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Part I.
Part I.
[See Marie Antoinette: Marie Antoinette, on the way to her execution. From the
painting by Francois Flameng.]
It may not be unnecessary to inform the reader; that the following
Reflections had their origin in a correspondence between the Author and a very
young gentleman at Paris, who did him the honour of desiring his opinion upon
the important transactions, which then, and ever since, have so much occupied
the attention of all men. An answer was written some time in the month of
October, 1789; but it was kept back upon prudential considerations. That
letter is alluded to in the beginning of the following sheets. It has been
since forwarded to the person to whom it was addressed. The reasons for the
delay in sending it were assigned in a short letter to the same gentleman.
This produced on his part a new and pressing application for the Author`s
sentiments.
The Author began a second and more full discussion on the subject. This
he had some thoughts of publishing early in the last spring; but, the matter
gaining upon him, he found that what he had undertaken not only far exceeded
the measure of a letter, but that its importance required rather a more
detailed consideration than at that time he had any leisure to bestow upon it.
However, having thrown down his first thoughts in the form of a letter, and,
indeed, when he sat down to write, having intended it for a private letter, he
found it difficult to change the form of address, when his sentiments had
grown into a greater extent, and had received another direction. A different
plan, he is sensible, might be more favourable to a commodious division and
distribution of his matter.
Dear Sir,
You are pleased to call again, and with some earnestness, for my thoughts
on the late proceedings in France. I will not give you reason to imagine that
I think my sentiments of such value as to wish myself to be solicited about
them. They are of too little consequence to be very anxiously either
communicated or withheld. It was from attention to you, and to you only, that
I hesitated at the time when you first desired to receive them. In the first
letter I had the honour to write to you, and which at length I send, I wrote
neither for, nor from, any description of men; nor shall I in this. My errors,
if any, are my own. My reputation alone is to answer for them.
You see, Sir, by the long letter I have transmitted to you, that though I
do most heartily wish that France may be animated by a spirit of rational
liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest policy, to provide a
permanent body in which that spirit may reside, and an effectual organ by
which it may act, it is my misfortune to entertain great doubts concerning
several material points in your late transactions.
You imagined, when you wrote last, that I might possibly be reckoned
among the approvers of certain proceedings in France, from the solemn public
seal of sanction they have received from two clubs of gentlemen in London,
called the Constitutional Society, and the Revolution Society.
I certainly have the honour to belong to more clubs than one, in which
the constitution of this kingdom, and the principles of the glorious
Revolution, are held in high reverence and I reckon myself among the most
forward in my zeal for maintaining that constitution and those principles in
their utmost purity and vigour. It is because I do so that I think it
necessary for me that there should be no mistake. Those who cultivate the
memory of our Revolution, and those who are attached to the constitution of
this kingdom, will take good care how they are involved with persons, who
under the pretext of zeal towards the Revolution and constitution too
frequently wander from their true principles; and are ready on every occasion
to depart from the firm but cautious and deliberate spirit which produced the
one, and which presides in the other. Before I proceed to answer the more
material particulars in your letter, I shall beg leave to give you such
information as I have been able to obtain of the two clubs which have thought
proper, as bodies, to interfere in the concerns of France; first assuring you,
that I am not, and that I have never been, a member of either of those
societies.
The first, calling itself the Constitutional Society, or Society for
Constitutional Information, or by some such title, is, I believe, of seven or
eight years standing. The institution of this society appears to be of a
charitable, and so far of a laudable nature: it was intended for the
circulation, at the expense of the members, of many books, which few others
would be at the expense of buying; and which might lie on the hands of the
booksellers, to the great loss of an useful body of men. Whether the books, so
charitably circulated, were ever as charitably read, is more than I know.
Possibly several of them have been exported to France; and, like goods not in
request here, may with you have found a market. I have heard much talk of the
lights to be drawn from books that are sent from hence. What improvements they
have had in their passage (as it is said some liquors are meliorated by
crossing the sea) I cannot tell: but I never heard a man of common judgment,
or the least degree of information, speak a word in praise of the greater part
of the publications circulated by that society; nor have their proceedings
been accounted, except by some of themselves, as of any serious consequence.
