In a lawsuit the
question
is, who has a right to a certain house or farm?
Edmund Burke
?
?
?
4:2 A VINDIGATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
less than five thousand of their own body. They went further; they disfranchised them; and, having once begun with an act of injustice, they could set no bounds to it. Not content with cutting them off from the rights of citizens, they plundered these unfortu nate wretches of all their substance; and, to crown this masterpiece of violence and tyranny, they actu ally sold every man of the five thousand as slaves in the public market. Observe, my lord, that the five thousand we here speak of were cut oif from a body of no more than nineteen thousand; for the entire number of citizens was no greater at that time. Could the tyrant who wished the Roman people but one neck; could the tyrant Caligula himself
? have done, nay, he could scarcely wish for, a greater mis
chief than to have cut off', at one stroke, a fourth of his people? Or has the cruelty of that series of san guine tyrants, the Caesars, ever presented such a piece of flagrant and extensive wickedness? The whole history of this celebrated republic is but one tissue of rashness, folly, ingratitude, injustice, tumult, violence, and tyranny, and, indeed, of every species of wicked ness that can well be imagined. This was a city of wise men, in which a minister could not exercise his functions; a warlike people, amongst whom a gen eral did not dare either to gain or lose a battle; a learned nation, in which a philosopher could not ven ture on a free inquiry. This was the city which ban ished Themistocles, starved Aristides, forced into ex
ile Miltiades, drove out Anaxagoras, and poisoned Socrates. This was a city which changed the form of its government with the moon; eternal conspirm cies, revolutions daily, nothing fixed and established. A republic, as an ancient philosopher has observed, is
? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL socmrr. _ 43
no one species of government, but a magazine of every species ; here you find every sort of and that in the worst form. As there perpetual change, one ris ing and the other falling, you have all the violence and wicked policy by which beginning power must always acquire its strength, and all the weakness by which falling states are brought to complete de struction.
Rome has more venerable aspect than Athens; and she conducted her affairs, so far as related to the ruin and oppression of the greatest part of the world, with greater wisdom and more uniformity. But the domestic economy of these two states was nearly or altogether the same. An internal dissension con stantly tore to pieces the bowels of the Roman com monwealth. You find the same confusion, the same factions, which subsisted at Athens, the same tu mults, the same revolutions, and, in fine, the same slavery; perhaps, their former condition did not deserve that name altogether as well. All other re publics were of the same character. Florence was
transcript of Athens. And the modern republics, as they approach more or less to the democratic form, partake more or less of the nature of those which have described.
We are now at the close of our review of the three simple forms of artificial society and we have shown them, however they may differ in name, or in some slight circumstances, to be all alike in effect: in effect, to be all tyrannies. But suppose we were inclined to make the most ample concessions; let us concede Athens, Rome, Carthage, and two or three more of the ancient, and as many of the mod ern, commonwealths, to have been, or to be, free
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? 44: A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
and happy, and to owe their freedom and happiness to their political constitution. Yet, allowing all this, what defence does this make for artificial society in general, that these inconsiderable spots of the globe have for some short space of time stood as exceptions to a charge so general? But when we call these governments free, or concede that their citizens were happier than those which lived under different forms, it is merely ex abundanti. For we should be greatly mistaken, if we really thought that the majority of the people which filled these cities enjoyed even that nominal political freedom of which I have spoken so much already. In reality, they had no part of it. In Athens there were usually from ten to thirty thousand freemen; this was the utmost. But the slaves usually amounted to four hundred thousand, and sometimes to a great many more. The freemen of Sparta and Rome were not more numerous in pro portion to those whom they held in a slavery even more terrible than the Athenian. Therefore state the matter fairly: the free states never formed, though they were taken altogether, the thousandth part of the habitable globe; the freemen in these states were never the twentieth part of the people, and the time they subsisted is scarce anything in that immense ocean 'of duration in which time and slavery are so nearly commensurate. Therefore call these free states, or popular governments, or what you please; when we consider the majority of their inhabitants, and regard the natural _rights of man kind, they must appear, in reality and truth, no bet ter than pitiful and oppressive oligarchies.
After so fair an examen, wherein nothing has been exaggerated; no fact produced which cannot
? ? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL SOCIETY. 45
be proved, and none which has been produced in any wise forced or strained, while thousands have, for brevity, been omitted; after so candid a discus sion in all respects; what slave so passive, what bigot so blind, what enthusiast so headlong, what politician so hardened, as to stand up in defence of a system calculated for a curse to mankind? a curse under which they smart and groan to this hour, without thoroughly knowing the nature of the disease, and wanting understanding or courage to supply the remedy.
I need not excuse myself to your lordship, nor, I think, to any honest man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause;'f0r it is an honest zeal, and in a good cause. I have defended natural religion against a confederacy of atheists and divines. I now plead for"natural society against politicians, and for natural reason against all three. When the world is in a fitter temper than it is at present to hear truth, or when I shall be more indifferent about its temper, my thoughts may become more public. In the mean time, let them repose in my own bosom, and in the bosoms of such men as are fit to be ini tiated in the sober mysteries of truth and reason. My antagonists have already done as much as I could desire. Parties in religion and politics make suffi cient discoveries concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them all. The monarchic, and aristocratical, and popular partisans, have been jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have, in their turns, proved each other absurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is
? ? ? ? 4:6 A VINDICATION OF' NATURAL SOCIETY.
the abuse! Observe, my lord, I pray yon, that grand error upon which all artificial legislative power is founded. It was observed, that men had ungovern able passions, which made it necessary to guard against the violence they might offer to each other. They appointed governors over them for this reason. But a worse and more perplexing difficulty arises, how to be defended against the governors? eustodiet ipsos custodes? In vain they change from a single person to a few. These few have the passions
of the one ; and they unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their lawless pas sions at the expense of the general good. In vain do we fly to the many. lThe case is worse; their passions are less under the government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended against all attacks by their multitude.
Qais
? I have purposely avoided the mention of the mixed form of government, for reasons that will be very obvious to your lordship. But my caution can avail me but little. You will not fail to urge it against me in favor of political society. You will not fail to
show how the errors of the several simple modes are corrected by a mixture of all of them, and a proper balance of the several powers in such a state. I confess, my lord, that this has been long a darling mistake of my own; and that of all the sacrifices I have made to truth, this has been by far the greatest. When I confess that I think this notion a mistake, I know to whom I am speaking, for I am satisfied that reasons are like liquors, and there are some of such a nature as none but strong heads can bear. There are few with whom I can communicate so freely as with Pope. But Pope cannot bear every truth. He
? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL socmrr. 47
has a timidity which hinders the full exertion of his faculties, almost as effectually as bigotry cramps those
of the general herd of mankind.
genuine follower of truth keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader. And, my lord, if it be properly con sidered, it were infinitely better to remain possessed by the whole legion of vulgar mistakes, than to re ject some, and at the same time to retain a fondnws for others altogether as absurd and irrational.
first has at least a consistency, that makes a man,
however erroneously, uniform at least; but the latter way of proceeding is such an inconsistent chimera and jumble of philosophy and vulgar prejudice, that hardly anything more ridiculous can be conceived. Let us therefore freely, and without fear or prejudice, examine this last contrivance of policy. And, with out considering how near the quick our instruments
may come, let us search it to the bottom.
First, then,'all men are agreed that this junction of
regal, aristocratic, and popular power, must form a very complex, nice, and intricate machine, wl. . c'h being composed of such a variety of parts, with such opposite tendencies and movements, it must be liable on every accident to be disordered. To speak with out metaphor, such a government must be liable to frequent cabals, tumults, and revolutions, from its very constitution. These are undoubtedly as ill effects as can happen in a society; for in such a case, the closeness acquired by community, instead of serv ing for mutual defence, serves only to increase the
danger. Such a system is like a city, where trades that require constant fires are much exercised, where the houses are built of combustible materials, and where they stand extremely close.
