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Part VI.
Part VI.
I almost venture to affirm, that not one in a hundred amongst us
participates in the "triumph" of the Revolution Society. If the king and queen
of France, and their children, were to fall into our hands by the chance of
war, in the most acrimonious of all hostilities, (I deprecate such an event, I
deprecate such hostility,) they would be treated with another sort of
triumphal entry into London. We formerly have had a king of France in that
situation; you have read how he was treated by the victor in the field; and in
what manner he was afterwards received in England. Four hundred years have
gone over us; but I believe we are not materially changed since that period.
Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks to the cold sluggishness
of our national character, we still bear the stamp of our forefathers. We have
not (as I conceive) lost the generosity and dignity of thinking of the
fourteenth century; nor as yet have we subtilized ourselves into savages. We
are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire;
Helvetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers;
madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries, and we
think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great
principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood
long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave
has heaped its mould upon our presumption, and the silent tomb shall have
imposed its law on our pert loquacity. In England we have not yet been
completely embowelled of our natural entrails; we still feel within us, and we
cherish and cultivate, those inbred sentiments which are the faithful
guardians, the active monitors of our duty, the true supporters of all liberal
and manly morals. We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be
filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags and paltry blurred
shreds of paper about the rights of man. We preserve the whole of our feelings
still native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and infidelity. We have
real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms. We fear God; we look up
with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates;
with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. ^18 Why? Because when
such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected;
because all other feelings are false and spurious, and tend to corrupt our
minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty;
and by teaching us a servile, licentious, and abandoned insolence, to be our
low sport for a few holidays, to make us perfectly fit for, and justly
deserving of, slavery, through the whole course of our lives.
[Footnote 18: The English are, I conceive, misrepresented in a letter
published in one of the papers, by a gentleman thought to be a dissenting
minister. - When writing to Dr. Price of the spirit which prevails at Paris,
he says, "The spirit of the people in this place has abolished all the proud
distinctions which the king and nobles had usurped in their minds; whether
they talk of the king, the noble, or the priest, their whole language is that
of the most enlightened and liberal amongst the English." If this gentleman
means to confine the terms enlightened and liberal to one set of men in
England, it may be true. It is not generally so.]
You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess,
that we are generally men of untaught feelings; that instead of casting away
all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to
take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and
the longer they have lasted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the
more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his
own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is
small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the
general bank and capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of
speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to
discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they
seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice,
with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to
leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a
motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it
permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously
engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave
the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and
unresolved. Prejudice renders a man`s virtue his habit; and not a series of
unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his
nature.
Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of the
enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have no respect
for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of
confidence in their own. With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old
scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort
of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste; because
duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done
before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery. They conceive,
very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous,
and therefore they are at inexpiable war with all establishments. They think
that government may vary like modes of dress, and with as little ill effect:
that there needs no principle of attachment, except a sense of present
conveniency, to any constitution of the state. They always speak as if they
were of opinion that there is a singular species of compact between them and
their magistrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has nothing
reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a right to dissolve
it without any reason, but its will. Their attachment to their country itself
is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects; it begins
and ends with that scheme of polity which falls in with their momentary
opinion.
These doctrines, or rather sentiments, seem prevalent with your new
statesmen. But they are wholly different from those on which we have always
acted in this country.
I hear it is sometimes given out in France, that what is doing among you
is after the example of England. I beg leave to affirm, that scarcely anything
done with you has originated from the practice or the prevalent opinions of
this people, either in the act or in the spirit of the proceeding. Let me add,
that we are as unwilling to learn these lessons from France, as we are sure
that we never taught them to that nation. The cabals here, who take a sort of
share in your transactions, as yet consist of but a handful of people. If
unfortunately by their intrigues, their sermons, their publications, and by a
confidence derived from an expected union with the counsels and forces of the
French nation, they should draw considerable numbers into their faction, and
in consequence should seriously attempt anything here in imitation of what has
been done with you, the event, I dare venture to prophesy, will be, that, with
some trouble to their country, they will soon accomplish their own
destruction. This people refused to change their law in remote ages from
respect to the infallibility of popes; and they will not now alter it from a
pious implicit faith in the dogmatism of philosophers; though the former was
armed with the anathema and crusade, and though the latter should act with the
libel and the lamp-iron.
