as too much indifference. A person who sets no bounds to his
admiration takes a surfeit of his favourites. He overdoes the thing.
He gets sick of his own everlasting praises, and affected raptures.
His preferences are a great deal too violent to last. He wears out an
author in a week, that might last him a year, or his life, by the
eagerness with which he devours him. Every such favourite is in his
turn the greatest writer in the world. Compared with the lord of the
ascendent for the time being, Shakspeare is commonplace, and Milton a
pedant, a little insipid or so. Some of these prodigies require to be
dragged out of their lurking-places, and cried up to the top of the
compass; their traits are subtle, and must be violently obtruded on
the sight. But the effort of exaggerated praise, though it may stagger
others, tires the maker, and we hear of them no more after a while.
Others take their turns, are swallowed whole, undigested, ravenously,
and disappear in the same manner. Good authors share the fate of bad,
and a library in a few years is nearly dismantled. It is a pity thus
to outlive our admiration, and exhaust our relish of what is
excellent. Actors and actresses are disposed of in the same conclusive
peremptory way: some of them are talked of for months, nay, years;
then it is almost an offence to mention them. Friends, acquaintance,
go the same road: are now asked to come six days in the week, then
warned against coming the seventh. The smallest faults are soon
magnified in those we think too highly of: but where shall we find
perfection? If we will put up with nothing short of that, we shall
have neither pictures, books, nor friends left--we shall have nothing
but our own absurdities to keep company with! 'In all things a regular
and moderate indulgence is the best security for a lasting enjoyment.'
There are numbers who judge by the event, and change with fortune.
They extol the hero of the day, and join the prevailing clamour,
whatever it is; so that the fluctuating state of public opinion
regulates their feverish, restless enthusiasm, like a thermometer.
They blow hot or cold, according as the wind sets favourably or
otherwise. With such people the only infallible test of merit is
success; and no arguments are true that have not a large or powerful
majority on their side. They go by appearances. Their vanity, not the
truth, is their ruling object. They are not the last to quit a
falling cause, and they are the first to hail the rising sun. Their
minds want sincerity, modesty, and keeping. With them--
----'To have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery.'
They still, 'with one consent, praise new-born gauds,' and Fame, as
they construe it, is
----'Like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand;
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps the in comer. Welcome ever smiles,
And Farewell goes out sighing.'
Such servile flatterers made an idol of Buonaparte while fortune
smiled upon him, but when it left him, they removed him from his
pedestal in the cabinet of their vanity, as we take down the picture
of a relation that has died without naming us in his will. The opinion
of such triflers is worth nothing; it is merely an echo. We do not
want to be told the event of a question, but the rights of it. Truth
is in their theory nothing but 'noise and inexplicable dumb show.'
They are the heralds, outriders, and trumpeters in the procession of
fame; are more loud and boisterous than the rest, and give themselves
great airs, as the avowed patrons and admirers of genius and merit. As
there are many who change their sentiments with circumstances (as they
decided lawsuits in Rabelais with the dice), so there are others who
change them with their acquaintance. 'Tell me your company, and I'll
tell you your opinions,' might be said to many a man who piques
himself on a select and superior view of things, distinct from the
vulgar. Individuals of this class are quick and versatile, but they
are not beforehand with opinion. They catch it, when it is pointed out
to them, and take it at the rebound, instead of giving the first
impulse. Their minds are a light, luxuriant soil, into which thoughts
are easily transplanted, and shoot up with uncommon sprightliness and
vigour. They wear the dress of other people's minds very gracefully
and unconsciously. They tell you your own opinion, or very gravely
repeat an observation you have made to them about half a year
afterwards. They let you into the delicacies and luxuries of Spenser
with great disinterestedness, in return for your having introduced
that author to their notice. They prefer West to Raphael, Stothard to
Rubens, till they are told better. Still they are acute in the main,
and good judges in their way. By trying to improve their tastes, and
reform their notions according to an ideal standard, they perhaps
spoil and muddle their native faculties, rather than do them any good.
Their first manner is their best, because it is the most natural. It
is well not to go out of ourselves, and to be contented to take up
with what we are, for better for worse. We can neither beg, borrow,
nor steal characteristic excellences. Some views and modes of thinking
suit certain minds, as certain colours suit certain complexions. We
may part with very shining and very useful qualities, without getting
better ones to supply them. Mocking is catching, only in regard to
defects. Mimicry is always dangerous.