Your National Assembly seems to entertain much the same opinion that I do
of this poor charitable club. As a nation, you reserved the whole stock of
your eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolution Society; when their fellows
in the Constitutional were, in equity, entitled to some share. Since you have
selected the Revolution Society as the great object of your national thanks
and praises, you will think me excusable in making its late conduct the
subject of my observations. The National Assembly of France has given
importance to these gentlemen by adopting them: and they return the favour, by
acting as a committee in England for extending the principles of the National
Assembly. Henceforward we must consider them as a kind of privileged persons;
as no inconsiderable members in the diplomatic body. This is one among the
revolutions which have given splendour to obscurity, and distinction to
undiscerned merit. Until very lately I do not recollect to have heard of this
club. I am quite sure that it never occupied a moment of my thoughts; nor, I
believe, those of any person out of their own set. I find, upon inquiry, that
on the anniversary of the Revolution in 1688, a club of dissenters, but of
what denomination I know not, have long had the custom of hearing a sermon in
one of their churches; and that afterwards they spent the day cheerfully, as
other clubs do, at the tavern. But I never heard that any public measure, or
political system, much less that the merits of the constitution of any foreign
nation, had been the subject of a formal proceeding at their festival; until,
to my inexpressible surprise, I found them in a sort of public capacity, by a
congratulatory address, giving an authoritative sanction to the proceedings of
the National Assembly in France.
In the ancient principles and conduct of the club, so far at least as
they were declared, I see nothing to which I could take exception. I think it
very probable, that for some purpose, new members may have entered among them;
and that some truly Christian politicians, who love to dispense benefits, but
are careful to conceal the hand which distributes the dole, may have made them
the instruments of their pious designs. Whatever I may have reason to suspect
concerning private management, I shall speak of nothing as of a certainty but
what is public.
For one, I should be sorry to be thought, directly or indirectly,
concerned in their proceedings. I certainly take my full share, along with the
rest of the world, in my individual and private capacity, in speculating on
what has been done, or is doing, on the public stage, in any place ancient or
modern; in the republic of Rome, or the republic of Paris; but having no
general apostolical mission, being a citizen of a particular state, and being
bound up, in a considerable degree, by its public will, I should think it at
least improper and irregular for me to open a formal public correspondence
with the actual government of a foreign nation, without the express authority
of the government under which I live.
I should be still more unwilling to enter into that correspondence under
anything like an equivocal description, which to many, unacquainted with our
usages, might make the address, in which I joined, appear as the act of
persons in some sort of corporate capacity, acknowledged by the laws of this
kingdom, and authorized to speak the sense of some part of it. On account of
the ambiguity and uncertainty of unauthorized general descriptions, and of the
deceit which may be practised under them, and not from mere formality, the
House of Commons would reject the most sneaking petition for the most trifling
object, under that mode of signature to which you have thrown open the folding
doors of your presence chamber, and have ushered into your National Assembly
with as much ceremony and parade, and with as great a bustle of applause, as
if you had been visited by the whole representative majesty of the whole
English nation. If what this society has thought proper to send forth had been
a piece of argument, it would have signified little whose argument it was. It
would be neither the more nor the less convincing on account of the party it
came from. But this is only a vote and resolution. It stands solely on
authority; and in this case it is the mere authority of individuals, few of
whom appear. Their signatures ought, in my opinion, to have been annexed to
their instrument. The world would then have the means of knowing how many they
are; who they are; and of what value their opinions may be, from their
personal abilities, from their knowledge, their experience, or their lead and
authority in this state. To me, who am but a plain man, the proceeding looks a
little too refined, and too ingenious; it has too much the air of a political
stratagem, adopted for the sake of giving, under a high-sounding name, an
importance to the public declarations of this club, which, when the matter
came to be closely inspected, they did not altogether so well deserve. It is a
policy that has very much the complexion of a fraud.
I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as
any gentleman of that society, be he who he will; and perhaps I have given as
good proofs of my attachment to that cause, in the whole course of my public
conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do, to any other nation. But
I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to anything which relates to
human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it
stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of
metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for
nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing
colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every
civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly
speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common
sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government
(for she then had a government) without inquiry what the nature of that
government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same
nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed
amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a mad-man,
who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his
cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to
congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the
recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of
the criminals condemned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the
metaphysic knight of the sorrowful countenance.
When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at
work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas,
the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgment
until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is
cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled
and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to
congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one. Flattery
corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service
to the people than to kings. I should therefore suspend my congratulations on
the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with
government; with public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies;
with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with
morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order;
with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too;
and, without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely
to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do
what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we
risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would
dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men; but liberty,
when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before they declare
themselves, will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of
so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers,
and dispositions they have little or no experience, and in situations, where
those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real
movers.