But whoever is a
The
? ? ? ? 48 A v1NmcAT1oN or NATURAL SOCIETY.
In the second place, the several constituent 'parts having their distinct rights, and these many of them so necessary to be determined with exactness, are yet so indeterminate in their nature, that it becomes a new and constant source of debate and confusion. Hence it that whilst the business of government should be carrying on, the question Who has right to exercise this or that fimction of or what men have power to keep their ofiices in any function? Whilst this contest continues, and whilst the balance in any sort continues, has never any remission all manner of abuses and villanies i11 officers remain un
? the greatest frauds and robberies in the public revenues are committed in defiance of justice; and abuses grow, by time and impunity, into cus toms; until they prescribe against the laws, and grow too inveterate often to admit cure, unless such as may be as bad as the disease.
Thirdly, the several parts of this species of govern ment, though united, preserve the spirit which each form has separately. Kings are ambitious; the no bility haughty; and the populace tumultuous and ungovernable. Each party, however in appearance peaceable, carries on design upon the others and
owing to this, that in all questions, whether con cerning foreign or domestic affairs, the whole gener
ally turns more upon some party-matter than upon
the nature of the thing itself; whether such
will diminish or augment the power of the crown, or how far the privileges of the subject are likely to be extended or restricted by it. And these questions are constantly resolved, without any consideration of the merits of the cause, merely as the parties who uphold these jarring interests may chance to prevail
punished;
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;
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? A VINDICATION or NATURAL SOCIETY. 49
and as they prevail, the balance is overset, now upon one side, now upon the other. The government one day, arbitrary power in single person another,
juggling confederacy of few to cheat the prince and enslave the people and the third, frantic and unmanageable democracy. The great instrument of all these changes, and what infuses peculiar venom into all of them, party. It of no consequence what the principles of any party, or what their preten sions are the spirit which actuates all parties the same; the spirit of ambition, of self-interest, of op pression and treachery. This spirit entirely reverses all the principles which benevolent nature has erected within us all honesty, all equal justice, and even the ties of natural society, the natural affections. In word, my lord, we have all seen, and, any out ward considerations were worthy the lasting concern of wise man, we have some of us felt, such oppres sion from party government as no other tyranny can parallel. Webehold daily the most important rights, rights upon which all the others depend, we behold these rights determined in the last resort, without the least attention even to the appearance or color of jus
tice; we behold this without emotion, because we have grown up in the constant view of such practices; and we are not surprised to hear man requested to be knave and traitor, with as much indifference as the most ordinary favor were asked; and we hear this request refused, not because most unjust and unreasonable desire, but because this Worthy has already engaged his injustice to another. These and many more points am far from spreading to their full extent. You are sensible that do not
put forth half my strength; and you cannot be at vot. 1.
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? 50 VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
loss for the reason. A man is allowed sufficient free dom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly. You may criticise freely upon the Chinese constitution, and observe with as much severity as you please upon the absurd tricks, or de structive bigotry of the bonzees. But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or trea son may be the names given in Britain, to what would be reason and truth if asserted of China. I submit to the condition, and though I have a notorious ad vantage before me, I waive the pursuit. For else, my lord, it is very obvious what a picture might be drawn of the excesses of party even in our own na tion. I could show, that the same faction has, in one reign, promoted popular seditions, and, in the next, been a patron of tyranny: I could show that they have all of them betrayed the public safety at
all times, and have very frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause and their own associates. I could show how vehemently they have contended for names, and how silently they have passed over things of the last importance. And I could demonstrate that they have had the opportunity of doing all this misclnef, nay, that they themselves had their origin and growth from that complex form of government, which we are wisely taught to look upon as so great a blessing. Revolve, my lord, our history from the Conquest. We scarcely ever had a prince, who, by fraud or violence, had not made some infringement on the constitution. We scarcely ever had a Parliament which knew, when it attempted to
set limits to the royal authority, how to set limits to its own. Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any
? ? ? ? A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
evils. Our boasted liberty sometimes trodden down, sometimes giddily set up, and ever precariously fluctu ating and unsettled ; it has only been kept alive by the blasts of continual feuds, wars, and conspiracies. In no country in Europe has the scaffold so often blushed with the blood of its nobility. Confiseations, banish ments, attainders, executions, make a large part of the history of such of our families as are not utterly extinguished by them. Formerly, indeed, things had a more ferocious appearance than they have at this day. In these early and unrefined ages, the jarring part of a certain chaotic constitution supported their several pretensions by the sword. Experience and policy have since taught other methods.
At nunc res agitur tenui pulmone rubetm.
? But how far corruption, vcnality, the contempt of honor, the oblivion of all duty to our country, and the most abandoned public prostitution, are prefer able to the more glaring and violent effects of faction, I will not presume to determine. Sure I am that they are very great evils.
I have done with the forms of government. Dur ing the course of my inquiry you may have observed a very material difference between my manner of rea soning and that which is in 'use amongst the abet tors of artificial society. They form their plans upon what seems most eligible to their imaginations, for the ordering of mankind. I discover the mistakes in those plans, from the real known consequences which have resulted from them. They have enlisted reason to fight against itself, and employ its whole force to prove that it is an insufficient guide to them in the conduct of their lives. But unhappily for us, in pro portion as we have deviated from the plain rule of our
? ? ? 52 A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
nature, and turned our reason against itself, in that proportion have we increased the follies and miseries of mankind. The more deeply we penetrate into the labyrinth of art, the further we find ourselves from those ends for which we entered it. This has hap pened in ahnost every species of artificial society, and in all times. We found, or we thought we found, an inconvenience in having every man the judge of his own cause. Therefore judges were set up, at first, with discretionary powers. But it was soon found a miserable slavery to have our lives and properties pre carious, and hanging upon the arbitrary determina tion of any one man, or set of men. We fled to laws as a remedy for this evil. By these we persuaded ourselves we might know with some certainty upon what ground we stood. But lo ! differences arose up on the sense and interpretation of these laws. Thus we were brought back to our old incertitude. New laws were made to expound the old; and new diffi culties arose upon the new laws ; as words multiplied, opportunities of cavilling upon them multiplied also. Then recourse was had to notes, comments, glosses,
? learned readings: eagle stood against eagle: authority was set up against authority. Some were allured by the modern, others
reverenced the ancient. The new were more enlight ened, the old were more venerable. Some adopted the comment, others stuck to the text. The confusion increased, the mist thickened, until it could be dis covered no longer what was allowed or forbidden, what things were in property, and what common. In this uncertainty, (uncertain even to the professors, an Egyptian darkness to the rest of mankind), the contending parties felt themselves more effectually
reports, responsa prudentum,
? ? ? 4 VINDICATION or NATURAL soomrv. 53
ruined by the delay, than they could have been by the injustice of any decision. Our inheritances are become a prize for disputation ; and disputes and liti gations are become an inheritance.
The professors of artificial law have always walked hand in hand with the professors of artificial theology. As their end, in confounding the reason of man, and abridging his natural freedom, is exactly the same, they have adjusted the means to that end in a way entirely similar. The divine thunders out his anath emas with more noise and terror against the breach of one of his . positive institutions, or the neglect of some of his trivial forms, than against the neglect or breach of those duties and commandments of natural religion, which by these forms and institutions he pre tends to enforce. The lawyer has his forms, and his positive institutions too, and he adheres to them with a veneration altogether as religious. The worst cause cannot be so prejudicial to the litigant, as his advo cate's or attorney's ignorance or neglect of these forms. A lawsuit is like an ill-managed dispute, in which the first object is soon out of sight, and the
parties end upon a matter wholly foreign to that on which they began.
In a lawsuit the question is, who has a right to a certain house or farm? And this question is daily determined, not upon the evidence of the right, but upon the observance or neglect of some forms of words in use with the gentlemen of the robe, about which there is even amongst themselves such a disagreement, that the most experienced vet erans in the profession can never be positively assured that they are not mistaken.
