cular project, and finding some in favor of it, and some against the project, according as one or the other class of facts preponderate: as, for instance, whether it would be better to plant a particular spot of ground with larch, or with Scotch fir, or with oak in preference to either. Surely every man will acknowledge, that his mind was very differently employed in the first case from what it was in the second, and all men have agreed to call the results of the first class the truths of science, such as not only are true, but which it is impossible to conceive other wise: while the results of the second class are called facts, or things of experience: and as to these latter we must often content ourselves with the greater probability, that they are so, or so, rather than other wise-nay, even when we have no doubt that they are so in the particular case, we never presume to assert that they must continue so always, and under all circumstances. On the contrary, our conclusions depend altogether on contingent circumstances. Now when the mind is employed, as in the case first mentioned, I call it Reasoning, or the use of the pure Reason; but in the second case, the Understanding or Prudence. This reason applied to the motives of our conduct, and combined with the sense of our moral responsibility, is the conditional cause of Conscience, which is a spiritual sense or testifying state of the coincidence or discordance of the FREE WILL with the REASON. But as the Reasoning consists wholly in a man's power of seeing, whether any two ideas, which happen to be in his mind, are, or are not in contradiction with each other, it follows of necessity, not only that all men have reason, but that every man has it in the same degree. For Reasoning (or Reason, in this its secondary sense) does not consist in the Ideas, or in their clearness, but simply, when they are in the mind, in seeing whether they contradict each other or no. other, the Reason is to decide, are all possessed alike by all men, namely, in Geometry, (for all men in their senses possess all the component images, viz. simple curves and straight lines) yet the power of attention required for the perception of linked Truths, even of such Truths, is so very different in A and in B, that Sir Isaac Newton professed that it was in this power only that he was superior to ordinary men. In short, the sophism is as gross as if I should say— The Souls of all men have the faculty of sight in an equal degree-forgetting to add, that this faculty cannot be exercised without eyes, and that some men are blind and others short-sighted, &c.—and should then take advantage of this my omission to conclude against the use or necessity of spectacles, microscopes, &c.-or of choosing the sharpest sighted men for our guides. 66 Having exposed this great sophism, I must warn against an opposite error-namely, that if Reason, distinguished from Prudence, consists merely in knowing that Black cannot be White or when a man has a clear conception of an inclosed figure, and another equally clear conception of a straight line, his Reason teaches him that these two conceptions are incompatible in the same object, i. e. that two straight lines cannot include a space-the said Reason must be a very insignificant faculty. But a moment's steady self-reflection will show us, that in the simple determination Black is not White" or "that two straight lines cannot include a space"-all the pow ers are implied, that distinguish Man from Animalsfirst, the power of reflection-2d. of comparison-3d. and therefore of suspension of the mind-4th. therefore of a controlling will, and the power of acting from notions, instead of mere images exciting appe. tites; from motives, and not from mere dark instincts. Was it an insignificant thing to weigh the Planets, to determine all their courses, and prophesy every possible relation of the Heavens a thousand years hence? Yet all this mighty claim of science is nothing but a And again, as in the determinations of Conscience the only knowledge required is that of my own inten-linking together of truths of the same kind, as the tion—whether in doing such a thing, instead of leaving it undone, I did what I should think right if any other person had done it; it follows that in the mere question of guilt or innocence, all men have not only Reason equally, but likewise all the materials on which the reason, considered as Conscience, is to work. But when we pass out of ourselves, and speak, not exclusively of the agent as meaning well or ill, but of the action in its consequences, then of course experience is required, judgment is making use of it, and all those other qualities of the mind which are so differently dispensed to different persons, both by nature and education. And though the reason itself is the same in all men, yet the means of exercising it, and the materials (i. e. the facts and ideas) on which it is exercised, being possessed in very different degrees by different persons, the practical Result is, of course, equally different-and the whole ground work of Rousseau's Philosophy ends in a mere Nothingism. Even in that branch of knowledge, on which the ideas, on the congruity of which with each whole is greater than its part:-or, if A and B =C, then, A Bor 3+4=7, therefore 7+5=12, and so forth. X is to be found either in A or B, or C or D: It is not found in A, B, or C, therefore it is to be found in D.-What can be simpler? Apply this to an animal-a Dog misses his master where four roads meet-he has come up one, smells to two of the others, and then with his head aloft darts forward to the fourth road without any examination. If this was done by a conclusion, the Dog would have Reason-how comes it then, that he never shows it in his ordinary habits? Why does this story excite either wonder or incredulity?