mankind."--This is an observation of Dr. _Tillotson_, with relation to
the interest of his fellow-men, in a future and immortal state: But it
is of equal truth and importance, if applied to the happiness of men in
society, on this side the grave.--In the earliest ages of the world,
_absolute Monarchy_ seems to have been the universal form of
government.--Kings, and a few of their great counsellors and captains,
exercised a cruel tyranny over the people who held a rank in the scale
of intelligence, in those days, but little higher than the camels and
elephants, that carried them and their engines to war.
By what causes it was brought to pass, that the people in the middle
ages, became more _intelligent_ in general, would not perhaps be
possible in these days to discover: But the fact is certain, and
wherever a general knowledge and sensibility have prevailed among the
people, arbitrary government and every kind of oppression have lessened
and disappeared in proportion.--Man has certainly an exalted soul! and
the same principle in human nature; that aspiring noble principle,
founded in benevolence and cherished by knowledge; I mean the love of
power, which has been so often the cause of _slavery_, has, whenever
freedom has existed, been the cause of freedom. If it is this principle,
that has always prompted the princes and nobles of the earth, by every
species of fraud and violence, to shake off all the limitations of their
power; it is the same that has always stimulated the common people to
aspire at independency, and to endeavour at confining the power of the
great, within the limits of equity and reason.
The poor people, it is true, have been much less successful than the
great--They have seldom found either leisure or opportunity to form an
union and exert their strength--ignorant as they were of arts and
letters, they have seldom been able to frame and support a regular
opposition. This, however, has been known, by the great, to be the
temper of mankind, and they have accordingly laboured, in all ages, to
wrest from the populace, as they are contemptuously called, the
knowledge of their rights and wrongs, and the power to assert the former
or redress the latter. I say RIGHTS, for such they have, undoubtedly,
antecedent to all earthly government--_Rights_, that cannot be repealed
or restrained by human laws--_Rights_, derived from the great Legislator
of the universe.
Since the promulgation of christianity, the two greatest systems of
tyranny, that have sprung from this original, are the _cannon_ and the
_feudal_ law--The desire of dominion, that great principle by which we
have attempted to account for so much good, and so much evil, is, when
properly restrained, a very useful and noble movement in the human mind:
but when such restraints are taken off, it becomes an encroaching,
grasping, restless and ungovernable power. Numberless have been the
systems of iniquity, contrived by the great, for the gratification of
this passion in themselves: but in none of them were they ever more
successful, than in the invention and establishment of the _canon_ and
the _feudal_ law.
By the former of these, the most refined, sublime, extensive, and
astonishing constitution of policy, that ever was conceived by the mind
of man, was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandisement of their
own order. All the epithets I have here given to the Romish policy are
just; and will be allowed to be so, when it is considered, that they
even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully and undoubtingly, that GOD
ALMIGHTY had intrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they
might open and close at pleasure--with a power of dispensation over all
the rules and obligations of morality--with authority to license all
sorts of sins and crimes--with a power of deposing princes, and
absolving subjects from allegiance--with a power of procuring or
withholding the rain of heaven, and the beams of the sun--with the
management of earthquakes, pestilence and famine.----Nay, with the
mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and
wine, the flesh and blood of GOD himself.--All these opinions they were
enabled to spread and rivet among the people, by reducing their minds to
a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity; and by infusing into
them a _religious_ horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human
nature chained fast for ages, in a cruel, shameful, and deplorable
servitude, to him and his subordinate tyrants; who, it was foretold,
would exalt himself above all that was called GOD, and that was
worshipped.----
In the latter we find another system similar in many respects to the
former; which, although it was originally formed perhaps for the
necessary defence of a barbarous people, against the inroads and
invasions of her neighbouring nations; yet, for the same purposes of
tyranny, cruelty and lust, which had dictated the _canon_ law, it was
soon adopted by almost all the Princes of Europe, and wrought into the
constitutions of their government.--It was originally a code of laws,
for a vast army in a perpetual encampment.--The general was invested
with the sovereign propriety of all the lands within the territory.--Of
him, his servants and vassals, the first rank of his great officers held
the lands; and in the same manner, the other subordinate officers held
of them; and all ranks and degrees, held their lands, by a variety of
duties and services, all tending to bind the chains the faster, on every
order of mankind. In this manner, the common people were holden
together, in herds and clans, in a state of servile dependance on their
Lords; bound, even by the tenure of their lands to follow them, whenever
they commanded, to their wars; and in a state of total ignorance of
every thing divine and human, excepting the use of arms, and the culture
of their lands.
