It is not necessary, with courtly insincerity, to apologise to you for
thus intruding on your precious time, not to profess that I think it an
honour to discuss an important subject with a man whose literary
abilities have raised him to notice in the state. I have not yet learned
to twist my periods, nor, in the equivocal idiom of politeness, to
disguise my sentiments, and imply what I should be afraid to utter: if,
therefore, in the course of this epistle, I chance to express contempt,
and even indignation, with some emphasis, I beseech you to believe that
it is not a flight of fancy; for truth, in morals, has ever appeared to
me the essence of the sublime; and, in taste, simplicity the only
criterion of the beautiful. But I war not with an individual when I
contend for the _rights of men_ and the liberty of reason. You see I do
not condescend to cull my words to avoid the invidious phrase, nor shall
I be prevented from giving a manly definition of it, by the flimsy
ridicule which a lively fancy has interwoven with the present
acceptation of the term. Reverencing the rights of humanity, I shall
dare to assert them; not intimidated by the horse laugh that you have
raised, or waiting till time has wiped away the compassionate tears
which you have elaborately laboured to excite.
From the many just sentiments interspersed through the letter before me,
and from the whole tendency of it, I should believe you to be a good,
though a vain man, if some circumstances in your conduct did not render
the inflexibility of your integrity doubtful; and for this vanity a
knowledge of human nature enables me to discover such extenuating
circumstances, in the very texture of your mind, that I am ready to call
it amiable, and separate the public from the private character.
I know that a lively imagination renders a man particularly calculated
to shine in conversation and in those desultory productions where method
is disregarded; and the instantaneous applause which his eloquence
extorts is at once a reward and a spur. Once a wit and always a wit, is
an aphorism that has received the sanction of experience; yet I am apt
to conclude that the man who with scrupulous anxiety endeavours to
support that shining character, can never nourish by reflection any
profound, or, if you please, metaphysical passion. Ambition becomes only
the tool of vanity, and his reason, the weather-cock of unrestrained
feelings, is only employed to varnish over the faults which it ought to
have corrected.
Sacred, however, would the infirmities and errors of a good man be, in
my eyes, if they were only displayed in a private circle; if the venial
fault only rendered the wit anxious, like a celebrated beauty, to raise
admiration on every occasion, and excite emotion, instead of the calm
reciprocation of mutual esteem and unimpassioned respect. Such vanity
enlivens social intercourse, and forces the little great man to be
always on his guard to secure his throne; and an ingenious man, who is
ever on the watch for conquest, will, in his eagerness to exhibit his
whole store of knowledge, furnish an attentive observer with some useful
information, calcined by fancy and formed by taste.
And though some dry reasoner might whisper that the arguments were
superficial, and should even add, that the feelings which are thus
ostentatiously displayed are often the cold declamation of the head, and
not the effusions of the heart—what will these shrewd remarks avail,
when the witty arguments and ornamental feelings are on a level with the
comprehension of the fashionable world, and a book is found very
amusing? Even the Ladies, Sir, may repeat your sprightly sallies, and
retail in theatrical attitudes many of your sentimental exclamations.
Sensibility is the _manie_ of the day, and compassion the virtue which
is to cover a multitude of vices, whilst justice is left to mourn in
sullen silence, and balance truth in vain.
In life, an honest man with a confined understanding is frequently the
slave of his habits and the dupe of his feelings, whilst the man with a
clearer head and colder heart makes the passions of others bend to his
interest; but truly sublime is the character that acts from principle,
and governs the inferior springs of activity without slackening their
vigour; whose feelings give vital heat to his resolves, but never hurry
him into feverish eccentricities.
However, as you have informed us that respect chills love, it is natural
to conclude, that all your pretty flights arise from your pampered
sensibility; and that, vain of this fancied pre-eminence of organs, you
foster every emotion till the fumes, mounting to your brain, dispel the
sober suggestions of reason. It is not in this view surprising, that
when you should argue you become impassioned, and that reflection
inflames your imagination, instead of enlightening your understanding.
Quitting now the flowers of rhetoric, let us, Sir, reason together; and,
believe me, I should not have meddled with these troubled waters, in
order to point out your inconsistencies, if your wit had not burnished
up some rusty, baneful opinions, and swelled the shallow current of
ridicule till it resembled the flow of reason, and presumed to be the
test of truth.
I shall not attempt to follow you through “horse-way and foot-path;”
but, attacking the foundation of your opinions, I shall leave the
superstructure to find a centre of gravity on which it may lean till
some strong blast puffs it into air; or your teeming fancy, which the
ripening judgment of sixty years has not tamed, produces another Chinese
erection, to stare, at every turn, the plain country people in the face,
who bluntly call such an airy edifice—a folly.
The birthright of man, to give you, Sir, a short definition of this
disputed right, is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is
compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is
united in a social compact, and the continued existence of that compact.
Liberty, in this simple, unsophisticated sense, I acknowledge, is a fair
idea that has never yet received a form in the various governments that
have been established on our beauteous globe; the demon of property has
ever been at hand to encroach on the sacred rights of men, and to fence
round with awful pomp laws that war with justice. But that it results
from the eternal foundation of right—from immutable truth—who will
presume to deny, that pretends to rationality—if reason has led them to
build their morality[1] and religion on an everlasting foundation—the
attributes of God?
I glow with indignation when I attempt, methodically, to unravel your
slavish paradoxes, in which I can find no fixed first principle to
refute; I shall not, therefore, condescend to shew where you affirm in
one page what you deny in another; and how frequently you draw
conclusions without any previous premises:—it would be something like
cowardice to fight with a man who had never exercised the weapons with
which his opponent chose to combat, and irksome to refute sentence after
sentence in which the latent spirit of tyranny appeared.
I perceive, from the whole tenor of your Reflections, that you have a
mortal antipathy to reason; but, if there is any thing like argument, or
first principles, in your wild declamation, behold the result:—that we
are to reverence the rust of antiquity, and term the unnatural customs,
which ignorance and mistaken self-interest have consolidated, the sage
fruit of experience: nay, that, if we do discover some errors, our
_feelings_ should lead us to excuse, with blind love, or unprincipled
filial affection, the venerable vestiges of ancient days. These are
gothic notions of beauty—the ivy is beautiful, but, when it insidiously
destroys the trunk from which it receives support, who would not grub it
up?
Further, that we ought cautiously to remain for ever in frozen
inactivity, because a thaw, whilst it nourishes the soil, spreads a
temporary inundation; and the fear of risking any personal present
convenience should prevent a struggle for the most estimable advantages.
This is sound reasoning, I grant, in the mouth of the rich and
short-sighted.