All these considerations however were below the transcendental dignity of
the Revolution Society. Whilst I continued in the country, from whence I had
the honour of writing to you, I had but an imperfect idea of their
transactions. On my coming to town, I sent for an account of their
proceedings, which had been published by their authority, containing a sermon
of Dr. Price, with the Duke de Rochefaucault`s and the Archbishop of Aix`s
letter, and several other documents annexed. The whole of that publication,
with the manifest design of connecting the affairs of France with those of
England, by drawing us into an imitation of the conduct of the National
Assembly, gave me a considerable degree of uneasiness. The effect of that
conduct upon the power, credit, prosperity, and tranquillity of France, became
every day more evident. The form of constitution to be settled, for its future
polity, became more clear. We are now in a condition to discern, with
tolerable exactness, the true nature of the object held up to our imitation.
If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances,
in others prudence of a higher order may justify us in speaking our thoughts.
The beginnings of confusion with us in England are at present feeble enough;
but, with you, we have seen an infancy, still more feeble, growing by moments
into a strength to heap mountains upon mountains, and to wage war with heaven
itself. Whenever our neighbour`s house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the
engines to play a little on our own. Better to be despised for too anxious
apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.
Solicitous chiefly for the peace of my own country, but by no means
unconcerned for yours, I wish to communicate more largely what was at first
intended only for your private satisfaction. I shall still keep your affairs
in my eye, and continue to address myself to you. Indulging myself in the
freedom of epistolary intercourse, I beg leave to throw out my thoughts, and
express my feelings, just as they arise in my mind, with very little attention
to formal method. I set out with the proceedings of the Revolution Society;
but I shall not confine myself to them. Is it possible I should? It appears to
me as if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but of
all Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circumstances taken together, the
French Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the
world. The most wonderful things are brought about in many instances by means
the most absurb and ridiculous; in the most ridiculous modes; and, apparently,
by the most contemptible instruments. Everything seems out of nature in this
strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled
together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragi-comic
scene, the most opposite passions necessarily succeed, and sometimes mix with
each other in the mind; alternate contempt and indignation; alternate laughter
and tears; alternate scorn and horror.
It cannot, however, be denied, that to some this strange scene appeared
in quite another point of view. Into them it inspired no other sentiments than
those of exultation and rapture. They saw nothing in what has been done in
France, but a firm and temperate exertion of freedom; so consistent, on the
whole, with morals and with piety as to make it deserving not only of the
secular applause of dashing Machiavelian politicians, but to render it a fit
theme for all the devout effusions of sacred eloquence.
On the forenoon of the 4th of November last, Doctor Richard Price, a
non-conforming minister of eminence, preached at the dissenting meeting-house
of the Old Jewry, to his club or society, a very extraordinary miscellaneous
sermon, in which there are some good moral and religious sentiments, and not
ill expressed, mixed up in a sort of porridge of various political opinions
and reflections; but the Revolution in France is the grand ingredient in the
cauldron. I consider the address transmitted by the Revolution Society to the
National Assembly, through Earl Stanhope, as originating in the principles of
the sermon, and as a corollary from them. It was moved by the preacher of that
discourse. It was passed by those who came reeking from the effect of the
sermon, without any censure or qualification, expressed or implied. If,
however, any of the gentlemen concerned shall wish to separate the sermon from
the resolution, they know how to acknowledge the one, and to disavow the
other. They may do it: I cannot.
For my part, I looked on that sermon as the public declaration of a man
much connected with literary caballers, and intriguing philosophers; with
political theologians, and theological politicians, both at home and abroad. I
know they set him up as a sort of oracle; because, with the best intentions in
the world, he naturally philippizes, and chants his prophetic song in exact
unison with their designs.
