Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke.
by
Edmund Burke
Part 1 out of 9
This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher asschers@dingoblue.net.au
from the book made available by Dr Mike Alder.
SELECTIONS FROM THE SPEECHES AND WRITINGS OF EDMUND BURKE.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
...
"Id dico, eum qui sit orator, virum bonum esse oportere. In omnibus quae
dicit tanta auctoritas inest, ut dissentire pudeat; nec advocati
studium, sed testis aut judicis afferat fidem."--Quintilianus.
"Democracy is the most monstrous of all governments, because it is
impossible at once to act and control; and, consequently, the Sovereign
Power is then left without any restraint whatever. That form of
government is the best which places the efficient direction in the hands
of the aristocracy, subjecting them in its exercise to the control of
the people at large."--Sir James Mackintosh.
...
The intellectual homage of more than half a century has assigned to
Edmund Burke a lofty pre-eminence in the aristocracy of mind, and we may
justly assume succeeding ages will confirm the judgment which the Past
has thus pronounced. His biographical history is so popularly known,
that it is almost superfluous to record it in this brief introduction.
It may, however, be summed up in a few sentences. He was born at Dublin
in 1730. His father was an attorney in extensive practice, and his
mother's maiden name was Nogle, whose family was respectable, and
resided near Castletown, Roche, where Burke himself received five years
of boyish education under the guidance of a rustic schoolmaster. He was
entered at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1746, but only remained there
until 1749. In 1753 he became a member of the Middle Temple, and
maintained himself chiefly by literary toil. Bristol did itself the
honour to elect him for her representative in 1774, and after years of
splendid usefulness and mental triumph, as an orator, statesman, and
patriot, he retired to his favourite retreat, Beaconsfield, in
Buckinghamshire, where he died on July 9th, 1797. He was buried here;
and the pilgrim who visits the grave of this illustrious man, when he
gazes on the simple tomb which marks the earthly resting?place of
himself, brother, son, and widow, may feelingly recall his own pathetic
wish uttered some forty years before, in London:--"I would rather sleep
in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tomb
of the Capulets. I should like, however, that my dust should mingle with
kindred dust. The good old expression, 'family burying?ground,' has
something pleasing in it, at least to me." Alluding to his approaching
dissolution, he thus speaks, in a letter addressed to a relative of his
earliest schoolmaster:--"I have been at Bath these four months for no
purpose, and am therefore to be removed to my own house at Beaconsfield
to-morrow, to be nearer a habitation more permanent, humbly and
fearfully hoping that my better part may find a better mansion." It is a
source of deep thankfulness for those who reverence the genius and
eloquence of this great man, to state, that Burke's religion was that of
the Cross, and to find him speaking of the "Intercession" of our
Redeeming Lord, as "what he had long sought with unfeigned anxiety, and
to which he looked with trembling hope." The commencing paragraph in his
Will also authenticates the genuine character of his personal
Christianity. "According to the ancient, good, and laudable custom, of
which my heart and understanding recognise the propriety, I BEQUEATH MY
SOUL TO GOD, HOPING FOR HIS MERCY ONLY THROUGH THE MERITS OF OUR LORD
AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. My body I desire to be buried in the church of
Beaconsfield, near to the bodies of my dearest brother, and my dearest
son, in all humility praying, that as we have lived in perfect unity
together, we may together have part in the resurrection of the just."
(In the "Epistolary Correspondence of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke and
Dr. French Laurence" (Rivingtons, London, 1827), are several touching
allusions to that master?grief which threw a mournful shadow over the
closing period of Burke's life. In one letter the anxious father says,
"The fever continues much as it was. He sleeps in a very uneasy way from
time to time?-but his strength decays visibly, and his voice is, in a
manner, gone. But God is all?sufficient?-and surely His goodness and his
mother's prayers may do much" (page 30). Again, in another communication
addressed to his revered correspondent, we find a beautiful allusion to
his departed son, which involves his belief in that most soothing
doctrine of the Church,--a recognition of souls in the kingdom of the
Beatified. "Here I am in the last retreat of hunted infirmity; I am
indeed 'aux abois.' But, as through the whole of a various and long life
I have been more indebted than thankful to Providence, so I am now
singularly so, in being dismissed, as hitherto I appear to be, so gently
from life, AND SENT TO FOLLOW THOSE WHO IN COURSE OUGHT TO HAVE FOLLOWED
ME, WHOM, I TRUST, I SHALL YET, IN SOME INCONCEIVABLE MANNER, SEE AND
KNOW; AND BY WHOM I SHALL BE SEEN AND KNOWN" (pages 53, 54).
In reference to the intellectual grandeur, the eloquent genius, and
prophetic wisdom of Burke, which have caused his writings to become
oracles for future statesmen to consult, it is quite unnecessary for
contemporary criticism to speak. By the concurring judgment, both of
political friends and foes, as well as by the highest arbiters of taste
throughout the civilized world, Burke has been pronounced, not only
"primus inter pares," but "facile omnium princeps." At the termination
of these introductory remarks, the reader will be presented with
critical portraitures of Burke from the writings and speeches of men,
who, while opposed to him in their principles of legislative policy,
with all the chivalry and candour of genius paid a noble homage to the
vastness and variety of his unrivalled powers. Meanwhile, it may not be
presumptuous for a writer, on an occasion like the present, to
contemplate this great man under certain aspects, which, perhaps, are
not sufficiently regarded in their DISTINCTIVE bearings on the worth and
wisdom of his character and writings. We say "distinctive," because the
eloquence of Burke, beyond that of all other orators and statesmen which
Great Britain has produced, is featured with expressions, and
characterised by qualities, as peculiar as they are immortal. So far as
invention, imagination, moral fervour, and metaphorical richness of
illustration, combined with that intense "pathos and ethos," which the
Roman critic describes ("Huc igitur incumbat orator: hoc opus ejus, hic
labor est; sine quo caetera nuda, jejuna, infirma, ingrata sunt: adeo
velut spiritus operis hujus atque animus est IN AFFECTIBUS. Horum autem,
sicut antiquitus traditum accepimus, duae sunt species: alteram Graeci
pathos vocant, quem nos vertentes recte ac proprie AFFECTUM dicimus;
alteram ethos, cujus nomine (ut ego quidem sentio) caret sermo Romanus,
mores appellantur."--Quintilian, "Instit. Orat." lib. vi. cap. 2.) as
essential to the true orator, are concerned, the author of "Reflections
on the French Revolution," and "Letters on a Regicide Peace," is justly
admired and appreciated. Moreover, if what we understand by the
"sublime" in eloquence has ever been embodied, the speeches and writings
of Burke appear to have been drawn from those five sources ("pegai") to
which Longinus alludes. In the 8th chapter of his fragment "On the
Sublime," he observes, that if we assume an ability for speaking well,
as a common basis, there are five copious fountains from whence
sublimity in eloquence may be said to flow; viz.
1. Boldness and grandeur of thought.
2. The pathetic, or the power of exciting the passions into an
enthusiastic reach and noble degree.
3. A skilful application of figures, both from sentiment and language.
4. A graceful, finished, and ornate style, embellished by tropes and
metaphors.
5. Lastly, as that which completes all the rest,--the structure of
periods, in dignity and grandeur.
These five sources of the sublime, the same philosophical critic
distinguishes into two classes; the first two he asserts to be gifts of
nature, and the remaining three are considered to depend, in a great
measure, upon literature and art. Again, if we may linger for a moment
in the attractive region of classical authorship, how justly applicable
are the words of Cicero in his "De Oratore," to the vastness and variety
of Burke's attainments! "Ac mea quidem sententia, nemo poterit esse omni
laude cumulatus orator, nisi erit OMNIUM RERUM MAGNARUM ATQUE ARTIUM
SCIENTIAM CONSECUTUS."--Cic. "De Orat." lib. i. cap. 6. Equally
descriptive of Burke's power in raising the dormant sensibilities of our
moral nature by his intuitive perception of what that nature really and
fundamentally is, are the following expressions of the same great
authority:--"Quis enim nescit, maximam vim existere oratoris, in hominum
mentibus vel ad iram aut ad odium, aut dolorem incitandis, vel, ab
hisce, iisdem permonitionibus, ad lenitatem misericordiamque revocandis?
Quare, NISI QUI NATURAS HOMINUM, VIMQUE OMNEM HUMANITATIS, CAUSASQUE EAS
QUIBUS MENTES AUT EXCITANTUR, AUT REFLECTUNTUR, PENITUS PERSPEXERIT,
DICENDO, QUOD VOLET, PERFICERE NON POTERIT."--Cic. "De Orat." lib. i.
cap. 12.
But to return. If a critical analysis of Burke, as an exhibition of
genius, be attempted, his characteristic endowments may, probably, be
not incorrectly represented by the following succinct statement.
1. Endless variety in connection with exhaustless vigour of mind.
2. A lofty power of generalisation, both in speculative views and in his
argumentative process.
3. Vivid intensity of conception, which caused abstractions to stand out
with almost living force and visible feature, in his impassioned
moments.
4. An imagination of oriental luxuriance, whose incessant play in
tropes, metaphors, and analogies, frequently causes his speeches to
gleam on the intellectual eye, as Aeschylus says the ocean does, when
the Sun irradiates its bosom with the "anerithmon gelasma" of countless
beams. 5. His positive acquirements in all the varied realms of art,
science, and literature, endowed him with such vast funds of knowledge
(In the wealth of his multitudinous acquirements, Burke seems to realise
Cicero's ideal of what a perfect orator should know:--"Equidem omnia,
quae pertinent ad usum civium, morem hominum, quae versantur in
consuetudine vitae, in ratione reipublicae, in hac societate civili, in
sensu hominum communi, in natura, in moribus, co hendenda esse oratori
puto."--Cicero "De Orat." lib. ii. cap. 16.), that Johnson declared of
Burke--"Enter upon what subject you will, and Burke is ready to meet
you."
6. In addition to these high gifts, may be added, an ability to wield
the weapons of sarcasm and irony, with a keenness of application and
effect rarely equalled. But, in all candour, it may be added, that just
as a profusion of figures and metaphors sometimes tempted this great
orator into incongruous images and coarse analogies, so his passion for
irony was occasionally too intense. Hence, there are occasions where his
pungency is embittered into acrimony, strength degenerates into
vulgarism, and the vehemence of satire is infuriated with the fierceness
of invective.
7. With regard to language and style, it may be truly said, they were
the absolute vassals of his Genius, and did homage to its command in
every possible mode by which it chose to employ them. Thus, in his
"Letters on a Regicide Peace," and above all, in "French Revolutions,"
the reader will find almost every conceivable manner of style and mode
of expression the English language can develop; and what is
more,--together with classical richness, there are also the pointed
seriousness and persuasive simplicity of our own vernacular Saxon, which
increase the attractions of Burke's style to a wonderful extent. But,
beyond controversy, among these great endowments, the imaginative
faculty is that which appears to be the most transcendent in the mental
constitution of Burke. And so truly is this the case, that both among
his contemporaries, as well as among his successors, this predominance
of imagination has caused his just claims as a philosophic thinker and
statesman to be partially overlooked. The union of ideal theory and
practical realisation, of imaginative creation with logical induction,
is indeed so rare, we cannot be surprised at the injustice which the
genius of Burke has had to endure in this respect. And yet, in the
nature of our faculties themselves, there exists no necessity why a
vivid power to conceive ideas, should NOT be combined with a dialectic
skill in expressing them. Degerando, an admirable French writer, in one
of his Treatises, has some profound observations on this subject; and
does not hesitate to define poetry itself as a species of "logique
cachee."
