horrible and disgustful situation. Already there appears a poverty of
conception, a coarseness and vulgarity, in all the proceedings of the
Assembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal.
Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and
brutal.
It is not clear whether in England we learned those grand and decorous
principles and manners, of which considerable traces yet remain, from
you, or whether you took them from us. But to you, I think, we trace
them best. You seem to me to be _gentis incunabula nostræ_. France has
always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your
fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long or not
run clear with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in
my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in
France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious
spectacle of the sixth of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to
the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most
important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day: I mean a
revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things now
stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt
to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to
apologize for harboring the common feelings of men.
* * * * *
Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend Dr. Price, and those of
his lay flock who will choose to adopt the sentiments of his
discourse?--For this plain reason: Because it is _natural_ I should;
because we are so made as to be affected at such spectacles with
melancholy sentiments upon the unstable condition of mortal prosperity,
and the tremendous uncertainty of human greatness; because in those
natural feelings we learn great lessons; because in events like these
our passions instruct our reason; because, when kings are hurled from
their thrones by the Supreme Director of this great drama, and become
the objects of insult to the base and of pity to the good, we behold
such disasters in the moral as we should behold a miracle in the
physical order of things. We are alarmed into reflection; our minds (as
it has long since been observed) are purified by terror and pity; our
weak, unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations of a
mysterious wisdom. Some tears might be drawn from me, if such a
spectacle were exhibited on the stage. I should be truly ashamed of
finding in myself that superficial, theatric sense of painted distress,
whilst I could exult over it in real life. With such a perverted mind, I
could never venture to show my face at a tragedy. People would think the
tears that Garrick formerly, or that Siddons not long since, have
extorted from me, were the tears of hypocrisy; I should know them to be
the tears of folly.
Indeed, the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments than churches
where the feelings of humanity are thus outraged. Poets who have to deal
with an audience not yet graduated in the school of the rights of men,
and who must apply themselves to the moral constitution of the heart,
would not dare to produce such a triumph as a matter of exultation.
There, where men follow their natural impulses, they would not bear the
odious maxims of a Machiavelian policy, whether applied to the
attainment of monarchical or democratic tyranny. They would reject them
on the modern, as they once did on the ancient stage, where they could
not bear even the hypothetical proposition of such wickedness in the
mouth of a personated tyrant, though suitable to the character he
sustained. No theatric audience in Athens would bear what has been borne
in the midst of the real tragedy of this triumphal day: a principal
actor weighing, as it were in scales hung in a shop of horrors, so much
actual crime against so much contingent advantage,--and after putting in
and out weights, declaring that the balance was on the side of the
advantages. They would not bear to see the crimes of new democracy
posted as in a ledger against the crimes of old despotism, and the
book-keepers of politics finding democracy still in debt, but by no
means unable or unwilling to pay the balance. In the theatre, the first
intuitive glance, without any elaborate process of reasoning, would show
that this method of political computation would justify every extent of
crime. They would see, that, on these principles, even where the very
worst acts were not perpetrated, it was owing rather to the fortune of
the conspirators than to their parsimony in the expenditure of treachery
and blood. They would soon see that criminal means, once tolerated, are
soon preferred. They present a shorter cut to the object than through
the highway of the moral virtues. Justifying perfidy and murder for
public benefit, public benefit would soon become the pretext, and
perfidy and murder the end,--until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fear
more dreadful than revenge, could satiate their insatiable appetites.
Such must be the consequences of losing, in the splendor of these
triumphs of the rights of men, all natural sense of wrong and right.
But the reverend pastor exults in this "leading in triumph," because,
truly, Louis the Sixteenth was "an arbitrary monarch": that is, in other
words, neither more nor less than because he was Louis the Sixteenth,
and because he had the misfortune to be born king of France, with the
prerogatives of which a long line of ancestors, and a long acquiescence
of the people, without any act of his, had put him in possession. A
misfortune it has indeed turned out to him, that he was born king of
France. But misfortune is not crime, nor is indiscretion always the
greatest guilt. I shall never think that a prince, the acts of whose
whole reign were a series of concessions to his subjects, who was
willing to relax his authority, to remit his prerogatives, to call his
people to a share of freedom not known, perhaps not desired, by their
ancestors,--such a prince, though he should be subject to the common
frailties attached to men and to princes, though he should have once
thought it necessary to provide force against the desperate designs
manifestly carrying on against his person and the remnants of his
authority,--though all this should be taken into consideration, I shall
be led with great difficulty to think he deserves the cruel and
insulting triumph of Paris, and of Dr. Price. I tremble for the cause of
liberty, from such an example to kings. I tremble for the cause of
humanity, in the unpunished outrages of the most wicked of mankind. But
there are some people of that low and degenerate fashion of mind that
they look up with a sort of complacent awe and admiration to kings who
know to keep firm in their seat, to hold a strict hand over their
subjects, to assert their prerogative, and, by the awakened vigilance of
a severe despotism, to guard against the very first approaches of
freedom. Against such as these they never elevate their voice. Deserters
from principle, listed with fortune, they never see any good in
suffering virtue, nor any crime in prosperous usurpation.
