If the Clerk of the Court of King's Bench should chuse to be the orator
of this luminous encomium on the constitution, I hope he will get
it well by heart before he attempts to deliver it, and not have
to apologize to Parliament, as he did in the case of Bolingbroke's
encomium, for forgetting his lesson; and, with this admonition I leave
him.
Having thus informed the Addressers of what passed at the meeting of
Parliament, I return to take up the subject at the part where I broke
off in order to introduce the preceding speeches.
I was then stating, that the first policy of the Government party was
silence, and the next, clamorous contempt; but as people generally
choose to read and judge for themselves, the work still went on, and the
affectation of contempt, like the silence that preceded it, passed for
nothing.
Thus foiled in their second scheme, their evil genius, like a
will-with-a-wisp, led them to a third; when all at once, as if it had
been unfolded to them by a fortune-teller, or Mr. Dundas had discovered
it by second sight, this once harmless, insignificant book, without
undergoing the alteration of a single letter, became a most wicked and
dangerous Libel. The whole Cabinet, like a ship's crew, became alarmed;
all hands were piped upon deck, as if a conspiracy of elements was
forming around them, and out came the Proclamation and the Prosecution;
and Addresses supplied the place of prayers.
Ye silly swains, thought I to myself, why do you torment yourselves
thus? The Rights OF Man is a book calmly and rationally written; why
then are you so disturbed? Did you see how little or how suspicious such
conduct makes you appear, even cunning alone, had you no other faculty,
would hush you into prudence. The plans, principles, and arguments,
contained in that work, are placed before the eyes of the nation, and
of the world, in a fair, open, and manly manner, and nothing more is
necessary than to refute them. Do this, and the whole is done; but if ye
cannot, so neither can ye suppress the reading, nor convict the author;
for the Law, in the opinion of all good men, would convict itself, that
should condemn what cannot be refuted.
Having now shown the Addressers the several stages of the business,
prior to their being called upon, like Caesar in the Tyber, crying to
Cassius, "_help, Cassius, or I sink_!" I next come to remark on the
policy of the Government, in promoting Addresses; on the consequences
naturally resulting therefrom; and on the conduct of the persons
concerned.
With respect to the policy, it evidently carries with it every mark
and feature of disguised fear. And it will hereafter be placed in the
history of extraordinary things, that a pamphlet should be produced by
an individual, unconnected with any sect or party, and not seeking to
make any, and almost a stranger in the land, that should compleatly
frighten a whole Government, and that in the midst of its most
triumphant security. Such a circumstance cannot fail to prove, that
either the pamphlet has irresistible powers, or the Government very
extraordinary defects, or both. The nation exhibits no signs of fear at
the Rights of Man; why then should the Government, unless the interest
of the two are really opposite to each other, and the secret is
beginning to be known? That there are two distinct classes of men in
the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon
the taxes, is evident at first sight; and when taxation is carried to
excess, it cannot fail to disunite those two, and something of this kind
is now beginning to appear.
It is also curious to observe, amidst all the fume and bustle about
Proclamations and Addresses, kept up by a few noisy and interested men,
how little the mass of the nation seem to care about either. They
appear to me, by the indifference they shew, not to believe a word the
Proclamation contains; and as to the Addresses, they travel to London
with the silence of a funeral, and having announced their arrival in
the Gazette, are deposited with the ashes of their predecessors, and Mr.
Dundas writes their _hic facet_.
One of the best effects which the Proclamation, and its echo the
Addresses have had, has been that of exciting and spreading curiosity;
and it requires only a single reflection to discover, that the object
of all curiosity is knowledge. When the mass of the nation saw that
Placemen, Pensioners, and Borough-mongers, were the persons that stood
forward to promote Addresses, it could not fail to create suspicions
that the public good was not their object; that the character of the
books, or writings, to which such persons obscurely alluded, not daring
to mention them, was directly contrary to what they described them to
be, and that it was necessary that every man, for his own satisfaction,
should exercise his proper right, and read and judge for himself.