But when we assert that these excellencies, which have thus been
succinctly exhibited, characterise the mental constitution of Burke, we
do not mean that others have not, in their degree, possessed similar
endowments. Such an inference would be an absurd extravagance. But what
we mean to affirm is--the qualifications enumerated have never been
combined into co-operative harmony, and developed in proportionable
effect, as they appear in the speeches and writings of this wonderful
man. But after all, we have not reached what may be considered a
peerless excellence, the peculiar gift,--the one great and glorious
distinction, which separates Burke's oratory from that of all others,
and which has caused his speeches to be blended with political History,
and to incorporate themselves with the moral destiny of Europe,--namely,
HIS INTUITIVE PERCEPTION OF UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES. The truth of this
statement may be verified, by comparing the eloquence of Burke with
specimens of departed orators; or by a reference to existing standards
in the parliamentary debates. Compared, then, either with the speeches
of Chatham, Holland, Pitt, Fox, etc. etc., we perceive at once the grand
distinction to which we refer. These illustrious men were effective
debaters, and, in various senses, orators of surpassing excellency. But
how is it, that with all their allowed grandeur of intellect and
political eminence, they have ceased to operate upon the hearts and
minds of the present Age, either as teachers of political Truth, or
oracles of legislative Wisdom? Simply, BECAUSE they were too popular in
temporary effect, ever to become influential by permanent inspiration.
In their highest moods, and amid their noblest hours of triumph, they
were "of the earth earthy." Party; personality; crushing rejoinders, or
satirical attacks; a felicitous exposure of inconsistency, or a
triumphant self-vindication; brilliant repartees, and logical
gladiatorship,--such are among the prominent characteristics which
caused parliamentary debates in Burke's day to be so animating and
interesting to those who heard, or perused them, amid the excitements of
the hour. It is not to be denied that commanding eloquence, vast genius,
political ardour, intellectual enthusiasm, together with indignant
denunciation and argumentative subtlety, were thus summoned into
exercise by the perils of the Nation, and the contentions of Party.
Nevertheless, the local, the temporal, the conventional, and the
individual, in all which relates to the science of politics or the
tactics of partisanship,--are sufficient to excite and employ the
energies and qualities which made the general parliamentary debates of
Burke's period so captivating. But when we revert to his own speeches
and writings, we at once perceive WHY, as long as the mind can
comprehend what is true, the heart appreciate what is pure, or the
conscience authenticate the sanction of heaven and the distinctions
between right and wrong,--Edmund Burke will continue to be admired,
revered, and consulted, not only as the greatest of English orators, but
as the profoundest teacher of political Science. It was not that he
despised the arrangement of facts, or overlooked the minutiae of detail;
on the contrary, as may be proved by his speeches on "economical
reform," and Warren Hastings; in these respects his research was
boundless, and his industry inexhaustible. Moreover, he was quite alive
to the claims of a crisis, and with the coolness and calm of a practical
statesman, knew how to confront a sudden emergency, and to contend with
a gigantic difficulty. Yet all these qualifications recede before
Burke's amazing power of expanding particulars into universals, and of
associating the accidents of a transient discussion with the essential
properties of some permanent Law in policy, or abstract Truth in morals.
His genius looked through the local to the universal; in the temporal
perceived the eternal; and while facing the features of the Individual,
was enabled to contemplate the attributes of a Race. (Cicero, in many
respects a counterpart of Burke, both in statesmanship and oratory,
appears to recognise what is here expressed when he says:--"Plerique duo
genera ad dicendum dederunt; UNUM DE CERTA DEFINITAQUE CAUSA, quales
sunt quae in litibus, quae in deliberationibus versantur;--alterum, quod
appellant omnes fere scriptores, explicat nemo, INFINITAM GENERIS SINE
TEMPORE, ET SINE PERSONA quaestionem."--"De Orat." lib. ii. cap. 15.)
Hence his speeches are virtual prophecies; and his writings a storehouse
of pregnant axioms and predictive enunciations, as limitless in their
range as they are undying in duration. In one word, no speeches
delivered in the English Parliament, are so likely to be eternalized as
Burke's, because he has combined with his treatment of some especial
case or contingency before him, the assertion of immutable Principles,
which can be detached from what is local and national, and thus made to
stand forth alone in all the naked grandeur of their truth and their
tendency. Let us be permitted to investigate this topic a little
further. If, then, what Quintilian asserted of the Roman orator may be
applied to our own British Cicero,--"Ille se profecisse sciat, cui
Cicero valde placebit;" and if, moreover, this pre-eminence be chiefly
discovered in Burke's instinctive grasp of that moral essence which is
incorporated with all questions of political Science, and social
Ethics--from WHENCE came this diviner energy of his Genius? No believer
in Christian revelation will hesitate to appropriate, even to this
subject, the apostolic axiom, "EVERY good gift, and EVERY perfect gift
is from above." But while we subscribe with reverential sincerity to
this announcement, it is equally true, that the Infinite Inspirer of all
good adjusts His secret energies by certain laws, and condescends to
work by analogous means. Bearing this in mind, we venture to think
Burke's gift of almost prescient insight into the recesses of our common
nature, and his consummate faculty of instructing the Future through the
medium of the Present,--were partly derived from the elevation of his
sentiments, and the purity of his private life. (The action and reaction
maintained between our moral and intellectual elements is but remotely
discussed by Quintilian in his "Institutes." But still, in more than one
passage, he most impressively declares, that mental proficiency is
greatly retarded by perversity of heart and will. For instance, on one
occasion we find him speaking thus:--"Nihil enim est tam occupatum, tam
multiforme, tot ac tam variis affectibus concisum, atque laceratum, quam
mala ac improba mens. Quis inter haec, literis, aut ulli bonae arti,
locus? Non hercle magis quam frugibus, in terra sentibus ac rubis
occupata."--"Nothing is so flurried and agitated, so self?contradictory,
or so violently rent and shattered by conflicting passions, as a bad
heart. In the distractions which it produces, what room is there for the
cultivation of letters, or the pursuits of any honourable art?
Assuredly, no more than there is for the growth of corn in a field
overrun with thorns and brambles.") It would be unwise to draw invidious
comparisons, but no student of the period in which Burke was in
Parliament, can deny that, compared with SOME of his illustrious
contemporaries, he was indeed a model of what reason and conscience
alike approve in all the relative duties and personal conduct of a man,
when beheld in his domestic career. It is, indeed, a source of deep
thankfulness, the admirer of Burke's genius in public, has no reason to
blush for his character in private; and that when we have listened to
his matchless oratory upon the arena of the House of Commons, we have
not to mourn over dissipation, impurity, and depravity amid the circles
of private history. Our theory, then, is, that beyond what his
distinctive genius inspired, Burke's wondrous power of enunciating
everlasting principles and of associating the loftiest abstractions of
wisdom with the commonest themes of the hour,--was sustained and
strengthened by the purity of his heart, and the subjection of passion
to the law of conscience. And if the worshippers of mere intellect,
apart from, or as opposed to, moral elevation, are inclined to ridicule
this view of Burke's genius, we beg to remind them, that "One greater
than the Temple" of mortal Wisdom, and all the idols enshrined therein,
has asserted a positive connection to exist between mental insight and
moral purity. We allude to the Redeemer's words, when He declares,--"If
any man WILLS to do His will, he shall KNOW of the doctrine." HOW the
passions act upon our perceptions, and by what process the motions of
the Will elevate or depress the forces of the Intellect, is beyond our
metaphysics to analyse. But that there exists a real, active, and
influential connection between our moral and mental life, is undeniable:
and since Burke's power of seizing the essential Idea, or fundamental
Principle of every complex detail which came before him, was
pre-eminently his gift,--the intellectual insight such gift developed,
was not only an expression of senatorial wisdom, but also a witness for
the elevation of his moral character. We must now allude to the public
conduct of Burke, as a Statesman and Politician, and only regret the
limited range of a popular essay confines us to one view, namely, his
alleged inconsistency. There WAS a period when charges of apostasy were
brought against him with reckless audacity: but Time, the instructor of
ignorance, and the subduer of prejudice, is now beginning to place the
conduct of Burke in its true light. The facts of the case are briefly
these. Up to the period of 1791, Fox and Burke fought in the same rank
of opposition, and stood together upon a basis of complete identity in
principle and sentiment. But even before the celebrated disruption of
1791, the progress of Republicanism in America, and the approaching
separation of the colonies from their parent state, Burke's views of
political liberty had received extensive modifications; and the ardour
of his confidence in the so?called friends of freedom had been greatly
cooled. But in 1791, the disruption between Burke and Fox became open,
absolute, and final, when the latter statesman uttered, in the hearing
of his friend, this fearful eulogium on the French Revolution:--"The new
constitution of France is the most stupendous and glorious edifice of
liberty which had been erected on the foundation of human integrity in
any age or country!" (That ancient Sage unto whose political wisdom
frequent reference has been made in this essay, thus speaks on the
reverence due unto an existing government, even when contemplated from
its weakest side:--"Formidable as these arguments seem, they may be
opposed by others of not less weight; arguments which prove that even
the rust of government is to be respected, and that its fabric is never
to be touched but with a fearful and trembling hand. When the evil of
persevering in hereditary institutions is small, it ought always to be
endured, because the evil of departing from them is certainly very
great. Slight imperfections, therefore, whether in the laws themselves,
or in those who administer and execute the laws, ought always to be
overlooked, because they cannot be corrected without occasioning a much
greater mischief, and tending to weaken that reverence which the safety
of all governments requires that the citizens at large should entertain,
cultivate, and cherish for the hereditary institutions of their country.
The comparison drawn from the improvement of arts does not apply to the
amendment of laws. To change or improve an art, and to alter or amend a
law, are things as dissimilar in their operation as different in their
tendency; for laws operate as practical principles of moral action; and,
like all the rules of morality, derive their force and efficacy, as even
the name imports, from the customary repetition of habitual acts, and
the slow operation of time. Every alteration of the laws, therefore,
tends to subvert that authority on which the persuasive agency of all
laws is founded, and to abridge, weaken, and destroy the power of the
law itself."--Aristotle's "Politics.") The reply of Burke to this burst
of Jacobinism, with all its consequences in the political history of
Europe, is far too well known to be quoted here. But, since it was at
this point in the career of Burke the charge of apostasy was commenced,
and which has never quite died away, even in existing times, we may be
permitted, first, to cite a noble passage from Burke's self?vindication;
and secondly, to adduce a still more impressive evidence of his
political rectitude and wisdom, derived from the admission of those who
were once his uncompromising opponents. In relation to the attacks of
Fox upon his supposed inconsistency, Mr. Burke thus replies:--
"I pass to the next head of charge,--Mr. Burke's inconsistency. It is
certainly a great aggravation of his fault in embracing false opinions,
that in doing so he is not supposed to fill up a void, but that he is
guilty of a dereliction of opinions that are true and laudable. This is
the great gist of the charge against him. It is not so much that he is
wrong in his book (that however is alleged also), as that he has therein
belied his whole life. I believe, if he could venture to value himself
upon anything, it is on the virtue of consistency that he would value
himself the most. Strip him of this, and you leave him naked indeed.
