No More Learning

The Spaniards have, indeed, no
fleet able to oppose us, but they will not endeavour actual opposition:
they will shut themselves up in their own territories, and let us
exhaust our seamen in a hopeless siege: they will give commissions to
privateers of every nation, who will prey upon our merchants without
possibility of reprisal. If they think their Plata fleet in danger, they
will forbid it to set sail, and live awhile upon the credit of treasure
which all Europe knows to be safe; and which, if our obstinacy should
continue till they can no longer be without it, will be conveyed to them
with secrecy and security, by our natural enemies the French, or by the
Dutch our natural allies.

But the whole continent of Spanish America will lie open to invasion; we
shall have nothing to do but march into these wealthy regions, and make
their present masters confess, that they were always ours by ancient
right. We shall throw brass and iron out of our houses, and nothing but
silver will be seen among us.

All this is very desirable, but it is not certain that it can be easily
attained. Large tracts of America were added, by the last war, to the
British dominions; but, if the faction credit their own Apollo, they
were conquered in Germany. They, at best, are only the barren parts of
the continent, the refuse of the earlier adventurers, which the French,
who came last, had taken only as better than nothing.

Against the Spanish dominions we have never, hitherto, been able to do
much. A few privateers have grown rich at their expense, but no scheme
of conquest has yet been successful. They are defended, not by walls
mounted with cannons, which by cannons may be battered, but by the
storms of the deep, and the vapours of the land, by the flames of
calenture and blasts of pestilence.

In the reign of Elizabeth, the favourite period of English greatness, no
enterprises against America had any other consequence than that of
extending English navigation. Here Cavendish perished, after all his
hazards; and here Drake and Hawkins, great as they were in knowledge and
in fame, having promised honour to themselves, and dominion to the
country, sunk by desperation and misery in dishonourable graves.

During the protectorship of Cromwell, a time of which the patriotick
tribes still more ardently desire the return, the Spanish dominions were
again attempted; but here, and only here, the fortune of Cromwell made a
pause. His forces were driven from Hispaniola; his hopes of possessing
the West Indies vanished; and Jamaica was taken, only that the whole
expedition might not grow ridiculous.

The attack of Carthagena is yet remembered, where the Spaniards, from
the ramparts, saw their invaders destroyed by the hostility of the
elements, poisoned by the air, and crippled by the dews; where every
hour swept away battalions; and, in the three days that passed between
the descent and reembarkation, half an army perished.

In the last war the Havanna was taken; at what expense is too well
remembered. May my country be never cursed with such another conquest!

These instances of miscarriage, and these arguments of difficulty, may,
perhaps, abate the military ardour of the publick. Upon the opponents of
the government their operation will be different; they wish for war, but
not for conquest; victory would defeat their purposes equally with
peace, because prosperity would naturally continue the trust in those
hands which had used it fortunately. The patriots gratified themselves
with expectations that some sinistrous accident, or erroneous conduct,
might diffuse discontent, and inflame malignity. Their hope is
malevolence, and their good is evil.

Of their zeal for their country we have already had a specimen. While
they were terrifying the nation with doubts, whether it was any longer
to exist; while they represented invasive armies as hovering in the
clouds, and hostile fleets, as emerging from the deeps; they obstructed
our levies of seamen, and embarrassed our endeavours of defence. Of such
men he thinks with unnecessary candour who does not believe them likely
to have promoted the miscarriage, which they desired, by intimidating
our troops, or betraying our counsels.

It is considered as an injury to the publick, by those sanguinary
statesmen, that though the fleet has been refitted and manned, yet no
hostilities have followed; and they, who sat wishing for misery and
slaughter, are disappointed of their pleasure. But as peace is the end
of war, it is the end, likewise, of preparations for war; and he may be
justly hunted down, as the enemy of mankind, that can choose to snatch,
by violence and bloodshed, what gentler means can equally obtain.

The ministry are reproached, as not daring to provoke an enemy, lest ill
success should discredit and displace them. I hope that they had better
reasons; that they paid some regard to equity and humanity; and
considered themselves as intrusted with the safety of their
fellow-subjects, and as the destroyers of all that should be
superfluously slaughtered. But let us suppose, that their own safety had
some influence on their conduct, they will not, however, sink to a level
with their enemies. Though the motive might be selfish, the act was
innocent. They, who grow rich by administering physick, are not to be
numbered with them that get money by dispensing poison. If they maintain
power by harmlessness and peace, they must for ever be at a great
distance from ruffians, who would gain it by mischief and confusion. The
watch of a city may guard it for hire; but are well employed in
protecting it from those, who lie in wait to fire the streets, and rob
the houses, amidst the conflagration.

An unsuccessful war would, undoubtedly, have had the effect which the
enemies of the ministry so earnestly desire; for who could have
sustained the disgrace of folly ending in misfortune? But had wanton
invasion undeservedly prospered, had Falkland's island been yielded
unconditionally, with every right, prior and posterior; though the
rabble might have shouted, and the windows have blazed, yet those who
know the value of life, and the uncertainty of publick credit, would
have murmured, perhaps unheard, at the increase of our debt, and the
loss of our people.

This thirst of blood, however the visible promoters of sedition may
think it convenient to shrink from the accusation, is loudly avowed by
Junius, the writer to whom his party owes much of its pride, and some of
its popularity. Of Junius it cannot be said, as of Ulysses, that he
scatters ambiguous expressions among the vulgar; for he cries havock,
without reserve, and endeavours to let slip the dogs of foreign or of
civil war, ignorant whither they are going, and careless what may be
their prey.

Junius has sometimes made his satire felt, but let not injudicious
admiration mistake the venom of the shaft for the vigour of the bow. He
has sometimes sported with lucky malice; but to him that knows his
company, it is not hard to be sarcastick in a mask. While he walks, like
Jack the giant-killer, in a coat of darkness, he may do much mischief
with little strength. Novelty captivates the superficial and
thoughtless; vehemence delights the discontented and turbulent. He that
contradicts acknowledged truth will always have an audience; he that
vilifies established authority will always find abettors.

Junius burst into notice with a blaze of impudence which has rarely
glared upon the world before, and drew the rabble after him, as a
monster makes a show. When he had once provided for his safety, by
impenetrable secrecy, he had nothing to combat but truth and justice,
enemies whom he knows to be feeble in the dark. Being then at liberty to
indulge himself in all the immunities of invisibility; out of the reach
of danger, he has been bold; out of the reach of shame, he has been
confident. As a rhetorician, he has had the art of persuading, when he
seconded desire; as a reasoner, he has convinced those who had no doubt
before; as a moralist, he has taught, that virtue may disgrace; and, as
a patriot, he has gratified the mean by insults on the high. Finding
sedition ascendant, he has been able to advance it; finding the nation
combustible, he has been able to inflame it. Let us abstract from his
wit the vivacity of insolence, and withdraw from his efficacy the
sympathetick favour of plebeian malignity; I do not say that we shall
leave him nothing; the cause that I defend, scorns the help of
falsehood; but if we leave him only his merit, what will be his praise?

It is not by his liveliness of imagery, his pungency of periods, or his
fertility of allusion, that he detains the cits of London, and the boors
of Middlesex. Of style and sentiment they take no cognizance. They
admire him, for virtues like their own, for contempt of order, and
violence of outrage; for rage of defamation, and audacity of falsehood.
The supporters of the bill of rights feel no niceties of composition,
nor dexterities of sophistry; their faculties are better proportioned to
the bawl of Bellas, or barbarity of Beckford; but they are told, that
Junius is on their side, and they are, therefore, sure that Junius is
infallible. Those who know not whither he would lead them, resolve to
follow him; and those who cannot find his meaning, hope he means
rebellion.