-If the story be a fact, and not a fiction, I should say-the Breeze brought his Master's scent down the fourth Road to the Dog's nose, and that therefore he did not put it down to the Road, as in the two former instances. So awful and almost miraculous does the simple act of concluding, that take 3 from 4, there remains one, appear to us when attributed to the most sagacious of all animals. The Friend. SECTION THE FIRST. ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE. Hoc potissimum pacto felicem ac magnum regem se fore judicans: non si quam plurimis sed si quam optimis impere. Proinde parum esse putat justis præsidiis regnum suum muniisse, nisi idem viris eruditione juxta ac vitæ integritate præcel tibus ditet atque honestet. Nimirum intelligit, hac demum esse vera regni decora, has veras opes. ESSAY I. Dum Politici sæpiuscule hominibus magis insidiantur quam consulunt, potius callidi quam sapientes; Theoretici e contrario se rem divinam facere et sapientia culmen attingere credunt, quando humanam naturam, quæ nullibi est, multis modis laudare, et eam, quæ re vera est, dictis lacessere norunt. Unde factum est, ut nunquam Politicam conceperint quæpossit ad usum revocari; sed quæ in Utopia vel in illo poetarum aureo sæculo, ubi scilicet minime necesse erat, institui potuisset. At mihi plane persuadeo, Experientiam omnia civitatum genera, quæ concipi possunt ut homines concorditer vivant, et simul media, quibus multitudo dirigi, seu quibus intra certos limites contineri debeat, ostendisse: ita ut non credam, nos posse aliquid, quod ab experientia sive, praxi non abhorreat, cogitatione de hac re assequi, quod nondum expertum compertumque sit. Cum igitur animum ad Politicam applicuerim, nihil quod novum vel inauditum est; sed tantum ea quæ cum praxi optime conveniunt, certa et indubitata ratione demonstrare aut ex ipsa humanæ naturæ conditione deducere, intendi. Et ut ea quæ ad hanc scientiam spectant, eadem animi libertate, qua res mathematicas solemus, inquirerem, sedulo curavi humanas actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari; sed intelligere. Nec ad imperii securitatem refert quo animo homines inducantur ad res recte administrandum, modo res recte administrentur. Animi enim libertas, seu fortitudo, privata virtus est; at imperii virtus securitas. SPINOZA. op. Post. p. 267. Translation.-While the mere practical Statesman too often rather plots against mankind, than consults their interest, crafty not wise; the mere Theorists, on the other hand, imagine that they are employed in a glorious work, and believe themselves at the very summit of earthly Wisdom, when they are able, in set and varied language, to extol that Human Nature, which exists no where (except indeed in their own fancy) and to accuse and vilify our nature as it really is. Hence it has happened, that these men have never conceived a practicable scheme of civil policy, but, at best, such forms of Government only, as might have been instituted in Utopia, or during the golden age of the poets: that is to say, forms of government excellently adapted for those who need no government at all. But I am fully persuaded, that experience has already brought to light all conceivable sorts of political Institutions under which human society can be maintained in concord, and likewise the chief means of directing the multitude, or retaining them within given boundaries: so that I can hardly believe, that on this subject the deepest research would arrive at any result, not abhorrent from experience and practice, which has not already been tried and proved. When, therefore, I applied my thoughts to the study of Political Economy, I proposed to myself nothing original or strange as the fruits of my reflections; but simply to demonstrate from plain and undoubted principles, or to deduce from the very condition and necessities of human nature, those plans and maxims which square the best with practice. And that in all things which relate to this province, I might o duct my investigations with the same freedom of intellec with which we proceed in questions of pure science, I secr lously disciplined my mind neither to laugh at, or bewail, c detest, the actions of men; but to understand them. For t the safety of the state it is not of necessary importance, wit motives induce men to administer public affairs rightly. vided only that public affairs be rightly administered. Fer moral strength, or freedom from the selfish passions, is the virtue of individuals; but security is the virtue of a stale. ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ALL the different philosophical systems of politics! former case? To what does the oppressor owe his safety? To the spirit-quelling thought, the laws of God and of my country have made his life sacred! I dare not touch a hair of his head!--"Tis Conscience that makes Cowards of us all,"-but! oh! it is Conscience too which makes Heroes of us all. ESSAY II. • and but one told so many times over without addition, as an idiot would tell the clock at noon-one, one, one, &c. But when, in the first instances, the descendants of one family joined together to attack those of another family, it is impossible that their chief or leader should have appeared to them stronger than all the rest together: they must therefore have chosen him, and this as for particular purposes, so doubtless under particular conditions, expressed or understood. Such we know to be the case with the North American tribes at present; such we are informed by History, was the case with our own remote ancestors. Therefore, even on the system of those who, in contempt of the oldest and most authentic records, consider the savage as the first and natural state of man, government must have originated Viribus parantur provinciæ, jure retinentur. Igitur breve id gaudium, quippe Germani victi magis, quam domiti. in choice and an agreement. The apparent exceptions in Africa and Asia are, if possible, still Translation.