"In the case of any man who had written something, and spoken a great
deal, upon very multifarious matter, during upwards of twenty?five
years' public service, and in as great a variety of important events as
perhaps have ever happened in the same number of years, it would appear
a little hard, in order to charge such a man with inconsistency, to see
collected by his friend, a sort of digest of his sayings, even to such
as were merely sportive and jocular. This digest, however, has been
made, with equal pains and partiality, and without bringing out those
passages of his writings which might tend to show with what restrictions
any expressions, quoted from him, ought to have been understood. From a
great statesman he did not quite expect this mode of inquisition. If it
only appeared in the works of common pamphleteers, Mr. Burke might
safely trust to his reputation. When thus urged, he ought, perhaps, to
do a little more. It shall be as little as possible, for I hope not much
is wanting. To be totally silent on his charges would not be respectful
to Mr. Fox. Accusations sometimes derive a weight from the persons who
make them, to which they are not entitled for their matter. "A man who,
among various objects of his equal regard, is secure of some, and full
of anxiety for the fate of others, is apt to go to much greater lengths
in his preference of the objects of his immediate solicitude than Mr.
Burke has ever done. A man so circumstanced often seems to undervalue,
to vilify, almost to reprobate and disown, those that are out of danger.
This is the voice of nature and truth, and not of inconsistency and
false pretence. The danger of anything very dear to us removes, for the
moment, every other affection from the mind. When Priam had his whole
thoughts employed on the body of his Hector, he repels with indignation,
and drives from him with a thousand reproaches, his surviving sons, who
with an officious piety crowded about him to offer their assistance. A
good critic (there is no better than Mr. Fox) would say, that this is a
master?stroke, and marks a deep understanding of nature in the father of
poetry. He would despise a Zoilus, who would conclude from this passage
that Homer meant to represent this man of affliction as hating, or being
indifferent and cold in his affections to the poor relics of his house,
or that he preferred a dead carcass to his living children.
"Mr. Burke does not stand in need of an allowance of this kind, which,
if he did, by candid critics ought to be granted to him. If the
principles of a mixed constitution be admitted, he wants no more to
justify to consistency everything he has said and done during the course
of a political life just touching to its close. I believe that gentleman
has kept himself more clear of running into the fashion of wild,
visionary theories, or of seeking popularity through every means, than
any man perhaps ever did in the same situation.
"He was the first man who, on the hustings, at a popular election,
rejected the authority of instructions from constituents; or who, in any
place, has argued so fully against it. Perhaps the discredit into which
that doctrine of compulsive instructions under our constitution is since
fallen, may be due, in a great degree, to his opposing himself to it in
that manner, and on that occasion.
"The reformers in representation, and the Bills for shortening the
duration of Parliaments, he uniformly and steadily opposed for many
years together, in contradiction to many of his best friends. These
friends, however, in his better days, when they had more to hope from
his service and more to fear from his loss than now they have, never
chose to find any inconsistency between his acts and expressions in
favour of liberty, and his votes on those questions. But there is a time
for all things." We need not, however, confine our vindication of Burke
to his own eloquence, but invite the especial attention of his accusers
and defamers unto two forgotten facts: 1st. A few weeks before Fox died,
he dictated a despatch to Lord Yarmouth, which confirmed all the policy
for which Pitt for fifteen years had contended: moreover, in a debate on
Wyndham's "Military System," 1806, Fox thus delivered his own
recantation:--"Indeed, by the circumstances of Europe, I AM READY TO
CONFESS I HAVE BEEN WEANED FROM THE OPINIONS I FORMERLY HELD WITH
RESPECT TO THE FORCE WHICH MIGHT SUFFICE IN TIME OF PEACE: nor do I
consider this any inconsistency, because I see no rational prospect of
any peace, which would exempt us from the necessity of watchful
preparation and powerful establishment." But the change of Fox's
opinions, and their similarity to those maintained by Pitt, with
reference to our war with France, are by no means ALL which history can
produce in justification of Burke's political wisdom and consistency.
The whole civilized world has read the "Reflections on the French
Revolution," whose sale, in one year, achieved the enormous number of
30,000 copies, in connection with medals or marks of honour from almost
every Court in Europe. Now, of all the replies made to this masterpiece
of reasoning and reflection, Mackintosh's "Vindiciae Gallicae" was
incontestably the ablest and profoundest. And yet, the greatest of all
his intellectual opponents thus addresses Burke, as appears from
"Memoirs" of Mackintosh, volume i. page 87:--"The enthusiasm with which
I once embraced the instruction conveyed in your writings is now ripened
into solid conviction by the experience and conviction of more mature
age. For a time, SEDUCED BY THE LOVE OF WHAT I THOUGHT LIBERTY, I
ventured to oppose, without ceasing to venerate, that writer who had
nourished my understanding with the most wholesome principles of
political wisdom...Since that time, A MELANCHOLY EXPERIENCE HAS
UNDECEIVED ME ON MANY SUBJECTS, IN WHICH I WAS THE DUPE OF MY OWN
ENTHUSIASM." Let us part from this branch of our subject by quoting
Burke's own words, uttered, as it were, on the very brink of eternity.
They attest, to the latest moment of his life, with what a sacred
intensity and unflinching sincerity he clung to his original sentiments
touching the French Revolution. Nor let the present writer shrink from
adding, they constitute but one of the many specimens of that
instinctive prescience, whereby this profoundest of philosophical
statesmen was enabled to herald from afar the final triumphs of courage,
patriotism, and truth. The passage occurs towards the conclusion of his
"Letters on a Regicide Peace," and is as follows:--"Never succumb. It is
a struggle for your existence as a nation. If you must die, die with the
sword in your hand. But I have no fear whatever for the result. There is
a salient living principle of energy in the public mind of England,
which only requires proper direction to enable her to withstand this, or
any other ferocious foe. Persevere, therefore, till this tyranny be
over-past."
If from the glare of public history, we follow this great man into the
shades of domestic seclusion, or watch the features of his social
character unfolding themselves in the varied circle which he graced by
his presence, or dignified by his worth,--he is alike the object of
respectful esteem and love. Warmth of heart, chivalry of sentiment, and
that true high?breeding which springs from the soul rather than a
pedigree, eminently characterise the history of Burke in private life.
Above all, a sympathising tendency for the children of Genius, and a
catholic largeness of view in all which relates unto mental effort,
combined with the utmost charity for human failings and
infirmities,--cannot but endear him to our deepest affections, while his
unrivalled endowments command our highest admiration. To illustrate what
is here alluded to, let the reader recall Burke's noble generosity
towards that erratic victim of genius and grief,--the painter Barry; or
his instantaneous sympathy in behalf of Crabbe the poet, when almost a
foodless wanderer in our vast metropolis; and our estimate of Burke's
excellencies as a man, will not be deemed overdrawn.
It now remains for the selector of the following pages to offer a few
remarks on their nature, and design. Accustomed, from the earliest
period of his mental life to read and study the writings of Edmund
Burke, he has long wished that such a selection as now appears, should
be published. The works of Burke extend through a vast range of large
volumes; and it is feared thousands have been deterred from holding
communion with a master?spirit of British literature, by the magnitude
of his labours. Hence, a concentrated specimen of his intellect may not
only tempt the "reading public" (Coleridge's horror, yet an author's
friend!) to study some of Burke's noblest passages, but even ultimately
to introduce them into a full acquaintance with his entire products. Let
it be distinctly understood, the selection now published, is not a
second-hand one, grafted on some pre-existing volume; but the result of
a diligent, careful, and analytical perusal of Burke's writings. In
attempting such a work, there was one difficulty, which none but those
who have intimately studied this great orator can appreciate,--we allude
to the giving general titles, or descriptive headings, to passages
selected for quotation. There is a mental fulness, a moral variety, and
such a rapid transition of idea, in most of Burke's speeches, that it
almost baffles ability to abbreviate the spirit of his paragraphs, so as
to exhibit under some general head the bearing of the whole. The
selector, in this respect, can only say, he has done his best; and those
who are most competent to appreciate difficulty, will be least inclined
to criticise failure.
Finally, as to the leading design of this volume, its title, "First
Principles," is sufficiently descriptive to save much explanation. Burke
represents an unrivalled combination of patriot, senator, and orator;
and as such, the moral and intellectual nature of the Age will be
purified and expanded, when brought into contact with the attributes of
his character, and the productions of his mind. Nor can the meditative
statesman, whose party is his country, and whose political creed is
based upon a true philosophy of human nature, forget,--that while the
French revolution, as involving FACTS, belongs to History, as enclosing
PRINCIPLES, it appertains to Humanity: and hence, the abiding
application of Burke's profound views, not only to France and England,
but to the world. Of course, those who reverence the majesty of
eloquence, and are fascinated by a florid richness of style, boundless
imagination, inexhaustible metaphor, and all the attending graces of
consummate rhetoric, will also be charmed by the appropriate supply
these pages afford. But, without seeking to be homiletical, let the
writer be permitted to add, a far higher purpose than mere literary
amusement, or the gratification of taste, is designed by the present
volume. It is the selector's most earnest hope, that the "First
Principles" these pages so eloquently inculcate, may be transcribed in
all their purity, loftiness, and truth, into the Reason and Conscience
of his countrymen. And among these, for whose especial guidance he
ventures to think the profound wisdom of these pages to be invaluable,
are the rising statesmen and senators of the day, who are either being
trained in our Public Schools, at the Universities, or about to enter
upon the difficult but inspiring arena of the House of Commons. In
reference to this sphere of legislative action, with all reverence to
its claims and character, let it be said,--material ends (a boundless
passion for physical good, whether indulged in by a nation, or professed
by an individual, is rebuked with solemn wisdom in the following passage
from Aristotle:--"The external advantages of power and fortune are
acquired and maintained by virtue, but virtue is not acquired and
maintained by them; and whether we consider the virtuous energies
themselves, or the fruits which they unceasingly produce, THE SOVEREIGN
GOOD OF LIFE MUST EVIDENTLY BE FOUND IN MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL
EXCELLENCE, MODERATELY SUPPLIED WITH EXTERNAL ACCOMMODATIONS, RATHER
THAN IN THE GREATEST ACCUMULATION OF EXTERNAL ADVANTAGES, UNIMPROVED AND
UNADORNED BY VIRTUE. External prosperity is, indeed, instrumental in
producing happiness, and, therefore, like every other instrument, must
have its assigned limits, beyond which it is inconvenient or hurtful.
