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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund
+Burke, Vol. I. (of 12), by Edmund Burke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12)
+
+Author: Edmund Burke
+
+Release Date: March 27, 2005 [EBook #15043]
+[Date last updated: May 5, 2006]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDMUND BURKE, VOL. I. (OF 12) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Michael Punch and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from
+images generously made available by the Bibliothèque
+nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BURKE'S WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME THE FIRST
+
+
+[Illustration: EDMUND BURKE.]
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS
+
+OF
+
+THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
+
+EDMUND BURKE
+
+
+IN TWELVE VOLUMES
+
+
+VOLUME THE FIRST
+
+
+[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms.]
+
+
+London
+JOHN C. NIMMO
+14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
+MDCCCLXXXVII
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER, PREFIXED TO THE FIRST OCTAVO EDITION      v
+
+ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND OCTAVO EDITION                          xvii
+
+A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY: OR, A VIEW OF THE MISERIES AND
+  EVILS ARISING TO MANKIND FROM EVERY SPECIES OF ARTIFICIAL SOCIETY    1
+
+A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF THE SUBLIME
+  AND BEAUTIFUL; WITH AN INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE CONCERNING TASTE      67
+
+A SHORT ACCOUNT OF A LATE SHORT ADMINISTRATION                       263
+
+OBSERVATIONS ON A LATE PUBLICATION, INTITULED,
+  "THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION"                                  269
+
+THOUGHTS ON THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS                     433
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+TO THE READER.[1]
+
+
+The late Mr. Burke, from a principle of unaffected humility, which they
+who were the most intimately acquainted with his character best know to
+have been in his estimation one of the most important moral duties,
+never himself made any collection of the various publications with
+which, during a period of forty years, he adorned and enriched the
+literature of this country. When, however, the rapid and unexampled
+demand for his "Reflections on the Revolution in France" had
+unequivocally testified his celebrity as a writer, some of his friends
+so far prevailed upon him, that he permitted them to put forth a regular
+edition of his works. Accordingly, three volumes in quarto appeared
+under that title in 1792, printed for the late Mr. Dodsley. That
+edition, therefore, has been made the foundation of the present, for
+which a form has been chosen better adapted to public convenience. Such
+errors of the press as have been discovered in it are here rectified: in
+other respects it is faithfully followed, except that in one instance
+an accident of little moment has occasioned a slight deviation from the
+strict chronological arrangement, and that, on the other hand, a speech
+of conspicuous excellence, on his declining the poll at Bristol, in
+1780, is here, for the first time, inserted in its proper place.
+
+As the activity of the author's mind, and the lively interest which he
+took in the welfare of his country, ceased only with his life, many
+subsequent productions issued from his pen, which were received in a
+manner corresponding with his distinguished reputation. He wrote also
+various tracts, of a less popular description, which he designed for
+private circulation in quarters where he supposed they might produce
+most benefit to the community, but which, with some other papers, have
+been printed since his death, from copies which he left behind him
+fairly transcribed, and most of them corrected as for the press. All
+these, now first collected together, form the contents of the last two
+volumes.[2] They are disposed in chronological order, with the exception
+of the "Preface to Brissot's Address," which having appeared in the
+author's lifetime, and from delicacy not being avowed by him, did not
+come within the plan of this edition, but has been placed at the end of
+the last volume, on its being found deficient in its just bulk.
+
+The several posthumous publications, as they from time to time made
+their appearance, were accompanied by appropriate prefaces. These,
+however, as they were principally intended for temporary purposes, have
+been omitted. Some few explanations only, which they contained, seem
+here to be necessary.
+
+The "Observations on the Conduct of the Minority" in the Session of 1793
+had been written and sent by Mr. Burke as a paper entirely and strictly
+confidential; but it crept surreptitiously into the world, through the
+fraud and treachery of the man whom he had employed to transcribe it,
+and, as usually happens in such cases, came forth in a very mangled
+state, under a false title, and without the introductory letter. The
+friends of the author, without waiting to consult him, instantly
+obtained an injunction from the Court of Chancery to stop the sale. What
+he himself felt, on receiving intelligence of the injury done him by one
+from whom his kindness deserved a very different return, will be best
+conveyed in his own words. The following is an extract of a letter to a
+friend, which he dictated on this subject from a sick-bed.
+
+BATH, 15th Feb., 1797.
+
+"My Dear Laurence,--
+
+"On the appearance of the advertisement, all newspapers and all letters
+have been kept back from me till this time. Mrs. Burke opened yours,
+and finding that all the measures in the power of Dr. King, yourself,
+and Mr. Woodford, had been taken to suppress the publication, she
+ventured to deliver me the letters to-day, which were read to me in my
+bed, about two o'clock.
+
+"This affair does vex me; but I am not in a state of health at present
+to be deeply vexed at anything. Whenever this matter comes into
+discussion, I authorize you to contradict the infamous reports which (I
+am informed) have been given out, that this paper had been circulated
+through the ministry, and was intended gradually to slide into the
+press. To the best of my recollection I never had a clean copy of it but
+one, which is now in my possession; I never communicated that, but to
+the Duke of Portland, from whom I had it back again. But the Duke will
+set this matter to rights, if in reality there were two copies, and he
+has one. I never showed it, as they know, to any one of the ministry. If
+the Duke has really a copy, I believe his and mine are the only ones
+that exist, except what was taken by fraud from loose and incorrect
+papers by S----, to whom I gave the letter to copy. As soon as I began
+to suspect him capable of any such scandalous breach of trust, you know
+with what anxiety I got the loose papers out of his hands, not having
+reason to think that he kept any other. Neither do I believe in fact
+(unless he meditated this villany long ago) that he did or does now
+possess any clean copy. I never communicated that paper to any one out
+of the very small circle of those private friends from whom I concealed
+nothing.
+
+"But I beg you and my friends to be cautious how you let it be
+understood that I disclaim anything but the mere act and intention of
+publication. I do not retract any one of the sentiments contained in
+that memorial, which was and is my justification, addressed to the
+friends for whose use alone I intended it. Had I designed it for the
+public, I should have been more exact and full. It was written in a tone
+of indignation, in consequence of the resolutions of the Whig Club,
+which were directly pointed against myself and others, and occasioned
+our secession from that club; which is the last act of my life that I
+shall under any circumstances repent. Many temperaments and explanations
+there would have been, if I had ever had a notion that it should meet
+the public eye."
+
+
+In the mean time a large impression, amounting, it is believed, to three
+thousand copies, had been dispersed over the country. To recall these
+was impossible; to have expected that any acknowledged production of Mr.
+Burke, full of matter likely to interest the future historian, could
+remain forever in obscurity, would have been folly; and to have passed
+it over in silent neglect, on the one hand, or, on the other, to have
+then made any considerable changes in it, might have seemed an
+abandonment of the principles which it contained. The author, therefore,
+discovering, that, with the exception of the introductory letter, he had
+not in fact kept any clean copy, as he had supposed, corrected one of
+the pamphlets with his own hand. From this, which was found preserved
+with his other papers, his friends afterwards thought it their duty to
+give an authentic edition.
+
+The "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity" were originally presented in the
+form of a memorial to Mr. Pitt. The author proposed afterwards to recast
+the same matter in a new shape. He even advertised the intended work
+under the title of "Letters on Rural Economics, addressed to Mr. Arthur
+Young"; but he seems to have finished only two or three detached
+fragments of the first letter. These being too imperfect to be printed
+alone, his friends inserted them in the memorial, where they seemed best
+to cohere. The memorial had been fairly copied, but did not appear to
+have been examined or corrected, as some trifling errors of the
+transcriber were perceptible in it. The manuscript of the fragments was
+a rough draft from the author's own hand, much blotted and very
+confused.
+
+The Third Letter on the Proposals for Peace was in its progress through
+the press when the author died. About one half of it was actually
+revised in print by himself, though not in the exact order of the pages
+as they now stand. He enlarged his first draft, and separated one great
+member of his subject, for the purpose of introducing some other matter
+between. The different parcels of manuscript designed to intervene were
+discovered. One of them he seemed to have gone over himself, and to have
+improved and augmented. The other (fortunately the smaller) was much
+more imperfect, just as it was taken from his mouth by dictation. The
+former reaches from the two hundred and forty-sixth to near the end of
+the two hundred and sixty-second page; the latter nearly occupies the
+twelve pages which follow.[3] No important change, none at all affecting
+the meaning of any passage, has been made in either, though in the more
+imperfect parcel some latitude of discretion in subordinate points was
+necessarily used.
+
+There is, however, a considerable member for the greater part of which
+Mr. Burke's reputation is not responsible: this is the inquiry into the
+condition of the higher classes, which commences in the two hundred and
+ninety-fifth page.[4] The summary of the whole topic, indeed, nearly as
+it stands in the three hundred and seventy-third and fourth pages,[5]
+was found, together with a marginal reference to the Bankrupt List, in
+his own handwriting; and the actual conclusion of the Letter was
+dictated by him, but never received his subsequent correction. He had
+also preserved, as materials for this branch of his subject, some
+scattered hints, documents, and parts of a correspondence on the state
+of the country. He was, however, prevented from working on them by the
+want of some authentic and official information, for which he had been
+long anxiously waiting, in order to ascertain, to the satisfaction of
+the public, what, with his usual sagacity, he had fully anticipated from
+his own personal observation, to his own private conviction. At length
+the reports of the different committees which had been appointed by the
+two Houses of Parliament amply furnished him with evidence for this
+purpose. Accordingly he read and considered them with attention: but for
+anything beyond this the season was now past. The Supreme Disposer of
+All, against whose inscrutable counsels it is vain as well as impious to
+murmur, did not permit him to enter on the execution of the task which
+he meditated. It was resolved, therefore, by one of his friends, after
+much hesitation, and under a very painful responsibility, to make such
+an attempt as he could at supplying the void; especially because the
+insufficiency of our resources for the continuance of the war was
+understood to have been the principal objection urged against the two
+former Letters on the Proposals for Peace. In performing with
+reverential diffidence this duty of friendship, care has been taken not
+to attribute to Mr. Burke any sentiment which is not most explicitly
+known, from repeated conversations, and from much correspondence, to
+have been decidedly entertained by that illustrious man. One passage of
+nearly three pages, containing a censure of our defensive system, is
+borrowed from a private letter, which he began to dictate with an
+intention of comprising in it the short result of his opinions, but
+which he afterwards abandoned, when, a little time before his death, his
+health appeared in some degree to amend, and he hoped that Providence
+might have spared him at least to complete the larger public letter,
+which he then proposed to resume.
+
+In the preface to the former edition of this Letter a fourth was
+mentioned as being in possession of Mr. Burke's friends. It was in fact
+announced by the author himself, in the conclusion of the second, which
+it was then designed to follow. He intended, he said, to proceed next on
+the question of the facilities possessed by the French Republic, _from
+the internal state of other nations, and particularly of this_, for
+obtaining her ends,--and as his notions were controverted, to take
+notice of what, in that way, had been recommended to him. The vehicle
+which he had chosen for this part of his plan was an answer to a
+pamphlet which was supposed to come from high authority, and was
+circulated by ministers with great industry, at the time of its
+appearance, in October, 1795, immediately previous to that session of
+Parliament when his Majesty for the first time declared that the
+appearance of any disposition in the enemy to negotiate for general
+peace should not fail to be met with an earnest desire to give it the
+fullest and speediest effect. In truth, the answer, which is full of
+spirit and vivacity, was written the latter end of the same year, but
+was laid aside when the question assumed a more serious aspect, from the
+commencement of an actual negotiation, which gave rise to the series of
+printed letters. Afterwards, he began to rewrite it, with a view of
+accommodating it to his new purpose. The greater part, however, still
+remained in its original state; and several heroes of the Revolution,
+who are there celebrated, having in the interval passed off the public
+stage, a greater liberty of insertion and alteration than his friends on
+consideration have thought allowable would be necessary to adapt it to
+that place in the series for which it was ultimately designed by the
+author. This piece, therefore, addressed, as the title originally stood,
+to his noble friend, Earl Fitzwilliam, will be given the first in the
+supplemental volumes which will be hereafter added to complete this
+edition of the author's works.
+
+The tracts, most of them in manuscript, which have been already selected
+as fit for this purpose, will probably furnish four or five volumes
+more, to be printed uniformly with this edition. The principal piece is
+an Essay on the History of England, from the earliest period to the
+conclusion of the reign of King John. It is written with much depth of
+antiquarian research, directed by the mind of an intelligent statesman.
+This alone, as far as can be conjectured, will form more than one
+volume. Another entire volume also, at least, will be filled with his
+letters to public men on public affairs, especially those of France.
+This supplement will be sent to the press without delay.
+
+Mr. Burke's more familiar correspondence will be reserved as authorities
+to accompany a narrative of his life, which will conclude the whole. The
+period during which he flourished was one of the most memorable of our
+annals. It comprehended the acquisition of one empire in the East, the
+loss of another in the West, and the total subversion of the ancient
+system of Europe by the French Revolution, with all which events the
+history of his life is necessarily and intimately connected,--as indeed
+it also is, much more than is generally known, with the state of
+literature and the elegant arts. Such a subject of biography cannot be
+dismissed with a slight and rapid touch; nor can it be treated in a
+manner worthy of it, from the information, however authentic and
+extensive, which the industry of any one man may have accumulated. Many
+important communications have been received; but some materials, which
+relate to the pursuits of his early years, and which are known to be in
+existence, have been hitherto kept back, notwithstanding repeated
+inquiries and applications. It is, therefore, once more earnestly
+requested, that all persons who call themselves the friends or admirers
+of the late Edmund Burke will have the goodness to transmit, without
+delay, any notices of that or of any other kind which may happen to be
+in their possession or within their reach, to Messrs. Rivingtons,--a
+respect and kindness to his memory which will be thankfully acknowledged
+by those friends to whom, in dying, he committed the sacred trust of his
+reputation.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Prefixed to the first octavo edition: London, F. and C. Rivington,
+1801: comprising Vols. I.-VIII. of the edition in sixteen volumes issued
+by these publishers at intervals between the years 1801 and 1827.
+
+[2] Comprising the last four papers of the fourth volume, and the whole
+of the fifth volume, of the present edition.
+
+[3] The former comprising the matter included between the paragraph
+commencing, "I hear it has been said," &c., and that ending with the
+words, "there were little or no materials"; and the latter extending
+through the paragraph concluding with the words, "disgraced and plagued
+mankind."
+
+[4] At the paragraph commencing with the words, "In turning our view
+from the lower to the higher classes," &c.
+
+[5] In the first half of the paragraph commencing, "If, then, the real
+state of this nation," &c.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+TO THE SECOND OCTAVO EDITION.[6]
+
+
+A new edition of the works of Mr. Burke having been called for by the
+public, the opportunity has been taken to make some slight changes, it
+is hoped for the better.
+
+A different distribution of the contents, while it has made the volumes,
+with the exception of the first and sixth, more nearly equal in their
+respective bulk, has, at the same time, been fortunately found to
+produce a more methodical arrangement of the whole. The first and second
+volumes, as before, severally contain those literary and philosophical
+works by which Mr. Burke was known previous to the commencement of his
+public life as a statesman, and the political pieces which were written
+by him between the time of his first becoming connected with the Marquis
+of Rockingham and his being chosen member for Bristol. In the third are
+comprehended all his speeches and pamphlets from his first arrival at
+Bristol, as a candidate, in the year 1774, to his farewell address from
+the hustings of that city, in the year 1780. What he himself published
+relative to the affairs of India occupies the fourth volume. The
+remaining four comprise his works since the French Revolution, with the
+exception of the Letter to Lord Kenmare on the Penal Laws against Irish
+Catholics, which was probably inserted where it stands from its relation
+to the subject of the Letter addressed by him, at a later period, to Sir
+Hercules Langrishe. With the same exception, too, strict regard has been
+paid to chronological order, which, in the last edition, was in some
+instances broken, to insert pieces that wore not discovered till it was
+too late to introduce them in their proper places.
+
+In the Appendix to the Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts the
+references were found to be confused, and, in many places, erroneous.
+This probably had arisen from the circumstance that a larger and
+differently constructed appendix seems to have been originally designed
+by Mr. Burke, which, however, he afterwards abridged and altered, while
+the speech and the notes upon it remained as they were. The text and the
+documents that support it have throughout been accommodated to each
+other.
+
+The orthography has been in many cases altered, and an attempt made to
+reduce it to some certain standard. The rule laid down for the discharge
+of this task was, that, whenever Mr. Burke could be perceived to have
+been uniform in his mode of spelling, that was considered as decisive;
+but where he varied, (and as he was in the habit of writing by
+dictation, and leaving to others the superintendence of the press, he
+was peculiarly liable to variations of this sort) the best received
+authorities were directed to be followed. The reader, it is trusted,
+will find this object, too much disregarded in modern books, has here
+been kept in view throughout. The quotations which are interspersed
+through the works of Mr Burke, and which were frequently made by him
+from memory, have been generally compared with the original authors.
+Several mistakes in printing, of one word for another, by which the
+sense was either perverted or obscured, are now rectified. Two or three
+small insertions have also been made from a quarto copy corrected by Mr.
+Burke himself. From the same source something more has been drawn in the
+shape of notes, to which are subscribed his initials. Of this number is
+the explanation of that celebrated phrase, "the swinish multitude": an
+explanation which was uniformly given by him to his friends, in
+conversation on the subject. But another note will probably interest the
+reader still more, as being strongly expressive of that parental
+affection which formed so amiable a feature in the character of Mr.
+Burke. It is in page 203 of Vol. V., where he points out a considerable
+passage as having been supplied by his "lost son".[7] Several other
+parts, possibly amounting altogether to a page or thereabout, were
+indicated in the same manner; but, as they in general consist of single
+sentences, and as the meaning of the mark by which they were
+distinguished was not actually expressed, it has not been thought
+necessary to notice them particularly.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] London, F. and C. Rivington, 1803. 8 vols.
+
+[7] In "Reflections on the Revolution in France,"--indicated by
+foot-note _in loco_.
+
+
+
+
+A
+
+VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY:
+
+OR,
+
+A VIEW OF THE MISERIES AND EVILS ARISING TO MANKIND
+FROM EVERY SPECIES OF ARTIFICIAL SOCIETY.
+
+IN A LETTER TO LORD ****,
+
+BY A LATE NOBLE WRITER.
+
+1756.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+Before the philosophical works of Lord Bolingbroke had appeared, great
+things were expected from the leisure of a man, who, from the splendid
+scene of action in which his talents had enabled him to make so
+conspicuous a figure, had retired to employ those talents in the
+investigation of truth. Philosophy began to congratulate herself upon
+such a proselyte from the world of business, and hoped to have extended
+her power under the auspices of such a leader. In the midst of these
+pleasing expectations, the works themselves at last appeared in _full
+body_, and with great pomp. Those who searched in them for new
+discoveries in the mysteries of nature; those who expected something
+which might explain or direct the operations of the mind; those who
+hoped to see morality illustrated and enforced; those who looked for new
+helps to society and government; those who desired to see the characters
+and passions of mankind delineated; in short, all who consider such
+things as philosophy, and require some of them at least in every
+philosophical work, all these were certainly disappointed; they found
+the landmarks of science precisely in their former places: and they
+thought they received but a poor recompense for this disappointment, in
+seeing every mode of religion attacked in a lively manner, and the
+foundation of every virtue, and of all government, sapped with great art
+and much ingenuity. What advantage do we derive from such writings? What
+delight can a man find in employing a capacity which might be usefully
+exerted for the noblest purposes, in a sort of sullen labor, in which,
+if the author could succeed, he is obliged to own, that nothing could be
+more fatal to mankind than his success?
+
+I cannot conceive how this sort of writers propose to compass the
+designs they pretend to have in view, by the instruments which they
+employ. Do they pretend to exalt the mind of man, by proving him no
+better than a beast? Do they think to enforce the practice of virtue, by
+denying that vice and virtue are distinguished by good or ill fortune
+here, or by happiness or misery hereafter? Do they imagine they shall
+increase our piety, and our reliance on God, by exploding his
+providence, and insisting that he is neither just nor good? Such are the
+doctrines which, sometimes concealed, sometimes openly and fully avowed,
+are found to prevail throughout the writings of Lord Bolingbroke; and
+such are the reasonings which this noble writer and several others have
+been pleased to dignify with the name of philosophy. If these are
+delivered in a specious manner, and in a style above the common, they
+cannot want a number of admirers of as much docility as can be wished
+for in disciples. To these the editor of the following little piece has
+addressed it: there is no reason to conceal the design of it any longer.
+
+The design was to show that, without the exertion of any considerable
+forces, the same engines which were employed for the destruction of
+religion, might be employed with equal success for the subversion of
+government; and that specious arguments might be used against those
+things which they, who doubt of everything else, will never permit to be
+questioned. It is an observation which I think Isocrates makes in one of
+his orations against the sophists, that it is far more easy to maintain
+a wrong cause, and to support paradoxical opinions to the satisfaction
+of a common auditory, than to establish a doubtful truth by solid and
+conclusive arguments. When men find that something can be said in favor
+of what, on the very proposal, they have thought utterly indefensible,
+they grow doubtful of their own reason; they are thrown into a sort of
+pleasing surprise; they run along with the speaker, charmed and
+captivated to find such a plentiful harvest of reasoning, where all
+seemed barren and unpromising. This is the fairy land of philosophy. And
+it very frequently happens, that those pleasing impressions on the
+imagination subsist and produce their effect, even after the
+understanding has been satisfied of their unsubstantial nature. There is
+a sort of gloss upon ingenious falsehoods that dazzles the imagination,
+but which neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober aspect of truth. I
+have met with a quotation in Lord Coke's Reports that pleased me very
+much, though I do not know from whence he has taken it: "_Interdum
+fucata falsitas_ (says he), _in multis est probabilior, at sæpe
+rationibus vincit nudam veritatem_." In such cases the writer has a
+certain fire and alacrity inspired into him by a consciousness, that,
+let it fare how it will with the subject, his ingenuity will be sure of
+applause; and this alacrity becomes much greater if he acts upon the
+offensive, by the impetuosity that always accompanies an attack, and
+the unfortunate propensity which mankind have to the finding and
+exaggerating faults. The editor is satisfied that a mind which has no
+restraint from a sense of its own weakness, of its subordinate rank in
+the creation, and of the extreme danger of letting the imagination loose
+upon some subjects, may very plausibly attack everything the most
+excellent and venerable; that it would not be difficult to criticise the
+creation itself; and that if we were to examine the divine fabrics by
+our ideas of reason and fitness, and to use the same method of attack by
+which some men have assaulted revealed religion, we might with as good
+color, and with the same success, make the wisdom and power of God in
+his creation appear to many no better than foolishness. There is an air
+of plausibility which accompanies vulgar reasonings and notions, taken
+from the beaten circle of ordinary experience, that is admirably suited
+to the narrow capacities of some, and to the laziness of others. But
+this advantage is in a great measure lost, when a painful, comprehensive
+survey of a very complicated matter, and which requires a great variety
+of considerations, is to be made; when we must seek in a profound
+subject, not only for arguments, but for new materials of argument,
+their measures and their method of arrangement; when we must go out of
+the sphere of our ordinary ideas, and when we can never walk surely, but
+by being sensible of our blindness. And this we must do, or we do
+nothing, whenever we examine the result of a reason which is not our
+own. Even in matters which are, as it were, just within our reach, what
+would become of the world, if the practice of all moral duties, and the
+foundations of society, rested upon having their reasons made clear and
+demonstrative to every individual?
+
+The editor knows that the subject of this letter is not so fully handled
+as obviously it might; it was not his design to say all that could
+possibly be said. It had been inexcusable to fill a large volume with
+the abuse of reason; nor would such an abuse have been tolerable, even
+for a few pages, if some under-plot, of more consequence than the
+apparent design, had not been carried on.
+
+Some persons have thought that the advantages of the state of nature
+ought to have been more fully displayed. This had undoubtedly been a
+very ample subject for declamation; but they do not consider the
+character of the piece. The writers against religion, whilst they oppose
+every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own. If
+some inaccuracies in calculation, in reasoning, or in method, be found,
+perhaps these will not be looked upon as faults by the admirers of Lord
+Bolingbroke; who will, the editor is afraid, observe much more of his
+lordship's character in such particulars of the following letter, than
+they are likely to find of that rapid torrent of an impetuous and
+overbearing eloquence, and the variety of rich imagery for which that
+writer is justly admired.
+
+
+
+
+A LETTER TO LORD ****.
+
+
+Shall I venture to say, my lord, that in our late conversation, you were
+inclined to the party which you adopted rather by the feelings of your
+good nature, than by the conviction of your judgment? We laid open the
+foundations of society; and you feared that the curiosity of this search
+might endanger the ruin of the whole fabric. You would readily have
+allowed my principle, but you dreaded the consequences; you thought,
+that having once entered upon these reasonings, we might be carried
+insensibly and irresistibly farther than at first we could either have
+imagined or wished. But for my part, my lord, I then thought, and am
+still of the same opinion, that error, and not truth of any kind, is
+dangerous; that ill conclusions can only flow from false propositions;
+and that, to know whether any proposition be true or false, it is a
+preposterous method to examine it by its apparent consequences.
+
+These were the reasons which induced me to go so far into that inquiry;
+and they are the reasons which direct me in all my inquiries. I had
+indeed often reflected on that subject before I could prevail on myself
+to communicate my reflections to anybody. They were generally melancholy
+enough; as those usually are which carry us beyond the mere surface of
+things; and which would undoubtedly make the lives of all thinking men
+extremely miserable, if the same philosophy which caused the grief, did
+not at the same time administer the comfort.
+
+On considering political societies, their origin, their constitution,
+and their effects, I have sometimes been in a good deal more than doubt,
+whether the Creator did ever really intend man for a state of happiness.
+He has mixed in his cup a number of natural evils, (in spite of the
+boasts of stoicism they are evils,) and every endeavor which the art and
+policy of mankind has used from the beginning of the world to this day,
+in order to alleviate or cure them, has only served to introduce new
+mischiefs, or to aggravate and inflame the old. Besides this, the mind
+of man itself is too active and restless a principle ever to settle on
+the true point of quiet. It discovers every day some craving want in a
+body, which really wants but little. It every day invents some new
+artificial rule to guide that nature which, if left to itself, were the
+best and surest guide. It finds out imaginary beings prescribing
+imaginary laws; and then, it raises imaginary terrors to support a
+belief in the beings, and an obedience to the laws.--Many things have
+been said, and very well undoubtedly, on the subjection in which we
+should preserve our bodies to the government of our understanding; but
+enough has not been said upon the restraint which our bodily necessities
+ought to lay on the extravagant sublimities and eccentric rovings of our
+minds. The body, or as some love to call it, our inferior nature, is
+wiser in its own plain way, and attends its own business more directly
+than the mind with all its boasted subtlety.
+
+In the state of nature, without question, mankind was subjected to many
+and great inconveniences. Want of union, want of mutual assistance, want
+of a common arbitrator to resort to in their differences. These were
+evils which they could not but have felt pretty severely on many
+occasions. The original children of the earth lived with their brethren
+of the other kinds in much equality. Their diet must have been confined
+almost wholly to the vegetable kind; and the same tree, which in its
+flourishing state produced them berries, in its decay gave them an
+habitation. The mutual desires of the sexes uniting their bodies and
+affections, and the children which are the results of these
+intercourses, introduced first the notion of society, and taught its
+conveniences. This society, founded in natural appetites and instincts,
+and not in any positive institution, I shall call _natural society_.
+Thus far nature went and succeeded: but man would go farther. The great
+error of our nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied
+with any reasonable acquirement; not to compound with our condition; but
+to lose all we have gained by an insatiable pursuit after more. Man
+found a considerable advantage by this union of many persons to form one
+family; he therefore judged that he would find his account
+proportionably in an union of many families into one body politic. And
+as nature has formed no bond of union to hold them together, he supplied
+this defect by _laws_.
+
+This is _political society_. And hence the sources of what are usually
+called states, civil societies, or governments; into some form of which,
+more extended or restrained, all mankind have gradually fallen. And
+since it has so happened, and that we owe an implicit reverence to all
+the institutions of our ancestors, we shall consider these institutions
+with all that modesty with which we ought to conduct ourselves in
+examining a received opinion; but with all that freedom and candor which
+we owe to truth wherever we find it, or however it may contradict our
+own notions, or oppose our own interests. There is a most absurd and
+audacious method of reasoning avowed by some bigots and enthusiasts, and
+through fear assented to by some wiser and better men; it is this: they
+argue against a fair discussion of popular prejudices, because, say
+they, though they would be found without any reasonable support, yet the
+discovery might be productive of the most dangerous consequences. Absurd
+and blasphemous notion! as if all happiness was not connected with the
+practice of virtue, which necessarily depends upon the knowledge of
+truth; that is, upon the knowledge of those unalterable relations which
+Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other.
+These relations, which are truth itself, the foundation of virtue, and
+consequently the only measures of happiness, should be likewise the only
+measures by which we should direct our reasoning. To these we should
+conform in good earnest; and not think to force nature, and the whole
+order of her system, by a compliance with our pride and folly, to
+conform to our artificial regulations. It is by a conformity to this
+method we owe the discovery of the few truths we know, and the little
+liberty and rational happiness we enjoy. We have something fairer play
+than a reasoner could have expected formerly; and we derive advantages
+from it which are very visible.
+
+The fabric of superstition has in this our age and nation received much
+ruder shocks than it had ever felt before; and through the chinks and
+breaches of our prison, we see such glimmerings of light, and feel such
+refreshing airs of liberty, as daily raise our ardor for more. The
+miseries derived to mankind from superstition under the name of
+religion, and of ecclesiastical tyranny under the name of church
+government, have been clearly and usefully exposed. We begin to think
+and to act from reason and from nature alone. This is true of several,
+but by far the majority is still in the same old state of blindness and
+slavery; and much is it to be feared that we shall perpetually relapse,
+whilst the real productive cause of all this superstitious folly,
+enthusiastical nonsense, and holy tyranny, holds a reverend place in the
+estimation even of those who are otherwise enlightened.
+
+Civil government borrows a strength from ecclesiastical; and artificial
+laws receive a sanction from artificial revelations. The ideas of
+religion and government are closely connected; and whilst we receive
+government as a thing necessary, or even useful to our well-being, we
+shall in spite of us draw in, as a necessary, though undesirable
+consequence, an artificial religion of some kind or other. To this the
+vulgar will always be voluntary slaves; and even those of a rank of
+understanding superior, will now and then involuntarily feel its
+influence. It is therefore of the deepest concernment to us to be set
+right in this point; and to be well satisfied whether civil government
+be such a protector from natural evils, and such a nurse and increaser
+of blessings, as those of warm imaginations promise. In such a
+discussion, far am I from proposing in the least to reflect on our most
+wise form of government; no more than I would, in the freer parts of my
+philosophical writings, mean to object to the piety, truth, and
+perfection of our most excellent Church. Both, I am sensible, have their
+foundations on a rock. No discovery of truth can prejudice them. On the
+contrary, the more closely the origin of religion and government is
+examined, the more clearly their excellences must appear. They come
+purified from the fire. My business is not with them. Having entered a
+protest against all objections from these quarters, I may the more
+freely inquire, from history and experience, how far policy has
+contributed in all times to alleviate those evils which Providence, that
+perhaps has designed us for a state of imperfection, has imposed; how
+far our physical skill has cured our constitutional disorders; and
+whether it may not have introduced new ones, curable perhaps by no
+skill.
+
+In looking over any state to form a judgment on it, it presents itself
+in two lights; the external, and the internal. The first, that relation
+which it bears in point of friendship or enmity to other states. The
+second, that relation which its component parts, the governing and the
+governed, bear to each other. The first part of the external view of all
+states, their relation as friends, makes so trifling a figure in
+history, that I am very sorry to say, it affords me but little matter on
+which to expatiate. The good offices done by one nation to its
+neighbor;[8] the support given in public distress; the relief afforded
+in general calamity; the protection granted in emergent danger; the
+mutual return of kindness and civility, would afford a very ample and
+very pleasing subject for history. But, alas! all the history of all
+times, concerning all nations, does not afford matter enough to fill ten
+pages, though it should be spun out by the wire-drawing amplification of
+a Guicciardini himself. The glaring side is that of enmity. War is the
+matter which fills all history, and consequently the only or almost the
+only view in which we can see the external of political society is in a
+hostile shape; and the only actions to which we have always seen, and
+still see all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one
+another. "War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a
+prince"; and by a prince, he means every sort of state, however
+constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider
+peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and
+furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the
+conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine, that war was the
+state of nature; and truly, if a man judged of the individuals of our
+race by their conduct when united and packed into nations and kingdoms,
+he might imagine that every sort of virtue was unnatural and foreign to
+the mind of man.
+
+The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their
+butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early
+periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into
+parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and
+indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated,
+was their mutual destruction. All ancient history is dark and
+uncertain. One thing, however, is clear,--there were conquerors, and
+conquests in those days; and, consequently, all that devastation by
+which they are formed, and all that oppression by which they are
+maintained. We know little of Sesostris, but that he led out of Egypt an
+army of above 700,000 men; that he overran the Mediterranean coast as
+far as Colchis; that in some places he met but little resistance, and of
+course shed not a great deal of blood; but that he found in others a
+people who knew the value of their liberties, and sold them dear.
+Whoever considers the army this conqueror headed, the space he
+traversed, and the opposition he frequently met, with the natural
+accidents of sickness, and the dearth and badness of provision to which
+he must have been subject in the variety of climates and countries his
+march lay through, if he knows anything, he must know that even the
+conqueror's army must have suffered greatly; and that of this immense
+number but a very small part could have returned to enjoy the plunder
+accumulated by the loss of so many of their companions, and the
+devastation of so considerable a part of the world. Considering, I say,
+the vast army headed by this conqueror, whose unwieldy weight was almost
+alone sufficient to wear down its strength, it will be far from excess
+to suppose that one half was lost in the expedition. If this was the
+state of the victorious, and from the circumstances it must have been
+this at the least; the vanquished must have had a much heavier loss, as
+the greatest slaughter is always in the flight, and great carnage did in
+those times and countries ever attend the first rage of conquest. It
+will, therefore, be very reasonable to allow on their account as much
+as, added to the losses of the conqueror, may amount to a million of
+deaths, and then we shall see this conqueror, the oldest we have on the
+records of history, (though, as we have observed before, the chronology
+of these remote times is extremely uncertain), opening the scene by a
+destruction of at least one million of his species, unprovoked but by
+his ambition, without any motives but pride, cruelty, and madness, and
+without any benefit to himself (for Justin expressly tells us he did not
+maintain his conquests), but solely to make so many people, in so
+distant countries, feel experimentally how severe a scourge Providence
+intends for the human race, when he gives one man the power over many,
+and arms his naturally impotent and feeble rage with the hands of
+millions, who know no common principle of action, but a blind obedience
+to the passions of their ruler.
+
+The next personage who figures in the tragedies of this ancient theatre
+is Semiramis; for we have no particulars of Ninus, but that he made
+immense and rapid conquests, which doubtless were not compassed without
+the usual carnage. We see an army of about three millions employed by
+this martial queen in a war against the Indians. We see the Indians
+arming a yet greater; and we behold a war continued with much fury, and
+with various success. This ends in the retreat of the queen, with scarce
+a third of the troops employed in the expedition; an expedition which,
+at this rate, must have cost two millions of souls on her part; and it
+is not unreasonable to judge that the country which was the seat of war
+must have been an equal sufferer. But I am content to detract from this,
+and to suppose that the Indians lost only half so much, and then the
+account stands thus: in this war alone (for Semiramis had other wars) in
+this single reign, and in this one spot of the globe, did three millions
+of souls expire, with all the horrid and shocking circumstances which
+attend all wars, and in a quarrel, in which none of the sufferers could
+have the least rational concern.
+
+The Babylonian, Assyrian, Median, and Persian monarchies must have
+poured out seas of blood in their formation, and in their destruction.
+The armies and fleets of Xerxes, their numbers, the glorious stand made
+against them, and the unfortunate event of all his mighty preparations,
+are known to everybody. In this expedition, draining half Asia of its
+inhabitants, he led an army of about two millions to be slaughtered, and
+wasted by a thousand fatal accidents, in the same place where his
+predecessors had before by a similar madness consumed the flower of so
+many kingdoms, and wasted the force of so extensive an empire. It is a
+cheap calculation to say, that the Persian empire, in its wars against
+the Greeks and Scythians, threw away at least four millions of its
+subjects; to say nothing of its other wars, and the losses sustained in
+them. These were their losses abroad; but the war was brought home to
+them, first by Agesilaus, and afterwards by Alexander. I have not, in
+this retreat, the books necessary to make very exact calculations; nor
+is it necessary to give more than hints to one of your lordship's
+erudition. You will recollect his uninterrupted series of success. You
+will run over his battles. You will call to mind the carnage which was
+made. You will give a glance at the whole, and you will agree with me,
+that to form this hero no less than twelve hundred thousand lives must
+have been sacrificed; but no sooner had he fallen himself a sacrifice to
+his vices, than a thousand breaches were made for ruin to enter, and
+give the last hand to this scene of misery and destruction. His kingdom
+was rent and divided; which served to employ the more distinct parts to
+tear each other to pieces, and bury the whole in blood and slaughter.
+The kings of Syria and of Egypt, the kings of Pergamus and Macedon,
+without intermission worried each other for above two hundred years;
+until at last a strong power, arising in the west, rushed in upon them
+and silenced their tumults, by involving all the contending parties in
+the same destruction. It is little to say, that the contentions between
+the successors of Alexander depopulated that part of the world of at
+least two millions.
+
+The struggle between the Macedonians and Greeks, and, before that, the
+disputes of the Greek commonwealths among themselves, for an
+unprofitable superiority, form one of the bloodiest scenes in history.
+One is astonished how such a small spot could furnish men sufficient to
+sacrifice to the pitiful ambition of possessing five or six thousand
+more acres, or two or three more villages; yet to see the acrimony and
+bitterness with which this was disputed between the Athenians and
+Lacedemonians; what armies cut off; what fleets sunk and burnt; what a
+number of cities sacked, and their inhabitants slaughtered and captived;
+one would be induced to believe the decision of the fate of mankind, at
+least, depended upon it! But those disputes ended as all such ever have
+done, and ever will do; in a real weakness of all parties; a momentary
+shadow, and dream of power in some one; and the subjection of all to the
+yoke of a stranger, who knows how to profit of their divisions. This,
+at least, was the case of the Greeks; and surely, from the earliest
+accounts of them, to their absorption into the Roman empire, we cannot
+judge that their intestine divisions, and their foreign wars, consumed
+less than three millions of their inhabitants.
+
+What an Aceldama, what a field of blood Sicily has been in ancient
+times, whilst the mode of its government was controverted between the
+republican and tyrannical parties, and the possession struggled for by
+the natives, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, and the Romans, your
+lordship will easily recollect. You will remember the total destruction
+of such bodies as an army of 300,000 men. You will find every page of
+its history dyed in blood, and blotted and confounded by tumults,
+rebellions, massacres, assassinations, proscriptions, and a series of
+horror beyond the histories perhaps of any other nation in the world;
+though the histories of all nations are made up of similar matter. I
+once more excuse myself in point of exactness for want of books. But I
+shall estimate the slaughters in this island but at two millions; which
+your lordship will find much short of the reality.
+
+Let us pass by the wars, and the consequences of them, which wasted
+Grecia-Magna, before the Roman power prevailed in that part of Italy.
+They are perhaps exaggerated; therefore I shall only rate them at one
+million. Let us hasten to open that great scene which establishes the
+Roman empire, and forms the grand catastrophe of the ancient drama. This
+empire, whilst in its infancy, began by an effusion of human blood
+scarcely credible. The neighboring little states teemed for new
+destruction: the Sabines, the Samnites, the Æqui, the Volsci, the
+Hetrurians, were broken by a series of slaughters which had no
+interruption, for some hundreds of years; slaughters which upon all
+sides consumed more than two millions of the wretched people. The Gauls,
+rushing into Italy about this time, added the total destruction of their
+own armies to those of the ancient inhabitants. In short, it were hardly
+possible to conceive a more horrid and bloody picture, if that the Punic
+wars that ensued soon after did not present one that far exceeds it.
+Here we find that climax of devastation, and ruin, which seemed to shake
+the whole earth. The extent of this war, which vexed so many nations,
+and both elements, and the havoc of the human species caused in both,
+really astonishes beyond expression, when it is nakedly considered, and
+those matters which are apt to divert our attention from it, the
+characters, actions, and designs of the persons concerned, are not taken
+into the account. These wars, I mean those called the Punic wars, could
+not have stood the human race in less than three millions of the
+species. And yet this forms but a part only, and a very small part, of
+the havoc caused by the Roman ambition. The war with Mithridates was
+very little less bloody; that prince cut off at one stroke 150,000
+Romans by a massacre. In that war Sylla destroyed 300,000 men at
+Cheronea. He defeated Mithridates' army under Dorilaus, and slew
+300,000. This great and unfortunate prince lost another 300,000 before
+Cyzicum. In the course of the war he had innumerable other losses; and
+having many intervals of success, he revenged them severely. He was at
+last totally overthrown; and he crushed to pieces the king of Armenia,
+his ally, by the greatness of his ruin. All who had connections with him
+shared the same fate. The merciless genius of Sylla had its full scope;
+and the streets of Athens were not the only ones which ran with blood.
+At this period, the sword, glutted with foreign slaughter, turned its
+edge upon the bowels of the Roman republic itself; and presented a scene
+of cruelties and treasons enough almost to obliterate the memory of all
+the external devastations. I intended, my lord, to have proceeded in a
+sort of method in estimating the numbers of mankind cut off in these
+wars which we have on record. But I am obliged to alter my design. Such
+a tragical uniformity of havoc and murder would disgust your lordship as
+much as it would me; and I confess I already feel my eyes ache by
+keeping them so long intent on so bloody a prospect. I shall observe
+little on the Servile, the Social, the Gallic, and Spanish wars; nor
+upon those with Jugurtha, nor Antiochus, nor many others equally
+important, and carried on with equal fury. The butcheries of Julius
+Cæsar alone are calculated by somebody else; the numbers he has been the
+means of destroying have been reckoned at 1,200,000. But to give your
+lordship an idea that may serve as a standard, by which to measure, in
+some degree, the others; you will turn your eyes on Judea; a very
+inconsiderable spot of the earth in itself, though ennobled by the
+singular events which had their rise in that country.
+
+This spot happened, it matters not here by what means, to become at
+several times extremely populous, and to supply men for slaughters
+scarcely credible, if other well-known and well-attested ones had not
+given them a color. The first settling of the Jews here was attended by
+an almost entire extirpation of all the former inhabitants. Their own
+civil wars, and those with their petty neighbors, consumed vast
+multitudes almost every year for several centuries; and the irruptions
+of the kings of Babylon and Assyria made immense ravages. Yet we have
+their history but partially, in an indistinct, confused manner; so that
+I shall only throw the strong point of light upon that part which
+coincides with Roman history, and of that part only on the point of time
+when they received the great and final stroke which made them, no more a
+nation; a stroke which is allowed to have cut off little less than two
+millions of that people. I say nothing of the loppings made from that
+stock whilst it stood; nor from the suckers that grew out of the old
+root ever since. But if, in this inconsiderable part of the globe, such
+a carnage has been made in two or three short reigns, and that this
+great carnage, great as it is, makes but a minute part of what the
+histories of that people inform us they suffered; what shall we judge of
+countries more extended, and which have waged wars by far more
+considerable?
+
+Instances of this sort compose the uniform of history. But there have
+been periods when no less than universal destruction to the race of
+mankind seems to have been threatened. Such was that when the Goths, the
+Vandals, and the Huns, poured into Gaul, Italy, Spain, Greece, and
+Africa, carrying destruction before them as they advanced, and leaving
+horrid deserts every way behind them. _Vastum ubique silentium, secreti
+colles; fumantia procul tecta; nemo exploratoribus obvius_, is what
+Tacitus calls _facies victoriæ_. It is always so; but was here
+emphatically so. From the north proceeded the swarms of Goths, Vandals,
+Huns, Ostrogoths, who ran towards the south, into Africa itself, which
+suffered as all to the north had done. About this time, another torrent
+of barbarians, animated by the same fury, and encouraged by the same
+success, poured out of the south, and ravaged all to the northeast and
+west, to the remotest parts of Persia on one hand, and to the banks of
+the Loire or farther on the other; destroying all the proud and curious
+monuments of human art, that not even the memory might seem to survive
+of the former inhabitants. What has been done since, and what will
+continue to be done while the same inducements to war continue, I shall
+not dwell upon. I shall only in one word mention the horrid effects of
+bigotry and avarice, in the conquest of Spanish America; a conquest, on
+a low estimation, effected by the murder of ten millions of the species.
+I shall draw to a conclusion of this part, by making a general
+calculation of the whole. I think I have actually mentioned above
+thirty-six millions. I have not particularized any more. I don't pretend
+to exactness; therefore, for the sake of a general view, I shall lay
+together all those actually slain in battles, or who have perished in a
+no less miserable manner by the other destructive consequences of war
+from the beginning of the world to this day, in the four parts of it, at
+a thousand times as much; no exaggerated calculation, allowing for time
+and extent. We have not perhaps spoke of the five-hundredth part; I am
+sure I have not of what is actually ascertained in history; but how much
+of these butcheries are only expressed in generals, what part of time
+history has never reached, and what vast spaces of the habitable globe
+it has not embraced, I need not mention to your lordship. I need not
+enlarge on those torrents of silent and inglorious blood which have
+glutted the thirsty sands of Afric, or discolored the polar snow, or
+fed the savage forests of America for so many ages of continual war.
+Shall I, to justify my calculations from the charge of extravagance, add
+to the account those skirmishes which happen in all wars, without being
+singly of sufficient dignity in mischief, to merit a place in history,
+but which by their frequency compensate for this comparative innocence?
+shall I inflame the account by those general massacres which have
+devoured whole cities and nations; those wasting pestilences, those
+consuming famines, and all those furies that follow in the train of war?
+I have no need to exaggerate; and I have purposely avoided a parade of
+eloquence on this occasion. I should despise it upon any occasion; else
+in mentioning these slaughters, it is obvious how much the whole might
+be heightened, by an affecting description of the horrors that attend
+the wasting of kingdoms, and sacking of cities. But I do not write to
+the vulgar, nor to that which only governs the vulgar, their passions. I
+go upon a naked and moderate calculation, just enough, without a
+pedantical exactness, to give your lordship some feeling of the effects
+of political society. I charge the whole of these effects on political
+society. I avow the charge, and I shall presently make it good to your
+lordship's satisfaction. The numbers I particularized are about
+thirty-six millions. Besides those killed in battles I have said
+something, not half what the matter would have justified, but something
+I have said concerning the consequences of war even more dreadful than
+that monstrous carnage itself which shocks our humanity, and almost
+staggers our belief. So that, allowing me in my exuberance one way for
+my deficiencies in the other, you will find me not unreasonable. I
+think the numbers of men now upon earth are computed at five hundred
+millions at the most. Here the slaughter of mankind, on what you will
+call a small calculation, amounts to upwards of seventy times the number
+of souls this day on the globe: a point which may furnish matter of
+reflection to one less inclined to draw consequences than your lordship.
+
+I now come to show that political society is justly chargeable with much
+the greatest part of this destruction of the species. To give the
+fairest play to every side of the question, I will own that there is a
+haughtiness and fierceness in human nature, which will cause innumerable
+broils, place men in what situation you please; but owning this, I still
+insist in charging it to political regulations, that these broils are so
+frequent, so cruel, and attended with consequences so deplorable. In a
+state of nature, it had been impossible to find a number of men,
+sufficient for such slaughters, agreed in the same bloody purpose; or
+allowing that they might have come to such an agreement (an impossible
+supposition), yet the means that simple nature has supplied them with,
+are by no means adequate to such an end; many scratches, many bruises
+undoubtedly would be received upon all hands; but only a few, a very few
+deaths. Society and politics, which have given us these destructive
+views, have given us also the means of satisfying them. From the
+earliest dawnings of policy to this day, the invention of men has been
+sharpening and improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude
+essays of clubs and stones, to the present perfection of gunnery,
+cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and all those species of artificial,
+learned, and refined cruelty, in which we are now so expert, and which
+make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is
+our principal glory.
+
+How far mere nature would have carried us, we may judge by the example
+of those animals who still follow her laws, and even of those to whom
+she has given dispositions more fierce, and arms more terrible than ever
+she intended we should use. It is an incontestable truth that there is
+more havoc made in one year by men of men, than has been made by all the
+lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, leopards, hyenas, rhinoceroses,
+elephants, bears and wolves, upon their several species, since the
+beginning of the world; though these agree ill enough with each other,
+and have a much greater proportion of rage and fury in their composition
+than we have. But with respect to you, ye legislators, ye civilizers of
+mankind! ye Orpheuses, Moseses, Minoses, Solons, Theseuses, Lycurguses,
+Numas! with respect to you be it spoken, your regulations have done more
+mischief in cold blood, than all the rage of the fiercest animals in
+their greatest terrors, or furies, has ever done, or ever could do!
+
+These evils are not accidental. Whoever will take the pains to consider
+the nature of society will find that they result directly from its
+constitution. For as _subordination_, or, in other words, the
+reciprocation of tyranny and slavery, is requisite to support these
+societies; the interest, the ambition, the malice, or the revenge, nay,
+even the whim and caprice of one ruling man among them, is enough to arm
+all the rest, without any private views of their own, to the worst and
+blackest purposes: and what is at once lamentable, and ridiculous, these
+wretches engage under those banners with a fury greater than if they
+were animated by revenge for their own proper wrongs.
+
+It is no less worth observing, that this artificial division of mankind
+into separate societies is a perpetual source in itself of hatred and
+dissension among them. The names which distinguish them are enough to
+blow up hatred and rage. Examine history; consult present experience;
+and you will find that far the greater part of the quarrels between
+several nations had scarce any other occasion than that these nations
+were different combinations of people, and called by different names: to
+an Englishman, the name of a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian, much
+more a Turk, or a Tartar, raises of course ideas of hatred and contempt.
+If you would inspire this compatriot of ours with pity or regard for one
+of these, would you not hide that distinction? You would not pray him to
+compassionate the poor Frenchman, or the unhappy German. Far from it;
+you would speak of him as a _foreigner_; an accident to which all are
+liable. You would represent him as a _man_; one partaking with us of the
+same common nature, and subject to the same law. There is something so
+averse from our nature in these artificial political distinctions, that
+we need no other trumpet to kindle us to war and destruction. But there
+is something so benign and healing in the general voice of humanity
+that, maugre all our regulations to prevent it, the simple name of man
+applied properly, never fails to work a salutary effect.
+
+This natural unpremeditated effect of policy on the unpossessed passions
+of mankind appears on other occasions. The very name of a politician, a
+statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected
+with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny; and those
+writers who have faithfully unveiled the mysteries of state-freemasonry,
+have ever been held in general detestation, for even knowing so
+perfectly a theory so detestable. The case of Machiavel seems at first
+sight something hard in that respect. He is obliged to bear the
+iniquities of those whose maxims and rules of government he published.
+His speculation is more abhorred than their practice.
+
+But if there were no other arguments against artificial society than
+this I am going to mention, methinks it ought to fall by this one only.
+All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with
+experience, that, all governments must frequently infringe the rules of
+justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to
+dissimulation; honesty to convenience; and humanity itself to the
+reigning interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the
+reason of state. It is a reason which I own I cannot penetrate. What
+sort of a protection is this of the general right, that is maintained by
+infringing the rights of particulars? What sort of justice is this,
+which is enforced by breaches of its own laws? These paradoxes I leave
+to be solved by the able heads of legislators and politicians. For my
+part, I say what a plain man would say on such an occasion. I can never
+believe that any institution, agreeable to nature, and proper for
+mankind, could find it necessary, or even expedient, in any case
+whatsoever, to do what the best and worthiest instincts of mankind warn
+us to avoid. But no wonder, that what is set up in opposition to the
+state of nature should preserve itself by trampling upon the law of
+nature.
+
+To prove that these sorts of policed societies are a violation offered
+to nature, and a constraint upon the human mind, it needs only to look
+upon the sanguinary measures, and instruments of violence, which are
+everywhere used to support them. Let us take a review of the dungeons,
+whips, chains, racks, gibbets, with which every society is abundantly
+stored; by which hundreds of victims are annually offered up to support
+a dozen or two in pride and madness, and millions in an abject servitude
+and dependence. There was a time when I looked with a reverential awe on
+these mysteries of policy; but age, experience, and philosophy, have
+rent the veil; and I view this _sanctum sanctorum_, at least, without
+any enthusiastic admiration. I acknowledge, indeed, the necessity of
+such a proceeding in such institutions; but I must have a very mean
+opinion of institutions where such proceedings are necessary.
+
+It is a misfortune that in no part of the globe natural liberty and
+natural religion are to be found pure, and free from the mixture of
+political adulterations. Yet we have implanted in us by Providence,
+ideas, axioms, rules, of what is pious, just, fair, honest, which no
+political craft, nor learned sophistry can entirely expel from our
+breasts. By these we judge, and we cannot otherwise judge, of the
+several artificial modes of religion and society, and determine of them
+as they approach to or recede from this standard.
+
+The simplest form of government is _despotism_, where all the inferior
+orbs of power are moved merely by the will of the Supreme, and all that
+are subjected to them directed in the same manner, merely by the
+occasional will of the magistrate. This form, as it is the most simple,
+so it is infinitely the most general. Scarcely any part of the world is
+exempted from its power. And in those few places where men enjoy what
+they call liberty, it is continually in a tottering situation, and makes
+greater and greater strides to that gulf of despotism which at last
+swallows up every species of government. The manner of ruling being
+directed merely by the will of the weakest, and generally the worst man
+in the society, becomes the most foolish and capricious thing, at the
+same time that it is the most terrible and destructive that well can be
+conceived. In a despotism, the principal person finds that, let the
+want, misery, and indigence of his subjects be what they will, he can
+yet possess abundantly of everything to gratify his most insatiable
+wishes. He does more. He finds that these gratifications increase in
+proportion to the wretchedness and slavery of his subjects. Thus
+encouraged both by passion and interest to trample on the public
+welfare, and by his station placed above both shame and fear, he
+proceeds to the most horrid and shocking outrages upon mankind. Their
+persons become victims of his suspicions. The slightest displeasure is
+death; and a disagreeable aspect is often as great a crime as high
+treason. In the court of Nero, a person of learning, of unquestioned
+merit, and of unsuspected loyalty, was put to death for no other reason,
+than that he had a pedantic countenance which displeased the emperor.
+This very monster of mankind appeared in the beginning of his reign to
+be a person of virtue. Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of
+history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth
+is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.
+And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by
+a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him
+from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice
+are utterly erased from his mind. When Alexander had in his fury
+inhumanly butchered one of his best friends and bravest captains; on the
+return of reason he began to conceive an horror suitable to the guilt of
+such a murder. In this juncture his council came to his assistance. But
+what did his council? They found him out a philosopher who gave him
+comfort. And in what manner did this philosopher comfort him for the
+loss of such a man, and heal his conscience, flagrant with the smart of
+such a crime? You have the matter at length in Plutarch. He told him,
+"_that let a sovereign do what he wilt, all his actions are just and
+lawful, because they are his_." The palaces of all princes abound with
+such courtly philosophers. The consequence was such as might be
+expected. He grew every day a monster more abandoned to unnatural lust,
+to debauchery, to drunkenness, and to murder. And yet this was
+originally a great man, of uncommon capacity, and a strong propensity to
+virtue. But unbounded power proceeds step by step, until it has
+eradicated every laudable principle. It has been remarked, that there is
+no prince so bad, whose favorites and ministers are not worse. There is
+hardly any prince without a favorite, by whom he is governed in as
+arbitrary a manner as he governs the wretches subjected to him. Here the
+tyranny is doubled. There are two courts, and two interests; both very
+different from the interests of the people. The favorite knows that the
+regard of a tyrant is as unconstant and capricious as that of a woman;
+and concluding his time to be short, he makes haste to fill up the
+measure of his iniquity, in rapine, in luxury, and in revenge. Every
+avenue to the throne is shut up. He oppresses and ruins the people,
+whilst he persuades the prince that those murmurs raised by his own
+oppression are the effects of disaffection to the prince's government.
+Then is the natural violence of despotism inflamed and aggravated by
+hatred and revenge. To deserve well of the state is a crime against the
+prince. To be popular, and to be a traitor, are considered as synonymous
+terms. Even virtue is dangerous, as an aspiring quality, that claims an
+esteem by itself, and independent of the countenance of the court. What
+has been said of the chief, is true of the inferior officers of this
+species of government; each in his province exercising the same tyranny,
+and grinding the people by an oppression, the more severely felt, as it
+is near them, and exercised by base and subordinate persons. For the
+gross of the people, they are considered as a mere herd of cattle; and
+really in a little time become no better; all principle of honest pride,
+all sense of the dignity of their nature, is lost in their slavery. The
+day, says Homer, which makes a man a slave, takes away half his worth;
+and, in fact, he loses every impulse to action, but that low and base
+one of fear. In this kind of government human nature is not only abused
+and insulted, but it is actually degraded and sunk into a species of
+brutality. The consideration of this made Mr. Locke say, with great
+justice, that a government of this kind was worse than anarchy: indeed
+it is so abhorred and detested by all who live under forms that have a
+milder appearance, that there is scarcely a rational man in Europe that
+would not prefer death to Asiatic despotism. Here then we have the
+acknowledgment of a great philosopher, that an irregular state of nature
+is preferable to such a government; we have the consent of all sensible
+and generous men, who carry it yet further, and avow that death itself
+is preferable; and yet this species of government, so justly condemned,
+and so generally detested, is what infinitely the greater part of
+mankind groan under, and have groaned under from the beginning. So that,
+by sure and uncontested principles, the greatest part of the governments
+on earth must be concluded tyrannies, impostures, violations of the
+natural rights of mankind, and worse than the most disorderly anarchies.
+How much other forms exceed this we shall consider immediately.