But, another event still more calamitous to human liberty, was a wicked
confederacy, between the two systems of tyranny above described.--It
seems to have been even stipulated between them, that the temporal
grandees should contribute every thing in their power to maintain the
ascendency of the priesthood; and that the spiritual grandees, in, their
turn, should employ that ascendency over the consciences of the people,
in impressing on their minds, a blind, implicit obedience to civil
magistracy.--
Thus, as long as this confederacy lasted, and the people were held in
ignorance; Liberty, and with her, knowledge, and virtue too, seem to
have deserted the earth; and one age of darkness succeeded another, till
GOD, in his benign Providence, raised up the champions, who began and
conducted the Reformation.--From the time of the Reformation, to the
first settlement of America, knowledge gradually spread in Europe, but
especially in England; and in proportion as that increased and spread
among the people, ecclesiastical and civil tyranny, which I use as
synonymous expressions, for the _canon_ and _feudal_ laws, seem to have
lost their strength and weight. The people grew more and more sensible
of the wrong that was done them, by these systems; more and more
impatient under it; and determined at all hazards to rid themselves of
it; till, at last, under the execrable race of the Stuarts, the struggle
between the people and the confederacy aforesaid of temporal and
spiritual tyranny, became formidable, violent and bloody.----
It was this great struggle that peopled America.--It was not religion
alone, as is commonly supposed; but it was a love of _universal_
liberty, and an hatred, a dread, an horror of the infernal confederacy
before described, that projected, conducted, and accomplished the
settlement of America.----
It was a resolution formed by a sensible people, I mean the _Puritans_
almost in despair. They had become intelligent in general, and many of
them learned.--For this fact I have the testimony of Archbishop _King_
himself, who observed of that people, that they were more intelligent,
and better read than even the members of the church whom he censures
warmly for that reason.--This people had been so vexed, and tortured by
the powers of those days, for no other crime than their knowledge, and
their freedom of enquiry and examination; and they had so much reason to
despair of deliverance from those miseries on that side the ocean, that
they at last resolved to fly to the _wilderness_ for refuge, from the
temporal and spiritual principalities and powers, and plagues, and
scourges of their native country.
After their arrival here, they began their settlement, and formed their
plan both of ecclesiastical and civil government, in direst opposition
to the _canon_ and the _feudal_ systems.----The leading men among them,
both of the clergy and the laity were men of sense and learning: To many
of them, the historians, orators, poets and philosophers of Greece and
Rome were quite familiar: and some of them have left libraries that are
still in being, consisting chiefly of volumes, in which the wisdom of
the most enlightened ages and nations is deposited, written however in
languages, which their great grandsons, _though educated in European
Universities_, can scarcely read.
Thus accomplished were many of the first planters of these colonies.--It
may be thought polite and fashionable, by many modern fine gentlemen,
perhaps, to deride the characters of these persons as enthusiastical,
superstitious and republican: But such ridicule is founded in nothing
but foppery and affectation, and is grosly injurious and
false.----Religious to some degree of enthusiasm, it may be admitted
they were; but this can be no peculiar derogation from their character,
because it was at that time almost the universal character, not only of
England but of Christendom. Had this however been otherwise, their
enthusiasm, considering the principles in which it was founded, and the
ends to which it was directed, far from being a reproach to them, was
greatly to their honour: for I believe it will be found universally
true, that no great enterprize, for the honour or happiness of mankind,
was ever atchieved without a large mixture of that noble
infirmity. Whatever imperfections may be justly ascribed to them, which
however are as few as any mortals have discovered, their judgment in
framing their policy was founded in wise, humane and benevolent
principles. It was founded in revelation and in reason too: It was
consistent with the principles of the best, and greatest, and wisest
legeslators of antiquity.----Tyranny in every form, shape and
appearance, was their disdain and abhorrence; no fear of punishment, nor
even of death itself, in exquisite tortures, had been sufficient to
conquer that steady, manly, pertinacious spirit, with which they had
opposed the tyrants of those days, in church and state. They were very
far from being enemies to monarchy; and they knew as well as any men,
the just regard and honour that is due to the character of a dispenser
of the mysteries of the gospel of grace: But they saw clearly, that
popular powers must be placed as a guard, a controul, a balance, to the
powers of the monarch and the priest in every government; or else it
would soon become the man of sin, the whore of Babylon, the mystery of
iniquity, a great and detestable system of fraud, violence and
usurpation. Their greatest concern seems to have been to establish a
government of the church more consistent with the Scriptures, and a
government of the state more agreeable to the dignity of human nature,
than any they had seen in Europe: and to transmit such a government down
to their posterity, with the means of securing and preserving it for
ever. To render the popular power in their new government as great and
wise as their principles of theory, i. e. as human nature and the
christian religion require it should be, they endeavoured to remove from
it as many of the feudal inequalities and dependencies as could be
spared, consistently with the preservation of a mild limited monarchy.