But to mental excellence no limit can be assigned; the further it
extends the more USEFUL it becomes, if the epithet of 'USEFUL' need ever
be added to that of HONOURABLE. Besides this, the relative importance of
qualities is best estimated by that of their respective subjects. But
the mind, both in itself and in reference to man, is far better than the
body, or than property. The excellencies of the mind, therefore, are in
the same proportion to be preferred to the highest perfection of the
body, and the best disposition of external circumstances. The two last
are of a far inferior, and merely subservient nature; since no man of
sense covets or pursues them, but for the sake of the mind, with a view
to promote its genuine improvement and augment its native joys. Let this
great truth then be acknowledged,--A TRUTH EVINCED BY THE DEITY HIMSELF,
WHO IS HAPPY, NOT FROM ANY EXTERNAL CAUSE, BUT THROUGH THE INHERENT
ATTRIBUTES OF HIS DIVINE NATURE."--"Politics," lib. iv.), commercial
objects, and secular aggrandizement, are now receiving an idolatrous
homage and passionate regard, which no Christian patriot can contemplate
without anxiety. The ideal, the imaginative, and the religious element,
is almost sneered out of the House of Commons at the existing moment;
and any glowing exhibition of oratory, or splendid manifestation of
intellect, is derided, as being "unpractical" and ill-adapted to the
sobriety of the English Senate! Against this heartless materialism and
unholy mammon-worship, Burke's pages are a magnificent protest; and are
admirably suited to protect the political youth and dawning statesmen of
our country, from the blight and the blast of doctrines which decry
Enthusiasm as folly, and condemn the Beautiful as worthless and untrue.
Ships, colonies, and commerce; exports and imports; taxes and imposts;
charters and civic arrangements,--none but a madman will depreciate what
such themes involve, of duty, energy, and zeal, in political life.
Still, let it be fearlessly maintained, neither wealth, nor commerce, IN
THEMSELVES, can constitute the real greatness of an empire; it is only
because they stand in relation to the higher destinies and holier
responsibilities of an Empire, that a true statesman will regard them as
vitally wound up with the vigour and prosperity of national development.
Such, at least, is the philosophy of Politics, breathed from the undying
pages of Edmund Burke. He who studies this great writer, will, more and
more, sympathise with what Hooker taught, and Bishop Sanderson
inculcates. In one word, he will learn to venerate with increasing
reverence THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION, as
"That peerless growth of patriotic mind,
The great eternal Wonder of mankind!"
Burke traced the ultimate origin of civil government to the Divine Will,
both as declared in Revelation, and imaged forth by the moral
Constitution of man. In this respect, it is well?known how fundamentally
he differs from the theories of Hobbes, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, and
Hutcheson. Not less also, is he opposed to Locke, who tells us,--"The
original compact which begins and ACTUALLY CONSTITUTES ANY POLITICAL
SOCIETY, IS NOTHING BUT THE CONSENT OF ANY NUMBER OF FREEMEN CAPABLE OF
A MAJORITY, TO UNITE AND INCORPORATE INTO SUCH A SOCIETY. AND THIS IS
THAT, AND THAT ONLY, WHICH COULD GIVE BEGINNING TO ANY LAWFUL GOVERNMENT
IN THE WORLD." In one word, Locke declares that civil government is not
from God in the way of principle, but from man in the way of fact; and
thus, being a mere contingency, or moral accident in the history of
human development, self?government is the essential prerogative of our
nature. In accordance with this irrational and unscriptural hypothesis,
we find Price and Priestly expanding Locke's views at the period of
Burke; while in the writings of that apostle of political Antinomianism,
Rousseau, and his English counterpart Tom Paine,--the principles of the
ASSUMED "CONTRAT SOCIAL" display their utmost virulence. This is not the
place to discuss the origin of Civil Government; but the classical
reader, who has been taught to revere the political wisdom of those
ancient Teachers, whose insight was almost prophetical in abstract
science, will thank us for an extract from Aristotle's "Politics," which
bears upon this subject. It presents a most striking coincidence of
sentiment between two master?spirits on the philosophy of government;
and will at once remind the reader of Burke's memorable passage,
beginning with, "Society is a partnership," etc. etc. The passage to
which we allude in Aristotle's "Politics," begins thus: "Ote men oun e
polis phusei proteron e ekastos," k.t.l. The whole passage may be thus
freely translated. "A participation in rights and advantages forms the
bond of political society; AN INSTITUTION PRIOR, IN THE INTENTION OF
NATURE, TO THE FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS FROM WHOM IT IS CONSTITUTED.
What members are to the body, that citizens are to a commonwealth. The
hands or foot, when separated from the body, retains its name, but
totally changes its nature, because it is completely divested of its
uses and powers. In the same manner a citizen is a constituent part of a
whole system, which invests him with powers and qualifies him for
functions for which, in his individual capacity, he is totally unfit;
and independently of such system, he might subsist indeed as a lonely
savage, but could never attain that improved and happy state to which
his progressive nature invariably tends. Perfected by the offices and
duties of social life, man is the best; but, rude and undisciplined, he
is the very worst, of animals. For nothing is more detestable than armed
improbity; and man is armed with craft and courage, which, uncontrolled
by justice, he will most wickedly pervert, and become at once the most
impious and fiercest of monsters, the most abominable in gluttony, and
shameless in personality. But justice is the fundamental virtue of
political society, since the order of Society cannot be maintained
without law, and laws are constituted to proclaim what is just." Let us
add to this noble passage, Aristotle remarks in his "Ethics" (lib. x. c.
8), that a higher destination than political virtue is the true end of
man. In this respect, he concurs with Plato; who teaches us in his
"Theaetetus," the main object of human pursuit ought to be "omoiosis to
theo kata to dunaton," etc. etc.; i.e. "A similitude unto God as far as
possible; which similitude consists in an imitation of His justice,
holiness, and wisdom." To conclude: the noblest end of all Policy on
earth, is to educate Human Nature for that august "politeuma" (Phil.
iii. v. 20), that Eternal Commonwealth which awaits perfected Spirits
above, when, through infinite grace, they are finally admitted into a
"CITY which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." (Heb. xi.
10.) (The dim approximations of Platonic philosophy to certain
discoveries in Divine Revelation, have rightly challenged the attention
of theological enquirers. The above quotation from St. Paul suggests a
reference to one of these, which occurs towards the termination of
Plato's ninth book of "The Republic." He is uttering a protest against
our concluding, that because degeneracy appears to be the invariable law
or destiny of all human commonwealths, THEREFORE, no Archetypal Model
exists of any perfect state, or polity: and then, in opposition to this
political scepticism, Plato adds these remarkable words:--"en ourano
isos paradeigma anakeitai to boulomeno oran kai oronti eauton
katoikizein," etc. etc.--"The state we have here established, which
exists only in our reasoning, but it seems to me, HAS NO EXISTENCE ON
EARTH. BUT IN HEAVEN, PROBABLY, I REPLIED, THERE IS A MODEL OF IT FOR
ANY ONE INCLINED TO CONTEMPLATE THE SAME, AND BY SO CONTEMPLATING IT, TO
REGULATE HIMSELF ACCORDINGLY.")
APPENDIX.
The following are the critical sketches of Burke's character, alluded to
in the commencement of this Essay. They are from the pens of his most
distinguished contemporaries, WHO WERE OPPOSED TO HIM in their political
views and public career.
(From SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.)
"There can be no hesitation in according to him a station among the most
extraordinary men that ever appeared; and we think there is now but
little diversity of opinion as to the kind of place which it is fit to
assign him. He was a writer of the first class, and excelled in almost
every kind of composition. Possessed of most extensive knowledge, and of
the most various description; acquainted alike with what different
classes of men knew, each in his own province, and with much that hardly
any one ever thought of learning; he could either bring his masses of
information to bear directly upon the subjects to which they severally
belonged,--or he could avail himself of them generally to strengthen his
faculties, and enlarge his views,--or he could turn any of them to
account for the purpose of illustrating his theme, or enriching his
diction. Hence, when he is handling any one matter, we perceive that we
are conversing with a reasoner or a teacher, to whom almost every other
branch of knowledge is familiar: his views range over all the cognate
objects; his reasonings are derived from principles applicable to other
themes, as well as the one in hand; arguments pour in from all sides, as
well as those which start up under our feet,--the natural growth of the
path he is leading us over; while to throw light round our steps, and
either explore its darkest places, or serve for our recreation;
illustrations are fetched from a thousand quarters, and an imagination
marvellously quick to descry unthought of resemblances, points to our
use the stores, which a love yet more marvellously has gathered from all
ages and nations, and arts and tongues. We are, in respect of the
argument, reminded of Bacon's multifarious knowledge, and the exuberance
of his learned fancy; whilst the many?lettered diction recalls to mind
the first of English poets, and his immortal verse, rich with the spoils
of all sciences and all times.
...
"He produced but one philosophical treatise; but no man lays down
abstract principles more soundly, or better traces their application.
All his works, indeed, even his controversial, are so infused with
general reflection, so variegated with speculative discussion, that they
wear the air of the Lyceum, as well as the Academy."
(From LORD ERSKINE.)
"I shall take care to put Burke's work on the French Revolution into the
hands of those whose principles are left to my protection. I shall take
care that they have the advantage of doing, in the regular progression
of youthful studies, what I have done even in the short intervals of
laborious life; that they shall transcribe with their own hands from all
the works of this most extraordinary person, and from this last, among
the rest, the soundest truths of religion, the justest principles of
morals, inculcated and rendered delightful by the most sublime
eloquence; the highest reach of philosophy brought down to the level of
common minds by the most captivating taste; the most enlightened
observations on history, and the most copious collection of useful
maxims for the experience of common life."
(From KING, Bishop of Rochester.) "In the mind of Mr. Burke political
principles were not objects of barren speculation. Wisdom in him was
always practical. Whatever his understanding adopted as truth, made its
way to his heart, and sank deep into it; and his ardent and generous
feelings seized with promptitude every occasion of applying it to
mankind. Where shall we find recorded exertions of active benevolence at
once so numerous, so varied, and so important, made by one man? Among
those, the redress of wrongs, and the protection of weakness from the
oppression of power, were most conspicuous.
...
The assumption of arbitrary power, in whatever shape it appeared,
whether under the veil of legitimacy, or skulking in the disguise of
State necessity, or presenting the shameless front of
usurpation--whether the prescriptive claim of ascendancy, or the career
of official authority, or the newly?acquired dominion of a mob,--was the
pure object of his detestation and hostility; and this is not a fanciful
enumeration of possible cases," etc.
SELECTIONS FROM THE SPEECHES AND WRITINGS OF EDMUND BURKE.
NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
Whatever alterations time and the necessary accommodation of business
may have introduced, this character can never be sustained, unless the
House of Commons shall be made to bear some stamp of the actual
disposition of the people at large. It would (among public misfortunes)
be an evil more natural and tolerable, that the House of Commons should
be infected with every epidemical frenzy of the people, as this would
indicate some consanguinity, some sympathy of nature with their
constituents, than that they should in all cases be wholly untouched by
the opinions and feelings of the people out of doors. By this want of
sympathy they would cease to be a house of commons. For it is not the
derivation of the power of that house from the people, which makes it in
a distinct sense their representative. The king is the representative of
the people; so are the lords, so are the judges. They all are trustees
for the people, as well as the commons; because no power is given for
the sole sake of the holder; and although government certainly is an
institution of Divine authority, yet its forms, and the persons who
administer it, all originate from the people.
A popular origin cannot therefore be the characteristical distinction of
a popular representative. This belongs equally to all parts of
government, and in all forms. The virtue, spirit, and essence of a house
of commons consists in its being the express image of the feelings of
the nation. It was not instituted to be a control UPON the people, as of
late it has been taught, by a doctrine of the most pernicious tendency.