That sermon is in a strain which I believe has not been heard in this
kingdom, in any of the pulpits which are tolerated or encouraged in it, since
the year 1648; when a predecessor of Dr. Price, the Rev. Hugh Peters, made the
vault of the king`s own chapel at St. James` ring with the honour and
privilege of the saints, who, with the "high praises of God in their mouths,
and a two-edged sword in their hands, were to execute judgment on the heathen
and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their
nobles with fetters of iron." ^1 Few harangues from the pulpit, except in the
days of your league in France, or in the days of our solemn league and
covenant in England, have ever breathed less of the spirit of moderation than
this lecture in the Old Jewry. Supposing, however, that something like
moderation were visible in this political sermon; yet politics and the pulpit
are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church
but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and
civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of
duties. Those who quit their proper character, to assume what does not belong
to them, are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave,
and of the character they assume. Wholly unacquainted with the world in which
they are so fond of meddling, and inexperienced in all its affairs, on which
they pronounce with so much confidence, they have nothing of politics but the
passions they excite. Surely the church is a place where one day`s truce ought
to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.
[Footnote 1: Psalm cxlix.]
This pulpit style, revived after so long a discontinuance, had to me the
air of novelty, and of a novelty not wholly without danger. I do not charge
this danger equally to every part of the discourse. The hint given to a noble
and reverend lay-divine, who is supposed high in office in one of our
universities, ^2 and other lay-divines "of rank and literature," may be proper
and seasonable, though somewhat new. If the noble Seekers should find nothing
to satisfy their pious fancies in the old staple of the national church, or in
all the rich variety to be found in the well-assorted warehouses of the
dissenting congregations, Dr. Price advises them to improve upon
nonconformity; and to set up, each of them, a separate meeting-house upon his
own particular principles. ^3 It is somewhat remarkable that this reverend
divine should be so earnest for setting up new churches, and so perfectly
indifferent concerning the doctrine which may be taught in them. His zeal is
of a curious character. It is not for the propagation of his own opinions, but
of any opinions. It is not for the diffusion of truth, but for the spreading
of contradiction. Let the noble teachers but dissent, it is no matter from
whom or from what. This great point once secured, it is taken for granted
their religion will be rational and manly. I doubt whether religion would reap
all the benefits which the calculating divine computes from this "great
company of great preachers." It would certainly be a valuable addition of
nondescripts to the ample collection of known classes, genera and species,
which at present beautify the hortus siccus of dissent. A sermon from a noble
duke, or a noble marquis, or a noble earl, or baron bold, would certainly
increase and diversify the amusements of this town, which begins to grow
satiated with the uniform round of its vapid dissipations. I should only
stipulate that these new Mess-Johns in robes and coronets should keep some
sort of bounds in the democratic and levelling principles which are expected
from their titled pulpits. The new evangelists will, I dare say, disappoint
the hopes that are conceived of them. They will not become, literally as well
as figuratively, polemic divines, nor be disposed so to drill their
congregations, that they may, as in former blessed times, preach their
doctrines to regiments of dragoons and corps of infantry and artillery. Such
arrangements, however favourable to the cause of compulsory freedom, civil and
religious, may not be equally conducive to the national tranquillity. These
few restrictions I hope are no great stretches of intolerance, no very violent
exertions of despotism.
[Footnote 2: Discourse on the Love of our Country, Nov. 4th, 1789, by Dr.
Richard Price, 3rd edition, p. 17 and 18.]
[Footnote 3: Those who dislike that mode of worship which is prescribed by
public authority, ought, if they can find no worship out of the church which
they approve, to set up a separate worship for themselves; and by doing this,
and giving an example of a rational and manly worship, men of weight from
their rank and literature may do the greatest service to society and the
world." - p. 18, Dr. Price`s Sermon.]
But I may say of our preacher, "utinam nugis tota illa dedisset tempora
saevitiae." - All things in this his fulminating bull are not of so innoxious
a tendency. His doctrines affect our constitution in its vital parts. He tells
the Revolution Society in this political sermon, that his Majesty "is almost
the only lawful king in the world, because the only one who owes his crown to
the choice of his people." As to the kings of the world, all of whom (except
one) this archpontiff of the rights of men, with all the plenitude, and with
more than the boldness, of the papal deposing power in its meridian fervour of
the twelfth century, puts into one sweeping clause of ban and anathema, and
proclaims usurpers by circles of longitude and latitude, over the whole globe,
it behoves them to consider how they admit into their territories these
apostolic missionaries, who are to tell their subjects they are not lawful
kings. That is their concern. It is ours, as a domestic interest of some
moment, seriously to consider the solidity of the only principle upon which
these gentlemen acknowledge a king of Great Britain to be entitled to their
allegiance.