+
+In all parts of the world, mankind, however debased, retains still the
+sense of _feeling_; the weight of tyranny at last becomes insupportable;
+but the remedy is not so easy: in general, the only remedy by which they
+attempt to cure the tyranny is to change the tyrant. This is, and always
+was, the case for the greater part. In some countries, however, were
+found men of more penetration, who discovered "_that to live by one
+man's will was the cause of all men's misery_." They therefore changed
+their former method, and assembling the men in their several societies
+the most respectable for their understanding and fortunes, they confided
+to them the charge of the public welfare. This originally formed what is
+called an _aristocracy_. They hoped it would be impossible that such a
+number could ever join in any design against the general good; and they
+promised themselves a great deal of security and happiness from the
+united counsels of so many able and experienced persons. But it is now
+found by abundant experience, that an _aristocracy_, and a _despotism_,
+differ but in name; and that a people who are in general excluded from
+any share of the legislative, are, to all intents and purposes, as much
+slaves, when twenty, independent of them, govern, as when but one
+domineers. The tyranny is even more felt, as every individual of the
+nobles has the haughtiness of a sultan; the people are more miserable,
+as they seem on the verge of liberty, from which they are forever
+debarred; this fallacious idea of liberty, whilst it presents a vain
+shadow of happiness to the subject, binds faster the chains of his
+subjection. What is left undone by the natural avarice and pride of
+those who are raised above the others, is completed by their suspicions,
+and their dread of losing an authority, which has no support in the
+common utility of the nation. A Genoese or a Venetian republic is a
+concealed _despotism_; where you find the same pride of the rulers, the
+same base subjection of the people, the same bloody maxims of a
+suspicious policy. In one respect the _aristocracy_ is worse than the
+_despotism_. A body politic, whilst it retains its authority, never
+changes its maxims; a _despotism_, which is this day horrible to a
+supreme degree, by the caprice natural to the heart of man, may, by the
+same caprice otherwise exerted, be as lovely the next; in a succession,
+it is possible to meet with some good princes. If there have been
+Tiberiuses, Caligulas, Neros, there have been likewise the serener days
+of Vespasians, Tituses, Trajans, and Antonines; but a body politic is
+not influenced by caprice or whim, it proceeds in a regular manner, its
+succession is insensible; and every man as he enters it, either has, or
+soon attains, the spirit of the whole body. Never was it known that an
+_aristocracy_, which was haughty and tyrannical in one century, became
+easy and mild in the next. In effect, the yoke of this species of
+government is so galling, that whenever the people have got the least
+power, they have shaken it off with the utmost indignation, and
+established a popular form. And when they have not had strength enough
+to support themselves, they have thrown themselves into the arms of
+_despotism_, as the more eligible of the two evils. This latter was the
+case of Denmark, who sought a refuge from the oppression of its
+nobility, in the strong hold of arbitrary power. Poland has at present
+the name of republic, and it is one of the _aristocratic_ form; but it
+is well known that the little finger of this government is heavier than
+the loins of arbitrary power in most nations. The people are not only
+politically, but personally slaves, and treated with the utmost
+indignity. The republic of Venice is somewhat more moderate; yet even
+here, so heavy is the _aristocratic_ yoke, that the nobles have been
+obliged to enervate the spirit of their subjects by every sort of
+debauchery; they have denied them the liberty of reason, and they have
+made them amends by what a base soul will think a more valuable liberty,
+by not only allowing, but encouraging them to corrupt themselves in the
+most scandalous manner. They consider their subjects as the farmer does
+the hog he keeps to feast upon. He holds him fast in his sty, but allows
+him to wallow as much as he pleases in his beloved filth and gluttony.
+So scandalously debauched a people as that of Venice is to be met with
+nowhere else. High, low, men, women, clergy, and laity, are all alike.
+The ruling nobility are no less afraid of one another than they are of
+the people; and, for that reason, politically enervate their own body by
+the same effeminate luxury by which they corrupt their subjects. They
+are impoverished by every means which can be invented; and they are kept
+in a perpetual terror by the horrors of a state inquisition. Here you
+see a people deprived of all rational freedom, and tyrannized over by
+about two thousand men; and yet this body of two thousand are so far
+from enjoying any liberty by the subjection of the rest, that they are
+in an infinitely severer state of slavery; they make themselves the most
+degenerate and unhappy of mankind, for no other purpose than that they
+may the more effectually contribute to the misery of a whole nation. In
+short, the regular and methodical proceedings of an _aristocracy_ are
+more intolerable than the very excesses of a _despotism_, and, in
+general, much further from any remedy.
+
+Thus, my lord, we have pursued _aristocracy_ through its whole progress;
+we have seen the seeds, the growth, and the fruit. It could boast none
+of the advantages of a _despotism_, miserable as those advantages were,
+and it was overloaded with an exuberance of mischiefs, unknown even to
+_despotism_ itself. In effect, it is no more than a disorderly tyranny.
+This form, therefore, could be little approved, even in speculation, by
+those who were capable of thinking, and could be less borne in practice
+by any who were capable of feeling. However, the fruitful policy of man
+was not yet exhausted. He had yet another farthing candle to supply the
+deficiencies of the sun. This was the third form, known by political
+writers under the name of _democracy_. Here the people transacted all
+public business, or the greater part of it, in their own persons; their
+laws were made by themselves, and, upon any failure of duty, their
+officers were accountable to themselves, and to them only. In all
+appearance, they had secured by this method the advantages of order and
+good government, without paying their liberty for the purchase. Now, my
+lord, we are come to the masterpiece of Grecian refinement, and Roman
+solidity,--a popular government. The earliest and most celebrated
+republic of this model was that of Athens. It was constructed by no less
+an artist than the celebrated poet and philosopher, Solon. But no sooner
+was this political vessel launched from the stocks, than it overset,
+even in the lifetime of the builder. A tyranny immediately supervened;
+not by a foreign conquest, not by accident, but by the very nature and
+constitution of a _democracy_. An artful man became popular, the people
+had power in their hands, and they devolved a considerable share of
+their power upon their favorite; and the only use he made of this power
+was, to plunge those who gave it into slavery. Accident restored their
+liberty, and the same good fortune produced men of uncommon abilities
+and uncommon virtues amongst them. But these abilities were suffered to
+be of little service either to their possessors or to the state. Some of
+these men, for whose sakes alone we read their history, they banished;
+others they imprisoned, and all they treated with various circumstances
+of the most shameful ingratitude. Republics have many things in the
+spirit of absolute monarchy, but none more than this. A shining merit
+is ever hated or suspected in a popular assembly, as well as in a court;
+and all services done the state are looked upon as dangerous to the
+rulers, whether sultans or senators. The _ostracism_ at Athens was built
+upon this principle. The giddy people whom we have now under
+consideration, being elated with some flashes of success, which they
+owed to nothing less than any merit of their own, began to tyrannize
+over their equals, who had associated with them for their common
+defence. With their prudence they renounced all appearance of justice.
+They entered into wars rashly and wantonly. If they were unsuccessful,
+instead of growing wiser by their misfortune, they threw the whole blame
+of their own misconduct on the ministers who had advised, and the
+generals who had conducted, those wars; until by degrees they had cut
+off all who could serve them in their councils or their battles. If at
+any time these wars had a happier issue, it was no less difficult to
+deal with them on account of their pride and insolence. Furious in their
+adversity, tyrannical in their successes, a commander had more trouble
+to concert his defence before the people, than to plan the operations of
+the campaign. It was not uncommon for a general, under the horrid
+_despotism_ of the Roman emperors, to be ill received in proportion to
+the greatness of his services. Agricola is a strong instance of this. No
+man had done greater things, nor with more honest ambition. Yet, on his
+return to court, he was obliged to enter Rome with all the secrecy of a
+criminal. He went to the palace, not like a victorious commander who had
+merited and might demand the greatest rewards, but like an offender who
+had come to supplicate a pardon for his crimes. His reception was
+answerable; "_Exceptusque brevi osculo et nullo sermone, turbæ
+servientium immixtus est_." Yet in that worst season of this worst of
+monarchical[9] tyrannies, modesty, discretion, and a coolness of temper,
+formed some kind of security, even for the highest merit. But at Athens,
+the nicest and best studied behavior was not a sufficient guard for a
+man of great capacity. Some of their bravest commanders were obliged to
+fly their country, some to enter into the service of its enemies, rather
+than abide a popular determination on their conduct, lest, as one of
+them said, their giddiness might make the people condemn where they
+meant to acquit; to throw in a black bean even when they intended a
+white one.
+
+The Athenians made a very rapid progress to the most enormous excesses.
+The people, under no restraint, soon grew dissolute, luxurious, and
+idle. They renounced all labor, and began to subsist themselves from the
+public revenues. They lost all concern for their common honor or safety,
+and could bear no advice that tended to reform them. At this time truth
+became offensive to those lords the people, and most highly dangerous to
+the speaker. The orators no longer ascended the _rostrum_, but to
+corrupt them further with the most fulsome adulation. These orators were
+all bribed by foreign princes on the one side or the other. And besides
+its own parties, in this city there were parties, and avowed ones too,
+for the Persians, Spartans, and Macedonians, supported each of them by
+one or more demagogues pensioned and bribed to this iniquitous service.
+The people, forgetful of all virtue and public spirit, and intoxicated
+with the flatteries of their orators (these courtiers of republics, and
+endowed with the distinguishing characteristics of all other courtiers),
+this people, I say, at last arrived at that pitch of madness, that they
+coolly and deliberately, by an express law, made it capital for any man
+to propose an application of the immense sums squandered in public
+shows, even to the most necessary purposes of the state. When you see
+the people of this republic banishing and murdering their best and
+ablest citizens, dissipating the public treasure with the most senseless
+extravagance, and spending their whole time, as spectators or actors, in
+playing, fiddling, dancing, and singing, does it not, my lord, strike
+your imagination with the image of a sort of complex Nero? And does it
+not strike you with the greater horror, when you observe, not one man
+only, but a whole city, grown drunk with pride and power, running with a
+rage of folly into the same mean and senseless debauchery and
+extravagance? But if this people resembled Nero in their extravagance,
+much more did they resemble and even exceed him in cruelty and
+injustice. In the time of Pericles, one of the most celebrated times in
+the history of that commonwealth, a king of Egypt sent them a donation
+of corn. This they were mean enough to accept. And had the Egyptian
+prince intended the ruin of this city of wicked Bedlamites, he could not
+have taken a more effectual method to do it than by such an ensnaring
+largess. The distribution of this bounty caused a quarrel; the majority
+set on foot an inquiry into the title of the citizens; and upon a vain
+pretence of illegitimacy, newly and occasionally set up, they deprived
+of their share of the royal donation no less than five thousand of
+their own body. They went further; they disfranchised them; and, having
+once begun with an act of injustice, they could set no bounds to it. Not
+content with cutting them off from the rights of citizens, they
+plundered these unfortunate wretches of all their substance; and, to
+crown this masterpiece of violence and tyranny, they actually sold every
+man of the five thousand as slaves in the public market. Observe, my
+lord, that the five thousand we here speak of were cut off from a body
+of no more than nineteen thousand; for the entire number of citizens was
+no greater at that time. Could the tyrant who wished the Roman people
+but one neck; could the tyrant Caligula himself have done, nay, he could
+scarcely wish for, a greater mischief than to have cut off, at one
+stroke, a fourth of his people? Or has the cruelty of that series of
+sanguine tyrants, the Cæsars, ever presented such a piece of flagrant
+and extensive wickedness? The whole history of this celebrated republic
+is but one tissue of rashness, folly, ingratitude, injustice, tumult,
+violence, and tyranny, and, indeed, of every species of wickedness that
+can well be imagined. This was a city of wise men, in which a minister
+could not exercise his functions; a warlike people, amongst whom a
+general did not dare either to gain or lose a battle; a learned nation,
+in which a philosopher could not venture on a free inquiry. This was the
+city which banished Themistocles, starved Aristides, forced into exile
+Miltiades, drove out Anaxagoras, and poisoned Socrates. This was a city
+which changed the form of its government with the moon; eternal
+conspiracies, revolutions daily, nothing fixed and established. A
+republic, as an ancient philosopher has observed, is no one species of
+government, but a magazine of every species; here you find every sort of
+it, and that in the worst form. As there is a perpetual change, one
+rising and the other falling, you have all the violence and wicked
+policy by which a beginning power must always acquire its strength, and
+all the weakness by which falling states are brought to a complete
+destruction.
+
+Rome has a more venerable aspect than Athens; and she conducted her
+affairs, so far as related to the ruin and oppression of the greatest
+part of the world, with greater wisdom and more uniformity. But the
+domestic economy of these two states was nearly or altogether the same.
+An internal dissension constantly tore to pieces the bowels of the Roman
+commonwealth. You find the same confusion, the same factions, which
+subsisted at Athens, the same tumults, the same revolutions, and, in
+fine, the same slavery; if, perhaps, their former condition did not
+deserve that name altogether as well. All other republics were of the
+same character. Florence was a transcript of Athens. And the modern
+republics, as they approach more or less to the democratic form, partake
+more or less of the nature of those which I have described.
+
+We are now at the close of our review of the three simple forms of
+artificial society; and we have shown them, however they may differ in
+name, or in some slight circumstances, to be all alike in effect: in
+effect, to be all tyrannies. But suppose we were inclined to make the
+most ample concessions; let us concede Athens, Rome, Carthage, and two
+or three more of the ancient, and as many of the modern, commonwealths,
+to have been, or to be, free and happy, and to owe their freedom and
+happiness to their political constitution. Yet, allowing all this, what
+defence does this make for artificial society in general, that these
+inconsiderable spots of the globe have for some short space of time
+stood as exceptions to a charge so general? But when we call these
+governments free, or concede that their citizens were happier than those
+which lived under different forms, it is merely _ex abundanti_. For we
+should be greatly mistaken, if we really thought that the majority of
+the people which filled these cities enjoyed even that nominal political
+freedom of which I have spoken so much already. In reality, they had no
+part of it. In Athens there were usually from ten to thirty thousand
+freemen; this was the utmost. But the slaves usually amounted to four
+hundred thousand, and sometimes to a great many more. The freemen of
+Sparta and Rome were not more numerous in proportion to those whom they
+held in a slavery even more terrible than the Athenian. Therefore state
+the matter fairly: the free states never formed, though they were taken
+altogether, the thousandth part of the habitable globe; the freemen in
+these states were never the twentieth part of the people, and the time
+they subsisted is scarce anything in that immense ocean of duration in
+which time and slavery are so nearly commensurate. Therefore call these
+free states, or popular governments, or what you please; when we
+consider the majority of their inhabitants, and regard the natural
+rights of mankind, they must appear, in reality and truth, no better
+than pitiful and oppressive oligarchies.
+
+After so fair an examen, wherein nothing has been exaggerated; no fact
+produced which cannot be proved, and none which has been produced in
+any wise forced or strained, while thousands have, for brevity, been
+omitted; after so candid a discussion in all respects; what slave so
+passive, what bigot so blind, what enthusiast so headlong, what
+politician so hardened, as to stand up in defence of a system calculated
+for a curse to mankind? a curse under which they smart and groan to this
+hour, without thoroughly knowing the nature of the disease, and wanting
+understanding or courage to supply the remedy.
+
+I need not excuse myself to your lordship, nor, I think, to any honest
+man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause; for it is an honest zeal,
+and in a good cause. I have defended natural religion against a
+confederacy of atheists and divines. I now plead for natural society
+against politicians, and for natural reason against all three. When the
+world is in a fitter temper than it is at present to hear truth, or when
+I shall be more indifferent about its temper, my thoughts may become
+more public. In the mean time, let them repose in my own bosom, and in
+the bosoms of such men as are fit to be initiated in the sober mysteries
+of truth and reason. My antagonists have already done as much as I could
+desire. Parties in religion and politics make sufficient discoveries
+concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them
+all. The monarchic, and aristocratical, and popular partisans, have been
+jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have, in
+their turns, proved each other absurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell
+me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the
+abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse! Observe, my lord, I
+pray you, that grand error upon which all artificial legislative power
+is founded. It was observed, that men had ungovernable passions, which
+made it necessary to guard against the violence they might offer to each
+other. They appointed governors over them for this reason. But a worse
+and more perplexing difficulty arises, how to be defended against the
+governors? _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ In vain they change from a
+single person to a few. These few have the passions of the one; and they
+unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their
+lawless passions at the expense of the general good. In vain do we fly
+to the many. The case is worse; their passions are less under the
+government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended
+against all attacks by their multitude.
+
+I have purposely avoided the mention of the mixed form of government,
+for reasons that will be very obvious to your lordship. But my caution
+can avail me but little. You will not fail to urge it against me in
+favor of political society. You will not fail to show how the errors of
+the several simple modes are corrected by a mixture of all of them, and
+a proper balance of the several powers in such a state. I confess, my
+lord, that this has been long a darling mistake of my own; and that of
+all the sacrifices I have made to truth, this has been by far the
+greatest. When I confess that I think this notion a mistake, I know to
+whom I am speaking, for I am satisfied that reasons are like liquors,
+and there are some of such a nature as none but strong heads can bear.
+There are few with whom I can communicate so freely as with Pope. But
+Pope cannot bear every truth. He has a timidity which hinders the full
+exertion of his faculties, almost as effectually as bigotry cramps those
+of the general herd of mankind. But whoever is a genuine follower of
+truth keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is
+led, provided that she is the leader. And, my lord, if it be properly
+considered, it were infinitely better to remain possessed by the whole
+legion of vulgar mistakes, than to reject some, and at the same time to
+retain a fondness for others altogether as absurd and irrational. The
+first has at least a consistency, that makes a man, however erroneously,
+uniform at least; but the latter way of proceeding is such an
+inconsistent chimera and jumble of philosophy and vulgar prejudice, that
+hardly anything more ridiculous can be conceived. Let us therefore
+freely, and without fear or prejudice, examine this last contrivance of
+policy. And, without considering how near the quick our instruments may
+come, let us search it to the bottom.
+
+First, then, all men are agreed that this junction of regal,
+aristocratic, and popular power, must form a very complex, nice, and
+intricate machine, which being composed of such a variety of parts, with
+such opposite tendencies and movements, it must be liable on every
+accident to be disordered. To speak without metaphor, such a government
+must be liable to frequent cabals, tumults, and revolutions, from its
+very constitution. These are undoubtedly as ill effects as can happen in
+a society; for in such a case, the closeness acquired by community,
+instead of serving for mutual defence, serves only to increase the
+danger. Such a system is like a city, where trades that require constant
+fires are much exercised, where the houses are built of combustible
+materials, and where they stand extremely close.
+
+In the second place, the several constituent parts having their distinct
+rights, and these many of them so necessary to be determined with
+exactness, are yet so indeterminate in their nature, that it becomes a
+new and constant source of debate and confusion. Hence it is, that
+whilst the business of government should be carrying on, the question
+is, Who has a right to exercise this or that function of it, or what men
+have power to keep their offices in any function? Whilst this contest
+continues, and whilst the balance in any sort continues, it has never
+any remission; all manner of abuses and villanies in officers remain
+unpunished; the greatest frauds and robberies in the public revenues are
+committed in defiance of justice; and abuses grow, by time and impunity,
+into customs; until they prescribe against the laws, and grow too
+inveterate often to admit a cure, unless such as may be as bad as the
+disease.
+
+Thirdly, the several parts of this species of government, though united,
+preserve the spirit which each form has separately. Kings are ambitious;
+the nobility haughty; and the populace tumultuous and ungovernable. Each
+party, however in appearance peaceable, carries on a design upon the
+others; and it is owing to this, that in all questions, whether
+concerning foreign or domestic affairs, the whole generally turns more
+upon some party-matter than upon the nature of the thing itself; whether
+such a step will diminish or augment the power of the crown, or how far
+the privileges of the subject are likely to be extended or restricted by
+it. And these questions are constantly resolved, without any
+consideration of the merits of the cause, merely as the parties who
+uphold these jarring interests may chance to prevail; and as they
+prevail, the balance is overset, now upon one side, now upon the other.
+The government is, one day, arbitrary power in a single person; another,
+a juggling confederacy of a few to cheat the prince and enslave the
+people; and the third, a frantic and unmanageable democracy. The great
+instrument of all these changes, and what infuses a peculiar venom into
+all of them, is party. It is of no consequence what the principles of
+any party, or what their pretensions are; the spirit which actuates all
+parties is the same; the spirit of ambition, of self-interest, of
+oppression and treachery. This spirit entirely reverses all the
+principles which a benevolent nature has erected within us; all honesty,
+all equal justice, and even the ties of natural society, the natural
+affections. In a word, my lord, we have all _seen_, and, if any outward
+considerations were worthy the lasting concern of a wise man, we have
+some of us _felt_, such oppression from party government as no other
+tyranny can parallel. We behold daily the most important rights, rights
+upon which all the others depend, we behold these rights determined in
+the last resort, without the least attention even to the appearance or
+color of justice; we behold this without emotion, because we have grown
+up in the constant view of such practices; and we are not surprised to
+hear a man requested to be a knave and a traitor, with as much
+indifference as if the most ordinary favor were asked; and we hear this
+request refused, not because it is a most unjust and unreasonable
+desire, but because this worthy has already engaged his injustice to
+another. These and many more points I am for from spreading to their
+full extent. You are sensible that I do not put forth half my strength;
+and you cannot be at a loss for the reason. A man is allowed sufficient
+freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject
+properly. You may criticise freely upon the Chinese constitution, and
+observe with as much severity as you please upon the absurd tricks, or
+destructive bigotry of the bonzees. But the scene is changed as you come
+homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain, to
+what would be reason and truth if asserted of China. I submit to the
+condition, and though I have a notorious advantage before me, I waive
+the pursuit. For else, my lord, it is very obvious what a picture might
+be drawn of the excesses of party even in our own nation. I could show,
+that the same faction has, in one reign, promoted popular seditions,
+and, in the next, been a patron of tyranny: I could show that they have
+all of them betrayed the public safety at all times, and have very
+frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause and their
+own associates. I could show how vehemently they have contended for
+names, and how silently they have passed over things of the last
+importance. And I could demonstrate that they have had the opportunity
+of doing all this mischief, nay, that they themselves had their origin
+and growth from that complex form of government, which we are wisely
+taught to look upon as so great a blessing. Revolve, my lord, our
+history from the Conquest. We scarcely ever had a prince, who, by fraud
+or violence, had not made some infringement on the constitution. We
+scarcely ever had a Parliament which knew, when it attempted to set
+limits to the royal authority, how to set limits to its own. Evils we
+have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more
+grievous than any evils. Our boasted liberty sometimes trodden down,
+sometimes giddily set up, and ever precariously fluctuating and
+unsettled; it has only been kept alive by the blasts of continual feuds,
+wars, and conspiracies. In no country in Europe has the scaffold so
+often blushed with the blood of its nobility. Confiscations,
+banishments, attainders, executions, make a large part of the history of
+such of our families as are not utterly extinguished by them. Formerly,
+indeed, things had a more ferocious appearance than they have at this
+day. In these early and unrefined ages, the jarring part of a certain
+chaotic constitution supported their several pretensions by the sword.
+Experience and policy have since taught other methods.
+
+     At nunc res agitur tenui pulmone rubetæ.
+
+But how far corruption, venality, the contempt of honor, the oblivion of
+all duty to our country, and the most abandoned public prostitution, are
+preferable to the more glaring and violent effects of faction, I will
+not presume to determine. Sure I am that they are very great evils.
+
+I have done with the forms of government. During the course of my
+inquiry you may have observed a very material difference between my
+manner of reasoning and that which is in use amongst the abettors of
+artificial society. They form their plans upon what seems most eligible
+to their imaginations, for the ordering of mankind. I discover the
+mistakes in those plans, from the real known consequences which have
+resulted from them. They have enlisted reason to fight against itself,
+and employ its whole force to prove that it is an insufficient guide to
+them in the conduct of their lives. But unhappily for us, in proportion
+as we have deviated from the plain rule of our nature, and turned our
+reason against itself, in that proportion have we increased the follies
+and miseries of mankind. The more deeply we penetrate into the labyrinth
+of art, the further we find ourselves from those ends for which we
+entered it. This has happened in almost every species of artificial
+society, and in all times. We found, or we thought we found, an
+inconvenience in having every man the judge of his own cause. Therefore
+judges were set up, at first, with discretionary powers. But it was soon
+found a miserable slavery to have our lives and properties precarious,
+and hanging upon the arbitrary determination of any one man, or set of
+men. We fled to laws as a remedy for this evil. By these we persuaded
+ourselves we might know with some certainty upon what ground we stood.
+But lo! differences arose upon the sense and interpretation of those
+laws. Thus we were brought back to our old incertitude. New laws were
+made to expound the old; and new difficulties arose upon the new laws;
+as words multiplied, opportunities of cavilling upon them multiplied
+also. Then recourse was had to notes, comments, glosses, reports,
+_responsa prudentum_, learned readings: eagle stood against eagle:
+authority was set up against authority. Some were allured by the modern,
+others reverenced the ancient. The new were more enlightened, the old
+were more venerable. Some adopted the comment, others stuck to the text.
+The confusion increased, the mist thickened, until it could be
+discovered no longer what was allowed or forbidden, what things were in
+property, and what common. In this uncertainty, (uncertain even to the
+professors, an Egyptian darkness to the rest of mankind), the contending
+parties felt themselves more effectually ruined by the delay, than they
+could have been by the injustice of any decision. Our inheritances are
+become a prize for disputation; and disputes and litigations are become
+an inheritance.
+
+The professors of artificial law have always walked hand in hand with
+the professors of artificial theology. As their end, in confounding the
+reason of man, and abridging his natural freedom, is exactly the same,
+they have adjusted the means to that end in a way entirely similar. The
+divine thunders out his _anathemas_ with more noise and terror against
+the breach of one of his positive institutions, or the neglect of some
+of his trivial forms, than against the neglect or breach of those duties
+and commandments of natural religion, which by these forms and
+institutions he pretends to enforce. The lawyer has his forms, and his
+positive institutions too, and he adheres to them with a veneration
+altogether as religious. The worst cause cannot be so prejudicial to the
+litigant, as his advocate's or attorney's ignorance or neglect of these
+forms. A lawsuit is like an ill-managed dispute, in which the first
+object is soon out of sight, and the parties end upon a matter wholly
+foreign to that on which they began. In a lawsuit the question is, who
+has a right to a certain house or farm? And this question is daily
+determined, not upon the evidence of the right, but upon the observance
+or neglect of some forms of words in use with the gentlemen of the robe,
+about which there is even amongst themselves such a disagreement, that
+the most experienced veterans in the profession can never be positively
+assured that they are not mistaken.
+
+Let us expostulate with these learned sages, these priests of the sacred
+temple of justice. Are we judges of our own property? By no means. You
+then, who are initiated into the mysteries of the blindfold goddess,
+inform me whether I have a right to eat the bread I have earned by the
+hazard of my life or the sweat of my brow? The grave doctor answers me
+in the affirmative; the reverend serjeant replies in the negative; the
+learned barrister reasons upon one side and upon the other, and
+concludes nothing. What shall I do? An antagonist starts up and presses
+me hard. I enter the field, and retain these three persons to defend my
+cause. My cause, which two farmers from the plough could have decided in
+half an hour, takes the court twenty years. I am however at the end of
+my labor, and have in reward for all my toil and vexation a judgment in
+my favor. But hold--a sagacious commander, in the adversary's army, has
+found a flaw in the proceeding. My triumph is turned into mourning. I
+have used _or_, instead of _and_, or some mistake, small in appearance,
+but dreadful in its consequences; and have the whole of my success
+quashed in a writ of error. I remove my suit; I shift from court to
+court; I fly from equity to law, and from law to equity; equal
+uncertainty attends me everywhere; and a mistake in which I had no
+share, decides at once upon my liberty and property, sending me from the
+court to a prison, and adjudging my family to beggary and famine. I am
+innocent, gentlemen, of the darkness and uncertainty of your science. I
+never darkened it with absurd and contradictory notions, nor confounded
+it with chicane and sophistry. You have excluded me from any share in
+the conduct of my own cause; the science was too deep for me; I
+acknowledged it; but it was too deep even for yourselves: you have made
+the way so intricate, that you are yourselves lost in it; you err, and
+you punish me for your errors.
+
+The delay of the law is, your lordship will tell me, a trite topic, and
+which of its abuses have not been too severely felt not to be complained
+of? A man's property is to serve for the purposes of his support; and
+therefore, to delay a determination concerning that, is the worst
+injustice, because it cuts off the very end and purpose for which I
+applied to the judicature for relief. Quite contrary in the case of a
+man's life; there the determination can hardly be too much protracted.
+Mistakes in this case are as often fallen into as many other; and if the
+judgment is sudden, the mistakes are the most irretrievable of all
+others. Of this the gentlemen of the robe are themselves sensible, and
+they have brought it into a maxim. _De morte hominis nulla est cunctatio
+longa._ But what could have induced them to reverse the rules, and to
+contradict that reason which dictated them, I am utterly unable to
+guess. A point concerning property, which ought, for the reasons I have
+just mentioned, to be most speedily decided, frequently exercises the
+wit of successions of lawyers, for many generations. _Multa virûm
+volvens durando sæcula vincit._ But the question concerning a man's
+life, that great question in which no delay ought to be counted tedious,
+is commonly determined in twenty-four hours at the utmost. It is not to
+be wondered at, that injustice and absurdity should be inseparable
+companions.
+
+Ask of politicians the end for which laws were originally designed; and
+they will answer, that the laws were designed as a protection for the
+poor and weak, against the oppression of the rich and powerful. But
+surely no pretence can be so ridiculous; a man might as well tell me he
+has taken off my load, because he has changed the burden. If the poor
+man is not able to support his suit, according to the vexatious and
+expensive manner established in civilized countries, has not the rich as
+great an advantage over him as the strong has over the weak in a state
+of nature? But we will not place the state of nature, which is the reign
+of God, in competition with political society, which is the absurd
+usurpation of man. In a state of nature, it is true that a man of
+superior force may beat or rob me; but then it is true, that I am at
+full liberty to defend myself, or make reprisal by surprise or by
+cunning, or by any other way in which I may be superior to him. But in
+political society, a rich man may rob me in another way. I cannot defend
+myself; for money is the only weapon with which we are allowed to fight.
+And if I attempt to avenge myself the whole force of that society is
+ready to complete my ruin.
+
+A good parson once said, that where mystery begins, religion ends.
+Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery
+begins, justice ends? It is hard to say, whether the doctors of law or
+divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of
+mystery. The lawyers, as well as the theologians, have erected another
+reason besides natural reason; and the result has been, another justice
+besides natural justice. They have so bewildered the world and
+themselves in unmeaning forms and ceremonies, and so perplexed the
+plainest matters with metaphysical jargon, that it carries the highest
+danger to a man out of that profession, to make the least step without
+their advice and assistance. Thus, by confining to themselves the
+knowledge of the foundation of all men's lives and properties, they have
+reduced all mankind into the most abject and servile dependence. We are
+tenants at the will of these gentlemen for everything; and a
+metaphysical quibble is to decide whether the greatest villain breathing
+shall meet his deserts, or escape with impunity, or whether the best man
+in the society shall not be reduced to the lowest and most despicable
+condition it affords. In a word, my lord, the injustice, delay,
+puerility, false refinement, and affected mystery of the law are such,
+that many who live under it come to admire and envy the expedition,
+simplicity, and equality of arbitrary judgments. I need insist the less
+on this article to your lordship, as you have frequently lamented the
+miseries derived to us from artificial law, and your candor is the more
+to be admired and applauded in this, as your lordship's noble house has
+derived its wealth and its honors from that profession.
+
+Before we finish our examination of artificial society, I shall lead
+your lordship into a closer consideration of the relations which it
+gives birth to, and the benefits, if such they are, which result from
+these relations. The most obvious division of society is into rich and
+poor; and it is no less obvious, that the number of the former bear a
+great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the
+poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich;
+and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of
+confirming the slavery and increasing the burdens of the poor. In a
+state of nature, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are
+in proportion to his labors. In a state of artificial society, it is a
+law as constant and as invariable, that those who labor most enjoy the
+fewest things; and that those who labor not at all have the greatest
+number of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and
+ridiculous beyond expression! We scarce believe a thing when we are told
+it, which we actually see before our eyes every day without being in the
+least surprised. I suppose that there are in Great Britain upwards of a
+hundred thousand people employed in lead, tin, iron, copper, and coal
+mines; these unhappy wretches scarce ever see the light of the sun; they
+are buried in the bowels of the earth; there they work at a severe and
+dismal task, without the least prospect of being delivered from it; they
+subsist upon the coarsest and worst sort of fare; they have their health
+miserably impaired, and their lives cut short, by being perpetually
+confined in the close vapor of these malignant minerals. A hundred
+thousand more at least are tortured without remission by the suffocating
+smoke, intense fires, and constant drudgery necessary in refining and
+managing the products of those mines. If any man informed us that two
+hundred thousand innocent persons were condemned to so intolerable
+slavery, how should we pity the unhappy sufferers, and how great would
+be our just indignation against those who inflicted so cruel and
+ignominious a punishment! This is an instance--I could not wish a
+stronger--of the numberless things which we pass by in their common
+dress, yet which shock us when they are nakedly represented. But this
+number, considerable as it is, and the slavery, with all its baseness
+and horror, which we have at home, is nothing to what the rest of the
+world affords of the same nature. Millions daily bathed in the
+poisonous damps and destructive effluvia of lead, silver, copper, and
+arsenic. To say nothing of those other employments, those stations of
+wretchedness and contempt, in which civil society has placed the
+numerous _enfans perdus_ of her army. Would any rational man submit to
+one of the most tolerable of these drudgeries, for all the artificial
+enjoyments which policy has made to result from them? By no means. And
+yet need I suggest to your lordship, that those who find the means, and
+those who arrive at the end, are not at all the same persons? On
+considering the strange and unaccountable fancies and contrivances of
+artificial reason, I have somewhere called this earth the Bedlam of our
+system. Looking now upon the effects of some of those fancies, may we
+not with equal reason call it likewise the Newgate and the Bridewell of
+the universe? Indeed the blindness of one part of mankind co-operating
+with the frenzy and villany of the other, has been the real builder of
+this respectable fabric of political society: and as the blindness of
+mankind has caused their slavery, in return their state of slavery is
+made a pretence for continuing them in a state of blindness; for the
+politician will tell you gravely, that their life of servitude
+disqualifies the greater part of the race of man for a search of truth,
+and supplies them with no other than mean and insufficient ideas. This
+is but too true; and this is one of the reasons for which I blame such
+institutions.
+
+In a misery of this sort, admitting some few lenitives, and those too
+but a few, nine parts in ten of the whole race of mankind drudge through
+life. It may be urged perhaps, in palliation of this, that at least the
+rich few find a considerable and real benefit from the wretchedness of
+the many. But is this so in fact? Let us examine the point with a little
+more attention. For this purpose the rich in all societies may he thrown
+into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as
+rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The
+other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of
+pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their
+toilsome days, and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These
+circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of
+the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place
+them, in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labor
+continually, which is the severest labor, but their hearts are torn by
+the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice,
+by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power
+gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity,
+benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.
+_Veræ amicitiæ rarissime inveniuntur in iis qui in honoribus reque
+publica versantur_, says Cicero. And indeed courts are the schools where
+cruelty, pride, dissimulation, and treachery are studied and taught in
+the most vicious perfection. This is a point so clear and acknowledged,
+that if it did not make a necessary part of my subject, I should pass it
+by entirely. And this has hindered me from drawing at full length, and
+in the most striking colors, this shocking picture of the degeneracy and
+wretchedness of human nature, in that part which is vulgarly thought its
+happiest and most amiable state. You know from what originals I could
+copy such pictures. Happy are they who know enough of them to know the
+little value of the possessors of such things, and of all that they
+possess; and happy they who have been snatched from that post of danger
+which they occupy, with the remains of their virtue; loss of honors,
+wealth, titles, and even the loss of one's country, is nothing in
+balance with so great an advantage.
+
+Let us now view the other species of the rich, those who devote their
+time and fortunes to idleness and pleasure. How much happier are they?
+The pleasures which are agreeable to nature are within the reach of all,
+and therefore can form no distinction in favor of the rich. The
+pleasures which art forces up are seldom sincere, and never satisfying.
+What is worse, this constant application to pleasure takes away from the
+enjoyment, or rather turns it into the nature of a very burdensome and
+laborious business. It has consequences much more fatal. It produces a
+weak valetudinary state of body, attended by all those horrid disorders,
+and yet more horrid methods of cure, which are the result of luxury on
+the one hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human art on the
+other. The pleasures of such men are scarcely felt as pleasures; at the
+same time that they bring on pains and diseases, which are felt but too
+severely. The mind has its share of the misfortune; it grows lazy and
+enervate, unwilling and unable to search for truth, and utterly
+uncapable of knowing, much less of relishing, real happiness. The poor
+by their excessive labor, and the rich by their enormous luxury, are set
+upon a level, and rendered equally ignorant of any knowledge which might
+conduce to their happiness. A dismal view of the interior of all civil
+society! The lower part broken and ground down by the most cruel
+oppression; and the rich by their artificial method of life bringing
+worse evils on themselves than their tyranny could possibly inflict on
+those below them. Very different is the prospect of the natural state.
+Here there are no wants which nature gives, and in this state men can be
+sensible of no other wants, which are not to be supplied by a very
+moderate degree of labor; therefore there is no slavery. Neither is
+there any luxury, because no single man can supply the materials of it.
+Life is simple, and therefore it is happy.
+
+I am conscious, my lord, that your politician will urge in his defence,
+that this unequal state is highly useful. That without dooming some part
+of mankind to extraordinary toil, the arts which cultivate life could
+not be exercised. But I demand of this politician, how such arts came to
+be necessary? He answers, that civil society could not well exist
+without them. So that these arts are necessary to civil society, and
+civil society necessary again to these arts. Thus are we running in a
+circle, without modesty, and without end, and making one error and
+extravagance an excuse for the other. My sentiments about these arts and
+their cause, I have often discoursed with my friends at large. Pope has
+expressed them in good verse, where he talks with so much force of
+reason and elegance of language, in praise of the state of nature:
+
+   "Then was not pride, nor arts that pride to aid,
+    Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade."
+
+
+On the whole, my lord, if political society, in whatever form, has still
+made the many the property of the few; if it has introduced labors
+unnecessary, vices and diseases unknown, and pleasures incompatible
+with nature; if in all countries it abridges the lives of millions, and
+renders those of millions more utterly abject and miserable, shall we
+still worship so destructive an idol, and daily sacrifice to it our
+health, our liberty, and our peace? Or shall we pass by this monstrous
+heap of absurd notions, and abominable practices, thinking we have
+sufficiently discharged our duty in exposing the trifling, cheats, and
+ridiculous juggles of a few mad, designing, or ambitious priests? Alas!
+my lord, we labor under a mortal consumption, whilst we are so anxious
+about the cure of a sore finger. For has not this leviathan of civil
+power overflowed the earth with a deluge of blood, as if he were made to
+disport and play therein? We have shown that political society, on a
+moderate calculation, has been the means of murdering several times the
+number of inhabitants now upon the earth, during its short existence,
+not upwards of four thousand years in any accounts to be depended on.
+But we have said nothing of the other, and perhaps as bad, consequence
+of these wars, which have spilled such seas of blood, and reduced so
+many millions to a merciless slavery. But these are only the ceremonies
+performed in the porch of the political temple. Much more horrid ones
+are seen as you enter it. The several species of government vie with
+each other in the absurdity of their constitutions, and the oppression
+which they make their subjects endure. Take them under what form you
+please, they are in effect but a despotism, and they fall, both in
+effect and appearance too, after a very short period, into that cruel
+and detestable species of tyranny: which I rather call it, because we
+have been educated under another form, than that this is of worse
+consequences to mankind. For the free governments, for the point of
+their space, and the moment of their duration, have felt more confusion,
+and committed more flagrant acts of tyranny, than the most perfect
+despotic governments which we have ever known. Turn your eye next to the
+labyrinth of the law, and the iniquity conceived in its intricate
+recesses. Consider the ravages committed in the bowels of all
+commonwealths by ambition, by avarice, envy, fraud, open injustice, and
+pretended friendship; vices which could draw little support from a state
+of nature, but which blossom and flourish in the rankness of political
+society. Revolve our whole discourse; add to it all those reflections
+which your own good understanding shall suggest, and make a strenuous
+effort beyond the reach of vulgar philosophy, to confess that the cause
+of artificial society is more defenceless even than that of artificial
+religion; that it is as derogatory from the honor of the Creator, as
+subversive of human reason, and productive of infinitely more mischief
+to the human race.
+
+If pretended revelations have caused wars where they were opposed, and
+slavery where they were received, the pretended wise inventions of
+politicians have done the same. But the slavery has been much heavier,
+the wars far more bloody, and both more universal by many degrees. Show
+me any mischief produced by the madness or wickedness of theologians,
+and I will show you a hundred resulting from the ambition and villany of
+conquerors and statesmen. Show me an absurdity in religion, and I will
+undertake to show you a hundred for one in political laws and
+institutions. If you say that natural religion is a sufficient guide
+without the foreign aid of revelation, on what principle should
+political laws become necessary? Is not the same reason available in
+theology and in politics? If the laws of nature are the laws of God, is
+it consistent with the Divine wisdom to prescribe rules to us, and leave
+the enforcement of them to the folly of human institutions? Will you
+follow truth but to a certain point?
+
+We are indebted for all our miseries to our distrust of that guide which
+Providence thought sufficient for our condition, our own natural reason,
+which rejecting both in human and divine things, we have given our necks
+to the yoke of political and theological slavery. We have renounced the
+prerogative of man, and it is no wonder that we should be treated like
+beasts. But our misery is much greater than theirs, as the crime we
+commit in rejecting the lawful dominion of our reason is greater than
+any which they can commit. If, after all, you should confess all these
+things, yet plead the necessity of political institutions, weak and
+wicked as they are, I can argue with equal, perhaps superior, force,
+concerning the necessity of artificial religion; and every step you
+advance in your argument, you add a strength to mine. So that if we are
+resolved to submit our reason, and our liberty to civil usurpation, we
+have nothing to do but to conform as quietly as we can to the vulgar
+notions which are connected with this, and take up the theology of the
+vulgar as well as their politics. But if we think this necessity rather
+imaginary than real, we should renounce their dreams of society,
+together with their visions of religion, and vindicate ourselves into
+perfect liberty.
+
+You are, my lord, but just entering into the world; I am going out of
+it. I have played long enough to be heartily tired of the drama. Whether
+I have acted my part in it well or ill, posterity will judge with more
+candor than I, or than the present age, with our present passions, can
+possibly pretend to. For my part, I quit it without a sigh, and submit
+to the sovereign order without murmuring. The nearer we approach to the
+goal of life, the better we begin to understand the true value of our
+existence, and the real weight of our opinions. We set out much in love
+with both; but we leave much behind us as we advance. We first throw
+away the tales along with the rattles of our nurses: those of the priest
+keep their hold a little longer; those of our governors the longest of
+all. But the passions which prop these opinions are withdrawn one after
+another; and the cool light of reason, at the setting of our life, shows
+us what a false splendor played upon these objects during our more
+sanguine seasons. Happy, my lord, if instructed by my experience, and
+even by my errors, you come early to make such an estimate of things, as
+may give freedom and ease to your life. I am happy that such an estimate
+promises me comfort at my death.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] Had his lordship lived to our days, to have seen the noble relief
+given by this nation to the distressed Portuguese, he had perhaps owned
+this part of his argument a little weakened; but we do not think
+ourselves entitled to alter his lordship's words, but that we are bound
+to follow him exactly.
+
+[9] Sciant quibus moris illicita mirari, posse etiam sub malis
+principibus magnos viros, &c. See 42, to the end of it.
+
+
+
+
+A
+
+PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY
+
+INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF
+
+THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL
+
+WITH
+
+AN INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE
+
+CONCERNING
+
+TASTE,
+
+AND SEVERAL OTHER ADDITIONS
+
+*** _The first edition of this work was published in 1756;
+     the second with large additions, in the year 1757._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+I have endeavored to make this edition something more full and
+satisfactory than the first. I have sought with the utmost care, and
+read with equal attention, everything which has appeared in public
+against my opinions; I have taken advantage of the candid liberty of my
+friends; and if by these means I have been better enabled to discover
+the imperfections of the work, the indulgence it has received, imperfect
+as it was, furnished me with a new motive to spare no reasonable pains
+for its improvement. Though I have not found sufficient reason, or what
+appeared to me sufficient, for making any material change in my theory,
+I have found it necessary in many places to explain, illustrate, and
+enforce it. I have prefixed an introductory discourse concerning Taste;
+it is a matter curious in itself; and it leads naturally enough to the
+principal inquiry. This, with the other explanations, has made the work
+considerably larger; and by increasing its bulk has, I am afraid, added
+to its faults; so that notwithstanding all my attention, it may stand in
+need of a yet greater share of indulgence than it required at its first
+appearance.
+
+They who are accustomed to studies of this nature will expect, and they
+will allow too for many faults. They know that many of the objects of
+our inquiry are in themselves obscure and intricate; and that many
+others have been rendered so by affected refinements, or false learning;
+they know that there are many impediments in the subject, in the
+prejudices of others, and even in our own, that render it a matter of no
+small difficulty to show in a clear light the genuine face of nature.
+They know that whilst the mind is intent on the general scheme of
+things, some particular parts must be neglected; that we must often
+submit the style to the matter, and frequently give up the praise of
+elegance, satisfied with being clear.
+
+The characters of nature are legible, it is true; but they are not plain
+enough to enable those who run, to read them. We must make use of a
+cautious, I had almost said, a timorous method of proceeding. We must
+not attempt to fly, when we can scarcely pretend to creep. In
+considering any complex matter, we ought to examine every distinct
+ingredient in the composition, one by one; and reduce everything to the
+utmost simplicity; since the condition of our nature binds us to a
+strict law and very narrow limits. We ought afterwards to re-examine the
+principles by the effect of the composition, as well as the composition
+by that of the principles. We ought to compare our subject with things
+of a similar nature, and even with things of a contrary nature; for
+discoveries may be, and often are made by the contrast, which would
+escape us on the single view. The greater number of the comparisons we
+make, the more general and the more certain our knowledge is likely to
+prove, as built upon a more extensive and perfect induction.
+
+If an inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of
+discovering the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in
+discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not
+make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from
+error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us
+cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much
+labor may end in so much uncertainty.
+
+I could wish that, in examining this theory, the same method were
+pursued which I endeavored to observe in forming it. The objections, in
+my opinion, ought to be proposed, either to the several principles as
+they are distinctly considered, or to the justness of the conclusion
+which is drawn from them. But it is common to pass over both the
+premises and conclusion in silence, and to produce, as an objection,
+some poetical passage which does not seem easily accounted for upon the
+principles I endeavor to establish. This manner of proceeding I should
+think very improper. The task would be infinite, if we could establish
+no principle until we had previously unravelled the complex texture of
+every image or description to be found in poets and orators. And though
+we should never be able to reconcile the effect of such images to our
+principles, this can never overturn the theory itself, whilst it is
+founded on certain and indisputable facts. A theory founded on
+experiment, and not assumed, is always good for so much as it explains.
+Our inability to push it indefinitely is no argument at all against it.
+This inability may be owing to our ignorance of some necessary
+_mediums_; to a want of proper application; to many other causes besides
+a defect in the principles we employ. In reality, the subject requires a
+much closer attention than we dare claim from our manner of treating
+it.
+
+If it should not appear on the face of the work, I must caution the
+reader against imagining that I intended a full dissertation on the
+Sublime and Beautiful. My inquiry went no farther than to the origin of
+these ideas. If the qualities which I have ranged under the head of the
+Sublime be all found consistent with each other, and all different from
+those which I place under the head of Beauty; and if those which compose
+the class of the Beautiful have the same consistency with themselves,
+and the same opposition to those which are classed under the
+denomination of Sublime, I am in little pain whether anybody chooses to
+follow the name I give them or not, provided he allows that what I
+dispose under different heads are in reality different things in nature.
+The use I make of the words may be blamed, as too confined or too
+extended; my meaning cannot well be misunderstood.
+
+To conclude: whatever progress may be made towards the discovery of
+truth in this matter, I do not repent the pains I have taken in it. The
+use of such inquiries may be very considerable. Whatever turns the soul
+inward on itself, tends to concentre its forces, and to fit it for
+greater and stronger flights of science. By looking into physical causes
+our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take
+or whether we lose our game, the chase is certainly of service. Cicero,
+true as he was to the academic philosophy, and consequently led to
+reject the certainty of physical, as of every other kind of knowledge,
+yet freely confesses its great importance to the human understanding:
+"_Est animorum ingeniorumque nostrorum naturale quoddam quasi pabulum
+consideratio contemplatioque naturæ_." If we can direct the lights we
+derive from such exalted speculations upon the humbler field of the
+imagination, whilst we investigate the springs, and trace the courses of
+our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of
+philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on the severer sciences
+some of the graces and elegances of taste, without which the greatest
+proficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of
+something illiberal.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+INTRODUCTION: On Taste                                                79
+
+
+PART I
+
+I.     Novelty                                                       101
+
+II.    Pain and Pleasure                                             102
+
+III.   The Difference between the Removal of Pain and Positive
+       Pleasure                                                      104
+
+IV.    Of Delight and Pleasure, as opposed to each other             106
+
+V.     Joy and Grief                                                 108
+
+VI.    Of the Passions which belong to Self-Preservation             110
+
+VII.   Of the Sublime                                                110
+
+VIII.  Of the Passions which belong to Society                       111
+
+IX.    The Final Cause of the Difference between the Passions
+       belonging to Self-Preservation, and those which regard
+       the Society of the Sexes                                      113
+
+X.     Of Beauty                                                     114
+
+XI.    Society and Solitude                                          115
+
+XII.   Sympathy, Imitation, and Ambition                             116
+
+XIII.  Sympathy                                                      117
+
+XIV.   The Effects of Sympathy in the Distresses of Others           119
+
+XV.    Of the Effects of Tragedy                                     120
+
+XVI.   Imitation                                                     122
+
+XVII.  Ambition                                                      123
+
+XVIII. The Recapitulation                                            125
+
+XIX.   The Conclusion                                                126
+
+
+PART II.
+
+I.     Of the Passion caused by the Sublime                          130
+
+II.    Terror                                                        130
+
+III.   Obscurity                                                     132
+
+IV.    Of the Difference between Clearness and Obscurity
+       with regard to the Passions                                   133
+
+[IV.]  The Same Subject continued                                    134
+
+V.     Power                                                         138
+
+VI.    Privation                                                     146
+
+VII.   Vastness                                                      147
+
+VIII.  Infinity                                                      148
+
+IX.    Succession and Uniformity                                     149
+
+X.     Magnitude in Building                                         152
+
+XI.    Infinity in Pleasing Objects                                  153
+
+XII.   Difficulty                                                    153
+
+XIII.  Magnificence                                                  154
+
+XIV.   Light                                                         156
+
+XV.    Light in Building                                             157
+
+XVI.   Color considered as productive of the Sublime                 158
+
+XVII.  Sound and Loudness                                            159
+
+XVIII. Suddenness                                                    160
+
+XIX.   Intermitting                                                  160
+
+XX.    The Cries of Animals                                          161
+
+XXI.   Smell and Taste--Bitters and Stenches                         162
+
+XXII.  Feeling.--Pain                                                164
+
+
+PART III.
+
+I.     Of Beauty                                                     165
+
+II.    Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in Vegetables              166
+
+III.   Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in Animals                 170
+
+IV.    Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in the Human Species       172
+
+V.     Proportion further considered                                 178
+
+VI.    Fitness not the Cause of Beauty                               181
+
+VII.   The Real Effects of Fitness                                   184
+
+VIII.  The Recapitulation                                            187
+
+IX.    Perfection not the Cause of Beauty                            187
+
+X.     How far the Idea of Beauty may be applied to the
+       Qualities of the Mind                                         188
+
+XI.    How far the Idea of Beauty may be applied to Virtue           190
+
+XII.   The Real Cause of Beauty                                      191
+
+XIII.  Beautiful Objects Small                                       191
+
+XIV.   Smoothness                                                    193
+
+XV.    Gradual Variation                                             194
+
+XVI.   Delicacy                                                      195
+
+XVII.  Beauty in Color                                               196
+
+XVIII. Recapitulation                                                197
+
+XIX.   The Physiognomy                                               198
+
+XX.    The Eye                                                       198
+
+XXI.   Ugliness                                                      199
+
+XXII.  Grace                                                         200
+
+XXIII. Elegance and Speciousness                                     200
+
+XXIV.  The Beautiful in Feeling                                      201
+
+XXV.   The Beautiful in Sounds                                       203
+
+XXVI.  Taste and Smell                                               205
+
+XXVII. The Sublime and Beautiful compared                            205
+
+
+PART IV.
+
+I.     Of the Efficient Cause of the Sublime and Beautiful           208
+
+II.    Association                                                   209
+
+III.   Cause of Pain and Fear                                        210
+
+IV.    Continued                                                     212
+
+V.     How the Sublime is produced                                   215
+
+VI.    How Pain can be a Cause of Delight                            215
+
+VII.   Exercise necessary for the Finer Organs                       216
+
+VIII.  Why Things not Dangerous sometimes produce a
+       Passion like Terror                                           217
+
+IX.    Why Visual Objects of Great Dimensions are Sublime            217
+
+X.     Unity, why requisite to Vastness                              219
+
+XI.    The Artificial Infinite                                       220
+
+XII.   The Vibrations must be Similar                                222
+
+XIII.  The Effects of Succession in Visual Objects explained         222
+
+XIV.   Locke's Opinion concerning Darkness considered                225
+
+XV.    Darkness Terrible in its own Nature                           226
+
+XVI.   Why Darkness is Terrible                                      227
+
+XVII.  The Effects of Blackness                                      229
+
+XVIII. The Effects of Blackness moderated                            231
+
+XIX.   The Physical Cause of Love                                    232
+
+XX.    Why Smoothness is Beautiful                                   234
+
+XXI.   Sweetness, its Nature                                         235
+
+XXII.  Sweetness relaxing                                            237
+
+XXIII. Variation, why Beautiful                                      239
+
+XXIV.  Concerning Smallness                                          240
+
+XXV.   Of Color                                                      244
+
+
+PART V.
+
+I.     Of Words                                                      246
+
+II.    The Common Effect of Poetry, not by raising Ideas of Things   246
+
+III.   General Words before Ideas                                    249
+
+IV.    The Effect of Words                                           250
+
+V.     Examples that Words may affect without raising Images         252
+
+VI.    Poetry not strictly an Imitative Art                          257
+
+VII.   How Words influence the Passions                              258
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+ON TASTE.
+
+
+On a superficial view we may seem to differ very widely from each other
+in our reasonings, and no less in our pleasures: but, notwithstanding
+this difference, which I think to be rather apparent than real, it is
+probable that the standard both of reason and taste is the same in all
+human creatures. For if there were not some principles of judgment as
+well as of sentiment common to all mankind, no hold could possibly be
+taken either on their reason or their passions, sufficient to maintain
+the ordinary correspondence of life. It appears, indeed, to be generally
+acknowledged, that with regard to truth and falsehood there is something
+fixed. We find people in their disputes continually appealing to certain
+tests and standards, which are allowed on all sides, and are supposed to
+be established in our common nature. But there is not the same obvious
+concurrence in any uniform or settled principles which relate to taste.
+It is even commonly supposed that this delicate and aerial faculty,
+which seems too volatile to endure even the chains of a definition,
+cannot be properly tried by any test, nor regulated by any standard.
+There is so continual a call for the exercise of the reasoning facility;
+and it is so much strengthened by perpetual contention, that certain
+maxims of right reason seem to be tacitly settled amongst the most
+ignorant. The learned have improved on this rude science, and reduced
+those maxims into a system. If taste has not been so happily cultivated,
+it was not that the subject was barren, but that the laborers were few
+or negligent; for, to say the truth, there are not the same interesting
+motives to impel us to fix the one, which urge us to ascertain the
+other. And, after all, if men differ in their opinion concerning such
+matters, their difference is not attended with the same important
+consequences; else I make no doubt but that the logic of taste, if I may
+be allowed the expression, might very possibly be as well digested, and
+we might come to discuss matters of this nature with as much certainty,
+as those which seem more immediately within the province of mere reason.
+And, indeed, it is very necessary, at the entrance into such an inquiry
+as our present, to make this point as clear as possible; for if taste
+has no fixed principles, if the imagination is not affected according to
+some invariable and certain laws, our labor is likely to be employed to
+very little purpose; as it must be judged an useless, if not an absurd
+undertaking, to lay down rules for caprice, and to set up for a
+legislator of whims and fancies.
+
+The term taste, like all other figurative terms, is not extremely
+accurate; the thing which we understand by it is far from a simple and
+determinate idea in the minds of most men, and it is therefore liable to
+uncertainty and confusion. I have no great opinion of a definition, the
+celebrated remedy for the cure of this disorder. For, when we define, we
+seem in danger of circumscribing nature within the bounds of our own
+notions, which we often take up by hazard or embrace on trust, or form
+out of a limited and partial consideration of the object before us;
+instead of extending our ideas to take in all that nature comprehends,
+according to her manner of combining. We are limited in our inquiry by
+the strict laws to which we have submitted at our setting out.
+
+        Circa vilem patulumque morabimur orbem,
+    Unde pudor proferre pedem vetat aut operis lex.
+
+
+A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards
+informing us of the nature of the thing defined; but let the virtue of a
+definition be what it will, in the order of things, it seems rather to
+follow than to precede our inquiry, of which it ought to be considered
+as the result. It must be acknowledged that the methods of disquisition
+and teaching may be sometimes different, and on very good reason
+undoubtedly; but, for my part, I am convinced that the method of
+teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is
+incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren
+and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew; it tends
+to set the reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him
+into those paths in which the author has made his own discoveries, if he
+should be so happy as to have made any that are valuable.
+
+But to cut off all pretence for cavilling, I mean by the word taste, no
+more than that faculty or those faculties of the mind, which are
+affected with, or which form a judgment of, the works of imagination and
+the elegant arts. This is, I think, the most general idea of that word,
+and what is the least connected with any particular theory. And my point
+in this inquiry is, to find whether there are any principles, on which
+the imagination is affected, so common to all, so grounded and certain,
+as to supply the means of reasoning satisfactorily about them. And such
+principles of taste I fancy there are; however paradoxical it may seem
+to those, who on a superficial view imagine that there is so great a
+diversity of tastes, both in kind and degree, that nothing can be more
+indeterminate.