It was designed as a control FOR the people. Other institutions have
been formed for the purpose of checking popular excesses; and they are,
I apprehend, fully adequate to their object. If not, they ought to be
made so. The House of Commons, as it was never intended for the support
of peace and subordination, is miserably appointed for that service;
having no stronger weapon than its mace, and no better officer than its
serjeant-at-arms, which it can command of its own proper authority. A
vigilant and jealous eye over executory and judicial magistracy; an
anxious care of public money; an openness, approaching towards facility,
to public complaint; these seem to be the true characteristics of a
house of commons. But an addressing house of commons, and a petitioning
nation; a house of commons full of confidence, when the nation is
plunged in despair; in the utmost harmony with ministers, whom the
people regard with the utmost abhorrence; who vote thanks, when the
public opinion calls upon them for impeachments; who are eager to grant,
when the general voice demands account; who, in all disputes between the
people and administration, presume against the people; who punish their
disorders, but refuse even to inquire into the provocations to them;
this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things in this constitution.
Such an assembly may be a great, wise, awful senate; but it is not, to
any popular purpose, a house of commons. This change from an immediate
state of procuration and delegation to a course of acting as from
original power, is the way in which all the popular magistracies in the
world have been perverted from their purposes. It is indeed their
greatest and sometimes their incurable corruption. For there is a
material distinction between that corruption by which particular points
are carried against reason (this is a thing which cannot be prevented by
human wisdom, and is of less consequence), and the corruption of the
principle itself. For then the evil is not accidental, but settled. The
distemper becomes the natural habit.
RETROSPECT AND RESIGNATION.
You are 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 my part in it well or ill, posterity will judge with more candour
than I, or than the present age, with our present passions, can possibly
pretend to. For my part, I quit it without a sigh, and submit to the
sovereign order without murmuring. The nearer we approach to the goal of
life, the better we begin to understand the true value of our existence,
and the real weight of our opinions. We set out much in love with both:
but we leave much behind us as we advance. We first throw away the tales
along with the rattles of our nurses; those of the priest keep their
hold a little longer; those of our governors the longest of all. But the
passions which prop these opinions are withdrawn one after another; and
the cool light of reason, at the setting of our life, shows us what a
false splendour played upon these objects during our more sanguine
seasons.
MODESTY OF MIND.
If any inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of
discovering the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in
discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not
make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from
error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us
cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much
labour may end in so much uncertainty.
NEWTON AND NATURE.
When Newton first discovered the property of attraction, and settled its
laws, he found it served very well to explain several of the most
remarkable phenomena in nature; but yet with reference to the general
system of things, he could consider attraction but as an effect, whose
cause at that time he did not attempt to trace. But when he afterwards
began to account for it by a subtle elastic aether, this great man (if
in so great a man it be not impious to discover anything like a blemish)
seemed to have quitted his usual cautious manner of philosophising:
since, perhaps, allowing all that has been advanced on this subject to
be sufficiently proved, I think it leaves us with as many difficulties
as it found us. That great chain of causes, which linking one to another
even to the throne of God himself, can never be unravelled by any
industry of ours. When we go but one step beyond the immediate sensible
qualities of things, we go out of our depth. All we do after is but a
faint struggle, that shows we are in an element which does not belong to
us.
THEORY AND PRACTICE.
It is, I own, not uncommon to be wrong in theory, and right in practice;
and we are happy that it is so. Men often act right from their feelings,
who afterwards reason but ill on them from principle: but as it is
impossible to avoid an attempt at such reasoning, and equally impossible
to prevent its having some influence on our practice, surely it is worth
taking some pains to have it just, and founded on the basis of sure
experience.
INDUCTION AND COMPARISON.
We must not attempt to fly, when we can scarcely pretend to creep. In
considering any complex matter, we ought to examine every distinct
ingredient in the composition, one by one; and reduce everything to the
utmost simplicity; since the condition of our nature binds us to a
strict law and vary narrow limits. We ought afterwards to re-examine the
principles by the effect of the composition, as well as the composition
by that of the principles. We ought to compare our subject with things
of a similar nature, and even with things of a contrary nature; for
discoveries may be, and often are, made by the contrast, which would
escape us on the single view. The greater number of the comparisons we
make, the more general and the more certain our knowledge is likely to
prove, as built upon a more extensive and perfect induction.
DIVINE POWER ON THE HUMAN IDEA.
Whilst we consider the Godhead merely as he is an object of the
understanding, which forms a complex idea of power, wisdom, justice,
goodness, all stretched to a degree far exceeding the bounds of our
comprehension, whilst we consider the Divinity in this refined and
abstracted light, the imagination and passions are little or nothing
affected. But because we are bound, by the condition of our nature, to
ascend to these pure and intellectual ideas, through the medium of
sensible images, to judge of these divine qualities by their evident
acts and exertions, it becomes extremely hard to disentangle our idea of
the cause from the effect by which we are led to know it. Thus, when we
contemplate the Deity, his attributes and their operation, coming united
on the mind, form a sort of sensible image, and as such are capable of
affecting the imagination. Now, though in a just idea of the Deity,
perhaps none of his attributes are predominant, yet, to our imagination,
his power is by far the most striking. Some reflection, some comparing,
is necessary to satisfy us of his wisdom, his justice, and his goodness.
To be struck with his power, it is only necessary that we should open
our eyes. But whilst we contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as
it were of almighty power, and invested upon every side with
omnipresence, we shrink into the minuteness of our own nature, and are,
in a manner, annihilated before him.
UNION OF LOVE AND DREAD IN RELIGION.
True religion has, and must have, a large mixture of salutary fear; and
false religions have generally nothing else but fear to support them.
Before the Christian religion had, as it were, humanized the idea of the
Divinity, and brought it somewhat nearer to us, there was very little
said of the love of God. The followers of Plato have something of it,
and only something; the other writers of pagan antiquity, whether poets
or philosophers, nothing at all. And they who consider with what
infinite attention, by what a disregard of every perishable object,
through what long habits of piety and contemplation it is that any man
is able to attain an entire love and devotion to the Deity, will easily
perceive that it is not the first, the most natural and the most
striking, effect which proceeds from that idea.
OFFICE OF SYMPATHY.
Whenever we are formed by nature to any active purpose, the passion
which animates us to it is attended with delight, or a pleasure of some
kind, let the subject?matter be what it will; and as our Creator had
designed that we should be united by the bond of sympathy, he has
strengthened that bond by a proportionable delight; and there most where
our sympathy is most wanted,--in the distresses of others.
WORDS.
Natural objects affect us, by the laws of that connexion which
Providence has established between certain motions and configurations of
bodies, and certain consequent feelings in our mind. Painting affects in
the same manner, but with the superadded pleasure of imitation.
Architecture affects by the laws of nature, and the law of reason; from
which latter result the rules of proportion, which make a work to be
praised or censured, in the whole or in some part, when the end for
which it was designed is or is not properly answered. But as to words;
they seem to me to affect us in a manner very different from that in
which we are affected by natural objects, or by painting or
architecture; yet words have as considerable a share in exciting ideas
of beauty and of the sublime as many of those, and sometimes a much
greater than any of them.
NATURE ANTICIPATES MAN.
Whenever the wisdom of our Creator intended that we should be affected
with anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the
languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with
powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will;
which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul
before the understanding is ready either to join with them, or to oppose
them. It is by a long deduction, and much study, that we discover the
adorable wisdom of God in his works: when we discover it, the effect is
very different, not only in the manner of acquiring it, but in its own
nature, from that which strikes us without any preparation from the
sublime or the beautiful.
SELF-INSPECTION.
Whatever turns the soul inward on itself, tends to concentre its forces,
and to fit it for greater and stronger flights of science. By looking
into physical causes our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this
pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose our game, the chase is
certainly of service.
POWER OF THE OBSCURE.
Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general, as well as a more
powerful, dominion over the passions, than the other art. And I think
there are reasons in nature, why the obscure idea, when properly
conveyed, should be more affecting than the clear. It is our ignorance
of things that causes all our admiration, and chiefly excites our
passions. Knowledge and acquaintance make the most striking causes
affect but little. It is thus with the vulgar; and all men are as the
vulgar in what they do not understand. The ideas of eternity and
infinity, are among the most affecting we have: and yet perhaps there is
nothing of which we really understand so little, as of infinity and
eternity.
FEMALE BEAUTY.
The object therefore of this mixed passion, which we call love, is the
BEAUTY of the SEX. Men are carried to the sex in general, as it is the
sex, and by the common law of nature; but they are attached to
particulars by personal BEAUTY. I call beauty a social quality; for
where women and men, and not only they, but when other animals give us a
sense of joy and pleasure in beholding them (and there are many that do
so), they inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and affection towards
their persons; we like to have them near us, and we enter willingly into
a kind of relation with them, unless we should have strong reasons to
the contrary.
NOVELTY AND CURIOSITY.
Curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its
object perpetually, it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very
easily satisfied; and it has always an appearance of giddiness,
restlessness, and anxiety. Curiosity, from its nature, is a very active
principle; it quickly runs over the greatest part of its objects, and
soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to be met with in nature;
the same things make frequent returns, and they return with less and
less of any agreeable effect. In short, the occurrences of life, by the
time we come to know it a little, would be incapable of affecting the
mind with any other sensations than those of loathing and weariness, if
many things were not adapted to affect the mind by means of other powers
besides novelty in them, and of other passions besides curiosity in
ourselves.
PLEASURES OF ANALOGY.
The mind of man has naturally a far greater alacrity and satisfaction in
tracing resemblances than in searching for differences: because by
making resemblances we produce NEW IMAGES; we unite, we create, we
enlarge our stock; but in making distinctions we offer no food at all to
the imagination; the task itself is more severe and irksome, and what
pleasure we derive from it is something of a negative and indirect
nature.
AMBITION.
God has planted in man a sense of ambition, and a satisfaction arising
from the contemplation of his excelling his fellows in something deemed
valuable amongst them. It is this passion that drives men to all the
ways we see in use of signalizing themselves, and that tends to make
whatever excites in a man the idea of this distinction so very pleasant.
It has been so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort, that
they were supreme in misery; and certain it is, that, where we cannot
distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we begin to take a
complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one
kind or other. It is on this principle that flattery is so prevalent;
for flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a
preference which he has not.
EXTENSIONS OF SYMPATHY.
For sympathy must be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we
are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as
he is affected; so that this passion may either partake of the nature of
those which regard self?preservation, and turning upon pain may be a
source of the sublime; or it may turn upon ideas of pleasure; and then
whatever has been said of the social affections, whether they regard
society in general, or only some particular modes of it, may be
applicable here. It is by this principle chiefly that poetry, painting,
and other affecting arts, transfuse their passions from one breast to
another, and are often capable of grafting a delight on wretchedness,
misery, and death itself.
PHILOSOPHY OF TASTE.
So far, then, as taste belongs to the imagination, its principle is the
same in all men; there is no different in the manner of their being
affected, nor in the causes of the affection; but in the DEGREE there is
a difference, which arises from two causes principally; either from a
greater degree of natural sensibility, or from a closer and longer
attention to the object.
CLEARNESS AND STRENGTH IN STYLE.