This doctrine, as applied to the prince now on the British throne, either
is nonsense, and therefore neither true nor false, or it affirms a most
unfounded, dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional position. According to
this spiritual doctor of politics, if his Majesty does not owe his crown to
the choice of his people, he is no lawful king. Now nothing can be more untrue
than that the crown of this kingdom is so held by his Majesty. Therefore if
you follow their rule, the king of Great Britain, who most certainly does not
owe his high office to any form of popular election, is in no respect better
than the rest of the gang of usurpers, who reign, or rather rob, all over the
face of this our miserable world, without any sort of right or title to the
allegiance of their people. The policy of this general doctrine, so qualified,
is evident enough. The propagators of this political gospel are in hopes that
their abstract principle (their principle that a popular choice is necessary
to the legal existence of the sovereign magistracy) would be overlooked,
whilst the king of Great Britain was not affected by it. In the mean time the
ears of their congregations would be gradually habituated to it, as if it were
a first principle admitted without dispute. For the present it would only
operate as a theory, pickled in the preserving juices of pulpit eloquence, and
laid by for future use. Condo et compono quae mox depromere possim. By this
policy, whilst our government is soothed with a reservation in its favour, to
which it has no claim, the security, which it has in common with all
governments, so far as opinion is security, is taken away.
Thus these politicians proceed, whilst little notice is taken of their
doctrines; but when they come to be examined upon the plain meaning of their
words, and the direct tendency of their doctrines, then equivocations and
slippery constructions come into play. When they say the king owes his crown
to the choice of his people, and is therefore the only lawful sovereign in the
world, they will perhaps tell us they mean to say no more than that some of
the king`s predecessors have been called to the throne by some sort of choice;
and therefore he owes his crown to the choice of his people. Thus, by a
miserable subterfuge, they hope to render their proposition safe, by rendering
it nugatory. They are welcome to the asylum they seek for their offence, since
they take refuge in their folly. For, if you admit this interpretation, how
does their idea of election differ from our idea of inheritance?
And how does the settlement of the crown in the Brunswick line derived
from James the First come to legalize our monarchy, rather than that of any of
the neighbouring countries? At some time or other, to be sure, all the
beginners of dynasties were chosen by those who called them to govern. There
is ground enough for the opinion that all the kingdoms of Europe were, at a
remote period, elective, with more or fewer limitations in the objects of
choice. But whatever kings might have been here, or elsewhere, a thousand
years ago, or in whatever manner the ruling dynasties of England or France may
have begun, the king of Great Britain is, at this day, king by a fixed rule of
succession, according to the laws of his country; and whilst the legal
conditions of the compact of sovereignty are performed by him, (as they are
performed,) he holds his crown in contempt of the choice of the Revolution
Society, who have not a single vote for a king amongst them, either
individually or collectively; though I make no doubt they would soon erect
themselves into an electoral college, if things were ripe to give effect to
their claim. His Majesty`s heirs and successors, each in his time and order,
will come to the crown with the same contempt of their choice with which his
Majesty has succeeded to that he wears.
Whatever may be the success of evasion in explaining away the gross error
of fact, which supposes that his Majesty (though he holds it in concurrence
with the wishes) owes his crown to the choice of his people, yet nothing can
evade their full explicit declaration concerning the principle of a right in
the people to choose; which right is directly maintained, and tenaciously
adhered to. All the oblique insinuations concerning election bottom in this
proposition, and are referable to it. Lest the foundation of the king`s
exclusive legal title should pass for a mere rant of adulatory freedom, the
political divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, ^4 that, by the principles
of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental
rights, all which, with him, compose one system, and lie together in one short
sentence; namely, that we have acquired a right
1. "To choose our own governors."
2. "To cashier them for misconduct."
3. "To frame a government for ourselves."
[Footnote 4: p.34.,"Discourse on the Love of our Country", by Dr. Price.]
This new, and hitherto unheard-of, bill of rights, though made in the
name of the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their faction only.
The body of the people of England have no share in it. They utterly disclaim
it. They will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and
fortunes. They are bound to do so by the laws of their country, made at the
time of that very Revolution which is appealed to in favour of the fictitious
rights claimed by the Society which abuses its name.
These gentlemen of the Old Jewry, in all their reasonings on the
Revolution of 1688, have a Revolution which happened in England about forty
years before, and the late French Revolution, so much before their eyes, and
in their hearts, that they are constantly confounding all the three together.
