Perhaps you all agree with me on both these subjects. We now come to

the method of doing these things. I agree with the Quakers so far

as they disclaim violence, and trust their cause wholly and solely

to its own truth. If you are convinced of the truth of your cause,

trust wholly to its truth; if you are not convinced, give it up. In

no case employ violence; the way to liberty and happiness is never to

transgress the rules of virtue and justice. Liberty and happiness are

founded upon virtue and justice; if you destroy the one you destroy

the other. However ill others may act, this will be no excuse for you

if you follow their example; it ought rather to warn you from pursuing

so bad a method. Depend upon it, Irishmen, your cause shall not be

neglected. I will fondly hope that the schemes for your happiness and

liberty, as well as those for the happiness and liberty of the world,

will not be wholly fruitless. One secure method of defeating them is

violence on the side of the injured party. If you can descend to use

the same weapons as your enemy, you put yourself on a level with him

on this score: you must be convinced that he is on these grounds your

superior. But appeal to the sacred principles of virtue and justice,

then how is he awed into nothing! How does truth show him in his real

colours, and place the cause of toleration and reform in the clearest

light! I extend my view not only to you as Irishmen, but to all of

every persuasion, of every country. Be calm, mild, deliberate, patient;

recollect that you can in no measure more effectually forward the

cause of reform than by employing your leisure time in reasoning or

the cultivation of your minds. Think and talk and discuss: the only

subjects you ought to propose are those of happiness and liberty. Be

free and be happy, but first be wise and good. For you are not all wise

or good. You are a great and a brave nation, but you cannot yet be all

wise or good. You may be at some time, and then Ireland will be an

earthly paradise. You know what is meant by a mob. It is an assembly

of people who, without foresight or thought, collect themselves to

disapprove of by force any measure which they dislike. An assembly

like this can never do anything but harm; tumultuous proceedings must

retard the period when thought and coolness will produce freedom and

happiness, and that to the very people who make the mob. But if a

number of human beings, after thinking of their own interests, meet

together for any conversation on them, and employ resistance of the

mind, not resistance of the body, these people are going the right way

to work. But let no fiery passions carry them beyond this point. Let

them consider that in some sense the whole welfare of their countrymen

depends on their prudence, and that it becomes them to guard the

welfare of others as their own. Associations for purposes of violence

are entitled to the strongest disapprobation of the real reformist.

Always suspect that some knavish rascal is at the bottom of things of

this kind, waiting to profit by the confusion. All secret associations

are also bad. Are you men of deep designs, whose deeds love darkness

better than light? Dare you not say what you think before any man?

Can you not meet in the open face of day in conscious innocence? Oh,

Irishmen, ye can! Hidden arms, secret meetings, and designs violently

to separate England from Ireland are all very bad. I do not mean to

say the very end of them is bad; the object you have in view may be

just enough, whilst the way you go about it is wrong--may be calculated

to produce an opposite effect. Never do evil that good may come; always

think of others as well as yourself, and cautiously look how your

conduct may do good or evil, when you yourself shall be mouldering in

the grave. Be fair, open, and you will be terrible to your enemies. A

friend cannot defend you, much as he may feel for your sufferings, if

you have recourse to methods of which virtue and justice disapprove. No

cause is in itself so dear to liberty as yours. Much depends on you;

far may your efforts spread either hope or despair: do not then cover

in darkness wrongs at which the face of day and the tyrants who bask in

its warmth ought to blush. Wherever has violence succeeded? The French

Revolution, although undertaken with the best intentions, ended ill

for the people, because violence was employed. The cause which they

vindicated was that of truth, but they gave it the appearance of a lie

by using methods which will suit the purposes of liars as well as their

own. Speak boldly and daringly what you think; an Irishman was never

accused of cowardice, do not let it be thought possible that he is a

coward. Let him say what he thinks; a lie is the basest and meanest

employment of men: leave lies and secrets to courtiers and lordlings.

Be open, sincere, and single-hearted. Let it be seen that the Irish

votaries of Freedom dare to speak what they think; let them resist

oppression, not by force of arms, but by power of mind and reliance on

truth and justice. Will any be arraigned for libel--will imprisonment

or death be the consequences of this mode of proceeding? Probably not.

But if it were so? Is danger frightful to an Irishman who speaks for

his own liberty and the liberty of his wife and children? No; he will

steadily persevere, and sooner shall pensioners cease to vote with

their benefactors than an Irishman swerve from the path of duty. But

steadily persevere in the system above laid down, its benefits will

speedily be manifested. Persecution may destroy some, but cannot

destroy all, or nearly all; let it do its will. Ye have appealed to

truth and justice, show the goodness of your religion by persisting

in a reliance on these things, which must be the rules even of the

Almighty’s conduct. But before this can be done with any effect, habits

of Sobriety, Regularity, and Thought must be entered into, and firmly

resolved upon.

My warm-hearted friends who meet together to talk of the distresses of

your countrymen until social chat induces you to drink rather freely,

as ye have felt passionately, so reason coolly. Nothing hasty can be

lasting; lay up the money with which you usually purchase drunkenness

and ill-health to relieve the pains of your fellow sufferers. Let

your children lisp of freedom in the cradle--let your deathbed be the

school for fresh exertions--let every street of the city and field of

the country be connected with thoughts which liberty has made holy. Be

warm in your cause, yet rational and charitable and tolerant--never let

the oppressor grind you into justifying his conduct by imitating his

meanness.

Many circumstances, I will own, may excuse what is called rebellion,

but no circumstances can ever make it good for your cause, and however

honourable to your feelings, it will reflect no credit on your

judgments. It will bind you more closely to the block of the oppressor,

and your children’s children, whilst they talk of your exploits, will

feel that you have done them injury instead of benefit.

A crisis is now arriving which shall decide your fate. The King of

Great Britain has arrived at the evening of his days. He has objected

to your emancipation; he has been inimical to you; but he will in a

certain time be no more. The present Prince of Wales will then be

king. It is said that he has promised to restore you to freedom: your

real and natural right will, in that case, be no longer kept from you.

I hope he has pledged himself to this act of justice, because there

will then exist some obligation to bind him to do right. Kings are but

too apt to think little as they should do: they think everything in the

world is made for them; when the truth is, that it is only the vices of

men that make such people necessary, and they have no other right of

being kings but in virtue of the good they do.

The benefit of the governed is the origin and meaning of government.

The Prince of Wales has had every opportunity of knowing how he ought

to act about Ireland and liberty. That great and good man Charles Fox,

who was your friend and the friend of freedom, was the friend of the

Prince of Wales. He never flattered nor disguised his sentiments, but

spoke them _openly_ on every occasion, and the Prince was the better

for his instructive conversation. He saw the truth, and he believed

it. Now I know not what to say; his staff is gone, and he leans upon a

broken reed; his present advisers are not like Charles Fox, they do not

plan for liberty and safety, not for the happiness, but for the glory

of their country; and what, Irishmen, is the glory of a country divided

from their happiness? It is a false light hung out by the enemies of

freedom to lure the unthinking into their net. Men like these surround

the Prince, and whether or no he has really promised to emancipate

you--whether or no he will consider the promise of a Prince of Wales

binding to a King of England, is yet a matter of doubt. We cannot at

least be quite certain of it: on this you cannot certainly rely. But

there are men who, wherever they find a tendency to freedom, go there

to increase, support, and regulate that tendency. These men, who join

to a rational disdain of danger a practice of speaking the truth,

and defending the cause of the oppressed against the oppressor--these

men see what is right and will pursue it. On such as these you may

safely rely: they love you as they love their brothers; they feel for

the unfortunate, and never ask whether a man is an Englishman or an

Irishman, a catholic, a heretic, a christian, or a heathen, before

their hearts and their purses are opened to feel with their misfortunes

and relieve their necessities: such are the men who will stand by you

for ever. Depend then not upon the promises of princes, but upon those

of virtuous and disinterested men: depend not upon force of arms or

violence, but upon the force of the truth of the rights which you have

to share equally with others, the benefits and the evils of government.

The crisis to which I allude as the period of your emancipation is not

the death of the present King, or any circumstance that has to do with

kings, but something that is much more likely to do you good: it is

the increase of virtue and wisdom which will lead people to find out

that force and oppression are wrong and false; and this opinion, when

it once gains ground, will prevent government from severity. It will

restore those rights which Government has taken away. Have nothing

to do with force or violence, and things will safely and surely make

their way to the right point. The Ministers have now in Parliament a

very great majority, and the Ministers are against you. They maintain

the falsehood that, were you in power, you would prosecute[4] and

burn, on the plea that you once did so. They maintain many other

things of the same nature. They command the majority of the House of

Commons, or rather the part of that assembly who receive pensions from

Government or whose relatives receive them. These men of course are

against you, because their employers are. But the sense of the country

is not against you; the people of England are not against you--they

feel warmly for you--in some respects they feel with you. The sense

of the English and of their governors is opposite--there must be an

end of this; the goodness of a Government consists in the happiness

of the governed. If the governed are wretched and dissatisfied, the

government has failed in its end. It wants altering and mending. It

will be mended, and a reform of English government will produce good

to the Irish--good to all human kind, excepting those whose happiness

consists in others’ sorrows, and it will be a fit punishment for these

to be deprived of their devilish joy. This I consider as an event which

is approaching, and which will make the beginning of our hopes for that

period which may spread wisdom and virtue so wide as to leave no hole

in which folly or villany may hide themselves. I wish you, O Irishmen,

to be as careful and thoughtful of your interests as are your real

friends. Do not drink, do not play, do not spend any idle time, do not

take everything that other people say for granted--there are numbers

who will tell you lies to make their own fortunes: you cannot more

certainly do good to your own cause than by defeating the intentions

of these men. Think, read, and talk; let your own condition and that

of your wives and children fill your minds; disclaim all manner of

alliance with violence: meet together if you will, but do not meet in

a mob. If you think and read and talk with a real wish of benefiting

the cause of truth and liberty, it will soon be seen how true a service

you are tendering, and how sincere you are in your professions; but

mobs and violence must be discarded. The certain degree of civil

and religious liberty which the usage of the English Constitution

allows, is such as the worst of men are entitled to, although you

have it not; but that liberty which we may one day hope for, wisdom

and virtue can alone give you a right to enjoy. This wisdom and this

virtue I recommend on every account that you should _instantly begin_

to practise. Lose not a day, not an hour, not a moment. Temperance,

sobriety, charity, and independence will give you virtue; and reading,

talking, thinking, and searching will give you wisdom; when you have

those things you may defy the tyrant. It is not going often to chapel,

crossing yourselves, or confessing that will make you virtuous; many a

rascal has attended regularly at mass, and many a good man has never

gone at all. It is not paying priests or believing in what they say

that makes a good man, but it is doing good actions or benefiting

other people; this is the true way to be good, and the prayers and

confessions and masses of him who does not these things are good for

nothing at all. Do your work regularly and quickly: when you have

done, think, read, and talk; do not spend your money in idleness and

drinking, which so far from doing good to your cause, will do it harm.

If you have anything to spare from your wife and children, let it do

some good to other people, and put them in a way of getting wisdom

and virtue, as the pleasure that will come from these good acts will

be much better than the headache that comes from a drinking bout. And

never quarrel between each other; be all of one mind as nearly as you

can; do these things, and I will promise you liberty and happiness. But

if, on the contrary of these things, you neglect to improve yourselves,

continue to use the word heretic, and demand from others the toleration

which you are unwilling to give, your friends and the friends of

liberty will have reason to lament the death-blow of their hopes. I

expect better things from you: it is for yourselves that I fear and

hope. Many Englishmen are prejudiced against you; they sit by their own

firesides, and certain rumours artfully spread are ever on the wing

against you. But these people who think ill of you and of your nation

are often the very men who, if they had better information, would feel

for you most keenly. Wherefore are these reports spread? How do they

begin? They originate from the warmth of the Irish character, which

the friends of the Irish nation have hitherto encouraged rather than

repressed; this leads them in those moments, when their wrongs appear

so clearly, to commit acts which justly excite displeasure. They begin

therefore from yourselves, although falsehood and tyranny artfully

magnify and multiply the cause of offence. Give no offence.