But how will the persons who have been induced to read the _Rights of
Man_, by the clamour that has been raised against it, be surprized
to find, that, instead of a wicked, inflammatory work, instead of a
licencious and profligate performance, it abounds with principles of
government that are uncontrovertible--with arguments which every reader
will feel, are unanswerable--with plans for the increase of commerce
and manufactures--for the extinction of war--for the education of
the children of the poor--for the comfortable support of the aged and
decayed persons of both sexes--for the relief of the army and navy, and,
in short, for the promotion of every thing that can benefit the moral,
civil, and political condition of Man.
Why, then, some calm observer will ask, why is the work prosecuted, if
these be the goodly matters it contains? I will tell thee, friend;
it contains also a plan for the reduction of Taxes, for lessening the
immense expences of Government, for abolishing sinecure Places and
Pensions; and it proposes applying the redundant taxes, that shall
be saved by these reforms, to the purposes mentioned in the former
paragraph, instead of applying them to the support of idle and
profligate Placemen and Pensioners.
Is it, then, any wonder that Placemen and Pensioners, and the whole
train of Court expectants, should become the promoters of Addresses,
Proclamations, and Prosecutions? or, is it any wonder that Corporations
and rotten Boroughs, which are attacked and exposed, both in the First
and Second Parts of _Rights of Man_, as unjust monopolies and public
nuisances, should join in the cavalcade? Yet these are the sources from
which Addresses have sprung. Had not such persons come forward to
oppose the _Rights of Man_, I should have doubted the efficacy of my
own writings: but those opposers have now proved to me that the blow was
well directed, and they have done it justice by confessing the smart.
The principal deception in this business of Addresses has been, that the
promoters of them have not come forward in their proper characters. They
have assumed to pass themselves upon the public as a part of the Public,
bearing a share of the burthen of Taxes, and acting for the public good;
whereas, they are in general that part of it that adds to the public
burthen, by living on the produce of the public taxes. They are to the
public what the locusts are to the tree: the burthen would be less, and
the prosperity would be greater, if they were shaken off.
"I do not come here," said Onslow, at the Surry County meeting, "as the
Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of the county, but I come here as
a plain country gentleman." The fact is, that he came there as what he
was, and as no other, and consequently he came as one of the beings I
have been describing. If it be the character of a gentleman to be fed by
the public, as a pauper is by the parish, Onslow has a fair claim to the
title; and the same description will suit the Duke of Richmond, who led
the Address at the Sussex meeting. He also may set up for a gentleman.
As to the meeting in the next adjoining county (Kent), it was a scene of
disgrace. About two hundred persons met, when a small part of them drew
privately away from the rest, and voted an Address: the consequence of
which was that they got together by the ears, and produced a riot in the
very act of producing an Address to prevent Riots.
That the Proclamation and the Addresses have failed of their intended
effect, may be collected from the silence which the Government party
itself observes. The number of addresses has been weekly retailed in the
Gazette; but the number of Addressers has been concealed. Several of the
Addresses have been voted by not more than ten or twelve persons; and a
considerable number of them by not more than thirty. The whole number of
Addresses presented at the time of writing this letter is three hundred
and twenty, (rotten Boroughs and Corporations included) and even
admitting, on an average, one hundred Addressers to each address, the
whole number of addressers would be but thirty-two thousand, and nearly
three months have been taken up in procuring this number. That the
success of the Proclamation has been less than the success of the work
it was intended to discourage, is a matter within my own knowledge; for
a greater number of the cheap edition of the First and Second Parts of
the Rights OF Man has been sold in the space only of one month, than the
whole number of Addressers (admitting them to be thirty-two thousand)
have amounted to in three months.
It is a dangerous attempt in any government to say to a Nation, "_thou
shalt not read_." This is now done in Spain, and was formerly done under
the old Government of France; but it served to procure the downfall of
the latter, and is subverting that of the former; and it will have
the same tendency in all countries; because _thought_ by some means
or other, is got abroad in the world, and cannot be restrained, though
reading may.
If _Rights of Man_ were a book that deserved the vile description which
the promoters of the Address have given of it, why did not these men
prove their charge, and satisfy the people, by producing it, and reading
it publicly? This most certainly ought to have been done, and would also
have been done, had they believed it would have answered their purpose.
But the fact is, that the book contains truths which those time-servers
dreaded to hear, and dreaded that the people should know; and it is now
following up the,