Yes, Sir, the strong gained riches, the few have sacrificed the many to
their vices; and, to be able to pamper their appetites, and supinely
exist without exercising mind or body, they have ceased to be men.—Lost
to the relish of true pleasure, such beings would, indeed, deserve
compassion, if injustice was not softened by the tyrant’s
plea—necessity; if prescription was not raised as an immortal boundary
against innovation. Their minds, in fact, instead of being cultivated,
have been so warped by education, that it may require some ages to bring
them back to nature, and enable them to see their true interest, with
that degree of conviction which is necessary to influence their conduct.
The civilization which has taken place in Europe has been very partial,
and, like every custom that an arbitrary point of honour has
established, refines the manners at the expence of morals, by making
sentiments and opinions current in conversation that have no root in the
heart, or weight in the cooler resolves of the mind.—And what has
stopped its progress?—hereditary property—hereditary honours. The man
has been changed into an artificial monster by the station in which he
was born, and the consequent homage that benumbed his faculties like the
torpedo’s touch;—or a being, with a capacity of reasoning, would not
have failed to discover, as his faculties unfolded, that true happiness
arose from the friendship and intimacy which can only be enjoyed by
equals; and that charity is not a condescending distribution of alms,
but an intercourse of good offices and mutual benefits, founded on
respect for justice and humanity.
Governed by these principles, the poor wretch, whose _inelegant_
distress extorted from a mixed feeling of disgust and animal sympathy
present relief, would have been considered as a man, whose misery
demanded a part of his birthright, supposing him to be industrious; but
should his vices have reduced him to poverty, he could only have
addressed his fellow-men as weak beings, subject to like passions, who
ought to forgive, because they expect to be forgiven, for suffering the
impulse of the moment to silence the suggestions of conscience, or
reason, which you will; for, in my view of things, they are synonymous
terms.
Will Mr. Burke be at the trouble to inform us, how far we are to go back
to discover the rights of men, since the light of reason is such a
fallacious guide that none but fools trust to its cold investigation?
In the infancy of society, confining our view to our own country,
customs were established by the lawless power of an ambitious
individual; or a weak prince was obliged to comply with every demand of
the licentious barbarous insurgents, who disputed his authority with
irrefragable arguments at the point of their swords; or the more
specious requests of the Parliament, who only allowed him conditional
supplies.
Are these the venerable pillars of our constitution? And is Magna Charta
to rest for its chief support on a former grant, which reverts to
another, till chaos becomes the base of the mighty structure—or we
cannot tell what?—for coherence, without some pervading principle of
order, is a solecism.
Speaking of Edward the IIId. Hume observes, that ‘he was a prince of
great capacity, not governed by favourites, not led astray by any unruly
passion, sensible that nothing could be more essential to his interests
than to keep on good terms with his people: yet, on the whole, it
appears that the government, at best, was only a barbarous monarchy, not
regulated by any fixed maxims, or bounded by any certain or undisputed
rights, which in practice were regularly observed. The King conducted
himself by one set of principles; the Barons by another; the Commons by
a third; the Clergy by a fourth. All these systems of government were
opposite and incompatible: each of them prevailed in its turn, as
incidents were favourable to it: a great prince rendered the monarchical
power predominant: the weakness of a king gave reins to the aristocracy:
a superstitious age saw the clergy triumphant: the people, for whom
chiefly government was instituted, and who chiefly deserve
consideration, were the weakest of the whole.’
And just before that most auspicious æra, the fourteenth century, during
the reign of Richard II. whose total incapacity to manage the reins of
power, and keep in subjection his haughty Barons, rendered him a mere
cypher; the House of Commons, to whom he was obliged frequently to
apply, not only for subsidies but assistance to quell the insurrections
that the contempt in which he was held naturally produced, gradually
rose into power; for whenever they granted supplies to the King, they
demanded in return, though it bore the name of petition, a confirmation,
or the renewal of former charters, which had been infringed, and even
utterly disregarded by the King and his seditious Barons, who
principally held their independence of the crown by force of arms, and
the encouragement which they gave to robbers and villains, who infested
the country, and lived by rapine and violence.
To what dreadful extremities were the poorer sort reduced, their
property, the fruit of their industry, being entirely at the disposal of
their lords, who were so many petty tyrants!
In return for the supplies and assistance which the king received from
the commons, they demanded privileges, which Edward, in his distress for
money to prosecute the numerous wars in which he was engaged during the
greater part of his reign, was constrained to grant them; so that by
degrees they rose to power, and became a check on both king and nobles.
Thus was the foundation of our liberty established, chiefly through the
pressing necessities of the king, who was more intent on being supplied
for the moment, in order to carry on his wars and ambitious projects,
than aware of the blow he gave to kingly power, by thus making a body of
men feel their importance, who afterwards might strenuously oppose
tyranny and oppression, and effectually guard the subject’s property
from seizure and confiscation. Richard’s weakness completed what
Edward’s ambition began.
At this period, it is true, Wickliffe opened a vista for reason by
attacking some of the most pernicious tenets of the church of Rome;
still the prospect was sufficiently misty to authorize the
question—Where was the dignity of thinking of the fourteenth century?
A Roman Catholic, it is true, enlightened by the reformation, might,
with singular propriety, celebrate the epoch that preceded it, to turn
our thoughts from former atrocious enormities; but a Protestant must
acknowledge that this faint dawn of liberty only made the subsiding
darkness more visible; and that the boasted virtues of that century all
bear the stamp of stupid pride and headstrong barbarism. Civility was
then called condescension, and ostentatious almsgiving humanity; and men
were content to borrow their virtues, or, to speak with more propriety,
their consequence, from posterity, rather than undertake the arduous
task of acquiring it for themselves.
The imperfection of all modern governments must, without waiting to
repeat the trite remark, that all human institutions are unavoidably
imperfect, in a great measure have arisen from this simple circumstance,
that the constitution, if such an heterogeneous mass deserve that name,
was settled in the dark days of ignorance, when the minds of men were
shackled by the grossest prejudices and most immoral superstition. And
do you, Sir, a sagacious philosopher, recommend night as the fittest
time to analyze a ray of light?
Are we to seek for the rights of men in the ages when a few marks were
the only penalty imposed for the life of a man, and death for death when
the property of the rich was touched? when—I blush to discover the
depravity of our nature—when a deer was killed! Are these the laws that
it is natural to love, and sacrilegious to invade?—Were the rights of
men understood when the law authorized or tolerated murder?—or is power
and right the same in your creed?
But in fact all your declamation leads so directly to this conclusion,
that I beseech you to ask your own heart, when you call yourself a
friend of liberty, whether it would not be more consistent to style
yourself the champion of property, the adorer of the golden image which
power has set up?—And, when you are examining your heart, if it would
not be too much like mathematical drudgery, to which a fine imagination
very reluctantly stoops, enquire further, how it is consistent with the
vulgar notions of honesty, and the foundation of morality—truth; for a
man to boast of his virtue and independence, when he cannot forget that
he is at the moment enjoying the wages of falsehood[2]; and that, in a
skulking, unmanly way, he has secured himself a pension of fifteen
hundred pounds per annum on the Irish establishment? Do honest men, Sir,
for I am not rising to the refined principle of honour, ever receive the
reward of their public services, or secret assistance, in the name of
_another_?