Junius is an unusual phenomenon, on which some have gazed with wonder,
and some with terrour, but wonder and terrour are transitory passions.
He will soon be more closely viewed, or more attentively examined; and
what folly has taken for a comet, that from its flaming hair shook
pestilence and war, inquiry will find to be only a meteor, formed by the
vapours of putrefying democracy, and kindled into flame by the
effervescence of interest, struggling with conviction; which, after
having plunged its followers in a bog, will leave us, inquiring why we
regard it.

Yet, though I cannot think the style of Junius secure from criticism,
though his expressions are often trite, and his periods feeble, I should
never have stationed him where he has placed himself, had I not rated
him by his morals rather than his faculties. What, says Pope, must be
the priest, where a monkey is the god? What must be the drudge of a
party, of which the heads are Wilkes and Crosby, Sawbridge and Townsend?

Junius knows his own meaning, and can, therefore, tell it. He is an
enemy to the ministry; he sees them growing hourly stronger. He knows
that a war, at once unjust and unsuccessful, would have certainly
displaced them, and is, therefore, in his zeal for his country, angry
that war was not unjustly made, and unsuccessfully conducted. But there
are others whose thoughts are less clearly expressed, and whose schemes,
perhaps, are less consequentially digested; who declare that they do not
wish for a rupture, yet condemn the ministry for not doing that, by
which a rupture would naturally have been made.

If one party resolves to demand what the other resolves to refuse, the
dispute can be determined only by arbitration; and between powers who
have no common superiour, there is no other arbitrator than the sword.

Whether the ministry might not equitably have demanded more is not worth
a question. The utmost exertion of right is always invidious, and, where
claims are not easily determinable, is always dangerous. We asked all
that was necessary, and persisted in our first claim, without mean
recession, or wanton aggravation. The Spaniards found us resolute, and
complied, after a short struggle.

The real crime of the ministry is, that they have found the means of
avoiding their own ruin; but the charge against them is multifarious and
confused, as will happen, when malice and discontent are ashamed of
their complaint. The past and the future are complicated in the censure.
We have heard a tumultuous clamour about honour and rights, injuries and
insults, the British flag and the Favourite's rudder, Buccarelli's
conduct and Grimaldi's declarations, the Manilla ransome, delays and
reparation.

Through the whole argument of the faction runs the general errour, that
our settlement on Falkland's island was not only lawful, but
unquestionable; that our right was not only certain, but acknowledged;
and that the equity of our conduct was such, that the Spaniards could
not blame or obstruct it, without combating their own conviction, and
opposing the general opinion of mankind.

If once it be discovered that, in the opinion of the Spaniards, our
settlement was usurped, our claim arbitrary, and our conduct insolent,
all that has happened will appear to follow by a natural concatenation.
Doubts will produce disputes and disquisition; disquisition requires
delay, and delay causes inconvenience.

Had the Spanish government immediately yielded, unconditionally, all
that was required, we might have been satisfied; but what would Europe
have judged of their submission? that they shrunk before us, as a
conquered people, who, having lately yielded to our arms, were now
compelled to sacrifice to our pride. The honour of the publick is,
indeed, of high importance; but we must remember, that we have had to
transact with a mighty king and a powerful nation, who have unluckily
been taught to think, that they have honour to keep or lose, as well as
ourselves.

When the admiralty were told, in June, of the warning given to Hunt,
they were, I suppose, informed that Hunt had first provoked it by
warning away the Spaniards, and naturally considered one act of
insolence as balanced by another, without expecting that more would be
done on either side. Of representations and remonstrances there would be
no end, if they were to be made whenever small commanders are uncivil to
each other; nor could peace ever be enjoyed, if, upon such transient
provocations, it be imagined necessary to prepare for war. We might
then, it is said, have increased our force with more leisure and less
inconvenience; but this is to judge only by the event. We omitted to
disturb the publick, because we did not suppose that an armament would
be necessary.

Some months afterwards, as has been told, Buccarelli, the governour of
Buenos Ayres, sent against the settlement of port Egmont a force which
ensured the conquest. The Spanish commander required the English
captains to depart, but they, thinking that resistance necessary, which
they knew to be useless, gave the Spaniards the right of prescribing
terms of capitulation. The Spaniards imposed no new condition, except
that the sloop should not sail under twenty days; and of this they
secured the performance by taking off the rudder.

To an inhabitant of the land there appears nothing in all this
unreasonable or offensive. If the English intended to keep their
stipulation, how were they injured by the detention of the rudder? If
the rudder be to a ship, what his tail is in fables to a fox, the part
in which honour is placed, and of which the violation is never to be
endured, I am sorry that the Favourite suffered an indignity, but cannot
yet think it a cause for which nations should slaughter one another.

When Buccarelli's invasion was known, and the dignity of the crown
infringed, we demanded reparation and prepared for war, and we gained
equal respect by the moderation of our terms, and the spirit of our
exertion. The Spanish minister immediately denied that Buccarelli had
received any particular orders to seize port Egmont, nor pretended that
he was justified, otherwise than by the general instructions by which
the American governours are required to exclude the subjects of other
powers.

To have inquired whether our settlement at port Egmont was any violation
of the Spanish rights, had been to enter upon a discussion, which the
pertinacity of political disputants might have continued without end.
We, therefore, called for restitution, not as a confession of right, but
as a reparation of honour, which required that we should be restored to
our former state upon the island, and that the king of Spain should
disavow the action of his governour.

In return to this demand, the Spaniards expected from us a disavowal of
the menaces, with which they had been first insulted by Hunt; and if the
claim to the island be supposed doubtful, they certainly expected it
with equal reason. This, however, was refused, and our superiority of
strength gave validity to our arguments.

But we are told, that the disavowal of the king of Spain is temporary
and fallacious; that Buccarelli's armament had all the appearance of
regular forces and a concerted expedition; and that he is not treated at
home as a man guilty of piracy, or as disobedient to the orders of his
master.

That the expedition was well planned, and the forces properly supplied,
affords no proof of communication between the governour and his court.
Those who are intrusted with the care of kingdoms in another hemisphere,
must always be trusted with power to defend them.

As little can be inferred from his reception at the Spanish court. He is
not punished, indeed; for what has he done that deserves punishment? He
was sent into America to govern and defend the dominions of Spain. He
thought the English were encroaching, and drove them away. No Spaniard
thinks that he has exceeded his duty, nor does the king of Spain charge
him with excess. The boundaries of dominion, in that part of the world,
have not yet been settled; and he mistook, if a mistake there was, like
a zealous subject, in his master's favour.

But all this inquiry is superfluous. Considered as a reparation of
honour, the disavowal of the king of Spain, made in the sight of all
Europe, is of equal value, whether true or false. There is, indeed, no
reason to question its veracity; they, however, who do not believe it,
must allow the weight of that influence, by which a great prince is
reduced to disown his own commission.