I will for the present dismiss the subject of the Catholic

Emancipation; a little reflection will convince you that my remarks are

just. Be true to yourselves, and your enemies shall not triumph. I fear

nothing, if charity and sobriety mark your proceedings. Everything is

to be dreaded--you yourselves will be unworthy of even a restoration

to your rights, if you disgrace the cause, which I hope is that of

truth and liberty, by violence; if you refuse to others the toleration

which you claim for yourselves. But this you will not do. I rely

upon it, Irishmen, that the warmth of your character will be shown

as much in union with Englishmen and what are called heretics, who

feel for you and love you, as in avenging your wrongs, or forwarding

their annihilation. It is the heart that glows and not the cheek. The

firmness, sobriety, and consistence of your outward behaviour will

not at all show any hardness of heart, but will prove that you are

determined in your cause, and are going the right way to work. I will

repeat that virtue and wisdom are necessary to true happiness and

liberty. The Catholic Emancipation, I consider, is certain. I do not

see that anything but violence and intolerance among yourselves can

leave an excuse to your enemies for continuing your slavery. The other

wrongs under which you labour will probably also soon be done away.

You will be rendered equal to the people of England in their rights

and privileges, and will be in all respects, so far as concerns the

State, as happy. And now, Irishmen, another and a more wide prospect

opens to my view. I cannot avoid, little as it may appear to have

anything to do with your present situation, to talk to you on the

subject. It intimately concerns the well-being of your children and

your children’s children, and will perhaps more than anything prove

to you the advantage and necessity of being thoughtful, sober, and

regular; of avoiding foolish and idle talk, and thinking of yourselves

as of men who are able to be much wiser and happier than you now are;

for habits like these will not only conduce to the successful putting

aside your present and immediate grievances, but will contain a seed

which in future times will spring up into the tree of liberty, and bear

the fruit of happiness.

There is no doubt but the world is going wrong, or rather that it is

very capable of being much improved. What I mean by this improvement

is, the inducement of a more equal and general diffusion of happiness

and liberty. Many people are very rich and many are very poor. Which do

you think are happiest? I can tell you that neither are happy, so far

as their station is concerned. Nature never intended that there should

be such a thing as a poor man or a rich one. Being put in an unnatural

situation, they can neither of them be happy, so far as their situation

is concerned. The poor man is born to obey the rich man, though they

both come into the world equally helpless and equally naked. But the

poor man does the rich no service by obeying him--the rich man does the

poor no good by commanding him. It would be much better if they could

be prevailed upon to live equally like brothers--they would ultimately

both be happier. But this can be done neither to-day nor to-morrow;

much as such a change is to be desired, it is quite impossible.

Violence and folly in this, as in the other case, would only put off

the period of its event. Mildness, sobriety, and reason are the

effectual methods of forwarding the ends of liberty and happiness.

Although we may see many things put in train during our life-time, we

cannot hope to see the work of virtue and reason finished now; we can

only lay the foundation for our posterity. Government is an evil; it

is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary

evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

So long as men continue foolish and vicious, so long will government,

even such a government as that of England, continue necessary in order

to prevent the crimes of bad men. Society is produced by the wants,

government by the wickedness, and a state of just and happy equality

by the improvement and reason of man. It is in vain to hope for any

liberty and happiness without reason and virtue, for where there is

no virtue there will be crime, and where there is crime there must be

government. Before the restraints of government are lessened, it is

fit that we should lessen the necessity for them. Before government is

done away with, we must reform ourselves. It is this work which I would

earnestly recommend to you. O Irishmen, Reform Yourselves, and I do not

recommend it to you particularly because I think that you most need it,

but because I think that your hearts are warm and your feelings high,

and you will perceive the necessity of doing it more than those of a

colder and more distant nature.

I look with an eye of hope and pleasure on the present state of things,

gloomy and incapable of improvement as they may appear to others. It

delights me to see that men begin to think and to act for the good

of others. Extensively as folly and selfishness have predominated in

this age, it gives me hope and pleasure at least to see that many know

what is right. Ignorance and vice commonly go together: he that would

do good must be wise. A man cannot be truly wise who is not truly

virtuous. Prudence and wisdom are very different things. The prudent

man is he who carefully consults for his own good: the wise man is he

who carefully consults for the good of others.

I look upon Catholic Emancipation and the restoration of the liberties

and happiness of Ireland, so far as they are compatible with the

English Constitution, as great and important events. I hope to see

them soon. But if all ended here, it would give me little pleasure, I

should still see thousands miserable and wicked; things would still be

wrong. I regard then the accomplishment of these things as the road

to a greater reform, that reform after which virtue and wisdom shall

have conquered pain and vice--when no government will be wanted but

that of your neighbour’s opinion. I look to these things with hope

and pleasure, because I consider that they will certainly happen,

and because men will not then be wicked and miserable. But I do not

consider that they will or can immediately happen; their arrival will

be gradual, and it all depends upon yourselves how soon or how late

these great changes will happen. If all of you to-morrow were virtuous

and wise, government which to-day is a safeguard, would then become a

tyranny. But I cannot expect a rapid change. Many are obstinate and

determined in their vice, whose selfishness makes them think only of

their own good, when in fact the best way even to bring that about is

to make others happy. I do not wish to see things changed now, because

it cannot be done without violence, and we may assure ourselves that

none of us are fit for any change, however good, if we condescend to

employ force in a cause which we think right. Force makes the side that

employs it directly wrong, and as much as we may pity we cannot approve

the headstrong and intolerant zeal of its adherents.

Can you conceive, O Irishmen! a happy state of society--conceive men of

every way of thinking living together like brothers? The descendant of

the greatest prince would then be entitled to no more respect than the

son of a peasant. There would be no pomp and no parade; but that which

the rich now keep to themselves would then be distributed among the

people. None would be in magnificence, but the superfluities then taken

from the rich would be sufficient when spread abroad to make every one

comfortable. No lover would then be false to his mistress, no mistress

could desert her lover. No friend would play false; no rents, no debts,

no taxes, no frauds of any kind would disturb the general happiness:

good as they would be, wise as they would be, they would be daily

getting better and wiser. No beggars would exist, nor any of those

wretched women who are now reduced to a state of the most horrible

misery and vice by men whose wealth makes them villainous and hardened;

no thieves or murderers, because poverty would never drive men to take

away comforts from another when he had enough for himself. Vice and

misery, pomp and poverty, power and obedience, would then be banished

altogether. It is for such a state as this, Irishmen, that I exhort you

to prepare. “A camel shall as soon pass through the eye of a needle, as

a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven.” This is not to be understood

literally. Jesus Christ appears to me only to have meant that riches

have generally the effect of hardening and vitiating the heart; so has

poverty. I think those people then are very silly, and cannot see one

inch beyond their noses, who say that human nature is depraved; when

at the same time wealth and poverty, those two great sources of crime,

fall to the lot of a great majority of people; and when they see that

people in moderate circumstances are always most wise and good. People

say that poverty is no evil; they have never felt it, or they would

not think so; that wealth is necessary to encourage the arts--but are

not the arts very inferior things to virtue and happiness?--the man

would be very dead to all generous feelings who would rather see pretty

pictures and statues than a million free and happy men.

It will be said that my design is to make you dissatisfied with your

present condition, and that I wish to raise a Rebellion. But how stupid

and sottish must those men be who think that violence and uneasiness of

mind have anything to do with forwarding the views of peace, harmony,

and happiness. They should know that nothing was so well fitted to

produce slavery, tyranny, and vice as the violence which is attributed

to the friends of liberty, and which the real friends of liberty are

the only persons who disdain. As to your being dissatisfied with your

present condition, anything that I may say is certainly not likely to

increase that dissatisfaction. I have advanced nothing concerning your

situation but its real case; but what may be proved to be true. I defy

any one to point out a falsehood that I have uttered in the course of

this Address. It is impossible but the blindest among you must see

that everything is not right. This sight has often pressed some of

the poorest among you to take something from the rich man’s store by

violence, to relieve his own necessities. I cannot justify, but I can

pity him. I cannot pity the fruits of the rich man’s intemperance. I

suppose some are to be found who will justify him. This sight has often

brought home to a day-labourer the truth which I wish to impress upon

you that all is not right. But I do not merely wish to convince you

that our present state is bad, but that its alteration for the better

depends on your own exertions and resolutions.

But he has never found out the method of mending it who does not first

mend his own conduct, and then prevail upon others to refrain from any

vicious habits which they may have contracted, much less does the poor

man suppose that wisdom as well as virtue is necessary, and that the

employing his little time in reading and thinking, is really doing all

that he has in his power to do towards the state, when pain and vice

shall perish altogether.

I wish to impress upon your minds that without virtue or wisdom there

can be no liberty or happiness; and that temperance, sobriety, charity,

and independence of soul will give you virtue, as thinking, inquiring,

reading, and talking will give you wisdom. Without the first the last

is of little use, and without the last the first is a dreadful curse to

yourselves and others.

I have told you what I think upon this subject, because I wish to

produce in your minds an awe and caution necessary, before the happy

state of which I have spoken can be introduced. This cautious awe is

very different from the prudential fear which leads you to consider

yourself as the first object, as, on the contrary, it is full of that

warm and ardent love for others that burns in your hearts, O Irishmen!

and from which I have fondly hoped to light a flame that may illumine

and invigorate the world.

I have said that the rich command and the poor obey, and that money is

only a kind of sign which shows that according to government the rich

man has a right to command the poor man, or rather that the poor man,

being urged by having no money to get bread, is forced to work for the

rich man, which amounts to the same thing. I have said that I think all

this very wrong, and that I wish the whole business was altered. I have

also said that we can expect little amendment in our own time, and that

we must be contented to lay the foundation of liberty and happiness by

virtue and wisdom. This, then, shall be my work; let this be yours,

Irishmen. Never shall that glory fail, which I am anxious that you

shall deserve--the glory of teaching to a world the first lessons of

virtue and wisdom.

Let poor men still continue to work. I do not wish to hide from

them a knowledge of their relative condition in society, I esteem

it next [to] impossible to do so. Let the work of the labourer, of

the artificer--let the work of every one, however employed, still be

exerted in its accustomed way. The public communication of this truth

ought in no manner to impede the established usages of society, however

it is fitted in the end to do them away. For this reason it ought not

to impede them, because if it did, a violent and unaccustomed and

sudden sensation[5] would take place in all ranks of men, which would

bring on violence and destroy the possibility of the event of that

which in its own nature must be gradual, however rapid, and rational

however warm. It is founded on the reform of private men, and without

individual amendment it is vain and foolish to expect the amendment of

a state or government. I would advise them, therefore, whose feelings

this Address may have succeeded in affecting (and surely those feelings

which charitable and temperate remarks excite can never be violent and

intolerant), if they be, as I hope, those whom poverty has compelled

to class themselves in the lower orders of society, that they will

as usual attend to their business and the discharge of those public

or private duties which custom has ordained. Nothing can be more

rash and thoughtless than to show in ourselves singular instances of

any particular doctrine before the general mass of the people are so

convinced by the reasons of the doctrine, that it will be no longer

singular. That reasons as well as feelings may help the establishment

of happiness and liberty, on the basis of wisdom and virtue, be our

aim and intention. Let us not be led into any means which are unworthy

of this end, nor, as so much depends upon yourselves, let us cease

carefully to watch over our conduct, that when we talk of reform it be

not objected to us, that reform ought to begin at home. In the interval

that public or private duties and necessary labours allow, husband your

time so that you may do to others and yourselves the most real good.

To improve your own minds is to join these two views; conversation

and reading are the principal and chief methods of awaking the mind

to knowledge and goodness. Reading or thought will principally bestow

the former of these--the benevolent exercise of the powers of the mind

in communicating useful knowledge will bestow an habit of the latter;

both united will contribute so far as lies in your individual power

to that great reform which will be perfect and finished the moment

every one is virtuous and wise. Every folly refuted, every bad habit

conquered, every good one confirmed, are so much gained in this great

and excellent cause.

