by Reason unaided by the positive and conventional it is Nature: because bodies are more than extension, laws in the formation of which the Understanding and to pure extension of space, only the mathematical must be our guide, and which become just because they happen to be expedient. The chief object for which men first formed themselves into a State was not the protection of their lives but of their property. Where the nature of the soil and climate precludes all property but personal, and permits that only in its simplest forms, as in Greenland, men remain in the domestic state and form Neighborhoods, but not Governments. And in North America, the Chiefs appear to exercise governnent in those tribes only which possess individual anded property. Among the rest the Chief is their General; but government is exercised only in Families by the Fathers of Families. But where individual landed property exists, there must be inequality of property: the nature of the earth and the nature of the mind unite to make the contrary impossible. But to suppose the Land the property of the State, and the labor and the produce to be equally divided among all the Members of the State, involves more than one contradiction: for it could not subsist without gross injustice, except where the Reason of all and of each was absolute master of the selfish passions of sloth, envy, &c.: and yet the same state would preclude the greater part of the means by which the Reason of man is developed. In whatever state of society you would place it, from the most savage to the most refined, it would be found equally unjust and impossible; and were there a race of men, a country, and a climate, that permitted such an order of things, the same causes would render all Government superfluous. To property, therefore, and to its inequalities, all human laws directly or indirectly relate, which would not be equally laws in the state of Nature. Now it is impossible to deduce the Right of Property* from pure Reason. The utmost which Reason could give would be a property in the forms of things, as far as the forms were produced by individual power. In the matter it could give no property. We regard angels, and glorified spirits as Beings of pure Reason: and whoever thought of property in Heaven? Even the simplest and most moral form of it, namely, Marriage, (we know from the highest authority) is excluded from the state of pure reason. Rousseau himself expressly admits, that Property cannot be deduced from the Laws of Reason and Nature; and he ought therefore to have admitted at the same time, that his whole theory was a thing of air. In the most respectable point of view he could regard his system as analogous to Geometry. (If indeed it be purely scientific, how could it be otherwise?) Geometry holds forth an Ideal which can never be fully realized in Nature, even because * I mean, practically and with the inequalities inseparable from the actual existence of Property. Abstractedly, the Right to Property is deducible from the Free-agency of man. If to act freely be a Right, a sphere of action must be so too. theorems wholly correspond. In the same manner the moral laws of the intellectual world, as far as they are deducible from pure Intellect, are never perfectly applicable to our mixed and sensitive nature, because Man is something besides Reason; because his Reason never acts by itself, but must clothe itself in the substance of individual Understanding and specific Inclination, in order to become a reality and an object of consciousness and experience. It will be seen hereafter that together with this, the key-stone of the arch, the greater part and the most specious of the popular arguments in favor of universal suffrage, fall in and are crushed. I will mention one only at present. Major Cartwright, in his deduction of the Rights of the Subject from Principles, "not susceptible of proof, being self-evident-if one of which be violated all are shaken," affirms (Principle 98th; though the greater part indeed are moral aphorisms, or blank assertions, not scientific principles) "that a power which ought never to be used ought never to exist." Again he affirms that "Laws to bind all must be assented to by all, and consequently every man, even the poorest, has an equal right to suffrage:" and this for an additional reason, because “all without exception are capable of feeling happiness or misery, accordingly as they are well or ill-governed." But are they not then capable of feeling happiness or misery according as they do or do not possess the means of a comfortable subsistence? and who is the judge, what is a comfortable subsistence, but the man himself? Might not then, on the same or equivalent principles, a Leveller construct a right to equal property? The inhabitants of this country without property form, doubtless, a great majority: each of these has a right to a suffrage, and the richest man to no more: and the object of this suffrage is, that each individual may secure himself a true efficient Representative