Let us expostulate with these learned sages, these priests of the sacred temple of justice. Are we judges
? ? ? ? 54 A v1Nn1cAT1oN or NATURAL SOCIETY.
of our own property? By no means. You then, who are initiated into the mysteries of the blindfold god dess, inform me whether I have a right to eat the bread I have earned by the hazard of my life or the sweat of my brow ? The grave doctor answers me 1n the affirmative ; the reverend serjeant replies in the negative ; the learned barrister reasons upon one side and upon the other, and concludes nothing. What shall I do? An antagonist starts up and presses me
hard. I enter the field, and retain these three per sons to defend my cause. My cause, which two farm ers from the plough could have decided in half an hour, takes the court twenty years. I am however at the end of my labor, and have in reward for all my toil and vexation a judgment in my favor. But hold --a sagacious commander, in the adversary's army, has found a flaw in the proceeding. My triumph is turned into mourning. I have used or, instead of and, or some mistake, small in appearance, but dread ful in its consequences; and have the whole of my success quashed in a writ of error. I remove my suit; I shift from court to court; I fly from equity to law, and from law to equity; equal uncertainty attends me everywhere; and a mistake in which I had no share, decides at once upon my liberty and property, sending me from the court to a prison, and adjudging my family to beggary and famine. I am innocent, gentlemen, of the darkness and uncertainty of your science. I never darkened it with absurd and contradictory notions, nor confounded it with chicane and sophistry. You have excluded me from any share in the conduct of my own cause; the science was too deep for me; I acknowledged it ; but it was too deep even for yourselves: you have made the way
? ? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL SOCIETY. 55
so intricate, that you are yourselves lost in it; you err, and you punish me for your errors.
The delay of the law your lordship will tell me, trite topic, and which of its abuses have not been too severely felt not to be complained of? man's
to serve for the purposes of his support and therefore, to delay determination concerning that, the worst injustice, 'because cuts off the very end and purpose for which applied to the judicature for relief. Quite contrary in the case of
man's life there the determination can hardly be too much protracted. Mistakes in this case are as often fallen into as many other and the judgment
sudden, the mistakes are the most irretrievable of all others. Of this the gentlemen of the robe are
themselves sensible, and they have brought into maxim. De morte homimls nulla est cunctatio longa. But what could have induced them to reverse the rules, and to contradict that reason which dictated them, am utterly unable to guess. point con cerning property, which ought, for the reasons have just mentioned, to be most speedily decided, fre
exercises the wit of successions of lawyers, for many generations. Malta virtim volvens durando stecula vincit. But the question concerning man's life, that great question in which no delay ought to be counted tedious, commonly determined in twenty-four hours at the utmost. It not to be wondered at, that injustice and absurdity should be inseparable companions.
Ask of politicians the end for which laws were orig inally designed; and they will answer, that the laws were designed as protection for the poor and weak,
the oppression of the rich and powerful
property
? quently
against
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? 56 A v1Nn1cAT1oN or NATURAL socmrv.
But surely no pretence can be so ridiculous; a man might as well tell me he has taken off my load, be cause he has changed the burden. If the poor man is not able to support his suit, according to the vex atious and expensive manner established in civilized countries, has not the rich as great an advantage over him as the strong has over the weak in a state of nature? But we will not place the state of na ture, which is the reign of God, in competition with political society, which is the absurd usurpation of man. In a state of nature, it is true that a man of superior force may beat or rob me; but then it is true, that I am at full liberty to defend myself, or make reprisal by surprise or by cunning, or by any other way in which I may be superior to him. But in political society, a rich man may rob me in an other way. I cannot defend myself; for money is the only weapon with which we are allowed to fight. And if I attempt to avenge myself the whole force of
gins, religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice ends? It is hard to say, whether the doctors of law or divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of mystery. The lawyers, as well as the theologians, have erected another reason be sides natural reason; and the result has been, an other justice besides natural justice, They have so bewildered the world and themselves in unmeaning forms and ceremonies, and so perplexed the plainest matters with metaphysical jargon, that it carries the highest danger to a man out of that profession, to make the least step without their advice and as
? that society is ready to complete my ruin.
A good parson once said, that where mystery be
? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL socmrr. 57
sistance. Thus, by confining to themselves the
of the foundation of all men's lives and properties, they have reduced all mankind into the most abject and servile dependence. We are ten ants at the will of these gentlemen for everything; and a metaphysical quibble is to decide whether the greatest villain breathing shall meet his deserts, or
with impunity, or whether the best man in the society shall not be reduced to the lowest and most despicable condition it affords. In a word, my lord, the injustice, delay, puerility, false refinement, and affected mystery of the law are such, that many who
live under it come to admire and envy the expedi tion, simplicity, and equality of arbitrary judgments. I need insist the less on this article to your lordship, as you have frequently lamented the miseries derived to us from artificial law, and your candor is the more to be admired and applauded in this, as your lord
knowledge
escape
? noble house has derived its wealth and its
ship's
honors from that profession.
Before we finish our examination of artificial soci ety, I shall lead your lordship into a closer consider ation of the relations which it gives birth to, and the benefits, if such they are, which result from these re lations. The most obvious division of society'is into rich and poor; and it is no less obvious, that the
of the former bear a great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find
the best methods of confirming the slavery and in creasing the burdens of the poor. In a state of na ture, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are in proportion to his labors. In a state of artificial
number
? ? ? 58 A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
society, it is a law as constant and as invariable, that those who labor most enjoy the fewest things; and that those who labor not at all have the greatest num ber of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and ridiculous beyond expression ! We scarce believe a thing when we are told which we actu ally see before our eyes every day without being in the least surprised. "suppose that there are in Great Britain upwards of hundred thousand people employed in lead, tin, iron, copper, and coal mines; these unhappy wretches scarce ever see the light of the sun they are buried in the bowels of the earth there they work at severe and dismal task, without the least prospect of being delivered from it; they subsist upon the coarsest and worst sort of fare they have their health miserably impaired, and their lives out short, by being perpetually confined in the close vapor of these malignant minerals. A hundred thou sand more at least are tortured without remission by the suffocating smoke, intense fires, and constant drudgery necessary in refining and managing the products of those mines. If any man informed us that two hundred thousand innocent_ persons were condemned to so intolerable slavery, how should we pity the unhappy sufferers, and how great would be our just indignation against those who inflicted so cruel and ignominious punishment! This an in stance --I could not wish stronger-- of the num berless things which we pass by in their common dress, yet which shock us when they are nakedly rep resented. But this number, considerable as and the slavery, with all its baseness and horror, which we have at home, nothing to what the rest of the world affords of the same nature. Millions
? daily
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? A VINDICATION or NATURAL socmrr. 59
bathed in the poisonous damps and destructive efflu via of lead, silver, copper, and arsenic. To say noth ing of those other employments, those stations of wretchedness and contempt, in which civil society has placed the numerous enfans perdus of her army. VVould any rational man submit to one of the most tolerable of these drudgeries, for all the artificial en
joyments which policy has made to result from them? By no means. And yet need I suggest to yo1u' lord ship, that those who find the means, and those who arrive at the end, are not at all the same persons? On considering the strange and unaccountable fan cies and contrivances of artificial reason, I have some where called this earth the Bedlam of our system. Looking now upon the effects of some of those fan cies, may we not with equal reason call it likewise the Newgate and the Bridewell of the universe ? In deed the blindness of one part of mankind co-operat ing with the frenzy and villany of the other, has been the real builder of this respectable fabric of political society: and as the blindness of mankind has caused their slavery, in return their state of slavery is made a pretence for continuing them in a state of blind ness ; for the politician will tell you gravely, that their life of servitude disqualifies the greater part of the race of man for a search of truth, and supplies them with no other than mean and insufficient ideas. This is but too true; and this is one of the reasons for which I blame such institutions.