To begin to reform the government is immediately necessary, however

good or bad individuals may be; it is the more necessary, if they are

eminently the latter, in some degree to palliate or do away the cause,

as political institution has even[6] the greatest influence on the

human character, and is that alone which differences the Turk from the

Irishman.

I write now not only with a view for Catholic Emancipation, but

for universal emancipation; and this emancipation complete and

unconditional, that shall comprehend every individual of whatever

nation or principles, that shall fold in its embrace all that think

and all that feel: the Catholic cause is subordinate, and its success

preparatory to this great cause, which adheres to no sect but society,

to no cause but that of universal happiness, to no party but the

people. I desire Catholic Emancipation, but I desire not to stop here;

and I hope there are few, who having perused the preceding arguments,

will not concur with me in desiring a complete, a lasting, and a happy

amendment. That all steps, however good and salutary, which may be

taken, all reforms consistent with the English constitution that may

be effectuated, can only be subordinate and preparatory to the great

and lasting one which shall bring about the peace, the harmony, and the

happiness of Ireland, England, Europe, the World. I offer merely an

outline of that picture which your own hopes may gift with the colours

of reality.

Government will not allow a peaceable and reasonable discussion

of its principles by any association of men who assemble for that

express purpose. But have not human beings a right to assemble to

talk upon what subject they please? Can anything be more evident than

that as government is only of use as it conduces to the happiness

of the governed, those who are governed have a right to talk on the

efficacy of the safeguard employed for their benefit? Can any topic

be more interesting or useful than one discussing how far the means

of government is or could be made in a higher degree effectual to

producing the end? Although I deprecate violence, and the cause which

depends for its influence on force, yet I can by no means think that

assembling together merely to talk of how things go on--I can by no

means think that societies formed for talking on any subject, however

Government may dislike them, come in any way under the head of force

or violence--I think that associations conducted in the spirit of

sobriety, regularity, and thought, are one of the best and most

efficient of those means which I would recommend for the production of

happiness, liberty, and virtue.

Are you slaves or are you men? If slaves, then crouch to the rod and

lick the feet of your oppressors; glory [in] your shame; it will become

you, if brutes, to act according to your nature. But you are men: a

real man is free, so far as circumstances will permit him. Then firmly

yet quietly resist. When one cheek is struck, turn the other to the

insulting coward. You will be truly brave: you will resist and conquer.

The discussion of any subject is a right that you have brought into the

world with your heart and tongue. Resign your heart’s blood before you

part with this inestimable privilege of man. For it is fit that the

governed should inquire into the proceedings of government, which is of

no use the moment it is conducted on any other principle but that of

safety. You have much to think of. Is war necessary to your happiness

and safety? The interests of the poor gain nothing from the wealth or

extension of a nation’s boundaries, they gain nothing from glory, a

word that has often served as a cloak to the ambition or avarice of

statesmen. The barren victories of Spain, gained in behalf of a bigoted

and tyrannical government, are nothing to them. The conquests in India,

by which England has gained glory indeed, but a glory which is not

more honourable than that of Buonaparte, are nothing to them. The poor

purchase this glory and this wealth at the expense of their blood and

labour and happiness and virtue. They die in battle for this infernal

cause. Their labour supplies money and food for carrying it into

effect; their happiness is destroyed by the oppression they undergo;

their virtue is rooted out by the depravity and vice that prevail

throughout the army, and which under the present system are perfectly

unavoidable. Who does not know that the quartering of a regiment on any

town will soon destroy the innocence and happiness of its inhabitants?

The advocates for the happiness and liberty of the great mass of the

people, who pay for war with their lives and labour, ought never to

cease writing and speaking until nations see, as they must feel, the

folly of fighting and killing each other in uniform for nothing at

all. Ye have much to think of. The state of your representation in the

House, which is called the collective representation of the country,

demands your attention.

It is horrible that the lower classes must waste their lives and

liberty to furnish means for their oppressors to oppress them yet more

terribly. It is horrible that the poor must give in taxes what would

save them and their families from hunger and cold;--it is still more

horrible that they should do this to furnish further means of their own

abjectedness and misery. But what words can express the enormity of the

abuse that prevents them from choosing representatives with authority

to inquire into the manner in which their lives and labour, their

happiness and innocence, are expended, and what advantages result from

their expenditure which may counterbalance so horrible and monstrous

an evil? There is an outcry raised against amendment; it is called

innovation and condemned by many unthinking people who have a good fire

and plenty to eat and drink. Hard-hearted or thoughtless beings, how

many are famishing whilst you deliberate, how many perish to contribute

to your pleasures? I hope that there are none such as these native

Irishmen, indeed I scarcely believe that there are.

Let the object of your associations (for I conceal not my approval of

assemblies conducted with regularity, _peaceableness_, and thought for

any purpose) be the amendment of these abuses, it will have for its

object universal emancipation, liberty, happiness, and virtue. There

is yet another subject, “the Liberty of the Press.” The liberty of the

Press consists in a right to publish any opinion on any subject which

the writer may entertain. The Attorney-General in 1793, on the trial of

Mr. Percy, said, “I never will dispute the right of any man fully to

discuss topics respecting Government, and honestly to point out what

he may consider a proper remedy of grievances.” The liberty of the

Press is placed as a sentinel to alarm us when any attempt is made on

our liberties. It is this sentinel, oh, Irishmen, whom I now awaken! I

create to myself a freedom which exists not. There is no liberty of the

Press for the subjects of British government.

It is really ridiculous to hear people yet boasting of this inestimable

blessing, when they daily see it successfully muzzled and outraged by

the lawyers of the Crown, and by virtue of what are called _ex officio_

informations. Blackstone says, that “if a person publishes what is

improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequences of

his own temerity.” And Lord Chief Baron Comyns defines libel as “a

contumely, or reproach, published to the defamation of the Government,

of a magistrate, or of a private person.” Now I beseech you to consider

the words mischievous, improper, illegal, contumely, reproach, or

defamation. May they not make that mischievous or improper which they

please? Is not law with them as clay in the potter’s hand? Do not the

words contumely, reproach, or defamation express all degrees and forces

of disapprobation? It is impossible to express yourself displeased at

certain proceedings of Government, or the individuals who conduct it,

without uttering a reproach. We cannot honestly point out a proper

remedy of grievances with safety, because the very mention of these

grievances will be reproachful to the personages who countenance them;

and therefore will come under a definition of libel. For the persons

who thus directly or indirectly undergo reproach, will say for their

own sakes that the exposure of their corruption is mischievous and

improper; therefore the utterer of the reproach is a fit subject for

three years’ imprisonment. Is there anything like the liberty of the

Press in restrictions so positive yet pliant as these? The little

freedom which we enjoy in this most important point comes from the

clemency of our rulers, or their fear lest public opinion, alarmed at

the discovery of its enslaved state, should violently assert a right

to extension and diffusion. Yet public opinion may not always be so

formidable; rulers may not always be so merciful or so timid; at any

rate, evils, and great evils, do result from the present system of

intellectual slavery, and you have enough to think of if this grievance

alone remained in the constitution of society. I will give but one

instance of the present state of our Press.

A countryman of yours is now confined in an English gaol. His health,

his fortune, his spirits suffer from close confinement. The air which

comes through the bars of a prison-grate does not invigorate the

frame nor cheer the spirits. But Mr. Finnerty, much as he has lost,

yet retains the fair name of truth and honour. He was imprisoned for

persisting in the truth. His judge told him on his trial that truth

and falsehood were indifferent to the law, and that if he owned the

publication, any consideration whether the facts that it related were

well or ill-founded, was totally irrelevant. Such is the libel law;

such the liberty of the Press--there is enough to think of. The right

of withholding your individual assent to war, the right of choosing

delegates to represent you in the assembly of the nation, and that of

freely opposing intellectual power to any measure of Government of

which you may disapprove, are, in addition to the indifference with

which the Legislative and the Executive power ought to rule their

conduct towards professors of every religion, enough to think of.

I earnestly desire peace and harmony:--peace, that whatever wrongs

you may have suffered, benevolence and a spirit of forgiveness should

mark your conduct towards those who have persecuted you:--harmony,

that among yourselves may be no divisions, that Protestants and

Catholics unite in a common interest, and that whatever be the belief

and principles of your countryman and fellow sufferer, you desire to

benefit his cause at the same time that you vindicate your own. Be

strong and unbiassed by selfishness or prejudice--for, Catholics, your

religion has not been spotless, crimes in past ages have sullied it

with a stain, which let it be your glory to remove. Nor, Protestants,

hath your religion always been characterized by the mildness of

benevolence which Jesus Christ recommended. Had it anything to do with

the present subject I could account for the spirit of intolerance which

marked both religions; I will, however, only adduce the fact, and

earnestly exhort you to root out from your own minds everything which

may lead to uncharitableness, and to reflect that yourselves as well

as your brethren may be deceived. Nothing on earth is infallible. The

priests that pretend to it are wicked and mischievous impostors; but

it is an imposture which every one more or less assumes who encourages

prejudice in his breast against those who differ from him in opinion,

or who sets up his own religion as the only right and true one, when

no one is so blind as not to see that every religion is right and true

which makes men beneficent and sincere. I therefore earnestly exhort

both Protestants and Catholics to act in brotherhood and harmony,

never forgetting because the Catholics alone are heinously deprived of

religious rights, that the Protestants and a certain rank of people of

every persuasion, share with them all else that is terrible, galling,

and intolerable in the mass of political grievance.

In no case employ violence or falsehood. I cannot too often or too

vividly endeavour to impress upon your minds that these methods will

produce nothing but wretchedness and slavery--that they will at the

same time rivet the fetters with which ignorance and oppression bind

you to abjectness, and deliver you over to a tyranny which shall render

you incapable of renewed efforts. Violence will immediately render

your cause a bad one. If you believe in a providential God, you must

also believe that he is a good one. And it is not likely a merciful

God would befriend a bad cause. Insincerity is no less hurtful than

violence; those who are in the habit of either, would do well to

reform themselves. A lying bravo will never promote the good of his

country--he cannot be a good man. The courageous and sincere may, at

the same time, successfully oppose corruption, by uniting their voice

with that of others, or individually raise up intellectual opposition

to counteract the abuses of Government and society. In order to

benefit yourselves and your country to any extent, habits of sobriety,

regularity, and thought are previously so necessary that, without these

preliminaries, all that you have done falls to the ground. You have

built on sand; secure a good foundation, and you may erect a fabric to

stand for ever--the glory and the envy of the world.

I have purposely avoided any lengthened discussion on those grievances

to which your hearts are, from custom and the immediate interest of the

circumstances, probably most alive at present. I have not, however,

wholly neglected them. Most of all have I insisted on their instant

palliation and ultimate removal; nor have I omitted a consideration

of the means which I deem most effectual for the accomplishment of

this great end. How far you will consider the former worthy of your

adoption, so far shall I deem the latter probable and interesting

to the lovers of human kind. And I have opened to your view a new

scene--does not your heart bound at the bare possibility of your

posterity possessing that liberty and happiness of which, during

our lives, powerful exertions and habitual abstinence may give us a

foretaste? Oh! if your hearts do not vibrate at such as this, then ye

are dead and cold--ye are not men.

I now come to the application of my principles, the conclusion of

my Address; and, O Irishmen, whatever conduct ye may feel yourselves

bound to pursue, the path which duty points to lies before me clear and

unobscured. Dangers may lurk around it, but they are not the dangers

which lie beneath the footsteps of the hypocrite or temporizer.