But the general orders, upon which the governour is acknowledged to have
acted, are neither disavowed _nor_ explained. Why the Spaniards should
disavow the defence of their own territories, the warmest disputant will
find it difficult to tell; and, if by an explanation is meant an
accurate delineation of the southern empire, and the limitation of their
claims beyond the line, it cannot be imputed to any very culpable
remissness, that what has been denied for two centuries to the European
powers, was not obtained in a hasty wrangle about a petty settlement.

The ministry were too well acquainted with negotiation to fill their
heads with such idle expectations. The question of right was
inexplicable and endless. They left it, as it stood. To be restored to
actual possession was easily practicable. This restoration they required
and obtained.

But they should, say their opponents, have insisted upon more; they
should have exacted not only, reparation of our honour, but repayment of
our expense. Nor are they all satisfied with the recovery of the costs
and damages of the present contest; they are for taking this opportunity
of calling in old debts, and reviving our right to the ransome of
Manilla.

The Manilla ransome has, I think, been most mentioned by the inferiour
bellowers of sedition. Those who lead the faction know that it cannot be
remembered much to their advantage. The followers of lord Rockingham
remember, that his ministry began and ended without obtaining it; the
adherents to Grenville would be told, that he could never be taught to
understand our claim. The law of nations made little of his knowledge.
Let him not, however, be depreciated in his grave. If he was sometimes
wrong, he was often right. [29]

Of reimbursement the talk has been more confident, though not more
reasonable. The expenses of war have been often desired, have been
sometimes required, but were never paid; or never, but when resistance
was hopeless, and there remained no choice between submission and
destruction.

Of our late equipments, I know not from whom the charge can be very
properly expected. The king of Spain disavows the violence which
provoked us to arm, and for the mischiefs, which he did not do, why
should he pay? Buccarelli, though he had learned all the arts of an
East Indian governour, could hardly have collected, at Buenos Ayres, a
sum sufficient to satisfy our demands. If he be honest, he is hardly
rich; and if he be disposed to rob, he has the misfortune of being
placed, where robbers have been before him.

The king of Spain, indeed, delayed to comply with our proposals, and our
armament was made necessary by unsatisfactory answers and dilatory
debates. The delay certainly increased our expenses, and, it is not
unlikely, that the increase of our expenses put an end to the delay.

But this is the inevitable process of human affairs. Negotiation
requires time, What is not apparent to intuition must be found by
inquiry. Claims that have remained doubtful for ages cannot be settled
in a day. Reciprocal complaints are not easily adjusted, but by
reciprocal compliance. The Spaniards, thinking themselves entitled to
the island, and injured by captain Hunt, in their turn demanded
satisfaction, which was refused; and where is the wonder, if their
concessions were delayed! They may tell us, that an independent nation
is to be influenced not by command, but by persuasion; that, if we
expect our proposals to be received without deliberation, we assume that
sovereignty which they do not grant us; and that if we arm, while they
are deliberating, we must indulge our martial ardour at our own charge.

The English ministry asked all that was reasonable, and enforced all
that they asked. Our national honour is advanced, and our interest, if
any interest we have, is sufficiently secured. There can be none amongst
us, to whom this transaction does not seem happily concluded, but those
who, having fixed their hopes on publick calamities, sat, like vultures,
waiting for a day of carnage. Having worn out all the arts of domestick
sedition, having wearied violence, and exhausted falsehood, they yet
flattered themselves with some assistance from the pride or malice of
Spain; and when they could no longer make the people complain of
grievances, which they did not feel, they had the comfort yet of
knowing, that real evils were possible, and their resolution is well
known of charging all evil on their governours.

The reconciliation was, therefore, considered as the loss of their last
anchor; and received not only with the fretfulness of disappointment,
but the rage of desperation. When they found that all were happy, in
spite of their machinations, and the soft effulgence of peace shone out
upon the nation, they felt no motion but that of sullen envy; they could
not, like Milton's prince of hell, abstract themselves a moment from
their evil; as they have not the wit of Satan, they have not his virtue;
they tried, once again, what could be done by sophistry without art, and
confidence without credit. They represented their sovereign as
dishonoured, and their country as betrayed, or, in their fiercer
paroxysms of fury, reviled their sovereign as betraying it.

Their pretences I have here endeavoured to expose, by showing, that more
than has been yielded, was not to be expected, that more, perhaps, was
not to be desired, and that, if all had been refused, there had scarcely
been an adequate reason for a war.

There was, perhaps, never much danger of war, or of refusal, but what
danger there was, proceeded from the faction. Foreign nations,
unacquainted with the insolence of common councils, and unaccustomed to
the howl of plebeian patriotism, when they heard of rabbles and riots,
of petitions and remonstrances, of discontent in Surrey, Derbyshire, and
Yorkshire; when they saw the chain of subordination broken, and the
legislature threatened and defied, naturally imagined, that such a
government had little leisure for Falkland's island; they supposed that
the English, when they returned ejected from port Egmont, would find
Wilkes invested with the protectorate, or see the mayor of London, what
the French have formerly seen their mayors of the palace, the commander
of the army, and tutor of the king; that they would be called to tell
their tale before the common council; and that the world was to expect
war or peace from a vote of the subscribers to the bill of rights.

But our enemies have now lost their hopes, and our friends, I hope, are
recovered from their fears. To fancy that our government can be
subverted by the rabble, whom its lenity has pampered into impudence, is
to fear that a city may be drowned by the overflowing of its kennels.
The distemper which cowardice or malice thought either decay of the
vitals, or resolution of the nerves, appears, at last, to have been
nothing more than a political _phtheiriasis_, a disease too loathsome
for a plainer name, but the effect of negligence rather than of
weakness, and of which the shame is greater than the danger.

Among the disturbers of our quiet are some animals of greater bulk, whom
their power of roaring persuaded us to think formidable; but we now
perceive that sound and force do not always go together. The noise of a
savage proves nothing but his hunger.

After all our broils, foreign and domestick, we may, at last, hope to
remain awhile in quiet, amused with the view of our own success. We have
gained political strength, by the increase of our reputation; we have
gained real strength, by the reparation of our navy; we have shown
Europe, that ten years of war have not yet exhausted us; and we have
enforced our settlement on an island on which, twenty years ago, we
durst not venture to look.

These are the gratifications only of honest minds; but there is a time,
in which hope comes to all. From the present happiness of the publick,
the patriots themselves may derive advantage. To be harmless, though by
impotence, obtains some degree of kindness: no man hates a worm as he
hates a viper; they were once dreaded enough to be detested, as serpents
that could bite; they have now shown that they can only hiss, and may,
therefore, quietly slink into holes, and change their slough, unmolested
and forgotten.




THE PATRIOT. [30]

ADDRESSED TO THE ELECTORS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 1774.

They bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
Yet still revolt when truth would set them free;
License they mean, when they cry liberty,
For who loves that must first be wise and good.

MILTON.


To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is
within our reach, is the great art of life. Many wants are suffered,
which might once have been supplied; and much time is lost in regretting
the time which had been lost before.

At the end of every seven years comes the saturnalian season, when the
freemen of great Britain may please themselves with the choice of their
representatives. This happy day has now arrived, somewhat sooner than it
could be claimed.

To select and depute those, by whom laws are to be made, and taxes to be
granted, is a high dignity, and an important trust; and it is the
business of every elector to consider, how this dignity may be well
sustained, and this trust faithfully discharged.

It ought to be deeply impressed on the minds of all who have voices in
this national deliberation, that no man can deserve a seat in
parliament, who is not a patriot. No other man will protect our rights:
no other man can merit our confidence.