-The strongest is never strong enough to be more subversive of this system: for they will be found to have originated in religious imposture, and the first chiefs to have secured a willing and enthusiastic obedience to themselves, as Delegates of the Deity. But the whole Theory is baseless. We are told by History, we learn from our experience, we know from our own hearts, that fear, of itself, is utterly incapable of producing any regular, continuous and calculable effect, even on an individual; and that the fear, which does act systematically upon the mind always presupposes a sense of duty, as its cause. The most cowardly of the European nations, the Neapolitans and Sicilians, those among whom the fear of death exercises the most tyrannous influence relatively to their own persons, are the very men who least fear to take away the life of a fellow-citizen by poison or assassination: while in Great Britain, a tyrant who has abused the power, which a vast property has given him, to oppress a whole neighborhood, can walk in safety unarmed, and unattended, amid a hundred men, each of whom feels his heart burn with rage and indignation at the sight of him. "It was this Man who broke my Father's heart" or "it is through Him that my Children are clad in rags, and cry for the Food which I am no longer able to provide for them." And yet they dare not touch a hair of his head! Whence does this arise? Is it from a cowardice of sensibility that makes the injured man shudder at the thought of shedding blood? Or from a cowardice of selfishness which makes him afraid of hazarding his own life! Neither the one or the other! The Field of Waterloo, as the most recent of an hundred equal proofs, has borne witness, That "bring a Briton fra his hill, Le plus fort n'est jamais assez fort pour etre toujours le maitre, s'il ne transforme sa force en droit et l'obeissance en devoir. ROUSSEAU. FLOR. iv. 12. always the master, unless he transform his Power into Right and Obedience into Duty. ROUSSEAU. Provinces are taken by force, but they are kept by right. This exultation therefore was of brief continuance, inasmuch as the Germans had been overcome, but not subdued. FLORUS. A TRULY great man, (the best and greatest public character that I had ever the opportunity of making myself acquainted with) on assuming the command of a man-of-war, found a mutinous crew, more than one half of them uneducated Irishmen, and of the remainder no small portion had become sailors by compromise of punishment. What terror could effect by severity and frequency of acts of discipline, had been already effected. And what was this effect? Something like that of a polar winter on a flask of brandy. The furious spirit concentered itself with tenfold strength at the heart; open violence was changed into secret plots and conspiracies; and the consequent orderliness of the crew, as far as they were orderly, was but the brooding of a tempest. The new commander instantly commenced a systern of discipline as near as possible to that of ordinary law-as much as possible, he avoided, in his own person, the appearance of any will or arbitrary power to vary, or to remit, punishment. The rules to be observed were affixed to a conspicuous part of the ship, with the particular penalties for the breach of each particular rule; and care was taken that every individual of the ship should know and understand this code. With a single exception in the case of mutinous behavior, a space of twenty-four hours was appointed between the first charge and the second hearing of the cause, at which time the accused person was permitted and required to bring forward whatever he thought conducive to his defence or palliation. If, as was commonly the case (for the officers well knew that the commander would seriously resent in them all caprice of will, and by no means permit to others what he denied to himself) if no answer could be returned to the three questions-Did you not commit the act? Did you not know that it was in contempt of such a rule, and in defiance of Whence then arises the difference of feeling in the such a rule, and in defiance of such a punishment? * * * Say, such is Royal George's will, And there's the foe, He has nae thought but how to kill Twa at a blow. Nae cauld, faint-hearted doubtings tease him; And when he fa's His latest draught o' breathin leaves him In faint huzzas." disquietudes in the full occupation of the senses But who dares struggle with an invisible combatant' with an enemy which exists and makes us know its existence, but where it is, we ask in vain.—No space contains it-time promises no control over it-it has no ear for my threats-it has no substance, that my hands can grasp, or my weapons find vulnerable—it commands and cannot be commanded-it acts and insusceptible of my reaction-the more I strive to subdue it, the more am I compelled to think of itand the more I think of it, the more do I find it to possess a reality out of myself, and not to be a phan And was it not wholly in your own power to have obeyed the one and avoided the other?