Formerly your affairs were your own concern only. We felt for them as
men; but we kept aloof from them, because we were not citizens of France. But
when we see the model held up to ourselves, we must feel as Englishmen, and
feeling, we must provide as Englishmen. Your affairs, in spite of us, are made
a part of our interest; so far at least as to keep at a distance your panacea,
or your plague. If it be a panacea, we do not want it. We know the
consequences of unnecessary physic. If it be a plague, it is such a plague
that the precautions of the most severe quarantine ought to be established
against it.
I hear on all hands that a cabal, calling itself philosophic, receives
the glory of many of the late proceedings; and that their opinions and systems
are the true actuating spirit of the whole of them. I have heard of no party
in England, literary or political, at any time, known by such a description.
It is not with you composed of those men, is it? whom the vulgar, in their
blunt, homely style, commonly call atheists and infidels? If it be, I admit
that we too have had writers of that description, who made some noise in their
day. At present they repose in lasting oblivion. Who, born within the last
forty years, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and Tindal, and Chubb,
and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves Freethinkers? Who now
reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through? Ask the booksellers of London
what is become of all these lights of the world. In as few years their few
successors will go to the family vault of "all the Capulets." But whatever
they were, or are, with us, they were and are wholly unconnected individuals.
With us they kept the common nature of their kind, and were not gregarious.
They never acted in corps, or were known as a faction in the state, nor
presumed to influence in that name or character, or for the purposes of such a
faction, on any of our public concerns. Whether they ought so to exist, and so
be permitted to act, is another question. As such cabals have not existed in
England, so neither has the spirit of them had any influence in establishing
the original frame of our constitution, or in any one of the several
reparations and improvements it has undergone. The whole has been done under
the auspices, and is confirmed by the sanctions, of religion and piety. The
whole has emanated from the simplicity of our national character, and from a
sort of native plainness and directness of understanding, which for a long
time characterized those men who have successively obtained authority amongst
us. This disposition still remains; at least in the great body of the people.
We know, and what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis
of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort. ^19 In
England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of superstition,
with which the accumulated absurdity of the human mind might have crusted it
over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine in a hundred of the people of
England would not prefer to impiety. We shall never be such fools as to call
in an enemy to the substance of any system to remove its corruptions, to
supply its defects, or to perfect its construction. If our religious tenets
should ever want a further elucidation, we shall not call on atheism to
explain them. We shall not light up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It
will be illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed with other incense,
than the infectious stuff which is imported by the smugglers of adulterated
metaphysics. If our ecclesiastical establishment should want a revision, it is
not avarice or rapacity, public or private, that we shall employ for the
audit, or receipt, or application of its consecrated revenue. Violently
condemning neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, since heats are subsided,
the Roman system of religion, we prefer the Protestant; not because we think
it has less of the Christian religion in it, but because, in our judgment, it
has more. We are Protestants, not from indifference, but from zeal.
[Footnote 19: Sit igitur hoc ab initio persuasum civibus, dominos esse omnium
rerum ac moderatores, deos; eaque, quae gerantur, eorum geri vi, ditione, ac
numine; eosdemque optime de genere hominum mereri; et qualis quisque sit, quid
agat, quid in se admittat, qua mente, qua pietate colat religiones intueri;
piorum et impiorum habere rationem. His enim rebus imbutae mentes haud sane
abhorrebunt ab utili et a vera sententia. Cic. de Legibus, l. 2.]
We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a
religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our
instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of riot, and
in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of hell,
which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness,
by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and
comfort, and one great source of civilization amongst us, and amongst many
other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not
endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition might
take place of it.