If it could have been made clear to me that the king and queen of France
(those, I mean, who were such before the triumph) were inexorable and
cruel tyrants, that they had formed a deliberate scheme for massacring
the National Assembly, (I think I have seen something like the latter
insinuated in certain publications,) I should think their captivity
just. If this be true, much more ought to have been done, but done, in
my opinion, in another manner. The punishment of real tyrants is a noble
and awful act of justice; and it has with truth been said to be
consolatory to the human mind. But if I were to punish a wicked king, I
should regard the dignity in avenging the crime. Justice is grave and
decorous, and in its punishments rather seems to submit to a necessity
than to make a choice. Had Nero, or Agrippina, or Louis the Eleventh, or
Charles the Ninth been the subject,--if Charles the Twelfth of Sweden,
after the murder of Patkul, or his predecessor, Christina, after the
murder of Monaldeschi, had fallen into your hands, Sir, or into mine, I
am sure our conduct would have been different.
If the French king, or king of the French, (or by whatever name he is
known in the new vocabulary of your Constitution,) has in his own person
and that of his queen really deserved these unavowed, but unavenged,
murderous attempts, and those frequent indignities more cruel than
murder, such a person would ill deserve even that subordinate executory
trust which I understand is to be placed in him; nor is he fit to be
called chief in a nation which he has outraged and oppressed. A worse
choice for such an office in a new commonwealth than that of a deposed
tyrant could not possibly be made. But to degrade and insult a man as
the worst of criminals, and afterwards to trust him in your highest
concerns, as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is not consistent
in reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe in practice. Those who
could make such an appointment must be guilty of a more flagrant breach
of trust than any they have yet committed against the people. As this is
the only crime in which your leading politicians could have acted
inconsistently, I conclude that there is no sort of ground for these
horrid insinuations. I think no better of all the other calumnies.
In England, we give no credit to them. We are generous enemies; we are
faithful allies. We spurn from us with disgust and indignation the
slanders of those who bring us their anecdotes with the attestation of
the flower-de-luce on their shoulder. We have Lord George Gordon fast in
Newgate; and neither his being a public proselyte to Judaism, nor his
having, in his zeal against Catholic priests and all sorts of
ecclesiastics, raised a mob (excuse the term, it is still in use here)
which pulled down all our prisons, have preserved to him a liberty of
which he did not render himself worthy by a virtuous use of it. We have
rebuilt Newgate, and tenanted the mansion. We have prisons almost as
strong as the Bastile, for those who dare to libel the queens of France.
In this spiritual retreat let the noble libeller remain. Let him there
meditate on his Talmud, until he learns a conduct more becoming his
birth and parts, and not so disgraceful to the ancient religion to which
he has become a proselyte,--or until some persons from your side of the
water, to please your new Hebrew brethren, shall ransom him. He may then
be enabled to purchase, with the old hoards of the synagogue, and a very
small poundage on the long compound interest of the thirty pieces of
silver, (Dr. Price has shown us what miracles compound interest will
perform in 1790 years,) the lands which are lately discovered to have
been usurped by the Gallican Church. Send us your Popish Archbishop of
Paris, and we will send you our Protestant Rabbin. We shall treat the
person you send us in exchange like a gentleman and an honest man, as he
is: but pray let him bring with him the fund of his hospitality, bounty,
and charity; and, depend upon it, we shall never confiscate a shilling
of that honorable and pious fund, nor think of enriching the Treasury
with the spoils of the poor-box.
To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the honor of our nation to
be somewhat concerned in the disclaimer of the proceedings of this
society of the Old Jewry and the London Tavern. I have no man's proxy. I
speak only from myself, when I disclaim, as I do with all possible
earnestness, all communion with the actors in that triumph, or with the
admirers of it. When I assert anything else, as concerning the people of
England, I speak from observation, not from authority; but I speak from
the experience I have had in a pretty extensive and mixed communication
with the inhabitants of this kingdom, of all descriptions and ranks, and
after a course of attentive observation, begun in early life, and
continued for near forty years. I have often been astonished,
considering that we are divided from you but by a slender dike of about
twenty-four miles, and that the mutual intercourse between the two
countries has lately been very great, to find how little you seem to
know of us. I suspect that this is owing to your forming a judgment of
this nation from certain publications, which do, very erroneously, if
they do at all, represent the opinions and dispositions generally
prevalent in England. The vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit
of intrigue of several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total
want of consequence in bustle and noise, and puffing and mutual
quotation of each other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous neglect
of their abilities is a general mark of acquiescence in their opinions.
No such thing, I assure you. Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a
fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands
of great cattle reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak chew the
cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise
are the only inhabitants of the field,--that, of course, they are many
in number,--or that, after all, they are other than the little,
shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the
hour.
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.[94] 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.
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 the 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, skeptical, 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, nor 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 among us. This disposition still remains,--at least in the
great body of the people.