A patriot is he whose publick conduct is regulated by one single motive,
the love of his country; who, as an agent in parliament, has, for
himself, neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but
refers every thing to the common interest.

That of five hundred men, such as this degenerate age affords, a
majority can be found thus virtuously abstracted, who will affirm? Yet
there is no good in despondence: vigilance and activity often effect
more than was expected. Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him;
and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish
those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive; for a man
may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent
qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
Some claim a place in the list of patriots, by an acrimonious and
unremitting opposition to the court.

This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily
included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his
country. He that has been refused a reasonable, or unreasonable request,
who thinks his merit underrated, and sees his influence declining,
begins soon to talk of natural equality, the absurdity of "many made for
one," the original compact, the foundation of authority, and the majesty
of the people. As his political melancholy increases, he tells, and,
perhaps, dreams, of the advances of the prerogative, and the dangers of
arbitrary power; yet his design, in all his declamation, is not to
benefit his country, but to gratify his malice.

These, however, are the most honest of the opponents of government;
their patriotism is a species of disease; and they feel some part of
what they express. But the greater, far the greater number of those who
rave and rail, and inquire and accuse, neither suspect nor fear, nor
care for the publick; but hope to force their way to riches, by
virulence and invective, and are vehement and clamorous, only that they
may be sooner hired to be silent.

A man sometimes starts up a patriot, only by disseminating discontent,
and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of
violated rights, and encroaching usurpation.

This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the
populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend publick
happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that
unnecessarily disturbs its peace. Few errours and few faults of
government, can justify an appeal to the rabble; who ought not to judge
of what they cannot understand, and whose opinions are not propagated by
reason, but caught by contagion.

The fallaciousness of this note of patriotism is particularly apparent,
when the clamour continues after the evil is past. They who are still
filling our ears with Mr. Wilkes, and the freeholders of Middlesex,
lament a grievance that is now at an end. Mr. Wilkes may be chosen, if
any will choose him, and the precedent of his exclusion makes not any
honest, or any decent man, think himself in clanger.

It may be doubted, whether the name of a patriot can be fairly given, as
the reward of secret satire, or open outrage. To fill the newspapers
with sly hints of corruption and intrigue, to circulate the Middlesex
Journal, and London Pacquet, may, indeed, be zeal; but it may, likewise,
be interest and malice. To offer a petition, not expected to be granted;
to insult a king-with a rude remonstrance, only because there is no
punishment for legal insolence, is not courage, for there is no danger;
nor patriotism, for it tends to the subversion of order, and lets
wickedness loose upon the land, by destroying the reverence due to
sovereign authority.

It is the quality of patriotism to be jealous and watchful, to observe
all secret machinations, and to see publick dangers at a distance. The
true lover of his country is ready to communicate his fears, and to
sound the alarm, whenever he perceives the approach of mischief. But he
sounds no alarm, when there is no enemy; he never terrifies his
countrymen till he is terrified himself. The patriotism, therefore, may
be justly doubted of him, who professes to be disturbed by
incredibilities; who tells, that the last peace was obtained by bribing
the princess of Wales; that the king is grasping at arbitrary power;
and, that because the French, in the new conquests, enjoy their own
laws, there is a design at court of abolishing, in England, the trial by
juries.

Still less does the true patriot circulate opinions which he knows to be
false. No man, who loves his country, fills the nation with clamorous
complaints, that the protestant religion is in danger, because "popery
is established in the extensive province of Quebec," a falsehood so open
and shameless, that it can need no confutation among those who know that
of which it is almost impossible for the most unenlightened zealot to be
ignorant:

That Quebec is on the other side of the Atlantick, at too great a
distance to do much good or harm to the European world:

That the inhabitants, being French, were always papists, who are
certainly more dangerous as enemies than as subjects:

That though the province be wide, the people are few, probably not so
many as may be found in one of the larger English counties:

That persecution is not more virtuous in a protestant than a papist; and
that, while we blame Lewis the fourteenth, for his dragoons and his
galleys, we ought, when power comes into our hands, to use it with
greater equity:

That when Canada, with its inhabitants, was yielded, the free enjoyment
of their religion was stipulated; a condition, of which king William,
who was no propagator of popery, gave an example nearer home, at the
surrender of Limerick:

That in an age, where every mouth is open for _liberty of conscience_,
it is equitable to show some regard to the conscience of a papist, who
may be supposed, like other men, to think himself safest in his own
religion; and that those, at least, who enjoy a toleration, ought not to
deny it to our new subjects.

If liberty of conscience be a natural right, we have no power to
withhold it; if it be an indulgence, it may be allowed to papists, while
it is not denied to other sects.

A patriot is necessarily and invariably a lover of the people. But even
this mark may sometimes deceive us.

The people is a very heterogeneous and confused mass of the wealthy and
the poor, the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad.
Before we
confer on a man, who caresses the people, the title of patriot, we must
examine to what part of the people he directs his notice. It is
proverbially said, that he who dissembles his own character, may be
known by that of his companions. If the candidate of patriotism
endeavours to infuse right opinions into the higher ranks, and, by their
influence, to regulate the lower; if he consorts chiefly with the wise,
the temperate, the regular, and the virtuous, his love of the people may
be rational and honest. But if his first or principal application be to
the indigent, who are always inflammable; to the weak, who are naturally
suspicious; to the ignorant, who are easily misled; and to the
profligate, who have no hope but from mischief and confusion; let his
love of the people be no longer boasted. No man can reasonably be
thought a lover of his country, for roasting an ox, or burning a boot,
or attending the meeting at Mile-end, or registering his name in the
lumber troop. He may, among the drunkards, be a hearty fellow, and,
among sober handicraftsmen, a free-spoken gentleman; but he must have
some better distinction, before he is a patriot.

A patriot is always ready to countenance the just claims, and animate
the reasonable hopes of the people; he reminds them, frequently, of
their rights, and stimulates them to resent encroachments, and to
multiply securities.

But all this may be done in appearance, without real patriotism. He that
raises false hopes to serve a present purpose, only makes a way for
disappointment and discontent. He who promises to endeavour, what he
knows his endeavours unable to effect, means only to delude his
followers by an empty clamour of ineffectual zeal.

A true patriot is no lavish promiser: he undertakes not to shorten
parliaments; to repeal laws; or to change the mode of representation,
transmitted by our ancestors; he knows that futurity is not in his
power, and that all times are not alike favourable to change.

Much less does he make a vague and indefinite promise of obeying the
mandates of his constituents. He knows the prejudices of faction, and
the inconstancy of the multitude. He would first inquire, how the
opinion of his constituents shall be taken. Popular instructions are,
commonly, the work, not of the wise and steady, but the violent and
rash; meetings held for directing representatives are seldom attended
but by the idle and the dissolute; and he is not without suspicion, that
of his constituents, as of other numbers of men, the smaller part may
often be the wiser.

He considers himself as deputed to promote the publick good, and to
preserve his constituents, with the rest of his countrymen, not only
from being hurt by others, but from hurting themselves.

The common marks of patriotism having been examined, and shown to be
such as artifice may counterfeit, or folly misapply, it cannot be
improper to consider, whether there are not some characteristical modes
of speaking or acting, which may prove a man to be not a patriot.

In this inquiry, perhaps, clearer evidence may be discovered, and firmer
persuasion attained; for it is, commonly, easier to know what is wrong
than what is right; to find what we should avoid, than what we should
pursue.