-the sentence was then passed with the greatest solemnity, and another, but shorter, space of time was again interposed between it and its actual execution. During this space the feelings of the commander, as a man, were so well blended with his inflexibility, as the organ of the law; and how much he suffered previous to and during the execution of the sentence was so well known to the crew, that it became a common saying with them, when a sailor was about to be punished, "The captain takes it more to heart than the fellow himself." But whenever the commander per-tom of my own imagination; that all, but the most ceived any trait of pride in the offender, or the germs of any noble feeling, he lost no opportunity of saying, "It is not the pain that you are about to suffer which grieves me! You are none of you, I trust, such cowards as to turn faint-hearted at the thought of that! but that, being a man and one who is to fight for his king and country, you should have made it necessary to treat you as a vicious beast, it is this that grieves me." I have been assured, both by a gentleman who was a lieutenant on board that ship at the time when the heroism of its captain, aided by his characteristic calmness and foresight, greatly influenced the decision of the most glorious battle recorded in the annals of our naval glory; and very recently by a grayheaded sailor, who did not even know my name, or could have suspected that I was previously acquainted with the circumstances-I have been assured, I say, that the success of this plan was such as astonished the oldest officers, and convinced the most incredulous. Ruffians, who like the old Buccaneers, had been used to inflict torture on themselves for sport, or in order to harden themselves beforehand, were tamed and overpowered, how or why they themselves knew not. From the fiercest spirits were heard the most earnest entreaties for the forgiveness of their commander; not before the punishment, for it was too well known that then they would have been to no purpose, but days after it, when the bodily pain was remembered but as a dream. An invisible power it was, that quelled them, a power, which was therefore irresistible, because it took away the very will of resisting. It was the awful power of Law, acting on natures pre-configured to its influences. A faculty was appealed to in the Offender's own being; a Faculty and a Presence, of which he had not been previously made aware-but it answered to the appeal! its real existence therefore could not be doubt ed, or its reply rendered inaudible! and the very struggle of the wilder passions to keep uppermost counteracted its own purpose, by wasting in internal contest that energy, which before had acted in its entireness on external resistance or provocation. Strength may be met with strength; the power of inflicting pain may be baffled by the pride of endurance; the eye of rage may be answered by the stare of defiance, or the downcast look of dark and revengeful resolve; and with all this there is an outward and determined object to which the mind can attach its passions and purposes, and bury its own abandoned men, acknowledge its authority, and that the whole strength and majesty of my country are pledged to support it; and yet that for me its powE? is the same with that of my own permanent Self, and that all the choice, which is permitted to me, consists in having it for my Guardian Angel or my avenging Fiend! This is the Spirit of LAW! The Lute of Amphion, the Harp of Orpheus! This is the true necessity, which compels man into the social state. now and always, by a still-beginning, never-ceasing force of moral cohesion. Thus is man to be governed, and thus only can be be governed. For from his creation the objects of his senses were to become his subjects, and the task a lotted to him was to subdue the visible world within the sphere of action circumscribed by those senses. as far as they could act in concert. What the eye beholds the hand strives to reach; what it reaches, it conquers and makes the instrument of further conquest. We can be subdued by that alone which s analogous in kind to that by which we subdue therefore by the invisible powers of our nature, whose immediate presence is disclosed to our inner sense. and only as the symbols and language of which al shapes and modifications of matter become formidable to us. A machine continues to move by the force which first set it in motion. If only the smallest number in any state, properly so called, hold together through the influence of any fear that does not itself presup pose the sense of duty, it is evident that the state itself could not have commenced through animal fear. We hear, indeed, of conquests; but how does History represent these? Almost without exception as the substitution of one set of governors for another: and so far is the conqueror from relying on fear alone to secure the obedience of the conquered, that his first step is to demand an oath of fealty from them, by which he would impose upon them the belief, that they become subjects: for who would think of administering an oath to a gang of slaves? But what can make the difference between slave and subject, if not the existence of an implied contract in the one case, and not in the other? And to what purpose would a contract serve if, however it might be entered into through fear, it were deemed binding only in consequence of fear? To repeat my former illustra tion-where fear alone is relied on, as in a slave ship, the chains that bind the poor victims must be material chains: for these only can act upon feelings which have their source wholly in the material organization. Hobbes has said that Laws without the sword are but bits of parchment. How far this is true, every honest man's heart will best tell him, if he will content himself with asking his own heart, and not falsify the answer by his notions concerning the hearts of other men. But were it true, still the fair answer would be-Well! but without the Laws the sword is but a piece of iron. The wretched tyrant, who disgraces the present age and human nature itself, had exhausted the whole magazine