+
+All the natural powers in man, which I know, that are conversant about
+external objects, are the senses; the imagination; and the judgment. And
+first with regard to the senses. We do and we must suppose, that as the
+conformation of their organs are nearly or altogether the same in all
+men, so the manner of perceiving external objects is in all men the
+same, or with little difference. We are satisfied that what appears to
+be light to one eye, appears light to another; that what seems sweet to
+one palate, is sweet to another; that what is dark and bitter to this
+man, is likewise dark and bitter to that; and we conclude in the same
+manner of great and little, hard and soft, hot and cold, rough and
+smooth; and indeed of all the natural qualities and affections of
+bodies. If we suffer ourselves to imagine, that their senses present to
+different men different images of things, this sceptical proceeding will
+make every sort of reasoning on every subject vain and frivolous, even
+that sceptical reasoning itself which had persuaded us to entertain a
+doubt concerning the agreement of our perceptions. But as there will be
+little doubt that bodies present similar images to the whole species, it
+must necessarily be allowed, that the pleasures and the pains which
+every object excites in one man, it must raise in all mankind, whilst
+it operates naturally, simply, and by its proper powers only: for if we
+deny this, we must imagine that the same cause, operating in the same
+manner, and on subjects of the same kind, will produce different
+effects; which would be highly absurd. Let us first consider this point
+in the sense of taste, and the rather as the faculty in question has
+taken its name from that sense. All men are agreed to call vinegar sour,
+honey sweet, and aloes bitter; and as they are all agreed in finding
+those qualities in those objects, they do not in the least differ
+concerning their effects with regard to pleasure and pain. They all
+concur in calling sweetness pleasant, and sourness and bitterness
+unpleasant. Here there is no diversity in their sentiments; and that
+there is not, appears fully from the consent of all men in the metaphors
+which are taken, from the souse of taste. A sour temper, bitter
+expressions, bitter curses, a bitter fate, are terms well and strongly
+understood by all. And we are altogether as well understood when we say,
+a sweet disposition, a sweet person, a sweet condition and the like. It
+is confessed, that custom and some other causes have made many
+deviations from the natural pleasures or pains which belong to these
+several tastes; but then the power of distinguishing between the natural
+and the acquired relish remains to the very last. A man frequently comes
+to prefer the taste of tobacco to that of sugar, and the flavor of
+vinegar to that of milk; but this makes no confusion in tastes, whilst
+he is sensible that the tobacco and vinegar are not sweet, and whilst he
+knows that habit alone has reconciled his palate to these alien
+pleasures. Even with such a person we may speak, and with sufficient
+precision, concerning tastes. But should any man be found who declares,
+that to him tobacco has a taste like sugar, and that he cannot
+distinguish between milk and vinegar; or that tobacco and vinegar are
+sweet, milk bitter, and sugar sour; we immediately conclude that the
+organs of this man are out of order, and that his palate is utterly
+vitiated. We are as far from conferring with such a person upon tastes,
+as from reasoning concerning the relations of quantity with one who
+should deny that all the parts together were equal to the whole. We do
+not call a man of this kind wrong in his notions, but absolutely mad.
+Exceptions of this sort, in either way, do not at all impeach our
+general rule, nor make us conclude that men have various principles
+concerning the relations of quantity or the taste of things. So that
+when it is said, taste cannot be disputed, it can only mean, that no one
+can strictly answer what pleasure or pain some particular man may find
+from the taste of some particular thing. This indeed cannot be disputed;
+but we may dispute, and with sufficient clearness too, concerning the
+things which are naturally pleasing or disagreeable to the sense. But
+when we talk of any peculiar or acquired relish, then we must know the
+habits, the prejudices, or the distempers of this particular man, and we
+must draw our conclusion from those.
+
+This agreement of mankind is not confined to the taste solely. The
+principle of pleasure derived from sight is the same in all. Light is
+more pleasing than darkness. Summer, when the earth is clad in green,
+when the heavens are serene and bright, is more agreeable than winter,
+when everything makes a different appearance. I never remember that
+anything beautiful, whether a man, a beast, a bird, or a plant, was
+ever shown, though it were to a hundred people, that they did not all
+immediately agree that it was beautiful, though some might have thought
+that it fell short of their expectation, or that other things were still
+finer. I believe no man thinks a goose to be more beautiful than a swan,
+or imagines that what they call a Friesland hen excels a peacock. It
+must be observed too, that the pleasures of the sight are not near so
+complicated, and confused, and altered by unnatural habits and
+associations, as the pleasures of the taste are; because the pleasures
+of the sight more commonly acquiesce in themselves; and are not so often
+altered by considerations which are independent of the sight itself. But
+things do not spontaneously present themselves to the palate as they do
+to the sight; they are generally applied to it, either as food or as
+medicine; and from the qualities which they possess for nutritive or
+medicinal purposes they often form the palate by degrees, and by force
+of these associations. Thus opium is pleasing to Turks, on account of
+the agreeable delirium it produces. Tobacco is the delight of Dutchmen,
+as it diffuses a torpor and pleasing stupefaction. Fermented spirits
+please our common people, because they banish care, and all
+consideration of future or present evils. All of these would lie
+absolutely neglected if their properties had originally gone no further
+than the taste; but all these, together with tea and coffee, and some
+other things, have passed from the apothecary's shop to our tables, and
+were taken for health long before they were thought of for pleasure. The
+effect of the drug has made us use it frequently; and frequent use,
+combined with the agreeable effect, has made the taste itself at last
+agreeable. But this does not in the least perplex our reasoning;
+because we distinguish to the last the acquired from the natural relish.
+In describing the taste of an unknown fruit, you would scarcely say that
+it had a sweet and pleasant flavor like tobacco, opium, or garlic,
+although you spoke to those who were in the constant use of those drugs,
+and had great pleasure in them. There is in all men a sufficient
+remembrance of the original natural causes of pleasure, to enable them
+to bring all things offered to their senses to that standard, and to
+regulate their feelings and opinions by it. Suppose one who had so
+vitiated his palate as to take more pleasure in the taste of opium than
+in that of butter or honey, to be presented with a bolus of squills;
+there is hardly any doubt but that he would prefer the butter or honey
+to this nauseous morsel, or to any other bitter drug to which he had not
+been accustomed; which proves that his palate was naturally like that of
+other men in all things, that it is still like the palate of other men
+in many things, and only vitiated in some particular points. For in
+judging of any new thing, even of a taste similar to that which he has
+been formed by habit to like, he finds his palate affected in the
+natural manner, and on the common principles. Thus the pleasure of all
+the senses, of the sight, and even of the taste, that most ambiguous of
+the senses, is the same in all, high and low, learned and unlearned.
+
+Besides the ideas, with their annexed pains and pleasures, which are
+presented by the sense; the mind of man possesses a sort of creative
+power of its own; either in representing at pleasure the images of
+things in the order and manner in which they were received by the
+senses, or in combining those images in a new manner, and according to
+a different order. This power is called imagination; and to this belongs
+whatever is called wit, fancy, invention, and the like. But it must be
+observed, that this power of the imagination is incapable of producing
+anything absolutely new; it can only vary the disposition of those ideas
+which it has received from the senses. Now the imagination is the most
+extensive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our
+fears and our hopes, and of all our passions that are connected with
+them; and whatever is calculated to affect the imagination with these
+commanding ideas, by force of any original natural impression, must have
+the same power pretty equally over all men. For since the imagination is
+only the representation of the senses, it can only be pleased or
+displeased with the images, from the same principle on which the sense
+is pleased or displeased with the realities; and consequently there must
+be just as close an agreement in the imaginations as in the senses of
+men. A little attention will convince us that this must of necessity be
+the case.
+
+But in the imagination, besides the pain or pleasure arising from the
+properties of the natural object, a pleasure is perceived from the
+resemblance which the imitation has to the original: the imagination, I
+conceive, can have no pleasure but what results from one or other of
+these causes. And these causes operate pretty uniformly upon all men,
+because they operate by principles in nature, and which are not derived
+from any particular habits or advantages. Mr. Locke very justly and
+finely observes of wit, that it is chiefly conversant in tracing
+resemblances; he remarks, at the same time, that the business of
+judgment is rather in finding differences. It may perhaps appear, on
+this supposition, that there is no material distinction between the wit
+and the judgment, as they both seem to result from different operations
+of the same faculty of _comparing_. But in reality, whether they are or
+are not dependent on the same power of the mind, they differ so very
+materially in many respects, that a perfect union of wit and judgment is
+one of the rarest things in the world. When two distinct objects are
+unlike to each other, it is only what we expect; things are in their
+common way; and therefore they make no impression on the imagination:
+but when two distinct objects have a resemblance, we are struck, we
+attend to them, and we are pleased. The mind of man has naturally a far
+greater alacrity and satisfaction in tracing resemblances than in
+searching for differences; because by making resemblances we produce
+_new images_; we unite, we create, we enlarge our stock; but in making
+distinctions we offer no food at all to the imagination; the task itself
+is more severe and irksome, and what pleasure we derive from it is
+something of a negative and indirect nature. A piece of news is told me
+in the morning; this, merely as a piece of news, as a fact added to my
+stock, gives me some pleasure. In the evening I find there was nothing
+in it. What do I gain by this, but the dissatisfaction to find that I
+had been imposed upon? Hence it is that men are much more naturally
+inclined to belief than to incredulity. And it is upon this principle,
+that the most ignorant and barbarous nations have frequently excelled in
+similitudes, comparisons, metaphors, and allegories, who have been weak
+and backward in distinguishing and sorting their ideas. And it is for a
+reason of this kind, that Homer and the oriental writers, though very
+fond of similitudes, and though they often strike out such as are truly
+admirable, seldom take care to have them exact; that is, they are taken
+with the general resemblance, they paint it strongly, and they take no
+notice of the difference which may be found between the things compared.
+
+Now as the pleasure of resemblance is that which principally flatters
+the imagination, all men are nearly equal in this point, as far as their
+knowledge of the things represented or compared extends. The principle
+of this knowledge is very much accidental, as it depends upon experience
+and observation, and not on the strength or weakness of any natural
+faculty; and it is from this difference in knowledge, that what we
+commonly, though with no great exactness, call a difference in taste
+proceeds. A man to whom sculpture is new, sees a barber's block, or some
+ordinary piece of statuary; he is immediately struck and pleased,
+because he sees something like a human figure; and, entirely taken up
+with this likeness, he does not at all attend to its defects. No person,
+I believe, at the first time of seeing a piece of imitation ever did.
+Some time after, we suppose that this novice lights upon a more
+artificial work of the same nature; he now begins to look with contempt
+on what he admired at first; not that he admired it even then for its
+unlikeness to a man, but for that general though inaccurate resemblance
+which it bore to the human figure. What he admired at different times in
+these so different figures, is strictly the same; and though his
+knowledge is improved, his taste is not altered. Hitherto his mistake
+was from a want of knowledge in art, and this arose from his
+inexperience; but he may be still deficient from a want of knowledge in
+nature. For it is possible that the man in question may stop here, and
+that the masterpiece of a great hand may please him no more than the
+middling performance of a vulgar artist; and this not for want of better
+or higher relish, but because all men do not observe with sufficient
+accuracy on the human figure to enable them to judge properly of an
+imitation of it. And that the critical taste does not depend upon a
+superior principle in men, but upon superior knowledge, may appear from
+several instances. The story of the ancient painter and the shoemaker is
+very well known. The shoemaker set the painter right with regard to some
+mistakes he had made in the shoe of one of his figures, which the
+painter, who had not made such accurate observations on shoes, and was
+content with a general resemblance, had never observed. But this was no
+impeachment to the taste of the painter; it only showed some want of
+knowledge in the art of making shoes. Let us imagine, that an anatomist
+had come into the painter's working-room. His piece is in general well
+done, the figure in question in a good attitude, and the parts well
+adjusted to their various movements; yet the anatomist, critical in his
+art, may observe the swell of some muscle not quite just in the peculiar
+action of the figure. Here the anatomist observes what the painter had
+not observed; and he passes by what the shoemaker had remarked. But a
+want of the last critical knowledge in anatomy no more reflected on the
+natural good taste of the painter, or of any common observer of his
+piece, than the want of an exact knowledge in the formation of a shoe. A
+fine piece of a decollated head of St. John the Baptist was shown to a
+Turkish emperor: he praised many things, but he observed one defect: he
+observed that the skin did not shrink from the wounded part of the neck.
+The sultan on this occasion, though his observation was very just,
+discovered no more natural taste than the painter who executed this
+piece, or than a thousand European connoisseurs, who probably never
+would have made the same observation. His Turkish majesty had indeed
+been well acquainted with that terrible spectacle, which the others
+could only have represented in their imagination. On the subject of
+their dislike there is a difference between all these people, arising
+from the different kinds and degrees of their knowledge; but there is
+something in common to the painter, the shoemaker, the anatomist, and
+the Turkish emperor, the pleasure arising from a natural object, so far
+as each perceives it justly imitated; the satisfaction in seeing an
+agreeable figure; the sympathy proceeding from a striking and affecting
+incident. So far as taste is natural, it is nearly common to all.
+
+In poetry, and other pieces of imagination, the same parity may be
+observed. It is true, that one man is charmed with Don Bellianis, and
+reads Virgil coldly; whilst another is transported with the Æneid, and
+leaves Don Bellianis to children. These two men seem to have a taste
+very different from each other; but in fact they differ very little. In
+both these pieces, which inspire such opposite sentiments, a tale
+exciting admiration is told; both are full of action, both are
+passionate; in both are voyages, battles, triumphs, and continual
+changes of fortune. The admirer of Don Bellianis perhaps does not
+understand the refined language of the Æneid, who, if it was degraded
+into the style of the "Pilgrim's Progress," might feel it in all its
+energy, on the same principle which made him an admirer of Don
+Bellianis.
+
+In his favorite author he is not shocked with the continual breaches of
+probability, the confusion of times, the offences against manners, the
+trampling upon geography; for he knows nothing of geography and
+chronology, and he has never examined the grounds of probability. He
+perhaps reads of a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia: wholly taken up
+with so interesting an event, and only solicitous for the fate of his
+hero, he is not in the least troubled at this extravagant blunder. For
+why should he be shocked at a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia, who
+does not know but that Bohemia may be an island in the Atlantic ocean?
+and after all, what reflection is this on the natural good taste of the
+person here supposed?
+
+So far then as taste belongs to the imagination, its principle is the
+same in all men; there is no difference in the manner of their being
+affected, nor in the causes of the affection; but in the _degree_ there
+is a difference, which arises from two causes principally; either from a
+greater degree of natural sensibility, or from a closer and longer
+attention to the object. To illustrate this by the procedure of the
+senses, in which the same difference is found, let us suppose a very
+smooth marble table to be set before two men; they both perceive it to
+be smooth, and they are both pleased with it because of this quality. So
+far they agree. But suppose another, and after that another table, the
+latter still smoother than the former, to be set before them. It is now
+very probable that these men, who are so agreed upon what is smooth, and
+in the pleasure from thence, will disagree when they come to settle
+which table has the advantage in point of polish. Here is indeed the
+great difference between tastes, when men come to compare the excess or
+diminution of things which are judged by degree and not by measure. Nor
+is it easy, when such a difference arises, to settle the point, if the
+excess or diminution be not glaring. If we differ in opinion about two
+quantities, we can have recourse to a common measure, which may decide
+the question with the utmost exactness; and this, I take it, is what
+gives mathematical knowledge a greater certainty than any other. But in
+things whose excess is not judged by greater or smaller, as smoothness
+and roughness, hardness and softness, darkness and light, the shades of
+colors, all these are very easily distinguished when the difference is
+any way considerable, but not when it is minute, for want of some common
+measures, which perhaps may never come to be discovered. In these nice
+cases, supposing the acuteness of the sense equal, the greater attention
+and habit in such things will have the advantage. In the question about
+the tables, the marble-polisher will unquestionably determine the most
+accurately. But notwithstanding this want of a common measure for
+settling many disputes relative to the senses, and their representative
+the imagination, we find that the principles are the same in all, and
+that there is no disagreement until we come to examine into the
+pre-eminence or difference of things, which brings us within the
+province of the judgment.
+
+So long as we are conversant with the sensible qualities of things,
+hardly any more than the imagination seems concerned; little more also
+than the imagination seems concerned when the passions are represented,
+because by the force of natural sympathy they are felt in all men
+without any recourse to reasoning, and their justness recognized in
+every breast. Love, grief, fear, anger, joy, all these passions have, in
+their turns, affected every mind; and they do not affect it in an
+arbitrary or casual manner, but upon certain, natural, and uniform
+principles. But as many of the works of imagination are not confined to
+the representation of sensible objects, nor to efforts upon the
+passions, but extend themselves to the manners, the characters, the
+actions, and designs of men, their relations, their virtues and vices,
+they come within the province of the judgment, which is improved by
+attention, and by the habit of reasoning. All these make a very
+considerable part of what are considered as the objects of taste; and
+Horace sends us to the schools of philosophy and the world for our
+instruction in them. Whatever certainty is to be acquired in morality
+and the science of life; just the same degree of certainty have we in
+what relates to them in works of imitation. Indeed it is for the most
+part in our skill in manners, and in the observances of time and place,
+and of decency in general, which is only to be learned in those schools
+to which Horace recommends us, that what is called taste, by way of
+distinction, consists: and which is in reality no other than a more
+refined judgment. On the whole, it appears to me, that what is called
+taste, in its most general acceptation, is not a simple idea, but is
+partly made up of a perception of the primary pleasures of sense, of the
+secondary pleasures of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the
+reasoning faculty, concerning the various relations of these, and
+concerning the human passions, manners, and actions. All this is
+requisite to form taste, and the groundwork of all these is the same in
+the human mind; for as the senses are the great originals of all our
+ideas, and consequently of all our pleasures, if they are not uncertain
+and arbitrary, the whole groundwork of taste is common to all, and
+therefore there is a sufficient foundation for a conclusive reasoning on
+these matters.
+
+Whilst we consider taste merely according to its nature and species, we
+shall find its principles entirely uniform; but the degree in which
+these principles prevail, in the several individuals of mankind, is
+altogether as different as the principles themselves are similar. For
+sensibility and judgment, which are the qualities that compose what we
+commonly call a _taste_, vary exceedingly in various people. From a
+defect in the former of these qualities arises a want of taste; a
+weakness in the latter constitutes a wrong or a bad one. There are some
+men formed with feelings so blunt, with tempers so cold and phlegmatic,
+that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of
+their lives. Upon such persons the most striking objects make but a
+faint and obscure impression. There are others so continually in the
+agitation of gross and merely sensual pleasures, or so occupied in the
+low drudgery of avarice, or so heated in the chase of honors and
+distinction, that their minds, which had been used continually to the
+storms of these violent and tempestuous passions, can hardly be put in
+motion by the delicate and refined play of the imagination. These men,
+though from a different cause, become as stupid and insensible as the
+former; but whenever either of these happen to be struck with any
+natural elegance or greatness, or with these qualities in any work of
+art, they are moved upon the same principle.
+
+The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment. And this may arise
+from a natural weakness of understanding (in whatever the strength of
+that faculty may consist), or, which is much more commonly the case, it
+may arise from a want of a proper and well-directed exercise, which
+alone can make it strong and ready. Besides, that ignorance,
+inattention, prejudice, rashness, levity, obstinacy, in short, all those
+passions, and all those vices, which pervert the judgment in other
+matters, prejudice it no less in this its more refined and elegant
+province. These causes produce different opinions upon everything which
+is an object of the understanding, without inducing us to suppose that
+there are no settled principles of reason. And indeed, on the whole, one
+may observe, that there is rather less difference upon matters of taste
+among mankind, than upon most of those which depend upon the naked
+reason; and that men are far better agreed on the excellence of a
+description in Virgil, than on the truth or falsehood of a theory of
+Aristotle.
+
+A rectitude of judgment in the arts, which may be called a good taste,
+does in a great measure depend upon sensibility; because if the mind has
+no bent to the pleasures of the imagination, it will never apply itself
+sufficiently to works of that species to acquire a competent knowledge
+in them. But though a degree of sensibility is requisite to form a good
+judgment, yet a good judgment does not necessarily arise from a quick
+sensibility of pleasure; it frequently happens that a very poor judge,
+merely by force of a greater complexional sensibility, is more affected
+by a very poor piece, than the best judge by the most perfect; for as
+everything now, extraordinary, grand, or passionate, is well calculated
+to affect such a person, and that the faults do not affect him, his
+pleasure is more pure and unmixed; and as it is merely a pleasure of the
+imagination, it is much higher than any which is derived from a
+rectitude of the judgment; the judgment is for the greater part employed
+in throwing stumbling-blocks in the way of the imagination, in
+dissipating the scenes of its enchantment, and in tying us down to the
+disagreeable yoke of our reason: for almost the only pleasure that men
+have in judging better than others, consists in a sort of conscious
+pride and superiority, which arises from thinking rightly; but then this
+is an indirect pleasure, a pleasure which does not immediately result
+from the object which is under contemplation. In the morning of our
+days, when the senses are unworn and tender, when the whole man is awake
+in every part, and the gloss of novelty fresh upon all the objects that
+surround us, how lively at that time are our sensations, but how false
+and inaccurate the judgments we form of things! I despair of ever
+receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most excellent
+performances of genius, which I felt at that age from pieces which my
+present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible. Every trivial
+cause of pleasure is apt to affect the man of too sanguine a complexion:
+his appetite is too keen to suffer his taste to be delicate; and he is
+in all respects what Ovid says of himself in love,
+
+    Molle meum levibus cor est violabile telis,
+    Et semper causa est, cur ego semper amem.
+
+One of this character can never be a refined judge; never what the
+comic poet calls _elegans formarum spectator_. The excellence and force
+of a composition must always he imperfectly estimated from its effect on
+the minds of any, except we know the temper and character of those
+minds. The most powerful effects of poetry and music have been
+displayed, and perhaps are still displayed, where these arts are but in
+a very low and imperfect state. The rude hearer is affected by the
+principles which operate in these arts even in their rudest condition;
+and he is not skilful enough to perceive the defects. But as the arts
+advance towards their perfection, the science of criticism advances with
+equal pace, and the pleasure of judges is frequently interrupted by the
+faults which we discovered in the most finished compositions.
+
+Before I leave this subject, I cannot help taking notice of an opinion
+which many persons entertain, as if the taste were a separate faculty of
+the mind, and distinct from the judgment and imagination; a species of
+instinct, by which we are struck naturally, and at the first glance,
+without any previous reasoning, with the excellences or the defects of a
+composition. So far as the imagination, and the passions are concerned,
+I believe it true, that the reason is little consulted; but where
+disposition, where decorum, where congruity are concerned, in short,
+wherever the best taste differs from the worst, I am convinced that the
+understanding operates, and nothing else; and its operation is in
+reality far from being always sudden, or, when it is sudden, it is often
+far from being right. Men of the best taste by consideration come
+frequently to change these early and precipitate judgments, which the
+mind, from its aversion to neutrality and doubt, loves to form on the
+spot. It is known that the taste (whatever it is) is improved exactly
+as we improve our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady
+attention to our object, and by frequent exercise. They who have not
+taken these methods, if their taste decides quickly, it is always
+uncertainly; and their quickness is owing to their presumption and
+rashness, and not to any sudden irradiation, that in a moment dispels
+all darkness from their minds. But they who have cultivated that species
+of knowledge which makes the object of taste, by degrees and habitually
+attain not only a soundness but a readiness of judgment, as men do by
+the same methods on all other occasions. At first they are obliged to
+spell, but at last they read with ease and with celerity; but this
+celerity of its operation is no proof that the taste is a distinct
+faculty. Nobody, I believe, has attended the course of a discussion
+which turned upon matters within the sphere of mere naked reason, but
+must have observed the extreme readiness with which the whole process of
+the argument is carried on, the grounds discovered, the objections
+raised and answered, and the conclusions drawn from premises, with a
+quickness altogether as great as the taste can be supposed to work with;
+and yet where nothing but plain reason either is or can be suspected to
+operate. To multiply principles for every different appearance is
+useless, and unphilosophical too in a high degree.
+
+This matter might be pursued much farther; but it is not the extent of
+the subject which must prescribe our bounds, for what subject does not
+branch out to infinity? It is the nature of our particular scheme, and
+the single point of view in which we consider it, which ought to put a
+stop to our researches.
+
+
+
+
+A
+
+PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY
+
+INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF
+
+THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+NOVELTY.
+
+The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind
+is curiosity. By curiosity I mean whatever desire we have for, or
+whatever pleasure we take in, novelty. We see children perpetually
+running from place to place, to hunt out something new: they catch with
+great eagerness, and with very little choice, at whatever comes before
+them; their attention is engaged by everything, because everything has,
+in that stage of life, the charm of novelty to recommend it. But as
+those things, which engage us merely by their novelty, cannot attach us
+for any length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all the
+affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which
+is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an
+appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and anxiety. Curiosity, from its
+nature, is a very active principle; it quickly runs over the greatest
+part of its objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to
+be met with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and they
+return with less and less of any agreeable effect. In short, the
+occurrences of life, by the time we come to know it a little, would be
+incapable of affecting the mind with any other sensations than those of
+loathing and weariness, if many things were not adapted to affect the
+mind by means of other powers besides novelty in them, and of other
+passions besides curiosity in ourselves. These powers and passions shall
+be considered in their place. But, whatever these powers are, or upon
+what principle soever they affect the mind, it is absolutely necessary
+that they should not be exerted in those things which a daily and vulgar
+use have brought into a stale unaffecting familiarity. Some degree of
+novelty must be one of the materials in every instrument which works
+upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself more or less with all our
+passions.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+PAIN AND PLEASURE.
+
+It seems, then, necessary towards moving the passions of people advanced
+in life to any considerable degree, that the objects designed for that
+purpose, besides their being in some measure new, should be capable of
+exciting pain or pleasure from other causes. Pain and pleasure are
+simple ideas, incapable of definition. People are not liable to be
+mistaken in their feelings, but they are very frequently wrong in the
+names they give them, and in their reasonings about them. Many are of
+opinion, that pain arises necessarily from the removal of some pleasure;
+as they think pleasure does from the ceasing or diminution of some pain.
+For my part, I am rather inclined to imagine, that pain and pleasure,
+in their most simple and natural manner of affecting, are each of a
+positive nature, and by no means necessarily dependent on each other for
+their existence. The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most
+part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of
+indifference. When I am carried from this state into a state of actual
+pleasure, it does not appear necessary that I should pass through the
+medium of any sort of pain. If in such a state of indifference, or ease,
+or tranquillity, or call it what you please, you were to be suddenly
+entertained with a concert of music; or suppose some object of a fine
+shape, and bright, lively colors, to be presented before you; or imagine
+your smell is gratified with the fragrance of a rose; or if, without any
+previous thirst, you were to drink of some pleasant kind of wine, or to
+taste of some sweetmeat without being hungry; in all the several senses,
+of hearing, smelling, and tasting, you undoubtedly find a pleasure; yet,
+if I inquire into the state of your mind previous to these
+gratifications, you will hardly tell me that they found you in any kind
+of pain; or, having satisfied these several senses with their several
+pleasures, will you say that any pain has succeeded, though the pleasure
+is absolutely over? Suppose, on the other hand, a man in the same state
+of indifference to receive a violent blow, or to drink of some bitter
+potion, or to have his ears wounded with some harsh and grating sound;
+here is no removal of pleasure; and yet here is felt, his every sense
+which is affected, a pain very distinguishable. It may be said, perhaps,
+that the pain in these cases had its rise from the removal of the
+pleasure which the man enjoyed before, though that pleasure was of so
+low a degree as to be perceived only by the removal. But this seems to
+me a subtilty that is not discoverable in nature. For if, previous to
+the pain, I do not feel any actual pleasure, I have no reason to judge
+that any such thing exists; since pleasure is only pleasure as it is
+felt. The same may be said of pain, and with equal reason. I can never
+persuade myself that pleasure and pain are mere relations, which can
+only exist as they are contrasted; but I think I can discern clearly
+that there are positive pains and pleasures, which do not at all depend
+upon each other. Nothing is more certain to my own feelings than this.
+There is nothing which I can distinguish in my mind with more clearness
+than the three states, of indifference, of pleasure, and of pain. Every
+one of these I can perceive without any sort of idea of its relation to
+anything else. Caius is afflicted with a fit of the colic; this man is
+actually in pain; stretch Caius upon the rack, he will feel a much
+greater pain: but does this pain of the rack arise from the removal of
+any pleasure? or is the fit of the colic a pleasure or a pain just as we
+are pleased to consider it?
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE REMOVAL OF PAIN AND POSITIVE PLEASURE.
+
+We shall carry this proposition yet a step further. We shall venture to
+propose, that pain and pleasure are not only not necessarily dependent
+for their existence on their mutual diminution or removal, but that, in
+reality, the diminution or ceasing of pleasure does not operate like
+positive pain; and that the removal or diminution of pain, in its
+effect, has very little resemblance to positive pleasure.[10] The former
+of these propositions will, I believe, be much more readily allowed than
+the latter; because it is very evident that pleasure, when it has run
+its career, sets us down very nearly where it found us. Pleasure of
+every kind quickly satisfies; and, when it is over, we relapse into
+indifference, or, rather, we fall into a soft tranquillity which is
+tinged with the agreeable color of the former sensation. I own it is not
+at first view so apparent that the removal of a great pain does not
+resemble positive pleasure: but let us recollect in what state we have
+found our minds upon escaping some imminent danger, or on being released
+from the severity of some cruel pain. We have on such occasions found,
+if I am not much mistaken, the temper of our minds in a tenor very
+remote from that which attends the presence of positive pleasure; we
+have found them in a state of much sobriety, impressed with a sense of
+awe, in a sort of tranquillity shadowed with horror. The fashion of the
+countenance and the gesture of the body on such occasions is so
+correspondent to this state of mind, that any person, a stranger to the
+cause of the appearance, would rather judge us under some consternation,
+than in the enjoyment of anything like positive pleasure.
+
+    [Greek:
+    Hôs d' hotan andr' atê pykinê labê, host' eni patrê,
+    Phôta katakteinas, allôn exiketo dêmon,
+    Andros es aphneiou, thambos d' echei eisoroôntas.]
+
+                                        Iliad, [Greek: Ô]. 480.
+
+   "As when a wretch, who, conscious of his crime,
+    Pursued for murder from his native clime,
+    Just gains some frontier, breathless, pale, amazed;
+    All gaze, all wonder!"
+
+This striking appearance of the man whom Homer supposes to have just
+escaped an imminent danger, the sort of mixed passion of terror and
+surprise, with which he affects the spectators, paints very strongly the
+manner in which we find ourselves affected upon occasions any way
+similar. For when we have suffered from any violent emotion, the mind
+naturally continues in something like the same condition, after the
+cause which first produced it has ceased to operate. The tossing of the
+sea remains after the storm; and when this remain of horror has entirely
+subsided, all the passion which the accident raised subsides along with
+it; and the mind returns to its usual state of indifference. In short,
+pleasure (I mean anything either in the inward sensation, or in the
+outward appearance, like pleasure from a positive cause) has never, I
+imagine, its origin from the removal of pain or danger.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+OF DELIGHT AND PLEASURE, AS OPPOSED TO EACH OTHER.
+
+But shall we therefore say, that the removal of pain or its diminution
+is always simply painful? or affirm that the cessation or the lessening
+of pleasure is always attended itself with a pleasure? By no means. What
+I advance is no more than this; first, that there are pleasures and
+pains of a positive and independent nature; and, secondly, that the
+feeling which results from the ceasing or diminution of pain does not
+bear a sufficient resemblance to positive pleasure, to have it
+considered as of the same nature, or to entitle it to be known by the
+same name; and thirdly, that upon the same principle the removal or
+qualification of pleasure has no resemblance to positive pain. It is
+certain that the former feeling (the removal or moderation of pain) has
+something in it far from distressing, or disagreeable in its nature.
+This feeling, in many cases so agreeable, but in all so different from
+positive pleasure, has no name which I know; but that hinders not its
+being a very real one, and very different from all others. It is most
+certain, that every species of satisfaction or pleasure, how different
+soever in its manner of affecting, is of a positive nature in the mind
+of him who feels it. The affection is undoubtedly positive; but the
+cause may be, as in this case it certainly is, a sort of _privation_.
+And it is very reasonable that we should distinguish by some term two
+things so distinct in nature, as a pleasure that is such simply, and
+without any relation, from that pleasure which cannot exist without a
+relation, and that, too, a relation to pain. Very extraordinary it would
+be, if these affections, so distinguishable in their causes, so
+different in their effects, should be confounded with each other,
+because vulgar use has ranged them under the same general title.
+Whenever I have occasion to speak of this species of relative pleasure,
+I call it _delight_; and I shall take the best care I can to use that
+word in no other sense. I am satisfied the word is not commonly used in
+this appropriated signification; but I thought it better to take up a
+word already known, and to limit its signification, than to introduce a
+new one, which would not perhaps incorporate so well with the language.
+I should never have presumed the least alteration in our words, if the
+nature of the language, framed for the purposes of business rather than
+those of philosophy, and the nature of my subject, that leads me out of
+the common track of discourse, did not in a manner necessitate me to it.
+I shall make use of this liberty with all possible caution. As I make
+use of the word _delight_ to express the sensation which accompanies the
+removal of pain or danger, so, when I speak of positive pleasure, I
+shall for the most part call it simply _pleasure_.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+JOY AND GRIEF.
+
+It must be observed, that the cessation of pleasure affects the mind
+three ways. If it simply ceases after having continued a proper time,
+the effect is _indifference_; if it be abruptly broken off, there ensues
+an uneasy sense called _disappointment_; if the object be so totally
+lost that there is no chance of enjoying it again, a passion arises in
+the mind which is called _grief_. Now there is none of these, not even
+grief, which is the most violent, that I think has any resemblance to
+positive pain. The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon
+him; he indulges it, he loves it: but this never happens in the case of
+actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable
+time. That grief should be willingly endured, though far from a simply
+pleasing sensation, is not so difficult to be understood. It is the
+nature of grief to keep its object perpetually in its eye, to present it
+in its most pleasurable views, to repeat all the circumstances that
+attend it, even to the last minuteness; to go back to every particular
+enjoyment, to dwell upon each, and to find a thousand new perfections in
+all, that were not sufficiently understood before; in grief, the
+_pleasure_ is still uppermost; and the affliction we suffer has no
+resemblance to absolute pain, which is always odious, and which we
+endeavor to shake off as soon as possible. The Odyssey of Homer, which
+abounds with so many natural and affecting images, has none more
+striking than those which Menelaus raises of the calamitous fate of his
+friends, and his own manner of feeling it. He owns, indeed, that he
+often gives himself some intermission from such melancholy reflections;
+but he observes, too, that, melancholy as they are, they give him
+pleasure.
+
+    [Greek:
+    All empês pantas men odyromenos kai acheuôn,
+    Pollakis en megaroisi kathêmenos hêmeteroisin,
+    Allote men te goô phrena terpomai, allote d' aute
+    Pauomai; aipsêros de koros kryeroio gooio]
+
+                                        Hom. Od. [Greek: D]. 100
+
+   "Still in short intervals of _pleasing woe_,
+    Regardful of the friendly dues I owe,
+    I to the glorious dead, forever dear,
+    _Indulge_ the tribute of a _grateful_ tear."
+
+On the other hand, when we recover our health, when we escape an
+imminent danger, is it with joy that we are affected? The sense on these
+occasions is far from that smooth and voluptuous satisfaction which the
+assured prospect of pleasure bestows. The delight which arises from the
+modifications of pain confesses the stock from whence it sprung, in its
+solid, strong, and severe nature.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SELF-PRESERVATION.
+
+Most of the ideas which are capable of making a powerful impression on
+the mind, whether simply of pain or pleasure, or of the modifications of
+those, may be reduced very nearly to these two heads,
+_self-preservation_, and _society_; to the ends of one or the other of
+which all our passions are calculated to answer. The passions which
+concern self-preservation, turn mostly on _pain_ or _danger_. The ideas
+of _pain_, _sickness_, and _death_, fill the mind with strong emotions
+of horror; but _life_ and _health_, though they put us in a capacity of
+being affected with pleasure, make no such impression by the simple
+enjoyment. The passions therefore which are conversant about the
+preservation of the individual turn chiefly on _pain_ and _danger_, and
+they are the most powerful of all the passions.
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+OF THE SUBLIME.
+
+Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger,
+that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about
+terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a
+source of the _sublime_; that is, it is productive of the strongest
+emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I say the strongest
+emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful
+than those which enter on the part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the
+torments which we may be made to suffer are much greater in their
+effect on the body and mind, than any pleasures which the most learned
+voluptuary could suggest, or than the liveliest imagination, and the
+most sound and exquisitely sensible body, could enjoy. Nay, I am in
+great doubt whether any man could be found, who would earn a life of the
+most perfect satisfaction at the price of ending it in the torments,
+which justice inflicted in a few hours on the late unfortunate regicide
+in France. But as pain is stronger in its operation than pleasure, so
+death is in general a much more affecting idea than pain; because there
+are very few pains, however exquisite, which are not preferred to death:
+nay, what generally makes pain itself, if I may say so, more painful,
+is, that it is considered as an emissary of this king of terrors. When
+danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any
+delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with
+certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we
+every day experience. The cause of this I shall endeavor to investigate
+hereafter.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SOCIETY.
+
+The other head under which I class our passions, is that of _society_,
+which may be divided into two sorts. 1. The society of the _sexes_,
+which answers the purpose of propagation; and next, that more _general
+society_, which we have with men and with other animals, and which we
+may in some sort be said to have even with the inanimate world. The
+passions belonging to the preservation of the individual turn wholly on
+pain and danger: those which belong to _generation_ have their origin in
+gratifications and _pleasures_; the pleasure most directly belonging to
+this purpose is of a lively character, rapturous and violent, and
+confessedly the highest pleasure of sense; yet the absence of this so
+great an enjoyment scarce amounts to an uneasiness; and, except at
+particular times, I do not think it affects at all. When men describe in
+what manner they are affected by pain and danger, they do not dwell on
+the pleasure of health and the comfort of security, and then lament the
+_loss_ of these satisfactions: the whole turns upon the actual pains and
+horrors which they endure. But if you listen to the complaints of a
+forsaken lover, you observe that he insists largely on the pleasures
+which he enjoyed, or hoped to enjoy, and on the perfection of the object
+of his desires; it is the _loss_ which is always uppermost in his mind.
+The violent effects produced by love, which has sometimes been even
+wrought up to madness, is no objection to the rule which we seek to
+establish. When men have suffered their imaginations to be long affected
+with any idea, it so wholly engrosses them as to shut out by degrees
+almost every other, and to break down every partition of the mind which
+would confine it. Any idea is sufficient for the purpose, as is evident
+from the infinite variety of causes, which give rise to madness: but
+this at most can only prove, that the passion of love is capable of
+producing very extraordinary effects, not that its extraordinary
+emotions have any connection with positive pain.
+
+
+SECTION IX.
+
+THE FINAL CAUSE OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PASSIONS BELONGING TO
+SELF-PRESERVATION AND THOSE WHICH REGARD THE SOCIETY OF THE SEXES.
+
+The final cause of the difference in character between the passions
+which regard self-preservation, and those which are directed to the
+multiplication of the species, will illustrate the foregoing remarks yet
+further; and it is, I imagine, worthy of observation even upon its own
+account. As the performance of our duties of every kind depends upon
+life, and the performing them with vigor and efficacy depends upon
+health, we are very strongly affected with whatever threatens the
+destruction of either: but as we were not made to acquiesce in life and
+health, the simple enjoyment of them is not attended with any real
+pleasure, lest, satisfied with that, we should give ourselves over to
+indolence and inaction. On the other hand, the generation of mankind is
+a great purpose, and it is requisite that men should be animated to the
+pursuit of it by some great incentive. It is therefore attended with a
+very high pleasure; but as it is by no means designed to be our constant
+business, it is not fit that the absence of this pleasure should be
+attended with any considerable pain. The difference between men and
+brutes, in this point, seems to be remarkable. Men are at all times
+pretty equally disposed to the pleasures of love, because they are to be
+guided by reason in the time and manner of indulging them. Had any great
+pain arisen from the want of this satisfaction, reason, I am afraid,
+would find great difficulties in the performance of its office. But
+brutes that obey laws, in the execution of which their own reason has
+but little share, have their stated seasons; at such times it is not
+improbable that the sensation from the want is very troublesome, because
+the end must be then answered, or be missed in many, perhaps forever; as
+the inclination returns only with its season.
+
+
+SECTION X.
+
+OF BEAUTY.
+
+The passion which belongs to generation, merely as such, is lust only.
+This is evident in brutes, whose passions are more unmixed, and which
+pursue their purposes more directly than ours. The only distinction they
+observe with regard to their mates, is that of sex. It is true, that
+they stick severally to their own species in preference to all others.
+But this preference, I imagine, does not arise from any sense of beauty
+which they find in their species, as Mr. Addison supposes, but from a
+law of some other kind, to which they are subject; and this we may
+fairly conclude, from their apparent want of choice amongst those
+objects to which the barriers of their species have confined them. But
+man, who is a creature adapted to a greater variety and intricacy of
+relation, connects with the general passion the idea of some _social_
+qualities, which direct and heighten the appetite which he has in common
+with all other animals; and as he is not designed like them to live at
+large, it is fit that he should have some thing to create a preference,
+and fix his choice; and this in general should be some sensible quality;
+as no other can so quickly, so powerfully, or so surely produce its
+effect. The object therefore of this mixed passion, which we call love,
+is the _beauty_ of the _sex_. Men are carried to the sex in general, as
+it is the sex, and by the common law of nature; but they are attached to
+particulars by personal _beauty_. I call beauty a social quality; for
+where women and men, and not only they, but when other animals give us a
+sense of joy and pleasure in beholding them (and there are many that do
+so), they inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and affection towards
+their persons; we like to have them near us, and we enter willingly into
+a kind of relation with them, unless we should have strong reasons to
+the contrary. But to what end, in many cases, this was designed, I am
+unable to discover; for I see no greater reason for a connection between
+man and several animals who are attired in so engaging a manner, than
+between him and some others who entirely want this attraction, or
+possess it in a far weaker degree. But it is probable that Providence
+did not make even this distinction, but with a view to some great end;
+though we cannot perceive distinctly what it is, as his wisdom is not
+our wisdom, nor our ways his ways.
+
+
+SECTION XI.
+
+SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE.
+
+The second branch of the social passions is that which administers to
+_society in general_. With regard to this, I observe, that society,
+merely as society, without any particular heightenings, gives us no
+positive pleasure in the enjoyment; but absolute and entire _solitude_,
+that is, the total and perpetual exclusion from all society, is as
+great a positive pain as can almost be conceived. Therefore in the
+balance between the pleasure of general _society_, and the pain of
+absolute solitude, _pain_ is the predominant idea. But the pleasure of
+any particular social enjoyment outweighs very considerably the
+uneasiness caused by the want of that particular enjoyment; so that the
+strongest sensations relative to the habitudes of _particular society_
+are sensations of pleasure. Good company, lively conversations, and the
+endearments of friendship, fill the mind with great pleasure; a
+temporary solitude, on the other hand, is itself agreeable. This may
+perhaps prove that we are creatures designed for contemplation as well
+as action; since solitude as well as society has its pleasures; as from
+the former observation we may discern, that an entire life of solitude
+contradicts the purposes of our being, since death itself is scarcely an
+idea of more terror.
+
+
+SECTION XII.
+
+SYMPATHY, IMITATION, AND AMBITION.
+
+Under this denomination of society, the passions are of a complicated
+kind, and branch out into a variety of forms, agreeably to that variety
+of ends they are to serve in the great chain of society. The three
+principal links in this chain are _sympathy_, _imitation,_ and
+_ambition_.
+
+
+SECTION XIII.
+
+SYMPATHY.
+
+It is by the first of these passions that we enter into the concerns of
+others; that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to
+be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer.
+For sympathy must be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we
+are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as
+he is affected: so that this passion may either partake of the nature of
+those which regard self-preservation, and turning upon pain may be a
+source of the sublime; or it may turn upon ideas of pleasure; and then
+whatever has been said of the social affections, whether they regard
+society in general, or only some particular modes of it, may be
+applicable here. It is by this principle chiefly that poetry, painting,
+and other affecting arts, transfuse their passions from one breast to
+another, and are often capable of grafting a delight on wretchedness,
+misery, and death itself. It is a common observation, that objects which
+in the reality would shock, are in tragical, and such like
+representations, the source of a very high species of pleasure. This,
+taken as a fact, has been the cause of much reasoning. The satisfaction
+has been commonly attributed, first, to the comfort we receive in
+considering that so melancholy a story is no more than a fiction; and,
+next, to the contemplation of our own freedom from the evils which we
+see represented. I am afraid it is a practice much too common in
+inquiries of this nature, to attribute the cause of feelings which
+merely arise from the mechanical structure of our bodies, or from the
+natural frame and constitution of our minds, to certain conclusions of
+the reasoning faculty on the objects presented to us; for I should
+imagine, that the influence of reason in producing our passions is
+nothing near so extensive as it is commonly believed.
+
+
+SECTION XIV.
+
+THE EFFECTS OF SYMPATHY IN THE DISTRESSES OF OTHERS.
+
+To examine this point concerning the effect of tragedy in a proper
+manner, we must previously consider how we are affected by the feelings
+of our fellow creatures in circumstances of real distress. I am
+convinced we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the
+real misfortunes and pains of others; for let the affection be what it
+will in appearance, if it does not make us shun such objects, if on the
+contrary it induces us to approach them, if it makes us dwell upon them,
+in this case I conceive we must have a delight or pleasure of some
+species or other in contemplating objects of this kind. Do we not read
+the authentic histories of scenes of this nature with as much pleasure
+as romances or poems, where the incidents are fictitious? The prosperity
+of no empire, nor the grandeur of no king, can so agreeably affect in
+the reading, as the ruin of the state of Macedon, and the distress of
+its unhappy prince. Such a catastrophe touches us in history as much as
+the destruction of Troy does in fable. Our delight, in cases of this
+kind, is very greatly heightened, if the sufferer be some excellent
+person who sinks under an unworthy fortune. Scipio and Cato are both
+virtuous characters; but we are more deeply affected by the violent
+death of the one, and the ruin of the great cause he adhered to, than
+with the deserved triumphs and uninterrupted prosperity of the other:
+for terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does not
+press too closely; and pity is a passion accompanied with pleasure,
+because it arises from love and social affection. Whenever we are formed
+by nature to any active purpose, the passion which animates us to it is
+attended with delight, or a pleasure of some kind, let the
+subject-matter be what it will; and as our Creator has designed that we
+should be united by the bond of sympathy, he has strengthened that bond
+by a proportionable delight; and there most where our sympathy is most
+wanted,--in the distresses of others. If this passion was simply
+painful, we would shun with the greatest care all persons and places
+that could excite such a passion; as some, who are so far gone in
+indolence as not to endure any strong impression, actually do. But the
+case is widely different with the greater part of mankind; there is no
+spectacle we so eagerly pursue, as that of some uncommon and grievous
+calamity; so that whether the misfortune is before our eyes, or whether
+they are turned back to it in history, it always touches with delight.
+This is not an unmixed delight, but blended with no small uneasiness.
+The delight we have in such things hinders us from shunning scenes of
+misery; and the pain we feel prompts us to relieve ourselves in
+relieving those who suffer; and all this antecedent to any reasoning, by
+an instinct that works us to its own purposes without our concurrence.
+
+
+SECTION XV.
+
+OF THE EFFECTS OF TRAGEDY.
+
+It is thus in real calamities. In imitated distresses the only
+difference is the pleasure resulting from the effects of imitation; for
+it is never so perfect, but we can perceive it is imitation, and on that
+principle are somewhat pleased with it. And indeed in some cases we
+derive as much or more pleasure from that source than from the thing
+itself. But then I imagine we shall be much mistaken if we attribute any
+considerable part of our satisfaction in tragedy to the consideration
+that tragedy is a deceit, and its representations no realities. The
+nearer it approaches the reality, and the further it removes us from all
+idea of fiction, the more perfect is its power. But be its power of what
+kind it will, it never approaches to what it represents. Choose a day on
+which to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have;
+appoint the most favorite actors; spare no cost upon the scenes and
+decorations; unite the greatest efforts of poetry, painting, and music;
+and when you have collected your audience, just at the moment when their
+minds are erect with expectation, let it be reported that a state
+criminal of high rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoining
+square; in a moment the emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the
+comparative weakness of the imitative arts, and proclaim the triumph of
+the real sympathy. I believe that this notion of our having a simple
+pain in the reality, yet a delight in the representation, arises from
+hence, that we do not sufficiently distinguish what we would by no means
+choose to do, from what we should be eager enough to see if it was once
+done. We delight in seeing things, which so far from doing, our
+heartiest wishes would be to see redressed. This noble capital, the
+pride of England and of Europe, I believe no man is so strangely wicked
+as to desire to see destroyed by a conflagration or an earthquake,
+though he should be removed himself to the greatest distance from the
+danger. But suppose such a fatal accident to have happened, what numbers
+from all parts would crowd to behold the ruins, and amongst them many
+who would have been content never to have seen London in its glory! Nor
+is it, either in real or fictitious distresses, our immunity from them
+which produces our delight; in my own mind I can discover nothing like
+it. I apprehend that this mistake is owing to a sort of sophism, by
+which we are frequently imposed upon; it arises from our not
+distinguishing between what is indeed a necessary condition to our doing
+or suffering anything in general, and what is the _cause_ of some
+particular act. If a man kills me with a sword, it is a necessary
+condition to this that we should have been both of us alive before the
+fact; and yet it would be absurd to say that our being both living
+creatures was the cause of his crime and of my death. So it is certain
+that it is absolutely necessary my life should be out of any imminent
+hazard, before I can take a delight in the sufferings of others, real or
+imaginary, or indeed in anything else from any cause whatsoever. But
+then it is a sophism to argue from thence that this immunity is the
+cause of my delight either on these or on any occasions. No one can
+distinguish such a cause of satisfaction in his own mind, I believe;
+nay, when we do not suffer any very acute pain, nor are exposed to any
+imminent danger of our lives, we can feel for others, whilst we suffer
+ourselves; and often then most when we are softened by affliction; we
+see with pity even distresses which we would accept in the place of our
+own.
+
+
+SECTION XVI.
+
+IMITATION.
+
+The second passion belonging to society is imitation, or, if you will, a
+desire of imitating, and consequently a pleasure in it. This passion
+arises from much the same cause with sympathy. For as sympathy makes us
+take a concern in whatever men feel, so this affection prompts us to
+copy whatever they do; and consequently we have a pleasure in imitating,
+and in whatever belongs to imitation merely as it is such, without any
+intervention of the reasoning faculty, but solely from our natural
+constitution, which Providence has framed in such a manner as to find
+either pleasure or delight, according to the nature of the object, in
+whatever regards the purposes of our being. It is by imitation far more
+than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we
+acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our
+manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links of
+society; it is a species of mutual compliance, which all men yield to
+each other, without constraint to themselves, and which is extremely
+flattering to all. Herein it is that painting and many other agreeable
+arts have laid one of the principal foundations of their power. And
+since, by its influence on our manners and our passions, it is of such
+great consequence, I shall here venture to lay down a rule, which may
+inform us with a good degree of certainty when we are to attribute the
+power of the arts to imitation, or to our pleasure in the skill of the
+imitator merely, and when to sympathy, or some other cause in
+conjunction, with it. When the object represented in poetry or painting
+is such as we could have no desire of seeing in the reality, then I may
+be sure that its power in poetry or painting is owing to the power of
+imitation, and to no cause operating in the thing itself. So it is with
+most of the pieces which the painters call still-life. In these a
+cottage, a dung-hill, the meanest and most ordinary utensils of the
+kitchen, are capable of giving us pleasure. But when the object of the
+painting or poem is such as we should run to see if real, let it affect
+us with what odd sort of sense it will, we may rely upon it that the
+power of the poem or picture is more owing to the nature of the thing
+itself than to the mere effect of imitation, or to a consideration of
+the skill of the imitator, however excellent. Aristotle has spoken so
+much and so solidly upon the force of imitation in his Poetics, that it
+makes any further discourse upon this subject the less necessary.
+
+
+SECTION XVII.
+
+AMBITION.
+
+Although imitation is one of the great instruments used by Providence in
+bringing our nature towards its perfection, yet if men gave themselves
+up to imitation entirely, and each followed the other, and so on in an
+eternal circle, it is easy to see that there never could be any
+improvement amongst them. Men must remain as brutes do, the same at the
+end that they are at this day, and that they were in the beginning of
+the world. To prevent this, God has planted in man a sense of ambition,
+and a satisfaction arising from the contemplation of his excelling his
+fellows in something deemed valuable amongst them. It is this passion
+that drives men to all the ways we see in use of signalizing themselves,
+and that tends to make whatever excites in a man the idea of this
+distinction so very pleasant. It has been so strong as to make very
+miserable men take comfort, that they were supreme in misery; and
+certain it is that, where we cannot distinguish ourselves by something
+excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some singular infirmities,
+follies, or defects of one kind or other. It is on this principle that
+flattery is so prevalent; for flattery is no more than what raises in a
+man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not. Now, whatever,
+either on good or upon bad grounds, tends to raise a man in his own
+opinion, produces a sort of swelling and triumph, that is extremely
+grateful to the human mind; and this swelling is never more perceived,
+nor operates with more force, than when without danger we are conversant
+with terrible objects; the mind always claiming to itself some part of
+the dignity and importance of the things which it contemplates. Hence
+proceeds what Longinus has observed of that glorying and sense of inward
+greatness, that always fills the reader of such passages in poets and
+orators as are sublime: it is what every man must have felt in himself
+upon such occasions.
+
+
+SECTION XVIII.
+
+THE RECAPITULATION.
+
+To draw the whole of what has been said into a few distinct points:--The
+passions which belong to self-preservation turn on pain and danger; they
+are simply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are
+delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being
+actually in such circumstances; this delight I have not called pleasure,
+because it turns on pain, and because it is different enough from any
+idea of positive pleasure. Whatever excites this delight, I call
+_sublime_. The passions belonging to self-preservation are the strongest
+of all the passions.
+
+The second head to which the passions are referred with relation to
+their final cause, is society. There are two sorts of societies. The
+first is, the society of sex. The passion belonging to this is called
+love, and it contains a mixture of lust; its object is the beauty of
+women. The other is the great society with man and all other animals.
+The passion subservient to this is called likewise love, but it has no
+mixture of lust, and its object is beauty; which is a name I shall apply
+to all such qualities in things as induce in us a sense of affection and
+tenderness, or some other passion the most nearly resembling these. The
+passion of love has its rise in positive pleasure; it is, like all
+things which grow out of pleasure, capable of being mixed with a mode of
+uneasiness, that is, when an idea of its object is excited in the mind
+with an idea at the same time of having irretrievably lost it. This
+mixed sense of pleasure I have not called _pain_, because it turns upon
+actual pleasure, and because it is, both in its cause and in most of its
+effects, of a nature altogether different.
+
+Next to the general passion we have for society, to a choice in which we
+are directed by the pleasure we have in the object, the particular
+passion under this head called sympathy has the greatest extent. The
+nature of this passion is, to put us in the place of another in whatever
+circumstance he is in, and to affect us in a like manner; so that this
+passion may, as the occasion requires, turn either on pain or pleasure;
+but with the modifications mentioned in some cases in Sect. 11. As to
+imitation and preference, nothing more need be said.
+
+
+SECTION XIX.
+
+THE CONCLUSION.
+
+I believed that an attempt to range and methodize some of our most
+leading passions would be a good preparative to such an inquiry as we
+are going to make in the ensuing discourse. The passions I have
+mentioned are almost the only ones which it can be necessary to consider
+in our present design; though the variety of the passions is great, and
+worthy, in every branch of that variety, of an attentive investigation.
+The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces
+we everywhere find of His wisdom who made it. If a discourse on the use
+of the parts of the body may be considered as a hymn to the Creator; the
+use of the passions, which are the organs of the mind, cannot be barren
+of praise to him, nor unproductive to ourselves of that noble and
+uncommon union of science and admiration, which a contemplation of the
+works of infinite wisdom alone can afford to a rational mind; whilst,
+referring to him whatever we find of right or good or fair in ourselves,
+discovering his strength and wisdom even in our own weakness and
+imperfection, honoring them where we discover them clearly, and adoring
+their profundity where we are lost in our search, we may be inquisitive
+without impertinence, and elevated without pride; we may be admitted, if
+I may dare to say so, into the counsels of the Almighty by a
+consideration of his works. The elevation of the mind ought to be the
+principal end of all our studies; which, if they do not in some measure
+effect, they are of very little service to us. But, besides this great
+purpose, a consideration of the rationale of our passions seems to me
+very necessary for all who would affect them upon solid and sure
+principles. It is not enough to know them in general; to affect them
+after a delicate manner, or to judge properly of any work designed to
+affect them, we should know the exact boundaries of their several
+jurisdictions; we should pursue them through all their variety of
+operations, and pierce into the inmost, and what might appear
+inaccessible parts of our nature,
+
+     Quod latet arcanâ non enarrabile fibrâ.
+
+Without all this it is possible for a man, after a confused manner
+sometimes to satisfy his own mind of the truth of his work; but he can
+never have a certain determinate rule to go by, nor can he ever make his
+propositions sufficiently clear to others. Poets, and orators, and
+painters, and those who cultivate other branches of the liberal arts,
+have, without this critical knowledge, succeeded well in their several
+provinces, and will succeed: as among artificers there are many machines
+made and even invented without any exact knowledge of the principles
+they are governed by. It is, I own, not uncommon to be wrong in theory,
+and right in practice: and we are happy that it is so. Men often act
+right from their feelings, who afterwards reason but ill on them from
+principle; but as it is impossible to avoid an attempt at such
+reasoning, and equally impossible to prevent its having some influence
+on our practice, surely it is worth taking some pains to have it just,
+and founded on the basis of sure experience. We might expect that the
+artists themselves would have been our surest guides; but the artists
+have been too much occupied in the practice: the philosophers have done
+little; and what they have done, was mostly with a view to their own
+schemes and systems; and as for those called critics, they have
+generally sought the rule of the arts in the wrong place; they sought it
+among poems, pictures, engravings, statues, and buildings. But art can
+never give the rules that make an art. This is, I believe, the reason
+why artists in general, and poets, principally, have been confined in so
+narrow a circle: they have been rather imitators of one another than of
+nature; and this with so faithful an uniformity, and to so remote an
+antiquity, that it is hard to say who gave the first model. Critics
+follow them, and therefore can do little as guides. I can judge but
+poorly of anything, whilst I measure it by no other standard than
+itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's power; and an
+easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the meanest things in
+nature, will give the truest lights, where the greatest sagacity and
+industry, that slights such observation, must leave us in the dark, or,
+what is worse, amuse and mislead us by false lights. In an inquiry it is
+almost everything to be once in a right road. I am satisfied I have done
+but little by these observations considered in themselves; and I never
+should have taken the pains to digest them, much less should I have ever
+ventured to publish them, if I was not convinced that nothing tends more
+to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stagnate. These waters
+must be troubled, before they can exert their virtues. A man who works
+beyond the surface of things, though he may be wrong himself, yet he
+clears the way for others, and may chance to make even his errors
+subservient to the cause of truth. In the following parts I shall
+inquire what things they are that cause in us the affections of the
+sublime and beautiful, as in this I have considered the affections
+themselves. I only desire one favor,--that no part of this discourse may
+be judged of by itself, and independently of the rest; for I am sensible
+I have not disposed my materials to abide the test of a captious
+controversy, but of a sober and even forgiving examination; that they
+are not armed at all points for battle, but dressed to visit those who
+are willing to give a peaceful entrance to truth.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] Mr. Locke [Essay on Human Understanding, l. ii. c. 20, sect. 16,]
+thinks that the removal or lessening of a pain is considered and
+operates as a pleasure, and the loss or diminishing of pleasure as a
+pain. It is this opinion which we consider here.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+OF THE PASSION CAUSED BY THE SUBLIME.
+
+The passion caused by the great and sublime in _nature_, when those
+causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment: and astonishment is
+that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some
+degree of horror.[11] In this case the mind is so entirely filled with
+its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence
+reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of
+the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our
+reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as
+I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the
+inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+TERROR.