As war is one of the heaviest of national evils, a calamity in which
every species of misery is involved; as it sets the general safety to
hazard, suspends commerce, and desolates the country; as it exposes
great numbers to hardships, dangers, captivity, and death; no man, who
desires the publick prosperity, will inflame general resentment by
aggravating minute injuries, or enforcing disputable rights of little
importance.

It may, therefore, be safely pronounced, that those men are no patriots,
who, when the national honour was vindicated in the sight of Europe, and
the Spaniards having invaded what they call their own, had shrunk to a
disavowal of their attempt, and a relaxation of their claim, would still
have instigated us to a war, for a bleak and barren spot in the
Magellanick ocean, of which no use could be made, unless it were a place
of exile for the hypocrites of patriotism.

Yet let it not be forgotten, that, by the howling violence of patriotick
rage, the nation was, for a time, exasperated to such madness, that, for
a barren rock under a stormy sky, we might have now been fighting and
dying, had not our competitors been wiser than ourselves; and those who
are now courting the favour of the people, by noisy professions of
publick spirit, would, while they were counting the profits of their
artifice, have enjoyed the patriotick pleasure of hearing, sometimes,
that thousands had been slaughtered in a battle, and, sometimes, that a
navy had been dispeopled by poisoned air and corrupted food. He that
wishes to see his country robbed of its rights cannot be a patriot.

That man, therefore, is no patriot, who justifies the ridiculous claims
of American usurpation; who endeavours to deprive the nation of its
natural and lawful authority over its own colonies; those colonies,
which were settled under English protection; were constituted by an
English charter; and have been defended by English arms.

To suppose, that by sending out a colony, the nation established an
independent power; that when, by indulgence and favour, emigrants are
become rich, they shall not contribute to their own defence, but at
their own pleasure; and that they shall not be included, like millions
of their fellow-subjects, in the general system of representation;
involves such an accumulation of absurdity, as nothing but the show of
patriotism could palliate.

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always
protected the Americans; we may, therefore, subject them to government.

The less is included in the greater. That power which can take away
life, may seize upon property. The parliament may enact, for America, a
law of capital punishment; it may, therefore, establish a mode and
proportion of taxation.

But there are some who lament the state of the poor Bostonians, because
they cannot all be supposed to have committed acts of rebellion, yet all
are involved in the penalty imposed. This, they say, is to violate the
first rule of justice, by condemning the innocent to suffer with the
guilty.

This deserves some notice, as it seems dictated by equity and humanity,
however it may raise contempt by the ignorance which it betrays of the
state of man, and the system of things. That the innocent should be
confounded with the guilty, is, undoubtedly, an evil; but it is an evil
which no care or caution can prevent. National crimes require national
punishments, of which many must necessarily have their part, who have
not incurred them by personal guilt. If rebels should fortify a town,
the cannon of lawful authority will endanger, equally, the harmless
burghers and the criminal garrison.

In some cases, those suffer most who are least intended to be hurt. If
the French, in the late war, had taken an English city, and permitted
the natives to keep their dwellings, how could it have been recovered,
but by the slaughter of our friends? A bomb might as well destroy an
Englishman as a Frenchman; and, by famine, we know that the inhabitants
would be the first that should perish.

This infliction of promiscuous evil may, therefore, be lamented, but
cannot be blamed. The power of lawful government must be maintained; and
the miseries which rebellion produces, can be charged only on the
rebels.

That man, likewise, is not a patriot, who denies his governours their
due praise, and who conceals from the people the benefits which they
receive. Those, therefore, can lay no claim to this illustrious
appellation, who impute want of publick spirit to the late parliament;
an assembly of men, whom, notwithstanding some fluctuation of counsel,
and some weakness of agency, the nation must always remember with
gratitude, since it is indebted to them for a very ample concession, in
the resignation of protections, and a wise and honest attempt to improve
the constitution, in the new judicature instituted for the trial of
elections.

The right of protection, which might be necessary, when it was first
claimed, and was very consistent with that liberality of immunities, in
which the feudal constitution delighted, was, by its nature, liable to
abuse, and had, in reality, been sometimes misapplied to the evasion of
the law, and the defeat of justice. The evil was, perhaps, not adequate
to the clamour; nor is it very certain, that the possible good of this
privilege was not more than equal to the possible evil. It is, however,
plain, that, whether they gave any thing or not to the publick, they, at
least, lost something from themselves. They divested their dignity of a
very splendid distinction, and showed that they were more willing than
their predecessors to stand on a level with their fellow-subjects.

The new mode of trying elections, if it be found effectual, will diffuse
its consequences further than seems yet to be foreseen. It is, I
believe, generally considered as advantageous only to those who claim
seats in parliament; but, if to choose representatives be one of the
most valuable rights of Englishmen, every voter must consider that law
as adding to his happiness, which makes his suffrage efficacious; since
it was vain to choose, while the election could be controlled by any
other power.

With what imperious contempt of ancient rights, and what audaciousness
of arbitrary authority former parliaments have judged the disputes about
elections, it is not necessary to relate. The claim of a candidate, and
the right of electors, are said scarcely to have been, even in
appearance, referred to conscience; but to have been decided by party,
by passion, by prejudice, or by frolick. To have friends in the borough
was of little use to him, who wanted friends in the house; a pretence
was easily found to evade a majority, and the seat was, at last, his,
that was chosen, not by his electors, but his fellow-senators.

Thus the nation was insulted with a mock election, and the parliament
was filled with spurious representatives one of the most important
claims, that of right to sit in the supreme council of the kingdom, was
debated in jest, and no man could be confident of success from the
justice of his cause.

A disputed election is now tried with the same scrupulousness and
solemnity, as any other title. The candidate that has deserved well of
his neighbours, may now be certain of enjoying the effect of their
approbation; and the elector, who has voted honestly for known merit,
may be certain, that he has not voted in vain.

Such was the parliament, which some of those, who are now aspiring to
sit in another, have taught the rabble to consider as an unlawful
convention of men, worthless, venal, and prostitute, slaves of the
court, and tyrants of the people.

That the next house of commons may act upon the principles of the last,
with more constancy and higher spirit, must be the wish of all who wish
well to the publick; and, it is surely not too much to expect, that the
nation will recover from its delusion, and unite in a general abhorrence
of those, who, by deceiving the credulous with fictitious mischiefs,
overbearing the weak by audacity of falsehood, by appealing to the
judgment of ignorance, and flattering the vanity of meanness, by
slandering honesty, and insulting dignity, have gathered round them
whatever the kingdom can supply of base, and gross, and profligate; and
"raised by merit to this bad eminence," arrogate to themselves the name
of patriots.




TAXATION NO TYRANNY;

An answer [31] to the resolutions and address of the American congress.
1775.


In all the parts of human knowledge, whether terminating in science
merely speculative, or operating upon life, private or civil, are
admitted some fundamental principles, or common axioms, which,
being-generally received, are little doubted, and, being little doubted,
have been rarely proved.

Of these gratuitous and acknowledged truths, it is often the fate to
become less evident by endeavours to explain them, however necessary
such endeavours may be made by the misapprehensions of absurdity, or the
sophistries of interest. It is difficult to prove the principles of
science; because notions cannot always be found more intelligible than
those which are questioned. It is difficult to prove the principles of
practice, because they have, for the most part, not been discovered by
investigation, but obtruded by experience; and the demonstrator will
find, after an operose deduction, that he has been trying to make that
seen, which can be only felt.