But to return from a digression which you will more perfectly understand
than any of my readers—on what principle you, Sir, can justify the
reformation, which tore up by the roots an old establishment, I cannot
guess—but, I beg your pardon, perhaps you do not wish to justify it—and
have some mental reservation to excuse you, to yourself, for not openly
avowing your reverence. Or, to go further back;—had you been a Jew—you
would have joined in the cry, crucify him!—crucify him! The promulgator
of a new doctrine, and the violator of old laws and customs, that not
melting, like ours, into darkness and ignorance, rested on Divine
authority, must have been a dangerous innovator, in your eyes,
particularly if you had not been informed that the Carpenter’s Son was
of the stock and lineage of David. But there is no end to the arguments
which might be deduced to combat such palpable absurdities, by shewing
the manifest inconsistencies which are necessarily involved in a direful
train of false opinions.
It is necessary emphatically to repeat, that there are rights which men
inherit at their birth, as rational creatures, who were raised above the
brute creation by their improvable faculties; and that, in receiving
these, not from their forefathers but, from God, prescription can never
undermine natural rights.
A father may dissipate his property without his child having any right
to complain;—but should he attempt to sell him for a slave, or fetter
him with laws contrary to reason; nature, in enabling him to discern
good from evil, teaches him to break the ignoble chain, and not to
believe that bread becomes flesh, and wine blood, because his parents
swallowed the Eucharist with this blind persuasion.
There is no end to this implicit submission to authority—some where it
must stop, or we return to barbarism; and the capacity of improvement,
which gives us a natural sceptre on earth, is a cheat, an ignis-fatuus,
that leads us from inviting meadows into bogs and dunghills. And if it
be allowed that many of the precautions, with which any alteration was
made, in our government, were prudent, it rather proves its weakness
than substantiates an opinion of the soundness of the stamina, or the
excellence of the constitution.
But on what principle Mr. Burke could defend American independence, I
cannot conceive; for the whole tenor of his plausible arguments settles
slavery on an everlasting foundation. Allowing his servile reverence for
antiquity, and prudent attention to self-interest, to have the force
which he insists on, the slave trade ought never to be abolished; and,
because our ignorant forefathers, not understanding the native dignity
of man, sanctioned a traffic that outrages every suggestion of reason
and religion, we are to submit to the inhuman custom, and term an
atrocious insult to humanity the love of our country, and a proper
submission to the laws by which our property is secured.—Security of
property! Behold, in a few words, the definition of English liberty. And
to this selfish principle every nobler one is sacrificed.—The Briton
takes place of the man, and the image of God is lost in the citizen! But
it is not that enthusiastic flame which in Greece and Rome consumed
every sordid passion: no, self is the focus; and the disparting rays
rise not above our foggy atmosphere. But softly—it is only the property
of the rich that is secure; the man who lives by the sweat of his brow
has no asylum from oppression; the strong man may enter—when was the
castle of the poor sacred? and the base informer steal him from the
family that depend on his industry for subsistence.
Fully sensible as you must be of the baneful consequences that
inevitably follow this notorious infringement on the dearest rights of
men, and that it is an infernal blot on the very face of our immaculate
constitution, I cannot avoid expressing my surprise that when you
recommended our form of government as a model, you did not caution the
French against the arbitrary custom of pressing men for the sea service.
You should have hinted to them, that property in England is much more
secure than liberty, and not have concealed that the liberty of an
honest mechanic—his all—is often sacrificed to secure the property of
the rich. For it is a farce to pretend that a man fights _for his
country, his hearth, or his altars_, when he has neither liberty nor
property.—His property is in his nervous arms—and they are compelled to
pull a strange rope at the surly command of a tyrannic boy, who probably
obtained his rank on account of his family connections, or the
prostituted vote of his father, whose interest in a borough, or voice as
a senator, was acceptable to the minister.
Our penal laws punish with death the thief who steals a few pounds; but
to take by violence, or trepan, a man, is no such heinous offence.—For
who shall dare to complain of the venerable vestige of the law that
rendered the life of a deer more sacred than that of a man? But it was
the poor man with only his native dignity who was thus oppressed—and
only metaphysical sophists and cold mathematicians can discern this
insubstantial form; it is a work of abstraction—and a _gentleman_ of
lively imagination must borrow some drapery from fancy before he can
love or pity a _man_.—Misery, to reach your heart, I perceive, must have
its cap and bells; your tears are reserved, very _naturally_ considering
your character, for the declamation of the theatre, or for the downfall
of queens, whose rank alters the nature of folly, and throws a graceful
veil over vices that degrade humanity; whilst the distress of many
industrious mothers, whose _helpmates_ have been torn from them, and the
hungry cry of helpless babes, were vulgar sorrows that could not move
your commiseration, though they might extort an alms. ‘The tears that
are shed for fictitious sorrow are admirably adapted,’ says Rousseau,
‘to make us proud of all the virtues which we do not possess.’
The baneful effects of the despotic practice of pressing we shall, in
all probability, soon feel; for a number of men, who have been taken
from their daily employments, will shortly be let loose on society, now
that there is no longer any apprehension of a war.
The vulgar, and by this epithet I mean not only to describe a class of
people, who, working to support the body, have not had time to cultivate
their minds; but likewise those who, born in the lap of affluence, have
never had their invention sharpened by necessity are, nine out of ten,
the creatures of habit and impulse.
If I were not afraid to derange your nervous system by the bare mention
of a metaphysical enquiry, I should observe, Sir, that self-preservation
is, literally speaking, the first law of nature; and that the care
necessary to support and guard the body is the first step to unfold the
mind, and inspire a manly spirit of independence. The mewing babe in
swaddling clothes, who is treated like a superior being, may perchance
become a gentleman; but nature must have given him uncommon faculties
if, when pleasure hangs on every bough, he has sufficient fortitude
either to exercise his mind or body in order to acquire personal merit.
The passions are necessary auxiliaries of reason: a present impulse
pushes us forward, and when we discover that the game did not deserve
the chace, we find that we have gone over much ground, and not only
gained many new ideas, but a habit of thinking. The exercise of our
faculties is the great end, though not the goal we had in view when we
started with such eagerness.