+
+No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and
+reasoning as _fear_.[12] For fear being an apprehension of pain or
+death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever
+therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too, whether
+this cause of terror be endued with greatness of dimensions or not; for
+it is impossible to look on anything as trifling, or contemptible, that
+may be dangerous. There are many animals, who, though far from being
+large, are yet capable of raising ideas of the sublime, because they are
+considered as objects of terror. As serpents and poisonous animals of
+almost all kinds. And to things of great dimensions, if we annex an
+adventitious idea of terror, they become without comparison greater. A
+level plain of a vast extent on land, is certainly no mean idea; the
+prospect of such a plain may be as extensive as a prospect of the ocean;
+but can it ever fill the mind with anything so great as the ocean
+itself? This is owing to several causes; but it is owing to none more
+than this, that the ocean is an object of no small terror. Indeed terror
+is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling
+principle of the sublime. Several languages bear a strong testimony to
+the affinity of these ideas. They frequently use the same word to
+signify indifferently the modes of astonishment or admiration and those
+of terror. [Greek: Thambos] is in Greek either fear or wonder; [Greek:
+deinos] is terrible or respectable; [Greek: ahideo], to reverence or to
+fear. _Vereor_ in Latin is what [Greek: ahideo] is in Greek. The Romans
+used the verb _stupeo_, a term which strongly marks the state of an
+astonished mind, to express the effect either of simple fear, or of
+astonishment; the word _attonitus_ (thunderstruck) is equally expressive
+of the alliance of these ideas; and do not the French _étonnement_, and
+the English _astonishment_ and _amazement_, point out as clearly the
+kindred emotions which attend fear and wonder? They who have a more
+general knowledge of languages, could produce, I make no doubt, many
+other and equally striking examples.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+OBSCURITY.
+
+To make anything very terrible, obscurity[13] seems in general to be
+necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can
+accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes.
+Every one will be sensible of this, who considers how greatly night adds
+to our dread, in all cases of danger, and how much the notions of ghosts
+and goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give
+credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts of beings. Those
+despotic governments which are founded on the passions of men, and
+principally upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as much as may be
+from the public eye. The policy has been the same in many cases of
+religion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark. Even in the
+barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in
+a dark part of the hut, which is consecrated to his worship. For this
+purpose too the Druids performed all their ceremonies in the bosom of
+the darkest woods, and in the shade of the oldest and most spreading
+oaks. No person seems better to have understood the secret of
+heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression,
+in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity than
+Milton. His description of death in the second book is admirably
+studied; it is astonishing with what a gloomy pomp, with what a
+significant and expressive uncertainty of strokes and coloring, he has
+finished the portrait of the king of terrors:
+
+                        "The other shape,
+    If shape it might be called that shape had none
+    Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;
+    Or substance might be called that shadow seemed;
+    For each seemed either; black he stood as night;
+    Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell;
+    And shook a deadly dart. What seemed his head
+    The likeness of a kingly crown had on."
+
+In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and
+sublime to the last degree.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CLEARNESS AND OBSCURITY WITH REGARD TO THE
+PASSIONS.
+
+It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it
+_affecting_ to the imagination. If I make a drawing of a palace, or a
+temple, or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of those objects;
+but then (allowing for the effect of imitation which is something) my
+picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or landscape,
+would have affected in the reality. On the other hand, the most lively
+and spirited verbal description I can give raises a very obscure and
+imperfect _idea_ of such objects; but then it is in my power to raise a
+stronger _emotion_ by the description than I could do by the best
+painting. This experience constantly evinces. The proper manner of
+conveying the _affections_ of the mind from one to another is by words;
+there is a great insufficiency in all other methods of communication;
+and so far is a clearness of imagery from being absolutely necessary to
+an influence upon the passions, that they may be considerably operated
+upon, without presenting any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to
+that purpose; of which we have a sufficient proof in the acknowledged
+and powerful effects of instrumental music. In reality, a great
+clearness helps but little towards affecting the passions, as it is in
+some sort an enemy to all enthusiasms whatsoever.
+
+
+SECTION [IV].
+
+THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.
+
+There are two verses in Horace's Art of Poetry that seem to contradict
+this opinion; for which reason I shall take a little more pains in
+clearing it up. The verses are,
+
+    Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,
+    Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus.
+
+
+On this the Abbé du Bos founds a criticism, wherein he gives painting
+the preference to poetry in the article of moving the passions;
+principally on account of the greater _clearness_ of the ideas it
+represents. I believe this excellent judge was led into this mistake (if
+it be a mistake) by his system; to which he found it more conformable
+than I imagine it will be found to experience. I know several who admire
+and love painting, and yet who regard the objects of their admiration in
+that art with coolness enough in comparison of that warmth with which
+they are animated by affecting pieces of poetry or rhetoric. Among the
+common sort of people, I never could perceive that painting had much
+influence on their passions. It is true that the best sorts of painting,
+as well as the best sorts of poetry, are not much understood in that
+sphere. But it is most certain that their passions are very strongly
+roused by a fanatic preacher, or by the ballads of Chevy Chase, or the
+Children in the Wood, and by other little popular poems and tales that
+are current in that rank of life. I do not know of any paintings, bad or
+good, that produce the same effect. So that poetry, with all its
+obscurity, has a more general, as well as a more powerful dominion over
+the passions, than the other art. And I think there are reasons in
+nature, why the obscure idea, when properly conveyed, should be more
+affecting than the clear. It is our ignorance of things that causes all
+our admiration, and chiefly excites our passions. Knowledge and
+acquaintance make the most striking causes affect but little. It is thus
+with the vulgar; and all men are as the vulgar in what they do not
+understand. The ideas of eternity, and infinity, are among the most
+affecting we have: and yet perhaps there is nothing of which we really
+understand so little, as of infinity and eternity. We do not anywhere
+meet a more sublime description than this justly-celebrated one of
+Milton, wherein he gives the portrait of Satan with a dignity so
+suitable to the subject:
+
+              "He above the rest
+    In shape and gesture proudly eminent
+    Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost
+    All her original brightness, nor appeared
+    Less than archangel ruined, and th' excess
+    Of glory obscured: as when the sun new risen
+    Looks through the horizontal misty air
+    Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon
+    In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
+    On half the nations; and with fear of change
+    Perplexes monarchs."
+
+Here is a very noble picture; and in what does this poetical picture
+consist? In images of a tower, an archangel, the sun rising through
+mists, or in an eclipse, the ruin of monarchs and the revolutions of
+kingdoms. The mind is hurried out of itself, by a crowd of great and
+confused images; which affect because they are crowded and confused. For
+separate them, and you lose much of the greatness; and join them, and
+you infallibly lose the clearness. The images raised by poetry are
+always of this obscure kind; though in general the effects of poetry are
+by no means to be attributed to the images it raises; which point we
+shall examine more at large hereafter.[14] But painting, when we have
+allowed for the pleasure of imitation, can only affect simply by the
+images it presents; and even in painting, a judicious obscurity in some
+things contributes to the effect of the picture; because the images in
+painting are exactly similar to those in nature; and in nature, dark,
+confused, uncertain images have a greater power on the fancy to form the
+grander passions, than those have which are more clear and determinate.
+But where and when this observation may be applied to practice, and how
+far it shall be extended, will be better deduced from the nature of the
+subject, and from the occasion, than from any rules that can be given.
+
+I am sensible that this idea has met with opposition, and is likely
+still to be rejected by several. But let it be considered that hardly
+anything can strike the mind with its greatness, which does not make
+some sort of approach towards infinity; which nothing can do whilst we
+are able to perceive its bounds; but to see an object distinctly, and to
+perceive its bounds, is one and the same thing. A clear idea is
+therefore another name for a little idea. There is a passage in the book
+of Job amazingly sublime, and this sublimity is principally due to the
+terrible uncertainty of the thing described: _In thoughts from the
+visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, fear came upon
+me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit
+passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still_,
+but I could not discern the form thereof; _an image was before mine
+eyes; there was silence; and I heard a voice,--Shall mortal man be more
+just than God?_ We are first prepared with the utmost solemnity for the
+vision; we are first terrified, before we are let even into the obscure
+cause of our emotion: but when this grand cause of terror makes its
+appearance, what is it? Is it not wrapt up in the shades of its own
+incomprehensible darkness, more awful, more striking, more terrible,
+than the liveliest description, than the clearest painting, could
+possibly represent it? When painters have attempted to give us clear
+representations of these very fanciful and terrible ideas, they have, I
+think, almost always failed; insomuch that I have been at a loss, in all
+the pictures I have seen of hell, to determine whether the painter did
+not intend something ludicrous. Several painters have handled a subject
+of this kind, with a view of assembling as many horrid phantoms as their
+imagination could suggest; but all the designs I have chanced to meet of
+the temptations of St. Anthony were rather a sort of odd, wild
+grotesques, than any thing capable of producing a serious passion. In
+all these subjects poetry is very happy. Its apparitions, its chimeras,
+its harpies, its allegorical figures, are grand and affecting; and
+though Virgil's Fame and Homer's Discord are obscure, they are
+magnificent figures. These figures in painting would be clear enough,
+but I fear they might become ridiculous.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+POWER.
+
+Besides those things which _directly_ suggest the idea of danger, and
+those which produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause, I know of
+nothing sublime, which is not some modification of power. And this
+branch rises, as naturally as the other two branches, from terror, the
+common stock of everything that is sublime. The idea of power, at first
+view, seems of the class of those indifferent ones, which may equally
+belong to pain or to pleasure. But in reality, the affection arising
+from the idea of vast power is extremely remote from that neutral
+character. For first, we must remember[15] that the idea of pain, in its
+highest degree, is much stronger than the highest degree of pleasure;
+and that it preserves the same superiority through all the subordinate
+gradations. From hence it is, that where the chances for equal degrees
+of suffering or enjoyment are in any sort equal, the idea of the
+suffering must always be prevalent. And indeed the ideas of pain, and,
+above all, of death, are so very affecting, that whilst we remain in the
+presence of whatever is supposed to have the power of inflicting either,
+it is impossible to be perfectly free from terror. Again, we know by
+experience, that, for the enjoyment of pleasure, no great efforts of
+power are at all necessary; nay, we know that such efforts would go a
+great way towards destroying our satisfaction: for pleasure must be
+stolen, and not forced upon us; pleasure follows the will; and therefore
+we are generally affected with it by many things of a force greatly
+inferior to our own. But pain is always inflicted by a power in some way
+superior, because we never submit to pain willingly. So that strength,
+violence, pain, and terror, are ideas that rush in upon the mind
+together. Look at a man, or any other animal of prodigious strength, and
+what is your idea before reflection? Is it that this strength will be
+subservient to you, to your ease, to your pleasure, to your interest in
+any sense? No; the emotion you feel is, lest this enormous strength
+should be employed to the purposes of[16] rapine and destruction. That
+power derives all its sublimity from the terror with which it is
+generally accompanied, will appear evidently from its effect in the very
+few cases, in which it may be possible to strip a considerable degree of
+strength of its ability to hurt. When you do this, you spoil it of
+everything sublime, and it immediately becomes contemptible. An ox is a
+creature of vast strength; but he is an innocent creature, extremely
+serviceable, and not at all dangerous; for which reason the idea of an
+ox is by no means grand. A bull is strong too; but his strength is of
+another kind; often very destructive, seldom (at least amongst us) of
+any use in our business; the idea of a bull is therefore great, and it
+has frequently a place in sublime descriptions, and elevating
+comparisons. Let us look at another strong animal, in the two distinct
+lights in which we may consider him. The horse in the light of an
+useful beast, fit for the plough, the road, the draft; in every social
+useful light, the horse has nothing sublime; but is it thus that we are
+affected with him, _whose neck is clothed with thunder, the glory of
+whose nostrils is terrible, who swalloweth the ground with fierceness
+and rage, neither believeth that it is the sound of the trumpet_? In
+this description, the useful character of the horse entirely disappears,
+and the terrible and sublime blaze out together. We have continually
+about us animals of a strength that is considerable, but not pernicious.
+Amongst these we never look for the sublime; it comes upon us in the
+gloomy forest, and in the howling wilderness, in the form of the lion,
+the tiger, the panther, or rhinoceros. Whenever strength is only useful,
+and employed for our benefit or our pleasure, then it is never sublime;
+for nothing can act agreeably to us, that does not act in conformity to
+our will; but to act agreeably to our will, it must be subject to us,
+and therefore can never be the cause of a grand and commanding
+conception. The description of the wild ass, in Job, is worked up into
+no small sublimity, merely by insisting on his freedom, and his setting
+mankind at defiance; otherwise the description of such an animal could
+have had nothing noble in it. _Who hath loosed_ (says he) _the bands of
+the wild ass? whose house I have made the wilderness and the barren land
+his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth
+he the voice of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture._
+The magnificent description of the unicorn and of leviathan, in the same
+book, is full of the same heightening circumstances: _Will the unicorn
+be willing to serve thee? canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in
+the furrow? wilt thou trust him because his strength is great?--Canst
+thou draw out leviathan with an hook? will he make a covenant with thee?
+wilt thou take him for a servant forever? shall not one be cast down
+even at the sight of him?_ In short, wheresoever we find strength, and
+in what light soever we look upon power, we shall all along observe the
+sublime the concomitant of terror, and contempt the attendant on a
+strength that is subservient and innoxious. The race of dogs, in many of
+their kinds, have generally a competent degree of strength and
+swiftness; and they exert these and other valuable qualities which they
+possess, greatly to our convenience and pleasure. Dogs are indeed the
+most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute
+creation; but love approaches much nearer to contempt than is commonly
+imagined; and accordingly, though we caress dogs, we borrow from them an
+appellation of the most despicable kind, when we employ terms of
+reproach; and this appellation is the common mark of the last vileness
+and contempt in every language. Wolves have not more strength than
+several species of dogs; but, on account of their unmanageable
+fierceness, the idea of a wolf is not despicable; it is not excluded
+from grand descriptions and similitudes. Thus we are affected by
+strength, which is _natural_ power. The power which arises from
+institution in kings and commanders, has the same connection with
+terror. Sovereigns are frequently addressed with the title of _dread
+majesty_. And it may be observed, that young persons, little acquainted
+with the world, and who have not been used to approach men in power, are
+commonly struck with an awe which takes away the free use of their
+faculties. _When I prepared my seat in the street,_ (says Job,) _the
+young men saw me, and hid themselves._ Indeed so natural is this
+timidity with regard to power, and so strongly does it inhere in our
+constitution, that very few are able to conquer it, but by mixing much
+in the business of the great world, or by using no small violence to
+their natural dispositions. I know some people are of opinion, that no
+awe, no degree of terror, accompanies the idea of power; and have
+hazarded to affirm, that we can contemplate the idea of God himself
+without any such emotion. I purposely avoided, when I first considered
+this subject, to introduce the idea of that great and tremendous Being,
+as an example in an argument so light as this; though it frequently
+occurred to me, not as an objection to, but as a strong confirmation of,
+my notions in this matter. I hope, in what I am going to say, I shall
+avoid presumption, where it is almost impossible for any mortal to speak
+with strict propriety. I say then, that whilst we consider the Godhead
+merely as he is an object of the understanding, which forms a complex
+idea of power, wisdom, justice, goodness, all stretched to a degree far
+exceeding the bounds of our comprehension, whilst we consider the
+divinity in this refined and abstracted light, the imagination and
+passions are little or nothing affected. But because we are bound, by
+the condition of our nature, to ascend to these pure and intellectual
+ideas, through the medium of sensible images, and to judge of these
+divine qualities by their evident acts and exertions, it becomes
+extremely hard to disentangle our idea of the cause from the effect by
+which we are led to know it. Thus, when we contemplate the Deity, his
+attributes and their operation, coming united on the mind, form a sort
+of sensible image, and as such are capable of affecting the
+imagination. Now, though in a just idea of the Deity, perhaps none of
+his attributes are predominant, yet, to our imagination, his power is by
+far the most striking. Some reflection, some comparing, is necessary to
+satisfy us of his wisdom, his justice, and his goodness. To be struck
+with his power, it is only necessary that we should open our eyes. But
+whilst we contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were, of
+almighty power, and invested upon every side with omnipresence, we
+shrink into the minuteness of our own nature, and are, in a manner,
+annihilated before him. And though a consideration of his other
+attributes may relieve, in some measure, our apprehensions; yet no
+conviction of the justice with which it is exercised, nor the mercy with
+which it is tempered, can wholly remove the terror that naturally arises
+from a force which nothing can withstand. If we rejoice, we rejoice with
+trembling; and even whilst we are receiving benefits, we cannot but
+shudder at a power which can confer benefits of such mighty importance.
+When the prophet David contemplated the wonders of wisdom and power
+which are displayed in the economy of man, he seems to be struck with a
+sort of divine horror, and cries out, _fearfully and wonderfully am I
+made_! An heathen poet has a sentiment of a similar nature; Horace looks
+upon it as the last effort of philosophical fortitude, to behold without
+terror and amazement, this immense and glorious fabric of the universe:
+
+    Hunc solem, et stellas, et decedentia certis
+    Tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nulla
+    Imbuti spectent.
+
+Lucretius is a poet not to be suspected of giving way to superstitious
+terrors; yet, when he supposes the whole mechanism of nature laid open
+by the master of his philosophy, his transport on this magnificent view,
+which he has represented in the colors of such bold and lively poetry,
+is overcast with a shade of secret dread and horror:
+
+    His ibi me rebus quædam divina voluptas
+    Percipit, atque horror; quod sic natura, tua vi
+    Tam manifesta patens, ex omni parte retecta est.
+
+But the Scripture alone can supply ideas answerable to the majesty of
+this subject. In the Scripture, wherever God is represented as appearing
+or speaking, everything terrible in nature is called up to heighten the
+awe and solemnity of the Divine presence. The Psalms, and the
+prophetical books, are crowded with instances of this kind. _The earth
+shook,_ (says the Psalmist,) _the heavens also dropped at the presence
+of the Lord._ And what is remarkable, the painting preserves the same
+character, not only when he is supposed descending to take vengeance
+upon the wicked, but even when he exerts the like plenitude of power in
+acts of beneficence to mankind. _Tremble, thou earth! at the presence of
+the Lord; at the presence of the God of Jacob; which turned the rock
+into standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters!_ It were
+endless to enumerate all the passages, both in the sacred and profane
+writers, which establish the general sentiment of mankind, concerning
+the inseparable union of a sacred and reverential awe, with our ideas of
+the divinity. Hence the common maxim, _Primus in orbe deos fecit timor_.
+This maxim may be, as I believe it is, false with regard to the origin
+of religion. The maker of the maxim saw how inseparable these ideas
+were, without considering that the notion of some great power must be
+always precedent to our dread of it. But this dread must necessarily
+follow the idea of such a power, when it is once excited in the mind. It
+is on this principle that true religion has, and must have, so large a
+mixture of salutary fear; and that false religions have generally
+nothing else but fear to support them. Before the Christian religion
+had, as it were, humanized the idea of the Divinity, and brought it
+somewhat nearer to us, there was very little said of the love of God.
+The followers of Plato have something of it, and only something; the
+other writers of pagan antiquity, whether poets or philosophers, nothing
+at all. And they who consider with what infinite attention, by what a
+disregard of every perishable object, through what long habits of piety
+and contemplation it is that any man is able to attain an entire love
+and devotion to the Deity, will easily perceive that it is not the
+first, the most natural, and the most striking effect which proceeds
+from that idea. Thus we have traced power through its several gradations
+unto the highest of all, where our imagination is finally lost; and we
+find terror, quite throughout the progress, its inseparable companion,
+and growing along with it, as far as we can possibly trace them. Now, as
+power is undoubtedly a capital source of the sublime, this will point
+out evidently from whence its energy is derived, and to what class of
+ideas we ought to unite it.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+PRIVATION.
+
+ALL _general_ privations are great, because they are all terrible;
+_vacuity_, _darkness_, _solitude_, and _silence_. With what a fire of
+imagination, yet with what severity of judgment, has Virgil amassed all
+these circumstances, where he knows that all the images of a tremendous
+dignity ought to be united at the mouth of hell! Where, before he
+unlocks the secrets of the great deep, he seems to be seized with a
+religious horror, and to retire astonished at the boldness of his own
+design:
+
+    Dii, quibus imperium est animarum, umbræque _silentes_!
+    Et Chaos, et Phlegethon! loca _nocte silentia_ late!
+    Sit mihi fas audita loqui! sit numine vestro
+    Pandere res alta terra et _caligine_ mersas!
+    Ibant _obscuri_, _sola_ sub _nocte_, per _umbram_,
+    Perque domos Ditis _vacuas_, et _inania_ regus.
+
+   "Ye subterraneous gods! whose awful sway
+    The gliding ghosts, and _silent_ shades obey:
+    O Chaos hoar! and Phlegethon profound!
+    Whose solemn empire stretches wide around;
+    Give me, ye great, tremendous powers, to tell
+    Of scenes and wonders in the depth of hell;
+    Give me your mighty secrets to display
+    From those _black_ realms of darkness to the day."
+
+                                        PITT.
+
+   "_Obscure_ they went through dreary _shades_ that led
+    Along the _waste_ dominions of the _dead_."
+
+                                        DRYDEN.
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+VASTNESS.
+
+Greatness[17] of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime. This is
+too evident, and the observation too common, to need any illustration;
+it is not so common to consider in what ways greatness of dimension,
+vastness of extent or quantity, has the most striking effect. For,
+certainly, there are ways and modes wherein the same quantity of
+extension shall produce greater effects than it is found to do in
+others. Extension is either in length, height, or depth. Of these the
+length strikes least; a hundred yards of even ground will never work
+such an effect as a tower a hundred yards high, or a rock or mountain of
+that altitude. I am apt to imagine, likewise, that height is less grand
+than depth; and that we are more struck at looking down from a
+precipice, than looking up at an object of equal height; but of that I
+am not very positive. A perpendicular has more force in forming the
+sublime, than an inclined plane, and the effects of a rugged and broken
+surface seem stronger than where it is smooth and polished. It would
+carry us out of our way to enter in this place into the cause of these
+appearances, but certain it is they afford a large and fruitful field of
+speculation. However, it may not be amiss to add to these remarks upon
+magnitude, that as the great extreme of dimension is sublime, so the
+last extreme of littleness is in some measure sublime likewise; when we
+attend to the infinite divisibility of matter, when we pursue animal
+life into these excessively small, and yet organized beings, that
+escape the nicest inquisition of the sense; when we push our discoveries
+yet downward, and consider those creatures so many degrees yet smaller,
+and the still diminishing scale of existence, in tracing which the
+imagination is lost as well as the sense; we become amazed and
+confounded at the wonders of minuteness; nor can we distinguish in its
+effect this extreme of littleness from the vast itself. For division
+must be infinite as well as addition; because the idea of a perfect
+unity can no more be arrived at, than that of a complete whole, to which
+nothing may be added.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+INFINITY.
+
+Another source of the sublime is _infinity_; if it does not rather
+belong to the last. Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that
+sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect, and truest
+test of the sublime. There are scarce any things which can become the
+objects of our senses, that are really and in their own nature infinite.
+But the eye not being able to perceive the bounds of many things, they
+seem to be infinite, and they produce the same effects as if they were
+really so. We are deceived in the like manner, if the parts of some
+large object are so continued to any indefinite number, that the
+imagination meets no check which may hinder its extending them at
+pleasure.
+
+Whenever we repeat any idea frequently, the mind, by a sort of
+mechanism, repeats it long after the first cause has ceased to
+operate.[18] After whirling about, when we sit down, the objects about
+us still seem to whirl. After a long succession of noises, as the fall
+of waters, or the beating of forge-hammers, the hammers beat and the
+waters roar in the imagination long after the first sounds have ceased
+to affect it; and they die away at last by gradations which are scarcely
+perceptible. If you hold up a straight pole, with your eye to one end,
+it will seem extended to a length almost incredible.[19] Place a number
+of uniform and equi-distant marks on this pole, they will cause the same
+deception, and seem multiplied without end. The senses, strongly
+affected in some one manner, cannot quickly change their tenor, or adapt
+themselves to other things; but they continue in their old channel until
+the strength of the first mover decays. This is the reason of an
+appearance very frequent in madmen; that they remain whole days and
+nights, sometimes whole years, in the constant repetition of some
+remark, some complaint, or song; which having struck powerfully on their
+disordered imagination, in the beginning of their frenzy, every
+repetition reinforces it with new strength, and the hurry of their
+spirits, unrestrained by the curb of reason, continues it to the end of
+their lives.
+
+
+SECTION IX.
+
+SUCCESSION AND UNIFORMITY.
+
+Succession and _uniformity_ of parts are what constitute the artificial
+infinite. 1. _Succession_; which is requisite that the parts may be
+continued so long and in such a direction, as by their frequent impulses
+on the sense to impress the imagination with an idea of their progress
+beyond their actual limits. 2. _Uniformity_; because, if the figures of
+the parts should be changed, the imagination at every change finds a
+check; you are presented at every alteration with the termination of one
+idea, and the beginning of another; by which means it becomes impossible
+to continue that uninterrupted progression, which alone can stamp on
+bounded objects the character of infinity. It is in this kind of
+artificial infinity, I believe, we ought to look for the cause why a
+rotund has such a noble effect.[20] For in a rotund, whether it be a
+building or a plantation, you can nowhere fix a boundary; turn which way
+you will, the same object still seems to continue, and the imagination
+has no rest. But the parts must be uniform, as well as circularly
+disposed, to give this figure its full force; because any difference,
+whether it be in the disposition, or in the figure, or even in the color
+of the parts, is highly prejudicial to the idea of infinity, which every
+change must check and interrupt, at every alteration commencing a new
+series. On the same principles of succession and uniformity, the grand
+appearance of the ancient heathen temples, which were generally oblong
+forms, with a range of uniform pillars on every side, will be easily
+accounted for. From the same cause also may be derived the grand effect
+of the aisles in many of our own old cathedrals. The form of a cross
+used in some churches seems to me not so eligible as the parallelogram
+of the ancients; at least, I imagine it is not so proper for the
+outside. For, supposing the arms of the cross every way equal, if you
+stand in a direction parallel to any of the side walls, or colonnades,
+instead of a deception that makes the building more extended than it is,
+you are cut off from a considerable part (two thirds) of its _actual_
+length; and, to prevent all possibility of progression, the arms of the
+cross taking a new direction, make a right angle with the beam, and
+thereby wholly turn the imagination from the repetition of the former
+idea. Or suppose the spectator placed where he may take a direct view of
+such a building, what will be the consequence? the necessary consequence
+will be, that a good part of the basis of each angle formed by the
+intersection of the arms of the cross, must be inevitably lost; the
+whole must of course assume a broken, unconnected figure; the lights
+must be unequal, here strong, and there weak; without that noble
+gradation which the perspective always effects on parts disposed
+uninterruptedly in a right line. Some or all of these objections will
+lie against every figure of a cross, in whatever view you take it. I
+exemplified them in the Greek cross, in which these faults appear the
+most strongly; but they appear in some degree in all sorts of crosses.
+Indeed, there is nothing more prejudicial to the grandeur of buildings
+than to abound in angles; a fault obvious in many; and owing to an
+inordinate thirst for variety, which, whenever it prevails, is sure to
+leave very little true taste.
+
+
+SECTION X.
+
+MAGNITUDE IN BUILDING.
+
+To the sublime in building, greatness of dimension seems requisite; for
+on a few parts, and those small, the imagination cannot rise to any idea
+of infinity. No greatness in the manner can effectually compensate for
+the want of proper dimensions. There is no danger of drawing men into
+extravagant designs by this rule; it carries its own caution along with
+it. Because too great a length in buildings destroys the purpose of
+greatness, which it was intended to promote; the perspective will lessen
+it in height as it gains in length; and will bring it at last to a
+point; turning the whole figure into a sort of triangle, the poorest in
+its effect of almost any figure that can be presented to the eye. I have
+ever observed, that colonnades and avenues of trees of a moderate length
+were, without comparison, far grander than when they were suffered to
+run to immense distances. A true artist should put a generous deceit on
+the spectators, and effect the noblest designs by easy methods. Designs
+that are vast only by their dimensions are always the sign of a common
+and low imagination. No work of art can be great, but as it deceives; to
+be otherwise is the prerogative of nature only. A good eye will fix the
+medium betwixt an excessive length or height (for the same objection
+lies against both), and a short or broken quantity: and perhaps it might
+be ascertained to a tolerable degree of exactness, if it was my purpose
+to descend far into the particulars of any art.
+
+
+SECTION XI.
+
+INFINITY IN PLEASING OBJECTS.
+
+Infinity, though of another kind, causes much of our pleasure in
+agreeable, as well as of our delight in sublime images. The spring is
+the pleasantest of the seasons; and the young of most animals, though
+far from being completely fashioned, afford a more agreeable sensation
+than the full-grown; because the imagination is entertained with the
+promise of something more, and does not acquiesce in the present object
+of the sense. In unfinished sketches of drawing, I have often seen
+something which pleased me beyond the best finishing; and this I believe
+proceeds from the cause I have just now assigned.
+
+
+SECTION XII.
+
+DIFFICULTY.
+
+Another source of greatness is _difficulty_.[21] When any work seems to
+have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand.
+Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything
+admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set on end, and piled
+each on other, turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a
+work. Nay, the rudeness of the work increases this cause of grandeur, as
+it excludes the idea of art and contrivance; for dexterity produces
+another sort of effect, which is different enough from this.
+
+
+SECTION XIII.
+
+MAGNIFICENCE.
+
+Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime. A great profusion of
+things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is _magnificent_.
+The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view never
+fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars
+themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause.
+The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care
+is highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie
+in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions
+to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity. In
+works of art, this kind of grandeur which consists in multitude, is to
+be very cautiously admitted; because a profusion of excellent things is
+not to be attained, or with too much difficulty; and because in many
+cases this splendid confusion would destroy all use, which should be
+attended to in most of the works of art with the greatest care; besides,
+it is to be considered, that unless you can produce an appearance of
+infinity by your disorder, you will have disorder only without
+magnificence. There are, however, a sort of fireworks, and some other
+things, that in this way succeed well, and are truly grand. There are
+also many descriptions in the poets and orators, which owe their
+sublimity to a richness and profusion of images, in which the mind is so
+dazzled as to make it impossible to attend to that exact coherence and
+agreement of the allusions, which we should require on every other
+occasion. I do not now remember a more striking example of this, than
+the description which is given of the king's army in the play of Henry
+IV.:--
+
+              "All furnished, all in arms,
+    All plumed like ostriches that with the wind
+    Baited like eagles having lately bathed:
+    As full of spirit us the month of May,
+    And gorgeous as the sun in midsummer,
+    Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
+    I saw young Harry with his beaver on
+    Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury;
+    And vaulted with such ease into his seat,
+    As if an angel dropped down from the clouds
+    To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus."
+
+
+In that excellent book, so remarkable for the vivacity of its
+descriptions, as well as the solidity and penetration of its sentences,
+the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, there is a noble panegyric on the
+high-priest Simon the son of Onias; and it is a very fine example of the
+point before us:--
+
+    _How was he honored in the midst of the people, in his coming out of
+    the sanctuary! He was as the morning star in the midst of a cloud,
+    and as the moon at the full; as the sun shining upon the temple of
+    the Most High, and as the rainbow giving light in the bright clouds:
+    and as the flower of roses in the spring of the year, as lilies by
+    the rivers of waters, and as the frankincense-tree in summer; as
+    fire and incense in the censer, and as a vessel of gold set with
+    precious stones; as a fair olive-tree budding forth fruit, and as a
+    cypress which groweth up to the clouds. When he put on the robe of
+    honor, and was clothed with the perfection of glory, when he went up
+    to the holy altar, he made the garment of holiness honorable. He
+    himself stood by the hearth of the altar, compassed with his
+    brethren round about; as a young cedar in Libanus, and as
+    palm-trees compassed they him about. So were all the sons of Aaron
+    in their glory, and the oblations of the Lord in their hands, &c._
+
+
+SECTION XIV.
+
+LIGHT.
+
+Having considered extension, so far as it is capable of raising ideas of
+greatness; _color_ comes next under consideration. All colors depend on
+_light_. Light therefore ought previously to be examined; and with it
+its opposite, darkness. With regard to light, to make it a cause capable
+of producing the sublime, it must be attended with some circumstances,
+besides its bare faculty of showing other objects. Mere light is too
+common a thing to make a strong impression on the mind, and without a
+strong impression nothing can be sublime. But such a light as that of
+the sun, immediately exerted on the eye, as it overpowers the sense, is
+a very great idea. Light of an inferior strength to this, if it moves
+with great celerity, has the same power; for lightning is certainly
+productive of grandeur, which it owes chiefly to the extreme velocity of
+its motion. A quick transition from light to darkness, or from darkness
+to light, has yet a greater effect. But darkness is more productive of
+sublime ideas than light. Our great poet was convinced of this; and
+indeed so full was he of this idea, so entirely possessed with the power
+of a well-managed darkness, that in describing the appearance of the
+Deity, amidst that profusion of magnificent images, which the grandeur
+of his subject provokes him to pour out upon every side, he is far from
+forgetting the obscurity which surrounds the most incomprehensible of
+all beings, but
+
+          "With majesty of _darkness_ round
+    Circles his throne."
+
+And what is no less remarkable, our author had the secret of preserving
+this idea, even when he seemed to depart the farthest from it, when he
+describes the light and glory which flows from the Divine presence; a
+light which by its very excess is converted into a species of
+darkness:--
+
+   "_Dark_ with excessive _light_ thy skirts appear."
+
+Here is an idea not only poetical in a high degree, but strictly and
+philosophically just. Extreme light, by overcoming the organs of sight,
+obliterates all objects, so as in its effect exactly to resemble
+darkness. After looking for some time at the sun, two black spots, the
+impression which it leaves, seem to dance before our eyes. Thus are two
+ideas as opposite as can be imagined reconciled in the extremes of both;
+and both, in spite of their opposite nature, brought to concur in
+producing the sublime. And this is not the only instance wherein the
+opposite extremes operate equally in favor of the sublime, which in all
+things abhors mediocrity.
+
+
+SECTION XV.
+
+LIGHT IN BUILDING.
+
+As the management of light is a matter of importance in architecture, it
+is worth inquiring, how far this remark is applicable to building. I
+think, then, that all edifices calculated to produce an idea of the
+sublime, ought rather to be dark and gloomy, and this for two reasons;
+the first is, that darkness itself on other occasions is known by
+experience to have a greater effect on the passions than light. The
+second is, that to make an object very striking, we should make it as
+different as possible from the objects with which we have been
+immediately conversant; when therefore you enter a building, you cannot
+pass into a greater light than you had in the open air; to go into one
+some few degrees less luminous, can make only a trifling change; but to
+make the transition thoroughly striking, you ought to pass from the
+greatest light, to as much darkness as is consistent with the uses of
+architecture. At night the contrary rule will hold, but for the very
+same reason; and the more highly a room is then illuminated, the grander
+will the passion be.
+
+
+SECTION XVI.
+
+COLOR CONSIDERED AS PRODUCTIVE OF THE SUBLIME.
+
+Among colors, such as are soft or cheerful (except perhaps a strong red,
+which is cheerful) are unfit to produce grand images. An immense
+mountain covered with a shining green turf, is nothing, in this respect,
+to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is more grand than the blue; and
+night more sublime and solemn than day. Therefore in historical
+painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never have a happy effect: and in
+buildings, when the highest degree of the sublime is intended, the
+materials and ornaments ought neither to be white, nor green, nor
+yellow, nor blue, nor of a pale red, nor violet, nor spotted, but of
+sad and fuscous colors, as black, or brown, or deep purple, and the
+like. Much of gilding, mosaics, painting, or statues, contribute but
+little to the sublime. This rule need not be put in practice, except
+where an uniform degree of the most striking sublimity is to be
+produced, and that in every particular; for it ought to be observed,
+that this melancholy kind of greatness, though it be certainly the
+highest, ought not to be studied in all sorts of edifices, where yet
+grandeur must be studied; in such cases the sublimity must be drawn from
+the other sources; with a strict caution however against anything light
+and riant; as nothing so effectually deadens the whole taste of the
+sublime.
+
+
+SECTION XVII.
+
+SOUND AND LOUDNESS.
+
+The eye is not the only organ of sensation by which a sublime passion
+may be produced. Sounds have a great power in these as in most other
+passions. I do not mean words, because words do not affect simply by
+their sounds, but by means altogether different. Excessive loudness
+alone is sufficient to overpower the soul, to suspend its action, and to
+fill it with terror. The noise of vast cataracts, raging storms,
+thunder, or artillery, awakes a great and awful sensation in the mind,
+though we can observe no nicety or artifice in those sorts of music. The
+shouting of multitudes has a similar effect; and by the sole strength of
+the sound, so amazes and confounds the imagination, that, in this
+staggering and hurry of the mind, the best established tempers can
+scarcely forbear being borne down, and joining in the common cry, and
+common resolution of the crowd.
+
+
+SECTION XVIII.
+
+SUDDENNESS.
+
+A sudden beginning, or sudden cessation of sound of any considerable
+force, has the same power. The attention is roused by this; and the
+faculties driven forward, as it were, on their guard. Whatever, either
+in sights or sounds, makes the transition from one extreme to the other
+easy, causes no terror, and consequently can be no cause of greatness.
+In everything sudden and unexpected, we are apt to start; that is, we
+have a perception of danger, and our nature rouses us to guard against
+it. It may be observed that a single sound of some strength, though but
+of short duration, if repeated after intervals, has a grand effect. Few
+things are more awful than the striking of a great clock, when the
+silence of the night prevents the attention from being too much
+dissipated. The same may be said of a single stroke on a drum, repeated
+with pauses; and of the successive firing of cannon at a distance. All
+the effects mentioned in this section have causes very nearly alike.
+
+
+SECTION XIX.
+
+INTERMITTING.
+
+A low, tremulous, intermitting sound, though it seems, in some respects,
+opposite to that just mentioned, is productive of the sublime. It is
+worth while to examine this a little. The fact itself must be determined
+by every man's own experience and reflection. I have already observed,
+that night[22] increases our terror, more perhaps than anything else; it
+is our nature, when we do not know what may happen to us, to fear the
+worst that can happen; and hence it is that uncertainty is so terrible,
+that we often seek to be rid of it, at the hazard of a certain mischief.
+Now some low, confused, uncertain sounds, leave us in the same fearful
+anxiety concerning their causes, that no light, or an uncertain light,
+does concerning the objects that surround us.
+
+      Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna
+      Est iter in sylvis.
+
+          "A faint shadow of uncertain light,
+      Like as a lamp, whose life doth fade away;
+      Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night
+    Doth show to him who walks in fear and great affright."
+
+                                          SPENSER.
+
+But light now appearing, and now leaving us, and so off and on, is even
+more terrible than total darkness; and a sort of uncertain sounds are,
+when the necessary dispositions concur, more alarming than a total
+silence.
+
+
+SECTION XX.
+
+THE CRIES OF ANIMALS.
+
+Such sounds as imitate the natural inarticulate voices of men, or any
+animals in pain or danger, are capable of conveying great ideas; unless
+it be the well-known voice of some creature, on which we are used to
+look with contempt. The angry tones of wild beasts are equally capable
+of causing a great and awful sensation.
+
+    Hinc exaudiri gemitus, iræque leonum
+    Vincia recusantum, et sera sub nocte rudentum;
+    Setigerique sues, atque in præsepibus ursi
+    Sævire; et formæ magnorum ululare luporam.
+
+It might seem that those modulations of sound carry some connection with
+the nature of the things they represent, and are not merely arbitrary;
+because the natural cries of all animals, even of those animals with
+whom we have not been acquainted, never fail to make themselves
+sufficiently understood; this cannot be said of language. The
+modifications of sound, which may be productive of the sublime, are
+almost infinite. Those I have mentioned are only a few instances to show
+on what principles they are all built.
+
+
+SECTION XXI.
+
+SMELL AND TASTE.--BITTERS AND STENCHES.
+
+_Smells_ and _tastes_ have some share too in ideas of greatness; but it
+is a small one, weak in its nature, and confined in its operations. I
+shall only observe that no smells or tastes can produce a grand
+sensation, except excessive bitters, and intolerable stenches. It is
+true that these affections of the smell and taste, when they are in
+their full force, and lean directly upon the sensory, are simply
+painful, and accompanied with no sort of delight; but when they are
+moderated, as in a description or narrative, they become sources of the
+sublime, as genuine as any other, and upon the very same principle of a
+moderated pain. "A cup of bitterness"; "to drain the bitter cup of
+fortune"; "the bitter apples of Sodom"; these are all ideas suitable to
+a sublime description. Nor is this passage of Virgil without sublimity,
+where the stench of the vapor in Albunea conspires so happily with the
+sacred horror and gloominess of that prophetic forest:
+
+    At rex sollicitus monstris oracula Fauni
+    Fatidici genitoris adit, lucosque sub alta
+    Consulit Albunea, nemorum quæ maxima sacro
+    Fonte sonat; _sævamque exhalat opaca Mephitim_.
+
+In the sixth book, and in a very sublime description, the poisonous
+exhalation of Acheron is not forgotten, nor does it at all disagree with
+the other images amongst which it is introduced:
+
+    Spelunca _alta_ fuit, _vastoque immanis_ hiatu
+    Scrupea, tuta _lacu nigro_, nemorumque _tenebris_;
+    Quam super haud ullæ poterant impune volantes
+    Tendere iter pennis: _talis sese halitus atris_
+    _Faucibus effundens supera ad convexa ferebat_.
+
+I have added these examples, because some friends, for whose judgment I
+have great deference, were of opinion that if the sentiment stood
+nakedly by itself, it would be subject, at first view, to burlesque and
+ridicule; but this I imagine would principally arise from considering
+the bitterness and stench in company with mean and contemptible ideas,
+with which it must be owned they are often united; such an union
+degrades the sublime in all other instances as well as in those. But it
+is one of the tests by which the sublimity of an image is to be tried,
+not whether it becomes mean when associated with mean ideas; but
+whether, when united with images of an allowed grandeur, the whole
+composition is supported with dignity. Things which are terrible are
+always great; but when things possess disagreeable qualities, or such
+as have indeed some degree of danger, but of a danger easily overcome,
+they are merely _odious_; as toads and spiders.
+
+
+SECTION XXII.
+
+FEELING.--PAIN.
+
+Of _feeling_ little more can be said than that the idea of bodily pain,
+in all the modes and degrees of labor, pain, anguish, torment, is
+productive of the sublime; and nothing else in this sense can produce
+it. I need not give here any fresh instances, as those given in the
+former sections abundantly illustrate a remark that, in reality, wants
+only an attention to nature, to be made by everybody.
+
+Having thus run through the causes of the sublime with reference to all
+the senses, my first observation (Sect. 7) will be found very nearly
+true; that the sublime is an idea belonging to self-preservation; that
+it is, therefore, one of the most affecting we have; that its strongest
+emotion is an emotion of distress; and that no pleasure[23] from a
+positive cause belongs to it. Numberless examples, besides those
+mentioned, might be brought in support of these truths, and many perhaps
+useful consequences drawn from them--
+
+    Sed fugit interea, fugit irrevocabile tempus,
+    Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] Part I. sect. 3, 4, 7.
+
+[12] Part IV. sect. 3, 4, 5, 6.
+
+[13] Part IV. sect. 14, 15, 16.
+
+[14] Part V.
+
+[15] Part I. sect. 7.
+
+[16] Vide Part III. sect. 21.
+
+[17] Part IV. sect. 9.
+
+[18] Part IV. sect. 11.
+
+[19] Part IV. sect. 13.
+
+[20] Mr. Addison, in the Spectators concerning the pleasures of the
+imagination, thinks it is because in the rotund at one glance you see
+half the building. This I do not imagine to be the real cause.
+
+[21] Part IV. sect. 4, 5, 6.
+
+[22] Sect. 3.
+
+[23] Vide Part I. sect. 6.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+OF BEAUTY.
+
+It is my design to consider beauty as distinguished from the sublime;
+and, in the course of the inquiry, to examine how far it is consistent
+with it. But previous to this, we must take a short review of the
+opinions already entertained of this quality; which I think are hardly
+to be reduced to any fixed principles; because men are used to talk of
+beauty in a figurative manner, that is to say, in a manner extremely
+uncertain, and indeterminate. By beauty, I mean that quality, or those
+qualities in bodies, by which they cause love, or some passion similar
+to it. I confine this definition to the merely sensible qualities of
+things, for the sake of preserving the utmost simplicity in a subject,
+which must always distract us whenever we take in those various causes
+of sympathy which attach us to any persons or things from secondary
+considerations, and not from the direct force which they have merely on
+being viewed. I likewise distinguish love, (by which I mean that
+satisfaction which arises to the mind upon contemplating anything
+beautiful, of whatsoever nature it may be,) from desire or lust; which
+is an energy of the mind, that hurries us on to the possession of
+certain objects, that do not affect us as they are beautiful, but by
+means altogether different. We shall have a strong desire for a woman of
+no remarkable beauty; whilst the greatest beauty in men, or in other
+animals, though it causes love, yet excites nothing at all of desire.
+Which shows that beauty, and the passion caused by beauty, which I call
+love, is different from desire, though desire may sometimes operate
+along with it; but it is to this latter that we must attribute those
+violent and tempestuous passions, and the consequent emotions of the
+body which attend what is called love in some of its ordinary
+acceptations, and not to the effects of beauty merely as it is such.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN VEGETABLES.
+
+Beauty hath usually been said to consist in certain proportions of
+parts. On considering the matter, I have great reason to doubt, whether
+beauty be at all an idea belonging to proportion. Proportion relates
+almost wholly to convenience, as every idea of order seems to do; and it
+must therefore be considered as a creature of the understanding, rather
+than a primary cause acting on the senses and imagination. It is not by
+the force of long attention and inquiry that we find any object to be
+beautiful; beauty demands no assistance from our reasoning; even the
+will is unconcerned; the appearance of beauty as effectually causes some
+degree of love in us, as the application of ice or fire produces the
+ideas of heat or cold. To gain something like a satisfactory conclusion
+in this point, it were well to examine what proportion is; since several
+who make use of that word do not always seem to understand very clearly
+the force of the term, nor to have very distinct ideas concerning the
+thing itself. Proportion is the measure of relative quantity. Since all
+quantity is divisible, it is evident that every distinct part into which
+any quantity is divided must bear some relation to the other parts, or
+to the whole. These relations give an origin to the idea of proportion.
+They are discovered by mensuration, and they are the objects of
+mathematical inquiry. But whether any part of any determinate quantity
+be a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth, or a moiety of the whole; or
+whether it be of equal length with any other part, or double its length,
+or but one half, is a matter merely indifferent to the mind; it stands
+neuter in the question: and it is from this absolute indifference and
+tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations derive some of
+their most considerable advantages; because there is nothing to interest
+the imagination; because the judgment sits free and unbiassed to examine
+the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity, is alike to
+the understanding, because the same truths result to it from all; from
+greater, from lesser, from equality and inequality. But surely beauty is
+no idea belonging to mensuration; nor has it anything to do with
+calculation and geometry. If it had, we might then point out some
+certain measures which we could demonstrate to be beautiful, either as
+simply considered, or as related to others; and we could call in those
+natural objects, for whose beauty we have no voucher but the sense, to
+this happy standard, and confirm the voice of our passions by the
+determination of our reason. But since we have not this help, let us see
+whether proportion can in any sense be considered as the cause of
+beauty, as hath been so generally, and, by some, so confidently
+affirmed. If proportion be one of the constituents of beauty, it must
+derive that power either from some natural properties inherent in
+certain measures, which operate mechanically; from the operation of
+custom; or from the fitness which some measures have to answer some
+particular ends of conveniency. Our business therefore is to inquire,
+whether the parts of those objects, which are found beautiful in the
+vegetable or animal kingdoms, are constantly so formed according to such
+certain measures, as may serve to satisfy us that their beauty results
+from those measures, on the principle of a natural mechanical cause; or
+from custom; or, in fine, from their fitness for any determinate
+purposes. I intend to examine this point under each of these heads in
+their order. But before I proceed further, I hope it will not be thought
+amiss, if I lay down the rules which governed me in this inquiry, and
+which have misled me in it, if I have gone astray. 1. If two bodies
+produce the same or a similar effect on the mind, and on examination
+they are found to agree in some of their properties, and to differ in
+others; the common effect is to be attributed to the properties in which
+they agree, and not to those in which they differ. 2. Not to account for
+the effect of a natural object from the effect of an artificial object.
+3. Not to account for the effect of any natural object from a conclusion
+of our reason concerning its uses, if a natural cause may be assigned.
+4. Not to admit any determinate quantity, or any relation of quantity,
+as the cause of a certain effect, if the effect is produced by different
+or opposite measures and relations; or if these measures and relations
+may exist, and yet the effect may not be produced. These are the rules
+which I have chiefly followed, whilst I examined into the power of
+proportion considered as a natural cause; and these, if he thinks them
+just, I request the reader to carry with him throughout the following
+discussion; whilst we inquire, in the first place, in what things we
+find this quality of beauty; next, to see whether in these we can find
+any assignable proportions in such a manner as ought to convince us that
+our idea of beauty results from them. We shall consider this pleasing
+power as it appears in vegetables, in the inferior animals, and in man.
+Turning our eyes to the vegetable creation, we find nothing there so
+beautiful as flowers; but flowers are almost of every sort of shape, and
+of every sort of disposition; they are turned and fashioned into an
+infinite variety of forms; and from these forms botanists have given
+them their names, which are almost as various. What proportion do we
+discover between the stalks and the leaves of flowers, or between the
+leaves and the pistils? How does the slender stalk of the rose agree
+with the bulky head under which it bends? but the rose is a beautiful
+flower; and can we undertake to say that it does not owe a great deal of
+its beauty even to that disproportion; the rose is a large flower, yet
+it grows upon a small shrub; the flower of the apple is very small, and
+grows upon a large tree; yet the rose and the apple blossom are both
+beautiful, and the plants that bear them are most engagingly attired,
+notwithstanding this disproportion. What by general consent is allowed
+to be a more beautiful object than an orange-tree, nourishing at once
+with its leaves, its blossoms, and its fruit? but it is in vain that we
+search here for any proportion between the height, the breadth, or
+anything else concerning the dimensions of the whole, or concerning the
+relation of the particular parts to each other. I grant that we may
+observe in many flowers something of a regular figure, and of a
+methodical disposition of the leaves. The rose has such a figure and
+such a disposition of its petals; but in an oblique view, when this
+figure is in a good measure lost, and the order of the leaves
+confounded, it yet retains its beauty; the rose is even more beautiful
+before it is full blown; in the bud; before this exact figure is formed;
+and this is not the only instance wherein method and exactness, the soul
+of proportion, are found rather prejudicial than serviceable to the
+cause of beauty.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN ANIMALS.
+
+That proportion has but a small share in the formation of beauty is full
+as evident among animals. Here the greatest variety of shapes and
+dispositions of parts are well fitted to excite this idea. The swan,
+confessedly a beautiful bird, has a neck longer than the rest of his
+body, and but a very short tail: is this a beautiful proportion? We must
+allow that it is. But then what shall we say to the peacock, who has
+comparatively but a short neck, with a tail longer than the neck and the
+rest of the body taken together? How many birds are there that vary
+infinitely from each of these standards, and from every other which you
+can fix; with proportions different, and often directly opposite to each
+other! and yet many of these birds are extremely beautiful; when upon
+considering them we find nothing in any one part that might determine
+us, _à priori_, to say what the others ought to be, nor indeed to guess
+anything about them, but what experience might show to be full of
+disappointment and mistake. And with regard to the colors either of
+birds or flowers, for there is something similar in the coloring of
+both, whether they are considered in their extension or gradation, there
+is nothing of proportion to be observed. Some are of but one single
+color; others have all the colors of the rainbow; some are of the
+primary colors, others are of the mixed; in short, an attentive observer
+may soon conclude that there is as little of proportion in the coloring
+as in the shapes of these objects. Turn next to beasts; examine the head
+of a beautiful horse; find what proportion that bears to his body, and
+to his limbs, and what relation these have to each other; and when you
+have settled these proportions as a standard of beauty, then take a dog
+or cat, or any other animal, and examine how far the same proportions
+between their heads and their necks, between those and the body, and so
+on, are found to hold; I think we may safely say, that they differ in
+every species, yet that there are individuals, found in a great many
+species so differing, that have a very striking beauty. Now, if it be
+allowed that very different, and even contrary forms and dispositions
+are consistent with beauty, it amounts I believe to a concession, that
+no certain measures, operating from a natural principle, are necessary
+to produce it; at least so far as the brute species is concerned.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN THE HUMAN SPECIES.
+
+There are some parts of the human body that are observed to hold certain
+proportions to each other; but before it can be proved that the
+efficient cause of beauty lies in these, it must be shown that, wherever
+these are found exact, the person to whom they belong is beautiful: I
+mean in the effect produced on the view, either of any member distinctly
+considered, or of the whole body together. It must be likewise shown,
+that these parts stand in such a relation to each other, that the
+comparison between them may be easily made, and that the affection of
+the mind may naturally result from it. For my part, I have at several
+times very carefully examined many of those proportions, and found them
+hold very nearly, or altogether alike in many subjects, which were not
+only very different from one another, but where one has been very
+beautiful, and the other very remote from beauty. With regard to the
+parts which are found so proportioned, they are often so remote from
+each other, in situation, nature, and office, that I cannot see how they
+admit of any comparison, nor consequently how any effect owing to
+proportion can result from them. The neck, say they, in beautiful
+bodies, should measure with the calf of the leg; it should likewise be
+twice the circumference of the wrist. And an infinity of observations of
+this kind are to be found in the writings and conversations of many. But
+what relation has the calf of the leg to the neck; or either of these
+parts to the wrist? These proportions are certainly to be found in
+handsome bodies. They are as certainly in ugly ones; as any who will
+take the pains to try may find. Nay, I do not know but they may be least
+perfect in some of the most beautiful. You may assign any proportions
+you please to every part of the human body; and I undertake that a
+painter shall religiously observe them all, and notwithstanding produce,
+if he pleases, a very ugly figure. The same painter shall considerably
+deviate from these proportions, and produce a very beautiful one. And,
+indeed, it may be observed in the masterpieces of the ancient and modern
+statuary, that several of them differ very widely from the proportions
+of others, in parts very conspicuous and of great consideration; and
+that they differ no less from the proportions we find in living men, of
+forms extremely striking and agreeable. And after all, how are the
+partisans of proportional beauty agreed amongst themselves about the
+proportions of the human body? Some hold it to be seven heads; some make
+it eight; whilst others extend it even to ten: a vast difference in such
+a small number of divisions! Others take other methods of estimating the
+proportions, and all with equal success. But are these proportions
+exactly the same in all handsome men? or are they at all the proportions
+found in beautiful women? Nobody will say that they are; yet both sexes
+are undoubtedly capable of beauty, and the female of the greatest; which
+advantage I believe will hardly be attributed to the superior exactness
+of proportion in the fair sex. Let us rest a moment on this point; and
+consider how much difference there is between the measures that prevail
+in many similar parts of the body, in the two sexes of this single
+species only. If you assign any determinate proportions to the limbs of
+a man, and if you limit human beauty to these proportions, when you find
+a woman who differs in the make and measures of almost every part, you
+must conclude her not to be beautiful, in spite of the suggestions of
+your imagination; or, in obedience to your imagination, you must
+renounce your rules; you must lay by the scale and compass, and look out
+for some other cause of beauty. For if beauty be attached to certain
+measures which operate from a _principle in nature_, why should similar
+parts with different measures of proportion be found to have beauty, and
+this too in the very same species? But to open our view a little, it is
+worth observing, that almost all animals have parts of very much the
+same nature, and destined nearly to the same purposes; a head, neck,
+body, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth; yet Providence, to provide in
+the best manner for their several wants, and to display the riches of
+his wisdom and goodness in his creation, has worked out of these few and
+similar organs, and members, a diversity hardly short of infinite in
+their disposition, measures and relation. But, as we have before
+observed, amidst this infinite diversity, one particular is common to
+many species: several of the individuals which compose them are capable
+of affecting us with a sense of loveliness: and whilst they agree in
+producing this effect, they differ extremely in the relative measures of
+those parts which have produced it. These considerations were sufficient
+to induce me to reject the notion of any particular proportions that
+operated by nature to produce a pleasing effect; but those who will
+agree with me with regard to a particular proportion, are strongly
+prepossessed in favor of one more indefinite. They imagine, that
+although beauty in general is annexed to no certain measures common to
+the several kinds of pleasing plants and animals; yet that there is a
+certain proportion in each species absolutely essential to the beauty of
+that particular kind. If we consider the animal world in general, we
+find beauty confined to no certain measures; but as some peculiar
+measure and relation of parts is what distinguishes each peculiar class
+of animals, it must of necessity be, that the beautiful in each kind
+will be found in the measures and proportions of that kind; for
+otherwise it would deviate from its proper species, and become in some
+sort monstrous: however, no species is so strictly confined to any
+certain proportions, that there is not a considerable variation amongst
+the individuals; and as it has been shown of the human, so it may be
+shown of the brute kinds, that beauty is found indifferently in all the
+proportions which each kind can admit, without quitting its common form;
+and it is this idea of a common form that makes the proportion of parts
+at all regarded, and not the operation of any natural cause: indeed a
+little consideration will make it appear, that it is not measure, but
+manner, that creates all the beauty which belongs to shape. What light
+do we borrow from these boasted proportions, when we study ornamental
+design? It seems amazing to me, that artists, if they were as well
+convinced as they pretend to be, that proportion is a principal cause of
+beauty, have not by them at all times accurate measurements of all sorts
+of beautiful animals to help them to proper proportions, when they would
+contrive anything elegant; especially as they frequently assert that it
+is from an observation of the beautiful in nature they direct their
+practice. I know that it has been said long since, and echoed backward
+and forward from one writer to another a thousand times, that the
+proportions of building have been taken from those of the human body. To
+make this forced analogy complete, they represent a man with his arms
+raised and extended at full length, and then describe a sort of square,
+as it is formed by passing lines along the extremities of this strange
+figure. But it appears very clearly to me that the human figure never
+supplied the architect with any of his ideas. For, in the first place,
+men are very rarely seen in this strained posture; it is not natural to
+them; neither is it at all becoming. Secondly, the view of the human
+figure so disposed, does not naturally suggest the idea of a square, but
+rather of a cross; as that large space be tween the arms and the ground
+must be filled with something before it can make anybody think of a
+square. Thirdly, several buildings are by no means of the form of that
+particular square, which are notwithstanding planned by the best
+architects, and produce an effect altogether as good, and perhaps a
+better. And certainly nothing could he more unaccountably whimsical,
+than for an architect to model his performance by the human figure,
+since no two things can have less resemblance or analogy, than a man,
+and a house or temple: do we need to observe that their purposes are
+entirely different? What I am apt to suspect is this: that these
+analogies were devised to give a credit to the works of art, by showing
+a conformity between them and the noblest works in nature; not that the
+latter served at all to supply hints for the perfection of the former.