Of this kind is the position, that "the supreme power of every community
has the right of requiring, from all its subjects, such contributions as
are necessary to the publick safety or publick prosperity," which was
considered, by all mankind, as comprising the primary and essential
condition of all political society, till it became disputed by those
zealots of anarchy, who have denied, to the parliament of Britain the
right of taxing the American colonies.

In favour of this exemption of the Americans from the authority of their
lawful sovereign, and the dominion of their mother-country, very loud
clamours have been raised, and many wild assertions advanced, which, by
such as borrow their opinions from the reigning fashion, have been
admitted as arguments; and, what is strange, though their tendency is to
lessen English honour and English power, have been heard by Englishmen,
with a wish to find them true. Passion has, in its first violence,
controlled interest, as the eddy for awhile runs against the stream.

To be prejudiced is always to be weak; yet there are prejudices so near
to laudable, that they have been often praised, and are always pardoned.
To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love
could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made
without a comparison; but it has never been my fortune to find, either
in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have,
with equal blindness, hated their country.

These antipatriotick prejudices are the abortions of folly impregnated
by faction, which, being produced against the standing order of nature,
have not strength sufficient for long life. They are born only to scream
and perish, and leave those to contempt or detestation, whose kindness
was employed to nurse them into mischief.

To perplex the opinion of the publick many artifices have been used,
which, as usually happens, when falsehood is to be maintained by fraud,
lose their force by counteracting one another.

The nation is, sometimes, to be mollified by a tender tale of men, who
fled from tyranny to rocks and deserts, and is persuaded to lose all
claims of justice, and all sense of dignity, in compassion for a
harmless people, who, having worked hard for bread in a wild country,
and obtained, by the slow progression of manual industry, the
accommodations of life, are now invaded by unprecedented oppression, and
plundered of their properties by the harpies of taxation.

We are told how their industry is obstructed by unnatural restraints,
and their trade confined by rigorous prohibitions; how they are
forbidden to enjoy the products of their own soil, to manufacture the
materials which nature spreads before them, or to carry their own goods
to the nearest market; and surely the generosity of English virtue will
never heap new weight upon those that are already overladen; will never
delight in that dominion, which cannot be exercised, but by cruelty and
outrage.

But, while we are melting in silent sorrow, and, in the transports of
delirious pity, dropping both the sword and balance from our hands,
another friend of the Americans thinks it better to awaken another
passion, and tries to alarm our interest, or excite our veneration, by
accounts of their greatness and their opulence, of the fertility of
their land, and the splendour of their towns. We then begin to consider
the question with more evenness of mind, are ready to conclude that
those restrictions are not very oppressive, which have been found
consistent with this speedy growth of prosperity; and begin to think it
reasonable, that they who thus flourish under the protection of our
government, should contribute something towards its expense.

But we are soon told, that the Americans, however wealthy, cannot be
taxed; that they are the descendants of men who left all for liberty,
and that they have constantly preserved the principles and stubbornness
of their progenitors; that they are too obstinate for persuasion, and
too powerful for constraint; that they will laugh at argument, and
defeat violence; that the continent of North America contains three
millions, not of men merely, but of whigs, of whigs fierce for liberty,
and disdainful of dominion; that they multiply with the fecundity of
their own rattlesnakes, so that every quarter of a century doubles their
numbers.

Men accustomed to think themselves masters do not love to be threatened.
This talk is, I hope, commonly thrown away, or raises passions different
from those which it was intended to excite. Instead of terrifying the
English hearer to tame acquiescence, it disposes him to hasten the
experiment of bending obstinacy, before it is become yet more obdurate,
and convinces him that it is necessary to attack a nation thus
prolifick, while we may yet hope to prevail. When he is told, through
what extent of territory we must travel to subdue them, he recollects
how far, a few years ago, we travelled in their defence. When it is
urged, that they will shoot up, like the hydra, he naturally considers
how the hydra was destroyed.

Nothing dejects a trader like the interruption of his profits. A
commercial people, however magnanimous, shrinks at the thought of
declining traffick and an unfavourable balance. The effect of this
terrour has been tried. We have been stunned with the importance of our
American commerce, and heard of merchants, with warehouses that are
never to be emptied, and of manufacturers starving for want of work.

That our commerce with America is profitable, however less than
ostentatious or deceitful estimates have made it, and that it is our
interest to preserve it, has never been denied; but, surely, it will
most effectually be preserved, by being kept always in our own power.
Concessions may promote it for a moment, but superiority only can ensure
its continuance. There will always be a part, and always a very large
part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose
care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate
pain, and eagerness for the nearest good. The blind are said to feel
with peculiar nicety. They who look but little into futurity, have,
perhaps, the quickest sensation of the present. A merchant's desire is
not of glory, but of gain; not of publick wealth, but of private
emolument; he is, therefore, rarely to be consulted about war and peace,
or any designs of wide extent and distant consequence.

Yet this, like other general characters, will sometimes fail. The
traders of Birmingham have rescued themselves from all imputation of
narrow selfishness, by a manly recommendation to parliament of the
rights and dignity of their native country.

To these men I do not intend to ascribe an absurd and enthusiastick
contempt of interest, but to give them the rational and just praise of
distinguishing real from seeming good; of being able to see through the
cloud of interposing difficulties, to the lasting and solid happiness of
victory and settlement.

Lest all these topicks of persuasion should fail, the greater actor of
patriotism has tried another, in which terrour and pity are happily
combined, not without a proper superaddition of that admiration which
latter ages have brought into the drama. The heroes of Boston, he tells
us, if the stamp act had not been repealed, would have left their town,
their port, and their trade, have resigned the splendour of opulence,
and quitted the delights of neighbourhood, to disperse themselves over
the country, where they would till the ground, and fish in the rivers,
and range the mountains, and be free.

These, surely, are brave words. If the mere sound of freedom can operate
thus powerfully, let no man, hereafter, doubt the story of the Pied
Piper. The removal of the people of Boston into the country, seems, even
to the congress, not only difficult in its execution, but important in
its consequences. The difficulty of execution is best known to the
Bostonians themselves; the consequence alas! will only be, that they
will leave good houses to wiser men.

Yet, before they quit the comforts of a warm home, for the sounding
something which they think better, he cannot be thought their enemy who
advises them, to consider well whether they shall find it. By turning
fishermen or hunters, woodmen or shepherds, they may become wild, but it
is not so easy to conceive them free; for who can be more a slave than
he that is driven, by force, from the comforts of life, is compelled to
leave his house to a casual comer, and, whatever he does, or wherever he
wanders, finds, every moment, some new testimony of his own subjection?
If choice of evil be freedom, the felon in the galleys has his option of
labour or of stripes. The Bostonian may quit his house to starve in the
fields; his dog may refuse to set, and smart under the lash, and they
may then congratulate each other upon the smiles of liberty, "profuse of
bliss, and pregnant with delight. "

To treat such designs as serious, would be to think too contemptuously
of Bostonian understandings. The artifice, indeed, is not new: the
blusterer, who threatened in vain to destroy his opponent, has,
sometimes, obtained his end, by making it believed, that he would hang
himself.