In a misery of this sort, admitting some few leni tives, and those too but a few, nine parts in ten of the whole race of mankind drudge through life. It may be urged perhaps, in palliation of this, that at least the rich few find a considerable and real benefit from
? ? ? ? 60
A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
the wretchedness of the many. But is this so in fact? Let us examine the point with a little more attention. For this purpose the rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of
As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days, and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are suf ficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labor continually, which is the severest labor, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations. Vera: amicitioe rarissime irweniuritu/r" in iis qai in hortoribus reque publica versarttur, says
Cicero. And indeed courts are the schools where cruelty, pride, dissimulation, and treachery are stud ied and taught in the most vicious perfection. This is a point so clear and acknowledged, that if it did not make a necessary part of my subject, I should pass it by entirely. And this has hindered me from drawing at full length, and in the most striking col ors, this shocking picture of the degeneracy and wretchedness of human nature, in that part which is vulgarly thought its happiest and most amiable state. You know from what originals I could copy such pictures. Happy are they who know enough of them
pleasure.
? ? ? ? A v1Nn1cATioN or NATURAL SOCIETY. 61
to know the little value of the possessors of such things, and of all that they possess ; and happy they
who have been snatched from that post of danger which they occupy, with the remains of their virtue ; loss of honors, wealth, titles, and even the loss of one's country, is nothing in balance with so great an advantage.
Let us now view the other species of the rich, those who devote their time and fortunes to idleness and pleasure. How much happier are they? The pleas ures which are agreeable to nature are within the reach of all, and therefore can form no distinction in favor of the rich. The pleasures which art forces up are seldom sincere, and never satisfying. What is worse, this constant application to pleasure takes away from the enjoyment, or rather turns it into the nature of a very burdensome and laborious business. It has consequences much more fatal. It produces a weak valetudinary state of body, attended by all those horrid disorders, and yet more horrid methods of cure, which are the result of luxury on the one hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human art on the other. The pleasures of such men are scarcely felt as pleasures; at the same time that they bring on pains and diseases, which are felt but too
The mind has its share of the misfortune ; it grows lazy and enervate, unwilling and unable to search for truth, and utterly uncapable of knowing, much less of relishing, real happiness. The poor by their excessive labor, and the rich by their enormous luxury, are set upon a level, and rendered equally
ignorant of any knowledge which might conduce to their happiness. A dismal view of the interior of all civil society! The lower part broken and ground down
? severely.
? ? ? 62 A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
by the most cruel oppression ; and the rich by their artificial method of life bringing worse evils on them selves than their tyranny could possibly inflict on those below them. Very different is the prospect of the nat ural state. Here there are no wants which nature gives, and in this state men can be sensible of no other wants, which are not to be supplied by a very moderate degree of labor; therefore there is no sla very. Neither is there any luxury, because no sin gle man can supply the materials of it. Life is simple, and therefore it is happy.
I am conscious, my lord, that your politician will urge in his defence, that this unequal state is highly useful. . That without dooming some part of mankind to extraordinary toil, the arts which cultivate life could not be exercised. But I demand of this poli tician, how such arts came to be necessary ? He an swers, that civil society could not well exist without them. So that these arts are necessary to civil soci ety, and civil society necessary again to these arts. Thus are we running in a circle, without modesty, and without end, and making one error and extrava ganoe an excuse for the other. My sentiments about these arts and their cause, I have often discoursed with my friends at large. Pope has expressed them in good verse, where he talks with so much force of reason and elegance of language, in praise of the state of nature :
" Then was not pride, nor arts that pride to aid, Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade. "
On the whole, my lord, if political society, in what ever form, has still made the many the property of the few; if it has introduced labors unnecessary, vices and diseases unknown, and pleasures
? incompatible
? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL socmrr.
63
w1th nature; if in all countries it abridges the lives of millions, and renders those of millions more utterly abject and miserable, shall we still worship so destruc tive an idol, and daily sacrifice to it our health, our liberty, and our peace? Or shall we pass by this mon strous heap of absurd notions, and abominable prac
tices, thinking we have sufficiently discharged our
duty in exposing the trifling cheats, and ridiculous juggles of a few mad, designing, or ambitious priests? Alas ! my lord, we labor under a mortal consumption, whilst we are so anxious about the cure of a sore fin ger. For has not this leviathan of civil power over flowed the earth with a deluge of blood, as if he were made to disport and play therein ? We have shown that political society, on a moderate calculation, has
been the means of murde1ing several times the num ber of inhabitants now upon the earth, during its short existence, not upwards of four thousand years in any accounts to be depended on. But we have said nothing of the other, and perhaps as bad, conse quence of these wars, which have spilled such seas of blood, and reduced so many millions to a merciless slavery. But these are only the ceremonies performed
in the porch of the political temple. Much more hor rid ones are seen as you enter it. The several species of government vie with each other in the absurdity of their constitutions, and the oppression which they make their subjects endure. Take them under what form you please, they are in effect but a despotism, and they fall, both in effect and appearance too, after
a very short period, into that cruel and detestable spe cies of tyranny: which I rather call because we have been educated under another form, than that this of worse consequences to mankind. For the free gov
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? 64 A 'vINn1oAT1oN or NATURAL soomrr.
ernments, for the point of their space, and the mo ment of their duration, have felt more confusion, and committed more flagrant acts of tyranny, than the most perfect despotic governments which we have ever known. Turn your eye next to the labyrinth of the law, and the iniquity conceived in its intri cate recesses. Consider the ravages committed in the bowels of all commonwealths by ambition, by avarice, envy, fraud, open injustice, and pretended friendship; vices which could draw little support from a state of
nature, but which blossom and flourish in the rank ness of political society. Revolve our whole discourse; add to it all those reflections which your own good understanding shall suggest, and make a strenuous effort beyond the reach of vulgar philosophy, to con fess that the cause of artificial society is more de fenceless even than that of artificial religion; that it is as derogatory from the honor of the Creator, as sub versive of human reason, and productive of infinitely more mischief to the human race.
If pretended revelations have caused wars where they were opposed, and slavery where they were re ceived, the pretended wise inventions of politicians have done the same. But the slavery has been much heavier, the wars _far more bloody, and both more universal by many degrees. Show me any mischief produced by the madness or wickedness of theolo gians, and I will show you a hundred resulting from the ambition and villany of conquerors and statesmen. Show me an absurdity in religion, and I will undertake to show you a hundred for one in po litical laws and institutions. If you say that natural
religion is a sufficient guide without the foreign aid of revelation, on what principle should political laws
? ? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL soo1ET'Y. 65
become necessary? Is not the same reason available in theology and in politics? If the laws of nature are the laws of God, is it consistent with the Divine wis dom to prescribe rules to us, and leave the enforce ment of them to the folly of human institutions ? Will you follow truth but to a certain point?
We are indebted for all our miseries to our distrust of that guide which Providence thought suflicient for our condition, our own natural reason, which reject ing both in human and divine things, we have given our necks to the yoke of political and theological sla
We have renounced the prerogative of man, and it is no wonder that we should be treated like beasts. But our misery is much greater than theirs, as the crime we commit in rejecting the lawful do minion of our reason is greater than any which they can commit. If, after all, you should confess all these things, yet plead the necessity of political institutions, weak and wicked as they are, I can argue with equal, perhaps superior, force, concerning the necessity of artificial religion ; and every step you advance in your argument, you add a strength to mine. So that
if we are resolved to submit our reason and our lib erty to civil usurpation, we have nothing to do but to conform as quietly as we can to the vulgar notions which are connected with this, and take up the the ology of the vulgar as well as their politics. But if we think this necessity rather imaginary than real,
we should renounce their dreams of society, together with their visions of religion, and vindicate ourselves into perfect liberty.