It would be straying still further into metaphysics to add, that this is
one of the strongest arguments for the natural immortality of the
soul.—Every thing looks like a means, nothing like an end, or point of
rest, when we can say, now let us sit down and enjoy the present moment;
our faculties and wishes are proportioned to the present scene; we may
return without repining to our sister clod. And, if no conscious dignity
whisper that we are capable of relishing more refined pleasures, the
thirst of truth appears to be allayed; and thought, the faint type of an
immaterial energy, no longer bounding it knows not where, is confined to
the tenement that affords it sufficient variety.—The rich man may then
thank his God that he is not like other men—but when is retribution to
be made to the miserable, who cry day and night for help, and there is
no one at hand to help them? And not only misery but immorality proceeds
from this stretch of arbitrary authority. The vulgar have not the power
of emptying their mind of the only ideas they imbibed whilst their hands
were employed; they cannot quickly turn from one kind of life to
another. Pressing them entirely unhinges their minds; they acquire new
habits, and cannot return to their old occupations with their former
readiness; consequently they fall into idleness, drunkenness, and the
whole train of vices which you stigmatise as gross.
A government that acts in this manner cannot be called a good parent,
nor inspire natural (habitual is the proper word) affection, in the
breasts of children who are thus disregarded.
The game laws are almost as oppressive to the peasantry as
press-warrants to the mechanic. In this land of liberty what is to
secure the property of the poor farmer when his noble landlord chooses
to plant a decoy field near his little property? Game devour the fruit
of his labour; but fines and imprisonment await him if he dare to kill
any—or lift up his hand to interrupt the pleasure of his lord. How many
families have been plunged, in the _sporting_ countries, into misery and
vice for some paltry transgression of these coercive laws, by the
natural consequence of that anger which a man feels when he sees the
reward of his industry laid waste by unfeeling luxury?—when his
children’s bread is given to dogs!
You have shewn, Sir, by your silence on these subjects, that your
respect for rank has swallowed up the common feelings of humanity; you
seem to consider the poor as only the live stock of an estate, the
feather of hereditary nobility. When you had so little respect for the
silent majesty of misery, I am not surprised at your manner of treating
an individual whose brow a mitre will never grace, and whose popularity
may have wounded your vanity—for vanity is ever fore. Even in France,
Sir, before the revolution, literary celebrity procured a man the
treatment of a gentleman; but you are going back for your credentials of
politeness to more distant times.—Gothic affability is the mode you
think proper to adopt, the condescension of a Baron, not the civility of
a liberal man. Politeness is, indeed, the only substitute for humanity;
or what distinguishes the civilised man from the unlettered savage? and
he who is not governed by reason should square his behaviour by an
arbitrary standard; but by what rule your attack on Dr. Price was
regulated we have yet to learn.
I agree with you, Sir, that the pulpit is not the place for political
discussions, though it might be more excusable to enter on such a
subject, when the day was set apart merely to commemorate a political
revolution, and no stated duty was encroached upon. I will, however,
wave this point, and allow that Dr. Price’s zeal may have carried him
further than sound reason can justify. I do also most cordially coincide
with you, that till we can see the remote consequences of things,
present calamities must appear in the ugly form of evil, and excite our
commiseration. The good that time slowly educes from them may be hid
from mortal eye, or dimly seen; whilst sympathy compels man to feel for
man, and almost restrains the hand that would amputate a limb to save
the whole body. But, after making this concession, allow me to
expostulate with you, and calmly hold up the glass which will shew you
your partial feelings.
In reprobating Dr. Price’s opinions you might have spared the man; and
if you had had but half as much reverence for the grey hairs of virtue
as for the accidental distinctions of rank, you would not have treated
with such indecent familiarity and supercilious contempt, a member of
the community whose talents and modest virtues place him high in the
scale of moral excellence. I am not accustomed to look up with vulgar
awe, even when mental superiority exalts a man above his fellows; but
still the sight of a man whose habits are fixed by piety and reason, and
whose virtues are consolidated into goodness, commands my homage—and I
should touch his errors with a tender hand when I made a parade of my
sensibility. Granting, for a moment, that Dr. Price’s political opinions
are Utopian reveries, and that the world is not yet sufficiently
civilized to adopt such a sublime system of morality; they could,
however, only be the reveries of a benevolent mind. Tottering on the
verge of the grave, that worthy man in his whole life never dreamt of
struggling for power or riches; and, if a glimpse of the glad dawn of
liberty rekindled the fire of youth in his veins, you, who could not
stand the fascinating glance of a _great_ Lady’s eyes, when neither
virtue nor sense beamed in them, might have pardoned his unseemly
transport,—if such it must be deemed.
I could almost fancy that I now see this respectable old man, in his
pulpit, with hands clasped, and eyes devoutly fixed, praying with all
the simple energy of unaffected piety; or, when more erect, inculcating
the dignity of virtue, and enforcing the doctrines his life adorns;
benevolence animated each feature, and persuasion attuned his accents;
the preacher grew eloquent, who only laboured to be clear; and the
respect that he extorted, seemed only the respect due to personified
virtue and matured wisdom.—Is this the man you brand with so many
opprobrious epithets? he whose private life will stand the test of the
strictest enquiry—away with such unmanly sarcasms, and puerile
conceits.—But, before I close this part of my animadversions, I must
convict you of wilful misrepresentation and wanton abuse.
Dr. Price, when he reasons on the necessity of men attending some place
of public worship, concisely obviates an objection that has been made in
the form of an apology, by advising those, who do not approve of our
Liturgy, and cannot find any mode of worship out of the church, in which
they can conscientiously join, to establish one for themselves. This
plain advice you have tortured into a very different meaning, and
represented the preacher as actuated by a dissenting phrensy,
recommending dissensions, ‘not to diffuse truth, but to spread
contradictions[3].’ A simple question will silence this impertinent
declamation.—What is truth? A few fundamental truths meet the first
enquiry of reason, and appear as clear to an unwarped mind, as that air
and bread are necessary to enable the body to fulfil its vital
functions; but the opinions which men discuss with so much heat must be
simplified and brought back to first principles; or who can discriminate
the vagaries of the imagination, or scrupulosity of weakness, from the
verdict of reason? Let all these points be demonstrated, and not
determined by arbitrary authority and dark traditions, lest a dangerous
supineness should take place; for probably, in ceasing to enquire, our
reason would remain dormant, and delivered up, without a curb, to every
impulse of passion, we might soon lose sight of the clear light which
the exercise of our understanding no longer kept alive. To argue from
experience, it should seem as if the human mind, averse to thought,
could only be opened by necessity; for, when it can take opinions on
trust, it gladly lets the spirit lie quiet in its gross tenement.
Perhaps the most improving exercise of the mind, confining the argument
to the enlargement of the understanding, is the restless enquiries that
hover on the boundary, or stretch over the dark abyss of uncertainty.
These lively conjectures are the breezes that preserve the still lake
from stagnating. We should be aware of confining all moral excellence to
one channel, however capacious; or, if we are so narrow-minded, we
should not forget how much we owe to chance that our inheritance was not
Mahometism; and that the iron hand of destiny, in the shape of deeply
rooted authority, has not suspended the sword of destruction over our
heads. But to return to the misrepresentation.
