basis of civil society, and the source of all good, and of all
comfort.[95] 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.
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 among 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, sent 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 forever 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 wholesome 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 favor. 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.[96] 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.
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
amongst 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 honor to beat almost with the
first pulses of the heart, when no man could know what would be the test
of honor 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 a 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
primeval 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 demands 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 præpotenti Deo qui omnem hunc mundum
regit nihil eorum quæ quidem fiant in terris acceptius quam concilia et
coetus hominum jure sociati quæ 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
connection 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 signiory
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,--that is, with modest
splendor, with 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 favor, (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 up 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.
Our education is so formed as to confirm and fix this impression. Our
education is in a manner wholly in the hands of ecclesiastics, and in
all stages from infancy to manhood. Even when our youth, leaving schools
and universities, enter that most important period of life which begins
to link experience and study together, and when with that view they
visit other countries, instead of old domestics whom we have seen as
governors to principal men from other parts, three fourths of those who
go abroad with our young nobility and gentlemen are ecclesiastics: not
as austere masters, nor as mere followers; but as friends and companions
of a graver character, and not seldom persons as well born as
themselves. With them, as relations, they most commonly keep up a close
connection through life. By this connection we conceive that we attach
our gentlemen to the Church; and we liberalize the Church by an
intercourse with the leading characters of the country.
So tenacious are we of the old ecclesiastical modes and fashions of
institution, that very little alteration has been made in them since the
fourteenth or fifteenth century: adhering in this particular, as in all
things else, to our old settled maxim, never entirely nor at once to
depart from antiquity. We found these old institutions, on the whole,
favorable to morality and discipline; and we thought they were
susceptible of amendment, without altering the ground. We thought that
they were capable of receiving and meliorating, and above all of
preserving, the accessions of science and literature, as the order of
Providence should successively produce them. And after all, with this
Gothic and monkish education, (for such it is in the groundwork,) we may
put in our claim to as ample and as early a share in all the
improvements in science, in arts, and in literature, which have
illuminated and adorned the modern world, as any other nation in Europe:
we think one main cause of this improvement was our not despising the
patrimony of knowledge which was left us by our forefathers.
It is from our attachment to a Church establishment, that the English
nation did not think it wise to intrust that great fundamental interest
of the whole to what they trust no part of their civil or military
public service,--that is, to the unsteady and precarious contribution of
individuals. They go further. They certainly never have suffered, and
never will suffer, the fixed estate of the Church to be converted into a
pension, to depend on the Treasury, and to be delayed, withheld, or
perhaps to be extinguished by fiscal difficulties: which difficulties
may sometimes be pretended for political purposes, and are in fact often
brought on by the extravagance, negligence, and rapacity of politicians.
The people of England think that they have constitutional motives, as
well as religious, against any project of turning their independent
clergy into ecclesiastical pensioners of state. They tremble for their
liberty, from the influence of a clergy dependent on the crown; they
tremble for the public tranquillity, from the disorders of a factious
clergy, if it were made to depend upon any other than the crown. They
therefore made their Church, like their king and their nobility,
independent.
From the united considerations of religion and constitutional policy,
from their opinion of a duty to make a sure provision for the
consolation of the feeble and the instruction of the ignorant, they have
incorporated and identified the estate of the Church with the mass of
_private property_, of which the state is not the proprietor, either for
use or dominion, but the guardian only and the regulator. They have
ordained that the provision of this establishment might be as stable as
the earth on which it stands, and should not fluctuate with the Euripus
of funds and actions.