We do not sufficiently distinguish, in our observations upon language,
between a clear expression and a strong expression. These are frequently
confounded with each other, though they are in reality extremely
different. The former regards the understanding; the latter belongs to
the passions. The one describes a thing as it is; the latter describes
it as it is felt. Now, as there is a moving tone of voice, an
impassioned countenance, an agitated gesture, which affect independently
of the things about which they are exerted, so there are words, and
certain dispositions of words, which being peculiarly devoted to
passionate subjects, and always used by those who are under the
influence of any passion, touch and move us more than those which far
more clearly and distinctly express the subject?matter. We yield to
sympathy what we refuse to description. The truth is, all verbal
description, merely as naked description, though never so exact, conveys
so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing described, that it could
scarcely have the smallest effect, if the speaker did not call in to his
aid those modes of speech that mark a strong and lively feeling in
himself. Then, by the contagion of our passions, we catch a fire already
kindled in another, which probably might never have been struck out by
the object described. Words, by strongly conveying the passions, by
those means which we have already mentioned, fully compensate for their
weakness in other respects.
UNITY OF IMAGINATION.
Since the imagination is only the representation of the senses, it can
only be pleased or displeased with the images, from the same principle
on which the sense is pleased or displeased with the realities; and
consequently there must be just as close an agreement in the
imaginations as in the senses of men. A little attention will convince
us that this must of necessity be the case.
EFFECT OF WORDS.
If words have all their possible extent of power, three effects arise in
the mind of the hearer. The first is, the SOUND; the second, the
PICTURE, or representation of the thing signified by the sound; the
third is, the AFFECTION of the soul produced by one or by both of the
foregoing. COMPOUNDED ABSTRACT words, of which we have been speaking
(honour, justice, liberty, and the like), produce the first and the last
of these effects, but not the second. SIMPLE ABSTRACTS, are used to
signify some one simple idea without much adverting to others which may
chance to attend it, as blue, green, hot, cold, and the like; these are
capable of effecting all three of the purposes of words; as the
AGGREGATE words, man, castle, horse, etc. are in a yet higher degree.
But I am of opinion, that the most general effect, even of these words,
does not arise from their forming pictures of the several things they
would represent in the imagination; because, on a very diligent
examination of my own mind, and getting others to consider theirs, I do
not find that once in twenty times any such picture is formed, and, when
it is, there is most commonly a particular effort of the imagination for
that purpose. But the aggregate words operate, as I said of the
compound?abstracts, not by presenting any image to the mind, but by
having from use the same effect on being mentioned, that their original
has when it is seen.
INVESTIGATION.
I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly
to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, not
content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to
the stock on which they grew; it tends to set the reader himself in the
track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the
author has made his own discoveries, if he should be so happy as to have
made any that are valuable.
THE SUBLIME.
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger,
that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about
terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a
source of the SUBLIME; that is, it is productive of the strongest
emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.
OBSCURITY.
Those despotic governments which are founded on the passions of men, and
principally upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as much as may be
from the public eye. The policy has been the same in many cases of
religion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark. Even in the
barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in
a dark part of the hut which is consecrated to his worship. For this
purpose too the Druids performed all their ceremonies in the bosom of
the darkest woods, and in the shade of the oldest and most spreading
oaks. No person seems better to have understood the secret of
heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression,
in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity, than
Milton.
PRINCIPLES OF TASTE.
Whatever certainty is to be acquired in morality and the science of
life; just the same degree of certainty have we in what relates to them
in works of imitation. Indeed, it is for the most part in our skill in
manners, and in the observances of time and place, and of decency in
general, which is only to be learned in those schools to which Horace
recommends us, that what is called taste, by way of distinction,
consists; and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment.
On the whole it appears to me, that what is called taste, in its most
general acceptation, is not a simple idea, but is partly made up of a
perception of the primary pleasures of sense, of the secondary pleasures
of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the reasoning faculty,
concerning the various relations of these, and concerning the human
passions, manners, and actions. All this is requisite to form taste, and
the ground?work of all these is the same in the human mind; for as the
senses are the great originals of all our ideas, and consequently of all
our pleasures, if they are not uncertain and arbitrary, the whole
ground-work of taste is common to all, and therefore there is a
sufficient foundation for a conclusive reasoning on these matters.
THE BEAUTIFUL.
Beauty is a thing much too affecting not to depend upon some positive
qualities. And, since it is no creature of our reason, since it strikes
us without any reference to use, and even where no use at all can be
discerned, since the order and method of nature is generally very
different from our measures and proportions, we must conclude that
beauty is, for the greater part, some quality in bodies acting
mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention of the senses.
THE REAL AND THE IDEAL.
Choose a day on which to represent the most sublime and affecting
tragedy we have: appoint the most favourite actors; spare no cost upon
the scenes and decorations; unite the greatest efforts of poetry,
painting, and music; and when you have collected your audience, just at
the moment when their minds are erect with expectation, let it be
reported that a state criminal of high rank is on the point of being
executed in the adjoining square; in a moment the emptiness of the
theatre would demonstrate the comparative weakness of the imitative
arts, and proclaim the triumph of the real sympathy. I believe that this
notion of our having a simple pain in the reality, yet a delight in the
representation, arises from hence, that we do not sufficiently
distinguish what we would by no means choose to do, from what we should
be eager enough to see if it was once done. We delight in seeing things,
which so far from doing, our heartiest wishes would be to see redressed.
This noble capital, the pride of England and of Europe, I believe no man
is so strangely wicked as to desire to see destroyed by a conflagration
or an earthquake, though he should be removed himself to the greatest
distance from the danger. But suppose such a fatal accident to have
happened, what numbers from all parts would crowd to behold the ruins,
and amongst them many who would have been content never to have seen
London in its glory!
JUDGMENT IN ART.
A rectitude of judgment in the arts, which may be called a good taste,
does in a great measure depend upon sensibility; because, if the mind
has no bent to the pleasures of the imagination, it will never apply
itself sufficiently to works of that species to acquire a competent
knowledge in them. But, though a degree of sensibility is requisite to
form a good judgment, yet a good judgment does not necessarily arise
from a quick sensibility of pleasure.
MORAL EFFECTS OF LANGUAGE.
This arises chiefly from these three causes. First. That we take an
extraordinary part in the passions of others, and that we are easily
affected and brought into sympathy by any tokens which are shown of
them; and there are no tokens which can express all the circumstances of
most passions so fully as words; so that if a person speaks upon any
subject, he can not only convey the subject to you, but likewise the
manner in which he is himself affected by it. Certain it is, that the
influence of most things on our passions is not so much from the things
themselves, as from our opinions concerning them; and these again depend
very much on the opinions of other men, conveyable for the most part by
words only. Secondly. There are many things of a very affecting nature,
which can seldom occur in the reality, but the words that represent them
often do; and thus they have an opportunity of making a deep impression
and taking root in the mind, whilst the idea of the reality was
transient; and to some perhaps never really occurred in any shape, to
whom it is notwithstanding very affecting, as war, death, famine, etc.
Besides, many ideas have never been at all presented to the senses of
any men but by words, as God, angels, devils, heaven, and hell, all of
which have, however, a great influence over the passions. Thirdly. By
words we have it in our power to make such COMBINATIONS as we cannot
possibly do otherwise. By this power of combining, we are able, by the
addition of well?chosen circumstances, to give a new life and force to
the simple object. In painting we may represent any fine figure we
please; but we never can give it those enlivening touches which it may
receive from words. To represent an angel in a picture, you can only
draw a beautiful young man winged: but what painting can furnish out
anything so grand as the addition of one word, "the angel of the LORD?"
SECURITY OF TRUTH.
I then thought, and am still of the same opinion, that error, and not
truth of any kind, is dangerous; that ill conclusions can only flow from
false propositions; and that, to know whether any proposition be true or
false, it is a preposterous method to examine it by its apparent
consequences.
IMITATION AN INSTINCTIVE LAW.
For as sympathy makes us take a concern in whatever men feel, so this
affection prompts us to copy whatever they do; and consequently we have
a pleasure in imitating, and in whatever belongs to imitation merely as
it is such, without any intervention of the reasoning faculty, but
solely from our natural constitution, which Providence has framed in
such a manner as to find either pleasure or delight, according to the
nature of the object, in whatever regards the purposes of our being. It
is by imitation far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and
what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more
pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one
of the strongest links of society; it is a species of mutual compliance,
which all men yield to each other, without constraint to themselves, and
which is extremely flattering to all.
STANDARD OF REASON AND TASTE.
It is probable that the standard both of reason and taste is the same in
all human creatures. For if there were not some principles of judgment
as well as of sentiment common to all mankind, no hold could possibly be
taken either on their reason or their passions, sufficient to maintain
the ordinary correspondence of life.
USE OF THEORY.
A theory founded on experiment, and not assumed, is always good for so
much as it explains. Our inability to push it indefinitely is no
argument at all against it. This inability may be owing to our ignorance
of some necessary MEDIUMS; to a want of proper application; to many
other causes besides a defect in the principles we employ.
POLITICAL OUTCASTS.
In the mean time, that power, which all these changes aimed at securing,
remains still as tottering and as uncertain as ever. They are delivered
up into the hands of those who feel neither respect for their persons,
nor gratitude for their favours; who are put about them in appearance to
serve, in reality to govern them; and, when the signal is given, to
abandon and destroy them, in order to set up some new dupe of ambition,
who in his turn is to be abandoned and destroyed. Thus, living in a
state of continual uneasiness and ferment, softened only by the
miserable consolation of giving now and then preferments to those for
whom they have no value; they are unhappy in their situation, yet find
it impossible to resign. Until, at length, soured in temper, and
disappointed by the very attainment of their ends, in some angry, in
some haughty, or some negligent moment, they incur the displeasure of
those upon whom they have rendered their very being dependent. Then
perierunt tempora longi servitii; they are cast off with scorn; they are
turned out, emptied of all natural character, of all intrinsic worth, of
all essential dignity, and deprived of every consolation of friendship.
Having rendered all retreat to old principles ridiculous, and to old
regards impracticable, not being able to counterfeit pleasure, or to
discharge discontent, nothing being sincere or right, or balanced in
their minds, it is more than a chance, that, in the delirium of the last
stage of their distempered power, they make an insane political
testament, by which they throw all their remaining weight and
consequence into the scale of their declared enemies, and the avowed
authors of their destruction.
INJUSTICE TO OUR OWN AGE.
If these evil dispositions should spread much farther they must end in
our destruction; for nothing can save a people destitute of public and
private faith. However, the author, for the present state of things, has
extended the charge by much too widely; as men are but too apt to take
the measure of all mankind from their own particular acquaintance.
Barren as this age may be in the growth of honour and virtue, the
country does not want, at this moment, as strong, and those not a few,
examples as were ever known, of an unshaken adherence to principle, and
attachment to connexion, against every allurement of interest. Those
examples are not furnished by the great alone; nor by those, whose
activity in public affairs may render it suspected that they make such a
character one of the rounds in their ladder of ambition; but by men more
quiet, and more in the shade, on whom an unmixed sense of honour alone
could operate.
FALSE COALITIONS.
No system of that kind can be formed, which will not leave room fully
sufficient for healing coalitions: but no coalition which, under the
specious name of independency, carries in its bosom the unreconciled
principles of the original discord of parties, ever was, or will be, an
healing coalition. Nor will the mind of our sovereign ever know repose,
his kingdom settlement, or his business order, in efficiency or grace
with his people, until things are established upon the basis of some set
of men, who are trusted by the public, and who can trust one another.
POLITICAL EMPIRICISM.
Men of sense, when new projects come before them, always think a
discourse proving the mere right or mere power of acting in the manner
proposed, to be no more than a very unpleasant way of mispending time.