For that reason, before we take from our establishment the natural, human
means of estimation, and give it up to contempt, as you have done, and in
doing it have incurred the penalties you well deserve to suffer, we desire
that some other may be presented to us in the place of it. We shall then form
our judgment.
On these ideas, instead of quarrelling with establishments, as some do,
who have made a philosophy and a religion of their hostility to such
institutions, we cleave closely to them. We are resolved to keep an
established church, an established monarchy, an established aristocracy, and
an established democracy, each in the degree it exists, and in no greater. I
shall show you presently how much of each of these we possess.
It has been the misfortune (not, as these gentlemen think it, the glory)
of this age, that everything is to be discussed, as if the constitution of our
country were to be always a subject rather of altercation, than enjoyment. For
this reason, as well as for the satisfaction of those among you (if any such
you have among you) who may wish to profit of examples, I venture to trouble
you with a few thoughts upon each of these establishments. I do not think they
were unwise in ancient Rome, who, when they wished to new model their laws,
set commissioners to examine the best constituted republics within their
reach.
First, I beg leave to speak of our church establishment, which is the
first of our prejudices, not a prejudice destitute of reason, but involving in
it profound and extensive wisdom. I speak of it first. It is first, and last,
and midst in our minds. For, taking ground on that religious system, of which
we are now in possession, we continue to act on the early received and
uniformly continued sense of mankind. That sense not only, like a wise
architect, hath built up the august fabric of states, but like a provident
proprietor, to preserve the structure from profanation and ruin, as a sacred
temple purged from all the impurities of fraud, and violence, and injustice,
and tyranny, hath solemnly and for ever consecrated the commonwealth, and all
that officiate in it. This consecration is made, that all who administer in
the government of men, in which they stand in the person of God himself,
should have high and worthy notions of their function and destination; that
their hope should be full of immortality; that they should not look to the
paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary and transient praise of the
vulgar, but to a solid, permanent existence, in the permanent part of their
nature, and to a permanent fame and glory, in the example they leave as a rich
inheritance to the world.
Such sublime principles ought to be infused into persons of exalted
situations; and religious establishments provided, that may continually revive
and enforce them. Every sort of moral, every sort of civil, every sort of
politic institution, aiding the rational and natural ties that connect the
human understanding and affections to the divine, are not more than necessary,
in order to build up that wonderful structure, Man; whose prerogative it is,
to be in a great degree a creature of his own making; and who, when made as he
ought to be made, is destined to hold no trivial place in the creation. But
whenever man is put over men, as the better nature ought ever to preside, in
that case more particularly, he should as nearly as possible be approximated
to his perfection.
The consecration of the state, by a state religious establishment, is
necessary also to operate with a wholesale awe upon free citizens; because, in
order to secure their freedom, they must enjoy some determinate portion of
power. To them therefore a religion connected with the state, and with their
duty towards it, becomes even more necessary than in such societies, where the
people, by the terms of their subjection, are confined to private sentiments,
and the management of their own family concerns. All persons possessing any
portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that
they act in trust: and that they are to account for their conduct in that
trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.