And in this they discovered the depth of their wisdom, and the warmth of
their friendship to human nature.--But the first place is due to
religion.----They saw clearly, that of all the nonsense and delusion
which had ever passed through the mind of man, none had ever been more
extravagant than the notions of absolutions, indelible characters,
uninterrupted successions, and the rest of those fantastical ideas,
derived from the canon law, which had thrown such a glare of mystery,
sanctity, reverence and right, reverend eminence, and holiness around
the idea of a priest, as no mortal could deserve and as always must,
from the constitution of human nature, be dangerous in society. For this
reason, they demolished the whole system of Diocesan episcopacy, and
deriding, as all reasonable and impartial men must do, the ridiculous
fancies of sanctified effluvia from episcopal fingers, they established
sacerdotal ordination on the foundation of the Bible and common
sense.----This conduct at once imposed an obligation on the whole body
of the clergy, to industry, virtue, piety and learning; and rendered
that whole body infinitely more independent on the civil powers, in all
respects, than they could be where they were formed into a scale of
subordination, from a Pope down to Priests and friars and confessors,
necessarily and essentially, a sordid, stupid, and wretched herd; or
than they could be in any other country, where an archbishop held the
place of an universal bishop, and the vicars and curates that of the
ignorant, dependent, miserable rabble aforesaid; and infinitely more
sensible and learned than they could be in either.----This subject has
been seen in the same light by many illustrious patriots, who have lived
in America, since the days of our forefathers, and who have adored their
memory for the same reason.----And methinks there has not appeared in
New England, a stronger veneration for their memory, a more penetrating
insight into the grounds and principles and spirit of their policy, nor
a more earnest desire of perpetuating the blessings of it to posterity,
than that fine institution of the late Chief Justice Dudley, of a
lecture against popery, and on the validity of presbyterian ordination.
This was certainly intended by that wise and excellent man, as an
eternal memento of the wisdom and goodness of the very principles that
settled America. But I must again return to the feudal law.----The
adventurers so often mentioned, had an utter contempt of all that dark
ribaldry of hereditary indefeasible right,--the Lord's anointed,--and
the divine miraculous original of government, with which the priesthood
had inveloped the feudal monarch in clouds and mysteries, and from
whence they had deduced the most mischievous of all doctrines, that of
passive obedience and non-resistance. They knew that government was a
plain, simple, intelligible thing, founded in nature and reason, and
quite comprehensible by common sense.----They detested all the base
services, and servile dependencies of the feudal system.----They knew
that no such unworthy dependencies took place in the ancient seats of
liberty, the republic of Greece and Rome: and they thought all such
slavish subordinations were equally inconsistent with the constitution
of human nature, and that religious liberty with which Jesus had made
them free. This was certainly the opinion they had formed, and they were
far from being singular or extravagant in thinking so.----Many
celebrated modern writers in Europe have espoused the same
sentiments.--Lord Kaims, a Scottish writer of great reputation, whose
authority in this case ought to have the more weight, as his countrymen
have not the most worthy ideas of liberty, speaking of the feudal law,
says, "A constitution so contradictory to all the principles which
govern mankind, can never be brought about, one should imagine, but by
foreign conquest or native usurpations." Brit. Ant. p. 2.--Rousseau
speaking of the same system, calls it, "That most iniquitous and absurd
form of government, by which human nature was so shamefully degraded."
Social compact, Page 164.----It would be easy to multiply authorities;
but it must be needless, because as the original of this form of
government was among savages, as the spirit of it is military and
despotic, every writer, who would allow the people to have any right to
life or property or freedom, more than the beasts of the field, and who
was not hired or inlisted under arbitrary lawless power, has been always
willing to admit the feudal system to be inconsistent with liberty and
the rights of mankind.