of his Will. Here then is a legal power of abolishing or equalizing property: and according to himself, a power which ought never to be used ought not to exist. Therefore, unless he carries his system to the whole length of common labor and common posses sion, a right to universal suffrage cannot exist; but if not to universal suffrage, there can exist no natural right to suffrage at all. In whatever way he would obviate this objection, he must admit expedience founded on experience and particular circumstances, which will vary in every different nation, and in the same nation at different times, as the maxim of all Legislation and the ground of all Legislative Power. For his universal principles, as far as they are principles and universal, necessarily suppose uniform and perfect subjects, which are to be found in the Ideas of pure Geometry and (I trust) in the Realities of Heaven, but never, never in creatures of flesh and blood. 434 The Friend. ESSAY I.* Neither by fair statements nor by fair reasoning, should I ever give offence to Major Cartwright him ON THE ERRORS OF PARTY SPIRIT OR self, nor to his judicious friends. If I am in danger EXTREMES MEET. pecially such as he (Lightfoot) who was generally more "And it was no wonder if some good and innocent men, es concerned about what was done in Judea many centuries ago, than what was transacted in his own time in his own country-it is no wonder if some such were for a while borne away to the approval of opinions which they after more sedate reflection disowned. Yet his innocency from any self-interest or design, together with his learning, secured him from the extravagancies of demagogues, the people's oracles." — LIGHTFOOT'S Works, Publisher's Preface to the Reader. of offending them, it must arise from one or other of two causes; either that I have falsely represented his principles, or his motives and the tendency of his writings. In the book from which I quoted The People's Barrier against undue Influence, &c." the only one of Major Cartwright's which I possess) I am conscious that there are six foundations stated of constitutional Government. Therefore, it may be urged, the Author cannot be justly classed with those who deduce our social Rights and correlative Duties exclusively from principles of pure Reason, or unavoid Of these six foundations three are but different words for one and the same, viz. the Law of Reason, the Law of God, and first Principles: and the three that remain cannot be taken as different, inasmuch as they are afterwards affirmed to be of no validity except as far as they are evidently deduced from the former ; that is, from the PRINCIPLES implanted by God in the universal REASON of man. These three latter foun I HAVE never seen Major Cartwright, much less en-able conclusions from such. My answer is ready. joy the honor of his acquaintance; but I know enough of his character from the testimony of others and from his own writings, to respect his talents, and revere the purity of his motives. I am fully persuaded, that there are few better men, few more fervent or disinterested adherents of their country or the laws of their country, of whatsoever things are lovely, of whatsoever things are honorable! It would give me great pain should I be supposed to have in-dations are, the general customs of the realm, partitroduced, disrespectfully, a name, which from my early youth I never heard mentioned without a feeling of affectionate admiration. I have indeed quoted from this venerable patriot, as from the most respectable English advocate for the Theory which derives the rights of government, and the duties of obedience to it, exclusively from principles of pure Reason. It was of consequence to my cause that I should not be thought to have been waging war against a straw image of my own setting up, or even against a foreign idol that had neither worshippers nor advocates in our own country; and it was not less my object to keep my discussion aloof from those passions, which more unpopular names might have excited. I therefore introduce the name of Cartwright, as I had previously done that of Luther, in order to give every fair advantage to a theory, which I thought it of importance to confute; and as an instance that though the system might be made tempting to the Vulgar, yet that, taken unmixed and entire, it was chiefly fascinating for lofty and imaginative spirits, who mistook their own virtues and powers for the average character of men in general. With this Essay commences the second volume of the English edition of The Friend, to which the following quotation is prefixed as a motto: Insolens, mehercule foret, omnia urbis alicujus ædificia diruere, ad hoc solum ut, iisdem postea meliori ordine et forma extructis, ejus plateæ pulchiores evaderent. At certe non insolens est dominum unies domus ad illam destruendam adhor rari, ut ejus loco meliorem ædificet. Immo sæpe multi hoc facere cogunter nempe cum ædes habent vetustate jam fatiscentes, vel quæ infirmis fundamentis superstructæ ruinam minantur.