+And I am the more fully convinced, that the patrons of proportion have
+transferred their artificial ideas to nature, and not borrowed from
+thence the proportions they use in works of art; because in any
+discussion of this subject they always quit as soon as possible the open
+field of natural beauties, the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and
+fortify themselves within the artificial lines and angles of
+architecture. For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make
+themselves, their views, and their works, the measure of excellence in
+everything whatsoever. Therefore having observed that their dwellings
+were most commodious and firm when they were thrown into regular
+figures, with parts answerable to each other; they transferred these
+ideas to their gardens; they turned their trees into pillars, pyramids,
+and obelisks; they formed their hedges into so many green walls, and
+fashioned their walks into squares, triangles, and other mathematical
+figures, with exactness and symmetry; and they thought, if they were not
+imitating, they were at least improving nature, and teaching her to know
+her business. But nature has at last escaped from their discipline and
+their fetters; and our gardens, if nothing else, declare, we begin to
+feel that mathematical ideas are not the true measures of beauty. And
+surely they are full as little so in the animal as the vegetable world.
+For is it not extraordinary, that in these fine descriptive pieces,
+these innumerable odes and elegies which are in the mouths of all the
+world, and many of which have been the entertainment of ages, that in
+these pieces which describe love with such a passionate energy, and
+represent its object in such an infinite variety of lights, not one word
+is said of proportion, if it be, what some insist it is, the principal
+component of beauty; whilst, at the same time, several other qualities
+are very frequently and warmly mentioned? But if proportion has not this
+power, it may appear odd how men came originally to be so prepossessed
+in its favor. It arose, I imagine, from the fondness I have just
+mentioned, which men bear so remarkably to their own works and notions;
+it arose from false reasonings on the effects of the customary figure of
+animals; it arose from the Platonic theory of fitness and aptitude. For
+which reason, in the next section, I shall consider the effects of
+custom in the figure of animals; and afterwards the idea of fitness:
+since if proportion does not operate by a natural power attending some
+measures, it must be either by custom, or the idea of utility; there is
+no other way.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+PROPORTION FURTHER CONSIDERED.
+
+If I am not mistaken, a great deal of the prejudice in favor of
+proportion has arisen, not so much from the observation of any certain
+measures found in beautiful bodies, as from a wrong idea of the relation
+which deformity bears to beauty, to which it has been considered as the
+opposite; on this principle it was concluded that where the causes of
+deformity were removed, beauty must naturally and necessarily be
+introduced. This I believe is a mistake. For _deformity_ is opposed not
+to beauty, but to the _complete common form_. If one of the legs of a
+man be found shorter than the other, the man is deformed; because there
+is something wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man; and
+this has the same effect in natural faults, as maiming and mutilation
+produce from accidents. So if the back be humped, the man is deformed;
+because his back has an unusual figure, and what carries with it the
+idea of some disease or misfortune; So if a man's neck be considerably
+longer or shorter than usual, we say he is deformed in that part,
+because men are not commonly made in that manner. But surely every
+hour's experience may convince us that a man may have his legs of an
+equal length, and resembling each other in all respects, and his neck of
+a just size, and his back quite straight, without having at the same
+time the least perceivable beauty. Indeed beauty is so far from
+belonging to the idea of custom, that in reality what affects us in that
+manner is extremely rare and uncommon. The beautiful strikes us as much
+by its novelty as the deformed itself. It is thus in those species of
+animals with which we are acquainted; and if one of a new species were
+represented, we should by no means wait until custom had settled an idea
+of proportion, before we decided concerning its beauty or ugliness:
+which shows that the general idea of beauty can be no more owing to
+customary than to natural proportion. Deformity arises from the want of
+the common proportions; but the necessary result of their existence in
+any object is not beauty. If we suppose proportion in natural things to
+be relative to custom and use, the nature of use and custom will show
+that beauty, which is a _positive_ and powerful quality, cannot result
+from it. We are so wonderfully formed, that, whilst we are creatures
+vehemently desirous of novelty, we are as strongly attached to habit and
+custom. But it is the nature of things which hold us by custom, to
+affect us very little whilst we are in possession of them, but strongly
+when they are absent. I remember to have frequented a certain place,
+every day for a long time together; and I may truly say that, so far
+from finding pleasure in it, I was affected with a sort of weariness and
+disgust; I came, I went, I returned, without pleasure; yet if by any
+means I passed by the usual time of my going thither, I was remarkably
+uneasy, and was not quiet till I had got into my old track. They who use
+snuff, take it almost without being sensible that they take it, and the
+acute sense of smell is deadened, so as to feel hardly anything from so
+sharp a stimulus; yet deprive the snuff-taker of his box, and he is the
+most uneasy mortal in the world. Indeed so far are use and habit from
+being causes of pleasure merely as such, that the effect of constant use
+is to make all things of whatever kind entirely unaffecting. For as use
+at last takes off the painful effect of many things, it reduces the
+pleasurable effect in others in the same manner, and brings both to a
+sort of mediocrity and indifference. Very justly is use called a second
+nature; and our natural and common state is one of absolute
+indifference, equally prepared for pain or pleasure. But when we are
+thrown out of this state, or deprived of anything requisite to maintain
+us in it; when this chance does not happen by pleasure from some
+mechanical cause, we are always hurt. It is so with the second nature,
+custom, in all things which relate to it. Thus the want of the usual
+proportions in men and other animals is sure to disgust, though their
+presence is by no means any cause of real pleasure. It is true that the
+proportions laid down as causes of beauty in the human body, are
+frequently found in beautiful ones, because they are generally found in
+all mankind; but if it can be shown too that they are found without
+beauty, and that beauty frequently exists without them, and that this
+beauty, where it exists, always can be assigned to other less equivocal
+causes, it will naturally lead us to conclude that proportion and beauty
+are not ideas of the same nature. The true opposite to beauty is not
+disproportion or deformity, but _ugliness_: and as it proceeds from
+causes opposite to those of positive beauty, we cannot consider it until
+we come to treat of that. Between beauty and ugliness there is a sort of
+mediocrity, in which the assigned proportions are most commonly found;
+but this has no effect upon the passions.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+FITNESS NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY.
+
+It is said that the idea of utility, or of a part's being well adapted
+to answer its end, is the cause of beauty, or indeed beauty itself. If
+it were not for this opinion, it had been impossible for the doctrine of
+proportion to have held its ground very long; the world would be soon
+weary of hearing of measures which related to nothing, either of a
+natural principle, or of a fitness to answer some end; the idea which
+mankind most commonly conceive of proportion, is the suitableness of
+means to certain ends, and, where this is not the question, very seldom
+trouble themselves about the effect of different measures of things.
+Therefore it was necessary for this theory to insist that not only
+artificial, but natural objects took their beauty from the fitness of
+the parts for their several purposes. But in framing this theory, I am
+apprehensive that experience was not sufficiently consulted. For, on
+that principle, the wedge-like snout of a swine, with its tough
+cartilage at the end, the little sunk eyes, and the whole make of the
+head, so well adapted to its offices of digging and rooting, would be
+extremely beautiful. The great bag hanging to the bill of a pelican, a
+thing highly useful to this animal, would be likewise as beautiful in
+our eyes. The hedge-hog, so well secured against all assaults by his
+prickly hide, and the porcupine with his missile quills, would be then
+considered as creatures of no small elegance. There are few animals
+whose parts are better contrived than those of a monkey: he has the
+hands of a man, joined to the springy limbs of a beast; he is admirably
+calculated for running, leaping, grappling, and climbing; and yet there
+are few animals which seem to have less beauty in the eyes of all
+mankind. I need say little on the trunk of the elephant, of such various
+usefulness, and which is so far from contributing to his beauty. How
+well fitted is the wolf for running and leaping! how admirably is the
+lion armed for battle! but will any one therefore call the elephant, the
+wolf, and the lion, beautiful animals? I believe nobody will think the
+form of a man's leg so well adapted to running, as those of a horse, a
+dog, a deer, and several other creatures; at least they have not that
+appearance: yet, I believe, a well-fashioned human leg will be allowed
+to far exceed all these in beauty. If the fitness of parts was what
+constituted the loveliness of their form, the actual employment of them
+would undoubtedly much augment it; but this, though it is sometimes so
+upon another principle, is far from being always the case. A bird on the
+wing is not so beautiful as when it is perched; nay, there are several
+of the domestic fowls which are seldom seen to fly, and which are
+nothing the less beautiful on that account; yet birds are so extremely
+different in their form from the beast and human kinds, that you cannot,
+on the principle of fitness, allow them anything agreeable, but in
+consideration of their parts being designed for quite other purposes. I
+never in my life chanced to see a peacock fly; and yet before, very long
+before I considered any aptitude in his form for the aërial life, I was
+struck with the extreme beauty which raises that bird above many of the
+best flying fowls in the world; though, for anything I saw, his way of
+living was much like that of the swine, which fed in the farm-yard along
+with him. The same may be said of cocks, hens, and the like; they are of
+the flying kind in figure; in their manner of moving not very different
+from men and beasts. To leave these foreign examples; if beauty in our
+own species was annexed to use, men would be much more lovely than
+women; and strength and agility would be considered as the only
+beauties. But to call strength by the name of beauty, to have but one
+denomination for the qualities of a Venus and Hercules, so totally
+different in almost all respects, is surely a strange confusion of
+ideas, or abuse of words. The cause of this confusion, I imagine,
+proceeds from our frequently perceiving the parts of the human and other
+animal bodies to be at once very beautiful, and very well adapted to
+their purposes; and we are deceived by a sophism, which makes us take
+that for a cause which is only a concomitant: this is the sophism of the
+fly; who imagined he raised a great dust, because he stood upon the
+chariot that really raised it. The stomach, the lungs, the liver, as
+well as other parts, are incomparably well adapted to their purposes;
+yet they are far from having any beauty. Again, many things are very
+beautiful, in which it is impossible to discern any idea of use. And I
+appeal to the first and most natural feelings of mankind, whether on
+beholding a beautiful eye, or a well-fashioned mouth, or a well-turned
+leg, any ideas of their being well fitted for seeing, eating, or
+running, ever present themselves. What idea of use is it that flowers
+excite, the most beautiful part of the vegetable world? It is true that
+the infinitely wise and good Creator has, of his bounty, frequently
+joined beauty to those things which he has made useful to us; but this
+does not prove that an idea of use and beauty are the same thing, or
+that they are any way dependent on each other.
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+THE REAL EFFECTS OF FITNESS.
+
+When I excluded proportion and fitness from any share in beauty, I did
+not by any means intend to say that they were of no value, or that they
+ought to be disregarded in works of art. Works of art are the proper
+sphere of their power; and here it is that they have their full effect.
+Whenever the wisdom of our Creator intended that we should be affected
+with anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the
+languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with
+powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will;
+which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul,
+before the understanding is ready either to join with them, or to
+oppose them. It is by a long deduction, and much study, that we discover
+the adorable wisdom of God in his works: when we discover it the effect
+is very different, not only in the manner of acquiring it, but in its
+own nature, from that which strikes us without any preparation from the
+sublime or the beautiful. How different is the satisfaction of an
+anatomist, who discovers the use of the muscles and of the skin, the
+excellent contrivance of the one for the various movements of the body,
+and the wonderful texture of the other, at once a general covering, and
+at once a general outlet as well as inlet; how different is this from
+the affection which possesses an ordinary man at the sight of a
+delicate, smooth skin, and all the other parts of beauty, which require
+no investigation to be perceived! In the former case, whilst we look up
+to the Maker with admiration and praise, the object which causes it may
+be odious and distasteful; the latter very often so touches us by its
+power on the imagination, that we examine but little into the artifice
+of its contrivance; and we have need of a strong effort of our reason to
+disentangle our minds from the allurements of the object, to a
+consideration of that wisdom which invented so powerful a machine. The
+effect of proportion and fitness, at least so far as they proceed from a
+mere consideration of the work itself, produce approbation, the
+acquiescence of the understanding, but not love, nor any passion of that
+species. When we examine the structure of a watch, when we come to know
+thoroughly the use of every part of it, satisfied as we are with the
+fitness of the whole, we are far enough from perceiving anything like
+beauty in the watch-work itself; but let us look on the case, the labor
+of some curious artist in engraving, with little or no idea of use, we
+shall have a much livelier idea of beauty than we ever could have had
+from the watch itself, though the masterpiece of Graham. In beauty, as I
+said, the effect is previous to any knowledge of the use; but to judge
+of proportion, we must know the end for which any work is designed.
+According to the end, the proportion varies. Thus there is one
+proportion of a tower, another of a house; one proportion of a gallery,
+another of a hall, another of a chamber. To judge of the proportions of
+these, you must be first acquainted with the purposes for which they
+were designed. Good sense and experience acting together, find out what
+is fit to be done in every work of art. We are rational creatures, and
+in all our works we ought to regard their end and purpose; the
+gratification of any passion, how innocent soever, ought only to be of
+secondary consideration. Herein is placed the real power of fitness and
+proportion; they operate on the understanding considering them, which
+_approves_ the work and acquiesces in it. The passions, and the
+imagination which principally raises them, have here very little to do.
+When a room appears in its original nakedness, bare walls and a plain
+ceiling: let its proportion be ever so excellent, it pleases very
+little; a cold approbation is the utmost we can reach; a much worse
+proportioned room with elegant mouldings and fine festoons, glasses, and
+other merely ornamental furniture, will make the imagination revolt
+against the reason; it will please much more than the naked proportion
+of the first room, which the understanding has so much approved, as
+admirably fitted for its purposes. What I have here said and before
+concerning proportion, is by no means to persuade people absurdly to
+neglect the idea of use in the works of art. It is only to show that
+these excellent things, beauty and proportion, are not the same; not
+that they should either of them be disregarded.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+THE RECAPITULATION.
+
+On the whole; if such parts in human bodies as are found proportioned,
+were likewise constantly found beautiful, as they certainly are not; or
+if they were so situated, as that a pleasure might flow from the
+comparison, which they seldom are; or if any assignable proportions were
+found, either in plants or animals, which were always attended with
+beauty, which never was the case; or if, where parts were well adapted
+to their purposes, they were constantly beautiful, and when no use
+appeared, there was no beauty, which is contrary to all experience; we
+might conclude that beauty consisted in proportion or utility. But
+since, in all respects, the case is quite otherwise; we may be satisfied
+that beauty does not depend on these, let it owe its origin to what else
+it will.
+
+
+SECTION IX.
+
+PERFECTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY.
+
+There is another notion current, pretty closely allied to the former;
+that _perfection_ is the constituent cause of beauty. This opinion has
+been made to extend much further than to sensible objects. But in
+these, so far is perfection, considered as such, from being the cause of
+beauty; that this quality, where it is highest, in the female sex,
+almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection.
+Women are very sensible of this; for which reason they learn to lisp, to
+totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness. In all
+this they are guided by nature. Beauty in distress is much the most
+affecting beauty. Blushing has little less power; and modesty in
+general, which is a tacit allowance of imperfection, is itself
+considered as an amiable quality, and certainly heightens every other
+that is so. I know it is in every body's mouth, that we ought to love
+perfection. This is to me a sufficient proof, that it is not the proper
+object of love. Who ever said we _ought_ to love a fine woman, or even
+any of these beautiful animals which please us? Here to be affected,
+there is no need of the concurrence of our will.
+
+
+SECTION X.
+
+HOW FAR THE IDEA OF BEAUTY MAY BE APPLIED TO THE QUALITIES OF THE MIND.
+
+Nor is this remark in general less applicable to the qualities of the
+mind. Those virtues which cause admiration, and are of the sublimer
+kind, produce terror rather than love; such as fortitude, justice,
+wisdom, and the like. Never was any man amiable by force of these
+qualities. Those which engage our hearts, which impress us with a sense
+of loveliness, are the softer virtues; easiness of temper, compassion,
+kindness, and liberality; though certainly those latter are of less
+immediate and momentous concern to society, and of less dignity. But it
+is for that reason that they are so amiable. The great virtues turn
+principally on dangers, punishments, and troubles, and are exercised,
+rather in preventing the worst mischiefs, than in dispensing favors; and
+are therefore not lovely, though highly venerable. The subordinate turn
+on reliefs, gratifications, and indulgences; and are therefore more
+lovely, though inferior in dignity. Those persons who creep into the
+hearts of most people, who are chosen as the companions of their softer
+hours, and their reliefs from care and anxiety, are never persons of
+shining qualities or strong virtues. It is rather the soft green of the
+soul on which we rest our eyes, that are fatigued with beholding more
+glaring objects. It is worth observing how we feel ourselves affected in
+reading the characters of Cæsar and Cato, as they are so finely drawn
+and contrasted in Sallust. In one the _ignoscendo largiundo_; in the
+other, _nil largiundo_. In one, the _miseris perfugium_; in the other,
+_malis perniciem_. In the latter we have much to admire, much to
+reverence, and perhaps something to fear; we respect him, but we respect
+him at a distance. The former makes us familiar with him; we love him,
+and he leads us whither he pleases. To draw things closer to our first
+and most natural feelings, I will add a remark made upon reading this
+section by an ingenious friend. The authority of a father, so useful to
+our well-being, and so justly venerable upon all accounts, hinders us
+from having that entire love for him that we have for our mothers, where
+the parental authority is almost melted down into the mother's fondness
+and indulgence. But we generally have a great love for our
+grandfathers, in whom this authority is removed a degree from us, and
+where the weakness of age mellows it into something of a feminine
+partiality.
+
+
+SECTION XI.
+
+HOW FAR THE IDEA OF BEAUTY MAY BE APPLIED TO VIRTUE.
+
+From what has been said in the foregoing section, we may easily see how
+far the application of beauty to virtue may be made with propriety. The
+general application of this quality to virtue has a strong tendency to
+confound our ideas of things, and it has given rise to an infinite deal
+of whimsical theory; as the affixing the name of beauty to proportion,
+congruity, and perfection, as well as to qualities of things yet more
+remote from our natural ideas of it, and from one another, has tended to
+confound our ideas of beauty, and left us no standard or rule to judge
+by, that was not even more uncertain and fallacious than our own
+fancies. This loose and inaccurate manner of speaking has therefore
+misled us both in the theory of taste and of morals; and induced us to
+remove the science of our duties from their proper basis (our reason,
+our relations, and our necessities), to rest it upon, foundations
+altogether visionary and unsubstantial.
+
+
+SECTION XII.
+
+THE REAL CAUSE OF BEAUTY.
+
+Having endeavored to show what beauty is not, it remains that we should
+examine, at least with equal attention, in what it really consists.
+Beauty is a thing much too affecting not to depend upon some positive
+qualities. And since it is no creature of our reason, since it strikes
+us without any reference to use, and even where no use at all can be
+discerned, since the order and method of nature is generally very
+different from our measures and proportions, we must conclude that
+beauty is, for the greater part, some quality in bodies acting
+mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention of the senses. We
+ought, therefore, to consider attentively in what manner those sensible
+qualities are disposed, in such things as by experience we find
+beautiful, or which excite in us the passion of love, or some
+correspondent affection.
+
+
+SECTION XIII.
+
+BEAUTIFUL OBJECTS SMALL.
+
+The most obvious point that presents itself to us in examining any
+object is its extent or quantity. And what degree of extent prevails in
+bodies that are held beautiful, may be gathered from the usual manner of
+expression concerning it. I am told that, in most languages, the objects
+of love are spoken of under diminutive epithets. It is so in all the
+languages of which I have any knowledge. In Greek the [Greek: ion] and
+other diminutive terms are almost always the terms of affection and
+tenderness. These diminutives were commonly added by the Greeks to the
+names of persons with whom they conversed on terms of friendship and
+familiarity. Though the Romans were a people of less quick and delicate
+feelings, yet they naturally slid into the lessening termination upon
+the same occasions. Anciently, in the English language, the diminishing
+_ling_ was added to the names of persons and things that were the
+objects of love. Some we retain still, as _darling_ (or little dear),
+and a few others. But to this day, in ordinary conversation, it is usual
+to add the endearing name of _little_ to everything we love; the French
+and Italians make use of these affectionate diminutives even more than
+we. In the animal creation, out of our own species, it is the small we
+are inclined to be fond of; little birds, and some of the smaller kinds
+of beasts. A great beautiful thing is a manner of expression scarcely
+ever used; but that of a great ugly thing is very common. There is a
+wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the
+cause of the former, always dwells on great objects, and terrible; the
+latter on small ones, and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we
+love what submits to us; in one case we are forced, in the other we are
+flattered, into compliance. In short, the ideas of the sublime and the
+beautiful stand on foundations so different, that it is hard, I had
+almost said impossible, to think of reconciling them in the same
+subject, without considerably lessening the effect of the one or the
+other upon the passions. So that, attending to their quantity, beautiful
+objects are comparatively small.
+
+
+SECTION XIV.
+
+SMOOTHNESS.
+
+The next property constantly observable in such objects is
+_smoothness_;[24] a quality so essential to beauty, that I do not now
+recollect anything beautiful that is not smooth. In trees and flowers,
+smooth leaves are beautiful; smooth slopes of earth in gardens; smooth
+streams in the landscape; smooth coats of birds and beasts in animal
+beauties; in fine women, smooth skins; and in several sorts of
+ornamental furniture, smooth and polished surfaces. A very considerable
+part of the effect of beauty is owing to this quality; indeed the most
+considerable. For, take any beautiful object, and give it a broken, and
+rugged surface; and, however well formed it may be in other respects, it
+pleases no longer. Whereas, let it want ever so many of the other
+constituents, if it wants not this, it becomes more pleasing than almost
+all the others without it. This seems to me so evident, that I am a good
+deal surprised that none who have handled the subject have made any
+mention of the quality of smoothness in the enumeration of those that go
+to the forming of beauty. For, indeed, any ruggedness, any sudden,
+projection, any sharp angle, is in the highest degree contrary to that
+idea.
+
+
+SECTION XV.
+
+GRADUAL VARIATION.
+
+But as perfectly beautiful bodies are not composed of angular parts, so
+their parts never continue long in the same right line.[25] They vary
+their direction every moment, and they change under the eye by a
+deviation continually carrying on, but for whose beginning or end you
+will find it difficult to ascertain a point. The view of a beautiful
+bird will illustrate this observation. Here we see the head increasing
+insensibly to the middle, from whence it lessens gradually until it
+mixes with the neck; the neck loses itself in a larger swell, which
+continues to the middle of the body, when the whole decreases again to
+the tail; the tail takes a new direction, but it soon varies its new
+course, it blends again with the other parts, and the line is
+perpetually changing, above, below, upon every side. In this description
+I have before me the idea of a dove; it agrees very well with most of
+the conditions of beauty. It is smooth and downy; its parts are (to use
+that expression) melted into one another; you are presented with no
+sudden protuberance through the whole, and yet the whole is continually
+changing. Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps
+the most beautiful, about the neck and breasts; the smoothness, the
+softness, the easy and insensible swell; the variety of the surface,
+which is never for the smallest space the same; the deceitful maze
+through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to
+fix, or whither it is carried. Is not this a demonstration of that
+change of surface, continual, and yet hardly perceptible at any point,
+which forms one of the great constituents of beauty? It gives me no
+small pleasure to find that I can strengthen my theory in this point by
+the opinion of the very ingenious Mr. Hogarth, whose idea of the line of
+beauty I take in general to be extremely just. But the idea of
+variation, without attending so accurately to the _manner_ of the
+variation, has led him to consider angular figures as beautiful; these
+figures, it is true, vary greatly, yet they vary in a sudden and broken
+manner, and I do not find any natural object which is angular, and at
+the same time beautiful. Indeed, few natural objects are entirely
+angular. But I think those which approach the most nearly to it are the
+ugliest. I must add, too, that so for as I could observe of nature,
+though the varied line is that alone in which complete beauty is found,
+yet there is no particular line which is always found in the most
+completely beautiful, and which is therefore beautiful in preference to
+all other lines. At least I never could observe it.
+
+
+SECTION XVI.
+
+DELICACY.
+
+An air of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to beauty. An
+appearance of _delicacy_, and even of fragility, is almost essential to
+it. Whoever examines the vegetable or animal creation will find this
+observation to be founded in nature. It is not the oak, the ash, or the
+elm, or any of the robust trees of the forest which we consider as
+beautiful; they are awful and majestic, they inspire a sort of
+reverence. It is the delicate myrtle, it is the orange, it is the
+almond, it is the jasmine, it is the vine which we look on as vegetable
+beauties. It is the flowery species, so remarkable for its weakness and
+momentary duration, that gives us the liveliest idea of beauty and
+elegance. Among animals, the greyhound is more beautiful than the
+mastiff, and the delicacy of a jennet, a barb, or an Arabian horse, is
+much more amiable than the strength and stability of some horses of war
+or carriage. I need here say little of the fair sex, where I believe the
+point will be easily allowed me. The beauty of women is considerably
+owing to their weakness or delicacy, and is even enhanced by their
+timidity, a quality of mind analogous to it. I would not here be
+understood to say, that weakness betraying very bad health has any share
+in beauty; but the ill effect of this is not because it is weakness, but
+because the ill state of health, which produces such weakness, alters
+the other conditions of beauty; the parts in such a case collapse, the
+bright color, the _lumen purpureum juventæ_ is gone, and the fine
+variation is lost in wrinkles, sudden breaks, and right lines.
+
+
+SECTION XVII.
+
+BEAUTY IN COLOR.
+
+As to the colors usually found in beautiful bodies, it may be somewhat
+difficult to ascertain them, because, in the several parts of nature,
+there is an infinite variety. However, even in this variety, we may mark
+out something on which to settle. First, the colors of beautiful bodies
+must not be dusky or muddy, but clean and fair. Secondly, they must not
+be of the strongest kind. Those which seem most appropriated to beauty,
+are the milder of every sort; light greens; soft blues; weak whites;
+pink reds; and violets. Thirdly, if the colors be strong and vivid, they
+are always diversified, and the object is never of one strong color;
+there are almost always such a number of them (as in variegated flowers)
+that the strength and glare of each is considerably abated. In a fine
+complexion there is not only some variety in the coloring, but the
+colors: neither the red nor the white are strong and glaring. Besides,
+they are mixed in such a manner, and with such gradations, that it is
+impossible to fix the bounds. On the same principle it is that the
+dubious color in the necks and tails of peacocks, and about the heads of
+drakes, is so very agreeable. In reality, the beauty both of shape and
+coloring are as nearly related as we can well suppose it possible for
+things of such different natures to be.
+
+
+SECTION XVIII.
+
+RECAPITULATION.
+
+On the whole, the qualities of beauty, as they are merely sensible
+qualities, are the following: First, to be comparatively small.
+Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of
+the parts; but, fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted,
+as it were, into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without
+any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colors clear
+and bright, but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if it should
+have any glaring color, to have it diversified with others. These are, I
+believe, the properties on which beauty depends; properties that operate
+by nature, and are less liable to be altered by caprice, or confounded
+by a diversity of tastes, than any other.
+
+
+SECTION XIX.
+
+THE PHYSIOGNOMY.
+
+The _physiognomy_ has a considerable share in beauty, especially in that
+of our own species. The manners give a certain determination to the
+countenance; which, being observed to correspond pretty regularly with
+them, is capable of joining the effect of certain agreeable qualities of
+the mind to those of the body. So that to form a finished human beauty,
+and to give it its full influence, the face must be expressive of such
+gentle and amiable qualities, as correspond with the softness,
+smoothness, and delicacy of the outward form.
+
+
+SECTION XX.
+
+THE EYE.
+
+I have hitherto purposely omitted to speak of the _eye_, which has so
+great a share in the beauty of the animal creation, as it did not fall
+so easily under the foregoing heads, though in fact it is reducible to
+the same principles. I think, then, that the beauty of the eye consists,
+first, in its _clearness_; what _colored_ eye shall please most, depends
+a good deal on particular fancies; but none are pleased with an eye
+whose water (to use that term) is dull and muddy.[26] We are pleased
+with the eye in this view, on the principle upon which we like diamonds,
+clear water, glass, and such like transparent substances. Secondly, the
+motion of the eye contributes to its beauty, by continually shifting its
+direction; but a slow and languid motion is more beautiful than a brisk
+one; the latter is enlivening; the former lovely. Thirdly, with regard
+to the union of the eye with the neighboring parts, it is to hold the
+same rule that is given of other beautiful ones; it is not to make a
+strong deviation from the line of the neighboring parts; nor to verge
+into any exact geometrical figure. Besides all this, the eye affects, as
+it is expressive of some qualities of the mind, and its principal power
+generally arises from this; so that what we have just said of the
+physiognomy is applicable here.
+
+
+SECTION XXI.
+
+UGLINESS.
+
+It may perhaps appear like a sort of repetition of what we have before
+said, to insist here upon the nature of _ugliness_; as I imagine it to
+be in all respects the opposite to those qualities which we have laid
+down for the constituents of beauty. But though ugliness be the opposite
+to beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness. For it is
+possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a
+perfect fitness to any uses. Ugliness I imagine likewise to be
+consistent enough with an idea of the sublime. But I would by no means
+insinuate that ugliness of itself is a sublime idea, unless united with
+such qualities as excite a strong terror.
+
+
+SECTION XXII.
+
+GRACE.
+
+Gracefulness is an idea not very different from beauty; it consists in
+much the same things. Gracefulness is an idea belonging to _posture_ and
+_motion_. In both these, to be graceful, it is requisite that there be
+no appearance of difficulty; there is required a small inflection of the
+body; and a composure of the parts in such a manner, as not to incumber
+each other, not to appear divided by sharp and sudden angles. In this
+case, this roundness, this delicacy of attitude and motion, it is that
+all the magic of grace consists, and what is called its _je ne sçai
+quoi_; as will be obvious to any observer, who considers attentively the
+Venus de Medicis, the Antinous or any statue generally allowed to be
+graceful in a high degree.
+
+
+SECTION XXIII.
+
+ELEGANCE AND SPECIOUSNESS.
+
+When any body is composed of parts smooth and polished, without pressing
+upon each other, without showing any ruggedness or confusion, and at the
+same time affecting some _regular shape_, I call it _elegant_. It is
+closely allied to the beautiful, differing from it only in this
+_regularity_; which, however, as it makes a very material difference in
+the affection produced, may very well constitute another species. Under
+this head I rank those delicate and regular works of art, that imitate
+no determinate object in nature, as elegant buildings, and pieces of
+furniture. When any object partakes of the above-mentioned qualities, or
+of those of beautiful bodies, and is withal of great dimensions, it is
+full as remote from the idea of mere beauty; I call _fine_ or
+_specious_.
+
+
+SECTION XXIV.
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL IN FEELING.
+
+The foregoing description of beauty, so far as it is taken in by the
+eye, may he greatly illustrated by describing the nature of objects,
+which produce a similar effect through the touch. This I call the
+beautiful in _feeling_. It corresponds wonderfully with what causes the
+same species of pleasure to the sight. There is a chain in all our
+sensations; they are all but different sorts of feelings calculated to
+be affected by various sorts of objects, but all to be affected after
+the same manner. All bodies that are pleasant to the touch, are so by
+the slightness of the resistance they make. Resistance is either to
+motion along the surface, or to the pressure of the parts on one
+another: if the former be slight, we call the body smooth; if the
+latter, soft. The chief pleasure we receive by feeling, is in the one or
+the other of these qualities; and if there be a combination of both, our
+pleasure is greatly increased. This is so plain, that it is rather more
+fit to illustrate other things, than to be illustrated itself by an
+example. The next source of pleasure in this sense, as in every other,
+is the continually presenting somewhat new; and we find that bodies
+which continually vary their surface, are much the most pleasant or
+beautiful to the feeling, as any one that pleases may experience. The
+third property in such objects is, that though the surface continually
+varies its direction, it never varies it suddenly. The application of
+anything sudden, even though the impression itself have little or
+nothing of violence, is disagreeable. The quick application of a finger
+a little warmer or colder than usual, without notice, makes us start; a
+slight tap on the shoulder, not expected, has the same effect. Hence it
+is that angular bodies, bodies that suddenly vary the direction of the
+outline, afford so little pleasure to the feeling. Every such change is
+a sort of climbing or falling in miniature; so that squares, triangles,
+and other angular figures are neither beautiful to the sight nor
+feeling. Whoever compares his state of mind, on feeling soft, smooth,
+variated, unangular bodies, with that in which he finds himself, on the
+view of a beautiful object, will perceive a very striking analogy in the
+effects of both; and which may go a good way towards discovering their
+common cause. Feeling and sight, in this respect, differ in but a few
+points. The touch takes in the pleasure of softness, which is not
+primarily an object of sight; the sight, on the other hand, comprehends
+color, which can hardly he made perceptible to the touch: the touch,
+again, has the advantage in a new idea of pleasure resulting from a
+moderate degree of warmth; but the eye triumphs in the infinite extent
+and multiplicity of its objects. But there is such a similitude in the
+pleasures of these senses, that I am apt to fancy, if it were possible
+that one might discern color by feeling (as it is said some blind men
+have done) that the same colors, and the same disposition of coloring,
+which are found beautiful to the sight, would be found likewise most
+grateful to the touch. But, setting aside conjectures, let us pass to
+the other sense; of hearing.
+
+
+SECTION XXV.
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL IN SOUNDS.
+
+In this sense we find an equal aptitude to be affected in a soft and
+delicate manner; and how far sweet or beautiful sounds agree with our
+descriptions of beauty in other senses, the experience of every one must
+decide. Milton has described this species of music in one of his
+juvenile poems.[27] I need not say that Milton was perfectly well versed
+in that art; and that no man had a finer ear, with a happier manner of
+expressing the affections of one sense by metaphors taken from another.
+The description is as follows:--
+
+          "And ever against eating cares,
+    Lap me in _soft_ Lydian airs;
+    In notes with many a _winding_ bout
+    Of _linked sweetness long drawn_ out;
+    With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
+    The _melting_ voice through _mazes_ running;
+    _Untwisting_ all the chains that tie
+    The hidden soul of harmony."
+
+Let us parallel this with the softness, the winding surface, the
+unbroken continuance, the easy gradation of the beautiful in other
+things; and all the diversities of the several senses, with all their
+several affections, will rather help to throw lights from one another to
+finish one clear, consistent idea of the whole, than to obscure it by
+their intricacy and variety.
+
+To the above-mentioned description I shall add one or two remarks. The
+first is; that the beautiful in music will not hear that loudness and
+strength of sounds, which may be used to raise other passions; nor notes
+which are shrill, or harsh, or deep; it agrees best with such as are
+clear, even, smooth, and weak. The second is; that great variety, and
+quick transitions from one measure or tone to another, are contrary to
+the genius of the beautiful in music. Such[28] transitions often excite
+mirth, or other sudden or tumultuous passions; but not that sinking,
+that melting, that languor, which is the characteristical effect of the
+beautiful as it regards every sense. The passion excited by beauty is in
+fact nearer to a species of melancholy, than to jollity and mirth. I do
+not here mean to confine music to any one species of notes, or tones,
+neither is it an art in which I can say I have any great skill. My sole
+design in this remark is to settle a consistent idea of beauty. The
+infinite variety of the affections of the soul will suggest to a good
+head, and skilful ear, a variety of such sounds as are fitted to raise
+them. It can be no prejudice to this, to clear and distinguish some few
+particulars that belong to the same class, and are consistent with each
+other, from the immense crowd of different and sometimes contradictory
+ideas, that rank vulgarly under the standard of beauty. And of these it
+is my intention to mark such only of the leading points as show the
+conformity of the sense of hearing with all the other senses, in the
+article of their pleasures.
+
+
+SECTION XXVI.
+
+TASTE AND SMELL.
+
+This general agreement of the senses is yet more evident on minutely
+considering those of taste and smell. We metaphorically apply the idea
+of sweetness to sights and sounds; but as the qualities of bodies by
+which they are fitted to excite either pleasure or pain in these senses
+are not so obvious as they are in the others, we shall refer an
+explanation of their analogy, which is a very close one, to that part
+wherein we come to consider the common efficient cause of beauty, as it
+regards all the senses. I do not think anything better fitted to
+establish a clear and settled idea of visual beauty than this way of
+examining the similar pleasures of other senses; for one part is
+sometimes clear in one of the senses that is more obscure in another;
+and where there is a clear concurrence of all, we may with more
+certainty speak of any one of them. By this means, they bear witness to
+each other; nature is, as it were, scrutinized; and we report nothing of
+her but what we receive from her own information.
+
+
+SECTION XXVII.
+
+THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL COMPARED.
+
+On closing this general view of beauty, it naturally occurs that we
+should compare it with the sublime; and in this comparison there appears
+a remarkable contrast. For sublime objects are vast in their dimensions,
+beautiful ones comparatively small; beauty should be smooth and
+polished; the great, rugged and negligent: beauty should shun the right
+line, yet deviate from it insensibly; the great in many cases loves the
+right line; and when it deviates, it often makes a strong deviation:
+beauty should not be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy:
+beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought to be solid, and
+even massive. They are indeed ideas of a very different nature, one
+being founded on pain, the other on pleasure; and, however they may vary
+afterwards from the direct nature of their causes, yet these causes keep
+up an eternal distinction between them, a distinction never to be
+forgotten by any whose business it is to affect the passions. In the
+infinite variety of natural combinations, we must expect to find the
+qualities of things the most remote imaginable from each other united in
+the same object. We must expect also to find combinations of the same
+kind in the works of art. But when we consider the power of an object
+upon our passions, we must know that when anything is intended to affect
+the mind by the force of some predominant property, the affection
+produced is like to be the more uniform and perfect, if all the other
+properties or qualities of the object be of the same nature, and tending
+to the same design as the principal.
+
+   "If black and white blend, soften, and unite
+    A thousand ways, are there no black and white?"
+
+If the qualities of the sublime and beautiful are sometimes found
+united, does this prove that they are the same; does it prove that they
+are any way allied; does it prove even that they are not opposite and
+contradictory? Black and white may soften, may blend; but they are not
+therefore the same. Nor, when they are so softened and blended with each
+other, or with different colors, is the power of black as black, or of
+white as white, so strong as when each stands uniform and distinguished.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[24] Part IV. sect. 20.
+
+[25] Part IV. sect. 23.
+
+[26] Part IV. sect. 25.
+
+[27] L'Allegro.
+
+[28]
+
+   "I ne'er am merry, when I hear sweet music."
+
+                                        SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+OF THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL.
+
+When I say, I intend to inquire into the efficient cause of sublimity
+and beauty, I would not be understood to say, that I can come to the
+ultimate cause. I do not pretend that I shall ever be able to explain
+why certain affections of the body produce such a distinct emotion of
+mind, and no other; or why the body is at all affected by the mind, or
+the mind by the body. A little thought will show this to be impossible.
+But I conceive, if we can discover what affections of the mind produce
+certain emotions of the body; and what distinct feelings and qualities
+of body shall produce certain determinate passions in the mind, and no
+others, I fancy a great deal will be done; something not unuseful
+towards a distinct knowledge of our passions, so far at least as we have
+them at present under our consideration. This is all, I believe, we can
+do. If we could advance a step farther, difficulties would still remain,
+as we should be still equally distant from the first cause. When Newton
+first discovered the property of attraction, and settled its laws, he
+found it served very well to explain several of the most remarkable
+phenomena in nature; but yet, with reference to the general system of
+things, he could consider attraction but as an effect, whose cause at
+that time he did not attempt to trace. But when he afterwards began to
+account for it by a subtle elastic ether, this great man (if in so
+great a man it be not impious to discover anything like a blemish)
+seemed to have quitted his usual cautious manner of philosophizing;
+since, perhaps, allowing all that has been advanced on this subject to
+be sufficiently proved, I think it leaves us with as many difficulties
+as it found us. That great chain of causes, which, linking one to
+another, even to the throne of God himself, can never be unravelled by
+any industry of ours. When we go but one step beyond the immediate
+sensible qualities of things, we go out of our depth. All we do after is
+but a faint struggle, that shows we are in an element which does not
+belong to us. So that when I speak of cause, and efficient cause, I only
+mean certain affections of the mind, that cause certain changes in the
+body; or certain powers and properties in bodies, that work a change in
+the mind. As, if I were to explain the motion of a body falling to the
+ground, I would say it was caused by gravity; and I would endeavor to
+show after what manner this power operated, without attempting to show
+why it operated in this manner: or, if I were to explain the effects of
+bodies striking one another by the common laws of percussion, I should
+not endeavor to explain how motion itself is communicated.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+ASSOCIATION.
+
+It is no small bar in the way of our inquiry into the cause of our
+passions, that the occasions of many of them are given, and that their
+governing motions are communicated at a time when we have not capacity
+to reflect on them; at a time of which all sort of memory is worn out
+of our minds. For besides such things as affect us in various manners,
+according to their natural powers, there are associations made at that
+early season, which we find it very hard afterwards to distinguish from
+natural effects. Not to mention the unaccountable antipathies which we
+find in many persons, we all find it impossible to remember when a steep
+became more terrible than a plain; or fire or water more terrible than a
+clod of earth; though all these are very probably either conclusions
+from experience, or arising from the premonitions of others; and some of
+them impressed, in all likelihood, pretty late. But as it must be
+allowed that many things affect us after a certain manner, not by any
+natural powers they have for that purpose, but by association; so it
+would be absurd, on the other hand, to say that all things affect us by
+association only; since some things must have been originally and
+naturally agreeable or disagreeable, from which the others derive their
+associated powers; and it would be, I fancy, to little purpose to look
+for the cause of our passions in association, until we fail of it in the
+natural properties of things.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+CAUSE OF PAIN AND FEAR.
+
+I have before observed,[29] that whatever is qualified to cause terror
+is a foundation capable of the sublime; to which I add, that not only
+these, but many things from which we cannot probably apprehend any
+danger, have a similar effect, because they operate in a similar manner.
+I observed, too,[30] that whatever produces pleasure, positive and
+original pleasure, is fit to have beauty engrafted on it. Therefore, to
+clear up the nature of these qualities, it may be necessary to explain
+the nature of pain and pleasure on which they depend. A man who suffers
+under violent bodily pain, (I suppose the most violent, because the
+effect may be the more obvious,) I say a man in great pain has his teeth
+set, his eyebrows are violently contracted, his forehead is wrinkled,
+his eyes are dragged inwards, and rolled with great vehemence, his hair
+stands on end, the voice is forced out in short shrieks and groans, and
+the whole fabric totters. Fear or terror, which is an apprehension of
+pain or death, exhibits exactly the same effects, approaching in
+violence to those just mentioned, in proportion to the nearness of the
+cause, and the weakness of the subject. This is not only so in the human
+species: but I have more than once observed in dogs, under an
+apprehension of punishment, that they have writhed their bodies, and
+yelped, and howled, as if they had actually felt the blows. From hence I
+conclude, that pain and fear act upon the same parts of the body, and in
+the same manner, though somewhat differing in degree: that pain and fear
+consist in an unnatural tension of the nerves; that this is sometimes
+accompanied with an unnatural strength, which sometimes suddenly changes
+into an extraordinary weakness; that these effects often come on
+alternately, and are sometimes mixed with each other. This is the nature
+of all convulsive agitations, especially in weaker subjects, which are
+the most liable to the severest impressions of pain and fear. The only
+difference between pain and terror is, that things which cause pain
+operate on the mind by the intervention of the body; whereas things that
+cause terror generally affect the bodily organs by the operation of the
+mind suggesting the danger; but both agreeing, either primarily or
+secondarily, in producing a tension, contraction, or violent emotion of
+the nerves,[31] they agree likewise in everything else. For it appears
+very clearly to me from this, as well as from many other examples, that
+when the body is disposed, by any means whatsoever, to such emotions as
+it would acquire by the means of a certain passion; it will of itself
+excite something very like that passion in the mind.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+CONTINUED.
+
+To this purpose Mr. Spon, in his "Récherches d'Antiquité," gives us a
+curious story of the celebrated physiognomist Campanella. This man, it
+seems, had not only made very accurate observations on human faces, but
+was very expert in mimicking such as were any way remarkable. When he
+had a mind to penetrate into the inclinations of those he had to deal
+with, he composed his face, his gesture, and his whole body, as nearly
+as he could into the exact similitude of the person he intended to
+examine; and then carefully observed what turn of mind he seemed to
+acquire by this change. So that, says my author, he was able to enter
+into the dispositions and thoughts of people as effectually as if he had
+been changed into the very men. I have often observed, that on mimicking
+the looks and gestures of angry, or placid, or frighted, or daring men,
+I have involuntarily found my mind turned to that passion, whose
+appearance I endeavored to imitate; nay, I am convinced it is hard to
+avoid it, though one strove to separate the passion from its
+correspondent gestures. Our minds and bodies are so closely and
+intimately connected, that one is incapable of pain or pleasure without
+the other. Campanella, of whom we have been speaking, could so abstract
+his attention from any sufferings of his body, that he was able to
+endure the rack itself without much pain; and in lesser pains everybody
+must have observed that, when we can employ our attention on anything
+else, the pain has been for a time suspended: on the other hand, if by
+any means the body is indisposed to perform such gestures, or to be
+stimulated into such emotions as any passion usually produces in it,
+that passion itself never can arise, though its cause should be never so
+strongly in action; though it should be merely mental, and immediately
+affecting none of the senses. As an opiate, or spirituous liquors, shall
+suspend the operation of grief, or fear, or anger, in spite of all our
+efforts to the contrary; and this by inducing in the body a disposition
+contrary to that which it receives from these passions.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+HOW THE SUBLIME IS PRODUCED.
+
+Having considered terror as producing an unnatural tension and certain
+violent emotions of the nerves; it easily follows, from what we have
+just said, that whatever is fitted to produce such a tension must be
+productive of a passion similar to terror,[32] and consequently must be
+a source of the sublime, though it should have no idea of danger
+connected with it. So that little remains towards showing the cause of
+the sublime, but to show that the instances we have given of it in the
+second part relate to such things, as are fitted by nature to produce
+this sort of tension, either by the primary operation of the mind or the
+body. With regard to such things as affect by the associated idea of
+danger, there can be no doubt but that they produce terror, and act by
+some modification of that passion; and that terror, when sufficiently
+violent, raises the emotions of the body just mentioned, can as little
+be doubted. But if the sublime is built on terror or some passion like
+it, which has pain for its object, it is previously proper to inquire
+how any species of delight can be derived from a cause so apparently
+contrary to it. I say _delight_, because, as I have often remarked, it
+is very evidently different in its cause, and in its own nature, from
+actual and positive pleasure.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+HOW PAIN CAN BE A CAUSE OF DELIGHT.
+
+Providence has so ordered it, that a state of rest and inaction, however
+it may flatter our indolence, should be productive of many
+inconveniences; that it should generate such disorders, as may force us
+to have recourse to some labor, as a thing absolutely requisite to make
+us pass our lives with tolerable satisfaction; for the nature of rest is
+to suffer all the parts of our bodies to fall into a relaxation, that
+not only disables the members from performing their functions, but takes
+away the vigorous tone of fibre which is requisite for carrying on the
+natural and necessary secretions. At the same time, that in this languid
+in active state, the nerves are more liable to the most horrid
+convulsions, than when they are sufficiently braced and strengthened.
+Melancholy, dejection, despair, and often self-murder, is the
+consequence of the gloomy view we take of things in this relaxed state
+of body. The best remedy for all these evils is exercise or _labor_; and
+labor is a surmounting of _difficulties_, an exertion of the contracting
+power of the muscles; and as such resembles pain, which consists in
+tension or contraction, in everything but degree. Labor is not only
+requisite to preserve the coarser organs, in a state fit for their
+functions; but it is equally necessary to these finer and more delicate
+organs, on which, and by which, the imagination and perhaps the other
+mental powers act. Since it is probable, that not only the inferior
+parts of the soul, as the passions are called, but the understanding
+itself makes use of some fine corporeal instruments in its operation;
+though what they are, and where they are, may be somewhat hard to
+settle: but that it does make use of such, appears from hence; that a
+long exercise of the mental powers induces a remarkable lassitude of the
+whole body; and on the other hand, that great bodily labor, or pain,
+weakens and sometimes actually destroys the mental faculties. Now, as a
+due exercise is essential to the coarse muscular parts of the
+constitution, and that without this rousing they would become languid
+and diseased, the very same rule holds with regard to those finer parts
+we have mentioned; to have them in proper order, they must be shaken and
+worked to a proper degree.
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+EXERCISE NECESSARY FOR THE FINER ORGANS.
+
+As common labor, which is a mode of pain, is the exercise of the
+grosser, a mode of terror is the exercise of the finer parts of the
+system; and if a certain mode of pain be of such a nature as to act upon
+the eye or the ear, as they are the most delicate organs, the affection
+approaches more nearly to that which has a mental cause. In all these
+cases, if the pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually
+noxious; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is not
+conversant about the present destruction of the person, as these
+emotions clear the parts, whether fine or gross, of a dangerous and
+troublesome incumbrance, they are capable of producing delight; not
+pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged
+with terror; which, as it belongs to self-preservation, is one of the
+strongest of all the passions. Its object is the sublime.[33] Its
+highest degree I call _astonishment_; the subordinate degrees are awe,
+reverence, and respect, which, by the very etymology of the words, show
+from what source they are derived, and how they stand distinguished from
+positive pleasure.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+WHY THINGS NOT DANGEROUS SOMETIMES PRODUCE A PASSION LIKE TERROR.
+
+A mode of terror or pain is always the cause of the sublime.[34] For
+terror or associated danger, the foregoing explication is, I believe,
+sufficient. It will require something more trouble to show, that such
+examples as I have given of the sublime in the second part are capable
+of producing a mode of pain, and of being thus allied to terror, and to
+be accounted for on the same principles. And first of such objects as
+are great in their dimensions. I speak of visual objects.
+
+
+SECTION IX.
+
+WHY VISUAL OBJECTS OF GREAT DIMENSIONS ARE SUBLIME.
+
+Vision is performed by having a picture, formed by the rays of light
+which are reflected from the object, painted in one piece,
+instantaneously, on the retina, or last nervous part of the eye. Or,
+according to others, there is but one point of any object painted on the
+eye in such a manner as to be perceived at once, but by moving the eye,
+we gather up, with great celerity, the several parts of the object, so
+as to form one uniform piece. If the former opinion be allowed, it will
+be considered,[35] that though all the light reflected from a large body
+should strike the eye in one instant; yet we must suppose that the body
+itself is formed of a vast number of distinct points, every one of
+which, or the ray from every one, makes an impression on the retina. So
+that, though the image of one point should cause but a small tension of
+this membrane, another, and another, and another stroke, must in their
+progress cause a very great one, until it arrives at last to the highest
+degree; and the whole capacity of the eye, vibrating in all its parts,
+must approach near to the nature of what causes pain, and consequently
+must produce an idea of the sublime. Again, if we take it, that one
+point only of an object is distinguishable at once; the matter will
+amount nearly to the same thing, or rather it will make the origin of
+the sublime from greatness of dimension yet clearer. For if but one
+point is observed at once, the eye must traverse the vast space of such
+bodies with great quickness, and consequently the fine nerves and
+muscles destined to the motion of that part must be very much strained;
+and their great sensibility must make them highly affected by this
+straining. Besides, it signifies just nothing to the effect produced,
+whether a body has its parts connected and makes its impression at once;
+or, making but one impression of a point at a time, it causes a
+succession of the same or others so quickly as to make them seem united;
+as is evident from the common effect of whirling about a lighted torch
+or piece of wood: which, if done with celerity, seems a circle of fire.
+
+
+SECTION X.
+
+UNITY WHY REQUISITE TO VASTNESS.
+
+It may be objected to this theory, that the eye generally receives an
+equal number of rays at all times, and that therefore a great object
+cannot affect it by the number of rays, more than that variety of
+objects which the eye must always discern whilst it remains open. But to
+this I answer, that admitting an equal number of rays, or an equal
+quantity of luminous particles to strike the eye at all times, yet if
+these rays frequently vary their nature, now to blue, now to red, and so
+on, or their manner of termination, as to a number of petty squares,
+triangles, or the like, at every change, whether of color or shape, the
+organ has a sort of relaxation or rest; but this relaxation and labor so
+often interrupted, is by no means productive of ease; neither has it the
+effect of vigorous and uniform labor. Whoever has remarked the different
+effects of some strong exercise, and some little piddling action, will
+understand why a teasing, fretful employment, which at once wearies and
+weakens the body, should have nothing great; these sorts of impulses,
+which are rather teasing than painful, by continually and suddenly
+altering their tenor and direction, prevent that full tension, that
+species of uniform labor, which is allied to strong pain, and causes the
+sublime. The sum total of things of various kinds, though it should
+equal the number of the uniform parts composing some _one_ entire
+object, is not equal in its effect upon the organs of our bodies.
+Besides the one already assigned, there is another very strong reason
+for the difference. The mind in reality hardly ever can attend
+diligently to more than one thing at a time; if this thing be little,
+the effect is little, and a number of other little objects cannot engage
+the attention; the mind is bounded by the bounds of the object; and what
+is not attended to, and what does not exist, are much the same in the
+effect; but the eye or the mind, (for in this case there is no
+difference,) in great, uniform objects, does not readily arrive at their
+bounds; it has no rest, whilst it contemplates them; the image is much
+the same everywhere. So that everything great by its quantity must
+necessarily be one, simple and entire.
+
+
+SECTION XI.
+
+THE ARTIFICIAL INFINITE.
+
+We have observed that a species of greatness arises from the artificial
+infinite; and that this infinite consists in an uniform succession of
+great parts: we observed too, that the same uniform succession had a
+like power in sounds. But because the effects of many things are clearer
+in one of the senses than in another, and that all the senses bear
+analogy to and illustrate one another, I shall begin with this power in
+sounds, as the cause of the sublimity from succession is rather more
+obvious in the sense of hearing. And I shall here, once for all,
+observe, that an investigation of the natural and mechanical causes of
+our passions, besides the curiosity of the subject, gives, if they are
+discovered, a double strength and lustre to any rules we deliver on such
+matters. When the ear receives any simple sound, it is struck by a
+single pulse of the air which makes the ear-drum and the other
+membranous parts vibrate according to the nature and species of the
+stroke. If the stroke be strong, the organ of hearing suffers a
+considerable degree of tension. If the stroke be repeated pretty soon
+after, the repetition causes an expectation of another stroke. And it
+must be observed, that expectation itself causes a tension. This is
+apparent in many animals, who, when they prepare for hearing any sound,
+rouse themselves, and prick up their ears; so that here the effect of
+the sounds is considerably augmented by a new auxiliary, the
+expectation. But though after a number of strokes, we expect still more,
+not being able to ascertain the exact time of their arrival, when they
+arrive, they produce a sort of surprise, which increases this tension
+yet further. For I have observed, that when at any time I have waited
+very earnestly for some sound, that returned at intervals, (as the
+successive firing of cannon,) though I fully expected the return of the
+sound, when it came it always made me start a little; the ear-drum
+suffered a convulsion, and the whole body consented with it. The tension
+of the part thus increasing at every blow, by the united forces of the
+stroke itself, the expectation and the surprise, it is worked up to such
+a pitch as to be capable of the sublime; it is brought just to the verge
+of pain. Even when the cause has ceased, the organs of hearing being
+often successively struck in a similar manner, continue to vibrate in
+that manner for some time longer; this is an additional help to the
+greatness of the effect.
+
+
+SECTION XII.
+
+THE VIBRATIONS MUST BE SIMILAR.
+
+But if the vibration be not similar at every impression, it can never be
+carried beyond the number of actual impressions; for, move any body as a
+pendulum, in one way, and it will continue to oscillate in an arch of
+the same circle, until the known causes make it rest; but if, after
+first putting it in motion in one direction, you push it into another,
+it can never reassume the first direction; because it can never move
+itself, and consequently it can have but the effect of that last motion;
+whereas, if in the same direction you act upon it several times, it will
+describe a greater arch, and move a longer time.
+
+
+SECTION XIII.
+
+THE EFFECTS OF SUCCESSION IN VISUAL OBJECTS EXPLAINED.
+
+If we can comprehend clearly how things operate upon one of our senses,
+there can be very little difficulty in conceiving in what manner they
+affect the rest. To say a great deal therefore upon the corresponding
+affections of every sense, would tend rather to fatigue us by an useless
+repetition, than to throw any new light upon the subject by that ample
+and diffuse manner of treating it; but as in this discourse we chiefly
+attach ourselves to the sublime, as it affects the eye, we shall
+consider particularly why a successive disposition of uniform parts in
+the same right line should be sublime,[36] and upon what principle this
+disposition is enabled to make a comparatively small quantity of matter
+produce a grander effect, than a much larger quantity disposed in
+another manner. To avoid the perplexity of general notions; let us set
+before our eyes, a colonnade of uniform pillars planted in a right line;
+let us take our stand in such a manner, that the eye may shoot along
+this colonnade, for it has its best effect in this view. In our present
+situation it is plain, that the rays from the first round pillar will
+cause in the eye a vibration of that species; an image of the pillar
+itself. The pillar immediately succeeding increases it; that which
+follows renews and enforces the impression; each in its order as it
+succeeds, repeats impulse after impulse, and stroke after stroke, until
+the eye, long exercised in one particular way, cannot lose that object
+immediately, and, being violently roused by this continued agitation, it
+presents the mind with a grand or sublime conception. But instead of
+viewing a rank of uniform pillars, let us suppose that they succeed each
+other, a round and a square one alternately. In this case the vibration
+caused by the first round pillar perishes as soon as it is formed; and
+one of quite another sort (the square) directly occupies its place;
+which however it resigns as quickly to the round one; and thus the eye
+proceeds, alternately, taking up one image, and laying down another, as
+long as the building continues. From whence it is obvious that, at the
+last pillar, the impression is as far from continuing as it was at the
+very first; because, in fact, the sensory can receive no distinct
+impression but from the last; and it can never of itself resume a
+dissimilar impression: besides every variation of the object is a rest
+and relaxation to the organs of sight; and these reliefs prevent that
+powerful emotion so necessary to produce the sublime. To produce
+therefore a perfect grandeur in such things as we have been mentioning,
+there should be a perfect simplicity, an absolute uniformity in
+disposition, shape, and coloring. Upon this principle of succession and
+uniformity it may be asked, why a long bare wall should not be a more
+sublime object than a colonnade; since the succession is no way
+interrupted; since the eye meets no check; since nothing more uniform
+can be conceived? A long bare wall is certainly not so grand an object
+as a colonnade of the same length and height. It is not altogether
+difficult to account for this difference. When we look at a naked wall,
+from the evenness of the object, the eye runs along its whole space, and
+arrives quickly at its termination; the eye meets nothing which may
+interrupt its progress; but then it meets nothing which may detain it a
+proper time to produce a very great and lasting effect. The view of a
+bare wall, if it be of a great height and length, is undoubtedly grand;
+but this is only _one_ idea, and not a _repetition_ of _similar_ ideas:
+it is therefore great, not so much upon the principle of _infinity_, as
+upon that of _vastness_. But we are not so powerfully affected with any
+one impulse, unless it be one of a prodigious force indeed, as we are
+with a succession of similar impulses; because the nerves of the sensory
+do not (if I may use the expression) acquire a habit of repeating the
+same feeling in such a manner as to continue it longer than its cause is
+in action; besides, all the effects which I have attributed to
+expectation and surprise in Sect. 11, can have no place in a bare wall.