[4]Blackstone, to whom Mr. Burke pays great deference, seems to agree
with Dr. Price, that the succession of the King of Great Britain depends
on the choice of the people, or that they have a power to cut it off;
but this power, as you have fully proved, has been cautiously exerted,
and might with more propriety be termed a _right_ than a power. Be it
so!—yet when you elaborately cited precedents to shew that our
forefathers paid great respect to hereditary claims, you might have gone
back to your favourite epoch, and shewn their respect for a church that
fulminating laws have since loaded with opprobrium. The preponderance of
inconsistencies, when weighed with precedents, should lessen the most
bigoted veneration for antiquity, and force men of the eighteenth
century to acknowledge, that our _canonized forefathers_ were unable, or
afraid, to revert to reason, without resting on the crutch of authority;
and should not be brought as a proof that their children are never to be
allowed to walk alone.
When we doubt the infallible wisdom of our ancestors, it is only
advancing on the same ground to doubt the sincerity of the law, and the
propriety of that servile appellation—OUR SOVEREIGN LORD THE KING. Who
were the dictators of this adulatory language of the law? Were they not
courtly parasites and worldly priests? Besides, whoever at divine
service, whose feelings were not deadened by habit, or their
understandings quiescent, ever repeated without horror the same epithets
applied to a man and his Creator? If this is confused jargon—say what
are the dictates of sober reason, or the criterion to distinguish
nonsense?
You further sarcastically animadvert on the consistency of the
democratists, by wresting the obvious meaning of a common phrase, _the
dregs of the people_; or your contempt for poverty may have led you into
an error. Be that as it may, an unprejudiced man would have directly
perceived the single sense of the word, and an old Member of Parliament
could scarcely have missed it. He who had so often felt the pulse of the
electors needed not have gone beyond his own experience to discover that
the dregs alluded to were the vicious, and not the lower class of the
community.
Again, Sir, I must doubt your sincerity or your discernment.—You have
been behind the curtain; and, though it might be difficult to bring back
your sophisticated heart to nature and make you feel like a man, yet the
awestruck confusion in which you were plunged must have gone off when
the vulgar emotion of wonder, excited by finding yourself a Senator, had
subsided. Then you must have seen the clogged wheels of corruption
continually oiled by the sweat of the laborious poor, squeezed out of
them by unceasing taxation. You must have discovered that the majority
in the House of Commons was often purchased by the crown, and that the
people were oppressed by the influence of their own money, extorted by
the venal voice of a packed representation.
You must have known that a man of merit cannot rise in the church, the
army, or navy, unless he has some interest in a borough; and that even a
paltry exciseman’s place can only be secured by electioneering interest.
I will go further, and assert that few Bishops, though there have been
learned and good Bishops, have gained the mitre without submitting to a
servility of dependence that degrades the man.—All these circumstances
you must have known, yet you talk of virtue and liberty, as the vulgar
talk of the letter of the law; and the polite of propriety. It is true
that these ceremonial observances produce decorum; the sepulchres are
white-washed, and do not offend the squeamish eyes of high rank; but
virtue is out of the question when you only worship a shadow, and
worship it to secure your property.
Man has been termed, with strict propriety, a microcosm, a little world
in himself.—He is so;—yet must, however, be reckoned an ephemera, or, to
adopt your figure of rhetoric, a summer’s fly. The perpetuation of
property in our families is one of the privileges you most warmly
contend for; yet it would not be very difficult to prove that the mind
must have a very limited range that thus confines its benevolence to
such a narrow circle, which, with great propriety, may be included in
the sordid calculations of blind self-love.
A brutal attachment to children has appeared most conspicuous in parents
who have treated them like slaves, and demanded due homage for all the
property they transferred to them, during their lives. It has led them
to force their children to break the most sacred ties; to do violence to
a natural impulse, and run into legal prostitution to increase wealth or
shun poverty; and, still worse, the dread of parental malediction has
made many weak characters violate truth in the face of Heaven; and, to
avoid a father’s angry curse, the most sacred promises have been broken.
It appears to be a natural suggestion of reason, that a man should be
freed from implicit obedience to parents and private punishments, when
he is of an age to be subject to the jurisdiction of the laws of his
country; and that the barbarous cruelty of allowing parents to imprison
their children, to prevent their contaminating their noble blood by
following the dictates of nature when they chose to marry, or for any
misdemeanor that does not come under the cognizance of public justice,
is one of the most arbitrary violations of liberty.
Who can recount all the unnatural crimes which the _laudable_,
_interesting_ desire of perpetuating a name has produced? The younger
children have been sacrificed to the eldest son; sent into exile, or
confined in convents, that they might not encroach on what was called,
with shameful falsehood, the _family_ estate. Will Mr. Burke call this
parental affection reasonable or virtuous?—No; it is the spurious
offspring of over-weening, mistaken pride—and not that first source of
civilization, natural parental affection, that makes no difference
between child and child, but what reason justifies by pointing out
superior merit.
Another pernicious consequence which unavoidably arises from this
artificial affection is, the insuperable bar which it puts in the way of
early marriages. It would be difficult to determine whether the minds or
bodies of our youth are most injured by this impediment. Our young men
become selfish coxcombs, and gallantry with modest women, and intrigues
with those of another description, weaken both mind and body, before
either has arrived at maturity. The character of a master of a family, a
husband, and a father, forms the citizen imperceptibly, by producing a
sober manliness of thought, and orderly behaviour; but, from the lax
morals and depraved affections of the libertine, what results?—a finical
man of taste, who is only anxious to secure his own private
gratifications, and to maintain his rank in society.
The same system has an equally pernicious effect on female morals.—Girls
are sacrificed to family convenience, or else marry to settle themselves
in a superior rank, and coquet, without restraint, with the fine
gentleman whom I have already described. And to such lengths has this
vanity, this desire of shining, carried them, that it is not now
necessary to guard girls against imprudent love matches; for if some
widows did not now and then _fall_ in love, Love and Hymen would seldom
meet, unless at a village church.
I do not intend to be sarcastically paradoxical when I say, that women
of fashion take husbands that they may have it in their power to coquet,
the grand business of genteel life, with a number of admirers, and thus
flutter the spring of life away, without laying up any store for the
winter of age, or being of any use to society. Affection in the marriage
state can only be founded on respect—and are these weak beings
respectable? Children are neglected for lovers, and we express surprise
that adulteries are so common! A woman never forgets to adorn herself to
make an impression on the senses of the other sex, and to extort the
homage which it is gallant to pay, and yet we wonder that they have such
confined understandings!
Have ye not heard that we cannot serve two masters? an immoderate desire
to please contracts the faculties, and immerges, to borrow the idea of a
great philosopher, the soul in matter, till it becomes unable to mount
on the wing of contemplation.