It is not necessary to change our road in order to advance on our
journey. We should cultivate the spot of ground we possess, to the
utmost of our power, though it may be circumscribed and comparatively
barren. _A rolling stone gathers no moss._ People may collect all the
wisdom they will ever attain, quite as well by staying at home as by
travelling abroad. There is no use in shifting from place to place,
from side to side, or from subject to subject. You have always to
begin again, and never finish any course of study or observation. By
adhering to the same principles you do not become stationary. You
enlarge, correct, and consolidate your reasonings, without
contradicting and shuffling about in your conclusions. If truth
consisted in hasty assumptions and petulant contradictions, there
might be some ground for this whiffling and violent inconsistency. But
the face of truth, like that of nature, is different and the same.
The first outline of an opinion, and the general tone of thinking, may
be sound and correct, though we may spend any quantity of time and
pains in working up and uniting the parts at subsequent sittings. If
we have misconceived the character of the countenance altogether at
first, no alterations will bring it right afterwards. Those who
mistake white for black in the first instance, may as well mistake
black for white when they reverse their canvas. I do not see what
security they can have in their present opinions, who build their
pretensions to wisdom on the total folly, rashness, and extravagance
(to say no worse) of their former ones. The perspective may change
with years and experience: we may see certain things nearer, and
others more remote; but the great masses and landmarks will remain,
though thrown into shadow and tinged by the intervening atmosphere: so
the laws of the understanding, the truth of nature, will remain, and
cannot be thrown into utter confusion and perplexity by our blunders
or caprice, like the objects in Hogarth's _Rules of Perspective_,
where everything is turned upside down, or thrust out of its
well-known place. I cannot understand how our political Harlequins
feel after all their summersaults and metamorphoses. They can hardly,
I should think, look at themselves in the glass, or walk across the
room without stumbling. This at least would be the case if they had
the least reflection or self-knowledge. But they judge from pique and
vanity solely. There should be a certain decorum in life, as in a
picture, without which it is neither useful nor agreeable. If my
opinions are not right, at any rate they are the best I have been able
to form, and better than any others I could take up at random, or out
of perversity, now. Contrary opinions vitiate one another, and destroy
the simplicity and clearness of the mind: nothing is good that has not
a beginning, a middle, and an end; and I would wish my thoughts to be
'Linked each to each by natural piety.'
1821.
ESSAY XI
PROJECT FOR A NEW THEORY OF CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LEGISLATION
When I was about fourteen (as long ago as the year 1792), in
consequence of a dispute, one day after coming out of meeting, between
my father and an old lady of the congregation, respecting the repeal
of the Corporation and Test Acts and the limits of religious
toleration, I set about forming in my head (the first time I ever
attempted to think) the following system of political rights and
general jurisprudence.
It was this circumstance that decided the fate of my future life; or
rather, I would say it was from an original bias or craving to be
satisfied of the reason of things, that I seized hold of this
accidental opportunity to indulge in its uneasy and unconscious
determination. Mr. Currie, my old tutor at Hackney, may still have the
rough draught of this speculation, which I gave him with tears in my
eyes, and which he good-naturedly accepted in lieu of the customary
_themes_, and as a proof that I was no idler, but that my inability to
produce a line on the ordinary school topics arose from my being
involved in more difficult and abstruse matters. He must smile at the
so oft-repeated charge against me of florid flippancy and tinsel. If
from those briars I have since plucked roses, what labour has it not
cost me? The Test and Corporation Acts were repealed the other day.
How would my father have rejoiced if this had happened in his time,
and in concert with his old friends Dr. Price, Dr. Priestly, and
others! but now that there is no one to care about it, they give as a
boon to indifference what they so long refused to justice, and thus
ascribed by some to the liberality of the age! Spirit of
contradiction! when wilt thou cease to rule over sublunary affairs, as
the moon governs the tides? Not till the unexpected stroke of a comet
throws up a new breed of men and animals from the bowels of the earth;
nor then neither, since it is included in the very idea of all life,
power, and motion. _For_ and _against_ are inseparable terms. But not
to wander any farther from the point--
I began with trying to define what a _right_ meant; and this I settled
with myself was not simply that which is good or useful in itself, but
that which is thought so by the individual, and which has the sanction
of his will as such. 1. Because the determining what is good in itself
is an endless question. 2. Because one person's having a right to any
good, and another being made the judge of it, leaves him without any
security for its being exercised to his advantage, whereas self-love
is a natural guarantee for our self-interest. 3. A thing being willed
is the most absolute moral reason for its existence: that a thing is
good in itself is no reason whatever why it should exist, till the
will clothes it with a power to act as a motive; and there is
certainly nothing to prevent this will from taking effect (no law or
admitted plea above it) but another will opposed to it, and which
forms a right on the same principle. A good is only so far a right,
inasmuch as it virtually determines the will; for a _right_ meant that
which contains within itself, and as respects the bosom in which it is
lodged, a cogent and unanswerable reason why it should exist. Suppose
I have a violent aversion to one thing and as strong an attachment to
something else, and that there is no other being in the world but
myself, shall I not have a self-evident right, full title, liberty, to
pursue the one and avoid the other? That is to say, in other words,
there can be no authority to interpose between the strong natural
tendency of the will and its desired effect, but the will of another.