But terrours and pity are not the only means by which the taxation of
the Americans is opposed. There are those, who profess to use them only
as auxiliaries to reason and justice; who tell us, that to tax the
colonies is usurpation and oppression, an invasion of natural and legal
rights, and a violation of those principles which support the
constitution of English government.

This question is of great importance. That the Americans are able to
bear taxation, is indubitable; that their refusal may be overruled, is
highly probable; but power is no sufficient evidence of truth. Let us
examine our own claim, and the objections of the recusants, with caution
proportioned to the event of the decision, which must convict one part
of robbery, or the other of rebellion.

A tax is a payment, exacted by authority, from part of the community,
for the benefit of the whole. From whom, and in what proportion such
payment shall be required, and to what uses it shall be applied, those
only are to judge to whom government is intrusted. In the British
dominions taxes are apportioned, levied, and appropriated by the states
assembled in parliament.

Of every empire all the subordinate communities are liable to taxation,
because they all share the benefits of government, and, therefore, ought
all to furnish their proportion of the expense.

This the Americans have never openly denied. That it is their duty to
pay the costs of their own safety, they seem to admit; nor do they
refuse their contribution to the exigencies, whatever they may be, of
the British empire; but they make this participation of the publick
burden a duty of very uncertain extent, and imperfect obligation, a duty
temporary, occasional, and elective, of which they reserve to themselves
the right of settling the degree, the time, and the duration; of judging
when it may be required, and when it has been performed.

They allow to the supreme power nothing more than the liberty of
notifying to them its demands or its necessities. Of this notification
they profess to think for themselves, how far it shall influence their
counsels; and of the necessities alleged, how far they shall endeavour
to relieve them. They assume the exclusive power of settling not only
the mode, but the quantity, of this payment. They are ready to cooperate
with all the other dominions of the king; but they will cooperate by no
means which they do not like, and at no greater charge than they are
willing to bear.

This claim, wild as it may seem; this claim, which supposes dominion
without authority, and subjects without subordination, has found among
the libertines of policy, many clamorous and hardy vindicators. The laws
of nature, the rights of humanity, the faith of charters, the danger of
liberty, the encroachments of usurpation, have been thundered in our
ears, sometimes by interested faction, and sometimes by honest
stupidity.

It is said by Fontenelle, that if twenty philosophers shall resolutely
deny that the presence of the sun makes the day, he will not despair but
whole nations may adopt the opinion. So many political dogmatists have
denied to the mother-country the power of taxing the colonies, and have
enforced their denial with so much violence of outcry, that their sect
is already very numerous, and the publick voice suspends its decision.

In moral and political questions, the contest between interest and
justice has been often tedious and often fierce, but, perhaps, it never
happened before, that justice found much opposition, with interest on
her side.

For the satisfaction of this inquiry, it is necessary to consider, how a
colony is constituted; what are the terms of migration, as dictated by
nature, or settled by compact; and what social or political rights the
man loses or acquires, that leaves his country to establish himself hi a
distant plantation.

Of two modes of migration the history of mankind informs us, and so far
as I can yet discover, of two only. In countries where life was yet
unadjusted, and policy unformed, it sometimes happened, that, by the
dissensions of heads of families, by the ambition of daring adventurers,
by some accidental pressure of distress, or by the mere discontent of
idleness, one part of the community broke off from the rest, and
numbers, greater or smaller, forsook their habitations, put themselves
under the command of some favourite of fortune, and with, or without the
consent of their countrymen or governours, went out to see what better
regions they could occupy, and in what place, by conquest or by treaty,
they could gain a habitation.

Sons of enterprise, like these, who committed to their own swords their
hopes and their lives, when they left their country, became another
nation, with designs, and prospects, and interests, of their own. They
looked back no more to their former home; they expected no help from
those whom they had left behind; if they conquered, they conquered for
themselves; if they were destroyed, they were not by any other power
either lamented or revenged.

Of this kind seem to have been all the migrations of the early world,
whether historical or fabulous, and of this kind were the eruptions of
those nations, which, from the north, invaded the Roman empire, and
filled Europe with new sovereignties.

But when, by the gradual admission of wiser laws and gentler manners,
society became more compacted and better regulated, it was found, that
the power of every people consisted in union, produced by one common
interest, and operating in joint efforts and consistent counsels.

From this time independence perceptibly wasted away. No part of the
nation was permitted to act for itself. All now had the same enemies and
the same friends; the government protected individuals, and individuals
were required to refer their designs to the prosperity of the
government.

By this principle it is, that states are formed and consolidated. Every
man is taught to consider his own happiness, as combined with the
publick prosperity, and to think himself great and powerful, in
proportion to the greatness and power of his governours.

Had the western continent been discovered between the fourth and tenth
century, when all the northen world was in motion; and had navigation
been, at that time, sufficiently advanced to make so long a passage
easily practicable, there is little reason for doubting, but the
intumescence of nations would have found its vent, like all other
expansive violence, where there was least resistance; and that Huns and
Vandals, instead of fighting their way to the south of Europe, would
have gone, by thousands and by myriads, under their several chiefs, to
take possession of regions smiling with pleasure, and waving with
fertility, from which the naked inhabitants were unable to repel them.

Every expedition would, in those days of laxity, have produced a
distinct and independent state. The Scandinavian heroes might have
divided the country among them, and have spread the feudal subdivision
of regality from Hudson's bay to the Pacifick ocean.

But Columbus came five or six hundred years too late for the candidates
of sovereignty. When he formed his project of discovery, the
fluctuations of military turbulence had subsided, and Europe began to
regain a settled form, by established government and regular
subordination. No man could any longer erect himself into a chieftain,
and lead out his fellow-subjects, by his own authority, to plunder or to
war. He that committed any act of hostility, by land or sea, without the
commission of some acknowledged sovereign, was considered, by all
mankind, as a robber or pirate, names which were now of little credit,
and of which, therefore, no man was ambitious.

Columbus, in a remoter time, would have found his way to some
discontented lord, or some younger brother of a petty sovereign, who
would have taken fire at his proposal, and have quickly kindled, with
equal heat, a troop of followers: they would have built ships, or have
seized them, and have wandered with him, at all adventures, as far as
they could keep hope in their company. But the age being now past of
vagrant excursion and fortuitous hostility, he was under the necessity
of travelling from court to court, scorned and repulsed as a wild
projector, an idle promiser of kingdoms in the clouds; nor has any part
of the world yet had reason to rejoice that he found, at last, reception
and employment.

In the same year, in a year hitherto disastrous to mankind, by the
Portuguese was discovered the passage of the Indies, and by the
Spaniards the coast of America. The nations of Europe were fired with
boundless expectations, and the discoverers, pursuing their enterprise,
made conquests in both hemispheres of wide extent. But the adventurers
were not contented with plunder: though they took gold and silver to
themselves, they seized islands and kingdoms in the name of their
sovereigns. When a new region was gained, a governour was appointed by
that power, which had given the commission to the conqueror; nor have I
met with any European, but Stukely, of London, that formed a design of
exalting himself in the newly found countries to independent dominion.

To secure a conquest, it was always necessary to plant a colony, and
territories, thus occupied and settled, were rightly considered, as mere
extensions, or processes of empire; as ramifications which, by the
circulation of one publick interest, communicated with the original
source of dominion, and which were kept flourishing and spreading by the
radical vigour of the mother-country.