It would be an arduous task to trace all the vice and misery that arise
in society from the middle class of people apeing the manners of the
great. All are aiming to procure respect on account of their property;
and most places are considered as sinecures that enable men to start
into notice. The grand concern of three parts out of four is to contrive
to live above their equals, and to appear to be richer than they are.
How much domestic comfort and private satisfaction is sacrificed to this
irrational ambition! It is a destructive mildew that blights the fairest
virtues; benevolence, friendship, generosity, and all those endearing
charities which bind human hearts together, and the pursuits which raise
the mind to higher contemplations, all that were not cankered in the bud
by the false notions that ‘grew with its growth and strengthened with
its strength,’ are crushed by the iron hand of property!
Property, I do not scruple to aver it, should be fluctuating, which
would be the case, if it were more equally divided amongst all the
children of a family; else it is an everlasting rampart, in consequence
of a barbarous feudal institution, that enables the elder son to
overpower talents and depress virtue.
Besides, an unmanly servility, most inimical to true dignity of
character is, by this means, fostered in society. Men of some abilities
play on the follies of the rich, and mounting to fortune as they degrade
themselves, they stand in the way of men of superior talents, who cannot
advance in such crooked paths, or wade through the filth which
_parasites_ never boggle at. Pursuing their way straight forward, their
spirit is either bent or broken by the rich man’s contumelies, or the
difficulties they have to encounter.
The only security of property that nature authorizes and reason
sanctions is, the right a man has to enjoy the acquisitions which his
talents and industry have acquired; and to bequeath them to whom he
chooses. Happy would it be for the world if there were no other road to
wealth or honour; if pride, in the shape of parental affection, did not
absorb the man, and prevent friendship from having the same weight as
relationship. Luxury and effeminacy would not then introduce so much
idiotism into the noble families which form one of the pillars of our
state: the ground would not lie fallow, nor would undirected activity of
mind spread the contagion of restless idleness, and its concomitant,
vice, through the whole mass of society.
Instead of gaming they might nourish a virtuous ambition, and love might
take place of the gallantry which you, with knightly fealty, venerate.
Women would probably then act like mothers, and the fine lady, become a
rational woman, might think it necessary to superintend her family and
suckle her children, in order to fulfil her part of the social compact.
But vain is the hope, whilst great masses of property are hedged round
by hereditary honours; for numberless vices, forced in the hot-bed of
wealth, assume a sightly form to dazzle the senses and cloud the
understanding. The respect paid to rank and fortune damps every generous
purpose of the soul, and stifles the natural affections on which human
contentment ought to be built. Who will venturously ascend the steeps of
virtue, or explore the great deep for knowledge, when _the one thing
needful_, attained by less arduous exertions, if not inherited, procures
the attention man naturally pants after, and vice ‘loses half its evil
by losing all its grossness[5].’—What a sentiment to come from a moral
pen!
A surgeon would tell you that by skinning over a wound you spread
disease through the whole frame; and, surely, they indirectly aim at
destroying all purity of morals, who poison the very source of virtue,
by smearing a sentimental varnish over vice, to hide its natural
deformity. Stealing, whoring, and drunkenness, are gross vices, I
presume, though they may not obliterate every moral sentiment, and have
a vulgar brand that makes them appear with all their native deformity;
but overreaching, adultery, and coquetry, are venial offences, though
they reduce virtue to an empty name, and make wisdom consist in saving
appearances.
‘On this scheme of things[6] a king _is_ but a man; a queen _is_ but a
woman; a woman _is_ but an animal, and an animal not of the highest
order.’—All true, Sir; if she is not more attentive to the duties of
humanity than queens and fashionable ladies in general are, I will still
further accede to the opinion you have so justly conceived of the spirit
which begins to animate this age.—‘All homage paid to the sex in
general, as such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as
_romance_ and folly.’ Undoubtedly; because such homage vitiates them,
prevents their endeavouring to obtain solid personal merit; and, in
short, makes those beings vain inconsiderate dolls, who ought to be
prudent mothers and useful members of society. ‘Regicide and sacrilege
are but fictions of superstition corrupting jurisprudence, by destroying
its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, are only
common homicide.’—Again I agree with you; but you perceive, Sir, that by
leaving out the word _father_, I think the whole extent of the
comparison invidious.
You further proceed grossly to misrepresent Dr. Price’s meaning; and,
with an affectation of holy fervour, express your indignation at his
profaning a beautiful rapturous ejaculation, when alluding to the King
of France’s submission to the National Assembly[7]; he rejoiced to hail
a glorious revolution, which promised an universal diffusion of liberty
and happiness.
Observe, Sir, that I called your piety affectation.—A rant to enable you
to point your venomous dart, and round your period. I speak with warmth,
because, of all hypocrites, my soul most indignantly spurns a religious
one;—and I very cautiously bring forward such a heavy charge, to strip
you of your cloak of sanctity. Your speech at the time the bill for a
regency was agitated now lies before me.—_Then_ you could in direct
terms, to promote ambitious or interested views, exclaim without any
pious qualms—‘Ought they to make a mockery of him, putting a crown of
thorns on his head, a reed in his hand, and dressing him in a raiment of
purple, cry, Hail! King of the British!’ Where was your sensibility when
you could utter this cruel mockery, equally insulting to God and man? Go
hence, thou slave of impulse, look into the private recesses of thy
heart, and take not a mote from thy brother’s eye, till thou hast
removed the beam from thine own.
Of your partial feelings I shall take another view, and shew that
‘following nature, which is,’ you say, ‘wisdom without reflection, and
_above it_’—has led you into great inconsistences, to use the softest
phrase. When, on a late melancholy occasion, a very important question
was agitated, with what indecent warmth did _you_ treat a woman, for I
shall not lay any stress on her title, whose conduct in life has
deserved praise, though not, perhaps, the servile elogiums which have
been lavished on the queen. But sympathy, and you tell us that you have
a heart of flesh, was made to give way to party spirit, and the feelings
of a man, not to allude to your romantic gallantry, to the views of the
statesman. When you descanted on the horrors of the 6th of October, and
gave a glowing, and, in some instances, a most exaggerated description
of that infernal night, without having troubled yourself to clean your
palette, you might have returned home and indulged us with a sketch of
the misery you personally aggravated.
With what eloquence might you not have insinuated, that the sight of
unexpected misery and strange reverse of fortune makes the mind recoil
on itself; and, pondering, traced the uncertainty of all human hope, the
frail foundation of sublunary grandeur! What a climax lay before you. A
father torn from his children,—a husband from an affectionate wife,—a
man from himself! And not torn by the resistless stroke of death, for
time would then have lent its aid to mitigate remediless sorrow; but
that living death, which only kept hope alive in the corroding form of
suspense, was a calamity that called for all your pity.