+
+
+SECTION XIV.
+
+LOCKE'S OPINION CONCERNING DARKNESS CONSIDERED.
+
+It is Mr. Locke's opinion, that darkness is not naturally an idea of
+terror; and that, though an excessive light is painful to the sense, the
+greatest excess of darkness is no ways troublesome. He observes indeed
+in another place, that a nurse or an old woman having once associated
+the ideas of ghosts and goblins with that of darkness, night, ever
+after, becomes painful and horrible to the imagination. The authority of
+this great man is doubtless as great as that of any man can be, and it
+seems to stand in the way of our general principle.[37] We have
+considered darkness as a cause of the sublime; and we have all along
+considered the sublime as depending on some modification of pain or
+terror: so that if darkness be no way painful or terrible to any, who
+have not had their minds early tainted with superstitions, it can be no
+source of the sublime to them. But, with all deference to such an
+authority, it seems to me, that an association of a more general nature,
+an association which takes in all mankind, may make darkness terrible;
+for in utter darkness it is impossible to know in what degree of safety
+we stand; we are ignorant of the objects that surround us; we may every
+moment strike against some dangerous obstruction; we may fall down a
+precipice the first step we take; and if an enemy approach, we know not
+in what quarter to defend ourselves; in such a case strength is no sure
+protection; wisdom can only act by guess; the boldest are staggered, and
+he who would pray for nothing else towards his defence is forced to
+pray for light.
+
+    [Greek:
+    Zeu pater, alla su rusai up êeros uias Achaiôn
+    Poiêson d' aithrên, dos d' ophthalmoisin idesthai
+    En de phaei kai olesson....]
+
+
+As to the association of ghosts and goblins; surely it is more natural
+to think that darkness, being originally an idea of terror, was chosen
+as a fit scene for such terrible representations, than that such
+representations have made darkness terrible. The mind of man very easily
+slides into an error of the former sort; but it is very hard to imagine,
+that the effect of an idea so universally terrible in all times, and in
+all countries, as darkness, could possibly have been owing to a set of
+idle stories, or to any cause of a nature so trivial, and of an
+operation so precarious.
+
+
+SECTION XV.
+
+DARKNESS TERRIBLE IN ITS OWN NATURE.
+
+Perhaps it may appear on inquiry, that blackness and darkness are in
+some degree painful by their natural operation, independent of any
+associations whatsoever. I must observe, that the ideas of darkness and
+blackness are much the same; and they differ only in this, that
+blackness is a more confined idea. Mr. Cheselden has given us a very
+curious story of a boy who had been born blind, and continued so until
+he was thirteen or fourteen years old; he was then couched for a
+cataract, by which operation he received his sight. Among many
+remarkable particulars that attended his first perceptions and judgments
+on visual objects, Cheselden tells us, that the first time the boy saw
+a black object, it gave him great uneasiness; and that some time after,
+upon accidentally seeing a negro woman, he was struck with great horror
+at the sight. The horror, in this case, can scarcely be supposed to
+arise from any association. The boy appears by the account to have been
+particularly observing and sensible for one of his age; and therefore it
+is probable, if the great uneasiness he felt at the first sight of black
+had arisen from its connection with any other disagreeable ideas, he
+would have observed and mentioned it. For an idea, disagreeable only by
+association, has the cause of its ill effect on the passions evident
+enough at the first impression; in ordinary cases, it is indeed
+frequently lost; but this is because the original association was made
+very early, and the consequent impression repeated often. In our
+instance, there was no time for such a habit; and there is no reason to
+think that the ill effects of black on his imagination were more owing
+to its connection with any disagreeable ideas, than that the good
+effects of more cheerful colors were derived from their connection with
+pleasing ones. They had both probably their effects from their natural
+operation.
+
+
+SECTION XVI.
+
+WHY DARKNESS IS TERRIBLE.
+
+It may be worth while to examine how darkness can operate in such a
+manner as to cause pain. It is observable, that still as we recede from
+the light, nature has so contrived it, that the pupil is enlarged by the
+retiring of the iris, in proportion to our recess. Now, instead of
+declining from it but a little, suppose that we withdraw entirely from
+the light; it is reasonable to think that the contraction of the radial
+fibres of the iris is proportionally greater; and that this part may by
+great darkness come to be so contracted, as to strain the nerves that
+compose it beyond their natural tone; and by this means to produce a
+painful sensation. Such a tension it seems there certainly is, whilst we
+are involved in darkness; for in such a state, whilst the eye remains
+open, there is a continual nisus to receive light; this is manifest from
+the flashes and luminous appearances which often seem in these
+circumstances to play before it; and which can be nothing but the effect
+of spasms, produced by its own efforts in pursuit of its object: several
+other strong impulses will produce the idea of light in the eye, besides
+the substance of light itself, as we experience on many occasions. Some,
+who allow darkness to be a cause of the sublime, would infer, from the
+dilatation of the pupil, that a relaxation may be productive of the
+sublime as well as a convulsion: but they do not, I believe, consider,
+that although the circular ring of the iris be in some sense a
+sphincter, which may possibly be dilated by a simple relaxation, yet in
+one respect it differs from most of the other sphincters of the body,
+that it is furnished with antagonist muscles, which are the radial
+fibres of the iris: no sooner does the circular muscle begin to relax,
+than these fibres, wanting their counterpoise, are forcibly drawn back,
+and open the pupil to a considerable wideness. But though we were not
+apprised of this, I believe any one will find, if he opens his eyes and
+makes an effort to see in a dark place, that a very perceivable pain
+ensues. And I have heard some ladies remark, that after having worked a
+long time upon a ground of black, their eyes were so pained and
+weakened, they could hardly see. It may perhaps be objected to this
+theory of the mechanical effect of darkness, that the ill effects of
+darkness or blackness seem rather mental than corporeal: and I own it is
+true that they do so; and so do all those that depend on the affections
+of the finer parts of our system. The ill effects of bad weather appear
+often no otherwise than in a melancholy and dejection of spirits; though
+without doubt, in this case, the bodily organs suffer first, and the
+mind through these organs.
+
+
+SECTION XVII.
+
+THE EFFECTS OF BLACKNESS.
+
+Blackness is but a _partial darkness_; and therefore it derives some of
+its powers from being mixed and surrounded with colored bodies. In its
+own nature, it cannot be considered as a color. Black bodies, reflecting
+none, or but a few rays, with regard to sight, are but as so many vacant
+spaces, dispersed among the objects we view. When the eye lights on one
+of these vacuities, after having been kept in some degree of tension by
+the play of the adjacent colors upon it, it suddenly falls into a
+relaxation; out of which it as suddenly recovers by a convulsive spring.
+To illustrate this: let us consider that when we intend to sit on a
+chair, and find it much lower than was expected, the shock is very
+violent; much more violent than could be thought from so slight a fall
+as the difference between one chair and another can possibly make. If,
+after descending a flight of stairs, we attempt inadvertently to take
+another step in the manner of the former ones, the shock is extremely
+rude and disagreeable: and by no art can we cause such a shock by the
+same means when we expect and prepare for it. When I say that this is
+owing to having the change made contrary to expectation; I do not mean
+solely, when the _mind_ expects. I mean likewise, that when any organ of
+sense is for some time affected in some one manner, if it be suddenly
+affected otherwise, there ensues a convulsive motion; such a convulsion
+as is caused when anything happens against the expectance of the mind.
+And though it may appear strange that such a change as produces a
+relaxation should immediately produce a sudden convulsion; it is yet
+most certainly so, and so in all the senses. Every one knows that sleep
+is a relaxation; and that silence, where nothing keeps the organs of
+hearing in action, is in general fittest to bring on this relaxation;
+yet when a sort of murmuring sounds dispose a man to sleep, let these
+sounds cease suddenly, and the person immediately awakes; that is, the
+parts are braced up suddenly, and he awakes. This I have often
+experienced myself, and I have heard the same from observing persons. In
+like manner, if a person in broad daylight were falling asleep, to
+introduce a sudden darkness would prevent his sleep for that time,
+though silence and darkness in themselves, and not suddenly introduced,
+are very favorable to it. This I knew only by conjecture on the analogy
+of the senses when I first digested these observations; but I have since
+experienced it. And I have often experienced, and so have a thousand
+others, that on the first inclining towards sleep, we have been suddenly
+awakened with a most violent start; and that this start was generally
+preceded by a sort of dream of our falling down a precipice: whence does
+this strange motion arise, but from the too sudden relaxation of the
+body, which by some mechanism in nature restores itself by as quick and
+vigorous an exertion of the contracting power of the muscles? The dream
+itself is caused by this relaxation; and it is of too uniform a nature
+to be attributed to any other cause. The parts relax too suddenly, which
+is in the nature of falling; and this accident of the body induces this
+image in the mind. When we are in a confirmed state of health and vigor,
+as all changes are then less sudden, and less on the extreme, we can
+seldom complain of this disagreeable sensation.
+
+
+SECTION XVIII.
+
+THE EFFECTS OF BLACKNESS MODERATED.
+
+Though the effects of black be painful originally, we must not think
+they always continue so. Custom reconciles us to everything. After we
+have been used to the sight of black objects, the terror abates, and the
+smoothness and glossiness, or some agreeable accident of bodies so
+colored, softens in some measure the horror and sternness of their
+original nature; yet the nature of the original impression still
+continues. Black will always have something melancholy in it, because
+the sensory will always find the change to it from other colors too
+violent; or if it occupy the whole compass of the sight, it will then be
+darkness; and what was said of darkness will be applicable here. I do
+not purpose to go into all that might be said to illustrate this theory
+of the effects of light and darkness; neither will I examine all the
+different effects produced by the various modifications and mixtures of
+these two causes. If the foregoing observations have any foundation in
+nature, I conceive them very sufficient to account for all the phenomena
+that can arise from all the combinations of black with other colors. To
+enter into every particular, or to answer every objection, would be an
+endless labor. We have only followed the most leading roads; and we
+shall observe the same conduct in our inquiry into the cause of beauty.
+
+
+SECTION XIX.
+
+THE PHYSICAL CAUSE OF LOVE.
+
+When we have before us such objects as excite love and complacency, the
+body is affected, so far as I could observe, much in the following
+manner: the head reclines something on one side; the eyelids are more
+closed than usual, and the eyes roll gently with an inclination to the
+object; the mouth is a little opened, and the breath drawn slowly, with
+now and then a low sigh; the whole body is composed, and the hands fall
+idly to the sides. All this is accompanied with an inward sense of
+melting and languor. These appearances are always proportioned to the
+degree of beauty in the object, and of sensibility in the observer. And
+this gradation from the highest pitch of beauty and sensibility, even to
+the lowest of mediocrity and indifference, and their correspondent
+effects, ought to be kept in view, else this description will seem
+exaggerated, which it certainly is not. But from this description it is
+almost impossible not to conclude that beauty acts by relaxing the
+solids of the whole system. There are all the appearances of such a
+relaxation; and a relaxation somewhat below the natural tone seems to me
+to be the cause of all positive pleasure. Who is a stranger to that
+manner of expression so common in all times and in all countries, of
+being softened, relaxed, enervated, dissolved, melted away by pleasure?
+The universal voice of mankind, faithful to their feelings, concurs in
+affirming this uniform and general effect: and although some odd and
+particular instance may perhaps be found, wherein there appears a
+considerable degree of positive pleasure, without all the characters of
+relaxation, we must not therefore reject the conclusion we had drawn
+from a concurrence of many experiments; but we must still retain it,
+subjoining the exceptions which may occur according to the judicious
+rule laid down by Sir Isaac Newton in the third book of his Optics. Our
+position will, I conceive, appear confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt,
+if we can show that such things as we have already observed to be the
+genuine constituents of beauty have each of them, separately taken, a
+natural tendency to relax the fibres. And if it must be allowed us, that
+the appearance of the human body, when all these constituents are united
+together before the sensory, further favors this opinion, we may
+venture, I believe, to conclude that the passion called love is produced
+by this relaxation. By the same method of reasoning which we have used
+in the inquiry into the causes of the sublime, we may likewise conclude,
+that as a beautiful object presented to the sense, by causing a
+relaxation of the body, produces the passion of love in the mind; so if
+by any means the passion should first have its origin in the mind, a
+relaxation of the outward organs will as certainly ensue in a degree
+proportioned to the cause.
+
+
+SECTION XX.
+
+WHY SMOOTHNESS IS BEAUTIFUL.
+
+It is to explain the true cause of visual beauty that I call in the
+assistance of the other senses. If it appears that _smoothness_ is a
+principal cause of pleasure to the touch, taste, smell, and hearing, it
+will be easily admitted a constituent of visual beauty; especially as we
+have before shown, that this quality is found almost without exception
+in all bodies that are by general consent held beautiful. There can be
+no doubt that bodies which are rough and angular, rouse and vellicate
+the organs of feeling, causing a sense of pain, which consists in the
+violent tension or contraction of the muscular fibres. On the contrary,
+the application of smooth bodies relaxes; gentle stroking with a smooth
+hand allays violent pains and cramps, and relaxes the suffering parts
+from their unnatural tension; and it has therefore very often no mean
+effect in removing swellings and obstructions. The sense of feeling is
+highly gratified with smooth bodies. A bed smoothly laid, and soft, that
+is, where the resistance is every way inconsiderable, is a great luxury,
+disposing to an universal relaxation, and inducing beyond anything else
+that species of it called sleep.
+
+
+SECTION XXI.
+
+SWEETNESS, ITS NATURE.
+
+Nor is it only in the touch that smooth bodies cause positive pleasure
+by relaxation. In the smell and taste, we find all things agreeable to
+them, and which are commonly called sweet, to be of a smooth nature, and
+that they all evidently tend to relax their respective sensories. Let us
+first consider the taste. Since it is most easy to inquire into the
+property of liquids, and since all things seem to want a fluid vehicle
+to make them tasted at all, I intend rather to consider the liquid than
+the solid parts of our food. The vehicles of all tastes are _water_ and
+_oil_. And what determines the taste is some salt, which affects
+variously according to its nature, or its manner of being combined with
+other things. Water and oil, simply considered, are capable of giving
+some pleasure to the taste. Water, when simple, is insipid, inodorous,
+colorless, and smooth; it is found, when _not cold_, to be a great
+resolver of spasms, and lubricator of the fibres; this power it probably
+owes to its smoothness. For as fluidity depends, according to the most
+general opinion, on the roundness, smoothness, and weak cohesion of the
+component parts of any body, and as water acts merely as a simple fluid,
+it follows that the cause of its fluidity is likewise the cause of its
+relaxing quality, namely, the smoothness and slippery texture of its
+parts. The other fluid vehicle of tastes is _oil_. This too, when
+simple, is insipid, inodorous, colorless, and smooth to the touch and
+taste. It is smoother than water, and in many cases yet more relaxing.
+Oil is in some degree pleasant to the eye, the touch, and the taste,
+insipid as it is. Water is not so grateful; which I do not know on what
+principle to account for, other than that water is not so soft and
+smooth. Suppose that to this oil or water were added a certain quantity
+of a specific salt, which had a power of putting the nervous papillæ of
+the tongue into a gentle vibratory motion; as suppose sugar dissolved in
+it. The smoothness of the oil and the vibratory power of the salt cause
+the sense we call sweetness. In all sweet bodies, sugar, or a substance
+very little different from sugar, is constantly found. Every species of
+salt, examined by the microscope, has its own distinct, regular,
+invariable form. That of nitre is a pointed oblong; that of sea-salt an
+exact cube; that of sugar a perfect globe. If you have tried how smooth
+globular bodies, as the marbles with which boys amuse themselves, have
+affected the touch when they are rolled backward and forward and over
+one another, you will easily conceive how sweetness, which consists in a
+salt of such nature, affects the taste; for a single globe (though
+somewhat pleasant to the feeling), yet by the regularity of its form,
+and the somewhat too sudden deviation of its parts from a right line, is
+nothing near so pleasant to the touch as several globes, where the hand
+gently rises to one and falls to another; and this pleasure is greatly
+increased if the globes are in motion, and sliding over one another; for
+this soft variety prevents that weariness, which the uniform disposition
+of the several globes would otherwise produce. Thus in sweet liquors,
+the parts of the fluid vehicle, though most probably round, are yet so
+minute, as to conceal the figure of their component parts from the
+nicest inquisition of the microscope; and consequently, being so
+excessively minute, they have a sort of flat simplicity to the taste,
+resembling the effects of plain smooth bodies to the touch; for if a
+body be composed of round parts excessively small, and packed pretty
+closely together, the surface will be both to the sight and touch as if
+it were nearly plain and smooth. It is clear from their unveiling their
+figure to the microscope, that the particles of sugar are considerably
+larger than those of water or oil, and consequently that their effects
+from their roundness will be more distinct and palpable to the nervous
+papillæ of that nice organ the tongue; they will induce that sense
+called sweetness, which in a weak manner we discover in oil, and in a
+yet weaker in water; for, insipid as they are, water and oil are in some
+degree sweet; and it may be observed, that insipid things of all kinds
+approach more nearly to the nature of sweetness than to that of any
+other taste.
+
+
+SECTION XXII.
+
+SWEETNESS RELAXING.
+
+In the other senses we have remarked, that smooth things are relaxing.
+Now it ought to appear that sweet things, which are the smooth of taste,
+are relaxing too. It is remarkable, that in some languages soft and
+sweet have but one name. _Doux_ in French signifies soft as well as
+sweet. The Latin _dulcis_, and the Italian _dolce_, have in many cases
+the same double signification. That sweet things are generally relaxing,
+is evident; because all such, especially those which are most oily,
+taken frequently, or in a large quantity, very much enfeeble the tone of
+the stomach. Sweet smells, which bear a great affinity to sweet tastes,
+relax very remarkably. The smell of flowers disposes people to
+drowsiness; and this relaxing effect is further apparent from the
+prejudice which people of weak nerves receive from their use. It were
+worth while to examine, whether tastes of this kind, sweet ones, tastes
+that are caused by smooth oils and a relaxing salt, are not the
+originally pleasant tastes. For many, which use has rendered such, were
+not at all agreeable at first. The way to examine this is, to try what
+nature has originally provided for us, which she has undoubtedly made
+originally pleasant; and to analyze this provision. _Milk_ is the first
+support of our childhood. The component parts of this are water, oil,
+and a sort of a very sweet salt, called the sugar of milk. All these
+when blended have a great _smoothness_ to the taste, and a relaxing
+quality to the skin. The next thing children covet is _fruit_, and of
+fruits those principally which are sweet; and every one knows that the
+sweetness of fruit is caused by a subtle oil, and such a salt as that
+mentioned in the last section. Afterwards custom, habit, the desire of
+novelty, and a thousand other causes, confound, adulterate, and change
+our palates, so that we can no longer reason with any satisfaction about
+them. Before we quit this article, we must observe, that as smooth
+things are, as such, agreeable to the taste, and are found of a relaxing
+quality; so on the other hand, things which are found by experience to
+be of a strengthening quality, and fit to brace the fibres, are almost
+universally rough and pungent to the taste, and in many cases rough even
+to the touch. We often apply the quality of sweetness, metaphorically,
+to visual objects. For the better carrying on this remarkable analogy
+of the senses, we may here call sweetness the beautiful of the taste.
+
+
+SECTION XXIII.
+
+VARIATION, WHY BEAUTIFUL.
+
+Another principal property of beautiful objects is, that the line of
+their parts is continually varying its direction; but it varies it by a
+very insensible deviation; it never varies it so quickly as to surprise,
+or by the sharpness of its angle to cause any twitching or convulsion of
+the optic nerve. Nothing long continued in the same manner, nothing very
+suddenly varied, can be beautiful; because both are opposite to that
+agreeable relaxation which is the characteristic effect of beauty. It is
+thus in all the senses. A motion in a right line is that manner of
+moving, next to a very gentle descent, in which we meet the least
+resistance; yet it is not that manner of moving, which next to a
+descent, wearies us the least. Rest certainly tends to relax: yet there
+is a species of motion which relaxes more than rest; a gentle
+oscillatory motion, a rising and falling. Rocking sets children to sleep
+better than absolute rest; there is indeed scarcely anything at that
+age, which gives more pleasure than to be gently lifted up and down; the
+manner of playing which their nurses use with children, and the weighing
+and swinging used afterwards by themselves as a favorite amusement,
+evince this very sufficiently. Most people must have observed the sort
+of sense they have had on being swiftly drawn in an easy coach on a
+smooth turf, with gradual ascents and declivities. This will give a
+better idea of the beautiful, and point out its probable cause better,
+than almost anything else. On the contrary, when one is hurried over a
+rough, rocky, broken road, the pain felt by these sudden inequalities
+shows why similar sights, feelings, and sounds, are so contrary to
+beauty: and with regard to the feeling, it is exactly the same in its
+effect, or very nearly the same, whether, for instance, I move my hand
+along the surface of a body of a certain shape, or whether such a body
+is moved along my hand. But to bring this analogy of the senses home to
+the eye; if a body presented to that sense has such a waving surface,
+that the rays of light reflected from it are in a continual insensible
+deviation from the strongest to the weakest (which is always the case in
+a surface gradually unequal), it must be exactly similar in its effects
+on the eye and touch; upon the one of which it operates directly, on the
+other indirectly. And this body will be beautiful if the lines which
+compose its surface are not continued, even so varied, in a manner that
+may weary or dissipate the attention. The variation itself must be
+continually varied.
+
+
+SECTION XXIV.
+
+CONCERNING SMALLNESS.
+
+To avoid a sameness which may arise from the too frequent repetition of
+the same reasonings, and of illustrations of the same nature, I will not
+enter very minutely into every particular that regards beauty, as it is
+founded on the disposition of its quantity, or its quantity itself. In
+speaking of the magnitude of bodies there is great uncertainty, because
+the ideas of great and small are terms almost entirely relative to the
+species of the objects, which are infinite. It is true, that having once
+fixed the species of any object, and the dimensions common in the
+individuals of that species, we may observe some that exceed, and some
+that fall short of, the ordinary standard: those which greatly exceed
+are, by that excess, provided the species itself be not very small,
+rather great and terrible than beautiful; but as in the animal world,
+and in a good measure in the vegetable world likewise, the qualities
+that constitute beauty may possibly be united to things of greater
+dimensions; when they are so united, they constitute a species something
+different both from the sublime and beautiful, which I have before
+called _fine_; but this kind, I imagine, has not such a power on the
+passions, either as vast bodies have which are endued with the
+correspondent qualities of the sublime; or as the qualities of beauty
+have when united in a small object. The affection produced by large
+bodies adorned with the spoils of beauty, is a tension continually
+relieved; which approaches to the nature of mediocrity. But if I were to
+say how I find myself affected upon such occasions, I should say that
+the sublime suffers less by being united to some of the qualities of
+beauty, than beauty does by being joined to greatness of quantity, or
+any other properties of the sublime. There is something so overruling in
+whatever inspires us with awe, in all things which belong ever so
+remotely to terror, that nothing else can stand in their presence. There
+lie the qualities of beauty either dead or unoperative; or at most
+exerted to mollify the rigor and sternness of the terror, which is the
+natural concomitant of greatness. Besides the extraordinary great in
+every species, the opposite to this, the dwarfish and diminutive, ought
+to be considered. Littleness, merely as such, has nothing contrary to
+the idea of beauty. The humming-bird, both in shape and coloring, yields
+to none of the winged species, of which it is the least; and perhaps his
+beauty is enhanced by his smallness. But there are animals, which, when
+they are extremely small, are rarely (if ever) beautiful. There is a
+dwarfish size of men and women, which is almost constantly so gross and
+massive in comparison of their height, that they present us with a very
+disagreeable image. But should a man be found not above two or three
+feet high, supposing such a person to have all the parts of his body of
+a delicacy suitable to such a size, and otherwise endued with the common
+qualities of other beautiful bodies, I am pretty well convinced that a
+person of such a stature might be considered as beautiful; might be the
+object of love; might give us very pleasing ideas on viewing him. The
+only thing which could possibly interpose to check our pleasure is, that
+such creatures, however formed, are unusual, and are often therefore
+considered as something monstrous. The large and gigantic, though very
+compatible with the sublime, is contrary to the beautiful. It is
+impossible to suppose a giant the object of love. When we let our
+imagination loose in romance, the ideas we naturally annex to that size
+are those of tyranny, cruelty, injustice, and everything horrid and
+abominable. We paint the giant ravaging the country, plundering the
+innocent traveller, and afterwards gorged with his half-living flesh:
+such are Polyphemus, Cacus, and others, who make so great a figure in
+romances and heroic poems. The event we attend to with the greatest
+satisfaction is their defeat and death. I do not remember, in all that
+multitude of deaths with which the Iliad is filled, that the fall of any
+man, remarkable for his great stature and strength, touches us with
+pity; nor does it appear that the author, so well read in human nature,
+ever intended it should. It is Simoisius, in the soft bloom of youth,
+torn from his parents, who tremble for a courage so ill suited to his
+strength; it is another hurried by war from the new embraces of his
+bride, young and fair, and a novice to the field, who melts us by his
+untimely fate. Achilles, in spite of the many qualities of beauty which
+Homer has bestowed on his outward form, and the many great virtues with
+which he has adorned his mind, can never make us love him. It may be
+observed, that Homer has given the Trojans, whose fate he has designed
+to excite our compassion, infinitely more of the amiable, social virtues
+than he has distributed among his Greeks. With regard to the Trojans,
+the passion he chooses to raise is pity; pity is a passion founded on
+love; and these _lesser_, and if I may say domestic virtues, are
+certainly the most amiable. But he has made the Greeks far their
+superiors in the politic and military virtues. The councils of Priam are
+weak; the arms of Hector comparatively feeble; his courage far below
+that of Achilles. Yet we love Priam more than Agamemnon, and Hector more
+than his conqueror Achilles. Admiration is the passion which Homer would
+excite in favor of the Greeks, and he has done it by bestowing on them
+the virtues which have but little to do with love. This short digression
+is perhaps not wholly beside our purpose, where our business is to show
+that objects of great dimensions are incompatible with beauty, the more
+incompatible as they are greater; whereas the small, if ever they fail
+of beauty, this failure is not to be attributed to their size.
+
+
+SECTION XXV.
+
+OF COLOR.
+
+With regard to color, the disquisition is almost infinite; but I
+conceive the principles laid down in the beginning of this part are
+sufficient to account for the effects of them all, as well as for the
+agreeable effects of transparent bodies, whether fluid or solid. Suppose
+I look at a bottle of muddy liquor, of a blue or red color; the blue or
+red rays cannot pass clearly to the eye, but are suddenly and unequally
+stopped by the intervention of little opaque bodies, which without
+preparation change the idea, and change it too into one disagreeable in
+its own nature, conformably to the principles laid down in Sect. 24. But
+when the ray passes without such opposition through the glass or liquor,
+when the glass or liquor is quite transparent, the light is sometimes
+softened in the passage, which makes it more agreeable even as light;
+and the liquor reflecting all the rays of its proper color _evenly_, it
+has such an effect on the eye, as smooth opaque bodies have on the eye
+and touch. So that the pleasure here is compounded of the softness of
+the transmitted, and the evenness of the reflected light. This pleasure
+may be heightened by the common principles in other things, if the shape
+of the glass which holds the transparent liquor be so judiciously
+varied, as to present the color gradually and interchangeably, weakened
+and strengthened with all the variety which judgment in affairs of this
+nature shall suggest. On a review of all that has been said of the
+effects, as well as the causes of both, it will appear that the sublime
+and beautiful are built on principles very different, and that their
+affections are as different: the great has terror for its basis, which,
+when it is modified, causes that emotion in the mind, which I have
+called astonishment; the beautiful is founded on mere positive pleasure,
+and excites in the soul that feeling which is called love. Their causes
+have made the subject of this fourth part.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[29] Part I. sect. 7.
+
+[30] Part I. sect. 10.
+
+[31] I do not here enter into the question debated among physiologists,
+whether pain be the effect of a contraction, or a tension of the nerves.
+Either will serve my purpose; for by tension, I mean no more than a
+violent pulling of the fibres which compose any muscle or membrane, in
+whatever way this is done.
+
+[32] Part II. sect. 2.
+
+[33] Part II. sect. 1.
+
+[34] Part I. sect. 7. Part II. sect. 2.
+
+[35] Part II. sect. 7.
+
+[36] Part II. sect. 10.
+
+[37] Part II. sect. 3.
+
+
+
+
+PART V.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+OF WORDS.
+
+Natural objects affect us by the laws of that connection which
+Providence has established between certain motions and configurations of
+bodies, and certain consequent feelings in our mind. Painting affects in
+the same manner, but with the superadded pleasure of imitation.
+Architecture affects by the laws of nature and the law of reason; from
+which latter result the rules of proportion, which make a work to be
+praised or censured, in the whole or in some part, when the end for
+which it was designed is or is not properly answered. But as to words;
+they seem to me to affect us in a manner very different from that in
+which we are affected by natural objects, or by painting or
+architecture; yet words have as considerable a share in exciting ideas
+of beauty and of the sublime as many of those, and sometimes a much
+greater than any of them; therefore an inquiry into the manner by which
+they excite such emotions is far from being unnecessary in a discourse
+of this kind.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+THE COMMON EFFECTS OF POETRY, NOT BY RAISING IDEAS OF THINGS.
+
+The common notion of the power of poetry and eloquence, as well as that
+of words in ordinary conversation, is, that they affect the mind by
+raising in it ideas of those things for which custom has appointed them
+to stand. To examine the truth of this notion, it may be requisite to
+observe that words may be divided into three sorts. The first are such
+as represent many simple ideas _united by nature_ to form some one
+determinate composition, as man, horse, tree, castle, &c. These I call
+_aggregate words_. The second are they that stand for one simple idea of
+such compositions, and no more; as red, blue, round, square, and the
+like. These I call _simple abstract_ words. The third are those which
+are formed by an union, an _arbitrary_ union of both the others, and of
+the various relations between them in greater or lesser degrees of
+complexity; as virtue, honor, persuasion, magistrate, and the like.
+These I call _compound abstract_ words. Words, I am sensible, are
+capable of being classed into more curious distinctions; but these seem
+to be natural, and enough for our purpose; and they are disposed in that
+order in which they are commonly taught, and in which the mind gets the
+ideas they are substituted for. I shall begin with the third sort of
+words; compound abstracts, such as virtue, honor, persuasion, docility.
+Of these I am convinced, that whatever power they may have on the
+passions, they do not derive it from any representation raised in the
+mind of the things for which they stand. As compositions, they are not
+real essences, and hardly cause, I think, any real ideas. Nobody, I
+believe, immediately on hearing the sounds, virtue, liberty, or honor,
+conceives any precise notions of the particular modes of action and
+thinking, together with the mixed and simple ideas, and the several
+relations of them for which these words are substituted; neither has he
+any general idea compounded of them; for if he had, then some of those
+particular ones, though indistinct perhaps, and confused, might come
+soon to be perceived. But this, I take it, is hardly ever the case. For,
+put yourself upon analyzing one of these words, and you must reduce it
+from one set of general words to another, and then into the simple
+abstracts and aggregates, in a much longer series than may be at first
+imagined, before any real idea emerges to light, before you come to
+discover anything like the first principles of such compositions; and
+when you have made such a discovery of the original ideas, the effect of
+the composition is utterly lost. A train of thinking of this sort is
+much too long to be pursued in the ordinary ways of conversation; nor is
+it at all necessary that it should. Such words are in reality but mere
+sounds; but they are sounds which being used on particular occasions,
+wherein we receive some good, or suffer some evil; or see others
+affected with good or evil; or which we hear applied to other
+interesting things or events; and being applied in such a variety of
+cases, that we know readily by habit to what things they belong, they
+produce in the mind, whenever they are afterwards mentioned, effects
+similar to those of their occasions. The sounds being often used without
+reference to any particular occasion, and carrying still their first
+impressions, they at last utterly lose their connection with the
+particular occasions that gave rise to them; yet the sound, without any
+annexed notion, continues to operate as before.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+GENERAL WORDS BEFORE IDEAS.
+
+Mr. Locke has somewhere observed, with his usual sagacity, that most
+general words, those belonging to virtue and vice, good and evil
+especially, are taught before the particular modes of action to which
+they belong are presented to the mind; and with them, the love of the
+one, and the abhorrence of the other; for the minds of children are so
+ductile, that a nurse, or any person about a child, by seeming pleased
+or displeased with anything, or even any word, may give the disposition
+of the child a similar turn. When, afterwards, the several occurrences
+in life come to be applied to these words, and that which is pleasant
+often appears under the name of evil; and what is disagreeable to nature
+is called good and virtuous; a strange confusion of ideas and affections
+arises in the minds of many; and an appearance of no small contradiction
+between their notions and their actions. There are many who love virtue
+and who detest vice, and this not from hypocrisy or affectation, who
+notwithstanding very frequently act ill and wickedly in particulars
+without the least remorse; because these particular occasions never came
+into view, when the passions on the side of virtue were so warmly
+affected by certain words heated originally by the breath of others; and
+for this reason, it is hard to repeat certain sets of words, though
+owned by themselves unoperative, without being in some degree affected;
+especially if a warm and affecting tone of voice accompanies them, as
+suppose,
+
+  Wise, valiant, generous, good, and great.
+
+These words, by having no application, ought to be unoperative; but
+when words commonly sacred to great occasions are used, we are affected
+by them even without the occasions. When words which have been generally
+so applied are put together without any rational view, or in such a
+manner that they do not rightly agree with each other, the style is
+called bombast. And it requires in several cases much good sense and
+experience to be guarded against the force of such language; for when
+propriety is neglected, a greater number of these affecting words may be
+taken into the service, and a greater variety may be indulged in
+combining them.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+THE EFFECT OF WORDS.
+
+If words have all their possible extent of power, three effects arise in
+the mind of the hearer. The first is, the _sound_; the second, the
+_picture_, or representation of the thing signified by the sound; the
+third is, the _affection_ of the soul produced by one or by both of the
+foregoing. _Compounded abstract_ words, of which we have been speaking,
+(honor, justice, liberty, and the like,) produce the first and the last
+of these effects, but not the second. _Simple abstracts_ are used to
+signify some one simple idea without much adverting to others which may
+chance to attend it, as blue, green, hot, cold, and the like; these are
+capable of affecting all three of the purposes of words; as the
+_aggregate_ words, man, castle, horse, &c. are in a yet higher degree.
+But I am of opinion, that the most general effect, even of these words,
+does not arise from their forming pictures of the several things they
+would represent in the imagination; because, on a very diligent
+examination of my own mind, and getting others to consider theirs, I do
+not find that once in twenty times any such picture is formed, and when
+it is, there is most commonly a particular effort of the imagination for
+that purpose. But the aggregate words operate, as I said of the
+compound-abstracts, not by presenting any image to the mind, but by
+having from use the same effect on being mentioned, that their original
+has when it is seen. Suppose we were to read a passage to this effect:
+"The river Danube rises in a moist and mountainous soil in the heart of
+Germany, where, winding to and fro, it waters several principalities,
+until, turning into Austria, and laving the walls of Vienna, it passes
+into Hungary; there with a vast flood, augmented by the Save and the
+Drave, it quits Christendom, and rolling through the barbarous countries
+which border on Tartary, it enters by many mouths in the Black Sea." In
+this description many things are mentioned, as mountains, rivers,
+cities, the sea, &c. But let anybody examine himself, and see whether he
+has had impressed on his imagination any pictures of a river, mountain,
+watery soil, Germany, &c. Indeed it is impossible, in the rapidity and
+quick succession of words in conversation, to have ideas both of the
+sound of the word, and of the thing represented; besides, some words,
+expressing real essences, are so mixed with others of a general and
+nominal import, that it is impracticable to jump from sense to thought,
+from particulars to generals, from things to words, in such a manner as
+to answer the purposes of life; nor is it necessary that we should.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+EXAMPLES THAT WORDS MAY AFFECT WITHOUT RAISING IMAGES.
+
+I find it very hard to persuade several that their passions are affected
+by words from whence they have no ideas; and yet harder to convince them
+that in the ordinary course of conversation we are sufficiently
+understood without raising any images of the things concerning which we
+speak. It seems to be an odd subject of dispute with any man, whether he
+has ideas in his mind or not. Of this, at first view, every man, in his
+own forum, ought to judge without appeal. But, strange as it may appear,
+we are often at a loss to know what ideas we have of things, or whether
+we have any ideas at all upon some subjects. It even requires a good
+deal of attention to be thoroughly satisfied on this head. Since I wrote
+these papers, I found two very striking instances of the possibility
+there is, that a man may hear words without having any idea of the
+things which they represent, and yet afterwards be capable of returning
+them to others, combined in a new way, and with great propriety, energy,
+and instruction. The first instance is that of Mr. Blacklock, a poet
+blind from his birth. Few men blessed with the most perfect sight can
+describe visual objects with more spirit and justness than this blind
+man; which cannot possibly be attributed to his having a clearer
+conception of the things he describes than is common to other persons.
+Mr. Spence, in an elegant preface which he has written to the works of
+this poet, reasons very ingeniously, and, I imagine, for the most part,
+very rightly, upon the cause of this extraordinary phenomenon; but I
+cannot altogether agree with him, that some improprieties in language
+and thought, which occur in these poems, have arisen from the blind
+poet's imperfect conception of visual objects, since such improprieties,
+and much greater, may be found in writers even of a higher class than
+Mr. Blacklock, and who, notwithstanding, possessed the faculty of seeing
+in its full perfection. Here is a poet doubtless as much affected by his
+own descriptions as any that reads them can be; and yet he is affected
+with this strong enthusiasm by things of which he neither has, nor can
+possibly have, any idea further than that of a bare sound: and why may
+not those who read his works be affected in the same manner that he was;
+with as little of any real ideas of the things described? The second
+instance is of Mr. Saunderson, professor of mathematics in the
+University of Cambridge. This learned man had acquired great knowledge
+in natural philosophy, in astronomy, and whatever sciences depend upon
+mathematical skill. What was the most extraordinary and the most to my
+purpose, he gave excellent lectures upon light and colors; and this man
+taught others the theory of those ideas which they had, and which he
+himself undoubtedly had not. But it is probable that the words red,
+blue, green, answered to him as well as the ideas of the colors
+themselves; for the ideas of greater or lesser degrees of refrangibility
+being applied to these words, and the blind man being instructed in what
+other respects they were found to agree or to disagree, it was as easy
+for him to reason upon the words as if he had been fully master of the
+ideas. Indeed it must be owned he could make no new discoveries in the
+way of experiment. He did nothing but what we do every day in common
+discourse. When I wrote this last sentence, and used the words _every
+day_ and _common discourse_, I had no images in my mind of any
+succession of time; nor of men in conference with each other; nor do I
+imagine that the reader will have any such ideas on reading it. Neither
+when I spoke of red, or blue, and green, as well as refrangibility, had
+I these several colors, or the rays of light passing into a different
+medium, and there diverted from their course, painted before me in the
+way of images. I know very well that the mind possesses a faculty of
+raising such images at pleasure; but then an act of the will is
+necessary to this; and in ordinary conversation or reading it is very
+rarely that any image at all is excited in the mind. If I say, "I shall
+go to Italy next summer," I am well understood. Yet I believe nobody has
+by this painted in his imagination the exact figure of the speaker
+passing by land or by water, or both; sometimes on horseback, sometimes
+in a carriage: with all the particulars of the journey. Still less has
+he any idea of Italy, the country to which I proposed to go; or of the
+greenness of the fields, the ripening of the fruits, and the warmth of
+the air, with the change to this from a different season, which are the
+ideas for which the word _summer_ is substituted; but least of all has
+he any image from the word _next_; for this word stands for the idea of
+many summers, with the exclusion of all but one: and surely the man who
+says _next summer_ has no images of such a succession, and such an
+exclusion. In short, it is not only of those ideas which are commonly
+called abstract, and of which no image at all can be formed, but even of
+particular, real beings, that we converse without having any idea of
+them excited in the imagination; as will certainly appear on a diligent
+examination of our own minds. Indeed, so little does poetry depend for
+its effect on the power of raising sensible images, that I am convinced
+it would lose a very considerable part of its energy, if this were the
+necessary result of all description. Because that union of affecting
+words, which is the most powerful of all poetical instruments, would
+frequently lose its force along with its propriety and consistency, if
+the sensible images were always excited. There is not, perhaps, in the
+whole Æneid a more grand and labored passage than the description of
+Vulcan's cavern in Etna, and the works that are there carried on. Virgil
+dwells particularly on the formation of the thunder which he describes
+unfinished under the hammers of the Cyclops. But what are the principles
+of this extraordinary composition?
+
+    Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
+    Addiderant; rutili tres ignis, et alitis austri:
+    Fulgores nunc terrificos, sonitumque, metumque
+    Miscebant operi, flammisque sequacibus iras.
+
+This seems to me admirably sublime: yet if we attend coolly to the kind
+of sensible images which a combination of ideas of this sort must form,
+the chimeras of madmen cannot appear more wild and absurd than such a
+picture. "_Three rays of twisted showers, three of watery clouds, three
+of fire, and three of the winged south wind; then mixed they in the work
+terrific lightnings, and sound, and fear, and anger, with pursuing
+flames._" This strange composition is formed into a gross body; it is
+hammered by the Cyclops, it is in part polished, and partly continues
+rough. The truth is, if poetry gives us a noble assemblage of words
+corresponding to many noble ideas, which are connected by circumstances
+of time or place, or related to each other as cause and effect, or
+associated in any natural way, they may be moulded together in any form,
+and perfectly answer their end. The picturesque connection is not
+demanded; because no real picture is formed; nor is the effect of the
+description at all the less upon this account. What is said of Helen by
+Priam and the old men of his council, is generally thought to give us
+the highest possible idea of that fatal beauty.
+
+    [Greek:
+    Ou nemesis, Trôas kai euknêmidas 'Achaious
+    Toiêd' amphi gunaiki polun chronon algea paschein
+    Ainôs athanatêsi theês eis ôpa eoiken.]
+
+   "They cried, No wonder such celestial charms
+    For nine long years have set the world in arms;
+    What winning graces! what majestic mien!
+    She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen."
+
+                                        POPE.
+
+Here is not one word said of the particulars of her beauty; nothing
+which can in the least help us to any precise idea of her person; but
+yet we are much more touched by this manner of mentioning her, than by
+those long and labored descriptions of Helen, whether handed down by
+tradition, or formed by fancy, which are to be met with in some authors.
+I am sure it affects me much more than the minute description which
+Spenser has given of Belphebe; though I own that there are parts, in
+that description, as there are in all the descriptions of that excellent
+writer, extremely fine and poetical. The terrible picture which
+Lucretius has drawn of religion in order to display the magnanimity of
+his philosophical hero in opposing her, is thought to be designed with
+great boldness and spirit:--
+
+    Humana ante oculos foedè cum vita jaceret,
+    In terris, oppressa gravi sub religione,
+    Quæ caput e coeli regionibus ostendebat
+    Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans;
+    Primus Graius homo mortales tollere contra
+    Est oculos ausus.
+
+What idea do you derive from so excellent a picture? none at all, most
+certainly: neither has the poet said a single word which might in the
+least serve to mark a single limb or feature of the phantom, which he
+intended to represent in all the horrors imagination can conceive. In
+reality, poetry and rhetoric do not succeed in exact description so well
+as painting does; their business is, to affect rather by sympathy than
+imitation; to display rather the effect of things on the mind of the
+speaker, or of others, than to present a clear idea of the things
+themselves. This is their most extensive province, and that in which
+they succeed the best.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+POETRY NOT STRICTLY AN IMITATIVE ART.
+
+Hence we may observe that poetry, taken in its most general sense,
+cannot with strict propriety be called an art of imitation. It is indeed
+an imitation so far as it describes the manners and passions of men
+which their words can express; where _animi motus effert interprete
+lingua_. There it is strictly imitation; and all merely _dramatic_
+poetry is of this sort. But _descriptive_ poetry operates chiefly by
+_substitution_; by the means of sounds, which by custom have the effect
+of realities. Nothing is an imitation further than as it resembles some
+other thing; and words undoubtedly have no sort of resemblance to the
+ideas for which they stand.
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+HOW WORDS INFLUENCE THE PASSIONS.
+
+Now, as words affect, not by any original power, but by representation,
+it might be supposed, that their influence over the passions should be
+but light; yet it is quite otherwise; for we find by experience, that
+eloquence and poetry are as capable, nay indeed much more capable, of
+making deep and lively impressions than any other arts, and even than
+nature itself in very many cases. And this arises chiefly from these
+three causes. First, that we take an extraordinary part in the passions
+of others, and that we are easily affected and brought into sympathy by
+any tokens which are shown of them; and there are no tokens which can
+express all the circumstances of most passions so fully as words; so
+that if a person speaks upon any subject, he can not only convey the
+subject to you, but likewise the manner in which he is himself affected
+by it. Certain it is, that the influence of most things on our passions
+is not so much from the things themselves, as from our opinions
+concerning them; and these again depend very much on the opinions of
+other men, conveyable for the most part by words only. Secondly, there
+are many things of a very affecting nature, which can seldom occur in
+the reality, but the words that represent them often do; and thus they
+have an opportunity of making a deep impression and taking root in the
+mind, whilst the idea of the reality was transient; and to some perhaps
+never really occurred in any shape, to whom it is notwithstanding very
+affecting, as war, death, famine, &c. Besides many ideas have never been
+at all presented to the senses of any men but by words, as God, angels,
+devils, heaven, and hell, all of which have however a great influence
+over the passions. Thirdly, by words we have it in our power to make
+such _combinations_ as we cannot possibly do otherwise. By this power of
+combining we are able, by the addition of well-chosen circumstances, to
+give a new life and force to the simple object. In painting we may
+represent any fine figure we please; but we never can give it those
+enlivening touches which it may receive from words. To represent an
+angel in a picture, you can only draw a beautiful young man winged: but
+what painting can furnish out anything so grand as the addition of one
+word, "the angel of the _Lord_"? It is true, I have here no clear idea;
+but these words affect the mind more than the sensible image did; which
+is all I contend for. A picture of Priam dragged to the altar's foot,
+and there murdered, if it were well executed, would undoubtedly be very
+moving; but there are very aggravating circumstances, which it could
+never represent:
+
+     Sanguine foedantem _quos ipse sacraverat_ ignes.
+
+As a further instance, let us consider those lines of Milton, where he
+describes the travels of the fallen angels through their dismal
+habitation:
+
+          "O'er many a dark and dreary vale
+    They passed, and many a region dolorous;
+    O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp;
+    Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,
+    A universe of death."
+
+Here is displayed the force of union in
+
+   "Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades"
+
+which yet would lose the greatest part of their effect, if they were not
+the
+
+   "Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades--of _Death_."
+
+
+This idea or this affection caused by a word, which nothing but a word
+could annex to the others, raises a very great degree of the sublime,
+and this sublime is raised yet higher by what follows, a "_universe of
+death_." Here are again two ideas not presentable but by language, and
+an union of them great and amazing beyond conception; if they may
+properly be called ideas which present no distinct image to the mind;
+but still it will be difficult to conceive how words can move the
+passions which belong to real objects, without representing these
+objects clearly. This is difficult to us, because we do not sufficiently
+distinguish, in our observations upon language, between a clear
+expression and a strong expression. These are frequently confounded with
+each other, though they are in reality extremely different. The former
+regards the understanding, the latter belongs to the passions. The one
+describes a thing as it is, the latter describes it as it is felt. Now,
+as there is a moving tone of voice, an impassioned countenance, an
+agitated gesture, which affect independently of the things about which
+they are exerted, so there are words, and certain dispositions of words,
+which being peculiarly devoted to passionate subjects, and always used
+by those who are under the influence of any passion, touch and move us
+more than those which far more clearly and distinctly express the
+subject-matter. We yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The
+truth is, all verbal description, merely as naked description, though
+never so exact, conveys so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing
+described, that it could scarcely have the smallest effect, if the
+speaker did not call in to his aid those modes of speech that mark a
+strong and lively feeling in himself. Then, by the contagion of our
+passions, we catch a fire already kindled in another, which probably
+might never have been struck out by the object described. Words, by
+strongly conveying the passions by those means which we have already
+mentioned, fully compensate for their weakness in other respects. It may
+be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for
+their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in
+strength. The French language has that perfection and that defect.
+Whereas the Oriental tongues, and in general the languages of most
+unpolished people, have a great force and energy of expression, and this
+is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of
+things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason
+they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and
+therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner. If
+the affection be well conveyed, it will work its effect without any
+clear idea, often without any idea at all of the thing which has
+originally given rise to it.
+
+It might be expected, from the fertility of the subject, that I should
+consider poetry, as it regards the sublime and beautiful, more at large;
+but it must be observed, that in this light it has been often and well
+handled already. It was not my design to enter into the criticism of the
+sublime and beautiful in any art, but to attempt to lay down such
+principles as may tend to ascertain, to distinguish, and to form a sort
+of standard for them; which purposes I thought might be best effected
+by an inquiry into the properties of such things in nature, as raise
+love and astonishment in us; and by showing in what manner they operated
+to produce these passions. Words were only so far to be considered as to
+show upon what principle they were capable of being the representatives
+of these natural things, and by what powers they were able to affect us
+often as strongly as the things they represent, and sometimes much more
+strongly.
+
+
+
+
+A
+
+SHORT ACCOUNT
+
+OF
+
+A LATE SHORT ADMINISTRATION.
+
+1766.
+
+
+The late administration came into employment, under the mediation of the
+Duke of Cumberland, on the tenth day of July, 1765; and was removed,
+upon a plan settled by the Earl of Chatham, on the thirtieth day of
+July, 1766, having lasted just one year and twenty days.
+
+In that space of time
+
+The distractions of the British empire were composed, by _the repeal of
+the American stamp act_;
+
+But the constitutional superiority of Great Britain was preserved by
+_the act for securing the dependence of the colonies_.
+
+_Private_ houses were relieved from the jurisdiction of the excise, by
+_the repeal of the cider tax_.
+
+The personal liberty of the subject was confirmed, by _the resolution
+against general warrants_.
+
+The lawful secrets of business and friendship were rendered inviolable,
+by _the resolution for condemning the seizure of papers_.
+
+The trade of America was set free from injudicious and ruinous
+impositions,--its revenue was improved, and settled upon a rational
+foundation,--its commerce extended with foreign countries; while all
+the advantages were secured to Great Britain, by _the act for repealing
+certain duties, and encouraging, regulating, and securing the trade of
+this kingdom, and the British dominions in America_.
+
+Materials were provided and insured to our manufactures,--the sale of
+these manufactures was increased,--the African trade preserved and
+extended,--the principles of the act of navigation pursued, and the plan
+improved,--and the trade for bullion rendered free, secure, and
+permanent, by _the act for opening certain ports in Dominica and
+Jamaica_.
+
+That administration was the first which proposed and encouraged public
+meetings and free consultations of merchants from all parts of the
+kingdom; by which means the truest lights have been received; great
+benefits have been already derived to manufactures and commerce; and the
+most extensive prospects are opened for further improvement.
+
+Under them, the interests of our northern and southern colonies, before
+that time jarring and dissonant, were understood, compared, adjusted,
+and perfectly reconciled. The passions and animosities of the colonies,
+by judicious and lenient measures, were allayed and composed, and the
+foundation laid for a lasting agreement amongst them.
+
+Whilst that administration provided for the liberty and commerce of
+their country, as the true basis of its power, they consulted its
+interests, they asserted its honor abroad, with temper and with
+firmness; by making an advantageous treaty of commerce with Russia; by
+obtaining a liquidation of the Canada bills, to the satisfaction of the
+proprietors; by reviving and raising from its ashes the negotiation for
+the Manilla ransom, which had been extinguished and abandoned by their
+predecessors.
+
+They treated their sovereign with decency; with reverence. They
+discountenanced, and, it is hoped, forever abolished, the dangerous and
+unconstitutional practice of removing military officers for their votes
+in Parliament. They firmly adhered to those friends of liberty, who had
+run all hazards in its cause; and provided for them in preference to
+every other claim.
+
+With the Earl of Bute they had no personal connection; no correspondence
+of councils. They neither courted him nor persecuted him. They practised
+no corruption; nor were they even suspected of it. They sold no offices.
+They obtained no reversions or pensions, either coming in or going out,
+for them selves, their families, or their dependents.
+
+In the prosecution of their measures they were traversed by an
+opposition of a new and singular character; an opposition of placemen
+and pensioners. They were supported by the confidence of the nation. And
+having held their offices under many difficulties and discouragements,
+they left them at the express command, as they had accepted them at the
+earnest request, of their royal master.
+
+These are plain facts; of a clear and public nature; neither extended by
+elaborate reasoning, nor heightened by the coloring of eloquence. They
+are the services of a single year.
+
+The removal of that administration from power is not to them premature;
+since they were in office long enough to accomplish many plans of public
+utility; and, by their perseverance and resolution, rendered the way
+smooth and easy to their successors; having left their king and their
+country in a much better condition than they found them. By the temper
+they manifest, they seem to have now no other wish than that their
+successors may do the public as real and as faithful service as they
+have done.
+
+
+
+
+OBSERVATIONS
+
+ON A LATE PUBLICATION,
+
+INTITULED
+
+"THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION."
+
+   "O Tite, si quid ego adjuvero curamve levasso,
+    Quæ nunc te coquit, et versat sub pectore fixa,
+    Ecquid erit pretii?"
+
+                                        ENN. ap. CIC.
+
+1769.
+
+
+Party divisions, whether on the whole operating for good or evil, are
+things inseparable from free government. This is a truth which, I
+believe, admits little dispute, having been established by the uniform
+experience of all ages. The part a good citizen ought to take in these
+divisions has been a matter of much deeper controversy. But God forbid
+that any controversy relating to our essential morals should admit of no
+decision. It appears to me, that this question, like most of the others
+which regard our duties in life, is to be determined by our station in
+it. Private men may be wholly neutral, and entirely innocent: but they
+who are legally invested with public trust, or stand on the high ground
+of rank and dignity, which is trust implied, can hardly in any case
+remain indifferent, without the certainty of sinking into
+insignificance; and thereby in effect deserting that post in which, with
+the fullest authority, and for the wisest purposes, the laws and
+institutions of their country have fixed them. However, if it be the
+office of those who are thus circumstanced, to take a decided part, it
+is no less their duty that it should be a sober one. It ought to be
+circumscribed by the same laws of decorum, and balanced by the same
+temper, which bound and regulate all the virtues. In a word, we ought to
+act in party with all the moderation which does not absolutely enervate
+that vigor, and quench that fervency of spirit, without which the best
+wishes for the public good must evaporate in empty speculation.
+
+It is probably from some such motives that the friends of a very
+respectable party in this kingdom have been hitherto silent. For these
+two years past, from one and the same quarter of politics, a continual
+fire has been kept upon them; sometimes from the unwieldy column of
+quartos and octavos; sometimes from the light squadrons of occasional
+pamphlets and flying sheets. Every month has brought on its periodical
+calumny. The abuse has taken every shape which the ability of the
+writers could give it; plain invective, clumsy raillery, misrepresented
+anecdote.[38] No method of vilifying the measures, the abilities, the
+intentions, or the persons which compose that body, has been omitted.
+
+On their part nothing was opposed but patience and character. It was a
+matter of the most serious and indignant affliction to persons who
+thought themselves in conscience bound to oppose a ministry dangerous
+from its very constitution, as well as its measures, to find themselves,
+whenever they faced their adversaries, continually attacked on the rear
+by a set of men who pretended to be actuated by motives similar to
+theirs. They saw that the plan long pursued, with but too fatal a
+success, was to break the strength of this kingdom, by frittering down
+the bodies which compose it, by fomenting bitter and sanguinary
+animosities, and by dissolving every tie of social affection and public
+trust. These virtuous men, such I am warranted by public opinion to call
+them, were resolved rather to endure everything, than co-operate in that
+design. A diversity of opinion upon almost every principle of politics
+had indeed drawn a strong line of separation between them and some
+others. However, they were desirous not to extend the misfortune by
+unnecessary bitterness; they wished to prevent a difference of opinion
+on the commonwealth from festering into rancorous and incurable
+hostility. Accordingly they endeavored that all past controversies
+should be forgotten; and that enough for the day should be the evil
+thereof. There is however a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a
+virtue. Men may tolerate injuries whilst they are only personal to
+themselves. But it is not the first of virtues to bear with moderation
+the indignities that are offered to our country. A piece has at length
+appeared, from the quarter of all the former attacks, which upon every
+public consideration demands an answer. Whilst persons more equal to
+this business may be engaged in affairs of greater moment, I hope I
+shall be excused, if, in a few hours of a time not very important, and
+from such materials as I have by me (more than enough however for this
+purpose), I undertake to set the facts and arguments of this wonderful
+performance in a proper light. I will endeavor to state what this piece
+is; the purpose for which I take it to have been written; and the
+effects (supposing it should have any effect at all) it must necessarily
+produce.
+
+This piece is called "The Present State of the Nation." It may be
+considered as a sort of digest of the avowed maxims of a certain
+political school, the effects of whose doctrines and practices this
+country will fuel long and severely. It is made up of a farrago of
+almost every topic which has been agitated on national affairs in
+parliamentary debate, or private conversation, for these last seven
+years. The oldest controversies are hauled out of the dust with which
+time and neglect had covered them. Arguments ten times repeated, a
+thousand times answered before, are here repeated again. Public accounts
+formerly printed and reprinted revolve once more, and find their old
+station in this sober meridian. All the commonplace lamentations upon
+the decay of trade, the increase of taxes, and the high price of labor
+and provisions, are here retailed again and again in the same tone with
+which they have drawled through columns of Gazetteers and Advertisers
+for a century together. Paradoxes which affront common sense, and
+uninteresting barren truths which generate no conclusion, are thrown in
+to augment unwieldy bulk, without adding anything to weight. Because two
+accusations are better than one, contradictions are set staring one
+another in the face, without even an attempt to reconcile them. And, to
+give the whole a sort of portentous air of labor and information, the
+table of the House of Commons is swept into this grand reservoir of
+politics.
+
+As to the composition, it bears a striking and whimsical resemblance to
+a funeral sermon, not only in the pathetic prayer with which it
+concludes, but in the style and tenor of the whole performance. It is
+piteously doleful, nodding every now and then towards dulness; well
+stored with pious frauds, and, like most discourses of the sort, much
+better calculated for the private advantage of the preacher than the
+edification of the hearers.
+
+The author has indeed so involved his subject, that it is frequently far
+from being easy to comprehend his meaning. It is happy for the public
+that it is never difficult to fathom his design. The apparent intention
+of this author is to draw the most aggravated, hideous and deformed
+picture of the state of this country, which his querulous eloquence,
+aided by the arbitrary dominion he assumes over fact, is capable of
+exhibiting. Had he attributed our misfortunes to their true cause, the
+injudicious tampering of bold, improvident, and visionary ministers at
+one period, or to their supine negligence and traitorous dissensions at
+another, the complaint had been just, and might have been useful. But
+far the greater and much the worst part of the state which he exhibits
+is owing, according to his representation, not to accidental and
+extrinsic mischiefs attendant on the nation, but to its radical weakness
+and constitutional distempers. All this however is not without purpose.