This principle ought even to be more strongly impressed upon the minds of
those who compose the collective sovereignty, than upon those of single
princes. Without instruments, these princes can do nothing. Whoever uses
instruments, in finding helps, finds also impediments. Their power is
therefore by no means complete; nor are they safe in extreme abuse. Such
persons, however elevated by flattery, arrogance, and self-opinion, must be
sensible, that, whether covered or not by positive law in some way or other
they are accountable even here for the abuse of their trust. If they are not
cut off by a rebellion of their people, they may be strangled by the very
janissaries kept for their security against all other rebellion. Thus we have
seen the king of France sold by his soldiers for an increase of pay. But where
popular authority is absolute and unrestrained, the people have an infinitely
greater, because a far better founded, confidence in their own power. They are
themselves, in a great measure, their own instruments. They are nearer to
their objects. Besides, they are less under responsibility to one of the
greatest controlling powers on earth, the sense of fame and estimation. The
share of infamy, that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in
public acts, is small indeed; the operation of opinion being in the inverse
ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own approbation of their
own acts has to them the appearance of a public judgment in their favour. A
perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world. As it is
the most shameless, it is also the most fearless. No man apprehends in his
person that he can be made subject to punishment. Certainly the people at
large never ought: for as all punishments are for example towards the
conservation of the people at large, the people at large can never become the
subject of punishment by any human hand. ^20 It is therefore of infinite
importance that they should not be suffered to imagine that their will, any
more than that of kings, is the standard of right and wrong. They ought to be
persuaded that they are full as little entitled, and far less qualified with
safety to themselves, to use any arbitrary power whatsoever; that therefore
they are not, under a false show of liberty, but in truth, to exercise an
unnatural, inverted domination, tyrannically to exact, from those who
officiate in the state, not an entire devotion to their interest, which is
their right, but an abject submission to their occasional will; extinguishing
thereby, in all those who serve them, all moral principle, all sense of
dignity, all use of judgment, and all consistency of character; whilst by the
very same process they give themselves up a proper, a suitable, but a most
contemptible prey to the servile ambition of popular sycophants, or courtly
flatterers.
[Footnote 20: Quicquid multis peccatur inultem.]
When the people have emptied themselves of all the lust of selfish will,
which without religion it is utterly impossible they ever should, when they
are conscious that they exercise, and exercise perhaps in a higher link of the
order of delegation, the power, which to be legitimate must be according to
that eternal, immutable law, in which will and reason are the same, they will
be more careful how they place power in base and incapable hands. In their
nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority, as to
a pitiful job, but as to a holy function; not according to their sordid,
selfish interest, nor to their wanton caprice, nor to their arbitrary will;
but they will confer that power (which any man may well tremble to give or to
receive) on those only, in whom they may discern that predominant proportion
of active virtue and wisdom, taken together and fitted to the charge, such, as
in the great and inevitable mixed mass of human imperfections and infirmities,
is to be found.
When they are habitually convinced that no evil can be acceptable, either
in the act or the permission, to him whose essence is good, they will be
better able to extirpate out of the minds of all magistrates, civil,
ecclesiastical, or military, anything that bears the least resemblance to a
proud and lawless domination.
But one of the first and most leading principles on which the
commonwealth and the laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors
and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their
ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were
the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut
off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their
pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to
those who come after them a ruin instead of an habitation - and teaching these
successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves
respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility
of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as there are
floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the
commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men
would become little better than the flies of a summer.
And first of all, the science of jurisprudence, the pride of the human
intellect, which, with all its defects, redundancies, and errors, is the
collected reason of ages, combining the principles of original justice with
the infinite variety of human concerns, as a heap of old exploded errors,
would be no longer studied. Personal self-sufficiency and arrogance (the
certain attendants upon all those who have never experienced a wisdom greater
than their own) would usurp the tribunal. Of course no certain laws,
establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of
men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end. Nothing stable in
the modes of holding property, or exercising function, could form a solid
ground on which any parent could speculate in the education of his offspring,
or in a choice for their future establishment in the world. No principles
would be early worked into the habits. As soon as the most able instructor had
completed his laborious course of institution, instead of sending forth his
pupil, accomplished in a virtuous discipline, fitted to procure him attention
and respect, in his place in society, he would find everything altered; and
that he had turned out a poor creature to the contempt and derision of the
world, ignorant of the true grounds of estimation. Who would insure a tender
and delicate sense of honour to beat almost with the first pulses of the
heart, when no man could know what would be the test of honour in a nation,
continually varying the standard of its coin? No part of life would retain its
acquisitions. Barbarism with regard to science and literature, unskilfulness
with regard to arts and manufactures, would infallibly succeed to the want of
a steady education and settled principle; and thus the commonwealth itself
would, in f few generations, crumble away, be disconnected into the dust and
powder of individuality, and at length dispersed to all the winds of heaven.
To avoid therefore the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand
times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have
consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or
corruptions but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its
reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the
state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude.