The sight of august ruins, of a depopulated country—what are they to a
disordered soul! when all the faculties are mixed in wild confusion. It
is then indeed we tremble for humanity—and, if some wild fancy chance to
cross the brain, we fearfully start, and pressing our hand against our
brow, ask if we are yet men?—if our reason is undisturbed?—if judgment
hold the helm? Marius might sit with dignity on the ruins of Carthage,
and the wretch in the Bastille, who longed in vain to see the human face
divine, might yet view the operations of his own mind, and vary the
leaden prospect by new combinations of thought: poverty, shame, and even
slavery, may be endured by the virtuous man—he has still a world to
range in—but the loss of reason appears a monstrous flaw in the moral
world, that eludes all investigation, and humbles without enlightening.
In this state was the King, when you, with unfeeling disrespect, and
indecent haste, wished to strip him of all his hereditary honours.—You
were so eager to taste the sweets of power, that you could not wait till
time had determined, whether a dreadful delirium would settle into a
confirmed madness; but, prying into the secrets of Omnipotence, you
thundered out that God had _hurled him from his throne_, and that it was
the most insulting mockery to recollect that he had been a king, or to
treat him with any particular respect on account of his former
dignity.—And who was the monster whom Heaven had thus awfully deposed,
and smitten with such an angry blow? Surely as harmless a character as
Lewis XVIth; and the queen of Great Britain, though her heart may not be
enlarged by generosity, who will presume to compare her character with
that of the queen of France?
Where then was the infallibility of that extolled instinct which rises
above reason? was it warped by vanity, or _hurled_ from its throne by
self-interest? To your own heart answer these questions in the sober
hours of reflection—and, after reviewing this gust of passion, learn to
respect the sovereignty of reason.
I have, Sir, been reading, with a scrutinizing, comparative eye, several
of your insensible and profane speeches during the King’s illness. I
disdain to take advantage of a man’s weak side, or draw consequences
from an unguarded transport—A lion preys not on carcasses! But on this
occasion you acted systematically. It was not the passion of the moment,
over which humanity draws a veil: no; what but the odious maxims of
Machiavelian policy could have led you to have searched in the very
dregs of misery for forcible arguments to support your party? Had not
vanity or interest steeled your heart, you would have been shocked at
the cold insensibility which could carry a man to those dreadful
mansions, where human weakness appears in its most awful form to
_calculate_ the chances against the King’s recovery. Impressed as _you
are_ with respect for royalty, I am astonished that you did not tremble
at every step, lest Heaven should avenge on your guilty head the insult
offered to its vicegerent. But the conscience that is under the
direction of transient ebullitions of feeling, is not very tender or
consistent, when the current runs another way.
Had you been in a philosophizing mood, had your heart or your reason
been at home, you might have been convinced, by ocular demonstration,
that madness is only the absence of reason.—The ruling angel leaving its
seat, wild anarchy ensues. You would have seen that the uncontrouled
imagination often pursues the most regular course in its most daring
flight; and that the eccentricities are boldly relieved when judgment no
longer officiously arranges the sentiments, by bringing them to the test
of principles. You would have seen every thing out of nature in that
strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of follies
jumbled together. You would have seen in that monstrous tragi-comic
scene the most opposite passions necessarily succeed, and sometimes mix
with each other in the mind; alternate contempt and indignation;
alternate laughter and tears; alternate scorn and horror[8].—This is a
true picture of that chaotic state of mind, called madness; when reason
gone, we know not where, the wild elements of passion clash, and all is
horror and confusion. You might have heard the best turned conceits,
flash following flash, and doubted whether the rhapsody was not
eloquent, if it had not been delivered in an equivocal language, neither
verse nor prose, if the sparkling periods had not stood alone, wanting
force because they wanted concatenation.
It is a proverbial observation, that a very thin partition divides wit
and madness. Poetry therefore naturally addresses the fancy, and the
language of passion is with great felicity borrowed from the heightened
picture which the imagination draws of sensible objects concentred by
impassioned reflection. And, during this ‘fine phrensy,’ reason has no
right to rein-in the imagination, unless to prevent the introduction of
supernumerary images; if the passion is real, the head will not be
ransacked for stale tropes and cold rodomontade. I now speak of the
genuine enthusiasm of genius, which, perhaps, seldom appears, but in the
infancy of civilization; for as this light becomes more luminous reason
clips the wing of fancy—the youth becomes a man.
Whether the glory of Europe is set, I shall not now enquire; but
probably the spirit of romance and chivalry is in the wane; and reason
will gain by its extinction.
From observing several cold romantic characters I have been led to
confine the term romantic to one definition—false, or rather artificial,
feelings. Works of genius are read with a prepossession in their favour,
and sentiments imitated, because they were fashionable and pretty, and
not because they were forcibly felt.
In modern poetry the understanding and memory often fabricate the
pretended effusions of the heart, and romance destroys all simplicity;
which, in works of taste, is but a synonymous word for truth. This
romantic spirit has extended to our prose, and scattered artificial
flowers over the most barren heath; or a mixture of verse and prose
producing the strangest incongruities. The turgid bombast of some of
your periods fully proves these assertions; for when the heart speaks we
are seldom shocked by hyperbole, or dry raptures.
I speak in this decided tone, because from turning over the pages of
your late publication, with more attention than I did when I first read
it cursorily over; and comparing the sentiments it contains with your
conduct on many important occasions, I am led very often to doubt your
sincerity, and to suppose that you have said many things merely for the
sake of saying them well; or to throw some pointed obloquy on characters
and opinions that jostled with your vanity.
It is an arduous task to follow the doublings of cunning, or the
subterfuges of inconsistency; for in controversy, as in battle, the
brave man wishes to face his enemy, and fight on the same ground.
Knowing, however, the influence of a ruling passion, and how often it
assumes the form of reason when there is much sensibility in the heart,
I respect an opponent, though he tenaciously maintains opinions in which
I cannot coincide; but, if I once discover that many of those opinions
are empty rhetorical flourishes, my respect is soon changed into that
pity which borders on contempt; and the mock dignity and haughty stalk,
only reminds me of the ass in the lion’s skin.
A sentiment of this kind glanced across my mind when I read the
following exclamation. ‘Whilst the royal captives, who followed in the
train, were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling
screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the
unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of
the ‘vilest of women[9].’ Probably you mean women who gained a
livelihood by selling vegetables or fish, who never had had any
advantages of education; or their vices might have lost part of their
abominable deformity, by losing part of their grossness. The queen of
France—the great and small vulgar, claim our pity; they have almost
insuperable obstacles to surmount in their progress towards true dignity
of character; still I have such a plain downright understanding that I
do not like to make a distinction without a difference. But it is not
very extraordinary that _you_ should, for throughout your letter you
frequently advert to a sentimental jargon which has long been current in
conversation, and even in books of morals, though it never received the
_regal_-stamp of reason. A kind of mysterious instinct is _supposed_ to
reside in the soul, that instantaneously discerns truth, without the
tedious labour of ratiocination. This instinct, for I know not what
other name to give it, has been termed _common sense_, and more
frequently _sensibility_; and, by a kind of _indefeasible_ right, it has
been _supposed_, for rights of this kind are not easily proved, to reign
paramount over the other faculties of the mind, and to be an authority
from which there is no appeal.