-CARTESIUS de Methodo. cular customs, and acts of Parliament. It might be supposed that the Author had not used his terms in the precise and single sense in which they are defined in my former Essay: and that self-evident Principles may be meant to include the dictates of manifest Expedience, the Inductions of the Understanding as well as the Prescripts of the pure Reason. But no! Major Cartwright has guarded against the possibility of this interpretation, and has expressed himself as decisively, and with as much warmth, against founding Governments on grounds of Expedience, as the Editor of The Friend has done against founding Morality on the same. Euclid himself could not have defined his words more sternly within the limit of pure Science: For instance, see the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th primary Rules. "A Principle is a manifest and simple proposition comprehending a certain Truth. Principles are the proof of every thing: but are not susceptible of external proof, being self-evident. If one Principle be violated, all are shaken. Against him, who denies Principles, all dispute is useless, and reason unintelligible, or disallowed, so far as he denies them. The Laws of Nature are immutable." Neither could Rousseau himself (or his predecessors, the fifth-Monarchy Men) have more nakedly or emphatically identified the foundations of government in the concrete with those of religion and morality in the abstract: see Major Cartwright's Primary Rules from 31 to 39, and from 44 to 83. In these it is affirmed: that the legislative Rights of Every Citizen are inherent in his nature; that being natural Rights they must be equal in all men; that a natural right is that right which a Citizen claims as being a Man, and that it hath no other foundation but his Personality or that Law in the abstract is the perfection of Reason Reason; that Property can neither increase or modify but that the Law of God and the Law of the Land any legislative Right; that every one Man, however are all one! What? The statutes against Witches! rich, to have any more than one Vote, is against na- Or those bloody Statutes against Papists, the abolition tural Justice, and an evil measure; that it is better of which gave rise to the infamous Riots in 1780! for a nation to endure all adversities, than to assent Or (in the author's own opinion) the Statutes of Dis to one evil measure; that to be free is to be governed franchisement and for making Parliaments septenby Laws, to which we have ourselves assented, either nial?-Nay! but (Principle 28) “an unjust Law is no in Person or by Representatives, for whose election Law:" and (P. 22.) against the Law of Reason neither we have actually voted; that all not having a right prescription, statute, nor custom, may prevail; and if of Suffrage are Slaves, and that a vast majority of any such be brought against it, they be not prescrip the People of Great Britain are Slaves! To prove tions, statute, nor customs, but things void: and (P. the total coincidence of Major Cartwright's Theory 29.) What the Parliament doth shall be holden for with that which I have stated (and I trust confuted) | naught, whensoever it shall enact that which is conin the preceding Number, it only remains for me to trary to a natural Right!" We dare not suspect a prove, that the former, equally with the latter, con- grave writer of such egregious trifling, as to mean no founds the sufficiency of the conscience to make more by these assertions, than that what is wrong is every person a moral and amenable Being, with the not right; and if more than this be meant, it must be sufficiency of judgment and experience requisite to that the subject is not bound to obey any Act of Parthe exercise of political Right. A single quotation liament, which according to his own conviction enwill place this out af all doubt, which from its length trenches on a Principle of Natural Right; which naI shall insert in a Note.* tural Rights are, as we have seen, not confined to the man in his individual capacity, but are made to confer universal legislative privileges on every subject of every state, and of the extent of which every man is competent to judge, who is competent to be the object of Law at all, i. e. every man who has not lost his Reason. Great stress, indeed, is laid on the authority of our ancient Laws, both in this and the other works of our patriotic author; and whatever his system may be, it is impossible not to feel, that the author himself possesses the heart of a genuine Englishman. But still his system can neither be changed nor modified by these appeals: for among the primary maxims, which form the ground-work of it, we are informed not only "But the equality (observe, that Major Cartwright is here speaking of the natural right to universal Suffrage and con the angels? How much more things that pertain to this In the statement of his principles therefore, I have not misrepresented Major Cartwright. Have I then endeavored to connect public odium with his honored name, by