The colonies of England differ no otherwise from those of other nations,
than as the English constitution differs from theirs. All government is
ultimately and essentially absolute, but subordinate societies may have
more immunities, or individuals greater liberty, as the operations of
government are differently conducted. An Englishman in the common course
of life and action feels no restraint. An English colony has very
liberal powers of regulating its own manners, and adjusting its own
affairs. But an English individual may, by the supreme authority, be
deprived of liberty, and a colony divested of its powers, for reasons of
which that authority is the only judge.

In sovereignty there are no gradations. There may be limited royalty,
there may be limited consulship; but there can be no limited government.
There must, in every society, be some power or other, from which there
is no appeal, which admits no restrictions, which pervades the whole
mass of the community, regulates and adjusts all subordination, enacts
laws or repeals them, erects or annuls judicatures, extends or contracts
privileges, exempt itself from question or control, and bounded only by
physical necessity.

By this power, wherever it subsists, all legislation and jurisdiction is
animated and maintained. From this all legal rights are emanations,
which, whether equitably or not, may be legally recalled. It is not
infallible, for it may do wrong; but it is irresistible, for it can be
resisted only by rebellion, by an act which makes it questionable, what
shall be thenceforward the supreme power.

An English colony is a number of persons, to whom the king grants a
charter, permitting them to settle in some distant country, and enabling
them to constitute a corporation enjoying such powers as the charter
grants, to be administered in such forms as the charter prescribes. As a
corporation, they make laws for themselves; but as a corporation,
subsisting by a grant from higher authority, to the control of that
authority they continue subject.

As men are placed at a greater distance from the supreme council of the
kingdom, they must be intrusted with ampler liberty of regulating their
conduct by their own wisdom. As they are more secluded from easy
recourse to national judicature, they must be more extensively
commissioned to pass judgment on each other.

For this reason our more important and opulent colonies see the
appearance, and feel the effect, of a regular legislature, which, in
some places, has acted so long with unquestioned authority, that it has
forgotten whence that authority was originally derived.

To their charters the colonies owe, like other corporations, their
political existence. The solemnities of legislation, the administration
of justice, the security of property, are all bestowed upon them by the
royal grant. Without their charter, there would be no power among them,
by which any law could be made, or duties enjoined; any debt recovered,
or criminal punished.

A charter is a grant of certain powers or privileges, given to a part of
the community for the advantage of the whole, and is, therefore, liable,
by its nature, to change or to revocation. Every act of government aims
at publick good. A charter, which experience has shown to be detrimental
to the nation, is to be repealed; because general prosperity must always
be preferred to particular interest. If a charter be used to evil
purposes, it is forfeited, as the weapon is taken away which is
injuriously employed.

The charter, therefore, by which provincial governments are constituted,
may be always legally, and, where it is either inconvenient in its
nature, or misapplied in its use, may be equitably repealed; by such
repeal the whole fabrick of subordination is immediately destroyed, and
the constitution sunk at once into a chaos; the society is dissolved
into a tumult of individuals, without authority to command, or
obligation to obey, without any punishment of wrongs, but by personal
resentment, or any protection of right, but by the hand of the
possessor.

A colony is to the mother-country, as a member to the body, deriving its
action and its strength from the general principle of vitality;
receiving from the body, and communicating to it, all the benefits and
evils of health and disease; liable, in dangerous maladies, to sharp
applications, of which the body, however, must partake the pain; and
exposed, if incurably tainted, to amputation, by which the body,
likewise, will be mutilated.

The mother-country always considers the colonies, thus connected, as
parts of itself; the prosperity or unhappiness of either, is the
prosperity or unhappiness of both; not, perhaps, of both in the same
degree, for the body may subsist, though less commodiously, without a
limb, but the limb must perish, if it be parted from the body.

Our colonies, therefore, however distant, have been, hitherto, treated
as constituent parts of the British empire. The inhabitants incorporated
by English charters are entitled to all the rights of Englishmen. They
are governed by English laws, entitled to English dignities, regulated
by English counsels, and protected by English arms; and it seems to
follow, by consequence not easily avoided, that they are subject to
English government, and chargeable by English taxation.

To him that considers the nature, the original, the progress, and the
constitution of the colonies, who remembers that the first discoverers
had commissions from the crown, that the first settlers owe to a charter
their civil forms and regular magistracy, and that all personal
immunities and legal securities, by which the condition of the subject
has been, from time to time, improved, have been extended to the
colonists, it will not be doubted, but the parliament of England has a
right to bind them by statutes, and to bind them in all cases
whatsoever; and has, therefore, a natural and constitutional power of
laying upon them any tax or impost, whether external or internal, upon
the product of land, or the manufactures of industry, in the exigencies
of war, or in the time of profound peace, for the defence of America,
for the purpose of raising a revenue, or for any other end beneficial to
the empire.

There are some, and those not inconsiderable for number, nor
contemptible for knowledge, who except the power of taxation from the
general dominion of parliament, and hold, that whatever degress of
obedience may be exacted, or whatever authority may be exercised in
other acts of government, there is still reverence to be paid to money,
and that legislation passes its limits when it violates the purse.

Of this exception, which, by a head not fully impregnated with
politicks, is not easily comprehended, it is alleged, as an unanswerable
reason, that the colonies send no representatives to the house of
commons.

It is, say the American advocates, the natural distinction of a freeman,
and the legal privilege of an Englishman, that he is able to call his
possessions his own, that he can sit secure in the enjoyment of
inheritance or acquisition, that his house is fortified by the law, and
that nothing can be taken from him, but by his own consent. This consent
is given for every man by his representative in parliament. The
Americans, unrepresented, cannot consent to English taxations, as a
corporation, and they will not consent, as individuals.

Of this argument, it has been observed by more than one, that its force
extends equally to all other laws, for a freeman is not to be exposed to
punishment, or be called to any onerous service, but by his own consent.
The congress has extracted a position from the fanciful Montesquieu
that, "in a free state, every man, being a free agent, ought to be
concerned in his own government. " Whatever is true of taxation, is true
of every other law, that he who is bound by it, without his consent, is
not free, for he is not concerned in his own government.

He that denies the English parliament the right of taxation, denies it,
likewise, the right of making any other laws, civil or criminal, yet
this power over the colonies was never yet disputed by themselves. They
have always admitted statutes for the punishment of offences, and for
the redress or prevention of inconveniencies; and the reception of any
law draws after it, by a chain which cannot be broken, the unwelcome
necessity of submitting to taxation.

That a freeman is governed by himself, or by laws to which he has
consented, is a position of mighty sound; but every man that utters it,
with whatever confidence, and every man that hears it, with whatever
acquiescence, if consent be supposed to imply the power of refusal,
feels it to be false. We virtually and implicitly allow the institutions
of any government, of which we enjoy the benefit, and solicit the
protection. In wide extended dominions, though power has been diffused
with the most even hand, yet a very small part of the people are either
primarily or secondarily consulted in legislation. The business of the
publick must be done by delegation. The choice of delegates is made by a
select number, and those who are not electors stand idle and helpless
spectators of the commonweal, "wholly unconcerned in the government of
themselves. "

Of the electors the hap is but little better. They are often far from
unanimity in their choice; and where the numbers approach to equality,
almost half must be governed not only without, but against their choice.

How any man can have consented to institutions established in distant
ages, it will be difficult to explain. In the most favourite residence
of liberty, the consent of individuals is merely passive; a tacit
admission, in every community, of the terms which that community grants
and requires.