You are, my lord, but just entering into the world; I am going out of it. I have played long enough to be heartily tired of the drama. Whether I have acted
voL.
less than five thousand of their own body. They went further; they disfranchised them; and, having once begun with an act of injustice, they could set no bounds to it. Not content with cutting them off from the rights of citizens, they plundered these unfortu nate wretches of all their substance; and, to crown this masterpiece of violence and tyranny, they actu ally sold every man of the five thousand as slaves in the public market. Observe, my lord, that the five thousand we here speak of were cut oif from a body of no more than nineteen thousand; for the entire number of citizens was no greater at that time. Could the tyrant who wished the Roman people but one neck; could the tyrant Caligula himself
? have done, nay, he could scarcely wish for, a greater mis
chief than to have cut off', at one stroke, a fourth of his people? Or has the cruelty of that series of san guine tyrants, the Caesars, ever presented such a piece of flagrant and extensive wickedness? The whole history of this celebrated republic is but one tissue of rashness, folly, ingratitude, injustice, tumult, violence, and tyranny, and, indeed, of every species of wicked ness that can well be imagined. This was a city of wise men, in which a minister could not exercise his functions; a warlike people, amongst whom a gen eral did not dare either to gain or lose a battle; a learned nation, in which a philosopher could not ven ture on a free inquiry. This was the city which ban ished Themistocles, starved Aristides, forced into ex
ile Miltiades, drove out Anaxagoras, and poisoned Socrates. This was a city which changed the form of its government with the moon; eternal conspirm cies, revolutions daily, nothing fixed and established. A republic, as an ancient philosopher has observed, is
? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL socmrr. _ 43
no one species of government, but a magazine of every species ; here you find every sort of and that in the worst form. As there perpetual change, one ris ing and the other falling, you have all the violence and wicked policy by which beginning power must always acquire its strength, and all the weakness by which falling states are brought to complete de struction.
Rome has more venerable aspect than Athens; and she conducted her affairs, so far as related to the ruin and oppression of the greatest part of the world, with greater wisdom and more uniformity. But the domestic economy of these two states was nearly or altogether the same. An internal dissension con stantly tore to pieces the bowels of the Roman com monwealth. You find the same confusion, the same factions, which subsisted at Athens, the same tu mults, the same revolutions, and, in fine, the same slavery; perhaps, their former condition did not deserve that name altogether as well. All other re publics were of the same character. Florence was
transcript of Athens. And the modern republics, as they approach more or less to the democratic form, partake more or less of the nature of those which have described.
We are now at the close of our review of the three simple forms of artificial society and we have shown them, however they may differ in name, or in some slight circumstances, to be all alike in effect: in effect, to be all tyrannies. But suppose we were inclined to make the most ample concessions; let us concede Athens, Rome, Carthage, and two or three more of the ancient, and as many of the mod ern, commonwealths, to have been, or to be, free
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and happy, and to owe their freedom and happiness to their political constitution. Yet, allowing all this, what defence does this make for artificial society in general, that these inconsiderable spots of the globe have for some short space of time stood as exceptions to a charge so general? But when we call these governments free, or concede that their citizens were happier than those which lived under different forms, it is merely ex abundanti. For we should be greatly mistaken, if we really thought that the majority of the people which filled these cities enjoyed even that nominal political freedom of which I have spoken so much already. In reality, they had no part of it. In Athens there were usually from ten to thirty thousand freemen; this was the utmost. But the slaves usually amounted to four hundred thousand, and sometimes to a great many more. The freemen of Sparta and Rome were not more numerous in pro portion to those whom they held in a slavery even more terrible than the Athenian. Therefore state the matter fairly: the free states never formed, though they were taken altogether, the thousandth part of the habitable globe; the freemen in these states were never the twentieth part of the people, and the time they subsisted is scarce anything in that immense ocean 'of duration in which time and slavery are so nearly commensurate. Therefore call these free states, or popular governments, or what you please; when we consider the majority of their inhabitants, and regard the natural _rights of man kind, they must appear, in reality and truth, no bet ter than pitiful and oppressive oligarchies.
After so fair an examen, wherein nothing has been exaggerated; no fact produced which cannot
? ? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL SOCIETY. 45
be proved, and none which has been produced in any wise forced or strained, while thousands have, for brevity, been omitted; after so candid a discus sion in all respects; what slave so passive, what bigot so blind, what enthusiast so headlong, what politician so hardened, as to stand up in defence of a system calculated for a curse to mankind? a curse under which they smart and groan to this hour, without thoroughly knowing the nature of the disease, and wanting understanding or courage to supply the remedy.
I need not excuse myself to your lordship, nor, I think, to any honest man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause;'f0r it is an honest zeal, and in a good cause. I have defended natural religion against a confederacy of atheists and divines. I now plead for"natural society against politicians, and for natural reason against all three. When the world is in a fitter temper than it is at present to hear truth, or when I shall be more indifferent about its temper, my thoughts may become more public. In the mean time, let them repose in my own bosom, and in the bosoms of such men as are fit to be ini tiated in the sober mysteries of truth and reason. My antagonists have already done as much as I could desire. Parties in religion and politics make suffi cient discoveries concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them all. The monarchic, and aristocratical, and popular partisans, have been jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have, in their turns, proved each other absurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is
? ? ? ? 4:6 A VINDICATION OF' NATURAL SOCIETY.
the abuse! Observe, my lord, I pray yon, that grand error upon which all artificial legislative power is founded. It was observed, that men had ungovern able passions, which made it necessary to guard against the violence they might offer to each other. They appointed governors over them for this reason. But a worse and more perplexing difficulty arises, how to be defended against the governors? eustodiet ipsos custodes? In vain they change from a single person to a few. These few have the passions
of the one ; and they unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their lawless pas sions at the expense of the general good. In vain do we fly to the many. lThe case is worse; their passions are less under the government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended against all attacks by their multitude.
Qais
? I have purposely avoided the mention of the mixed form of government, for reasons that will be very obvious to your lordship. But my caution can avail me but little. You will not fail to urge it against me in favor of political society. You will not fail to
show how the errors of the several simple modes are corrected by a mixture of all of them, and a proper balance of the several powers in such a state. I confess, my lord, that this has been long a darling mistake of my own; and that of all the sacrifices I have made to truth, this has been by far the greatest. When I confess that I think this notion a mistake, I know to whom I am speaking, for I am satisfied that reasons are like liquors, and there are some of such a nature as none but strong heads can bear. There are few with whom I can communicate so freely as with Pope. But Pope cannot bear every truth. He
? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL socmrr. 47
has a timidity which hinders the full exertion of his faculties, almost as effectually as bigotry cramps those
of the general herd of mankind.
genuine follower of truth keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader. And, my lord, if it be properly con sidered, it were infinitely better to remain possessed by the whole legion of vulgar mistakes, than to re ject some, and at the same time to retain a fondnws for others altogether as absurd and irrational.
first has at least a consistency, that makes a man,
however erroneously, uniform at least; but the latter way of proceeding is such an inconsistent chimera and jumble of philosophy and vulgar prejudice, that hardly anything more ridiculous can be conceived. Let us therefore freely, and without fear or prejudice, examine this last contrivance of policy. And, with out considering how near the quick our instruments
may come, let us search it to the bottom.
First, then,'all men are agreed that this junction of
regal, aristocratic, and popular power, must form a very complex, nice, and intricate machine, wl. . c'h being composed of such a variety of parts, with such opposite tendencies and movements, it must be liable on every accident to be disordered. To speak with out metaphor, such a government must be liable to frequent cabals, tumults, and revolutions, from its very constitution. These are undoubtedly as ill effects as can happen in a society; for in such a case, the closeness acquired by community, instead of serv ing for mutual defence, serves only to increase the
danger. Such a system is like a city, where trades that require constant fires are much exercised, where the houses are built of combustible materials, and where they stand extremely close.