For I have not presented to you the picture of happiness on which my

fancy doats as an uncertain meteor to mislead honourable enthusiasm,

or blindfold the judgment which makes virtue useful. I have not

proposed crude schemes, which I should be incompetent to mature, or

desired to excite in you any virulence against the abuses of political

institution; where I have had occasion to point them out, I have

recommended moderation whilst yet I have earnestly insisted upon energy

and perseverance; I have spoken of peace, yet declared that resistance

is laudable; but the intellectual resistance which I recommend, I deem

essential to the introduction of the millennium of virtue, whose period

every one can, so far as he is concerned, forward by his own proper

power. I have not attempted to show that the Catholic claims, or the

claims of the people to a full representation in Parliament, or any of

these claims to real rights, which I have insisted upon as introductory

to the ultimate claim of _all_, to universal happiness, freedom and

equality; I have not attempted, I say, to show that these can be

granted consistently with the spirit of the English Constitution;[7]

this is a point which I do not feel myself inclined to discuss, and

which I consider foreign to my subject. But I have shown that these

claims have for their basis truth and justice, which are immutable,

and which in the ruin of governments shall rise like a phœnix from

their ashes.

Is any one inclined to dispute the possibility of a happy change in

society? Do they say that the nature of man is corrupt, and that he

was made for misery and wickedness? Be it so. Certain as are opposite

conclusions, I will concede the truth of this for a moment. What are

the means which I take for melioration? Violence, corruption, rapine,

crime? Do I do evil that good may come? I have recommended peace,

philanthropy, wisdom. So far as my arguments influence, they will

influence to these; and if there is any one _now_ inclined to say that

“private vices are public benefits,” and that peace, philanthropy,

and wisdom will, if once they gain ground, ruin the human race, he

may revel in his happy dreams; though were _I_ this man I should envy

Satan’s hell. The wisdom and charity of which I speak are the _only_

means which I will countenance for the redress of your grievances and

the grievances of the world. So far as they operate, I am willing to

stand responsible for their evil effects. I expect to be accused of

a desire for renewing in Ireland the scenes of revolutionary horror

which marked the struggles of France twenty years ago. But it is the

renewal of that unfortunate era which I strongly deprecate, and which

the tendency of this Address is calculated to obviate. For can burthens

be borne for ever, and the slave crouch and cringe the while? Is misery

and vice so consonant to man’s nature that he will hug it to his heart?

But when the wretched one in bondage beholds the emancipation near,

will he not endure his misery awhile with hope and patience, then

spring to his preserver’s arms, and start into a man?

It is my intention to observe the effect on your minds, O Irishmen,

which this Address, dictated by the fervency of my love and hope,

will produce. I have come to this country to spare no pains where

expenditure may purchase you real benefit. The present is a crisis

which of all others is the most valuable for fixing the fluctuation of

public feeling; as far as my poor efforts may have succeeded in fixing

it to virtue, Irishmen, so far shall I esteem myself happy. I intend

this Address as introductory to another. The organization of a society

whose institution shall serve as a bond to its members for the purposes

of virtue, happiness, liberty, and wisdom, by the means of intellectual

opposition to grievances, would probably be useful. For the formation

of such society I avow myself anxious.

Adieu, my friends! May every sun that shines on your green island

see the annihilation of an abuse, and the birth of an embryon of

melioration! Your own hearts--may they become the shrines of purity and

freedom, and never may smoke to the Mammon of unrighteousness ascend

from the unpolluted altar of their devotion!

No. 7, Lower Sackville Street, Feb. 22nd.

* * * * *

POSTSCRIPT.

I have now been a week in Dublin, during which time I have endeavoured

to make myself more accurately acquainted with the state of the public

mind on those great topics of grievances which induced me to select

Ireland as a theatre, the widest and fairest, for the operations of the

determined friend of religious and political freedom.

The result of my observations has determined me to propose an

association for the purposes of restoring Ireland to the prosperity

which she possessed before the Union Act; and the religious freedom

which the involuntariness of faith ought to have taught all

monopolists of Heaven long, long ago, that every one had a right to

possess.

For the purpose of obtaining the emancipation of the Catholics from

the penal laws that aggrieve them, and a repeal of the Legislative

Union Act, and grounding upon the remission of the church-craft and

oppression, which caused these grievances; _a plan of amendment

and regeneration in the moral and political state of society, on a

comprehensive and systematic philanthropy which shall be sure though

slow in its projects: and as it is without the rapidity and danger of

revolution, so will it be devoid of the time-servingness of temporizing

reform_--which in its deliberate capacity, having investigated the

state of the Government of England, shall oppose those parts of it, by

intellectual force, which will not bear the touchstone of reason.

For information respecting the principles which I possess, and the

nature and spirit of the association which I propose, I refer the

reader to a small pamphlet, which I shall publish on the subject in the

course of a few days.

I have published the above Address (written in England) in the cheapest

possible form, and have taken pains that the remarks which it contains

should be intelligible to the most uneducated minds. Men are not

slaves and brutes because they are poor; it has been the policy of the

thoughtless or wicked of the higher ranks (as a proof of the decay of

which policy I am happy to see the rapid success of a comparatively

enlightened system of education) to conceal from the poor the truths

which I have endeavoured to teach them. In doing so I have but

translated my thoughts into another language; and, as language is only

useful as it communicates ideas, I shall think my style so far good as

it is successful as a means to bring about the end which I desire on

any occasion to accomplish.

A Limerick paper, which I suppose professes to support certain

_loyal_ and _John Bullish_ principles of freedom, has, in an essay

for advocating the liberty of the Press, the following clause: “For

lawless licence of discussion never did we advocate, nor do we now.”

What is lawless licence of discussion? Is it not as indefinite as the

words _contumely_, _reproach_, _defamation_, that allow at present such

latitude to the outrages that are committed on the free expression

of individual sentiment? Can they not see that what is rational will

stand by its reason, and what is true stand by its truth, as all

that is foolish will fall by its folly, and all that is false be

controverted by its own falsehood? Liberty gains nothing by the reform

of politicians of this stamp, any more than it gains from a change

of Ministers in London. What at present is contumely and defamation,

would at the period of this Limerick amendment be “lawless licence of

discussion,” and such would be the mighty advantage which this doughty

champion of liberty proposes to effect.

I conclude with the words of Lafayette, a name endeared by its peerless

bearer to every lover of the human race, “For a nation to love liberty

it is sufficient that she knows it, to be free it is sufficient that

she wills it.”

FOOTNOTES:

[4] [Persecute?]

[5] [Cessation?]

[6] [Ever?]

[7] The excellence of the Constitution of Great Britain appears

to me to be its indefiniteness and versatility, whereby it may be

unresistingly accommodated to the progression of wisdom and virtue.

Such accommodation I desire; but I wish for the cause before the

effect.

PROPOSALS

FOR AN

ASSOCIATION

OF THOSE

_PHILANTHROPISTS_,

WHO CONVINCED OF THE INADEQUACY OF THE MORAL AND POLITICAL

STATE OF IRELAND TO PRODUCE BENEFITS WHICH ARE NEVERTHELESS

ATTAINABLE, ARE WILLING TO UNITE TO ACCOMPLISH ITS

REGENERATION.

BY

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Dublin:

PRINTED BY I. ETON, WINETAVERN STREET.

[1812.]

[Decoration]

PROPOSALS FOR AN ASSOCIATION, ETC.

I propose an Association which shall have for its immediate

objects Catholic Emancipation and the Repeal of the Act

of Union between Great Britain and Ireland; and grounding

on the removal of these grievances, an annihilation or

palliation of whatever moral or political evil it may be

within the compass of human power to assuage or eradicate.

Man cannot make occasions, but he may seize those that offer. None are

more interesting to philanthropy than those which excite the benevolent

passions, that generalize and expand private into public feelings,

and make the hearts of individuals vibrate not merely for themselves,

their families, and their friends, but for posterity, _for a people_;

till their country becomes the world, and their family the sensitive

creation.

A recollection of the absent, and a taking into consideration the

interests of those unconnected with ourselves, is a principal source of

that feeling which generates occasions wherein a love for human kind

may become eminently useful and active. Public topics of fear and hope,

such as sympathize with general grievance, or hold out hopes of general

amendment, are those on which the philanthropist would dilate with the

warmest feeling; because these are accustomed to place individuals at

a distance from self; for in proportion as he is absorbed in public

feeling, so will a consideration of his proper benefit be generalized.

In proportion as he feels with or for a nation or a world, so will man

consider himself less as that centre to which we are but too prone to

believe that every line of human concern does or ought to converge.

I should not here make the trite remark that selfish motive biasses,

brutalizes, and degrades the human mind, did it not thence follow, that

to seize those occasions wherein the opposite spirit predominates, is

a duty which Philanthropy imperiously exacts of her votaries; that

occasions like these are the proper ones for leading mankind to their

own interest by awakening in their minds a love for the interest of

their fellows. A plant that grows in every soil, though too often it

is choked by tares before its lovely blossoms are expanded. Virtue

produces pleasure, it is as the cause to the effect; I feel pleasure in

doing good to my friend, because I love him. I do not love him for the

sake of that pleasure.

I regard the present state of the public mind in Ireland to be one of

those occasions which the ardent votary of the religion of Philanthropy

dare not leave unseized. I perceive that the public interest is

excited, I perceive that individual interest has, in a certain degree,

quitted individual concern to generalize itself with universal

feeling. Be the Catholic Emancipation a thing of great or of small

misfortune,[8] be it a means of adding happiness to four millions of

people, or a reform which will only give honour to a few of the higher

ranks, yet a benevolent and disinterested feeling has gone abroad, and

I am willing that it should never subside. I desire that means should

be taken with energy and expedition in this important yet fleeting

crisis, to feed the unpolluted flame at which nations and ages may

light the torch of Liberty and Virtue!

It is my opinion that the claims of the Catholic inhabitants of

Ireland, if gained to-morrow, would in a very small degree aggrandize

their liberty and happiness. The disqualifications principally affect

the higher orders of the Catholic persuasion, these would principally

be benefited by their removal. Power and wealth do not benefit, but

injure, the cause of virtue and freedom. I am happy, however, at the

near approach of this emancipation, because I am inimical to all

disqualifications for opinion. It gives me pleasure to see the approach

of this enfranchisement, not for the good which it will bring with

it, but because it is a sign of benefits approaching, a prophet of

good about to come; and therefore do I sympathize with the inhabitants

of Ireland in this great cause; a cause which though in its own

accomplishment will add not one comfort to the cottager, will snatch

not one from the dark dungeon, will root not out one vice, alleviate

not one pang, yet it is the foreground of a picture, in the dimness

of whose distance I behold the lion lay down with the lamb, and the

infant play with the basilisk. For it supposes the extermination of

the eyeless monster Bigotry, whose throne has tottered for two hundred

years. I hear the teeth of the palsied beldame Superstition chatter,

and I see her descending to the grave! Reason points to the open gates

of the Temple of Religious Freedom, Philanthropy kneels at the altar

of the common God! There, wealth and poverty, rank and abjectness, are

names known but as memorials of past time: meteors which play over the

loathsome pool of vice and misery, to warn the wanderer where dangers

lie. Does a God rule this illimitable universe? Are you thankful for

his beneficence--do you adore his wisdom--do you hang upon his altar

the garland of your devotion? Curse not your brother, though he hath

enwreathed with his flowers of a different hue; the purest religion is

that of Charity, its loveliness begins to proselyte the hearts of men.

The tree is to be judged of by its fruit. I regard the admission of the

Catholic claims and the Repeal of the Union Act as blossoms of that

fruit which the summer sun of improved intellect and progressive virtue

is destined to mature.

I will not pass unreflected on the Legislative Union of Great Britain

and Ireland, nor will I speak of it as a grievance so tolerable or

unimportant in its own nature as that of Catholic disqualification. The

latter affects few, the former affects thousands. The one disqualifies

the rich from power, the other impoverishes the peasant, adds beggary

to the city, famine to the country, multiplies abjectedness, whilst

misery and crime play into each other’s hands under its withering

auspices. I esteem, then, the annihilation of this second grievance

to be something more than a mere sign of coming good. I esteem it to

be in itself a substantial benefit. The aristocracy of Ireland--(for

much as I may disapprove other distinctions than those of virtue and

talent, I consider it useless, hasty, and violent, not for the present

to acquiesce in their continuance)--the aristocracy of Ireland suck the

veins of its inhabitants and consume the blood in England. I mean not

to deny the unhappy truth that there is much misery and vice in the

world. I mean to say that Ireland shares largely of both.--England has

made her poor; and the poverty of a rich nation will make its people

very desperate and wicked.