arraigning his motives, or the tendency of his Writings? The tendency of his Writings, in my inmost conscience I believe to be perfectly harmless, and I dare cite them in confirmation of the opinions which it was the object of my introductory Essays to communicating what he believes to be the Truth for the sake of Truth and according to the rules of Conscience, will be found to have acted injuriously to the peace or interests of Society. The venerable StateMoralist (for this is his true character, and in this title is conveyed the whole error of his system) is incapable of aiding his arguments by the poignant condiment of personal slander, incapable of appealing to the envy of the multitude by bitter declamation against the follies and oppressions of the higher classes! He would shrink with horror from the thought of adding a false and unnatural influence to the cause of Truth and Justice, by details of present calamity or immediate suffering, fitted to excite the fury of the multitude, or by promises of turning the individual Distress and Poverty, so as to bribe the current of the public Revenue into the channelst of populace by selfish hopes! It does not belong to men sequently of the universal right of eligibility, as well as of election, independent of character or property)-the equality and dignity of human nature in all men, whether rich or poor, is placed in the highest point of view by St. Paul, when he reprehends the Corinthian believers for their litigations one with another, in the Courts of Law where unbelievers pre-establish, and as an additional proof, that no good man sided; and as an argument of the competency of all men to judge for themselves, he alludes to that elevation in the king dom of heaven which is promised to every man who shall be virtuous, in the language of that time, a Saint. Do ye not know,' says he, that the Saints shall judge the world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that ye shall judge life?' If after such authorities, such manifestations of truth as these, any Christian, through those prejudices which are the effects of long habits of injustice and oppression, and teach us to despise the poor, shall still think it right to exclude that part of the commonalty, consisting of Tradesmen, Artificers, and Laborers,' or any of them, from voting in elections of members to serve in parliament, I must sincerely lament such a persuasion as a misfortune both to himself and his country. And if any man, (not having given himself the trouble to consider whether or not the Scripture be an authority, but who, nevertheless, is a friend to the rights of mankind) upon grounds of mere prudence, policy, or expediency, shall think it advisable to go against the whole current of our constitutional and law maxims, by which it is self-evident that every man, as being a man, is created free, born to freedom, and, without it, a Thing, a Slave, a Beast; and shall contend for drawing a line of exclusion at freeholders of forty pounds a year, or forty shillings a year, or house-holders, or potboilers, so that all who are below that line shall not have a vote in the election of a legislative guardian,-which is taking from a citizen the power even of self-preservation,-such a man, I venture to say, is bolder than he who wrestled with the angel; for he wrestles with God himself, who established those principles in the eternal laws of nature, never to be violated by any of his Creatures." t I must again remind the Reader, that these Essays were written October, 1809. If Major Cartwright, however, since then acted in a different spirit, and tampered personally with the distresses, and consequent irritability of the ignorant, the inconsistency is his, not the Author's. If what I then be lieved and avowed should now appear a severe satire in the shape of a false prophecy, any shame I might feel for my lack of penetration would be lost in the sincerity of my regret. of his character to delude the uninstructed into the belief that their shortest way of obtaining the good things of this life, is to commence busy Politicians, instead of remaining industrious Laborers. He knows, and acts on the knowledge, that it is the duty of the enlightened Philanthropist to plead for the the poor and ignorant, not to them. No! From Works written and published under the control of austere principles, and at the impulse of a lofty and generous enthusiasm, from Works rendered attractive only by the fervor of sincerity, and imposing only by the Majesty of Plain Dealing, no danger will be apprehended by a wise man, no of fence received by a good man. I could almost venture to warrant our Patriot's publications innoxious, from the single circumstance of their perfect freedom from personal themes in this AGE OF PERSONALITY, this age of literary and political Gossiping, when the meanest insects are worshipped with a sort of Egyptian superstition, if only the brainless head be atoned for by the sting of personal malignity in the tail; when the most vapid satires have become the objects of a keen public interest purely from the number of contemporary characters named in the patch-work Notes (which possess, however, the comparative merit of being more poetical than the Text,) and because, to increase the stimulus, the Author has sagaciously left his own name for whispers and conjectures!