Addresses in every part of the nation, and convicting them of
falsehoods.
Among the unwarrantable proceedings to which the Proclamation has given
rise, the meetings of the Justices in several of the towns and counties
ought to be noticed.. Those men have assumed to re-act the farce of
General Warrants, and to suppress, by their own authority, whatever
publications they please. This is an attempt at power equalled only by
the conduct of the minor despots of the most despotic governments in
Europe, and yet those Justices affect to call England a Free Country.
But even this, perhaps, like the scheme for garrisoning the country
by building military barracks, is necessary to awaken the country to a
sense of its Rights, and, as such, it will have a good effect.
Another part of the conduct of such Justices has been, that of
threatening to take away the licences from taverns and public-houses,
where the inhabitants of the neighbourhood associated to read and
discuss the principles of Government, and to inform each other thereon.
This, again, is similar to what is doing in Spain and Russia; and the
reflection which it cannot fail to suggest is, that the principles and
conduct of any Government must be bad, when that Government dreads and
startles at discussion, and seeks security by a prevention of knowledge.
If the Government, or the Constitution, or by whatever name it be
called, be that miracle of perfection which the Proclamation and
the Addresses have trumpeted it forth to be, it ought to have defied
discussion and investigation, instead of dreading it. Whereas, every
attempt it makes, either by Proclamation, Prosecution, or Address, to
suppress investigation, is a confession that it feels itself unable to
bear it. It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from enquiry. All
the numerous pamphlets, and all the newspaper falsehood and abuse, that
have been published against the Rights of Man, have fallen before it
like pointless arrows; and, in like manner, would any work have fallen
before the Constitution, had the Constitution, as it is called, been
founded on as good political principles as those on which the Rights OF
Man is written.
It is a good Constitution for courtiers, placemen, pensioners,
borough-holders, and the leaders of Parties, and these are the men that
have been the active leaders of Addresses; but it is a bad Constitution
for at least ninety-nine parts of the nation out of an hundred, and this
truth is every day making its way.
It is bad, first, because it entails upon the nation the unnecessary
expence of supporting three forms and systems of Government at once,
namely, the monarchical, the aristocratical, and the democratical.
Secondly, because it is impossible to unite such a discordant
composition by any other means than perpetual corruption; and therefore
the corruption so loudly and so universally complained of, is no
other than the natural consequence of such an unnatural compound of
Governments; and in this consists that excellence which the numerous
herd of placemen and pensioners so loudly extol, and which at the same
time, occasions that enormous load of taxes under which the rest of the
nation groans.
Among the mass of national delusions calculated to amuse and impose upon
the multitude, the standing one has been that of flattering them into
taxes, by calling the Government (or as they please to express it,
the English Constitution) "_the envy and the admiration of the world_"
Scarcely an Address has been voted in which some of the speakers have
not uttered this hackneyed nonsensical falsehood.
Two Revolutions have taken place, those of America and France; and both
of them have rejected the unnatural compounded system of the English
government. America has declared against all hereditary Government, and
established the representative system of Government only. France has
entirely rejected the aristocratical part, and is now discovering
the absurdity of the monarchical, and is approaching fast to the
representative system. On what ground then, do these men continue a
declaration, respecting what they call the _envy and admiration of other
nations_, which the voluntary practice of such nations, as have had the
opportunity of establishing Government, contradicts and falsifies. Will
such men never confine themselves to truth? Will they be for ever the
deceivers of the people?
But I will go further, and shew, that were Government now to begin in
England, the people could not be brought to establish the same system
they now submit to.
In speaking on this subject (or on any other) _on the pure ground
of principle_, antiquity and precedent cease to be authority, and
hoary-headed error loses its effect. The reasonableness and propriety of
things must be examined abstractedly from custom and usage; and, in this
point of view, the right which grows into practice to-day is as much a
right, and as old in principle and theory, as if it had the customary
sanction of a thousand ages. Principles have no connection with time,
nor characters with names.
To say that the Government of this country is composed of King, Lords,
and Commons, is the mere phraseology of custom. It is composed of
men; and whoever the men be to whom the Government of any country is
intrusted, they ought to be the best and wisest that can be found, and
if they are not so, they are not fit for the station. A man derives
no more excellence from the change of a name, or calling him King, or
calling him Lord, than I should do by changing my name from Thomas to
George, or from Paine to Guelph. I should not be a whit more able to
write a book because my name was altered; neither would any man, now
called a King or a lord, have a whit the more sense than he now has,
were he to call himself Thomas Paine.
As to the word "Commons," applied as it is in England, it is a term
of degradation and reproach, and ought to be abolished. It is a term
unknown in free countries.
But to the point.--Let us suppose that Government was now to begin in
England, and that the plan of Government, offered to the nation for its
approbation or rejection, consisted of the following parts:
First--That some one individual should be taken from all the rest of the
nation, and to whom all the rest should swear obedience, and never be
permitted to sit down in his presence, and that they should give to him
one million sterling a year.--That the nation should never after have
power or authority to make laws but with his express consent; and that
his sons and his sons' sons, whether wise or foolish, good men or
bad, fit or unfit, should have the same power, and also the same money
annually paid to them for ever.