But whoever is a
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? ? ? ? 48 A v1NmcAT1oN or NATURAL SOCIETY.
In the second place, the several constituent 'parts having their distinct rights, and these many of them so necessary to be determined with exactness, are yet so indeterminate in their nature, that it becomes a new and constant source of debate and confusion. Hence it that whilst the business of government should be carrying on, the question Who has right to exercise this or that fimction of or what men have power to keep their ofiices in any function? Whilst this contest continues, and whilst the balance in any sort continues, has never any remission all manner of abuses and villanies i11 officers remain un
? the greatest frauds and robberies in the public revenues are committed in defiance of justice; and abuses grow, by time and impunity, into cus toms; until they prescribe against the laws, and grow too inveterate often to admit cure, unless such as may be as bad as the disease.
Thirdly, the several parts of this species of govern ment, though united, preserve the spirit which each form has separately. Kings are ambitious; the no bility haughty; and the populace tumultuous and ungovernable. Each party, however in appearance peaceable, carries on design upon the others and
owing to this, that in all questions, whether con cerning foreign or domestic affairs, the whole gener
ally turns more upon some party-matter than upon
the nature of the thing itself; whether such
will diminish or augment the power of the crown, or how far the privileges of the subject are likely to be extended or restricted by it. And these questions are constantly resolved, without any consideration of the merits of the cause, merely as the parties who uphold these jarring interests may chance to prevail
punished;
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and as they prevail, the balance is overset, now upon one side, now upon the other. The government one day, arbitrary power in single person another,
juggling confederacy of few to cheat the prince and enslave the people and the third, frantic and unmanageable democracy. The great instrument of all these changes, and what infuses peculiar venom into all of them, party. It of no consequence what the principles of any party, or what their preten sions are the spirit which actuates all parties the same; the spirit of ambition, of self-interest, of op pression and treachery. This spirit entirely reverses all the principles which benevolent nature has erected within us all honesty, all equal justice, and even the ties of natural society, the natural affections. In word, my lord, we have all seen, and, any out ward considerations were worthy the lasting concern of wise man, we have some of us felt, such oppres sion from party government as no other tyranny can parallel. Webehold daily the most important rights, rights upon which all the others depend, we behold these rights determined in the last resort, without the least attention even to the appearance or color of jus
tice; we behold this without emotion, because we have grown up in the constant view of such practices; and we are not surprised to hear man requested to be knave and traitor, with as much indifference as the most ordinary favor were asked; and we hear this request refused, not because most unjust and unreasonable desire, but because this Worthy has already engaged his injustice to another. These and many more points am far from spreading to their full extent. You are sensible that do not
put forth half my strength; and you cannot be at vot. 1.
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loss for the reason. A man is allowed sufficient free dom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly. You may criticise freely upon the Chinese constitution, and observe with as much severity as you please upon the absurd tricks, or de structive bigotry of the bonzees. But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or trea son may be the names given in Britain, to what would be reason and truth if asserted of China. I submit to the condition, and though I have a notorious ad vantage before me, I waive the pursuit. For else, my lord, it is very obvious what a picture might be drawn of the excesses of party even in our own na tion. I could show, that the same faction has, in one reign, promoted popular seditions, and, in the next, been a patron of tyranny: I could show that they have all of them betrayed the public safety at
all times, and have very frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause and their own associates. I could show how vehemently they have contended for names, and how silently they have passed over things of the last importance. And I could demonstrate that they have had the opportunity of doing all this misclnef, nay, that they themselves had their origin and growth from that complex form of government, which we are wisely taught to look upon as so great a blessing. Revolve, my lord, our history from the Conquest. We scarcely ever had a prince, who, by fraud or violence, had not made some infringement on the constitution. We scarcely ever had a Parliament which knew, when it attempted to
set limits to the royal authority, how to set limits to its own. Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any
? ? ? ? A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
evils. Our boasted liberty sometimes trodden down, sometimes giddily set up, and ever precariously fluctu ating and unsettled ; it has only been kept alive by the blasts of continual feuds, wars, and conspiracies. In no country in Europe has the scaffold so often blushed with the blood of its nobility. Confiseations, banish ments, attainders, executions, make a large part of the history of such of our families as are not utterly extinguished by them. Formerly, indeed, things had a more ferocious appearance than they have at this day. In these early and unrefined ages, the jarring part of a certain chaotic constitution supported their several pretensions by the sword. Experience and policy have since taught other methods.
At nunc res agitur tenui pulmone rubetm.
? But how far corruption, vcnality, the contempt of honor, the oblivion of all duty to our country, and the most abandoned public prostitution, are prefer able to the more glaring and violent effects of faction, I will not presume to determine. Sure I am that they are very great evils.
I have done with the forms of government. Dur ing the course of my inquiry you may have observed a very material difference between my manner of rea soning and that which is in 'use amongst the abet tors of artificial society. They form their plans upon what seems most eligible to their imaginations, for the ordering of mankind. I discover the mistakes in those plans, from the real known consequences which have resulted from them. They have enlisted reason to fight against itself, and employ its whole force to prove that it is an insufficient guide to them in the conduct of their lives. But unhappily for us, in pro portion as we have deviated from the plain rule of our
? ? ? 52 A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
nature, and turned our reason against itself, in that proportion have we increased the follies and miseries of mankind. The more deeply we penetrate into the labyrinth of art, the further we find ourselves from those ends for which we entered it. This has hap pened in ahnost every species of artificial society, and in all times. We found, or we thought we found, an inconvenience in having every man the judge of his own cause. Therefore judges were set up, at first, with discretionary powers. But it was soon found a miserable slavery to have our lives and properties pre carious, and hanging upon the arbitrary determina tion of any one man, or set of men. We fled to laws as a remedy for this evil. By these we persuaded ourselves we might know with some certainty upon what ground we stood. But lo ! differences arose up on the sense and interpretation of these laws. Thus we were brought back to our old incertitude. New laws were made to expound the old; and new diffi culties arose upon the new laws ; as words multiplied, opportunities of cavilling upon them multiplied also. Then recourse was had to notes, comments, glosses,
? learned readings: eagle stood against eagle: authority was set up against authority. Some were allured by the modern, others
reverenced the ancient. The new were more enlight ened, the old were more venerable. Some adopted the comment, others stuck to the text. The confusion increased, the mist thickened, until it could be dis covered no longer what was allowed or forbidden, what things were in property, and what common. In this uncertainty, (uncertain even to the professors, an Egyptian darkness to the rest of mankind), the contending parties felt themselves more effectually
reports, responsa prudentum,
? ? ? 4 VINDICATION or NATURAL soomrv. 53
ruined by the delay, than they could have been by the injustice of any decision. Our inheritances are become a prize for disputation ; and disputes and liti gations are become an inheritance.
The professors of artificial law have always walked hand in hand with the professors of artificial theology. As their end, in confounding the reason of man, and abridging his natural freedom, is exactly the same, they have adjusted the means to that end in a way entirely similar. The divine thunders out his anath emas with more noise and terror against the breach of one of his . positive institutions, or the neglect of some of his trivial forms, than against the neglect or breach of those duties and commandments of natural religion, which by these forms and institutions he pre tends to enforce. The lawyer has his forms, and his positive institutions too, and he adheres to them with a veneration altogether as religious. The worst cause cannot be so prejudicial to the litigant, as his advo cate's or attorney's ignorance or neglect of these forms. A lawsuit is like an ill-managed dispute, in which the first object is soon out of sight, and the
parties end upon a matter wholly foreign to that on which they began.
In a lawsuit the question is, who has a right to a certain house or farm? And this question is daily determined, not upon the evidence of the right, but upon the observance or neglect of some forms of words in use with the gentlemen of the robe, about which there is even amongst themselves such a disagreement, that the most experienced vet erans in the profession can never be positively assured that they are not mistaken.