It is necessary that we should separate what they confound. We must recall
their erring fancies to the acts of the Revolution which we revere, for the
discovery of its true principles. If the principles of the Revolution of 1688
are anywhere to be found, it is in the statute called the Declaration of
Right. In that most wise, sober, and considerate declaration, drawn up by
great lawyers and great statesmen, and not by warm and inexperienced
enthusiasts, not one word is said, nor one suggestion made, of a general right
"to choose our own governors; to cashier them for misconduct; and to form a
government for ourselves."
This Declaration of Right (the act of the 1st of William and Mary, sess.
2, ch. 2) is the corner-stone of our constitution, as reinforced, explained,
improved, and in its fundamental principles for ever settled. It is called "An
Act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject, and for settling
the succession of the crown." You will observe, that these rights and this
succession are declared in one body, and bound indissolubly together.
A few years after this period, a second opportunity offered for asserting
a right of election to the crown. On the prospect of a total failure of issue
from King William, and from the Princess, afterwards Queen Anne, the
consideration of the settlement of the crown, and of a further security for
the liberties of the people, again came before the legislature. Did they this
second time make any provision for legalizing the crown on the spurious
revolution principles of the Old Jewry? No. They followed the principles which
prevailed in the Declaration of Right; indicating with more precision the
persons who were to inherit in the Protestant line. This act also
incorporated, by the same policy, our liberties, and an hereditary succession
in the same act. Instead of a right to choose our own governors, they declared
that the succession in that line (the Protestant line drawn from James the
First) was absolutely necessary "for the peace, quiet, and security of the
realm," and that it was equally urgent on them "to maintain a certainty in the
succession thereof, to which the subjects may safely have recourse for their
protection." Both these acts, in which are heard the unerring, unambiguous
oracles of revolution policy, instead of countenancing the delusive, gipsy
predictions of a "right to choose our governors," prove to a demonstration how
totally adverse the wisdom of the nation was from turning a case of necessity
into a rule of law.
Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the person of King
William, a small and a temporary deviation from the strict order of a regular
hereditary succession; but it is against all genuine principles of
jurisprudence to draw a principle from a law made in a special case, and
regarding an individual person. Privilegium non transit in exemplum. If ever
there was a time favourable for establishing the principle, that a king of
popular choice was the only legal king, without all doubt it was at the
Revolution. Its not being done at that time is a proof that the nation was of
opinion it ought not to be done at any time. There is no person so completely
ignorant of our history as not to know, that the majority in parliament of
both parties were so little disposed to anything resembling that principle,
that at first they were determined to place the vacant crown, not on the head
of the Prince of Orange, but on that of his wife Mary, daughter of King James,
the eldest born of the issue of that king, which they acknowledged as
undoubtedly his. It would be to repeat a very trite story, to recall to your
memory all those circumstances which demonstrated that their accepting King
William was not properly a choice; but to all those who did not wish, in
effect, to recall King James, or to deluge their country in blood, and again
to bring their religion, laws, and liberties into the peril they had just
escaped, it was an act of necessity, in the strictest moral sense in which
necessity can be taken.
In the very act, in which for a time, and in a single case, parliament
departed from the strict order of inheritance, in favour of a prince, who,
though not next, was however very near, in the line of succession, it is
curious to observe how Lord Somers, who drew the bill called the Declaration
of Right, has comported himself on that delicate occasion. It is curious to
observe with what address this temporary solution of continuity is kept from
the eye; whilst all that could be found in this act of necessity to
countenance the idea of an hereditary succession is brought forward, and
fostered, and made the most of, by this great man, and by the legislature who
followed him. Quitting the dry, imperative style of an act of parliament, he
makes the Lords and Commons fall to a pious, legislative ejaculation, and
declare, that they consider it "as a marvellous providence, and merciful
goodness of God to this nation, to preserve their said Majesties` royal
persons, most happily to reign over us on the throne of their ancestors, for
which, from the bottom of their hearts, they return their humblest thanks and
praises." - The legislature plainly had in view the act of recognition of the
first of Queen Elizabeth, chap. 3rd, and of that of James the First, chap.
1st, both acts strongly declaratory of the inheritable nature of the crown,
and in many parts they follow, with a nearly literal precision, the words and
even the form of thanksgiving which is found in these old declaratory
statutes.