They must see the object to be of proper magnitude to engage them; they
must see the means of compassing it to be next to certain: the mischiefs
not to counterbalance the profit; they will examine how a proposed
imposition or regulation agrees with the opinion of those who are likely
to be affected by it; they will not despise the consideration even of
their habitudes and prejudices. They wish to know how it accords or
disagrees with the true spirit of prior establishments, whether of
government or of finance; because they well know, that in the
complicated economy of great kingdoms, and immense revenues, which in a
length of time, and by a variety of accidents, have coalesced into a
sort of body, an attempt towards a compulsory equality in all
circumstances, and an exact practical definition of the supreme rights
in every case, is the most dangerous and chimerical of all enterprises.
The old building stands well enough, though part Gothic, part Grecian,
and part Chinese, until an attempt is made to square it into uniformity.
Then it may come down upon our heads altogether, in much uniformity of
ruin; and great will be the fall thereof.
A VISIONARY.
Enough of this visionary union; in which much extravagance appears
without any fancy, and the judgment is shocked without anything to
refresh the imagination. It looks as if the author had dropped down from
the moon, without any knowledge of the general nature of this globe, of
the general nature of its inhabitants, without the least acquaintance
with the affairs of this country.
PARTY DIVISIONS.
Party divisions, whether on the whole operating for good or evil, are
things inseparable from free government. This is a truth which, I
believe, admits little dispute, having been established by the uniform
experience of all ages. The part a good citizen ought to take in these
divisions has been a matter of much deeper controversy. But God forbid
that any controversy relating to our essential morals should admit of no
decision. It appears to me, that this question, like most of the others
which regard our duties in life, is to be determined by our station in
it. Private men may be wholly neutral, and entirely innocent; but they
who are legally invested with public trust, or stand on the high ground
of rank and dignity, which is trust implied, can hardly in any case
remain indifferent, without the certainty of sinking into
insignificance; and thereby in effect deserting that post in which, with
the fullest authority, and for the wisest purposes, the laws and
institutions of their country have fixed them. However, if it be the
office of those who are thus circumstanced, to take a decided part, it
is no less their duty that it should be a sober one.
DECORUM IN PARTY.
It ought to be circumscribed by the same laws of decorum, and balanced
by the same temper, which bound and regulate all the virtues. In a word,
we ought to act in party with all the moderation which does not
absolutely enervate that vigour, and quench that fervency of spirit,
without which the best wishes for the public good must evaporate in
empty speculation.
NOT SO BAD AS WE SEEM.
Our circumstances are indeed critical; but then they are the critical
circumstances of a strong and mighty nation. If corruption and meanness
are greatly spread, they are not spread universally. Many public men are
hitherto examples of public spirit and integrity. Whole parties, as far
as large bodies can be uniform, have preserved character. However they
may be deceived in some particulars, I know of no set of men amongst us
which does not contain persons on whom the nation, in a difficult
exigence, may well value itself. Private life, which is the nursery of
the commonwealth, is yet in general pure, and on the whole disposed to
virtue; and the people at large want neither generosity nor spirit. No
small part of that very luxury, which is so much the subject of the
author's declamation, but which, in most parts of life, by being well
balanced and diffused, is only decency and convenience, has perhaps as
many or more good than evil consequences attending it. It certainly
excites industry, nourishes emulation, and inspires some sense of
personal value into all ranks of people. What we want is to establish
more fully an opinion of uniformity, and consistency of character, in
the leading men of the state; such as will restore some confidence to
profession and appearance, such as will fix subordination upon esteem.
Without this all schemes are begun at the wrong end.
POLITICS WITHOUT PRINCIPLE.
People not very well grounded in the principles of public morality find
a set of maxims in office ready made for them, which they assume as
naturally and inevitably, as any of the insignia or instruments of the
situation. A certain tone of the solid and practical is immediately
acquired. Every former profession of public spirit is to be considered
as a debauch of youth, or, at best, as a visionary scheme of
unattainable perfection. The very idea of consistency is exploded. The
convenience of the business of the day is to furnish the principle for
doing it. Then the whole ministerial cant is quickly got by heart. The
prevalence of faction is to be lamented. All opposition is to be
regarded as the effect of envy and disappointed ambition. All
administrations are declared to be alike. The same necessity justifies
all their measures. It is no longer a matter of discussion, who or what
administration is; but that administration is to be supported, is a
general maxim. Flattering themselves that their power is become
necessary to the support of all order and government, everything which
tends to the support of that power is sanctified, and becomes a part of
the public interest.
MORAL DEBASEMENT PROGRESSIVE.
I believe the instances are exceedingly rare of men immediately passing
over a clear, marked line of virtue into declared vice and corruption.
There are a sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes;
there is something uncertain on the confines of the two empires which
they first pass through, and which renders the change easy and
imperceptible. There are even a sort of splendid impositions so well
contrived, that, at the very time the path of rectitude is quitted for
ever, men seem to be advancing into some higher and nobler road of
public conduct. Not that such impositions are strong enough in
themselves; but a powerful interest, often concealed from those whom it
affects, works at the bottom, and secures the operation. Men are thus
debauched away from those legitimate connexions, which they had formed
on a judgment, early perhaps but sufficiently mature, and wholly
unbiassed.
DESPOTISM.
It is the nature of despotism to abhor power held by any means but its
own momentary pleasure; and to annihilate all intermediate situations
between boundless strength on its own part, and total debility on the
part of the people.
JUDGMENT AND POLICY.
Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what
must either render us totally desperate, or sooth us into the security
of idiots. We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of
infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity
truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and
corrupt. Men are in public as in private, some good, some evil. The
elevation of the one, and the depression of the other, are the first
objects of all true policy. But that form of government, which, neither
in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate tendency, has
contrived to throw its affairs into the most trustworthy hands, but has
left its whole executory system to be disposed of agreeably to the
uncontrolled pleasures of any one man, however excellent or virtuous, is
a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but consequentially
erroneous in every part of it.
POPULAR DISCONTENT.
To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors
of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the
future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind;
indeed, the necessary effects of the ignorance and levity of the vulgar.
Such complaints and humours have existed in all times; yet as all times
have NOT been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself in
distinguishing that complaint which only characterises the general
infirmity of human nature, from those which are symptoms of the
particular distemperature of our own air and season.
THE PEOPLE AND THEIR RULERS.
I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong.
They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries
and in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their
rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.
Experience may perhaps justify me in going farther. When popular
discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed and
supported, that there has been generally something found amiss in the
constitution, or in the conduct of government. The people have no
interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error, and not
their crime.
GOVERNMENT FAVOURITISM.
It is this unnatural infusion of a government which in a great part of
its constitution is popular, that has raised the present ferment in the
nation. The people, without entering deeply into its principles, could
plainly perceive its effects, in much violence, in a great spirit of
innovation, and a general disorder in all the functions of government. I
keep my eye solely on this system; if I speak of those measures which
have arisen from it, it will be so far only as they illustrate the
general scheme. This is the fountain of all those bitter waters, of
which, through an hundred different conduits, we have drunk until we are
ready to burst. The discretionary power of the Crown in the formation of
ministry, abused by bad or weak men, has given rise to a system which,
without directly violating the letter of any law, operates against the
spirit of the whole constitution.
A plan of favouritism for our executory government is essentially at
variance with the plan of our legislature. One great end undoubtedly of
a mixed government like ours, composed of monarchy, and of controls, on
the part of the higher people and the lower, is that the prince shall
not be able to violate the laws. This is useful indeed and fundamental.
But this, even at first view, in no more than a negative advantage; an
armour merely defensive. It is therefore next in order, and equal in
importance, THAT THE DISCRETIONARY POWERS WHICH ARE NECESSARILY VESTED
IN THE MONARCH, WHETHER FOR THE EXECUTION OF THE LAWS, OR FOR THE
NOMINATION TO MAGISTRACY AND OFFICE, OR FOR CONDUCTING THE AFFAIRS OF
PEACE AND WAR, OR FOR ORDERING THE REVENUE, SHOULD ALL BE EXERCISED UPON
PUBLIC PRINCIPLES AND NATIONAL GROUNDS, AND NOT ON THE LIKINGS OR
PREJUDICES, THE INTRIGUES OR POLICIES, OF A COURT.
ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION.
In arbitrary governments, the constitution of the ministry follows the
constitution of the legislature. Both the law and the magistrate are the
creatures of will. It must be so. Nothing, indeed, will appear more
certain, on any tolerable consideration of this matter, than that EVERY
SORT OF GOVERNMENT OUGHT TO HAVE ITS ADMINISTRATION CORRESPONDENT TO ITS
LEGISLATURE. If it should be otherwise, things must fall into a hideous
disorder. The people of a free commonwealth, who have taken such care
that their laws should be the result of general consent, cannot be so
senseless as to suffer their executory system to be composed of persons
on whom they have no dependence, and whom no proofs of the public love
and confidence have recommended to those powers, upon the use of which
the very being of the state depends.
INFLUENCE OF THE CROWN.
The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown
up anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the name of
Influence. An influence, which operated without noise and without
violence; an influence which converted the very antagonist into the
instrument of power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle of
growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of
the country equally tend to augment, was an admirable substitute for a
prerogative, that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices,
had moulded into its original stamina irresistible principles of decay
and dissolution. The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a
temporary system; the interest of active men in the state is a
foundation perpetual and infallible.
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE.
Government is deeply interested in everything which, even through the
medium of some temporary uneasiness, may tend finally to compose the
minds of the subjects, and to conciliate their affections. I have
nothing to do here with the abstract value of the voice of the people.
But as long as reputation, the most precious possession of every
individual, and as long as opinion, the great support of the state,
depend entirely upon that voice, it can never be considered as a thing
of little consequence either to individuals or to governments. Nations
are not primarily ruled by laws; less by violence. Whatever original
energy may be supposed either in force or regulation, the operation of
both is, in truth, merely instrumental. Nations are governed by the same
methods, and on the same principles, by which an individual without
authority is often able to govern those who are his equals or his
superiors--by a knowledge of their temper, and by a judicious management
of it; I mean, when public affairs are steadily and quietly conducted;
and when government is nothing but a continued scuffle between the
magistrate and the multitude; in which sometimes the one and sometimes
the other is uppermost; in which they alternately yield and prevail, in
a series of contemptible victories, and scandalous submissions. The
temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be the
first study of a statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is by no
means impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being
ignorant of what it is his duty to learn.
FALLACY OF EXTREMES.
It is a fallacy in constant use with those who would level all things,
and confound right with wrong, to insist upon the inconveniences which
are attached to every choice, without taking into consideration the
different weight and consequence of those inconveniences. The question
is not concerning ABSOLUTE discontent or PERFECT satisfaction in
government; neither of which can be pure and unmixed at any time, or
upon any system. The controversy is about that degree of good humour in
the people, which may possibly be attained, and ought certainly to be
looked for. While some politicians may be waiting to know whether the
sense of every individual be against them, accurately distinguishing the
vulgar from the better sort, drawing lines between the enterprises of a
faction and the efforts of a people, they may chance to see the
government, which they are so nicely weighing, and dividing, and
distinguishing, tumble to the ground in the midst of their wise
deliberation. Prudent men, when so great an object as the security of
government, or even its peace, is at stake, will not run the risk of a
decision which may be fatal to it. They who can read the political sky
will see a hurricane in a cloud no bigger than a hand at the very edge
of the horizon, and will run into the first harbour. No lines can be
laid down for civil or political wisdom. They are a matter incapable of
exact definition. But, though no man can draw a stroke between the
confines of day and night, yet light and darkness are, upon the whole,
tolerably distinguishable. Nor will it be impossible for a prince to
find out such a mode of government, and such persons to administer it,
as will give a great degree of content to his people; without any
curious and anxious research for that abstract, universal, perfect
harmony, which, while he is seeking, he abandons those means of ordinary
tranquillity which are in his power without any research at all.