It may be replied that reason, that affection, may interpose between
the will and the act; but there are motives that influence the conduct
by first altering the will; and the point at issue is, that these
being away, what other principle or lever is there always left to
appeal to, before we come to blows? Now, such a principle is to be
found in self-interest; and such a barrier against the violent will is
erected by the limits which this principle necessarily sets to itself
in the claims of different individuals. Thus, then, a right is not
that which is right in itself, or best for the whole, or even for the
individual, but that which is good in his own eyes, and according to
his own will; and to which, among a number of equally selfish and
self-willed beings, he can lay claim, allowing the same latitude and
allowance to others. Political justice is that which assigns the
limits of these individual rights in society, or it is the adjustment
of force against force, of will against will, to prevent worse
consequences. In the savage state there is nothing but an appeal to
brute force, or the right of the strongest; Politics lays down a rule
to curb and measure out the wills of individuals in equal portions;
Morals has a higher standard still, and ought never to appeal to force
in any case whatever. Hence I always found something wanting in Mr.
Godwin's _Enquiry concerning Political Justice_ (which I read soon
after with great avidity, and hoped, from its title and its vast
reputation, to get entire satisfaction from it), for he makes no
distinction between political justice, which implies an appeal to
force, and moral justice, which implies only an appeal to reason. It
is surely a distinct question, what you can persuade people to do by
argument and fair discussion, and what you may lawfully compel them to
do, when reason and remonstrance fail. But in Mr. Godwin's system the
'omnipotence of reason' supersedes the use of law and government,
merges the imperfection of the means in the grandeur of the end, and
leaves but one class of ideas or motives, the highest and the least
attainable possible. So promises and oaths are said to be of no more
value than common breath; nor would they, if every word we uttered was
infallible and oracular, as if delivered from a Tripod. But this is
pragmatical, and putting an imaginary for a real state of things.
Again, right and duties, according to Mr. Godwin, are reciprocal. I
could not comprehend this without an arbitrary definition that took
away the meaning. In my sense, a man might have a right, a
discriminating power, to do something, which others could not deprive
him of, without a manifest infraction of certain rules laid down for
the peace and order of society, but which it might be his duty to
waive upon good reasons shown; rights are seconded by force, duties
are things of choice. This is the import of the words in common
speech: why then pass over this distinction in a work confessedly
rhetorical as well as logical, that is, which laid an equal stress on
sound and sense? Right, therefore, has a personal or selfish
reference, as it is founded on the law which determines a man's
actions in regard to his own being and well-being; and political
justice is that which assigns the limits of these individual rights on
their compatibility or incompatibility with each other in society.
Right, in a word, is the duty which each man owes to himself; or it is
that portion of the general good of which (as being principally
interested) he is made the special judge, and which is put under his
immediate keeping.
The next question I asked myself was, what is law and the real and
necessary ground of civil government? The answer to this is found in
the former statement. _Law_ is something to abridge, or, more properly
speaking, to ascertain, the bounds of the original right, and to
coerce the will of individuals in the community. Whence, then, has the
community such a right? It can only arise in self-defence, or from the
necessity of maintaining the equal rights of every one, and of
opposing force to force in case of any violent and unwarrantable
infringement of them. Society consists of a given number of
individuals; and the aggregate right of government is only the
consequence of these inherent rights, balancing and neutralising one
another. How those who deny natural rights get at any sort of right,
divine or human, I am at a loss to discover; for whatever exists in
combination, exists beforehand in an elementary state. The world is
composed of atoms, and a machine cannot be made without materials.
First, then, it follows that law or government is not the mere
creature of a social compact, since each person has a certain right
which he is bound to defend against another without asking that
other's leave, or else the right would always be at the mercy of
whoever chose to invade it. There would be a right to do wrong, but
none to resist it. Thus I have a natural right to defend my life
against a murderer, without any mutual compact between us; hence
society has an aggregate right of the same kind, and to make a law to
that effect, forbidding and punishing murder. If there be no such
immediate value and attachment to life felt by the individual, and a
consequent justifiable determination to defend it, then the formal
pretension of society to vindicate a right, which, according to this
reasoning, has no existence in itself, must be founded on air, on a
word, or a lawyer's _ipse dixit_. Secondly, society, or government, as
such, has no right to trench upon the liberty or rights of the
individuals its members, except as these last are, as it were,
forfeited by interfering with and destroying one another, like
opposite mechanical forces or quantities in arithmetic. Put the basis
that each man's will is a sovereign law to itself: this can only hold
in society as long as he does not meddle with others; but so long as
he does not do this, the first principle retains its force, for there
is no other principle to impeach or overrule it. The will of society
is not a sufficient plea; since this is, or ought to be, made up of
the wills or rights of the individuals composing it, which by the
supposition remain entire, and consequently without power to act. The
good of society is not a sufficient plea, for individuals are only
bound (on compulsion) not to do it harm, or to be barely just:
benevolence and virtue are voluntary qualities. For instance, if two
persons are obliged to do all that is possible for the good of both,
this must either be settled voluntarily between them, and then it is
friendship, and not force; or if this is not the case, it is plain
that one must be the slave, and lie at the caprice and mercy of the
other: it will be one will forcibly regulating two bodies. But if each
is left master of his own person and actions, with only the implied
proviso of not encroaching on those of the other, then both may
continue free and independent, and contented in their several spheres.
