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 vigor. 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 favor 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 splendor 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 festivals, 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 color 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
madman 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 solidity and 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 honor 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 Rochefoucault'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 neighbor'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 looks 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 absurd 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 fourth 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 with a sort of
porridge of various political opinions and reflections: but the
Revolution in France is the grand ingredient in the caldron. 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 Reverend Hugh
Peters, made the vault of the king's own chapel at St. James's ring with
the honor 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."[77] 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.
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,[78] 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 Non-Conformity, and to set up,
each of them, a separate meeting-house upon his own particular
principles.[79] 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 favorable 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.
But I may say of our preacher, "_Utinam nugis tota illa dedisset et
tempora sævitiæ_." 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 arch-pontiff of the
_rights of men_, with all the plenitude and with more than the boldness
of the Papal deposing power in its meridian fervor 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 behooves 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 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 quæ mox depromere passim_. By this policy,
whilst our government is soothed with a reservation in its favor, 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.