This subtle magnetic fluid, that runs round the whole circle of society,
is not subject to any known rule, or, to use an obnoxious phrase, in
spite of the sneers of mock humility, or the timid fears of some
well-meaning Christians, who shrink from any freedom of thought, lest
they should rouse the old serpent, to the _eternal fitness of things_.
It dips, we know not why, granting it to be an infallible instinct, and,
though supposed always to point to truth, its pole-star, the point is
always shifting, and seldom stands due north.
It is to this instinct, without doubt, that you allude, when you talk of
the ‘moral constitution of the heart.’ To it, I allow, for I consider it
as a congregate of sensations and passions, _Poets_ must apply, ‘who
have to deal with an audience not yet graduated in the school of the
rights of men.’ They must, it is clear, often cloud the understanding,
whilst they move the heart by a kind of mechanical spring; but that ‘in
the theatre the first intuitive glance’ of feeling should discriminate
the form of truth, and see her fair proportion, I must beg leave to
doubt. Sacred be the feelings of the heart! concentred in a glowing
flame, they become the sun of life; and, without his invigorating
impregnation, reason would probably lie in helpless inactivity, and
never bring forth her only legitimate offspring—virtue. But to prove
that virtue is really an acquisition of the individual, and not the
blind impulse of unerring instinct, the bastard vice has often been
begotten by the same father.
In what respect are we superior to the brute creation, if intellect is
not allowed to be the guide of passion? Brutes hope and fear, love and
hate; but, without a capacity to improve, a power of turning these
passions to good or evil, they neither acquire virtue nor wisdom.—Why?
Because the Creator has not given them reason[10].
But the cultivation of reason is an arduous task, and men of lively
fancy, finding it easier to follow the impulse of passion, endeavour to
persuade themselves and others that it is most _natural_. And happy is
it for those, who indolently let that heaven-lighted spark rest like the
ancient lamps in sepulchres, that some virtuous habits, with which the
reason of others shackled them, supplies its place.—Affection for
parents, reverence for superiors or antiquity, notions of honour, or
that worldly self-interest that shrewdly shews them that honesty is the
best policy: all proceed from the reason for which they serve as
substitutes;—but it is reason at second-hand.
Children are born ignorant, consequently innocent; the passions, are
neither good nor evil dispositions, till they receive a direction, and
either bound over the feeble barrier raised by a faint glimmering of
unexercised reason, called conscience, or strengthen her wavering
dictates till sound principles are deeply rooted, and able to cope with
the headstrong passions that often assume her awful form. What moral
purpose can be answered by extolling good dispositions, as they are
called, when these good dispositions are described as instincts: for
instinct moves in a direct line to its ultimate end, and asks not for
guide or support. But if virtue is to be acquired by experience, or
taught by example, reason, perfected by reflection, must be the director
of the whole host of passions, which produce a fructifying heat, but no
light, that you would exalt into her place.—She must hold the rudder,
or, let the wind blow which way it list, the vessel will never advance
smoothly to its destined port; for the time lost in tacking about would
dreadfully impede its progress.
In the name of the people of England, you say, ‘that we know _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 emboweled
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[11].’—What do you mean by inbred sentiments? From whence do
they come? How were they bred? Are they the brood of folly, which swarm
like the insects on the banks of the Nile, when mud and putrefaction
have enriched the languid soil? Were these _inbred_ sentiments faithful
guardians of our duty when the church was an asylum for murderers, and
men worshipped bread as a God? when slavery was authorized by law to
fasten her fangs on human flesh, and the iron eat into the very soul? If
these sentiments are not acquired, if our passive dispositions do not
expand into virtuous affections and passions, why are not the Tartars in
the first rude horde endued with sentiments white and _elegant_ as the
driven snow? Why is passion or heroism the child of reflection, the
consequence of dwelling with intent contemplation on one object? The
appetites are the only perfect inbred powers that I can discern; and
they like instincts have a certain aim, they can be satisfied—but
improvable reason has not yet discovered the perfection it may arrive
at—God forbid!
First, however, it is necessary to make what we know practical. Who can
deny, that has marked the slow progress of civilization, that men may
become more virtuous and happy without any new discovery in morals? Who
will venture to assert that virtue would not be promoted by the more
extensive cultivation of reason? If nothing more is to be done, let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die—and die for ever! Who will pretend
to say, that there is as much happiness diffused on this globe as it is
capable of affording? as many social virtues as reason would foster, if
she could gain the strength she is able to acquire even in this
imperfect state; if the voice of nature was allowed to speak audibly
from the bottom of the heart, and the _native_ unalienable rights of men
were recognized in their full force; if factitious merit did not take
place of genuine acquired virtue, and enable men to build their
enjoyment on the misery of their fellow-creatures; if men were more
under the dominion of reason than opinion, and did not cherish their
prejudices ‘because they were prejudices[12]?’ I am not, Sir, aware of
your sneers, hailing a millennium, though a state of greater purity of
morals may not be a mere poetic fiction; nor did my fancy ever create a
heaven on earth, since reason threw off her swaddling clothes. I
perceive, but too forcibly, that happiness, literally speaking, dwells
not here;—and that we wander to and fro in a vale of darkness as well as
tears. I perceive that my passions pursue objects that the imagination
enlarges, till they become only a sublime idea that shrinks from the
enquiry of sense, and mocks the experimental philosophers who would
confine this spiritual phlogiston in their material crucibles. I know
that the human understanding is deluded with vain shadows, and that when
we eagerly pursue any study, we only reach the boundary set to human
enquires.—Thus far shalt thou go, and no further, says some stern
difficulty; and the _cause_ we were pursuing melts into utter darkness.
But these are only the trials of contemplative minds, the foundation of
virtue remains firm.—The power of exercising our understanding raises us
above the brutes; and this exercise produces that ‘primary morality,’
which you term ‘untaught feelings.’
If virtue be an instinct, I renounce all hope of immortality; and with
it all the sublime reveries and dignified sentiments that have smoothed
the rugged path of life: it is all a cheat, a lying vision; I have
disquieted myself in vain; for in my eye all feelings are false and
spurious, that do not rest on justice as their foundation, and are not
concentred by universal love.
I reverence the rights of men.—Sacred rights! for which I acquire a more
profound respect, the more I look into my own mind; and, professing
these heterodox opinions, I still preserve my bowels; my heart is human,
beats quick with human sympathies—and I FEAR God!