-In an age, when even Sermons are published with a double Appendix stuffed with namesin a generation so transformed from the characteristic reserve of Britons, that from the ephemeral sheet of a London Newspaper to the everlasting Scotch Professorial Quarto, almost every publication exhibits or flatters the epidemic distemper: that the very "Last year's Rebuses" in the Lady's Diary, are answered in a serious Elegy "On my Father's Death," with the name and habitat of the elegiac Edipus subscribed:-and "other ingenious solutions were likewise given" to the said Rebuses-not, as heretofore, by Crito, Philander, A B, X Y, &c.. but by fifty or sixty plain English surnames at full length, with their several places of abode! In an age, when a bashful Philalethes or Phileleutheros is as rare on the titlepages and among the signatures of our Magazines, as a real name used to be in the days of our shy and notice-shunning grandfathers! When (more exquisite than all) I see an EPIC POEM (Spirits of Maro and Mæonides, make ready to welcome your new compeer!) advertised with the special recommendation, that the said EPIC POEM contains more than a hundred names of living persons! No-if Works as abhorrent, as those of Major Cartwright, from all unworthy provocatives to the vanity, the envy, and the selfish passions of mankind, could acquire a sufficient influence on the public mind to be mischievous, the plans proposed in his pamphlets would cease to be altogether visionary: though even then they could not ground their claims to actual adoption on self-evident principles of pure Reason, but on the happy accident of the virtue and good sense of that public, for whose suffrages they were presented. (Indeed with Major Cartwright's plans I have no present concern; but with the principles, on which he grounds the obligations to adopt them.) But I must not sacrifice Truth to my reverence for individual purity of intention. The tendency of one good man's writings is altogether a different thing from the tendency of the system itself, when seasoned and served up for the unreasoning multitude, as it has been by men whose names I would not honor by writing them in the same sentence with Major Cart wright's. For this system has two sides, and holds out very different attractions to its admirers that advance towards it from different points of the compass. It possesses qualities, that can scarcely fail of winning over to its banners a numerous host of shallow heads and restless tempers, men who without learning (or, as one of my Friends has forcibly expressed it," Strong Book-mindedness") live as almsfolks on the opinions of their contemporaries, and who, (well pleased to exchange the humility of regret for the self-complacent feelings of contempt) reconcile themselves to the sans-culotterie of their Ignorance, by scoffing at the useless fox-brush of Pedantry.* The attachment of this numerous class is owing neither to the solidity and depth of foundation in this theory, or to the strict coherence of its arguments; and still less to any genuine reverence of humanity in the abstract. The physiocratic system promises to deduce all things, and everything relative to law and government, with mathematical exactness and certainty, from a few individual and self-evident principles. But who so dull, as not to be capable of apprehending a simple self-evident principle, and of following a short demonstration? By this system, THE SYSTEM, as its admirers were wont to call it, even as they named the writer who first applied it in systematic detail to the whole constitution and administration of civil policy, D. Quesnoy to wit, le Docteur, or THE TEACHER; by this system the observation of Times, Places, relative Bearings, History, national Customs and Character, is rendered superfluous: all, in short, which according to the common notion makes the attainment of legislative prudence a work of difficulty and long-continued effort, even for the acutest and most comprehensive minds. The cautious bal ancing of comparative advantages, the painful cal culation of forces and counter-forces, the preparation of circumstances, the lynx-eyed watching for opportunities, are all superseded; and by the magic oracles of certain axioms and definitions it is revealed how the world with all its concerns should be mechanized, and then let go on of itself. All the positive *"He (Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk) knowing that learning hath no enemy but Ignorance, did suspect always the want of it in those men who derided the habit of it in others: like the Fox in the Fable, who being without a Tail, would persuade others to cut off theirs as a burthen. But he liked well the Philosopher's division of men into