Let us expostulate with these learned sages, these priests of the sacred temple of justice. Are we judges
? ? ? ? 54 A v1Nn1cAT1oN or NATURAL SOCIETY.
of our own property? By no means. You then, who are initiated into the mysteries of the blindfold god dess, inform me whether I have a right to eat the bread I have earned by the hazard of my life or the sweat of my brow ? The grave doctor answers me 1n the affirmative ; the reverend serjeant replies in the negative ; the learned barrister reasons upon one side and upon the other, and concludes nothing. What shall I do? An antagonist starts up and presses me
hard. I enter the field, and retain these three per sons to defend my cause. My cause, which two farm ers from the plough could have decided in half an hour, takes the court twenty years. I am however at the end of my labor, and have in reward for all my toil and vexation a judgment in my favor. But hold --a sagacious commander, in the adversary's army, has found a flaw in the proceeding. My triumph is turned into mourning. I have used or, instead of and, or some mistake, small in appearance, but dread ful in its consequences; and have the whole of my success quashed in a writ of error. I remove my suit; I shift from court to court; I fly from equity to law, and from law to equity; equal uncertainty attends me everywhere; and a mistake in which I had no share, decides at once upon my liberty and property, sending me from the court to a prison, and adjudging my family to beggary and famine. I am innocent, gentlemen, of the darkness and uncertainty of your science. I never darkened it with absurd and contradictory notions, nor confounded it with chicane and sophistry. You have excluded me from any share in the conduct of my own cause; the science was too deep for me; I acknowledged it ; but it was too deep even for yourselves: you have made the way
? ? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL SOCIETY. 55
so intricate, that you are yourselves lost in it; you err, and you punish me for your errors.
The delay of the law your lordship will tell me, trite topic, and which of its abuses have not been too severely felt not to be complained of? man's
to serve for the purposes of his support and therefore, to delay determination concerning that, the worst injustice, 'because cuts off the very end and purpose for which applied to the judicature for relief. Quite contrary in the case of
man's life there the determination can hardly be too much protracted. Mistakes in this case are as often fallen into as many other and the judgment
sudden, the mistakes are the most irretrievable of all others. Of this the gentlemen of the robe are
themselves sensible, and they have brought into maxim. De morte homimls nulla est cunctatio longa. But what could have induced them to reverse the rules, and to contradict that reason which dictated them, am utterly unable to guess. point con cerning property, which ought, for the reasons have just mentioned, to be most speedily decided, fre
exercises the wit of successions of lawyers, for many generations. Malta virtim volvens durando stecula vincit. But the question concerning man's life, that great question in which no delay ought to be counted tedious, commonly determined in twenty-four hours at the utmost. It not to be wondered at, that injustice and absurdity should be inseparable companions.
Ask of politicians the end for which laws were orig inally designed; and they will answer, that the laws were designed as protection for the poor and weak,
the oppression of the rich and powerful
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? 56 A v1Nn1cAT1oN or NATURAL socmrv.
But surely no pretence can be so ridiculous; a man might as well tell me he has taken off my load, be cause he has changed the burden. If the poor man is not able to support his suit, according to the vex atious and expensive manner established in civilized countries, has not the rich as great an advantage over him as the strong has over the weak in a state of nature? But we will not place the state of na ture, which is the reign of God, in competition with political society, which is the absurd usurpation of man. In a state of nature, it is true that a man of superior force may beat or rob me; but then it is true, that I am at full liberty to defend myself, or make reprisal by surprise or by cunning, or by any other way in which I may be superior to him. But in political society, a rich man may rob me in an other way. I cannot defend myself; for money is the only weapon with which we are allowed to fight. And if I attempt to avenge myself the whole force of
gins, religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice ends? It is hard to say, whether the doctors of law or divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of mystery. The lawyers, as well as the theologians, have erected another reason be sides natural reason; and the result has been, an other justice besides natural justice, They have so bewildered the world and themselves in unmeaning forms and ceremonies, and so perplexed the plainest matters with metaphysical jargon, that it carries the highest danger to a man out of that profession, to make the least step without their advice and as
? that society is ready to complete my ruin.
A good parson once said, that where mystery be
? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL socmrr. 57
sistance. Thus, by confining to themselves the
of the foundation of all men's lives and properties, they have reduced all mankind into the most abject and servile dependence. We are ten ants at the will of these gentlemen for everything; and a metaphysical quibble is to decide whether the greatest villain breathing shall meet his deserts, or
with impunity, or whether the best man in the society shall not be reduced to the lowest and most despicable condition it affords. In a word, my lord, the injustice, delay, puerility, false refinement, and affected mystery of the law are such, that many who
live under it come to admire and envy the expedi tion, simplicity, and equality of arbitrary judgments. I need insist the less on this article to your lordship, as you have frequently lamented the miseries derived to us from artificial law, and your candor is the more to be admired and applauded in this, as your lord
knowledge
escape
? noble house has derived its wealth and its
ship's
honors from that profession.
Before we finish our examination of artificial soci ety, I shall lead your lordship into a closer consider ation of the relations which it gives birth to, and the benefits, if such they are, which result from these re lations. The most obvious division of society'is into rich and poor; and it is no less obvious, that the
of the former bear a great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find
the best methods of confirming the slavery and in creasing the burdens of the poor. In a state of na ture, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are in proportion to his labors. In a state of artificial
number
? ? ? 58 A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
society, it is a law as constant and as invariable, that those who labor most enjoy the fewest things; and that those who labor not at all have the greatest num ber of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and ridiculous beyond expression ! We scarce believe a thing when we are told which we actu ally see before our eyes every day without being in the least surprised. "suppose that there are in Great Britain upwards of hundred thousand people employed in lead, tin, iron, copper, and coal mines; these unhappy wretches scarce ever see the light of the sun they are buried in the bowels of the earth there they work at severe and dismal task, without the least prospect of being delivered from it; they subsist upon the coarsest and worst sort of fare they have their health miserably impaired, and their lives out short, by being perpetually confined in the close vapor of these malignant minerals. A hundred thou sand more at least are tortured without remission by the suffocating smoke, intense fires, and constant drudgery necessary in refining and managing the products of those mines. If any man informed us that two hundred thousand innocent_ persons were condemned to so intolerable slavery, how should we pity the unhappy sufferers, and how great would be our just indignation against those who inflicted so cruel and ignominious punishment! This an in stance --I could not wish stronger-- of the num berless things which we pass by in their common dress, yet which shock us when they are nakedly rep resented. But this number, considerable as and the slavery, with all its baseness and horror, which we have at home, nothing to what the rest of the world affords of the same nature. Millions
? daily
? ? is
a
I
it is,
is
;
;
a a
a
;
it,
? A VINDICATION or NATURAL socmrr. 59
bathed in the poisonous damps and destructive efflu via of lead, silver, copper, and arsenic. To say noth ing of those other employments, those stations of wretchedness and contempt, in which civil society has placed the numerous enfans perdus of her army. VVould any rational man submit to one of the most tolerable of these drudgeries, for all the artificial en
joyments which policy has made to result from them? By no means. And yet need I suggest to yo1u' lord ship, that those who find the means, and those who arrive at the end, are not at all the same persons? On considering the strange and unaccountable fan cies and contrivances of artificial reason, I have some where called this earth the Bedlam of our system. Looking now upon the effects of some of those fan cies, may we not with equal reason call it likewise the Newgate and the Bridewell of the universe ? In deed the blindness of one part of mankind co-operat ing with the frenzy and villany of the other, has been the real builder of this respectable fabric of political society: and as the blindness of mankind has caused their slavery, in return their state of slavery is made a pretence for continuing them in a state of blind ness ; for the politician will tell you gravely, that their life of servitude disqualifies the greater part of the race of man for a search of truth, and supplies them with no other than mean and insufficient ideas. This is but too true; and this is one of the reasons for which I blame such institutions.