I look forward, then, to the redress of both these grievances; or

rather, I perceive the state of the public mind, that precedes them

as the crisis of beneficial innovation. The latter I consider to

be the cause of the former, as I hope it will be the cause of more

comprehensively beneficial amendments. It forms that occasion which

should energetically and quickly be occupied. The voice of the whole

human race; their crimes, their miseries, and their ignorance, invoke

us to the task. For the miseries of the Irish poor, exacerbated by the

union of their country with England, are not peculiar to themselves.

England, the whole civilized world, with few exceptions, is either

sunk in disproportioned abjectness, or raised to unnatural elevation.

The repeal of the Union Act will place Ireland on a level, so far as

concerns the well-being of its poor, with her sister nation. Benevolent

feeling has gone out in this country in favour of the happiness of

its inhabitants; may this feeling be corroborated, methodized, and

continued! May it never fail! But it will not be kept alive by each

citizen sitting quietly by his own fireside, and saying that things

are going on well, because the rain does not beat on _him_, because

_he_ has books and leisure to read them, because _he_ has money and

is at liberty to accumulate luxuries to _himself_. Generous feeling

dictates no such sayings. When the heart recurs to the thousands who

have no liberty and no leisure, it must be rendered callous by long

contemplation of wretchedness, if after such recurrence it can beat

with contented evenness. Why do I talk thus? Is there anyone who

doubts that the present state of politics and morals is wrong? They

say, Show us a safe method of improvement. There is no safer than the

corroboration and propagation of generous and philanthropic feeling,

than the keeping continually alive a love for the human race, than the

putting in train causes which shall have for their consequences virtue

and freedom; and, because I think that individuals acting singly, with

whatever energy, can never effect so much as a society, I propose

that all those whose views coincide with those that I have avowed,

who perceive the state of the public mind in Ireland, who think the

present a fit opportunity for attempting to fix its fluctuations at

Philanthropy, who love all mankind, and are willing actively to engage

in its cause, or passively to endure the persecutions of those who are

inimical to its success; I propose to these to form an association for

the purposes, first, of debating on the propriety of whatever measures

may be agitated; and secondly, for carrying, by united or individual

exertion, such measures into effect when determined on. That it should

be an association for discussing[9] knowledge and virtue throughout

the poorer classes of society in Ireland, for co-operating with any

enlightened system of education; for discussing topics calculated to

throw light on any methods of alleviation of moral and political evil,

and, as far as lays in its power, actively interesting itself, in

whatever occasions may arise for benefiting mankind.

When I mention Ireland, I do not mean to confine the influence of the

association to this or to any other country, but for the time being.

Moreover, I would recommend that this association should attempt to

form others, and to actuate them with a similar spirit; and I am thus

indeterminate in my description of the association which I propose,

because I conceive that an assembly of men meeting to do all the good

that opportunity will permit them to do, must be in its nature as

indefinite and varying as the instances of human vice and misery that

precede, occasion, and call for its institution.

As political institution and its attendant evils constitute the

majority of those grievances which philanthropists desire to remedy, it

is probable that existing Governments will frequently become the topic

of their discussions, the results of which may little coincide with

the opinions which those who profit by the supineness of human belief

desire to impress upon the world. It is probable that this freedom may

excite the odium of certain well-meaning people, who pin their faith

upon their grandmother’s apron-string. The minority in number are the

majority in intellect and power. The former govern the latter, though

it is by the sufferance of the latter that this originally delegated

power is exercised. This power is become hereditary, and hath ceased to

be necessarily united with intellect.

It is certain, therefore, that any questioning of established

principles would excite the abhorrence and opposition of those who

derived power and honour (such as it is) from their continuance.

As the association which I recommend would question those principles

(however they may be hedged in with antiquity and precedent) which

appeared ill adapted for the benefit of human kind, it would probably

excite the odium of those in power. It would be obnoxious to the

Government, though nothing would be farther from the views of

associated philanthropists than attempting to subvert establishments

forcibly, or even hastily. Aristocracy would oppose it, whether

oppositionists or ministerialists (for philanthropy is of no party),

because its ultimate views look to a subversion of all factitious

distinctions, although from its immediate intentions I fear that

aristocracy can have nothing to dread. The priesthood would oppose

it, because a union of Church and State--contrary to the principles

and practice of Jesus, contrary to that equality which he fruitlessly

endeavoured to teach mankind--is, of all institutions that from the

rust of antiquity are called venerable, the least qualified to stand

free and cool reasoning, because it least conduces to the happiness

of human kind; yet, did either the minister, the peer, or the bishop

know their true interest, instead of that virulent opposition which

some among them have made to freedom and philanthropy, they would

rejoice and co-operate with the diffusion and corroboration of those

principles that would remove a load of paltry equivocation, paltrier

grandeur, and of wigs that crush into emptiness the brains below them,

from their shoulders; and, by permitting them to reassume the degraded

and vilified title of man, would preclude the necessity of mystery and

deception, would bestow on them a title more ennobling, and a dignity

which, though it would be without the gravity of an ape, would possess

the ease and consistency of a man.

For the reasons above alleged, falsely, prejudicedly, and narrowly,

will those very persons whose ultimate benefit is included in the

general good, whose promotion is the essence of a philanthropic

association, will they persecute those who have the best intentions

towards them, malevolence towards none.

I do not, therefore, conceal that those who make the favour of

Government the sunshine of their moral day, confide in the political

creed-makers of the hour, are willing to think things that are rusty

and decayed venerable and are uninquiringly satisfied with evils as

these are, because they find them established and unquestioned as

they do sunlight and air when they come into existence; that they had

better not even think of philanthropy. I conceal not from them that the

discountenance which Government will show to such an association as I

am desirous to establish will come under their comprehensive definition

of danger: that virtue, and any assembly instituted under its auspices,

demands a voluntariness on the part of its devoted individuals, to

sacrifice personal to public benefit; and that it is possible that a

party of beings associated for the purposes of disseminating virtuous

principles, may, considering the ascendency which long custom has

conferred on opposite motives to action, meet with inconveniences that

may amount to personal danger. These considerations are, however, to

the mind of the philanthropist, as is a drop to an ocean; they serve

by their possible existence as tests whereby to discover the really

virtuous man from him who calls himself a patriot for dishonourable

and selfish purposes. I propose then, to such as think with me, a

Philanthropic Association, in spite of the danger that may attend the

attempt. I do not this beneath the shroud of mystery and darkness. I

propose not an Association of Secrecy. Let it [be?] open as the beam

of day. Let it rival the sunbeam in its stainless purity, as in the

extensiveness of its effulgence.

I disclaim all connexion with insincerity and concealment. The latter

implies the former, as much as the former stands in need of the

latter. It is a very latitudinarian system of morality that permits

its professor to employ bad means for any end whatever. Weapons which

vice _can_ use are unfit for the hands of virtue. Concealment implies

falsehood; it is bad, and can therefore never be serviceable to the

cause of philanthropy.

I propose therefore that the association shall be established and

conducted in the open face of day, with the utmost possible publicity.

It is only vice that hides itself in holes and corners, whose

effrontery shrinks from scrutiny, whose cowardice

lets “I _dare not_” wait upon “I would,”

Like the poor cat i’ th’ adage.[10]

But the eye of virtue, eagle-like, darts through the undazzling beam of

eternal truth, and from the undiminished fountain of its purity gathers

wherewith to vivify and illuminate a universe.

I have hitherto abstained from inquiring whether the association which

I recommend be or be not consistent with the English Constitution. And

here it is fit briefly to consider what a constitution is.

Government can have no rights, it is a delegation for the purpose of

securing them to others. Man becomes a subject of government, not that

he may be in a worse, but that he may be in a better state than that

of unorganized society. The strength of government is the happiness

of the governed. All government existing for the happiness of others

is just only so far as it exists by their consent, and useful only so

far as it operates to their well-being. Constitution is to government

what government is to law. Constitution may, in this view of the

subject, be defined to be not merely something constituted for the

benefit of any nation or class of people, but something constituted by

themselves for their own benefit. The nations of England and Ireland

have no constitution, because at no one time did the individuals

that compose them constitute a system for the general benefit. If a

system determined on by a very few, at a great length of time; if

Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, and other usages for whose influence

the improved state of human knowledge is rather to be looked to than

any system which courtiers pretend to exist, and perhaps believe to

exist--a system whose spring of agency they represent as something

secret, undiscoverable, and awful as the law of nature; if these make

a constitution, then England has one. But if (as I have endeavoured to

show they do not) a constitution is something else, then the speeches

of kings or commissioners, the writings of courtiers, and the journals

of Parliament, which teem with its glory, are full of political cant,

exhibit the skeleton of national freedom, and are fruitless attempts to

hide evils in whose favour they cannot prove an alibi. As, therefore,

in the true sense of the expression, the spot of earth on which we live

is destitute of constituted government, it is impossible to offend

against its principles, or to be with justice accused of wishing to

subvert what has no real existence. If a man was accused of setting

fire to a house, which house never existed, and from the nature of

things could not have existed, it is impossible that a jury in their

senses would find him guilty of arson. The English Constitution then

could not be offended by the principles of virtue and freedom. In

fact, the manner in which the Government of England has varied since

its earliest establishment, proves that its present form is the result

of a progressive accommodation to existing principles. It has been

a continual struggle for liberty on the part of the people, and an

uninterrupted attempt at tightening the reins of oppression, and

encouraging ignorance and imposture, by the oligarchy to whom the first

William parcelled out the property of the aborigines at the conquest

of England by the Normans. I hear much of its being a tree so long

growing which to cut down is as bad as cutting down an oak where there

are no more. But the best way, on topics similar to these, is to tell

the plain truth, without the confusion and ornament of metaphor. I call

expressions similar to these, political cant, which, like the songs

of “Rule Britannia” and “God save the King,” are but abstracts of the

caterpillar creed of courtiers, cut down to the taste and comprehension

of a mob; the one to disguise to an alehouse politician the evils of

that devilish practice of war, and the other to inspire among clubs of

all descriptions a certain feeling which some call loyalty and others

servility. A Philanthropic Association has nothing to fear from the

English Constitution, but it may expect danger from its government. So

far, however, from thinking this an argument against its institution,

establishment, and augmentation, I am inclined to rest much of the

weight of the cause which my duties call upon me to support, on the

very fact that government forcibly interferes when the opposition that

is made to its proceedings is profoundly and undeniably nothing but

intellectual. A good cause may be shown to be good, violence instantly

renders bad what might before have been good. “Weapons that falsehood

can use are unfit for the hands of truth”--truth can reason, and

falsehood cannot.

A political or religious system may burn and imprison those who

investigate its principles; but it is an invariable proof of their

falsehood and hollowness. Here there is another reason for the

necessity of a Philanthropic Association, and I call upon any fair and

rational opponent to controvert the argument which it contains; for

there is no one who even calls himself a philanthropist that thinks

personal danger or dishonour terrible in any other light than as it

affects his usefulness.

Man has a heart to feel, a brain to think, and a tongue to utter.

The laws of his moral as of his physical nature are immutable, as

is everything of nature; nor can the ephemeral institutions of

human society take away those rights, annihilate or strengthen the

duties that have for their basis the imperishable relations of his

constitution.

Though the Parliament of England were to pass a thousand bills, to

inflict upon those who determined to utter their thoughts a thousand

penalties, it could not render that criminal which was in its nature

innocent before the passing of such bills.