Secondly--That there should be two houses of Legislators to assist in
making laws, one of which should, in the first instance, be entirely
appointed by the aforesaid person, and that their sons and their sons'
sons, whether wise or foolish, good men or bad, fit or unfit, should for
ever after be hereditary Legislators.
Thirdly--That the other house should be chosen in the same manner as the
house now called the House of Commons is chosen, and should be subject
to the controul of the two aforesaid hereditary Powers in all things.
It would be impossible to cram such a farrago of imposition and
absurdity down the throat of this or any other nation that was capable
of reasoning upon its rights and its interest.
They would ask, in the first place, on what ground of right, or on what
principle, such irrational and preposterous distinctions could, or ought
to be made; and what pretensions any man could have, or what services he
could render, to entitle him to a million a year? They would go
farther, and revolt at the idea of consigning their children, and their
children's children, to the domination of persons hereafter to be born,
who might, for any thing they could foresee, turn out to be knaves or
fools; and they would finally discover, that the project of hereditary
Governors and Legislators _was a treasonable usurpation over the rights
of posterity_. Not only the calm dictates of reason, and the force of
natural affection, but the integrity of manly pride, would impel men to
spurn such proposals.
From the grosser absurdities of such a scheme, they would extend their
examination to the practical defects--They would soon see that it would
end in tyranny accomplished by fraud. That in the operation of it, it
would be two to one against them, because the two parts that were to be
made hereditary would form a common interest, and stick to each other;
and that themselves and representatives would become no better
than hewers of wood and drawers of water for the other parts of the
Government.--Yet call one of those powers King, the other Lords, and the
third the Commons, and it gives the model of what is called the English
Government.
I have asserted, and have shewn, both in the First and Second Parts
of _Rights of Man_, that there is not such a thing as an English
Constitution, and that the people have yet a Constitution to form. _A
Constitution is a thing antecedent to a Government; it is the act of a
people creating a Government and giving it powers, and defining the
limits and exercise of the powers so given_. But whenever did the people
of England, acting in their original constituent character, by a
delegation elected for that express purpose, declare and say, "We, the
people of this land, do constitute and appoint this to be our system and
form of Government." The Government has assumed to constitute itself,
but it never was constituted by the people, in whom alone the right of
constituting resides.
I will here recite the preamble to the Federal Constitution of the
United States of America. I have shewn in the Second Part of _Rights
of Man_, the manner by which the Constitution was formed and afterwards
ratified; and to which I refer the reader. The preamble is in the
following words:
"We, the people, of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for
common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this
constitution for the United States of America."
Then follow the several articles which appoint the manner in which the
several component parts of the Government, legislative and executive,
shall be elected, and the period of their duration, and the powers they
shall have: also, the manner by which future additions, alterations,
or amendments, shall be made to the constitution. Consequently, every
improvement that can be made in the science of government, follows in
that country as a matter of order. It is only in Governments founded on
assumption and false principles, that reasoning upon, and investigating
systems and principles of Government, and shewing their several
excellencies and defects, are termed libellous and seditious. These
terms were made part of the charge brought against Locke, Hampden, and
Sydney, and will continue to be brought against all good men, so long as
bad government shall continue.
The Government of this country has been ostentatiously giving challenges
for more than an hundred years past, upon what it called its own
excellence and perfection. Scarcely a King's Speech, or a Parliamentary
Speech, has been uttered, in which this glove has not been thrown, till
the world has been insulted with their challenges. But it now appears
that all this was vapour and vain boasting, or that it was intended to
conceal abuses and defects, and hush the people into taxes. I have taken
the challenge up, and in behalf of the public have shewn, in a fair,
open, and candid manner, both the radical and practical defects of the
system; when, lo! those champions of the Civil List have fled away,
and sent the Attorney-General to deny the challenge, by turning the
acceptance of it into an attack, and defending their Places and Pensions
by a prosecution.
I will here drop this part of the subject, and state a few particulars
respecting the prosecution now pending, by which the Addressers will
see that they have been used as tools to the prosecuting party and their
dependents. The case is as follows:
The original edition of the First and Second Parts of the Rights of
Man, having been expensively printed, (in the modern stile of printing
pamphlets, that they might be bound up with Mr. Burke's Reflections on
the French Revolution,) the high price(1) precluded the generality
of people from purchasing; and many applications were made to me from
various parts of the country to print the work in a cheaper manner. The
people of Sheffield requested leave to print two thousand copies for
themselves, with which request I immediately complied. The same request
came to me from Rotherham, from Leicester, from Chester, from several
towns in Scotland; and Mr. James Mackintosh, author of _Vindico
Gallico_, brought me a request from Warwickshire, for leave to print ten
thousand copies in that county. I had already sent a cheap edition to
Scotland; and finding the applications increase, I concluded that the
best method of complying therewith, would be to print a very numerous
edition in London, under my own direction, by which means the work would
be more perfect, and the price be reduced lower than it could be by
_printing_ small editions in the country, of only a few thousands each.