+The author is in hopes, that, when we are fallen into a fanatical terror
+for the national salvation, we shall then be ready to throw
+ourselves,--in a sort of precipitate trust, some strange disposition of
+the mind jumbled up of presumption and despair,--into the hands of the
+most pretending and forward undertaker. One such undertaker at least he
+has in readiness for our service. But let me assure this generous
+person, that however he may succeed in exciting our fears for the public
+danger, he will find it hard indeed to engage us to place any confidence
+in the system he proposes for our security.
+
+His undertaking is great. The purpose of this pamphlet, at which it
+aims directly or obliquely in every page, is to persuade the public of
+three or four of the most difficult points in the world,--that all the
+advantages of the late war were on the part of the Bourbon alliance;
+that the peace of Paris perfectly consulted the dignity and interest of
+this country; and that the American Stamp Act was a masterpiece of
+policy and finance; that the only good minister this nation has enjoyed
+since his Majesty's accession, is the Earl of Bute; and the only good
+managers of revenue we have seen are Lord Despenser and Mr. George
+Grenville; and, under the description of men of virtue and ability, he
+holds them out to us as the only persons fit to put our affairs in
+order. Let not the reader mistake me: he does not actually name these
+persons; but having highly applauded their conduct in all its parts, and
+heavily censured every other set of men in the kingdom, he then
+recommends us to his men of virtue and ability.
+
+Such is the author's scheme. Whether it will answer his purpose I know
+not. But surely that purpose ought to be a wonderfully good one, to
+warrant the methods he has taken to compass it. If the facts and
+reasonings in this piece are admitted, it is all over with us. The
+continuance of our tranquillity depends upon the compassion of our
+rivals. Unable to secure to ourselves the advantages of peace, we are at
+the same time utterly unfit for war. It is impossible, if this state of
+things be credited abroad, that we can have any alliance; all nations
+will fly from so dangerous a connection, lest, instead of being
+partakers of our strength, they should only become sharers in our ruin.
+If it is believed at home, all that firmness of mind, and dignified
+national courage, which used to be the great support of this isle
+against the powers of the world, must melt away, and fail within us.
+
+In such a state of things can it be amiss if I aim at holding out some
+comfort to the nation; another sort of comfort, indeed, than that which
+this writer provides for it; a comfort not from its physician, but from
+its constitution: if I attempt to show that all the arguments upon which
+he founds the decay of that constitution, and the necessity of that
+physician, are vain and frivolous? I will follow the author closely in
+his own long career, through the war, the peace, the finances, our
+trade, and our foreign politics: not for the sake of the particular
+measures which he discusses; that can be of no use; they are all
+decided; their good is all enjoyed, or their evil incurred: but for the
+sake of the principles of war, peace, trade, and finances. These
+principles are of infinite moment. They must come again and again under
+consideration; and it imports the public, of all things, that those of
+its ministers be enlarged, and just, and well confirmed, upon all these
+subjects. What notions this author entertains we shall see presently;
+notions in my opinion very irrational, and extremely dangerous; and
+which, if they should crawl from pamphlets into counsels, and be
+realized from private speculation into national measures, cannot fail of
+hastening and completing our ruin.
+
+This author, after having paid his compliment to the showy appearances
+of the late war in our favor, is in the utmost haste to tell you that
+these appearances were _fallacious_, that they were no more than an
+_imposition_.--I fear I must trouble the reader with a pretty long
+quotation, in order to set before him the more clearly this author's
+peculiar way of conceiving and reasoning:
+
+"Happily (the K.) was then advised by ministers, who did not suffer
+themselves to be dazzled by the glare of brilliant appearances; but,
+knowing them to be _fallacious_, they wisely resolved to profit of their
+splendor before our enemies should also _discover the imposition_.--The
+increase in the exports was found to have been occasioned chiefly by the
+demands of _our own fleets and armies_, and, instead of bringing wealth
+to the nation, was to be paid for by oppressive taxes upon the people of
+England. While the British seamen were consuming on board our men of war
+and privateers, foreign ships and foreign seamen were employed in the
+transportation of our merchandise; and the carrying trade, so great a
+source of wealth and marine, _was entirely engrossed by the neutral
+nations_. The number of British ships annually arriving in our ports was
+reduced 1756 sail, containing 92,559 tons, on a medium of the six years'
+war, compared with the six years of peace preceding it.--The conquest of
+the Havannah had, indeed, stopped the remittance of specie from Mexico
+to Spain; but it had not enabled England to seize it: on the contrary,
+our merchants suffered by the detention of the galleons, as their
+_correspondents in Spain were disabled from paying them for their goods
+sent to America. The loss of the trade to Old Spain was a further bar to
+an influx of specie_; and the attempt upon Portugal had not only
+deprived us of an import of bullion from thence, but the payment of our
+troops employed in its defence was a fresh drain opened for the
+diminution of our circulating specie.--The high premiums given for new
+loans had sunk the price of the old stock near a third of its original
+value; so that the purchasers had an obligation from the state to repay
+them with an addition of 33 per cent to their capital. Every new loan
+required new taxes to be imposed; new taxes must add to the price of our
+manufactures, _and lessen their consumption among foreigners_. The decay
+of our trade must necessarily _occasion a decrease of the public
+revenue_; and a deficiency of our funds must either be made up by fresh
+taxes, which would only add to the calamity, or our national credit must
+be destroyed, by showing the public creditors the inability of the
+nation to repay them their principal money.--Bounties had already been
+given for recruits which exceeded the year's wages of the ploughman and
+reaper; and as these were exhausted, and _husbandry stood still for want
+of hands_, the manufacturers were next to be tempted to quit the anvil
+and the loom by higher offers.--_France, bankrupt France, had no such
+calamities impending over her; her distresses were great, but they were
+immediate and temporary; her want of credit preserved her from a great
+increase of debt, and the loss of her ultramarine dominions lessened her
+expenses. Her colonies had, indeed, put themselves into the hands of the
+English; but the property of her subjects had been preserved by
+capitulations, and a way opened for making her those remittances which
+the war had before suspended, with as much security as in time of
+peace_.--Her armies in Germany had been hitherto prevented from seizing
+upon Hanover; but they continued to encamp on the same ground on which
+the first battle was fought; and, as it must ever happen from the policy
+of that government, _the last troops she sent into the field were
+always found to be the best, and her frequent losses only served to fill
+her regiments with better soldiers. The conquest of Hanover became
+therefore every campaign more probable_.--It is to be noted, that the
+French troops received subsistence only, for the last three years of the
+war; and that, although large arrears were due to them at its
+conclusion, the charge was the less during its continuance."[39]
+
+If any one be willing to see to how much greater lengths the author
+carries these ideas, he will recur to the book. This is sufficient for a
+specimen of his manner of thinking. I believe one reflection uniformly
+obtrudes itself upon every reader of these paragraphs. For what purpose,
+in any cause, shall we hereafter contend with France? Can we ever
+flatter ourselves that we shall wage a more successful war? If, on our
+part, in a war the most prosperous we ever carried on, by sea and by
+land, and in every part of the globe, attended with the unparalleled
+circumstance of an immense increase of trade and augmentation of
+revenue; if a continued series of disappointments, disgraces, and
+defeats, followed by public bankruptcy, on the part of France; if all
+these still leave her a gainer on the whole balance, will it not be
+downright frenzy in us ever to look her in the face again, or to contend
+with her any, even the most essential points, since victory and defeat,
+though by different ways, equally conduct us to our ruin? Subjection to
+France without a struggle will indeed be less for our honor, but on
+every principle of our author it must be more for our advantage.
+According to his representation of things, the question is only
+concerning the most easy fall. France had not discovered, our statesman
+tells us, at the end of that war, the triumphs of defeat, and the
+resources which are derived from bankruptcy. For my poor part, I do not
+wonder at their blindness. But the English ministers saw further. Our
+author has at length let foreigners also into the secret, and made them
+altogether as wise as ourselves. It is their own fault if (_vulgato
+imperii arcano_) they are imposed upon any longer. They now are apprised
+of the sentiments which the great candidate for the government of this
+great empire entertains; and they will act accordingly. They are taught
+our weakness and their own advantages.
+
+He tells the world,[40] that if France carries on the war against us in
+Germany, every loss she sustains contributes to the achievement of her
+conquest. If her armies are three years unpaid, she is the less
+exhausted by expense. If her credit is destroyed, she is the less
+oppressed with debt. If her troops are cut to pieces, they will by her
+policy (and a wonderful policy it is) be improved, and will be supplied
+with much better men. If the war is carried on in the colonies, he tells
+them[41] that the loss of her ultramarine dominions lessens her
+expenses, and insures her remittances:--
+
+    Per damna, per cædes, ab ipso
+    Ducit opes animumque ferro.
+
+If so, what is it we can do to hurt her?--it will be all an
+_imposition_, all _fallacious_. Why, the result must be,--
+
+                Occidit, occidit
+    Spes omnis, et fortuna nostri
+    Nominis.
+
+
+The only way which the author's principles leave for our escape, is to
+reverse our condition into that of France, and to take her losing cards
+into our hands. But though his principles drive him to it, his politics
+will not suffer him to walk on this ground. Talking at our ease and of
+other countries, we may bear to be diverted with such speculations; but
+in England we shall never be taught to look upon the annihilation of our
+trade, the ruin of our credit, the defeat of our armies, and the loss of
+our ultramarine dominions (whatever the author may think of them), to be
+the high road to prosperity and greatness.
+
+The reader does not, I hope, imagine that I mean seriously to set about
+the refutation of these uningenious paradoxes and reveries without
+imagination. I state them only that we may discern a little in the
+questions of war and peace, the most weighty of all questions, what is
+the wisdom of those men who are held out to us as the only hope of an
+expiring nation. The present ministry is indeed of a strange character:
+at once indolent and distracted. But if a ministerial system should be
+formed, actuated by such maxims as are avowed in this piece, the vices
+of the present ministry would become their virtues; their indolence
+would be the greatest of all public benefits, and a distraction that
+entirely defeated every one of their schemes would be our only security
+from destruction.
+
+To have stated these reasonings is enough, I presume, to do their
+business. But they are accompanied with facts and records, which may
+seem of a little more weight. I trust, however, that the facts of this
+author will be as far from bearing the touchstone, as his arguments. On
+a little inquiry, they will be found as great an imposition as the
+successes they are meant to depreciate; for they are all either false
+or fallaciously applied; or not in the least to the purpose for which
+they are produced.
+
+First the author, in order to support his favorite paradox, that our
+possession of the French colonies was of no detriment to France, has
+thought proper to inform us, that[42] "they put themselves into the
+hands of the English." He uses the same assertion, in nearly the same
+words, in another place;[43] "her colonies had put themselves into our
+hands." Now, in justice, not only to fact and common sense, but to the
+incomparable valor and perseverance of our military and naval forces
+thus unhandsomely traduced, I must tell this author, that the French
+colonies did not "put themselves into the hands of the English." They
+were compelled to submit; they were subdued by dint of English valor.
+Will the five years' war carried on in Canada, in which fell one of the
+principal hopes of this nation, and all the battles lost and gained
+during that anxious period, convince this author of his mistake? Let him
+inquire of Sir Jeffery Amherst, under whose conduct that war was carried
+on; of Sir Charles Saunders, whose steadiness and presence of mind saved
+our fleet, and were so eminently serviceable in the whole course of the
+siege of Quebec; of General Monckton, who was shot through the body
+there, whether France "put her colonies into the hands of the English."
+
+Though he has made no exception, yet I would be liberal to him; perhaps
+he means to confine himself to her colonies in the West Indies. But
+surely it will fare as ill with him there as in North America, whilst we
+remember that in our first attempt at Martinico we were actually
+defeated; that it was three months before we reduced Guadaloupe; and
+that the conquest of the Havannah was achieved by the highest conduct,
+aided by circumstances of the greatest good fortune. He knows the
+expense both of men and treasure at which we bought that place. However,
+if it had so pleased the peacemakers, it was no dear purchase; for it
+was decisive of the fortune of the war and the terms of the treaty: the
+Duke of Nivernois thought so; France, England, Europe, considered it in
+that light; all the world, except the then friends of the then ministry,
+who wept for our victories, and were in haste to get rid of the burden
+of our conquests. This author knows that France did not put those
+colonies into the hands of England; but he well knows who did put the
+most valuable of them into the hands of France.
+
+In the next place, our author[44] is pleased to consider the conquest of
+those colonies in no other light than as a convenience for the
+remittances to France, which he asserts that the war had before
+suspended, but for which a way was opened (by our conquest) as secure as
+in time of peace. I charitably hope he knows nothing of the subject. I
+referred him lately to our commanders, for the resistance of the French
+colonies; I now wish he would apply to our custom-house entries, and our
+merchants, for the advantages which we derived from them.
+
+In 1761, there was no entry of goods from any of the conquered places
+but Guadaloupe; in that year it stood thus:--
+
+  Imports from Guadaloupe,       value, £482,179
+                                        --------
+
+In 1762, when we had not yet delivered up our conquests, the account
+was,
+
+  Guadaloupe                            £513,244
+  Martinico                              288,425
+                                        --------
+  Total imports in 1762,         value, £801,669
+                                        --------
+
+In 1763, after we had delivered up the sovereignty of these islands, but
+kept open a communication with them, the imports were,
+
+  Guadaloupe                            £412,303
+  Martinico                              344,161
+  Havannah                               249,386
+                                      ----------
+  Total imports in 1763,         value, £1,005,850
+                                      ----------
+
+Besides, I find, in the account of bullion imported and brought to the
+Bank, that, during that period in which the intercourse with the
+Havannah was open, we received at that one shop, in treasure, from that
+one place, 559,810_l._; in the year 1763, 389,450_l._; so that the
+import from these places in that year amounted to 1,395,300_l._
+
+On this state the reader will observe, that I take the imports from, and
+not the exports to, these conquests, as the measure of the advantages
+which we derived from them. I do so for reasons which will be somewhat
+worthy the attention of such readers as are fond of this species of
+inquiry. I say therefore I choose the import article, as the best, and
+indeed the only standard we can have, of the value of the West India
+trade. Our export entry does not comprehend the greatest trade we carry
+on with any of the West India islands, the sale of negroes: nor does it
+give any idea of two other advantages we draw from them; the
+remittances for money spent here, and the payment of part of the balance
+of the North American trade. It is therefore quite ridiculous, to strike
+a balance merely on the face of an excess of imports and exports, in
+that commerce; though, in most foreign branches, it is, on the whole,
+the best method. If we should take that standard, it would appear, that
+the balance with our own islands is, annually, several hundred thousand
+pounds against this country.[45] Such is its aspect on the custom-house
+entries; but we know the direct contrary to be the fact. We know that
+the West-Indians are always indebted to our merchants, and that the
+value of every shilling of West India produce is English property. So
+that our import from them, and not our export, ought always to be
+considered as their true value; and this corrective ought to be applied
+to all general balances of our trade, which are formed on the ordinary
+principles.
+
+If possible, this was more emphatically true of the French West India
+islands, whilst they continued in our hands. That none or only a very
+contemptible part, of the value of this produce could be remitted to
+France, the author will see, perhaps with unwillingness, but with the
+clearest conviction, if he considers, that in the year 1763, _after we
+had ceased to export_ to the isles of Guadaloupe and Martinico, and to
+the Havannah, and after the colonies were free to send all their
+produce to Old France and Spain, if they had any remittance to make; he
+will see, that we imported from those places, in that year, to the
+amount of 1,395,300_l._ So far was the whole annual produce of these
+islands from being adequate to the payments of their annual call upon
+us, that this mighty additional importation was necessary, though not
+quite sufficient, to discharge the debts contracted in the few years we
+held them. The property, therefore, of their whole produce was ours; not
+only during the war, but even for more than a year after the peace. The
+author, I hope, will not again venture upon so rash and discouraging a
+proposition concerning the nature and effect of those conquests, as to
+call them a convenience to the remittances of France; he sees, by this
+account, that what he asserts is not only without foundation, but even
+impossible to be true.
+
+As to our trade at that time, he labors with all his might to represent
+it as absolutely ruined, or on the very edge of ruin. Indeed, as usual
+with him, he is often as equivocal in his expression as he is clear in
+his design. Sometimes he more than insinuates a decay of our commerce in
+that war; sometimes he admits an increase of exports; but it is in order
+to depreciate the advantages we might appear to derive from that
+increase, whenever it should come to be proved against him. He tells
+you,[46] "that it was chiefly occasioned by the demands of our own
+fleets and armies, and, instead or bringing wealth to the nation, was to
+be paid for by oppressive taxes upon the people of England." Never was
+anything more destitute of foundation. It might be proved, with the
+greatest ease, from the nature and quality of the goods exported, as
+well as from the situation of the places to which our merchandise was
+sent, and which the war could no wise affect, that the supply of our
+fleets and armies could not have been the cause of this wonderful
+increase of trade: its cause was evident to the whole world; the ruin of
+the trade of France, and our possession of her colonies. What wonderful
+effects this cause produced the reader will see below;[47] and he will
+form on that account some judgment of the author's candor or
+information.
+
+Admit however that a great part of our export, though nothing is more
+remote from fact, was owing to the supply of our fleets and armies; was
+it not something?--was it not peculiarly fortunate for a nation, that
+she was able from her own bosom to contribute largely to the supply of
+her armies militating in so many distant countries? The author allows
+that France did not enjoy the same advantages. But it is remarkable,
+throughout his whole book, that those circumstances which have ever been
+considered as great benefits, and decisive proofs of national
+superiority, are, when in our hands, taken either in diminution of some
+other apparent advantage, or even sometimes as positive misfortunes. The
+optics of that politician must be of a strange conformation, who beholds
+everything in this distorted shape.
+
+So far as to our trade. With regard to our navigation, he is still more
+uneasy at our situation, and still more fallacious in his state of it.
+In his text, he affirms it "to have been _entirely_ engrossed by the
+neutral nations."[48] This he asserts roundly and boldly, and without
+the least concern; although it cost no more than a single glance of the
+eye upon his own margin to see the full refutation of this assertion.
+His own account proves against him, that, in the year 1761, the British
+shipping amounted to 527,557 tons,--the foreign to no more than 180,102.
+The medium of his six years British, 2,449,555 tons,--foreign only
+906,690. This state (his own) demonstrates that the neutral nations did
+not _entirely engross our navigation_.
+
+I am willing from a strain of candor to admit that this author speaks at
+random; that he is only slovenly and inaccurate, and not fallacious. In
+matters of account, however, this want of care is not excusable; and the
+difference between neutral nations entirely engrossing our navigation,
+and being only subsidiary to a vastly augmented trade, makes a most
+material difference to his argument. From that principle of fairness,
+though the author speaks otherwise, I am willing to suppose he means no
+more than that our navigation had so declined as to alarm us with the
+probable loss of this valuable object. I shall however show, that his
+whole proposition, whatever modifications he may please to give it, is
+without foundation; that our navigation had not decreased; that, on the
+contrary, it had greatly increased in the war; that it had increased by
+the war; and that it was probable the same cause would continue to
+augment it to a still greater height; to what an height it is hard to
+say, had our success continued.
+
+But first I must observe, I am much less solicitous whether his fact be
+true or no, than whether his principle is well established. Cases are
+dead things, principles are living and productive. I affirm then, that,
+if in time of war our trade had the good fortune to increase, and at the
+same time a large, nay the largest, proportion of carriage had been
+engrossed by neutral nations, it ought not in itself to have been
+considered as a circumstance of distress. War is a time of inconvenience
+to trade; in general it must be straitened, and must find its way as it
+can. It is often happy for nations that they are able to call in neutral
+navigation. They all aim at it. France endeavored at it, but could not
+compass it. Will this author say, that, in a war with Spain, such an
+assistance would not be of absolute necessity? that it would not be the
+most gross of all follies to refuse it?
+
+In the next place, his method of stating a medium of six years of war,
+and six years of peace, to decide this question, is altogether unfair.
+To say, in derogation of the advantages of a war, that navigation is not
+equal to what it was in time of peace, is what hitherto has never been
+heard of. No war ever bore that test but the war which he so bitterly
+laments. One may lay it down as a maxim, that an average estimate of an
+object in a steady course of rising or of falling, must in its nature be
+an unfair one; more particularly if the cause of the rise or fall be
+visible, and its continuance in any degree probable. Average estimates
+are never just but when the object fluctuates, and no reason can be
+assigned why it should not continue still to fluctuate. The author
+chooses to allow nothing at all for this: he has taken an average of six
+years of the war. He knew, for everybody knows, that the first three
+years were on the whole rather unsuccessful; and that, in consequence of
+this ill success, trade sunk, and navigation declined with it; but _that
+grand delusion_ of the three last years turned the scale in our favor.
+At the beginning of that war (as in the commencement of every war),
+traders were struck with a sort of panic. Many went out of the
+freighting business. But by degrees, as the war continued, the terror
+wore off; the danger came to be better appreciated, and better provided
+against; our trade was carried on in large fleets, under regular
+convoys, and with great safety. The freighting business revived. The
+ships were fewer, but much larger; and though the number decreased, the
+tonnage was vastly augmented: insomuch that in 1761 the _British_
+shipping had risen by the author's own account to 527,557 tons.--In the
+last year he has given us of the peace, it amounted to no more than
+494,772; that is, in the last year of the war it was 32,785 tons more
+than in the correspondent year of his peace average. No year of the
+peace exceeded it except one, and that but little.
+
+The fair account of the matter is this. Our trade had, as we have just
+seen, increased to so astonishing a degree in 1761, as to employ British
+and foreign ships to the amount of 707,659 tons, which is 149,500 more
+than we employed in the last year of the peace.--Thus our trade
+increased more than a fifth; our British navigation had increased
+likewise with this astonishing increase of trade, but was not able to
+keep pace with it; and we added about 120,000 tons of foreign shipping
+to the 60,000, which had been employed in the last year of the peace.
+Whatever happened to our shipping in the former years of the war, this
+would be no true state of the case at the time of the treaty. If we had
+lost something in the beginning, we had then recovered, and more than
+recovered, all our losses. Such is the ground of the doleful complaints
+of the author, that _the carrying trade was wholly engrossed by the
+neutral nations_.
+
+I have done fairly, and even very moderately, in taking this year, and
+not his average, as the standard of what might be expected in future,
+had the war continued. The author will be compelled to allow it, unless
+he undertakes to show; first, that the possession of Canada, Martinico,
+Guadaloupe, Grenada, the Havannah, the Philippines, the whole African
+trade, the whole East India trade, and the whole Newfoundland fishery,
+had no certain inevitable tendency to increase the British shipping;
+unless, in the second place, he can prove that those trades were, or
+might be, by law or indulgence, carried on in foreign vessels; and
+unless, thirdly, he can demonstrate that the premium of insurance on
+British ships was rising as the war continued. He can prove not one of
+these points. I will show him a fact more that is mortal to his
+assertions. It is the state of our shipping in 1762. The author had his
+reasons for stopping short at the preceding year. It would have
+appeared, had he proceeded farther, that our tonnage was in a course of
+uniform augmentation, owing to the freight derived from our foreign
+conquests, and to the perfect security of our navigation from our clear
+and decided superiority at sea. This, I say, would have appeared from
+the state of the two years:--
+
+  1761. British       527,557 tons.
+  1762. Ditto         559,537 tons.
+  1761. Foreign       180,102 tons.
+  1762. Ditto         129,502 tons.
+
+The two last years of the peace were in no degree equal to these. Much
+of the navigation of 1763 was also owing to the war; this is manifest
+from the large part of it employed in the carriage from the ceded
+islands, with which the communication still continued open. No such
+circumstances of glory and advantage ever attended upon a war. Too happy
+will be our lot, if we should again be forced into a war, to behold
+anything that shall resemble them; and if we were not then the better
+for them, it is net in the ordinary course of God's providence to mend
+our condition.
+
+In vain does the author declaim on the high premiums given for the loans
+during the war. His long note swelled with calculations on that subject
+(even supposing the most inaccurate of all calculations to be just)
+would be entirety thrown away, did it not serve to raise a wonderful
+opinion of his financial skill in those who are not less surprised than
+edified, when, with a solemn face and mysterious air, they are told that
+two and two make four. For what else do we learn from this note? That
+the more expense is incurred by a nation, the more money will be
+required to defray it; that in proportion to the continuance of that
+expense, will be the continuance of borrowing; that the increase of
+borrowing and the increase of debt will go hand in hand; and lastly,
+that the more money you want, the harder it will be to get it; and that
+the scarcity of the commodity will enhance the price. Who ever doubted
+the truth, or the insignificance, of these propositions? what do they
+prove? that war is expensive, and peace desirable. They contain nothing
+more than a commonplace against war; the easiest of all topics. To bring
+them home to his purpose, he ought to have shown that our enemies had
+money upon better terms; which he has not shown, neither can he. I shall
+speak more fully to this point in another place. He ought to have shown
+that the money they raised, upon whatever terms, had procured them a
+more lucrative return. He knows that our expenditure purchased commerce
+and conquest: theirs acquired nothing but defeat and bankruptcy.
+
+Thus the author has laid down his ideas on the subject of war. Next
+follow those he entertains on that of peace. The treaty of Paris upon
+the whole has his approbation. Indeed, if his account of the war be
+just, he might have spared himself all further trouble. The rest is
+drawn on as an inevitable conclusion.[49] If the House of Bourbon had
+the advantage, she must give the law; and the peace, though it were much
+worse than it is, had still been a good one. But as the world is yet
+_deluded_ on the state of that war, other arguments are necessary; and
+the author has in my opinion very ill supplied them. He tells of many
+things we have got, and of which he has made out a kind of bill. This
+matter may be brought within a very narrow compass, if we come to
+consider the requisites of a good peace under some plain distinct heads.
+I apprehend they may be reduced to these: 1. Stability; 2.
+Indemnification; 3. Alliance.
+
+As to the first, the author more than obscurely hints in several places,
+that he thinks the peace not likely to last. However, he does furnish a
+security; a security, in any light, I fear, but insufficient; on his
+hypothesis, surely a very odd one. "By stipulating for the entire
+possession of the Continent (says he) the restored French islands are
+become in some measure dependent on the British empire; and the good
+faith of France in observing the treaty guaranteed by the value at which
+she estimates their possession."[50] This author soon grows weary of his
+principles. They seldom last him for two pages together. When the
+advantages of the war were to be depreciated, then the loss of the
+ultramarine colonies lightened the expenses of France, facilitated her
+remittances, and therefore _her colonists put them into our hands_.
+According to this author's system, the actual possession of those
+colonies ought to give us little or no advantage in the negotiation for
+peace; and yet the chance of possessing them on a future occasion gives
+a perfect security for the preservation of that peace.[51] The conquest
+of the Havannah, if it did not serve Spain, rather distressed England,
+says our author.[52] But the molestation which her galleons may suffer
+from our station in Pensacola gives us advantages, for which we were not
+allowed to credit the nation for the Havannah itself; a place surely
+full as well situated for every external purpose as Pensacola, and of
+more internal benefit than ten thousand Pensacolas.
+
+The author sets very little by conquests;[53] I suppose it is because he
+makes them so very lightly. On this subject he speaks with the greatest
+certainty imaginable. We have, according to him, nothing to do, but to
+go and take possession, whenever we think proper, of the French and
+Spanish settlements. It were better that he had examined a little what
+advantage the peace gave us towards the invasion of these colonies,
+which we did not possess before the peace. It would not have been amiss
+if he had consulted the public experience, and our commanders,
+concerning the absolute certainty of those conquests on which he is
+pleased to found our security. And if, after all, he should have
+discovered them to be so very sure, and so very easy, he might at least,
+to preserve consistency, have looked a few pages back, and (no
+unpleasing thing to him) listened to himself, where he says, "that the
+most successful enterprise could not compensate to the nation for the
+waste of its people, by carrying on war in unhealthy climates."[54] A
+position which he repeats again, p. 9. So that, according to himself,
+his security is not worth the suit; according to fact, he has only a
+chance, God knows what a chance, of getting at it; and therefore,
+according to reason, the giving up the most valuable of all possessions,
+in hopes to conquer them back, under any advantage of situation, is the
+most ridiculous security that ever was imagined for the peace of a
+nation. It is true his friends did not give up Canada; they could not
+give up everything; let us make the most of it. We have Canada, we know
+its value. We have not the French any longer to fight in North America;
+and from this circumstance we derive considerable advantages. But here
+let me rest a little. The author touches upon a string which sounds
+under his fingers but a tremulous and melancholy note. North America was
+once indeed a great strength to this nation, in opportunity of ports, in
+ships, in provisions, in men. We found her a sound, an active, a
+vigorous member of the empire. I hope, by wise management, she will
+again become so. But one of our capital present misfortunes is her
+discontent and disobedience. To which of the author's favorites this
+discontent is owing, we all know but too sufficiently. It would be a
+dismal event, if this foundation of his security, and indeed of all our
+public strength, should, in reality, become our weakness; and if all the
+powers of this empire, which ought to fall with a compacted weight upon
+the head of our enemies, should be dissipated and distracted by a
+jealous vigilance, or by hostile attempts upon one another. Ten Canadas
+cannot restore that security for the peace, and for everything valuable
+to this country, which we have lost along with the affection and the
+obedience of our colonies. He is the wise minister, he is the true
+friend to Britain, who shall be able to restore it.
+
+To return to the security for the peace. The author tells us, that the
+original great purposes of the war were more than accomplished by the
+treaty. Surely he has experience and reading enough to know, that, in
+the course of a war, events may happen, that render its original very
+far from being its principal purpose. This original may dwindle by
+circumstances, so as to become not a purpose of the second or even the
+third magnitude. I trust this is so obvious that it will not be
+necessary to put cases for its illustration. In that war, as soon as
+Spain entered into the quarrel, the security of North America was no
+longer the sole nor the foremost object. The _Family Compact_ had been I
+know not how long before in agitation. But then it was that we saw
+produced into daylight and action the most odious and most formidable of
+all the conspiracies against the liberties of Europe that ever has been
+framed. The war with Spain was the first fruits of that league; and a
+security against that league ought to have been the fundamental point of
+a pacification with the powers who compose it. We had materials in our
+hands to have constructed that security in such a manner as never to be
+shaken. But how did the virtuous and able men of our author labor for
+this great end? They took no one step towards it. On the contrary they
+countenanced, and, indeed, as far as it depended on them, recognized it
+in all its parts; for our plenipotentiary treated with those who acted
+for the two crowns, as if they had been different ministers of the same
+monarch. The Spanish minister received his instructions, not from
+Madrid, but from Versailles.
+
+This was not hid from our ministers at home; and the discovery ought to
+have alarmed them, if the good of their country had been the object of
+their anxiety. They could not but have seen that the whole Spanish
+monarchy was melted down into the cabinet of Versailles. But they
+thought this circumstance an advantage; as it enabled them to go through
+with their work the more expeditiously. Expedition was everything to
+them; because France might happen during a protracted negotiation to
+discover the great imposition of our victories.
+
+In the same spirit they negotiated the terms of the peace. If it were
+thought advisable not to take any positive security from Spain, the most
+obvious principles of policy dictated that the burden of the cessions
+ought to fall upon France; and that everything which was of grace and
+favor should be given to Spain. Spain could not, on her part, have
+executed a capital article in the family compact, which obliged her to
+compensate the losses of France. At least she could not do it in
+America; for she was expressly precluded by the treaty of Utrecht from
+ceding any territory or giving any advantage in trade to that power.
+What did our ministers? They took from Spain the territory of Florida,
+an object of no value except to show our dispositions to be quite equal
+at least towards both powers; and they enabled France to compensate
+Spain by the gift of Louisiana: loading us with all the harshness,
+leaving the act of kindness with France, and opening thereby a door to
+the fulfilling of this the most consolidating article of the family
+compact. Accordingly that dangerous league, thus abetted and authorized
+by the English ministry without an attempt to invalidate it in any way,
+or in any of its parts, exists to this hour; and has grown stronger and
+stronger every hour of its existence.
+
+As to the second component of a good peace, _compensation_, I have but
+little trouble; the author has said nothing upon that head. He has
+nothing to say. After a war of such expense, this ought to have been a
+capital consideration. But on what he has been so prudently silent, I
+think it is right to speak plainly. All our new acquisitions together,
+at this time, scarce afford matter of revenue, either at home or abroad,
+sufficient to defray the expense of their establishments; not one
+shilling towards the reduction of our debt. Guadaloupe or Martinico
+alone would have given us material aid; much in the way of duties, much
+in the way of trade and navigation. A good ministry would have
+considered how a renewal of the _Assiento_ might have been obtained. We
+had as much right to ask it at the treaty of Paris as at the treaty of
+Utrecht. We had incomparably more in our hands to purchase it. Floods of
+treasure would have poured into this kingdom from such a source; and,
+under proper management, no small part of it would have taken a public
+direction, and have fructified an exhausted exchequer.
+
+If this gentleman's hero of finance, instead of flying from a treaty,
+which, though he now defends, he could not approve, and would not
+oppose; if he, instead of shifting into an office, which removed him
+from the manufacture of the treaty, had, by his credit with the then
+great director, acquired for us these, or any of these, objects, the
+possession of Guadaloupe or Martinico, or the renewal of the _Assiento_,
+he might have held his head high in his country; because he would have
+performed real service; ten thousand times more real service, than all
+the economy of which this writer is perpetually talking, or all the
+little tricks of finance which the expertest juggler of the treasury can
+practise, could amount to in a thousand years. But the occasion is lost;
+the time is gone, perhaps forever.
+
+As to the third requisite, _alliance_, there too the author is silent.
+What strength of that kind did they acquire? They got no one new ally;
+they stript the enemy of not a single old one. They disgusted (how
+justly, or unjustly, matters not) every ally we had; and from that time
+to this we stand friendless in Europe. But of this naked condition of
+their country I know some people are not ashamed. They have their system
+of politics; our ancestors grew great by another. In this manner these
+virtuous men concluded the peace; and their practice is only consonant
+to their theory.
+
+Many things more might be observed on this curious head of our author's
+speculations. But, taking leave of what the writer says in his serious
+part, if he be serious in any part, I shall only just point out a piece
+of his pleasantry. No man, I believe, ever denied that the time for
+making peace is that in which the best terms maybe obtained. But what
+that time is, together with the use that has been made of it, we are to
+judge by seeing whether terms adequate to our advantages, and to our
+necessities, have been actually obtained. Here is the pinch of the
+question, to which the author ought to have set his shoulders in
+earnest. Instead of doing this, he slips out of the harness by a jest;
+and sneeringly tells us, that, to determine this point, we must know the
+secrets of the French and Spanish cabinets[55], and that Parliament was
+pleased to approve the treaty of peace without calling for the
+correspondence concerning it. How just this sarcasm on that Parliament
+may be, I say not; but how becoming in the author, I leave it to his
+friends to determine.
+
+Having thus gone through the questions of war and peace, the author
+proceeds to state our debt, and the interest which it carried, at the
+time of the treaty, with the unfairness and inaccuracy, however, which
+distinguish all his assertions, and all his calculations. To detect
+every fallacy, and rectify every mistake, would be endless. It will be
+enough to point out a few of them, in order to show how unsafe it is to
+place anything like an implicit trust in such a writer.
+
+The interest of debt contracted during the war is stated by the author
+at 2,614,892_l._ The particulars appear in pp. 14 and 15. Among them is
+stated the unfunded debt, 9,975,017_l._, supposed to carry interest on a
+medium at 3 per cent, which amounts to 299,250_l._ We are referred to
+the "Considerations on the Trade and Finances of the Kingdom," p. 22,
+for the particulars of that unfunded debt. Turn to the work, and to the
+place referred to by the author himself, if you have a mind to see a
+clear detection of a capital fallacy of this article in his account. You
+will there see that this unfunded debt consists of the nine following
+articles: the remaining subsidy to the Duke of Brunswick; the remaining
+_dédommagement_ to the Landgrave of Hesse; the German demands; the army
+and ordnance extraordinaries; the deficiencies of grants and funds; Mr.
+Touchet's claim; the debts due to Nova Scotia and Barbadoes; exchequer
+bills; and navy debt. The extreme fallacy of this state cannot escape
+any reader who will be at the pains to compare the interest money, with
+which he affirms us to have been loaded, in his "State of the Nation,"
+with the items of the principal debt to which he refers in his
+"Considerations." The reader must observe, that of this long list of
+nine articles, only two, the exchequer bills, and part of the navy debt,
+carried any interest at all. The first amounted to 1,800,000_l._; and
+this undoubtedly carried interest. The whole navy debt indeed amounted
+to 4,576,915_l._; but of this only a _part_ carried interest. The author
+of the "Considerations," &c. labors to prove this very point in p. 18;
+and Mr. G. has always defended himself upon the same ground, for the
+insufficient provision he made for the discharge of that debt. The
+reader may see their own authority for it.[56]
+
+Mr. G. did in fact provide no more than 2,150,000_l._ for the discharge
+of these bills in two years. It is much to be wished that these
+gentlemen would lay their heads together, that they would consider well
+this matter, and agree upon something. For when the scanty provision
+made for the unfunded debt is to be vindicated, then we are told it is a
+very _small part_ of that debt which carries interest. But when the
+public is to be represented in a miserable condition, and the
+consequences of the late war to be laid before us in dreadful colors,
+then we are to be told that the unfunded debt is within a trifle of ten
+millions, and so large a portion of it carries interest that we must not
+compute less than 3 per cent upon the _whole_.
+
+In the year 1764, Parliament voted 650,000_l._ towards the discharge of
+the navy debt. This sum could not be applied solely to the discharge of
+bills carrying interest; because part of the debt due on seamen's wages
+must have been paid, and some bills carried no interest at all.
+Notwithstanding this, we find by an account in the journals of the House
+of Commons, in the following session, that the navy debt carrying
+interest was, on the 31st of December, 1764, no more than 1,687,442_l._
+I am sure therefore that I admit too much when I admit the navy debt
+carrying interest, after the creation of the navy annuities in the year
+1763, to have been 2,200,000_l._ Add the exchequer bills; and the whole
+unfunded debt carrying interest will be four millions instead of ten;
+and the annual interest paid for it at 4 per cent will be 160,000_l._
+instead of 299,250_l._ An error of no small magnitude, and which could
+not have been owing to inadvertency.
+
+The misrepresentation of the increase of the peace establishment is
+still more extraordinary than that of the interest of the unfunded debt.
+The increase is great, undoubtedly. However, the author finds no fault
+with it, and urges it only as a matter of argument to support the
+strange chimerical proposals he is to make us in the close of his work
+for the increase of revenue. The greater he made that establishment, the
+stronger he expected to stand in argument: but, whatever he expected or
+proposed, he should have stated the matter fairly. He tells us that this
+establishment is nearly 1,500,000_l._ more than it was in 1752, 1753,
+and other years of peace. This he has done in his usual manner, by
+assertion, without troubling himself either with proof or probability.
+For he has not given us any state of the peace establishment in the
+years 1753 and 1754, the time which he means to compare with the
+present. As I am obliged to force him to that precision, from which he
+always flies as from his most dangerous enemy, I have been at the
+trouble to search the journals in the period between the two last wars:
+and I find that the peace establishment, consisting of the navy, the
+ordnance, and the several incidental expenses, amounted to 2,346,594_l._
+Now is this writer wild enough to imagine, that the peace establishment
+of 1764 and the subsequent years, made up from the same articles, is
+3,800,000_l._ and upwards? His assertion however goes to this. But I
+must take the liberty of correcting him in this gross mistake, and from
+an authority he cannot refuse, from his favorite work, and standing
+authority, the "Considerations." We find there, p. 43[57], the peace
+establishment of 1764 and 1765 stated at 3,609,700_l._ This is near two
+hundred thousand pounds less than that given in "The State of the
+Nation." But even from this, in order to render the articles which
+compose the peace establishment in the two periods correspondent (for
+otherwise they cannot be compared), we must deduct first, his articles
+of the deficiency of land and malt, which amount to 300,000_l._ They
+certainly are no part of the establishment; nor are they included in
+that sum, which I have stated above for the establishment in the time of
+the former peace. If they were proper to be stated at all, they ought to
+be stated in both accounts. We must also deduct the deficiencies of
+funds, 202,400_l._ These deficiencies are the difference between the
+interest charged on the public for moneys borrowed, and the produce of
+the taxes laid for the discharge of that interest. Annual provision is
+indeed to be made for them by Parliament: but in the inquiry before us,
+which is only what charge is brought on the public by interest paid or
+to be paid for money borrowed, the utmost that the author should do, is
+to bring into the account the full interest for all that money. This he
+has done in p. 15; and he repeats it in p. 18, the very page I am now
+examining, 2,614,892_l._ To comprehend afterwards in the peace
+establishment the deficiency of the fund created for payment of that
+interest, would be laying twice to the account of the war part of the
+same sum. Suppose ten millions borrowed at 4 per cent, and the fund for
+payment of the interest to produce no more than 200,000_l._ The whole
+annual charge on the public is 400,000_l._ It can be no more. But to
+charge the interest in one part of the account, and then the deficiency
+in the other, would be charging 600,000_l._ The deficiency of funds must
+therefore be also deducted from the peace establishment in the
+"Considerations"; and then the peace establishment in that author will
+be reduced to the same articles with those included in the sum I have
+already mentioned for the peace establishment before the last war, in
+the year 1753, and 1754.
+
+  Peace establishment in the "Considerations"     £3,609,700
+  Deduct deficiency of land and malt    £300,000
+  Ditto of funds                         202,400
+                                        --------     502,400
+                                                   ---------
+                                                   3,107,300
+  Peace establishment before the late war, in
+    which no deficiencies of land and malt, or
+    funds are included                             2,346,594
+                                                   ---------
+
+                           Difference               £760,706
+
+
+Being about half the sum which our author has been pleased to suppose
+it.
+
+Let us put the whole together. The author states,--
+
+  Difference of peace establishment before and
+    since the war                                 £1,500,000
+  Interest of Debt contracted by the war           2,614,892
+                                                   ---------
+                                                   4,114,892
+  The _real_ difference in the peace
+    establishment is                    £760,706
+
+  The actual interest of the
+    funded debt, including
+    that charged on the
+    sinking fund            £2,315,642
+
+  The actual interest of
+    unfunded debt at most      160,000
+                             ---------
+  Total interest of debt
+    contracted by the war              2,475,642
+                                       ---------
+  Increase of peace establishment, and interest of
+    new debt                                       3,236,348
+                                                   ---------
+  Error of the author                               £878,544
+
+
+It is true, the extraordinaries of the army have been found considerably
+greater than the author of the "Considerations" was pleased to foretell
+they would be. The author of "The Present State" avails himself of that
+increase, and, finding it suit his purpose, sets the whole down in the
+peace establishment of the present times. If this is allowed him, his
+error perhaps may be reduced to 700,000_l._ But I doubt the author of
+the "Considerations" will not thank him for admitting 200,000_l._ and
+upwards, as the peace establishment for extraordinaries, when that
+author has so much labored to confine them within 35,000_l._
+
+These are some of the capital fallacies of the author. To break the
+thread of my discourse as little as possible, I have thrown into the
+margin many instances, though God knows far from the whole of his
+inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and want of common care. I think myself
+obliged to take some notice of them, in order to take off from any
+authority this writer may have; and to put an end to the deference which
+careless men are apt to pay to one who boldly arrays his accounts, and
+marshals his figures, in perfect confidence that their correctness will
+never be examined.[58]
+
+However, for argument, I am content to take his state of it. The debt
+was and is enormous. The war was expensive. The best economy had not
+perhaps been used. But I must observe, that war and economy are things
+not easily reconciled; and that the attempt of leaning towards parsimony
+in such a state may be the worst management, and in the end the worst
+economy in the world, hazarding the total loss of all the charge
+incurred, and of everything along with it.
+
+But _cui bono_ all this detail of our debt? Has the author given a
+single light towards any material reduction of it? Not a glimmering. We
+shall see in its place what sort of thing he proposes. But before he
+commences his operations, in order to scare the public imagination, he
+raises by art magic a thick mist before our eyes, through which glare
+the most ghastly and horrible phantoms:
+
+    Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necesse est.
+    Non radii solis, neque lucida tela diei
+    Discutiant, sed naturæ species ratioque.
+
+Let us therefore calmly, if we can for the fright into which he has put
+us, appreciate those dreadful and deformed gorgons and hydras, which
+inhabit the joyless regions of an imagination fruitful in nothing but
+the production of monsters.
+
+His whole representation, is founded on the supposed operation of our
+debt, upon our manufactures, and our trade. To this cause he attributes
+a certain supposed dearness of the necessaries of life, which must
+compel our manufacturers to emigrate to cheaper countries, particularly
+to France, and with them the manufacture. Thence consumption declining,
+and with it revenue. He will not permit the real balance of our trade to
+be estimated so high as 2,500,000_l._; and the interest of the debt to
+foreigners carries off 1,500,000_l._ of that balance. France is not in
+the same condition. Then follow his wailings and lamentings, which he
+renews over and over, according to his custom--a declining trade, and
+decreasing specie--on the point of becoming tributary to France--of
+losing Ireland--of having the colonies torn away from us.
+
+The first thing upon which I shall observe is,[60] what he takes for
+granted as the clearest of all propositions, the emigration of our
+manufacturers to France. I undertake to say that this assertion is
+totally groundless, and I challenge the author to bring any sort of
+proof of it. If living is cheaper in France, that is, to be had for less
+specie, wages are proportionably lower. No manufacturer, let the living
+be what it will, was ever known to fly for refuge to low wages. Money is
+the first thing which attracts him. Accordingly our wages attract
+artificers from all parts of the world. From two shillings to one
+shilling, is a fall in all men's imaginations, which no calculation upon
+a difference in the price of the necessaries of life can compensate. But
+it will be hard to prove that a French artificer is better fed, clothed,
+lodged, and warmed, than one in England; for that is the sense, and the
+only sense, of living cheaper. If, in truth and fact, our artificer
+fares as well in all these respects as one in the same state in
+France,--how stands the matter in point of opinion and prejudice, the
+springs by which people in that class of life are chiefly actuated? The
+idea of our common people concerning French living is dreadful;
+altogether as dreadful as our author's can possibly be of the state of
+his own country; a way of thinking that will hardly ever prevail on them
+to desert to France.[61]
+
+But, leaving the author's speculations, the fact is, that they have not
+deserted; and of course the manufacture cannot be departed, or
+departing, with them. I am not indeed able to get at all the details of
+our manufactures; though, I think, I have taken full as much pains for
+that purpose as our author. Some I have by me; and they do not hitherto,
+thank God, support the author's complaint, unless a vast increase of the
+quantity of goods manufactured be a proof of losing the manufacture. On
+a view of the registers in the West Riding of Yorkshire, for three years
+before the war, and for the three last, it appears, that the quantities
+of cloths entered were as follows:
+
+                            Pieces broad.    Pieces narrow.
+                  1752           60,724           72,442
+                  1753           55,358           71,618
+                  1754           56,070           72,394
+                                -------          -------
+                                172,152          216,454
+
+                            Pieces broad.    Pieces narrow.
+                  1765           54,660           77,419
+                  1766           72,575           78,893
+                  1767          102,428           78,819
+                                -------          -------
+  3 years, ending 1767          229,663          235,131
+  3 years, ending 1754          172,152          216,464
+                                -------          -------
+                   Increase      57,511           18,677
+
+
+In this manner this capital branch of manufacture has increased, under
+the increase of taxes; and this not from a declining, but from a greatly
+flourishing period of commerce. I may say the same on the best authority
+of the fabric of thin goods at Halifax; of the bays at Rochdale; and of
+that infinite variety of admirable manufactures that grow and extend
+every year among the spirited, inventive, and enterprising traders of
+Manchester.
+
+A trade sometimes seems to perish when it only assumes a different form.
+Thus the coarsest woollens were formerly exported in great quantities to
+Russia. The Russians now supply themselves with these goods. But the
+export thither of finer cloths has increased in proportion as the other
+has declined. Possibly some parts of the kingdom may have felt something
+like a languor in business. Objects like trade and manufacture, which
+the very attempt to confine would certainly destroy, frequently change
+their place; and thereby, far from being lost, are often highly
+improved. Thus some manufactures have decayed in the west and south,
+which have made new and more vigorous shoots when transplanted into the
+north. And here it is impossible to pass by, though the author has said
+nothing upon it, the vast addition to the mass of British trade, which
+has been made by the improvement of Scotland. What does he think of the
+commerce of the city of Glasgow, and of the manufactures of Paisley and
+all the adjacent country? Has this anything like the deadly aspect and
+_facies Hippocratica_ which the false diagnostic of our state physician
+has given to our trade in general? Has he not heard of the iron-works of
+such magnitude even in their cradle which are set up on the Carron, and
+which at the same time have drawn nothing from Sheffield, Birmingham, or
+Wolverhampton?
+
+This might perhaps be enough to show the entire falsity of the complaint
+concerning the decline of our manufactures. But every step we advance,
+this matter clears up more; and the false terrors of the author are
+dissipated, and fade away as the light appears. "The trade and
+manufactures of this country (says he) going to ruin, and a diminution
+of our _revenue from consumption_ must attend the loss of so many seamen
+and artificers." Nothing more true than the general observation: nothing
+more false than its application to our circumstances. Let the revenue on
+consumption speak for itself:--
+
+  Average of net excise, since the new duties,
+    three years ending 1767                       £4,590,734
+  Ditto before the new duties, three years
+    ending 1759                                    3,261,694
+                                                   ---------
+                    Average increase              £1,329,040
+
+Here is no diminution. Here is, on the contrary, an immense increase.
+This is owing, I shall be told, to the new duties, which may increase
+the total bulk, but at the same time may make some diminution of the
+produce of the old. Were this the fact, it would be far from supporting
+the author's complaint. It might have proved that the burden lay rather
+too heavy; but it would never prove that the _revenue from, consumption_
+was impaired, which it was his business to do. But what is the real
+fact? Let us take, as the best instance for the purpose, the produce of
+the old hereditary and temporary excise granted in the reign of Charles
+the Second, whose object is that of most of the new impositions, from
+two averages, each of eight years.
+
+  Average, first period, eight years, ending 1754   £525,317
+  Ditto, second period, eight years, ending 1767     538,542
+                                                     -------
+                             Increase               £613,225
+
+I have taken these averages as including in each a war and a peace
+period; the first before the imposition of the new duties, the other
+since those impositions; and such is the state of the oldest branch of
+the revenue from consumption. Besides the acquisition of so much new,
+this article, to speak of no other, has rather increased under the
+pressure of all those additional taxes to which the author is pleased to
+attribute its destruction. But as the author has made his grand effort
+against those moderate, judicious, and necessary levies, which support
+all the dignity, the credit, and the power of his country, the reader
+will excuse a little further detail on this subject; that we may see how
+little oppressive those taxes are on the shoulders of the public, with
+which he labors so earnestly to load its imagination. For this purpose
+we take the state of that specific article upon which the two capital
+burdens of the war leaned the most immediately, by the additional
+duties on malt, and upon beer.
+
+                                                  Barrels.
+  Average of strong beer, brewed in eight years
+    before the additional malt and beer duties   3,895,059
+
+  Average of strong beer, eight years since
+    the duties                                   4,060,726
+                                                 ---------
+              Increase in the last period          165,667
+
+Here is the effect of two such daring taxes as 3_d._ by the bushel
+additional on malt, and 3_s._ by the barrel additional on beer. Two
+impositions laid without remission one upon the neck of the other; and
+laid upon an object which before had been immensely loaded. They did not
+in the least impair the consumption: it has grown under them. It appears
+that, upon the whole, the people did not feel so much inconvenience from
+the new duties as to oblige them to take refuge in the private brewery.
+Quite the contrary happened in both these respects in the reign of King
+William; and it happened from much slighter impositions.[62] No people
+can long consume a commodity for which they are not well able to pay. An
+enlightened reader laughs at the inconsistent chimera of our author, of
+a people universally luxurious, and at the same time oppressed with
+taxes and declining in trade. For my part, I cannot look on these duties
+as the author does. He sees nothing but the burden. I can perceive the
+burden as well as he; but I cannot avoid contemplating also the strength
+that supports it. From thence I draw the most comfortable assurances of
+the future vigor, and the ample resources, of this great, misrepresented
+country; and can never prevail on myself to make complaints which have
+no cause, in order to raise hopes which have no foundation.
+
+When a representation is built on truth and nature, one member supports
+the other, and mutual lights are given and received from every part.
+Thus, as our manufacturers have not deserted, nor the manufacture left
+us, nor the consumption declined, nor the revenue sunk; so neither has
+trade, which is at once the result, measure, and cause of the whole, in
+the least decayed, as our author has thought proper sometimes to affirm,
+constantly to suppose, as if it were the most indisputable of all
+propositions. The reader will see below the comparative state of our
+trade[63] in three of the best years before our increase of debt and
+taxes, and with it the three last years since the author's date of our
+ruin.
+
+In the last three years the whole of our exports was between 44 and 45
+millions. In the three years preceding the war, it was no more than from
+35 to 36 millions. The average balance of the former period was
+3,706,000_l._; of the latter, something above four millions. It is true,
+that whilst the impressions of the author's destructive war continued,
+our trade was greater than it is at present. One of the necessary
+consequences of the peace was, that France must gradually recover a part
+of those markets of which she had been originally in possession.
+However, after all these deductions, still the gross trade in the worst
+year of the present is better than in the best year of any former period
+of peace. A very great part of our taxes, if not the greatest, has been
+imposed since the beginning of the century. On the author's principles,
+this continual increase of taxes must have ruined our trade, or at least
+entirely checked its growth. But I have a manuscript of Davenant, which
+contains an abstract of our trade for the years 1703 and 1704; by which
+it appears that the whole export from England did not then exceed
+6,552,019_l._ It is now considerably more than double that amount. Yet
+England was then a rich and flourishing nation.
+
+The author endeavors to derogate from the balance in our favor as it
+stands on the entries, and reduces it from four millions, as it there
+appears, to no more than 2,500,000_l._ His observation on the looseness
+and inaccuracy of the export entries is just; and that the error is
+always an error of excess, I readily admit. But because, as usual, he
+has wholly omitted some very material facts, his conclusion is as
+erroneous as the entries he complains of.
+
+On this point of the custom-house entries I shall make a few
+observations. 1st. The inaccuracy of these entries can extend only to
+FREE GOODS, that is, to such British products and manufactures, as are
+exported without drawback and without bounty; which do not in general
+amount to more than two thirds at the very utmost of the whole export
+even of _our home products_. The valuable articles of corn, malt,
+leather, hops, beer, and many others, do not come under this objection
+of inaccuracy. The article of CERTIFICATE GOODS re-exported, a vast
+branch of our commerce, admits of no error, (except some smaller frauds
+which cannot be estimated,) as they have all a drawback of duty, and the
+exporter must therefore correctly specify their quantity and kind. The
+author therefore is not warranted from the known error in some of the
+entries, to make a general defalcation from the whole balance in our
+favor. This error cannot affect more than half, if so much, of the
+export article. 2dly. In the account made up at the Inspector-General's
+office, they estimate only the original cost of British products as they
+are here purchased; and on foreign goods, only the prices in the country
+from whence they are sent. This was the method established by Mr.
+Davenant; and as far as it goes, it certainly is a good one. But the
+profits of the merchant at home, and of our factories abroad, are not
+taken into the account; which profit on such an immense quantity of
+goods exported and re-exported cannot fail of being very great: five per
+cent, upon the whole, I should think, a very moderate allowance. 3dly.
+It does not comprehend the advantage arising from the employment of
+600,000 tons of shipping, which must be paid by the foreign consumer,
+and which, in many bulky articles of commerce, is equal to the value of
+the commodity. This can scarcely be rated at less than a million
+annually. 4thly. The whole import from Ireland and America, and from the
+West Indies, is set against us in the ordinary way of striking a balance
+of imports and exports; whereas the import and export are both our own.
+This is just as ridiculous, as to put against the general balance of the
+nation, how much more goods Cheshire receives from London than London
+from Cheshire. The whole revolves and circulates through this kingdom,
+and is, so far as regards our profit, in the nature of home trade, as
+much as if the several countries of America and Ireland were all pieced
+to Cornwall. The course of exchange with all these places is fully
+sufficient to demonstrate that this kingdom has the whole advantage of
+their commerce. When the final profit upon a whole system of trade rests
+and centres in a certain place, a balance struck in that place merely on
+the mutual sale of commodities is quite fallacious. 5thly. The
+custom-house entries furnish a most defective, and, indeed, ridiculous
+idea of the most valuable branch of trade we have in the world,--that
+with Newfoundland. Observe what you export thither; a little spirits,
+provision, fishing-lines, and fishing-hooks. Is this _export_ the true
+idea of the Newfoundland trade in the light of a beneficial branch of
+commerce? Nothing less. Examine our imports from thence; it seems upon
+this vulgar idea of exports and imports, to turn the balance against
+you. But your exports to Newfoundland are your own goods. Your import is
+your own food; as much your own, as that you raise with your ploughs out
+of your own soil; and not your loss, but your gain; your riches, not
+your poverty. But so fallacious is this way of judging, that neither the
+export nor import, nor both together, supply any idea approaching to
+adequate of that branch of business. The vessels in that trade go
+straight from Newfoundland to the foreign market; and the sale there,
+not the import here, is the measure of its value. That trade, which is
+one of your greatest and best, is hardly so much as seen in the
+custom-house entries; and it is not of less annual value to this nation
+than 400,000_l._ 6thly. The quality of your imports must be considered
+as well as the quantity. To state the whole of the foreign import _as
+loss_, is exceedingly absurd. All the iron, hemp, flax, cotton, Spanish
+wool, raw silk, woollen and linen-yarn, which we import, are by no means
+to be considered as the matter of a merely luxurious consumption; which
+is the idea too generally and loosely annexed to our import article.
+These above mentioned are materials of industry, not of luxury, which
+are wrought up here, in many instances, to ten times, and more, of their
+original value. Even where they are not subservient to our exports, they
+still add to our internal wealth, which consists in the stock of useful
+commodities, as much as in gold and silver. In looking over the specific
+articles of our export and import, I have often been astonished to see
+for how small a part of the supply of our consumption, either luxurious
+or convenient, we are indebted to nations properly foreign to us.
+
+These considerations are entirely passed over by the author; they have
+been but too much neglected by most who have speculated on this subject.
+But they ought never to be omitted by those who mean to come to anything
+like the true state of the British trade. They compensate, and they more
+than compensate, everything which the author can cut off with any
+appearance of reason for the over-entry of British goods; and they
+restore to us that balance of four millions, which the author has
+thought proper on such a very poor and limited comprehension of the
+object to reduce to 2,500,000_l._
+
+In general this author is so circumstanced, that to support his theory
+he is obliged to assume his facts: and then, if you allow his facts,
+they will not support his conclusions. What if all he says of the state
+of this balance were true? did not the same objections always lie to
+custom-house entries? do they defalcate more from the entries of 1766
+than from those of 1754? If they prove us ruined, we were always ruined.