Man has a right to feel, to think, and to speak, nor can any acts of

legislature destroy that right. He will feel, he must think, and he

_ought_ to give utterance to those thoughts and feelings with the

readiest sincerity and the strictest candour. A man must have a right

to do a thing before he can have a duty; this right must permit before

his duty can enjoin him to any act. Any law is bad which attempts to

make it criminal to do what the plain dictates within the breast of

every man tell him that he ought to do.

The English Government permits a fanatic to assemble any number of

persons to teach them the most extravagant and immoral systems of

faith; but a few men meeting to consider its own principles are marked

with its hatred and pursued by its jealousy.

The religionist who agonizes the death-bed of the cottager, and, by

picturing the hell which hearts black and narrow as his own alone

could have invented, and which exists but in their cores, spreads the

uncharitable doctrines which devote _heretics_ to eternal torments,

and represents heaven to be what earth is, a monopoly in the hands

of certain favoured ones whose merit consists in slavishness, whose

success is the reward of sycophancy. Thus much is permitted, but

a public inquiry that involves any doubt of their rectitude into

the principles of government is not permitted. When Jupiter and a

countryman were one day walking out, conversing familiarly on the

affairs of earth, the countryman listened to Jupiter’s assertions on

the subject for some time in acquiescence, at length, happening to

hint a doubt, Jupiter threatened him with his thunder. “Ah, ah,” says

the countryman, “now, Jupiter, I know that you are wrong; you are

always wrong when you appeal to your thunder.” The essence of virtue

is disinterestedness. Disinterestedness is the quality which preserves

the character of virtue distinct from that of either innocence or

vice. This, it will be said, is mere assertion. It is so: but it is an

assertion whose truth, I believe, the hearts of philanthropists are

disinclined to deny. Those who have been convinced by their grandam of

the doctrine of an original hereditary sin, or by the apostles of a

degrading philosophy of the necessary and universal selfishness of man,

cannot be philanthropists. Now, as an action, or a motive to action,

is only virtuous so far as it is disinterested, or partakes (I adopt

this mode of expression to suit the taste of some) of the nature of

generalized self-love, then reward or punishment, attached even by

omnipotence to any action, can in no wise make it either good or bad.

It is no crime to act in contradiction to an English judge or an

English legislator, but it is a crime to transgress the dictates of

a monitor which feels the spring of every motive, whose throne is

the human sensorium, whose empire the human conduct. Conscience is a

government before which all others sink into nothingness; it surpasses,

and, where it can act, supersedes all other, as nature surpasses art,

as God surpasses man.

In the preceding pages, during the course of an investigation of

the possible objections which might be urged by philanthropy to an

association such as I recommend, as I have rather sought to bring

forward than conceal my principles, it will appear that they have their

origin from the discoveries in the sciences of politics and morals

which preceded and occasioned the revolutions of America and France. It

is with openness that I confess, nay, with pride I assert, that they

are so. The names of Paine and Lafayette will outlive the p[o]etic

aristocracy of an expatriated Jesuit,[11] as the executive of a bigoted

policy will die before the disgust at the sycophancy of their eulogists

can subside.

It will be said, perhaps, that much as principles such as these

may appear marked on the outside with peace, liberty, and virtue,

that their ultimate tendency is to a Revolution, which, like that

of France, will end in bloodshed, vice, and slavery. I must offer,

therefore, my thoughts on that event, which so suddenly and so

lamentably extinguished the overstrained hopes of liberty which it

excited. I do not deny that the Revolution of France was occasioned

by the literary labours of the encyclopædists. When we see two events

together, in certain cases, we speak of one as the cause, the other

the effect. We have no other idea of cause and effect but that which

arises from necessary connexion; it is, therefore, still doubtful

whether D’Alembert, Boulanger, Condorcet, and other celebrated

characters, were the causes of the overthrow of the ancient monarchy

of France. Thus much is certain, that they contributed greatly to

the extension and diffusion of knowledge, and that knowledge is

incompatible with slavery. The French nation was bowed to the dust by

ages of uninterrupted despotism. They were plundered and insulted by

a succession of oligarchies, each more bloodthirsty and unrelenting

than the foregoing. In a state like this her soldiers learned to fight

for Freedom on the plains of America, whilst at this very conjuncture

a ray of science burst through the clouds of bigotry that obscured

the moral day of Europe. The French were in the lowest state of human

degradation, and when the truth, unaccustomed to their ears, that they

were men and equals, was promulgated, they were the first to vent

their indignation on the monopolizers of earth, because they were most

glaringly defrauded of the immunities of nature.

Since the French were furthest removed by the sophistications of

political institution from the genuine condition of human beings, they

must have been most unfit for that happy state of equal law which

proceeds from consummated civilization, and which demands habits of the

strictest virtue before its introduction.

The murders during the period of the French Revolution, and the

despotism which has since been established, prove that the doctrines

of philanthropy and freedom were but shallowly understood. Nor was it

until after that period that their principles became clearly to be

explained, and unanswerably to be established.

Voltaire was the flatterer of kings, though in his heart he despised

them--so far has he been instrumental in the present slavery of his

country. Rousseau gave licence by his writings to passions that only

incapacitate and contract the human heart--so far hath he prepared the

necks of his fellow-beings for that yoke of galling and dishonourable

servitude which at this moment it bears. Helvetius and Condorcet

established principles; but if they drew conclusions, their conclusions

were unsystematical, and devoid of the luminousness and energy of

method. They were little understood in the Revolution. But this age

of ours is not stationary. Philosophers have not developed the great

principles of the human mind that conclusions from them should be

unprofitable and impracticable. We are in a state of continually

progressive improvement. One truth that has been discovered can never

die, but will prevent the revivification of its apportioned opposite

falsehood. By promoting truth and discouraging its opposite--the means

of philanthropy are principally to be forwarded. Godwin wrote during

the Revolution of France, and certainly his writings were totally

devoid of influence with regard to its purposes. Oh! that they had

not! In the Revolution of France were engaged men whose names are

inerasable from the records of Liberty. Their genius penetrated with

a glance the gloom and glare which Church-craft and State-craft had

spread before the imposture and villany of their establishments. They

saw the world. Were they men? Yes! They felt for it! They risked their

lives and happiness for its benefit! Had there been more of those men,

France would not now be a beacon to warn us of the hazard and horror

of Revolutions, but a pattern of society rapidly advancing to a state

of perfection, and holding out an example for the gradual and peaceful

regeneration of the world. I consider it to be one of the effects of a

Philanthropic Association to assist in the production of such men as

these, in an extensive development of those germs of excellence whose

favourite soil is the cultured garden of the human mind.

Many well-meaning persons may think that the attainment of the good

which I propose as the ultimatum of philanthropic exertion is visionary

and inconsistent with human nature; they would tell me not to make

people happy for fear of overstocking the world, and to permit those

who found dishes placed before them on the table of partial nature to

enjoy their superfluities in quietness, though millions of wretches

crowded around but to pick a morsel,[12] which morsel was still refused

to the prayers of agonizing famine.

I cannot help thinking this an evil, nor help endeavouring, by the

safest means that I can devise, to palliate at present, and in fine to

eradicate, this evil. War, vice, and misery are undeniably bad, they

embrace all that we can conceive of temporal and eternal evil. Are

we to be told that these are remediless, because the earth would, in

case of their remedy, be overstocked? That the rich are still to glut,

that the ambitious are still to plan, that the fools whom these knaves

mould, are still to murder their brethren and call it glory, and that

the poor are to pay with their blood, their labour, their happiness,

and their innocence for the crimes and mistakes which the hereditary

monopolists of earth commit? Rare sophism! How will the heartless rich

hug thee to their bosoms, and lull their conscience into slumber with

the opiate of thy reconciling dogmas!

But when the philosopher and philanthropist contemplates the universe,

when he perceives existing evils that admit of amendment, and hears

tell of other evils, which, in the course of sixty centuries, may again

derange the system of happiness which the amendment is calculated to

produce, does he submit to prolong a positive evil, because, if that

were eradicated, after a millennium of 6000 years (for such space of

time would it take to people the earth) another evil would take place?

To how contemptible a degradation of grossest credulity will not

prejudice lower the human mind! We see in winter that the foliage of

the trees is gone, that they present to the view nothing but leafless

branches--we see that the loveliness of the flower decays, though the

root continues in the earth. What opinion should we form of that man

who, when he walked in the freshness of the spring, beheld the fields

enamelled with flowers, and the foliage bursting from the buds, should

find fault with this beautiful order, and murmur his contemptible

discontents because winter must come, and the landscape be robbed of

its beauty for a while again? Yet this man is Mr. Malthus. Do we not

see that the laws of nature perpetually act by disorganization and

reproduction, each alternately becoming cause and effect. The analogies

that we can draw from physical to moral topics are of all others the

most striking.

Does anyone yet question the possibility of inducing radical reform

of moral and political evil? Does he object, from that impossibility,

to the association which I propose, which I frankly confess to be

one of the means whose instrumentality I would employ to attain this

reform. Let them look to the methods which I use. Let me put my object

out of their view and propose their own, how would they accomplish

it? By diffusing virtue and knowledge, by promoting human happiness.

Palsied be the hand, for ever dumb be the tongue that would by one

expression convey sentiments differing from these: I will use no bad

means for any end whatever. Know then, ye philanthropists--to whatever

profession of faith, or whatever determination of principles, chance,

reason, or education may have conducted you--that the endeavours of the

truly virtuous necessarily converge to one point, though it be hidden

from them what point that is; they all labour for one end, and that

controversies concerning the nature of that end serve only to weaken

the strength which for the interest of virtue should be consolidated.

The diffusion of true and virtuous principles (for in the first

principles of morality _none_ disagree) will produce the best of

possible terminations.

I invite to an Association of Philanthropy those, of whatever ultimate

expectations, who will employ the same means that I employ; let their

designs differ as much as they may from mine, I shall rejoice at their

co-operation: because, if the ultimatum of my hopes be founded on the

unity of truth, I shall then have auxiliaries in its cause, and if it

be false I shall rejoice that means are not neglected for forwarding

that which is true.

The accumulation of evil which Ireland has for the last twenty years

sustained, and considering the unremittingness of its pressure I may

say patiently sustained; the melancholy prospect which the unforeseen

conduct of the Regent of England holds out of its continuance, demands

of every Irishman whose pulses have not ceased to throb with the

life-blood of his heart, that he should individually consult, and

unitedly determine on some measures for the liberty of his countrymen.

That those measures should be pacific though resolute, that their

movers should be calmly brave and temperately unbending, though the

whole heart and soul should go with the attempt, is the opinion which

my principles command me to give.

And I am induced to call an association such as this occasion demands,

an Association of Philanthropy, because good men ought never to

circumscribe their usefulness by any name which denotes their exclusive

devotion to the accomplishment of its signification.

When I began the preceding remarks, I conceived that on the removal

of the restrictions from the Regent a ministry less inimical than

the present to the interests of liberty would have been appointed. I

am deceived, and the disappointment of the hopes of freedom on this

subject affords an additional argument towards the necessity of an

Association.

I conclude these remarks, which I have indited principally with a view

of unveiling my principles, with a proposal for an Association for

the purposes of Catholic Emancipation, a repeal of the Union Act, and

grounding upon the attainment of these objects a reform of whatever

moral or political evil may be within its compass of human power to

remedy.

Such as are favourably inclined towards the institution would highly

gratify the Proposer if they would personally communicate with him on

this important subject; by which means the plan might be matured,

errors in the Proposer’s original system be detected, and a meeting for

the purpose convened with that resolute expedition which the nature of

the present crisis demands.

No. 7, Lower Sackville Street.

DECLARATION OF RIGHTS.

I.

Government has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals

for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so

far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to

their well-being.

II.

If these individuals think that the form of government which they

or their forefathers constituted is ill adapted to produce their

happiness, they have a right to change it.

III.

Government is devised for the security of Rights. The rights of man are

liberty, and an equal participation of the commonage of Nature.

IV.

As the benefit of the governed is, or ought to be, the origin of

government, no men can have any authority that does not expressly

emanate from _their_ will.

V.