In a misery of this sort, admitting some few leni tives, and those too but a few, nine parts in ten of the whole race of mankind drudge through life. It may be urged perhaps, in palliation of this, that at least the rich few find a considerable and real benefit from
? ? ? ? 60
A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
the wretchedness of the many. But is this so in fact? Let us examine the point with a little more attention. For this purpose the rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of
As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days, and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are suf ficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labor continually, which is the severest labor, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations. Vera: amicitioe rarissime irweniuritu/r" in iis qai in hortoribus reque publica versarttur, says
Cicero. And indeed courts are the schools where cruelty, pride, dissimulation, and treachery are stud ied and taught in the most vicious perfection. This is a point so clear and acknowledged, that if it did not make a necessary part of my subject, I should pass it by entirely. And this has hindered me from drawing at full length, and in the most striking col ors, this shocking picture of the degeneracy and wretchedness of human nature, in that part which is vulgarly thought its happiest and most amiable state. You know from what originals I could copy such pictures. Happy are they who know enough of them
pleasure.
? ? ? ? A v1Nn1cATioN or NATURAL SOCIETY. 61
to know the little value of the possessors of such things, and of all that they possess ; and happy they
who have been snatched from that post of danger which they occupy, with the remains of their virtue ; loss of honors, wealth, titles, and even the loss of one's country, is nothing in balance with so great an advantage.
Let us now view the other species of the rich, those who devote their time and fortunes to idleness and pleasure. How much happier are they? The pleas ures which are agreeable to nature are within the reach of all, and therefore can form no distinction in favor of the rich. The pleasures which art forces up are seldom sincere, and never satisfying. What is worse, this constant application to pleasure takes away from the enjoyment, or rather turns it into the nature of a very burdensome and laborious business. It has consequences much more fatal. It produces a weak valetudinary state of body, attended by all those horrid disorders, and yet more horrid methods of cure, which are the result of luxury on the one hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human art on the other. The pleasures of such men are scarcely felt as pleasures; at the same time that they bring on pains and diseases, which are felt but too
The mind has its share of the misfortune ; it grows lazy and enervate, unwilling and unable to search for truth, and utterly uncapable of knowing, much less of relishing, real happiness. The poor by their excessive labor, and the rich by their enormous luxury, are set upon a level, and rendered equally
ignorant of any knowledge which might conduce to their happiness. A dismal view of the interior of all civil society! The lower part broken and ground down
? severely.
? ? ? 62 A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY.
by the most cruel oppression ; and the rich by their artificial method of life bringing worse evils on them selves than their tyranny could possibly inflict on those below them. Very different is the prospect of the nat ural state. Here there are no wants which nature gives, and in this state men can be sensible of no other wants, which are not to be supplied by a very moderate degree of labor; therefore there is no sla very. Neither is there any luxury, because no sin gle man can supply the materials of it. Life is simple, and therefore it is happy.
I am conscious, my lord, that your politician will urge in his defence, that this unequal state is highly useful. . That without dooming some part of mankind to extraordinary toil, the arts which cultivate life could not be exercised. But I demand of this poli tician, how such arts came to be necessary ? He an swers, that civil society could not well exist without them. So that these arts are necessary to civil soci ety, and civil society necessary again to these arts. Thus are we running in a circle, without modesty, and without end, and making one error and extrava ganoe an excuse for the other. My sentiments about these arts and their cause, I have often discoursed with my friends at large. Pope has expressed them in good verse, where he talks with so much force of reason and elegance of language, in praise of the state of nature :
" Then was not pride, nor arts that pride to aid, Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade. "
On the whole, my lord, if political society, in what ever form, has still made the many the property of the few; if it has introduced labors unnecessary, vices and diseases unknown, and pleasures
? incompatible
? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL socmrr.
63
w1th nature; if in all countries it abridges the lives of millions, and renders those of millions more utterly abject and miserable, shall we still worship so destruc tive an idol, and daily sacrifice to it our health, our liberty, and our peace? Or shall we pass by this mon strous heap of absurd notions, and abominable prac
tices, thinking we have sufficiently discharged our
duty in exposing the trifling cheats, and ridiculous juggles of a few mad, designing, or ambitious priests? Alas ! my lord, we labor under a mortal consumption, whilst we are so anxious about the cure of a sore fin ger. For has not this leviathan of civil power over flowed the earth with a deluge of blood, as if he were made to disport and play therein ? We have shown that political society, on a moderate calculation, has
been the means of murde1ing several times the num ber of inhabitants now upon the earth, during its short existence, not upwards of four thousand years in any accounts to be depended on. But we have said nothing of the other, and perhaps as bad, conse quence of these wars, which have spilled such seas of blood, and reduced so many millions to a merciless slavery. But these are only the ceremonies performed
in the porch of the political temple. Much more hor rid ones are seen as you enter it. The several species of government vie with each other in the absurdity of their constitutions, and the oppression which they make their subjects endure. Take them under what form you please, they are in effect but a despotism, and they fall, both in effect and appearance too, after
a very short period, into that cruel and detestable spe cies of tyranny: which I rather call because we have been educated under another form, than that this of worse consequences to mankind. For the free gov
? ? ? is
it,
? 64 A 'vINn1oAT1oN or NATURAL soomrr.
ernments, for the point of their space, and the mo ment of their duration, have felt more confusion, and committed more flagrant acts of tyranny, than the most perfect despotic governments which we have ever known. Turn your eye next to the labyrinth of the law, and the iniquity conceived in its intri cate recesses. Consider the ravages committed in the bowels of all commonwealths by ambition, by avarice, envy, fraud, open injustice, and pretended friendship; vices which could draw little support from a state of
nature, but which blossom and flourish in the rank ness of political society. Revolve our whole discourse; add to it all those reflections which your own good understanding shall suggest, and make a strenuous effort beyond the reach of vulgar philosophy, to con fess that the cause of artificial society is more de fenceless even than that of artificial religion; that it is as derogatory from the honor of the Creator, as sub versive of human reason, and productive of infinitely more mischief to the human race.
If pretended revelations have caused wars where they were opposed, and slavery where they were re ceived, the pretended wise inventions of politicians have done the same. But the slavery has been much heavier, the wars _far more bloody, and both more universal by many degrees. Show me any mischief produced by the madness or wickedness of theolo gians, and I will show you a hundred resulting from the ambition and villany of conquerors and statesmen. Show me an absurdity in religion, and I will undertake to show you a hundred for one in po litical laws and institutions. If you say that natural
religion is a sufficient guide without the foreign aid of revelation, on what principle should political laws
? ? ? ? A VINDICATION or NATURAL soo1ET'Y. 65
become necessary? Is not the same reason available in theology and in politics? If the laws of nature are the laws of God, is it consistent with the Divine wis dom to prescribe rules to us, and leave the enforce ment of them to the folly of human institutions ? Will you follow truth but to a certain point?
We are indebted for all our miseries to our distrust of that guide which Providence thought suflicient for our condition, our own natural reason, which reject ing both in human and divine things, we have given our necks to the yoke of political and theological sla
We have renounced the prerogative of man, and it is no wonder that we should be treated like beasts. But our misery is much greater than theirs, as the crime we commit in rejecting the lawful do minion of our reason is greater than any which they can commit. If, after all, you should confess all these things, yet plead the necessity of political institutions, weak and wicked as they are, I can argue with equal, perhaps superior, force, concerning the necessity of artificial religion ; and every step you advance in your argument, you add a strength to mine. So that
if we are resolved to submit our reason and our lib erty to civil usurpation, we have nothing to do but to conform as quietly as we can to the vulgar notions which are connected with this, and take up the the ology of the vulgar as well as their politics. But if we think this necessity rather imaginary than real,
we should renounce their dreams of society, together with their visions of religion, and vindicate ourselves into perfect liberty.
You are, my lord, but just entering into the world; I am going out of it. I have played long enough to be heartily tired of the drama. Whether I have acted
voL.