of animal terror, in order to consolidate his truly satanic Government. But look at the new French catechism, and in it read the misgivings of the monster's mind, as to the insufficiency of terror alone! The system, which I have been confuting, is indeed so inconsistent with the facts revealed to us by our own mind, and so utterly unsupported by any facts of History, that I should be censurable in wasting my own time and my Reader's patience by the exposure of its falsehood, but that the arguments adduced have a value of themselves independent of their present application. Else it would have been an ample and satisfactory reply to an asserter of this bestial Theory -Government is a thing which relates to men, and what you say applies only to beasts. on the one hand, and the external circumstances on the other (ambitious or barbarous neighbors, &c.) required or permitted. In after times it could be appealed to only for the general principle, and no more than the ideal Contract, could it affect a question of ways and means. As each particular age brings with it its own exigencies, so must it rely on its own prudence for the specific measures by which they are to be encountered. Nevertheless, it assuredly cannot be denied, that an original (in reality, rather an ever-originating) Contract is a very natural and significant mode of expressing the reciprocal duties of subject and sovereign. We need only consider the utility of a real and formal State Contract, the Bill of Rights for instance, as a sort of est demonstratum in politics; and the contempt lavished on this notion, though sufficiently compatible with the tenets of a Hume, will seem strange to us in the writings of a Protestant clergyman, who surely owed some respect to a mode of thinking which God himself had authorized by his own example, in the establishment of the Jewish constitution. In this instance there was no necessity for deducing the will of God from the tendency of the Laws to the general happiness: his will was expressly declared. Nevertheless, it seemed good to the divine wisdom, that there should be a covenant, an original contract, between himself as sovereign, and the Hebrew nation as subjects. This, I admit, was a written and formal Contract; but the relations of mankind, as members of a body spiritual, or religious commonwealth, to the Saviour, as its head or regent-is not this too styled a covenant, though it would be absurd to ask for the material instrument that contained it, or the time when it was signed or voted by the members of the church collectively.* With this explanation, the assertion of an original (still better, of a perpetual) Contract is rescued from all rational objection; and however speciously it may Before I proceed to the second of the three Systems, let me remove a possible misunderstanding that may have arisen from the use of the word Contract: as if I had asserted, that the whole duty of obedience to Governors is derived from, and dependent on, the fact of an original Contract. I freely admit, that to make this the cause and origin of political obligation, is not only a dangerous but an absurd Theory; for what could give moral force to the Contract? The same sense of Duty which binds us to keep it, must have pre-existed as impelling us to make it. For what man in his senses would regard the faithful observation of a contract entered into to plunder a neighbor's house but as a treble crime? First thebe urged, that History can scarcely produce a single act, which is a crime of itself;-secondly, the entering into a contract which it is a crime to observe, and yet a weakening of one of the main pillars of human confidence not to observe, and thus voluntarily placing ourselves under the necessity of choosing between two evils; - and thirdly, the crime of choosing the greater of two evils, by the unlawful observance of an unlawful promise. But in my sense, the word Contract is merely synonymous with the sense of duty acting in a specific direction, i. e. determining our moral relations, as members of a body Human institutions cannot be wholly constructed on princi politic. If I have referred to a supposed origin of Government, it has been in courtesy to a common notion: for I myself regard the supposition as no more than a means of simplifying to our apprehension the ever-continuing causes of social union, even as the conservation of the world may be represented as an act of continued Creation. For, what if an original Contract had really been entered into, and formally recorded? Still it could do no more than bind the contracting parties to act for the general good in the best manner, that the existing relations among themselves, (state of property, religion, &c.) example of a state dating its primary establishment from a free and mutual covenant, the answer is ready: if there be any difference between a Government and a band of robbers, an act of consent must be supposed on the part of the people governed. ESSAY III. ples of Science, which is proper to immutable objects. In the government of the visible world the supreme Wisdom itself submits to be the Author of the Better: not of the Best, but of the Best possible in the subsisting Relations. Much more must all human Legislators give way to many Evils rather than encourage the Discontent that would lead to worse Remedies. If it is not in the power of man to *It is perhaps to be regretted, that the words, Old and New Testament, they having lost the sense intended by the translators of the Bible, have not been changed into the Old and New Covenant. We cannot too carefully keep in sight a notion, which appeared to the primitive church the fittest and most scriptural mode of representing the sum of the contents of the sacred writings. |