Though all governments are not so bad as that of Turkey, yet none are

so good as they might be. The majority of every country have a right to

perfect their government. The minority should not disturb them; they

ought to secede, and form their own system in their own way.

VI.

All have a right to an equal share in the benefits and burdens of

Government. Any disabilities for opinion imply, by their existence,

bare-faced tyranny on the side of Government, ignorant slavishness on

the side of the governed.

VII.

The rights of man, in the present state of society, are only to be

secured by some degree of coercion to be exercised on their violator.

The sufferer has a right that the degree of coercion employed be as

slight as possible.

VIII.

It may be considered as a plain proof of the hollowness of any

proposition if power be used to enforce instead of reason to persuade

its admission. Government is never supported by fraud until it cannot

be supported by reason.

IX.

No man has a right to disturb the public peace by personally resisting

the execution of a law, however bad. He ought to acquiesce, using at

the same time the utmost powers of his reason to promote its repeal.

X.

A man must have a right to act in a certain manner, before it can be

his duty. He may, before he ought.

XI.

A man has a right to think as his reason directs; it is a duty he owes

to himself to think with freedom, that he may act from conviction.

XII.

A man has a right to unrestricted liberty of discussion. Falsehood is a

scorpion that will sting itself to death.

XIII.

A man has not only a right to express his thoughts, but it is his duty

to do so.

XIV.

No law has a right to discourage the practice of truth. A man ought to

speak the truth on every occasion. A duty can never be criminal; what

is not criminal cannot be injurious.

XV.

Law cannot make what is in its nature virtuous or innocent to be

criminal, any more than it can make what is criminal to be innocent.

Government cannot make a law; it can only pronounce that which was the

law before its organization; viz., the moral result of the imperishable

relations of things.

XVI.

The present generation cannot bind their posterity: the few cannot

promise for the many.

XVII.

No man has a right to do an evil thing that good may come.

XVIII.

Expediency is inadmissible in morals. Politics are only sound when

conducted on principles of morality: they are, in fact, the morals of

nations.

XIX.

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does

so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of

murder.

XX.

Man, whatever be his country, has the same rights in one place as

another--the rights of universal citizenship.

XXI.

The government of a country ought to be perfectly indifferent to every

opinion. Religious differences, the bloodiest and most rancorous of

all, spring from partiality.

XXII.

A delegation of individuals, for the purpose of securing their rights,

can have no undelegated power of restraining the expression of their

opinion.

XXIII.

Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or

reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his

belief.

XXIV.

A Christian, a Deist, a Turk, and a Jew, have equal rights: they are

men and brethren.

XXV.

If a person’s religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him

nevertheless. How different would yours have been had the chance of

birth placed you in Tartary or India!

XXVI.

Those who believe that Heaven is, what earth has been, a monopoly in

the hands of a favoured few, would do well to reconsider their opinion;

if they find that it came from their priest or their grandmother, they

could not do better than reject it.

XXVII.

No man has a right to be respected for any other possessions but those

of virtue and talents. Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a

bubble, and excessive wealth a libel on its possessor.

XXVIII.

No man has a right to monopolise more than he can enjoy; what the

rich give to the poor, whilst millions are starving, is not a perfect

favour, but an imperfect right.

XXIX.

Every man has a right to a certain degree of leisure and liberty,

because it is his duty to attain a certain degree of knowledge. He may,

before he ought.

XXX.

Sobriety of body and mind is necessary to those who would be free;

because, without sobriety, a high sense of philanthropy cannot actuate

the heart, nor cool and determined courage execute its dictates.

XXXI.

The only use of government is to repress the vices of man. If man

were to-day sinless, to-morrow he would have a right to demand that

government and all its evils should cease.

* * * * *

Man! thou whose rights are here declared, be no longer forgetful of the

loftiness of thy destination. Think of thy rights, of those possessions

which will give thee virtue and wisdom, by which thou mayest arrive

at happiness and freedom. They are declared to thee by one who knows

thy dignity, for every hour does his heart swell with honourable pride

in the contemplation of what thou mayest attain--by one who is not

forgetful of thy degeneracy, for every moment brings home to him the

bitter conviction of what thou art.

_Awake!--arise!--or be for ever fallen._

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Query, a misprint for _importance_?

[9] Query, _diffusing_?

[10] Macbeth, act i. sc. 7.

[11] See _Mémoires de Jacobinisme_, par l’Abbé Baruel.

[12] See Malthus on _Population_.

A

REFUTATION

OF

DEISM:

IN

A DIALOGUE.

* * * * *

ΣΥΝΕΤΟΙΣΙΝ.

London:

PRINTED BY SCHULZE AND DEAN,

13, Poland Street.

* * * * *

1814.

PREFACE.

The object of the following Dialogue is to prove that the system

of Deism is untenable. It is attempted to shew that there is no

alternative between Atheism and Christianity; that the evidences of the

Being of a God are to be deduced from no other principles than those of

Divine Revelation.

The Author endeavours to shew how much the cause of natural and

revealed Religion has suffered from the mode of defence adopted by

Theosophistical Christians. How far he will accomplish what he proposed

to himself, in the composition of this Dialogue, the world will finally

determine.

The mode of printing this little work may appear too expensive,

either for its merits or its length. However inimical this practice

confessedly is, to the general diffusion of knowledge, yet it was

adopted in this instance with a view of excluding the multitude from

the abuse of a mode of reasoning, liable to misconstruction on account

of its novelty.

[Decoration]

EUSEBES AND THEOSOPHUS.

Eusebes.

O Theosophus, I have long regretted and observed the strange

infatuation which has blinded your understanding. It is not without

acute uneasiness that I have beheld the progress of your audacious

scepticism trample on the most venerable institutions of our

forefathers, until it has rejected the salvation which the only

begotten Son of God deigned to proffer in person to a guilty and

unbelieving world. To this excess, then, has the pride of the human

understanding at length arrived? To measure itself with Omniscience! To

scan the intentions of Inscrutability!

You can have reflected but superficially on this awful and important

subject. The love of paradox, an affectation of singularity, or the

pride of reason has seduced you to the barren and gloomy paths of

infidelity. Surely you have hardened yourself against the truth with a

spirit of coldness and cavil.

Have you been wholly inattentive to the accumulated evidence which the

Deity has been pleased to attach to the revelation of his will? The

antient books in which the advent of the Messiah was predicted, the

miracles by which its truth has been so conspicuously confirmed, the

martyrs who have undergone every variety of torment in attestation of

its veracity? You seem to require mathematical demonstration in a case

which admits of no more than strong moral probability. Surely the merit

of that faith which we are required to repose in our Redeemer would be

thus entirely done away. Where is the difficulty of according credit

to that which is perfectly plain and evident? How is he entitled to a

recompense who believes what he cannot disbelieve?

When there is satisfactory evidence that the witnesses of the Christian

miracles passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, and

consented severally to be racked, burned, and strangled, in testimony

of the truth of their account, will it be asserted that they were

actuated by a disinterested desire of deceiving others? That they

were hypocrites for no end but to teach the purest doctrine that ever

enlightened the world, and martyrs without any prospect of emolument

or fame? The sophist, who gravely advances an opinion thus absurd,

certainly sins with gratuitous and indefensible pertinacity.

The history of Christianity is itself the most indisputable proof of

those miracles by which its origin was sanctioned to the world. It

is itself one great miracle. A few humble men established it in the

face of an opposing universe. In less than fifty years an astonishing

multitude was converted, as Suetonius,[13] Pliny,[14] Tacitus,[15]

and Lucian attest; and shortly afterwards thousands who had boldly

overturned the altars, slain the priests and burned the temples of

Paganism, were loud in demanding the recompense of martyrdom from the

hands of the infuriated heathens. Not until three centuries after

the coming of the Messiah did his holy religion incorporate itself

with the institutions of the Roman Empire, and derive support from

the visible arm of fleshly strength. Thus long without any assistance

but that of its Omnipotent author, Christianity prevailed in defiance

of incredible persecutions, and drew fresh vigour from circumstances

the most desperate and unpromising. By what process of sophistry can

a rational being persuade himself to reject a religion, the original

propagation of which is an event wholly unparalleled in the sphere of

human experience?

The morality of the Christian religion is as original and sublime, as

its miracles and mysteries are unlike all other portents. A patient

acquiescence in injuries and violence; a passive submission to the

will of sovereigns; a disregard of those ties by which the feelings of

humanity have ever been bound to this unimportant world; humility and

faith, are doctrines neither similar nor comparable to those of any

other system.[16] Friendship, patriotism, and magnanimity; the heart

that is quick in sensibility, the hand that is inflexible in execution;

genius, learning and courage, are qualities which have engaged the

admiration of mankind, but which we are taught by Christianity to

consider as splendid and delusive vices.

I know not why a Theist should feel himself more inclined to distrust

the historians of Jesus Christ than those of Alexander the Great. What

do the tidings of redemption contain which render them peculiarly

obnoxious to discredit? It will not be disputed that a revelation of

the Divine will is a benefit to mankind.[17] It will not be asserted

that even under the Christian revelation, we have too clear a solution

of the vast enigma of the Universe, too satisfactory a justification of

the attributes of God. When we call to mind the profound ignorance in

which, with the exception of the Jews, the philosophers of antiquity

were plunged; when we recollect that men, eminent for dazzling talents

and fallacious virtues, Epicurus, Democritus, Pliny, Lucretius,[18]

Euripides, and innumerable others, dared publicly to avow their

faith in Atheism with impunity, and that the Theists, Anaxagoras,

Pythagoras and Plato, vainly endeavoured by that human reason,

which is truly incommensurate to so vast a purpose, to establish

among philosophers the belief in one Almighty God, the creator and

preserver of the world; when we recollect that the multitude were

grossly and ridiculously idolatrous, and that the magistrates, if not

Atheists, regarded the being of a God in the light of an abstruse and

uninteresting speculation;[19] when we add to these considerations

a remembrance of the wars and the oppressions, which about the time

of the advent of the Messiah, desolated the human race, is it not

more credible that the Deity actually interposed to check the rapid

progress of human deterioration, than that he permitted a specious and

pestilent imposture to seduce mankind into the labyrinth of a deadlier

superstition? Surely the Deity has not created man immortal, and left

him for ever in ignorance of his glorious destination. If the Christian

Religion is false, I see not upon what foundation our belief in a moral

governor of the universe, or our hopes of immortality can rest.

Thus then the plain reason of the case, and the suffrage of the

civilized world, conspire with the more indisputable suggestions of

faith, to render impregnable that system which has been so vainly and

so wantonly assailed. Suppose, however, it were admitted that the

conclusions of human reason and the lessons of worldly virtue should

be found, in the detail, incongruous with Divine Revelation; by the

dictates of which would it become us to abide? Not by that which errs

whenever it is employed, but by that which is incapable of error: not

by the ephemeral systems of vain philosophy, but by the word of God,

which shall endure for ever.

Reflect, O Theosophus, that if the religion you reject be true, you

are justly excluded from the benefits which result from a belief in

its efficiency to salvation. Be not regardless, therefore, I entreat

you, of the curses so emphatically heaped upon infidels by the inspired

organs of the will of God: the fire which is never quenched, the worm

that never dies. I dare not think that the God in whom I trust for

salvation, would terrify his creatures with menaces of punishment which

he does not intend to inflict. The ingratitude of incredulity is,

perhaps, the only sin to which the Almighty cannot extend his mercy

without compromising his justice. How can the human heart endure,

without despair, the mere conception of so tremendous an alternative?

Return, I entreat you, to that tower of strength which securely

overlooks the chaos of the conflicting opinions of men. Return to that

God who is your creator and preserver, by whom alone you are defended

from the ceaseless wiles of your eternal enemy. Are human institutions

so faultless that the principle upon which they are founded may strive

with the voice of God? Know that faith is superior to reason, in as

much as the creature is surpassed by the Creator; and that whensoever

they are incompatible, the suggestions of the latter, not those of the

former, are to be questioned.

Permit me to exhibit in their genuine deformity the errors which

are seducing you to destruction. State to me with candour the train

of sophisms by which the evil spirit has deluded your understanding.