By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of
their country, who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces, and
put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds,
and wild incantations, they may regenerate the paternal constitution, and
renovate their father`s life.
Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere
occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure - but the state ought not to
be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of
pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be
taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of
the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a
partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a
temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a
partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it
becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those
who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each
contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval
contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures,
connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact
sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral
natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of
those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to
submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal
kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their
speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder
the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial,
uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and
supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a
necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and iemands no
evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no
exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that
moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by
consent or force; but if that which is only submission to necessity should be
made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the
rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason,
and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist
world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.
These, my dear Sir, are, were, and, I think, long will be, the sentiments
of not the least learned and reflecting part of this kingdom. They, who are
included in this description, form their opinions on such grounds as such
persons ought to form them. The less inquiring receive them from an authority,
which those whom Providence dooms to live on trust need not be ashamed to rely
on. These two sorts of men move in the same direction, though in a different
place. They both move with the order of the universe. They all know or feel
this great ancient truth: "Quod illi principi et praepotenti Deo qui omnem
hunc mundum regit, nihil eorum quae quidem fiant in terris acceptius quam
concilia et coetus hominum jure sociati quae civitates appellantur." They take
this tenet of the head and heart, not from the great name which it immediately
bears, nor from the greater from whence it is derived; but from that which
alone can give true weight and sanction to any learned opinion, the common
nature and common relation of men. Persuaded that all things ought to be done
with reference, and referring all to the point of reference to which all
should be directed, they think themselves bound, not only as individuals in
the sanctuary of the heart, or as congregated in that personal capacity, to
renew the memory of their high origin and cast; but also in their corporate
character to perform their national homage to the institutor, and author, and
protector of civil society; without which civil society man could not by any
possibility arrive at the perfection of which his nature is capable, nor even
make a remote and faint approach to it. They conceive that He who gave our
nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed also the necessary means of its
perfection. - He willed therefore the state - He willed its connexion with the
source and original archetype of all perfection. They who are convinced of
this his will, which is the law of laws, and the sovereign of sovereigns,
cannot think it reprehensible that this our corporate fealty and homage, that
this our recognition of a seigniory paramount, I had almost said this oblation
of the state itself, as a worthy offering on the high altar of universal
praise, should be performed as all public, solemn acts are performed, in
buildings, in music, in decoration, in speech, in the dignity of persons;
according to the customs of mankind, taught by their nature; this is, with
modest splendour and unassuming state, with mild majesty and sober pomp. For
those purposes they think some part of the wealth of the country is as
usefully employed as it can be in fomenting the luxury of individuals. It is
the public ornament. It is the public consolation. It nourishes the public
hope. The poorest man finds his own importance and dignity in it, whilst the
wealth and pride of individuals at every moment makes the man of humble rank
and fortune sensible of his inferiority, and degrades and vilifies his
condition. It is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to
put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease,
when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue, that
this portion of the general wealth of his country is employed and sanctified.
I assure you I do not aim at singularity. I give you opinions which have
been accepted amongst us, from very early times to this moment, with a
continued and general approbation, and which indeed are so worked into my
mind, that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from others from the
results of my own meditation.
It is on some such principles that the majority of the people of England,
far from thinking a religious national establishment unlawful, hardly think it
lawful to be without one. In France you are wholly mistaken if you do not
believe us above all other things attached to it, and beyond all other
nations; and when this people has acted unwisely and unjustifiably in its
favour, (as in some instances they have done most certainly) in their very
errors you will at least discover their zeal.
This principle runs through the whole system of their polity. They do not
consider their church establishment as convenient, but as essential to their
state; not as a thing heterogeneous and separable; something added for
accommodation; what they may either keep or lay aside, according to their
temporary ideas of convenience. They consider it as the foundation of their
whole constitution, with which, and with every part of which, it holds an
indissoluble union. Church and state are ideas inseparable in their minds, and
scarcely is the one ever mentioned without mentioning the other.
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