three ranks -some who knew good and were willing to teach others; these he said were like Gods among men-others who though they knew not much yet were willing to learn: these he said were like Men among Beasts--and some who knew not good and yet despised such as should teach them; these he es teemed as Beasts among Men." Lloyd's State Worthies, p. 33. Institutions and Regulations, which the prudence of the noblest minds: and I should act the part of a coward, if I disguised my convictions, that the errors of the Aristocratic party were full as gross, and far less excusable. Instead of contenting themselves with opposing the real blessings of English law to the splendid promises of untried theory, too large a part of those, who called themselves Anti-Jacobins, did all in their power to suspend those blessings; and thus furnished new arguments to the advocates of innova tion, when they should have been answering the old ones. The most prudent, as well as the most honest mode of defending the existing arrangements, would have been, to have candidly admitted what could not with truth be denied, and then to have shown that, though the things complained of were evils, they were necessary evils; or if they were removable, yet that the consequences of the heroic medicines recommended by the Revolutionists would be far more dreadful than the disease. Now either the one or the other point, by the double aid of History and a sound Philosophy, they might have established with a certainty little short of demonstration, and with such colors and illustrations as would have taken strong hold of the very feelings which had attached to the democratic system all the good and valuable men of the party. But instead of this they precluded the possibility of being listened to even by the gentlest and most ingenuous among the friends of the French Revolution, denying or attempting to palliate facts, that were equally notorious and unjustifiable, and supplying the lack of brain by an overflow of gall. While they lamented with tragic outcries the injured Monarch and the exiled Noble, they displayed the most disgusting insensibility to the privations, sufferings, and manifold oppressions of the great mass of the Continental population, and a blindness or callousness still more offensive to the crimes and unutterable abominations of their oppressors. Not only was the Bastile justified, but the Spanish Inquisition itself-and this in a pamphlet passionately extolled and industriously circulated by the adherents of the then ministry. Thus, and by their infatuated panegyrics on the former state of France, they played into the hands of their worst and most dangerous antago nists. In confounding the conditions of the English and the French peasantry, and in quoting the author An hour's importance to the poor man's heart!" But a system which not only flatters the pride and vanity of men, but which in so plausible and intelligible a manner persuades them, not that this is wrong and that that ought to have been managed otherwise; or that Mr. X. is worth a hundred of Mr. Y. as a Minister or Parliament Man, &c. &c.; but that all is wrong and mistaken, nay, all most unjust and wicked, and that every man is competent, and in contempt of all rank and property, on the mere title of his Per-ities of Milton, Sidney, and their immortal compeers, sonality, possesses the Right, and is under the most solemn moral obligation, to give a helping hand toward overthrowing it: this confusion of political with religious claims, this transfer of the rights of Religion disjoined from the austere duties of self-denial, with which religious rights exercised in their proper sphere cannot fail to be accompanied; and not only disjoined from self-restraint, but united with the indulgence of those passions (self-will, love of power, &c.,) which it is the principal aim and hardest task of Religion to correct and restrain-this, I say, is altogether different from the Village Politics of yore, and may be pronounced alarming and of dangerous tendency by the boldest Advocates of Reform not less consistently, than the most timid eschewers of popular disturbance. Still, however, the system had its golden side for as applicable to the present times and the existing government, the Demagogues appeared to talk only the same language as the Anti-jacobins themselves employed. For if the vilest calumnies of obsolete bigots were applied against these great men by the ons party, with equal plausibility might their authorities be adduced, and their arguments for increasing the power of the people be re-applied to the existing government, by the other. If the most disgusting forms of despotism were spoken of by the one in the same respectful language as the executive power of ou *I do not mean the Sovereigns, but the old Nobility of both Germany and France. The extravagantly false and flattering archy, has always appeared to me the greatest defect of his, picture, which Burke gave of the French Nobility and Hierin so many respects, invaluable Work. |