Confess the secret motives of your disbelief; suffer me to administer a

remedy to your intellectual disease. I fear not the contagion of such

revolting sentiments: I fear only lest patience should desert me before

you have finished the detail of your presumptuous credulity.

Theosophus.

I am not only prepared to confess, but to vindicate my sentiments. I

cannot refrain, however, from premising, that in this controversy I

labour under a disadvantage from which you are exempt. You believe

that incredulity is immoral, and regard him as an object of suspicion

and distrust whose creed is incongruous with your own. But truth is

the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas. I can no

more conceive that a man who perceives the disagreement of any ideas

should be persuaded of their agreement, than that he should overcome a

physical impossibility. The reasonableness or the folly of the articles

of our creed is therefore no legitimate object of merit or demerit; our

opinions depend not on the will, but on the understanding.

If I am in error (and the wisest of us may not presume to deem himself

secure from all illusion) that error is the consequence of the

prejudices by which I am prevented, of the ignorance by which I am

incapacitated from forming a correct estimation of the subject. Remove

those prejudices, dispel that ignorance, make truth apparent, and fear

not the obstacles that remain to be encountered. But do not repeat to

me those terrible and frequent curses, by whose intolerance and cruelty

I have so often been disgusted in the perusal of your sacred books. Do

not tell me that the All-Merciful will punish me for the conclusions

of that reason by which he has thought fit to distinguish me from

the beasts that perish. Above all, refrain from urging considerations

drawn from reason, to degrade that which you are thereby compelled

to acknowledge as the ultimate arbiter of the dispute. Answer my

objections as I engage to answer your assertions, point by point, word

by word.

You believe that the only and ever-present God begot a Son whom he sent

to reform the world, and to propitiate its sins; you believe that a

book, called the Bible, contains a true account of this event, together

with an infinity of miracles and prophecies which preceded it from the

creation of the world. Your opinion that these circumstances really

happened appears to me, from some considerations which I will proceed

to state, destitute of rational foundation.

To expose all the inconsistency, immorality and false pretensions which

I perceive in the Bible, demands a minuteness of criticism at least

as voluminous as itself. I shall confine myself, therefore, to the

confronting of your tenets with those primitive and general principles

which are the basis of all moral reasoning.

In creating the Universe, God certainly proposed to himself the

happiness of his creatures. It is just, therefore, to conclude that he

left no means unemployed, which did not involve an impossibility, to

accomplish this design. In fixing a residence for this image of his own

Majesty, he was doubtless careful that every occasion of detriment,

every opportunity of evil, should be removed. He was aware of the

extent of his powers, he foresaw the consequences of his conduct, and

doubtless modelled his being consentaneously with the world of which he

was to be the inhabitant, and the circumstances which were destined to

surround him.

The account given by the Bible has but a faint concordance with the

surmises of reason concerning this event.

According to this book, God created Satan, who, instigated by the

impulses of his nature, contended with the Omnipotent for the throne of

Heaven. After a contest for the empire, in which God was victorious,

Satan was thrust into a pit of burning sulphur. On man’s creation, God

placed within his reach a tree whose fruit he forbade him to taste, on

pain of death; permitting Satan, at the same time, to employ all his

artifice to persuade this innocent and wondering creature to transgress

the fatal prohibition.

The first man yielded to this temptation; and to satisfy Divine Justice

the whole of his posterity must have been eternally burned in hell,

if God had not sent his only Son on earth, to save those few whose

salvation had been foreseen and determined before the creation of the

world.

God is here represented as creating man with certain passions and

powers, surrounding him with certain circumstances, and then condemning

him to everlasting torments because he acted as omniscience had

foreseen, and was such as omnipotence had made him. For to assert that

the Creator is the author of all good, and the creature the author of

all evil, is to assert that one man makes a straight line and a crooked

one, and that another makes the incongruity.[20]

Barbarous and uncivilized nations have uniformly adored, under

various names, a God of which themselves were the model: revengeful,

blood-thirsty, grovelling and capricious. The idol of a savage is a

demon that delights in carnage. The steam of slaughter, the dissonance

of groans, the flames of a desolated land, are the offerings which he

deems acceptable, and his innumerable votaries throughout the world

have made it a point of duty to worship him to his taste.[21] The

Phenicians, the Druids and the Mexicans have immolated hundreds at the

shrines of their divinity, and the high and holy name of God has been

in all ages the watchword of the most unsparing massacres, the sanction

of the most atrocious perfidies.

But I appeal to your candour, O Eusebes, if there exist a record

of such grovelling absurdities and enormities so atrocious, a

picture of the Deity so characteristic of a demon as that which the

sacred writings of the Jews contain. I demand of you, whether as a

conscientious Theist you can reconcile the conduct which is attributed

to the God of the Jews with your conceptions of the purity and

benevolence of the divine nature.

The loathsome and minute obscenities to which the inspired writers

perpetually descend, the filthy observances which God is described as

personally instituting,[22] the total disregard of truth and contempt

of the first principles of morality, manifested on the most public

occasions by the chosen favourites of Heaven, might corrupt, were they

not so flagitious as to disgust.

When the chief of this obscure and brutal horde of assassins asserts

that the God of the Universe was enclosed in a box of shittim wood,[23]

“two feet long and three feet wide,”[24] and brought home in a new

cart, I smile at the impertinence of so shallow an imposture. But it is

blasphemy of a more hideous and unexampled nature to maintain that the

Almighty God expressly commanded Moses to invade an unoffending nation;

and, on account of the difference of their worship, utterly to destroy

every human being it contained, to murder every infant and unarmed man

in cold blood, to massacre the captives, to rip up the matrons, and

to retain the maidens alone for concubinage and violation.[25] At

the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence

were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the

wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the

weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer,

a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God’s own heart? A wretch,

at the thought of whose unparalleled enormities the sternest soul must

sicken in dismay! An unnatural monster, who sawed his fellow beings in

sunder, harrowed them to fragments under harrows of iron, chopped them

to pieces with axes, and burned them in brick-kilns, because they bowed

before a different, and less bloody idol than his own. It is surely no

perverse conclusion of an infatuated understanding that the God of the

Jews is not the benevolent author of this beautiful world.

The conduct of the Deity in the promulgation of the Gospel, appears

not to the eye of reason more compatible with his immutability and

omnipotence than the history of his actions under the law accords with

his benevolence.

You assert that the human race merited eternal reprobation because

their common father had transgressed the divine command, and that the

crucifixion of the Son of God was the only sacrifice of sufficient

efficacy to satisfy eternal justice. But it is no less inconsistent

with justice and subversive of morality that millions should be

responsible for a crime which they had no share in committing, than

that, if they had really committed it, the crucifixion of an innocent

being could absolve them from moral turpitude. _Ferretne ulla civitas

latorem istiusmodi legis, ut condemnaretur filius, aut nepos, si pater

aut avus deliquisset?_ Certainly this is a mode of legislation peculiar

to a state of savageness and anarchy; this is the irrefragable logic of

tyranny and imposture.

The supposition that God has ever supernaturally revealed his will

to man at any other period than the original creation of the human

race, necessarily involves a compromise of his benevolence. It assumes

that he withheld from mankind a benefit which it was in his power to

confer. That he suffered his creatures to remain in ignorance of truths

essential to their happiness and salvation. That during the lapse of

innumerable ages, every individual of the human race had perished

without redemption, from an universal stain which the Deity at length

descended in person to erase. That the good and wise of all ages,

involved in one common fate with the ignorant and wicked, have been

tainted by involuntary and inevitable error which torments infinite in

duration may not avail to expiate.

In vain will you assure me with amiable inconsistency that the mercy of

God will be extended to the virtuous, and that the vicious will alone

be punished. The foundation of the Christian Religion is manifestly

compromised by a concession of this nature. A subterfuge thus palpable

plainly annihilates the necessity of the incarnation of God for the

redemption of the human race, and represents the descent of the Messiah

as a gratuitous display of Deity, solely adapted to perplex, to terrify

and to embroil mankind.

It is sufficiently evident that an omniscient being never conceived

the design of reforming the world by Christianity. Omniscience would

surely have foreseen the inefficacy of that system, which experience

demonstrates not only to have been utterly impotent in restraining, but

to have been most active in exhaling the malevolent propensities of

men. During the period which elapsed between the removal of the seat of

empire to Constantinople in 328, and its capture by the Turks in 1453,

what salutary influence did Christianity exercise upon that world which

it was intended to enlighten? Never before was Europe the theatre of

such ceaseless and sanguinary wars; never were the people so brutalized

by ignorance and debased by slavery.

I will admit that one prediction of Jesus Christ has been indisputably

fulfilled. _I come not to bring peace upon earth, but a sword._

Christianity indeed has equalled Judaism in the atrocities, and

exceeded it in the extent of its desolation. Eleven millions of men,

women, and children, have been killed in battle, butchered in their

sleep, burned to death at public festivals of sacrifice, poisoned,

tortured, assassinated, and pillaged in the spirit of the Religion of

Peace, and for the glory of the most merciful God.

In vain will you tell me that these terrible effects flow not from

Christianity, but from the abuse of it. No such excuse will avail

to palliate the enormities of a religion pretended to be divine. A

limited intelligence is only so far responsible for the effects of its

agency as it foresaw, or might have foreseen them; but Omniscience

is manifestly chargeable with all the consequences of its conduct.

Christianity itself declares that the worth of the tree is to be

determined by the quality of its fruit. The extermination of infidels;

the mutual persecutions of hostile sects; the midnight massacres and

slow burning of thousands, because their creed contained either more

or less than the orthodox standard, of which Christianity has been the

immediate occasion; and the invariable opposition which philosophy has

ever encountered from the spirit of revealed religion, plainly show

that a very slight portion of sagacity was sufficient to have estimated

at its true value the advantages of that belief to which some Theists

are unaccountably attached.

You lay great stress upon the originality of the Christian system of

morals. If this claim be just, either your religion must be false, or

the Deity has willed that opposite modes of conduct should be pursued

by mankind at different times, under the same circumstances; which is

absurd.

The doctrine of acquiescing in the most insolent despotism; of

praying for and loving our enemies; of faith and humility, appears

to fix the perfection of the human character in that abjectness and

credulity which priests and tyrants of all ages have found sufficiently

convenient for their purposes. It is evident that a whole nation of

Christians (could such an anomaly maintain itself a day) would become,

like cattle, the property of the first occupier. It is evident that ten

highwaymen would suffice to subjugate the world if it were composed of

slaves who dared not to resist oppression.

The apathy to love and friendship, recommended by your creed, would,

if attainable, not be less pernicious. This enthusiasm of anti-social

misanthropy, if it were an actual rule of conduct, and not the

speculation of a few interested persons, would speedily annihilate

the human race. A total abstinence from sexual intercourse is not

perhaps enjoined, but is strenuously recommended,[26] and was actually

practised to a frightful extent by the primitive Christians.[27]

The penalties inflicted by that monster Constantine, the first

Christian Emperor, on the pleasures of unlicensed love, are so

iniquitously severe, that no modern legislator could have affixed them

to the most atrocious crimes.[28] This cold-blooded and hypocritical

ruffian cut his son’s throat, strangled his wife, murdered his

father-in-law and his brother-in-law, and maintained at his court a

set of blood-thirsty and bigoted Christian Priests, one of whom was

sufficient to excite the one half of the world to massacre the other.

I am willing to admit that some few axioms of morality, which

Christianity has borrowed from the philosophers of Greece and India,

dictate, in an unconnected state, rules of conduct worthy of regard;

but the purest and most elevated lessons of morality must remain

nugatory, the most probable inducements to virtue must fail of their

effect, so long as the slightest weight is attached to that dogma which

is the vital essence of revealed religion.

Belief is set up as the criterion of merit or demerit; a man is to be

judged not by the purity of his intentions but by the orthodoxy of his

creed; an assent to certain propositions, is to outweigh in the balance

of Christianity the most generous and elevated virtue.