The two Houses, in the act of King William, did not thank God that they
had found a fair opportunity to assert a right to choose their own governors,
much less to make an election the only lawful title to the crown. Their having
been in a condition to avoid the very appearance of it, as much as possible,
was by them considered as a providential escape. They threw a politic,
well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights, which
in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate; or which might
furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they had then settled
for ever. Accordingly, that they might not relax the nerves of their monarchy,
and that they might preserve a close conformity to the practice of their
ancestors, as it appeared in the declaratory statutes of Queen Mary ^5 and
Queen Elizabeth, in the next clause they vest, by recognition, in their
Majesties, all the legal prerogatives of the crown, declaring, "that in them
they are most fully, rightfully, and entirely invested, incorporated, united,
and annexed." In the clause which follows, for preventing questions, by reason
of any pretended titles to the crown, they declare, (observing also in this
the traditionary language, along with the traditionary policy of the nation,
and repeating as from a rubric the language of the preceding acts of Elizabeth
and James,) that on the preserving "a certainty in the Succession thereof, the
unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation doth, under God, wholly depend."
[Footnote 5: 1st Mary, sess. 3. ch. 1.]
They knew that a doubtful title of succession would but too much resemble
an election; and that an election would be utterly destructive of the "unity,
peace, and tranquillity of this nation," which they thought to be
considerations of some moment. To provide for these objects, and therefore to
exclude for ever the Old Jewry doctrine of "a right to choose our own
governors," they follow with a clause containing a most solemn pledge, taken
from the preceding act of Queen Elizabeth, as solemn a pledge as ever was or
can be given in favour of an hereditary succession, and as solemn a
renunciation as could be made of the principles by this Society imputed to
them. "The Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of all
the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their
heirs and posterities for ever; and do faithfully promise that they will stand
to maintain, and defend their said Majesties, and also the limitation of the
crown, herein specified and contained, to the utmost of their powers," &c. &c.
So far is it from being true, that we acquired a right by the Revolution
to elect our kings, that if we had possessed it before, the English nation did
at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for
all their posterity for ever. These gentlemen may value themselves as much as
they please on their Whig principles; but I never desire to be thought a
better Whig than Lord Somers; or to understand the principles of the
Revolution better than those by whom it was brought about; or to read in the
Declaration of Right any mysteries unknown to those whose penetrating style
has engraved in our ordinances, and in our hearts, the words and spirit of
that immortal law.
It is true, that, aided with the powers derived from force and
opportunity, the nation was at that time, in some sense, free to take what
course it pleased for filling the throne; but only free to do so upon the same
grounds on which they might have wholly abolished their monarchy, and every
other part of their constitution. However, they did not think such bold
changes within their commission. It is indeed difficult, perhaps impossible,
to give limits to the mere abstract competence of the supreme power, such as
was exercised by parliament at that time; but the limits of a moral
competence, subjecting, even in powers more indisputably sovereign, occasional
will to permanent reason, and to the steady maxims of faith, justice, and
fixed fundamental policy, are perfectly intelligible, and perfectly binding
upon those who exercise any authority, under any name, or under any title, in
the state. The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to
dissolve the House of Commons; no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to
abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom. Though a
king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy. By
as strong, or by a stronger reason, the House of Commons cannot renounce its
share of authority. The engagement and pact of society, which generally goes
by the name of the constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender. The
constituent parts of a state are obliged to hold their public faith with each
other, and with all those who derive any serious interest under their
engagements, as much as the whole state is bound to keep its faith with
separate communities. Otherwise competence and power would soon be confounded,
and no law be left but the will of a prevailing force. On this principle the
succession of the crown has always been what it now is, an hereditary
succession by law: in the old line it was a succession by the common law; in
the new by the statute law, operating on the principles of the common law, not
changing the substance, but regulating the mode, and describing the persons.
Both these descriptions of law are of the same force, and are derived from an
equal authority, emanating from the common agreement and original compact of
the state, communi sponsione reipublicae, and as such are equally binding on
king and people too, as long as the terms are observed, and they continue the
same body politic.
It is far from impossible to reconcile, if we do not suffer ourselves to
be entangled in the mazes of metaphysic sophistry, the use both of a fixed
rule and an occasional deviation; the sacredness of an hereditary principle of
succession in our government, with a power of change in its application in
cases of extreme emergency. Even in that extremity, (if we take the measure of
our rights by our exercise of them at the Revolution,) the change is to be
confined to the peccant part only; to the part which produced the necessary
deviation; and even then it is to be effected without a decomposition of the
whole civil and political mass, for the purpose of originating a new civil
order out of the first elements of society.
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