One individual has no right to interfere with the employment of my
muscular powers, or to put violence on my person, to force me to
contribute to the most laudable undertaking if I do not approve of it,
any more than I have to force him to assist me in the direct contrary:
if one has not, ten have not, nor a million, any such arbitrary right
over me. What one can be _made_ to do for a million is very trifling:
what a million may do by being left free in all that merely concerns
themselves, and not subject to the perpetual caprice and insolence of
authority, and pretext of the public good, is a very different
calculation. By giving up the principle of political independence, it
is not the million that will govern the one, but the one that will in
time give law to the million. There are some things that cannot be
free in natural society, and against which there is a natural law; for
instance, no one can be allowed to knock out another's brains or to
fetter his limbs with impunity. And government is bound to prevent the
same violations of liberty and justice. The question is, whether it
would not be possible for a government to exist, and for a system of
laws to be framed, that confined itself to the punishment of such
offences, and left all the rest (except the suppression of force by
force) optional or matter of mutual compact. What are a man's natural
rights? Those, the infringement of which cannot on any supposition go
unpunished: by leaving all but cases of necessity to choice and
reason, much would be perhaps gained, and nothing lost.
COROLLARY 1. It results from the foregoing statement, that there is
nothing naturally to restrain or oppose the will of one man, but the
will of another meeting it. Thus, in a desert island, it is evident
that my will and rights would be absolute and unlimited, and I might
say with Robinson Crusoe, 'I am monarch of all I survey.'
COROLLARY 2. It is coming into society that circumscribes my will and
rights, by establishing equal and mutual rights, instead of the
original uncircumscribed ones. They are still 'founded as the rock,'
though not so broad and general as the casing air, for the only thing
that limits them is the solidity of another right, no better than my
own, and, like stones in a building, or a mosaic pavement, each
remains not the less firmly riveted to its place, though it cannot
encroach upon the next to it. I do not belong to the state, nor am I a
nonentity in it, but I am one part of it, and independent in it, for
that very reason that every one in it is independent of me. Equality,
instead of being destroyed by society, results from and is improved by
it; for in politics, as in physics, the action and reaction are the
same: the right of resistance on their part implies the right of
self-defence on mine. In a theatre, each person has a right to his own
seat, by the supposition that he has no right to intrude into any one
else's. They are convertible propositions. Away, then, with the notion
that liberty and equality are inconsistent. But here is the artifice:
by merging the rights and independence of the individual in the
fictitious order of society, those rights become arbitrary,
capricious, equivocal, removable at the pleasure of the state or
ruling power; there is nothing substantial or durable implied in them:
if each has no positive claim, naturally, those of all taken together
can mount up to nothing; right and justice are mere blanks to be
filled up with arbitrary will, and the people have thenceforward no
defence against the government. On the other hand, suppose these
rights to be not empty names or artificial arrangements, but original
and inherent like solid atoms, then it is not in the power of
government to annihilate one of them, whatever may be the confusion
arising from their struggle for mastery, or before they can settle
into order and harmony. Mr. Burke talks of the reflections and
refractions of the rays of light as altering their primary essence and
direction. But if there were no original rays of light, there could be
neither refraction, nor reflections. Why, then, does he try by cloudy
sophistry to blot the sun out of heaven? One body impinges against and
impedes another in the fall, but it could not do this, but for the
principle of gravity. The author of the _Sublime and Beautiful_ would
have a single atom outweigh the great globe itself; or all empty
title, a bloated privilege, or a grievous wrong overturn the entire
mass of truth and justice. The question between the author and his
opponents appears to be simply this: whether politics, or the general
good, is all affair of reason or imagination! and this seems decided
by another consideration, viz. that Imagination is the judge of
individual things, and Reason of generals. Hence the great importance
of the principle of universal suffrage; for if the vote and choice of
a single individual goes for nothing, so, by parity of reasoning, may
that of all the rest of the community: but if the choice of every man
in the community is held sacred, then what must be the weight and
value of the whole.