PRIVATE CHARACTER A BASIS FOR PUBLIC CONFIDENCE.
Before men are put forward into the great trusts of the state, they
ought, by their conduct, to have obtained such a degree of estimation in
their country, as may be some sort of pledge and security to the public,
that they will not abuse those trusts. It is no mean security for a
proper use of power, that a man has shown by the general tenor of his
actions, that the affection, the good opinion, the confidence of his
fellow citizens, have been among the principal objects of his life; and
that he has owed none of the degradations of his power or fortune to a
settled contempt, or occasional forfeiture of their esteem.
That man who before he comes into power has no friends, or who coming
into power is obliged to desert his friends, or who losing it has no
friends to sympathise with him; he who has no sway among any part of the
landed or commercial interest, but whose whole importance has begun with
his office, and is sure to end with it; is a person who ought never to
be suffered by a controlling parliament to continue in any of those
situations which confer the lead and direction of all our public
affairs; because such a man HAS NO CONNECTION WITH THE INTEREST OF THE
PEOPLE. Those knots or cabals of men who have got together avowedly
without any public principle, in order to sell their conjunct iniquity
at the higher rate, and are therefore universally odious, ought never to
be suffered to domineer in the state; because they have NO CONNECTION
WITH THE SENTIMENTS AND OPINIONS OF THE PEOPLE.
PREVENTION.
Every good political institution must have a preventive operation as
well as a remedial. It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude bad
men from government, and not to trust for the safety of the state to
subsequent punishment alone: punishment, which has ever been tardy and
uncertain, and which, when power is suffered in bad hands, may chance to
fall rather on the injured than the criminal.
CONFIDENCE IN THE PEOPLE.
They may be assured, that however they amuse themselves with a variety
of projects for substituting something else in the place of that great
and only foundation of government, the confidence of the people, every
attempt will but make their condition worse. When men imagine that their
food is only a cover for poison, and when they neither love nor trust
the hand that serves it, it is not the name of the roast beef of Old
England, that will persuade them to sit down to the table that is spread
for them. When the people conceive that laws, and tribunals, and even
popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends of their institution,
they find in those names of degenerated establishments only new motives
to discontent. Those bodies which, when full of life and beauty, lay in
their arms, and were their joy and comfort, when dead and putrid, become
but the more loathsome from remembrance of former endearments. A sullen
gloom and furious disorder prevail by fits: the nation loses its relish
for peace and prosperity; as it did in that season of fulness which
opened our troubles in the time of Charles the First. A species of men
to whom a state of order would become a sentence of obscurity, are
nourished into a dangerous magnitude by the heat of intestine
disturbances; and it is no wonder that, by a sort of sinister piety,
they cherish, in their turn, the disorders which are the parents of all
their consequence.
FALSE MAXIMS ASSUMED AS FIRST PRINCIPLES.
It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals, that their
maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to
first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as
copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first
capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the
worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of NOT MEN, BUT
MEASURES; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every
honourable engagement. When I see a man acting this desultory and
disconnected part, with as much detriment to his own fortune as
prejudice to the cause of any party, I am not persuaded that he is
right; but I am ready to believe he is in earnest. I respect virtue in
all its situations; even when it is found in the unsuitable company of
weakness. I lament to see qualities rare and valuable, squandered away
without any public utility. But when a gentleman with great visible
emoluments abandons the party in which he has long acted, and tells you,
it is because he proceeds upon his own judgment; that he acts on the
merits of the several measures as they arise; and that he is obliged to
follow his own conscience, and not that of others; he gives reasons
which it is impossible to controvert, and discovers a character which it
is impossible to mistake. What shall we think of him who never differed
from a certain set of men until the moment they lost their power, and
who never agreed with them in a single instance afterwards? Would not
such a coincidence of interest and opinion be rather fortunate? Would it
not be an extraordinary cast upon the dice, that a man's connexions
should degenerate into faction, precisely at the critical moment when
they lose their power, or he accepts a place? When people desert their
connexions, the desertion is a manifest FACT, upon which a direct simple
issue lies, triable by plain men. Whether a MEASURE of government be
right or wrong, IS NO MATTER OF FACT, but a mere affair of opinion, on
which men may, as they do, dispute and wrangle without end. But whether
the individual THINKS the measure right or wrong, is a point at still a
greater distance from the reach of all human decision. It is therefore
very convenient to politicians, not to put the judgment of their conduct
on overt acts, cognizable in any ordinary court, but upon such matter as
can be triable only in that secret tribunal, where they are sure of
being heard with favour, or where at worst the sentence will be only
private whipping.
LORD CHATHAM.
Another scene was opened, and other actors appeared on the stage. The
State, in the condition I have described it, was delivered into the
hands of Lord Chatham--a great and celebrated name; a name that keeps
the name of this country respectable in every other on the globe. It may
be truly called--
Clarum et venerabile nomen
Gentibus, et multum nostrae quod proderat urbi.
Sir, the venerable age of this great man, his merited rank, his superior
eloquence, his splendid qualities, his eminent services, the vast space
he fills in the eye of mankind; and, more than all the rest, his fall
from power, which, like death, canonizes and sanctifies a great
character, will not suffer me to censure any part of his conduct. I am
afraid to flatter him; I am sure I am not disposed to blame him. Let
those, who have betrayed him by their adulation, insult him with their
malevolence. But what I do not presume to censure, I may have leave to
lament. For a wise man, he seemed to me at that time to be governed too
much by general maxims. I speak with the freedom of history, and I hope
without offence. One or two of these maxims, flowing from an opinion not
the most indulgent to our unhappy species, and surely a little too
general, led him into measures that were greatly mischievous to himself;
and for that reason, among others, perhaps fatal to his country;
measures, the effects of which, I am afraid, are for ever incurable. He
made an administration, so checkered and speckled; he put together a
piece of joinery, so crossly indented and whimsically dove-tailed; a
cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a
tesselated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and there
a bit of white; patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans;
Whigs and Tories; treacherous friends and open enemies; that it was
indeed a very curious show; but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to
stand on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards, stared
at each other, and were obliged to ask, "Sir, your name?--Sir, you have
the advantage of me--Mr. Such-a-one--I beg a thousand pardons--" I
venture to say, it did so happen, that persons had a single office
divided between them, who had never spoken to each other in their lives,
until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads
and points, in the same truckle-bed.
Sir, in consequence of this arrangement, having put so much the larger
part of his enemies and opposers into power, the confusion was such,
that his own principles could not possibly have any effect or influence
in the conduct of affairs. If ever he fell into a fit of the gout, or if
any other cause withdrew him from public cares, principles directly the
contrary were sure to predominate. When he had executed his plan, he had
not an inch of ground to stand upon. When he had accomplished his scheme
of administration, he was no longer a minister. When his face was hid
but for a moment, his whole system was on a wide sea, without chart or
compass. The gentlemen, his particular friends, who, with the names of
various departments of ministry, were admitted to seem as if they acted
a part under him, with a modesty that becomes all men, and with a
confidence in him, which was justified even in its extravagance by his
superior abilities, had never, in any instance, presumed upon any
opinion of their own. Deprived of his guiding influence, they were
whirled about, the sport of every gust, and easily driven into any port;
and as those who joined with them in manning the vessel were the most
directly opposite to his opinions, measures, and character, and far the
most artful and most powerful of the set, they easily prevailed, so as
to seize upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds of his friends;
and instantly they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his
policy. As if it were to insult as well as to betray him, even long
before the close of the first session of his administration, when
everything was publicly transacted, and with great parade, in his name,
they made an act, declaring it highly just and expedient to raise a
revenue in America. For even then, Sir, even before this splendid orb
was entirely set, and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his
descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another
luminary, and, for his hour, became lord of the ascendant.
GRENVILLE.
Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country. With a masculine
understanding, and a stout and resolute heart, he had an application
undissipated and unwearied. He took public business not as a duty which
he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy; and he seemed to
have no delight out of this house, except in such things as some way
related to the business that was to be done within it. If he was
ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and
generous strain. It was to raise himself, not by the low, pimping
politics of a court, but to win his way to power, through the laborious
gradations of public service; and to secure himself a well-earned rank
in Parliament, by a thorough knowledge of its constitution, and a
perfect practice in all its business.
Sir, if such a man fell into errors, it must be from defects not
intrinsical; they must be rather sought in the particular habits of his
life; which though they do not alter the ground-work of character, yet
tinge it with their own hue. He was bred in a profession. He was bred to
the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human
sciences; a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the
understanding, than all the other kinds of learning put together; but it
is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and to
liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion. Passing from that
study he did not go very largely into the world; but plunged into
business; I mean into the business of office; and the limited and fixed
methods and forms established there. Much knowledge is to be had
undoubtedly in that line; and there is no knowledge which is not
valuable. But it may be truly said, that men too much conversant in
office are rarely minds of remarkable enlargement. Their habits of
office are apt to give them a turn to think the substance of business
not to be much more important than the forms in which it is conducted.
These forms are adapted to ordinary occasions; and therefore persons who
are nurtured in office do admirably well as long as things go on in
their common order; but when the high roads are broken up, and the
waters out, when a new and troubled scene is opened, and the file
affords no precedent, then it is that a greater knowledge of mankind,
and a far more extensive comprehension of things, is requisite, than
ever office gave, or than office can ever give.
CHARLES TOWNSHEND.
This light too is passed and set for ever. You understand, to be sure,
that I speak of Charles Townshend, officially the reproducer of this
fatal scheme; whom I cannot even now remember without some degree of
sensibility. In truth, Sir, he was the delight and ornament of this
house, and the charm of every private society which he honoured with his
presence. Perhaps there never arose in this country, nor in any country,
a man of a more pointed and finished wit; and (where his passions were
not concerned) of a more refined, exquisite, and penetrating judgment.
If he had not so great a stock, as some have had who flourished
formerly, of knowledge long treasured up, he knew better by far, than
any man I ever was acquainted with, how to bring together within a short
time, all that was necessary to establish, to illustrate, and to
decorate that side of the question he supported. He stated his matter
skilfully and powerfully. He particularly excelled in a most luminous
explanation and display of his subject. His style of argument was
neither trite and vulgar, nor subtle and abstruse. He hit the house just
between wind and water. And not being troubled with too anxious a zeal
for any matter in question, he was never more tedious, or more earnest,
than the pre-conceived opinions and present temper of his hearers
required; to whom he was always in perfect unison. He conformed exactly
to the temper of the house; and he seemed to guide, because he was
always sure to follow it.
PARTY AND PLACE.
Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours
the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are
all agreed. For my part, I find it impossible to conceive that any one
believes in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any weight, who
refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into practice. It is
the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of
government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher
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