To have holden their lands allodially, or for every man to have been the
sovereign lord and proprietor of the ground he occupied, would have
constituted a government, too nearly like a commonwealth.--They were
contented, therefore, to hold their lands of their King, as their
sovereign lord, and to him they were willing to render homage: but to no
mesne and subordinate lords, nor were they willing to submit to any of
the baser services.--In all this they were so strenuous, that they have
even transmitted to their posterity, a very general contempt and
detestation of holdings by quit rents: As they have also an hereditary
ardour for liberty, and thirst for knowledge.--
They were convinced by their knowledge of human nature derived from
history and their own experience, that nothing could preserve their
posterity from the encroachments of the two systems of tyranny, in
opposition to which, as has been observed already, they erected their
government in church and state, but knowledge diffused generally through
the whole body of the people.--Their civil and religious principles,
therefore, conspired to prompt them to use every measure, and take every
precaution in their power to propagate and perpetuate knowledge. For
this purpose they laid very early the foundations of colleges, and
invested them with ample privileges and emoluments; and it is
remarkable, that they have left among their posterity, so universal an
affection and veneration for those seminaries, and for liberal
education, that the meanest of the people contribute chearfully to the
support and maintenance of them every year, and that nothing is more
generally popular than productions for the honour, reputation, and
advantage of those seats of learning. But the wisdom and benevolence of
our fathers rested not here. They made an early provision by law, that
every town, consisting of so many families, should be always furnished
with a grammar school.--They made it a crime for such a town to be
destitute of a grammar school-master for a few months, and subjected it
to an heavy penalty.--So that the education of all ranks of people was
made the care and expence of the public in a manner, that I believe has
been unknown to any other people ancient or modern.
The consequences of these establishments we see and feel every day.--A
native of America who cannot read and write, is as rare an appearance as
a Jacobite, or a Roman Catholic, i. e. as rare as a comet or an
earthquake.--It has been observed, that we are all of us lawyers,
divines, politicians, and philosophers.--And I have good authorities to
say, that all candid foreigners who have passed through this country,
and conversed freely with all sorts of people here, will allow, that
they have never seen so much knowledge and civility among the common
people in any part or the world.--It is true there has been among us a
party for some years, consisting chiefly, not of the descendants of the
first settlers of this country, but of high churchmen and high
statesmen, imported since, who affect to censure this provision for the
education of our youth as a needless expence, and an imposition upon
the rich in favour of the poor;--and as an institution productive of
idleness and vain speculation among the people, whose time and
attention, it is said, ought to be devoted to labour, and not to public
affairs, or to examination into the conduct of their superiors. And
certain officers of the crown, and certain other missionaries of
ignorance, foppery, servility, and slavery, have been most inclined to
countenance and encrease the same party.--Be it remembered, however,
that liberty must at all hazards be supported. _We have a right to it,
derived from our_ MAKER! But if we had not, our fathers have earned and
bought it for us at the expence of their ease, their estates, their
pleasure, and their blood.--And Liberty cannot be preserved without a
general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of
their nature, to knowledge, as their great CREATOR, who does nothing in
vain, has given them understandings and a desire to know; but besides
this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible,
divine right, to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean
of the characters and conduct of their rulers. _Rulers are no more than
attornies, agents, and trustees for the people_: and if the cause, the
interest, and trust are insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away,
the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves
have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attornies, and
trustees. And the preservation of the means of knowledge, among the
lowest rank, is of more importance to the public, than all the property
of all the rich men in the country. It is even of more consequence to
the rich themselves, and to their posterity.--The only question is,
whether it is a public emolument? and if it is, the rich ought
undoubtedly to contribute in the same proportion as to all other public
burdens, i. e. in proportion to their wealth, which is secured by public
expences.--But none of the means of information are more sacred, or have
been cherished with more tenderness and care by the settlers of America,
than the press. Care has been taken that the art of printing should be
encouraged, and that it should be easy and cheap, and safe for any
person to communicate his thoughts to the Public.--And you, Messieurs
Printers, whatever the tyrants of the earth may say of your Paper, have
done important service to your country, by your readiness and freedom
in publishing the speculations of the curious. The stale, impudent
insinuations of slander and sedition, with which the gormandizers of
power have endeavoured to discredit your Paper, are so much the more to
your honour; for the jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her
arm is always stretched out, if possible to destroy, the freedom of
thinking, speaking, and writing.--And if the public interest, liberty
and happiness have been in danger, from the ambition or avarice of any
great man, or number of great men, whatever may be their politeness,
address, learning, ingenuity, and in other respects integrity and
humanity, you have done yourselves honour, and your country service, by
publishing and pointing out that avarice and ambition.--These views are
so much the more dangerous and pernicious, for the virtues with which
they may be accompanied in the same character, and with so much the more
watchful jealousy to be guarded against.
"Curse on such virtues, they've undone their country."