+Some ravens have always indeed croaked out this kind of song. They have
+a malignant delight in presaging mischief, when they are not employed in
+doing it: they are miserable and disappointed at every instance of the
+public prosperity. They overlook us like the malevolent being of the
+poet:--
+
+             Tritonida conspicit arcem
+    Ingeniis, opibusque, et festa pace virentem;
+    Vixque tenet lacrymas quia nil lacrymabile cernit.
+
+
+It is in this spirit that some have looked upon those accidents that
+cast an occasional damp upon trade. Their imaginations entail these
+accidents upon us in perpetuity. We have had some bad harvests. This
+must very disadvantageously affect the balance of trade, and the
+navigation of a people, so large a part of whose commerce is in grain.
+But, in knowing the cause, we are morally certain, that, according to
+the course of events, it cannot long subsist. In the three last years,
+we have exported scarcely any grain; in good years, that export hath
+been worth twelve hundred thousand pounds and more; in the two last
+years, far from exporting, we have been obliged to import to the amount
+perhaps of our former exportation. So that in this article the balance
+must be 2,000,000_l._ against us; that is, one million in the ceasing of
+gain, the other in the increase of expenditure. But none of the author's
+promises or projects could have prevented this misfortune; and, thank
+God, we do not want him or them to relieve us from it; although, if his
+friends should now come into power, I doubt not but they will be ready
+to take credit for any increase of trade or excise, that may arise from
+the happy circumstance of a good harvest.
+
+This connects with his loud laments and melancholy prognostications
+concerning the high price of the necessaries of life and the products of
+labor. With all his others, I deny this fact; and I again call upon him
+to prove it. Take average and not accident, the grand and first
+necessary of life is cheap in this country; and that too as weighed, not
+against labor, which is its true counterpoise, but against money. Does
+he call the price of wheat at this day, between 32 and 40 shillings per
+quarter in London dear?[64] He must know that fuel (an object of the
+highest order in the necessaries of life, and of the first necessity in
+almost every kind of manufacture) is in many of our provinces cheaper
+than in any part of the globe. Meat is on the whole not excessively
+dear, whatever its price may be at particular times and from particular
+accidents. If it has had anything like an uniform rise, this enhancement
+may easily be proved not to be owing to the increase of taxes, but to
+uniform increase of consumption and of money. Diminish the latter, and
+meat in your markets will be sufficiently cheap in account, but much
+dearer in effect: because fewer will be in a condition to buy. Thus your
+apparent plenty will be real indigence. At present, even under temporary
+disadvantages, the use of flesh is greater here than anywhere else; it
+is continued without any interruption of Lents or meagre days; it is
+sustained and growing even with the increase of our taxes. But some have
+the art of converting even the signs of national prosperity into
+symptoms of decay and ruin. And our author, who so loudly disclaims
+popularity, never fails to lay hold of the most vulgar popular
+prejudices and humors, in hopes to captivate the crowd. Even those
+peevish dispositions which grow out of some transitory suffering, those
+passing clouds which float in our changeable atmosphere, are by him
+industriously figured into frightful shapes, in order first to terrify,
+and then to govern the populace.
+
+It was not enough for the author's purpose to give this false and
+discouraging picture of the state of his own country. It did not fully
+answer his end, to exaggerate her burdens, to depreciate her successes,
+and to vilify her character. Nothing had been done, unless the
+situation of France were exalted in proportion as that of England had
+been abased. The reader will excuse the citation I make at length from
+his book; he outdoes himself upon this occasion. His confidence is
+indeed unparalleled, and altogether of the heroic cast:--
+
+"If our rival nations were in the same circumstances with ourselves, the
+_augmentation of our taxes would produce no ill consequences_: if we
+were obliged to raise our prices, they must, from the same causes, do
+the like, and could take no advantage by underselling and under-working
+us. But the alarming consideration to Great Britain is, _that France is
+not in the same condition_. Her distresses, during the war, were great,
+but they were immediate; her want of credit, as has been said, compelled
+her to impoverish her people, by raising the greatest part of her
+supplies within the year; _but the burdens she imposed on them were, in
+a great measure, temporary, and must be greatly diminished by a few
+years of peace_. She could procure no considerable loans, therefore she
+has mortgaged no _such oppressive taxes as those Great Britain has
+imposed in perpetuity for payment of interest_. Peace must, therefore,
+soon re-establish her commerce and manufactures, especially as the
+comparative _lightness of taxes_, and the cheapness of living, in that
+country, must make France an asylum for British manufacturers and
+artificers." On this the author rests the merit of his whole system. And
+on this point I will join issue with him. If France is not at least in
+the _same condition_, even in that very condition which the author
+falsely represents to be ours,--if the very reverse of his proposition
+be not true, then I will admit his state of the nation to be just; and
+all his inferences from that state to be logical and conclusive. It is
+not surprising, that the author should hazard our opinion of his
+veracity. That is a virtue on which great statesmen do not perhaps pique
+themselves so much; but it is somewhat extraordinary, that he should
+stake on a very poor calculation of chances, all credit for care, for
+accuracy, and for knowledge of the subject of which he treats. He is
+rash and inaccurate, because he thinks he writes to a public ignorant
+and inattentive. But he may find himself in that respect, as in many
+others, greatly mistaken. In order to contrast the light and vigorous
+condition of France with that of England, weak, and sinking under her
+burdens, he states, in his tenth page, that France had raised
+50,314,378_l._ sterling _by taxes within the several years_ from the
+year 1756 to 1762 both inclusive. All Englishman must stand aghast at
+such a representation: To find France able to _raise within the year_
+sums little inferior to all that we were able even to _borrow_ on
+interest with all the resources of the greatest and most established
+credit in the world! Europe was filled with astonishment when they saw
+England _borrow_ in one year twelve millions. It was thought, and very
+justly, no small proof of national strength and financial skill, to find
+a fund for the payment of the interest upon this sum. The interest of
+this, computed with the one per cent annuities, amounted only to
+600,000_l._ a year. This, I say, was thought a surprising effort even of
+credit. But this author talks, as of a thing not worth proving, and but
+just worth observing, that France in one year raised sixteen times that
+sum without borrowing, and continued to raise sums not far from equal to
+it for several years together. Suppose some Jacob Henriques had
+proposed, in the year 1762, to prevent a perpetual charge on the nation
+by raising ten millions within the year: he would have been considered,
+not as a harsh financier, who laid a heavy hand on the public; but as a
+poor visionary, who had run mad on supplies and taxes. They who know
+that the whole land-tax of England, at 4_s._ in the pound, raises but
+two millions, will not easily apprehend that any such sums as the author
+has conjured up can be raised even in the most opulent nations. France
+owed a large debt, and was encumbered with heavy establishments, before
+that war. The author does not formally deny that she borrowed something
+in every year of its continuance; let him produce the funds for this
+astonishing annual addition to all her vast preceding taxes; an
+addition, equal to the whole excise, customs, land and malt-taxes of
+England taken together.
+
+But what must be the reader's astonishment, perhaps his indignation, if
+he should find that this great financier has fallen into the most
+unaccountable of all errors, no less an error than that of mistaking the
+_identical sums borrowed by France upon interest, for supplies raised
+within the year_! Can it be conceived that any man, only entered into
+the first rudiments of finance, should make so egregious a blunder;
+should write it, should print it; should carry it to a second edition;
+should take it not collaterally and incidentally, but lay it down as the
+corner-stone of his whole system, in such an important point as the
+comparative states of France and England? But it will be said, that it
+was his misfortune to be ill-informed. Not at all. A man of any loose
+general knowledge, and of the most ordinary sagacity, never could have
+been misinformed in so gross a manner; because he would have immediately
+rejected so wild and extravagant an account.
+
+The fact is this: the credit of France, bad as it might have been, did
+enable her (not to raise within the year) but to _borrow_ the very sums
+the author mentions; that is to say, 1,106,916,261 livres, making, in
+the author's computation, 50,314,378_l._ The credit of France was low;
+but it was not annihilated. She did not derive, as our author chooses to
+assert, any advantages from the debility of her credit. Its consequence
+was the natural one: she borrowed; but she borrowed upon bad terms,
+indeed on the most exorbitant usury.
+
+In speaking of a foreign revenue, the very pretence to accuracy would be
+the most inaccurate thing in the world. Neither the author nor I can
+with certainty authenticate the information we communicate to the
+public, nor in an affair of eternal fluctuation arrive at perfect
+exactness. All we can do, and this we may be expected to do, is to avoid
+gross errors and blunders of a capital nature. We cannot order the
+proper officer to lay the accounts before the House. But the reader must
+judge on the probability of the accounts we lay before him. The author
+speaks of France as raising her supplies for war by taxes within the
+year; and of her debt, as a thing scarcely worthy of notice. I affirm
+that she borrowed large sums in every year; and has thereby accumulated
+an immense debt. This debt continued after the war infinitely to
+embarrass her affairs; and to find some means for its reduction was then
+and has ever since been the first object of her policy. But she has so
+little succeeded in all her efforts, that the _perpetual_ debt of
+France is at this hour little short of 100,000,000_l._ sterling; and she
+stands charged with at least 40,000,000 of English pounds on life-rents
+and tontines. The annuities paid at this day at the Hôtel de Ville of
+Paris, which are by no means her sole payments of that nature, amount to
+139,000,000 of livres, that is to 6,318,000_l._; besides _billets au
+porteur_, and various detached and unfunded debts, to a great amount,
+and which bear an interest.
+
+At the end of the war, the interest payable on her debt amounted to
+upwards of seven millions sterling. M. de la Verdy, the last hope of the
+French finances, was called in, to aid in the reduction of an interest,
+so light to our author, so intolerably heavy upon those who are to pay
+it. After many unsuccessful efforts towards reconciling arbitrary
+reduction with public credit, he was obliged to go the plain high road
+of power, and to impose a tax of 10 per cent upon a very great part of
+the capital debt of that kingdom; and this measure of present ease, to
+the destruction of future credit, produced about 500,000_l._ a year,
+which was carried to their _Caisse d'amortissement_ or sinking fund. But
+so unfaithfully and unsteadily has this and all the other articles which
+compose that fund been applied to their purposes, that they have given
+the state but very little even of present relief, since it is known to
+the whole world that she is behindhand on every one of her
+establishments. Since the year 1763, there has been no operation of any
+consequence on the French finances; and in this enviable condition is
+France at present with regard to her debt.
+
+Everybody knows that the principal of the debt is but a name; the
+interest is the only thing which can distress a nation. Take this idea,
+which will not be disputed, and compare the interest paid by England
+with that paid by France:
+
+  Interest paid by France, funded and
+    unfunded, for perpetuity or on lives,
+    after the tax of 10 per cent                £6,500,000
+  Interest paid by England, as stated by
+    the author, p. 27                            4,600,000
+                                                ----------
+  Interest paid by France exceeds that
+    paid by England                             £1,900,000
+
+
+The author cannot complain, that I state the interest paid by England as
+too low. He takes it himself as the extremest term. Nobody who knows
+anything of the French finances will affirm that I state the interest
+paid by that kingdom too high. It might be easily proved to amount to a
+great deal more: even this is near two millions above what is paid by
+England.
+
+There are three standards to judge of the good condition of a nation
+with regard to its finances. 1st, The relief of the people. 2nd, The
+equality of supplies to establishments. 3rd, The state of public credit.
+Try France on all these standards.
+
+Although our author very liberally administers relief to the people of
+France, its government has not been altogether so gracious. Since the
+peace, she has taken off but a single _vingtième_, or shilling in the
+pound, and some small matter in the capitation. But, if the government
+has relieved them in one point, it has only burdened them the more
+heavily in another. The _Taille_,[65] that grievous and destructive
+imposition, which all their financiers lament, without being able to
+remove or to replace, has been augmented no less than six millions of
+livres, or 270,000 pounds English. A further augmentation of this or
+other duties is now talked of; and it is certainly necessary to their
+affairs: so exceedingly remote from either truth or verisimilitude is
+the author's amazing assertion, _that the burdens of France in the war
+were in a great measure temporary, and must be greatly diminished by a
+few years of peace_.
+
+In the next place, if the people of France are not lightened of taxes,
+so neither is the state disburdened of charges. I speak from very good
+information, that the annual income of that state is at this day thirty
+millions of livres, or 1,350,000_l._ sterling, short of a provision for
+their ordinary peace establishment; so far are they from the attempt or
+even hope to discharge any part of the capital of their enormous debt.
+Indeed, under such extreme straitness and distraction labors the whole
+body of their finances, so far does their charge outrun their supply in
+every particular, that no man, I believe, who has considered their
+affairs with any degree of attention or information, but must hourly
+look for some extraordinary convulsion in that whole system: the effect
+of which on France, and even on all Europe, it is difficult to
+conjecture.
+
+In the third point of view, their credit. Let the reader cast his eye on
+a table of the price of French funds, as they stood a few weeks ago,
+compared with the state of some of our English stocks, even in their
+present low condition:--
+
+        French.                          British.
+  5 per cents              63      Bank stock, 5-1/2   159
+  4 per cent (not taxed)   57      4 per cent cons.    100
+  3 per cent    "   "      49      3 per cent cons.     88
+
+
+This state of the funds of France and England is sufficient to convince
+even prejudice and obstinacy, that if France and England are not in the
+same condition (as the author affirms they are not) the difference is
+infinitely to the disadvantage of France. This depreciation of their
+funds has not much the air of a nation lightening burdens and
+discharging debts.
+
+Such is the true comparative state of the two kingdoms in those capital
+points of view. Now as to the nature of the taxes which provide for this
+debt, as well as for their ordinary establishments, the author has
+thought proper to affirm that "they are comparatively light"; that "she
+has mortgaged no such oppressive taxes as ours"; his effrontery on this
+head is intolerable. Does the author recollect a single tax in England
+to which something parallel in nature, and as heavy in burden, does not
+exist in France; does he not know that the lands of the noblesse are
+still under the load of the greater part of the old feudal charges, from
+which the gentry of England have been relieved for upwards of a hundred
+years, and which were in kind, as well as burden, much worse than our
+modern land-tax? Besides that all the gentry of France serve in the army
+on very slender pay, and to the utter ruin of their fortunes, all those
+who are not noble have their lands heavily taxed. Does he not know that
+wine, brandy, soap, candles, leather, saltpetre, gunpowder, are taxed in
+France? Has he not heard that government in France has made a monopoly
+of that great article of _salt?_ that they compel the people to take a
+certain quantity of it, and at a certain rate, both rate and quantity
+fixed at the arbitrary pleasure of the imposer?[66] that they pay in
+France the _Taille_, an arbitrary imposition on presumed property? that
+a tax is laid in fact and name, on the same arbitrary standard, upon the
+acquisitions of their _industry_? and that in France a heavy
+_capitation-tax_ is also paid, from the highest to the very poorest sort
+of people? Have we taxes of such weight, or anything at all of the
+compulsion, in the article of _salt_? do we pay any _taillage_, any
+_faculty-tax_, any _industry-tax?_ do we pay any _capitation-tax_
+whatsoever? I believe the people of London would fall into an agony to
+hear of such taxes proposed upon them as are paid at Paris. There is not
+a single article of provision for man or beast which enters that great
+city, and is not excised; corn, hay, meal, butcher's-meat, fish, fowls,
+everything. I do not here mean to censure the policy of taxes laid on
+the consumption of great luxurious cities. I only state the fact. We
+should be with difficulty brought to hear of a tax of 50_s._ upon every
+ox sold in Smithfield. Yet this tax is paid in Paris. Wine, the lower
+sort of wine, little better than English small beer, pays 2_d._ a
+bottle.
+
+We, indeed, tax our beer; but the imposition on small beer is very far
+from heavy. In no part of England are eatables of any kind the object of
+taxation. In almost every other country in Europe they are excised, more
+or less. I have by me the state of the revenues of many of the principal
+nations on the Continent; and, on comparing them with ours, I think I am
+fairly warranted to assert, that England is the most lightly taxed of
+any of the great states of Europe. They, whose unnatural and sullen joy
+arises from a contemplation of the distresses of their country, will
+revolt at this position. But if I am called upon, I will prove it beyond
+all possibility of dispute; even though this proof should deprive these
+gentlemen of the singular satisfaction of considering their country as
+undone; and though the best civil government, the best constituted, and
+the best managed revenue that ever the world beheld, should be
+thoroughly vindicated from their perpetual clamors and complaints. As to
+our neighbor and rival France, in addition to what I have here
+suggested, I say, and when the author chooses formally to deny, I shall
+formally prove it, that her subjects pay more than England, on a
+computation of the wealth of both countries; that her taxes are more
+injudiciously and more oppressively imposed; more vexatiously collected;
+come in a smaller proportion to the royal coffers, and are less applied
+by far to the public service. I am not one of those who choose to take
+the author's word for this happy and flourishing condition of the French
+finances, rather than attend to the changes, the violent pushes and the
+despair of all her own financiers. Does he choose to be referred for the
+easy and happy condition of the subject in France to the remonstrances
+of their own parliaments, written with such an eloquence, feeling, and
+energy, as I have not seen exceeded in any other writings? The author
+may say, their complaints are exaggerated, and the effects of faction. I
+answer, that they are the representations of numerous, grave, and most
+respectable bodies of men, upon the affairs of their own country. But,
+allowing that discontent and faction may pervert the judgment of such
+venerable bodies in France, we have as good a right to suppose that the
+same causes may full as probably have produced from a private, however
+respectable person, that frightful, and, I trust I have shown,
+groundless representation of our own affairs in England.
+
+The author is so conscious of the dangerous effects of that
+representation, that he thinks it necessary, and very necessary it is,
+to guard against them. He assures us, "that he has not made that display
+of the difficulties of his country, to expose her counsels to the
+ridicule of other states, or to provoke a vanquished enemy to insult
+her; nor to excite the people's rage against their governors, or sink
+them into a despondency of the public welfare." I readily admit this
+apology for his intentions. God forbid I should think any man capable of
+entertaining so execrable and senseless a design. The true cause of his
+drawing so shocking a picture is no more than this; and it ought rather
+to claim our pity than excite our indignation; he finds himself out of
+power; and this condition is intolerable to him. The same sun which
+gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine
+upon disappointed ambition. It is something that rays out of darkness,
+and inspires nothing but gloom and melancholy. Men in this deplorable
+state of mind find a comfort in spreading the contagion of their spleen.
+They find an advantage too; for it is a general, popular error, to
+imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious
+for its welfare. If such persons can answer the ends of relief and
+profit to themselves, they are apt to be careless enough about either
+the means or the consequences.
+
+Whatever this complainant's motives may be, the effects can by no
+possibility be other than those which he so strongly, and I hope truly,
+disclaims all intention of producing. To verify this, the reader has
+only to consider how dreadful a picture he has drawn in his 32nd page,
+of the state of this kingdom; such a picture as, I believe, has hardly
+been applicable, without some exaggeration, to the most degenerate and
+undone commonwealth that ever existed. Let this view of things be
+compared with the prospect of a remedy which he proposes in the page
+directly opposite, and the subsequent. I believe no man living could
+have imagined it possible, except for the sake of burlesquing a subject,
+to propose remedies so ridiculously disproportionate to the evil, so
+full of uncertainty in their operation, and depending for their success
+in every step upon the happy event of so many new, dangerous, and
+visionary projects. It is not amiss, that he has thought proper to give
+the public some little notice of what they may expect from his friends,
+when our affairs shall be committed to their management. Let us see how
+the accounts of disease and remedy are balanced in his "State of the
+Nation." In the first place, on the side of evils, he states, "an
+impoverished and heavily-burdened public. A declining trade and
+decreasing specie. The power of the crown never so much extended over
+the great; but the great without influence over the lower sort.
+Parliament losing its reverence with the people. The voice of the
+multitude set up against the sense of the legislature; a people
+luxurious and licentious, impatient of rule, and despising all
+authority. Government relaxed in every sinew, and a corrupt selfish
+spirit pervading the whole. An opinion of many, that the form of
+government is not worth contending for. No attachment in the bulk of
+the people towards the constitution. No reverence for the customs of our
+ancestors. No attachment but to private interest, nor any zeal but for
+selfish gratifications. Trade and manufactures going to ruin. Great
+Britain in danger of becoming tributary to France, and the descent of
+the crown dependent on her pleasure. Ireland, in case of a war, to
+become a prey to France; and Great Britain, unable to recover Ireland,
+cede it by treaty," (the author never can think of a treaty without
+making cessions,) "in order to purchase peace for herself. The colonies
+left exposed to the ravages of a domestic, or the conquest of a foreign
+enemy."--Gloomy enough, God knows. The author well observes,[67] _that a
+mind not totally devoid of feeling cannot look upon such a prospect
+without horror; and an heart capable of humanity must be unable to hear
+its description_. He ought to have added, that no man of common
+discretion ought to have exhibited it to the public, if it were true; or
+of common honesty, if it were false.
+
+But now for the comfort; the day-star which is to arise in our hearts;
+the author's grand scheme for totally reversing this dismal state of
+things, and making us[68] "happy at home and respected abroad,
+formidable in war and flourishing in peace."
+
+In this great work he proceeds with a facility equally astonishing and
+pleasing. Never was financier less embarrassed by the burden of
+establishments, or with the difficulty of finding ways and means. If an
+establishment is troublesome to him, he lops off at a stroke just as
+much of it as he chooses. He mows down, without giving quarter, or
+assigning reason, army, navy, ordnance, ordinary, extraordinaries;
+nothing can stand before him. Then, when he comes to provide, Amalthea's
+horn is in his hands; and he pours out with an inexhaustible bounty,
+taxes, duties, loans, and revenues, without uneasiness to himself, or
+burden to the public. Insomuch that, when we consider the abundance of
+his resources, we cannot avoid being surprised at his extraordinary
+attention to savings. But it is all the exuberance of his goodness.
+
+This book has so much of a certain tone of power, that one would be
+almost tempted to think it written by some person who had been high in
+office. A man is generally rendered somewhat a worse reasoner for having
+been a minister. In private, the assent of listening and obsequious
+friends; in public, the venal cry and prepared vote of a passive senate,
+confirm him in habits of begging the question with impunity, and
+asserting without thinking himself obliged to prove. Had it not been for
+some such habits, the author could never have expected that we should
+take his estimate for a peace establishment solely on his word.
+
+This estimate which he gives,[69] is the great groundwork of his plan
+for the national redemption; and it ought to be well and firmly laid, or
+what must become of the superstructure? One would have thought the
+natural method in a plan of reformation would be, to take the present
+existing estimates as they stand; and then to show what may be
+practicably and safely defalcated from them. This would, I say, be the
+natural course; and what would be expected from a man of business. But
+this author takes a very different method. For the ground of his
+speculation of a present peace establishment, he resorts to a former
+speculation of the same kind, which was in the mind of the minister of
+the year 1764. Indeed it never existed anywhere else. "The plan,"[70]
+says he, with his usual ease, "has been already formed, and the outline
+drawn, by the administration of 1764. I shall attempt to fill up the
+void and obliterated parts, and trace its operation. The standing
+expense of the present (his projected) peace establishment, _improved by
+the experience of the two last years, may be thus estimated_"; and he
+estimates it at 3,468,161_l._
+
+Here too it would be natural to expect some reasons for condemning the
+subsequent actual establishments, which have so much transgressed the
+limits of his plan of 1764, as well as some arguments in favor of his
+new project; which has in some articles exceeded, in others fallen
+short, but on the whole is much below his old one. Hardly a word on any
+of these points, the only points however that are in the least
+essential; for unless you assign reasons for the increase or diminution
+of the several articles of public charge, the playing at establishments
+and estimates is an amusement of no higher order, and of much less
+ingenuity, than _Questions and commands_, or _What is my thought like_?
+To bring more distinctly under the reader's view this author's strange
+method of proceeding, I will lay before him the three schemes; viz. the
+idea of the ministers in 1764, the actual estimates of the two last
+years as given by the author himself, and lastly the new project of his
+political millennium:--
+
+  Plan of establishment for 1764, as by
+    "Considerations," p. 43              [71]   £3,609,700
+  Medium of 1767 and 1768, as by
+    "State of the Nation," p. 29 and 30          3,919,375
+  Present peace establishment, as by the
+    project in "State of the Nation," p. 33      3,468,161
+
+
+It is not from anything our author has anywhere said, that you are
+enabled to find the ground, much less the justification, of the immense
+difference between these several systems; you must compare them
+yourself, article by article; no very pleasing employment, by the way,
+to compare the agreement or disagreement of two chimeras. I now only
+speak of the comparison of his own two projects. As to the latter of
+them, it differs from the former, by having some of the articles
+diminished, and others increased.[72] I find the chief article of
+reduction arises from the smaller deficiency of land and malt, and of
+the annuity funds, which he brings down to 295,561_l._ in his new
+estimate, from 502,400_l._ which he had allowed for those articles in
+the "Considerations." With this _reduction_, owing, as it must be,
+merely to a smaller deficiency of funds, he has nothing at all to do. It
+can be no work and no merit of his. But with regard to the _increase_,
+the matter is very different. It is all his own; the public is loaded
+(for anything we can see to the contrary) entirely _gratis_. The chief
+articles of the increase are on the navy,[73] and on the army and
+ordnance extraordinaries; the navy being estimated in his "State of the
+Nation" 50,000_l._ a year more, and the army and ordnance
+extraordinaries 40,000_l._ more, than he had thought proper to allow for
+them in that estimate in his "Considerations," which he makes the
+foundation of his present project. He has given no sort of reason,
+stated no sort of necessity, for this additional allowance, either in
+the one article or the other. What is still stronger, he admits that his
+allowance for the army and ordnance extras is too great, and expressly
+refers you to the "Considerations";[74] where, far from giving
+75,000_l._ a year to that service, as the "State of the Nation" has
+done, the author apprehends his own scanty provision of 35,000_l._ to be
+by far too considerable, and thinks it may well admit of further
+reductions.[75] Thus, according to his own principles, this great
+economist falls into a vicious prodigality; and is as far in his
+estimate from a consistency with his own principles as with the real
+nature of the services.
+
+Still, however, his present establishment differs from its archetype of
+1764, by being, though raised in particular parts, upon the whole, about
+141,000_l._ smaller. It is improved, he tells us, by the experience of
+the two last years. One would have concluded that the peace
+establishment of these two years had been less than that of 1764, in
+order to suggest to the author his improvements, which enabled him to
+reduce it. But how does that turn out?
+
+  Peace establishment[76] 1767 and 1768, medium       £3,919,375
+  Ditto, estimate in the "Considerations," for 1764    3,609,700
+                                                       ---------
+                            Difference                  £309,675
+
+A vast increase instead of diminution. The experience then of the two
+last years ought naturally to have given the idea of a heavier
+establishment; but this writer is able to diminish by increasing, and to
+draw the effects of subtraction from the operations of addition. By
+means of these new powers, he may certainly do whatever he pleases. He
+is indeed moderate enough in the use of them, and condescends to settle
+his establishments at 3,468,161_l._ a year.
+
+However, he has not yet done with it; he has further ideas of saving,
+and new resources of revenue. These additional savings are principally
+two: 1st, _It is to be hoped_,[77] says he, that the sum of 250,000_l._
+(which in the estimate he allows for the deficiency of land and malt)
+will be less by 37,924_l._[78]
+
+2nd, That the sum of 20,000_l._ allowed for the Foundling Hospital, and
+1800_l._ for American Surveys, will soon cease to be necessary, as the
+services will be completed.
+
+What follows, with regard to the resources,[79] is very well worthy the
+reader's attention. "Of this estimate," says he, "upwards of 300,000_l._
+will be for the plantation service; and that sum, _I hope_, the people
+of Ireland and the colonies _might be induced_ to take off Great
+Britain, and defray between them, in the proportion of 200,000_l._ by
+the colonies, and 100,000_l._ by Ireland."
+
+Such is the whole of this mighty scheme. Take his reduced estimate, and
+his further reductions, and his resources all together, and the result
+will be,--he will _certainly_ lower the provision made for the navy. He
+will cut off largely (God knows what or how) from the army and ordnance
+extraordinaries. He may be _expected_ to cut off more. He _hopes_ that
+the deficiencies on land and malt will be less than usual; and he
+_hopes_ that America and Ireland might be _induced_ to take off
+300,000_l._ of our annual charges.
+
+If any of these Hopes, Mights, Insinuations, Expectations, and
+Inducements, should fail him, there will be a formidable gaping breach
+in his whole project. If all of them should fail, he has left the nation
+without a glimmering of hope in this thick night of terrors which he has
+thought fit to spread about us. If every one of them, which, attended
+with success, would signify anything to our revenue, can have no effect
+but to add to our distractions and dangers, we shall be if possible in a
+still worse condition from his projects of cure, than he represents us
+from our original disorders.
+
+Before we examine into the consequences of these schemes, and the
+probability of these savings, let us suppose them all real and all safe,
+and then see what it is they amount to, and how he reasons on them:--
+
+  Deficiency on land and malt, less by             £37,000
+  Foundling Hospital                                20,000
+  American Surveys                                   1,800
+                                                   -------
+                                                   £58,800
+
+This is the amount of the only articles of saving he specifies: and yet
+he chooses to assert,[81] "that we may venture on the credit of them to
+reduce the standing expenses of the estimate (from 3,468,161_l._) to
+3,300,000_l._"; that is, for a saving of 58,000_l._ he is not ashamed
+to take credit for a defalcation from his own ideal establishment in a
+sum of no less than 168,161_l._! Suppose even that we were to take up
+the estimate of the "Considerations" (which is however abandoned in the
+"State of the Nation"), and reduce his 75,000_l._ extraordinaries to the
+original 35,000_l._, still all these savings joined together give us but
+98,800_l._; that is, near 70,000_l._ short of the credit he calls for,
+and for which he has neither given any reason, nor furnished any data
+whatsoever for others to reason upon.
+
+Such are his savings, as operating on his own project of a peace
+establishment. Let us now consider them as they affect the existing
+establishment and our actual services. He tells us, the sum allowed in
+his estimate for the navy is "69,321_l._ less than the grant for that
+service in 1767; but in that grant 30,000_l._ was included for the
+purchase of hemp, and a saving of about 25,000_l._ was made in that
+year." The author has got some secret in arithmetic. These two sums put
+together amount, in the ordinary way of computing, to 55,000_l._, and
+not to 69,321_l._ On what principle has he chosen to take credit for
+14,321_l._ more? To what this strange inaccuracy is owing, I cannot
+possibly comprehend; nor is it very material, where the logic is so bad,
+and the policy so erroneous, whether the arithmetic be just or
+otherwise. But in a scheme for making this nation "happy at home and
+respected abroad, formidable in war and flourishing in peace," it is
+surely a little unfortunate for us, that he has picked out the _Navy_,
+as the very first object of his economical experiments. Of all the
+public services, that of the navy is the one in which tampering may be
+of the greatest danger, which can worst be supplied upon an emergency,
+and of which any failure draws after it the longest and heaviest train
+of consequences. I am far from saying, that this or any service ought
+not to be conducted with economy. But I will never suffer the sacred
+name of economy to be bestowed upon arbitrary defalcation of charge. The
+author tells us himself, "that to suffer the navy to rot in harbor for
+want of repairs and marines, would be to invite destruction." It would
+be so. When the author talks therefore of savings on the navy estimate,
+it is incumbent on him to let us know, not what sums he will cut off,
+but what branch of that service he deems superfluous. Instead of putting
+us off with unmeaning generalities, he ought to have stated what naval
+force, what naval works, and what naval stores, with the lowest
+estimated expense, are necessary to keep our marine in a condition
+commensurate to its great ends. And this too not for the contracted and
+deceitful space of a single year, but for some reasonable term.
+Everybody knows that many charges cannot be in their nature regular or
+annual. In the year 1767 a stock of hemp, &c., was to be laid in; that
+charge intermits, but it does not end. Other charges of other kinds take
+their place. Great works are now carrying on at Portsmouth, but not of
+greater magnitude than utility; and they must be provided for. A year's
+estimate is therefore no just idea at all of a permanent peace
+establishment. Had the author opened this matter upon these plain
+principles, a judgment might have been formed, how far he had contrived
+to reconcile national defence with public economy. Till he has done it,
+those who had rather depend on any man's reason than the greatest man's
+authority, will not give him credit on this head, for the saving of a
+single shilling. As to those savings which are already made, or in
+course of being made, whether right or wrong, he has nothing at all to
+do with them; they can be no part of his project, considered as a plan
+of reformation. I greatly fear that the error has not lately been on the
+side of profusion.
+
+Another head is the saving on the army and ordnance extraordinaries,
+particularly in the American branch. What or how much reduction may be
+made, none of us, I believe, can with any fairness pretend to say; very
+little, I am convinced. The state of America is extremely unsettled;
+more troops have been sent thither; new dispositions have been made; and
+this augmentation of number, and change of disposition, has rarely, I
+believe, the effect of lessening the bill for extraordinaries, which, if
+not this year, yet in the next we must certainly feel. Care has not been
+wanting to introduce economy into that part of the service. The author's
+great friend has made, I admit, some regulations: his immediate
+successors have made more and better. This part will be handled more
+ably and more minutely at another time: but no one can cut down this
+bill of extraordinaries at his pleasure. The author has given us
+nothing, but his word, for any certain or considerable reduction; and
+this we ought to be the more cautious in taking, as he has promised
+great savings in his "Considerations," which he has not chosen to abide
+by in his "State of the Nation."
+
+On this head also of the American extraordinaries, he can take credit
+for nothing. As to his next, the lessening of the deficiency of the land
+and malt-tax, particularly of the malt-tax, any person the least
+conversant in that subject cannot avoid a smile. This deficiency arises
+from charge of collection, from anticipation, and from defective
+produce. What has the author said on the reduction of any head of this
+deficiency upon the land-tax? On these points he is absolutely silent.
+As to the deficiency on the malt-tax, which is chiefly owing to a
+defective produce, he has and can have nothing to propose. If this
+deficiency should he lessened by the increase of malting in any years
+more than in others, (as it is a greatly fluctuating object,) how much
+of this obligation shall we owe to this author's ministry? will it not
+be the case under any administration? must it not go to the general
+service of the year, in some way or other, let the finances be in whose
+hands they will? But why take credit for so extremely reduced a
+deficiency at all? I can tell him he has no rational ground for it in
+the produce of the year 1767; and I suspect will have full as little
+reason from the produce of the year 1768. That produce may indeed become
+greater, and the deficiency of course will be less. It may too be far
+otherwise. A fair and judicious financier will not, as this writer has
+done, for the sake of making out a specious account, select a favorable
+year or two, at remote periods, and ground his calculations on those. In
+1768 he will not take the deficiencies of 1753 and 1754 for his
+standard. Sober men have hitherto (and must continue this course, to
+preserve this character,) taken indifferently the mediums of the years
+immediately preceding. But a person who has a scheme from which he
+promises much to the public ought to be still more cautious; he should
+ground his speculation rather on the lowest mediums because all new
+schemes are known to be subject to some defect or failure not foreseen;
+and which therefore every prudent proposer will be ready to allow for,
+in order to lay his foundation as low and as solid as possible. Quite
+contrary is the practice of some politicians. They first propose
+savings, which they well know cannot be made, in order to get a
+reputation for economy. In due time they assume another, but a different
+method, by providing for the service they had before cut off or
+straitened, and which they can then very easily prove to be necessary.
+In the same spirit they raise magnificent ideas of revenue on funds
+which they know to be insufficient. Afterwards, who can blame them, if
+they do not satisfy the public desires? They are great artificers but
+they cannot work without materials.
+
+These are some of the little arts of great statesmen. To such we leave
+them, and follow where the author leads us, to his next resource, the
+Foundling Hospital. Whatever particular virtue there is in the mode of
+this saving, there seems to be nothing at all new, and indeed nothing
+wonderfully important in it. The sum annually voted for the support of
+the Foundling Hospital has been in a former Parliament limited to the
+establishment of the children then in the hospital. When they are
+apprenticed, this provision will cease. It will therefore fall in more
+or less at different times; and will at length cease entirely. But,
+until it does, we cannot reckon upon it as the saving on the
+establishment of any given year: nor can any one conceive how the author
+comes to mention this, any more than some other articles, as a part of a
+_new_ plan of economy which is to retrieve our affairs. This charge will
+indeed cease in its own time. But will no other succeed to it? Has he
+ever known the public free from some contingent charge, either for the
+just support of royal dignity or for national magnificence, or for
+public charity, or for public service? does he choose to flatter his
+readers that no such will ever return? or does he in good earnest
+declare, that let the reason, or necessity, be what they will, he is
+resolved not to provide for such services?
+
+Another resource of economy yet remains, for he gleans the field very
+closely,--1800_l._ for the American surveys. Why, what signifies a
+dispute about trifles? he shall have it. But while he is carrying it
+off, I shall just whisper in his ear, that neither the saving that is
+allowed, nor that which is doubted of, can at all belong to that future
+proposed administration, whose touch is to cure all our evils. Both the
+one and the other belong equally (as indeed all the rest do) to the
+present administration, to any administration; because they are the gift
+of time, and not the bounty of the exchequer.
+
+I have now done with all the minor, preparatory parts of the author's
+scheme, the several articles of saving which he proposes. At length
+comes the capital operation, his new resources. Three hundred thousand
+pounds a year from America and Ireland.--Alas! alas! if that too should
+fail us, what will become of this poor undone nation? The author, in a
+tone of great humility, _hopes_ they may be induced to pay it. Well, if
+that be all, we may hope so too: and for any light he is pleased to give
+us into the ground of this hope, and the ways and means of this
+inducement, here is a speedy end both of the question and the revenue.
+
+It is the constant custom of this author, in all his writings, to take
+it for granted, that he has given you a revenue, whenever he can point
+out to you where you may have money, if you can contrive how to get at
+it; and this seems to be the masterpiece of his financial ability. I
+think, however, in his way of proceeding, he has behaved rather like a
+harsh step-dame, than a kind nursing-mother to his country. Why stop at
+300,000_l._ If his state of things be at all founded, America and
+Ireland are much better able to pay 600,000_l._ than we are to satisfy
+ourselves with half that sum. However, let us forgive him this one
+instance of tenderness towards Ireland and the colonies.
+
+He spends a vast deal of time[82] in an endeavor to prove that Ireland
+is able to bear greater impositions. He is of opinion, that the poverty
+of the lower class of people there is, in a great measure, owing to _a
+want_ of judicious taxes; that a land-tax will enrich her tenants; that
+taxes are paid in England which are not paid there; that the colony
+trade is increased above 100,000_l._ since the peace; that she _ought_
+to have further indulgence in that trade; and ought to have further
+privileges in the woollen manufacture. From these premises, of what she
+has, what she has not, and what she ought to have, he infers that
+Ireland will contribute 100,000_l._ towards the extraordinaries of the
+American establishment.
+
+I shall make no objections whatsoever, logical or financial, to this
+reasoning: many occur; but they would lead me from my purpose, from
+which I do not intend to be diverted, because it seems to me of no small
+importance. It will be just enough to hint, what I dare say many readers
+have before observed, that when any man proposes new taxes in a country
+with which he is not personally conversant by residence or office, he
+ought to lay open its situation much more minutely and critically than
+this author has done, or than perhaps he is able to do. He ought not to
+content himself with saying that a single article of her trade is
+increased 100,000_l._ a year; he ought, if he argues from the increase
+of trade to the increase of taxes, to state the whole trade, and not one
+branch of trade only; he ought to enter fully into the state of its
+remittances, and the course of its exchange; he ought likewise to
+examine whether all its establishments are increased or diminished; and
+whether it incurs or discharges debts annually. But I pass over all
+this; and am content to ask a few plain questions.
+
+Does the author then seriously mean to propose in Parliament a land-tax,
+or any tax for 100,000_l._ a year upon Ireland? If he does, and if
+fatally, by his temerity and our weakness, he should succeed; then I say
+he will throw the whole empire from one end of it to the other into
+mortal convulsions. What is it that can satisfy the furious and
+perturbed mind of this man? is it not enough for him that such projects
+have alienated our colonies from the mother-country, and not to propose
+violently to tear our sister kingdom also from our side, and to convince
+every dependent part of the empire, that, when a little money is to be
+raised, we have no sort of regard to their ancient customs, their
+opinions, their circumstances, or their affections? He has however a
+_douceur_ for Ireland in his pocket; benefits in trade, by opening the
+woollen manufacture to that nation. A very right idea in my opinion; but
+not more strong in reason, than likely to be opposed by the most
+powerful and most violent of all local prejudices and popular passions.
+First, a fire is already kindled by his schemes of taxation in America;
+he then proposes one which will set all Ireland in a blaze; and his way
+of quenching both is by a plan which may kindle perhaps ten times a
+greater flame in Britain.
+
+Will the author pledge himself, previously to his proposal of such a
+tax, to carry this enlargement of the Irish trade? If he does not, then
+the tax will be certain; the benefit will be less than problematical. In
+this view, his compensation to Ireland vanishes into smoke; the tax, to
+their prejudices, will appear stark naked in the light of an act of
+arbitrary power and oppression. But, if he should propose the benefit
+and tax together, then the people of Ireland, a very high and spirited
+people, would think it the worst bargain in the world. They would look
+upon the one as wholly vitiated and poisoned by the other; and, if they
+could not be separated, would infallibly resist them both together. Here
+would be taxes, indeed, amounting to a handsome sum; 100,000_l._ very
+effectually voted, and passed through the best and most authentic forms;
+but how to be collected?--This is his perpetual manner. One of his
+projects depends for success upon another project, and this upon a
+third, all of them equally visionary. His finance is like the Indian
+philosophy; his earth is poised on the horns of a bull, his bull stands
+upon an elephant, his elephant is supported by a tortoise; and so on
+forever.
+
+As to his American 200,000_l._ a year, he is satisfied to repeat
+gravely, as he has done an hundred times before, that the Americans are
+able to pay it. Well, and what then? does he lay open any part of his
+plan how they may be compelled to pay it, without plunging ourselves
+into calamities that outweigh tenfold the proposed benefit? or does he
+show how they may be induced to submit to it quietly? or does he give
+any satisfaction concerning the mode of levying it; in commercial
+colonies, one of the most important and difficult of all considerations?
+Nothing like it. To the Stamp Act, whatever its excellences may be, I
+think he will not in reality recur, or even choose to assert that he
+means to do so, in case his minister should come again into power. If he
+does, I will predict that some of the fastest friends of that minister
+will desert him upon this point. As to port duties he has damned them
+all in the lump, by declaring them[83] "contrary to the first principles
+of colonization, and not less prejudicial to the interests of Great
+Britain than to those of the colonies." Surely this single observation
+of his ought to have taught him a little caution; he ought to have begun
+to doubt, whether there is not something in the nature of commercial
+colonies, which renders them an unfit object of taxation; when port
+duties, so large a fund of revenue in all countries, are by himself
+found, in this case, not only improper, but destructive. However, he has
+here pretty well narrowed the field of taxation. Stamp Act, hardly to be
+resumed. Port duties, mischievous. Excises, I believe, he will scarcely
+think worth the collection (if any revenue should be so) in America.
+Land-tax (notwithstanding his opinion of its immense use to agriculture)
+he will not directly propose, before he has thought again and again on
+the subject. Indeed he very readily recommends it for Ireland, and
+seems to think it not improper for America; because, he observes, they
+already raise most of their taxes internally, including this tax. A most
+curious reason, truly! because their lands are already heavily burdened,
+he thinks it right to burden them still further. But he will recollect,
+for surely he cannot be ignorant of it, that the lands of America are
+not, as in England, let at a rent certain in money, and therefore
+cannot, as here, be taxed at a certain pound rate. They value them in
+gross among themselves; and none but themselves in their several
+districts can value them. Without their hearty concurrence and
+co-operation, it is evident, we cannot advance a step in the assessing
+or collecting any land-tax. As to the taxes which in some places the
+Americans pay by the acre, they are merely duties of regulation; they
+are small; and to increase them, notwithstanding the secret virtues of a
+land-tax, would be the most effectual means of preventing that
+cultivation they are intended to promote. Besides, the whole country is
+heavily in arrear already for land-taxes and quit-rents. They have
+different methods of taxation in the different provinces, agreeable to
+their several local circumstances. In New England by far the greatest
+part of their revenue is raised by _faculty-taxes_ and _capitations_.
+Such is the method in many others. It is obvious that Parliament,
+unassisted by the colonies themselves, cannot take so much as a single
+step in this mode of taxation. Then what tax is it he will impose? Why,
+after all the boasting speeches and writings of his faction for these
+four years, after all the vain expectations which they have held out to
+a deluded public, this their great advocate, after twisting the subject
+every way, after writhing himself in every posture, after knocking at
+every door, is obliged fairly to abandon every mode of taxation
+whatsoever in America.[84] He thinks it the best method for Parliament
+to impose the sum, and reserve the account to itself, leaving the mode
+of taxation to the colonies. But how and in what proportion? what does
+the author say? O, not a single syllable on this the most material part
+of the whole question! Will he, in Parliament, undertake to settle the
+proportions of such payments from Nova Scotia to Nevis, in no fewer than
+six-and-twenty different countries, varying in almost every possible
+circumstance one from another? If he does, I tell him, he adjourns his
+revenue to a very long day. If he leaves it to themselves to settle
+these proportions, he adjourns it to doomsday.
+
+Then what does he get by this method on the side of acquiescence? will
+the people of America relish this course, of giving and granting and
+applying their money, the better because their assemblies are made
+commissioners of the taxes? This is far worse than all his former
+projects; for here, if the assemblies shall refuse, or delay, or be
+negligent, or fraudulent, in this new-imposed duty, we are wholly
+without remedy; and neither our custom-house officers, nor our troops,
+nor our armed ships can be of the least use in the collection. No idea
+can be more contemptible (I will not call it an oppressive one, the
+harshness is lost in the folly) than that of proposing to get any
+revenue from the Americans but by their freest and most cheerful
+consent. Most moneyed men know their own interest right well; and are as
+able as any financier, in the valuation of risks. Yet I think this
+financier will scarcely find that adventurer hardy enough, at any
+premium, to advance a shilling upon a vote of such taxes. Let him name
+the man, or set of men, that would do it. This is the only proof of the
+value of revenues; what would an interested man rate them at? His
+subscription would be at ninety-nine per cent discount the very first
+day of its opening. Here is our only national security from ruin; a
+security upon which no man in his senses would venture a shilling of his
+fortune. Yet he puts down those articles as gravely in his supply for
+the peace establishment, as if the money had been all fairly lodged in
+the exchequer.
+
+          American revenue                      £200,000
+          Ireland                                100,000
+
+Very handsome indeed! But if supply is to be got in such a manner,
+farewell the lucrative mystery of finance! If you are to be credited for
+savings, without showing how, why, or with what safety, they are to be
+made; and for revenues, without specifying on what articles, or by what
+means, or at what expense, they are to be collected; there is not a
+clerk in a public office who may not outbid this author, or his friend,
+for the department of chancellor of the exchequer; not an apprentice in
+the city, that will not strike out, with the same advantages, the same,
+or a much larger plan of supply.
+
+Here is the whole of what belongs to the author's scheme for saving us
+from impending destruction. Take it even in its most favorable point of
+view, as a thing within possibility; and imagine what must be the wisdom
+of this gentleman, or his opinion of ours, who could first think of
+representing this nation in such a state, as no friend can look upon but
+with horror, and scarcely an enemy without compassion, and afterwards
+of diverting himself with such inadequate, impracticable, puerile
+methods for our relief! If these had been the dreams of some unknown,
+unnamed, and nameless writer, they would excite no alarm; their weakness
+had been an antidote to their malignity. But as they are universally
+believed to be written by the hand, or, what amounts to the same thing,
+under the immediate direction, of a person who has been in the
+management of the highest affairs, and may soon be in the same
+situation, I think it is not to be reckoned amongst our greatest
+consolations, that the yet remaining power of this kingdom is to be
+employed in an attempt to realize notions that are at once so frivolous,
+and so full of danger. That consideration will justify me in dwelling a
+little longer on the difficulties of the nation, and the solutions of
+our author.
+
+I am then persuaded that he cannot be in the least alarmed about our
+situation, let his outcry be what he pleases. I will give him a reason
+for my opinion, which, I think, he cannot dispute. All that he bestows
+upon the nation, which it does not possess without him, and supposing it
+all sure money, amounts to no more than a sum of 300,000_l._ a year.
+This, he thinks, will do the business completely, and render us
+flourishing at home, and respectable abroad. If the option between glory
+and shame, if our salvation or destruction, depended on this sum, it is
+impossible that he should have been active, and made a merit of that
+activity, in taking off a shilling in the pound of the land-tax, which
+came up to his grand desideratum, and upwards of 100,000_l._ more. By
+this manoeuvre, he left our trade, navigation, and manufactures, on the
+verge of destruction, our finances in ruin, our credit expiring, Ireland
+on the point of being ceded to France, the colonies of being torn to
+pieces, the succession of the crown at the mercy of our great rival, and
+the kingdom itself on the very point of becoming tributary to that
+haughty power. All this for want of 300,000_l._; for I defy the reader
+to point out any other revenue, or any other precise and defined scheme
+of politics, which he assigns for our redemption.
+
+I know that two things may be said in his defence, as bad reasons are
+always at hand in an indifferent cause; that he was not sure the money
+would be applied as he thinks it ought to be, by the present ministers.
+I think as ill of them as he does to the full. They have done very near
+as much mischief as they can do, to a constitution so robust as this is.
+Nothing can make them more dangerous, but that, as they are already in
+general composed of his disciples and instruments, they may add to the
+public calamity of their own measures, the adoption of his projects. But
+be the ministers what they may, the author knows that they could not
+avoid applying this 450,000_l._ to the service of the establishment, as
+faithfully as he, or any other minister, could do. I say they could not
+avoid it, and have no merit at all for the application. But supposing
+that they should greatly mismanage this revenue. Here is a good deal of
+room for mistake and prodigality before you come to the edge of ruin.
+The difference between the amount of that real and his imaginary revenue
+is, 150,000_l._ a year at least; a tolerable sum for them to play with:
+this might compensate the difference between the author's economy and
+their profusion; and still, notwithstanding their vices and ignorance,
+the nation might he saved. The author ought also to recollect, that a
+good man would hardly deny, even to the worst of ministers, the means of
+doing their duty; especially in a crisis when our being depended on
+supplying them with some means or other. In such a case their penury of
+mind, in discovering resources, would make it rather the more necessary,
+not to strip such poor providers of the little stock they had in hand.
+
+Besides, here is another subject of distress, and a very serious one,
+which puts us again to a stand. The author may possibly not come into
+power (I only state the possibility): he may not always continue in it:
+and if the contrary to all this should fortunately for us happen, what
+insurance on his life can be made for a sum adequate to his loss? Then
+we are thus unluckily situated, that the _chance_ of an American and
+Irish revenue of 300,000_l._ to be managed by him, is to save us from
+ruin two or three years hence at best, to make us happy at home and
+glorious abroad; and the actual possession of 400,000_l._ English taxes
+cannot so much as protract our ruin without him. So we are staked on
+four chances; his power, its permanence, the success of his projects,
+and the duration of his life. Any one of these failing, we are gone.
+_Propria hæc si dona fuissent!_ This is no unfair representation;
+ultimately all hangs on his life, because, in his account of every set
+of men that have held or supported administration, he finds neither
+virtue nor ability in any but himself. Indeed he pays (through their
+measures) some compliments to Lord Bute and Lord Despenser. But to the
+latter, this is, I suppose, but a civility to old acquaintance: to the
+former, a little stroke of politics. We may therefore fairly say, that
+our only hope is his life; and he has, to make it the more so, taken
+care to cut off any resource which we possessed independently of him.
+
+In the next place it may be said, to excuse any appearance of
+inconsistency between the author's actions and his declarations, that he
+thought it right to relieve the landed interest, and lay the burden
+where it ought to lie, on the colonies. What! to take off a revenue so
+necessary to our being, before anything whatsoever was acquired in the
+place of it? In prudence, he ought to have waited at least for the first
+quarter's receipt of the new anonymous American revenue, and Irish
+land-tax. Is there something so specific for our disorders in American,
+and something so poisonous in English money, that one is to heal, the
+other to destroy us? To say that the landed interest _could_ not
+continue to pay it for a year or two longer, is more than the author
+will attempt to prove. To say that they _would_ pay it no longer, is to
+treat the landed interest, in my opinion, very scurvily. To suppose that
+the gentry, clergy, and freeholders of England do not rate the commerce,
+the credit, the religion, the liberty, the independency of their
+country, and the succession of their crown, at a shilling in the pound
+land-tax! They never gave him reason to think so meanly of them. And, if
+I am rightly informed, when that measure was debated in Parliament, a
+very different reason was assigned by the author's great friend, as well
+as by others, for that reduction: one very different from the critical
+and almost desperate state of our finances. Some people then endeavored
+to prove, that the reduction might be made without detriment to the
+national credit, or the due support of a proper peace establishment;
+otherwise it is obvious that the reduction could not be defended in
+argument. So that this author cannot despair so much of the
+commonwealth, without this American and Irish revenue, as he pretends to
+do. If he does, the reader sees how handsomely he has provided for us,
+by voting away one revenue, and by giving us a pamphlet on the other.
+
+I do not mean to blame the relief which was then given by Parliament to
+the land. It was grounded on very weighty reasons. The administration
+contended only for its continuance for a year, in order to have the
+merit of taking off the shilling in the pound immediately before the
+elections; and thus to bribe the freeholders of England with their own
+money.
+
+It is true, the author, in his estimate of ways and means, takes credit
+for 400,000_l._ a year, _Indian Revenue_. But he will not very
+positively insist, that we should put this revenue to the account of his
+plans or his power; and for a very plain reason: we are already near two
+years in possession of it. By what means we came to that possession, is
+a pretty long story; however, I shall give nothing more than a short
+abstract of the proceeding, in order to see whether the author will take
+to himself any part in that measure.
+
+The fact is this; the East India Company had for a good while solicited
+the ministry for a negotiation, by which they proposed to pay largely
+for some advantages in their trade, and for the renewal of their
+charter. This had been the former method of transacting with that body.
+Government having only leased the monopoly for short terms, the Company
+has been obliged to resort to it frequently for renewals. These two
+parties had always negotiated (on the true principle of credit) not as
+government and subject, but as equal dealers, on the footing of mutual
+advantage. The public had derived great benefit from such dealing. But
+at that time new ideas prevailed. The ministry, instead of listening to
+the proposals of that Company, chose to set up a claim of the crown to
+their possessions. The original plan seems to have been, to get the
+House of Commons to compliment the crown with a sort of juridical
+declaration of a title to the Company's acquisitions in India; which the
+crown on its part, with the best air in the world, was to bestow upon
+the public. Then it would come to the turn of the House of Commons again
+to be liberal and grateful to the crown. The civil list debts were to be
+paid off; with perhaps a pretty augmentation of income. All this was to
+be done on the most public-spirited principles, and with a politeness
+and mutual interchange of good offices, that could not but have charmed.
+But what was best of all, these civilities were to be without a farthing
+of charge to either of the kind and obliging parties. The East India
+Company was to be covered with infamy and disgrace, and at the same time
+was to pay the whole bill.
+
+In consequence of this scheme, the terrors of a parliamentary inquiry
+were hung over them. A judicature was asserted in Parliament to try this
+question. But lest this judicial character should chance to inspire
+certain stubborn ideas of law and right, it was argued, that the
+judicature was arbitrary, and ought not to determine by the rules of
+law, but by their opinion of policy and expediency. Nothing exceeded the
+violence of some of the managers, except their impotence. They were
+bewildered by their passions, and by their want of knowledge or want of
+consideration of the subject. The more they advanced, the further they
+found themselves from their object.--All things ran into confusion. The
+ministers quarrelled among themselves. They disclaimed one another. They
+suspended violence, and shrunk from treaty. The inquiry was almost at
+its last gasp; when some active persons of the Company were given to
+understand that this hostile proceeding was only set up _in terrorem_;
+that government was far from an intention of seizing upon the
+possessions of the Company. Administration, they said, was sensible,
+that the idea was in every light full of absurdity; and that such a
+seizure was not more out of their power, than remote from their wishes;
+and therefore, if the Company would come in a liberal manner to the
+House, they certainly could not fail of putting a speedy end to this
+disagreeable business, and of opening a way to an advantageous treaty.
+
+On this hint the Company acted: they came at once to a resolution of
+getting rid of the difficulties which arose from the complication of
+their trade with their revenue; a step which despoiled them of their
+best defensive armor, and put them at once into the power of
+administration. They threw their whole stock of every kind, the revenue,
+the trade, and even their debt from government, into one fund, which
+they computed on the surest grounds would amount to 800,000_l._, with a
+large probable surplus for the payment of debt. Then they agreed to
+divide this sum in equal portions between themselves and the public,
+400,000_l._ to each. This gave to the proprietors of that fund an annual
+augmentation of no more than 80,000_l._ dividend. They ought to receive
+from government 120,000_l._ for the loan of their capital. So that, in
+fact, the whole, which on this plan they reserved to themselves, from
+their vast revenues, from their extensive trade, and in consideration of
+the great risks and mighty expenses which purchased these advantages,
+amounted to no more than 280,000_l._, whilst government was to receive,
+as I said, 400,000_l._
+
+This proposal was thought by themselves liberal indeed; and they
+expected the highest applauses for it. However, their reception was very
+different from their expectations. When they brought up their plan to
+the House of Commons, the offer, as it was natural, of 400,000_l._ was
+very well relished. But nothing could be more disgustful than the
+80,000_l._ which the Company had divided amongst themselves. A violent
+tempest of public indignation and fury rose against them. The heads of
+people turned. The Company was held well able to pay 400,000_l._ a year
+to government; but bankrupts, if they attempted to divide the fifth part
+of it among themselves. An _ex post facto_ law was brought in with great
+precipitation, for annulling this dividend. In the bill was inserted a
+clause, which suspended for about a year the right, which, under the
+public faith, the Company enjoyed, of making their own dividends. Such
+was the disposition and temper of the House, that although the plain
+face of facts, reason, arithmetic, all the authority, parts, and
+eloquence in the kingdom, were against this bill; though all the
+Chancellors of the Exchequer, who had held that office from the
+beginning of this reign, opposed it; yet a few placemen of the
+subordinate departments sprung out of their ranks, took the lead, and,
+by an opinion _of some sort of secret support_, carried the bill with a
+high hand, leaving the then Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the
+Exchequer in a very moderate minority. In this distracted situation, the
+managers of the bill, notwithstanding their triumph, did not venture to
+propose the payment of the civil list debt. The Chancellor of the
+Exchequer was not in good humor enough, after his late defeat by his own
+troops, to co-operate in such a design; so they made an act, to lock up
+the money in the exchequer until they should have time to look about
+them, and settle among themselves what they were to do with it.
+
+Thus ended this unparalleled transaction. The author, I believe, will
+not claim any part of the glory of it: he will leave it whole and entire
+to the authors of the measure. The money was the voluntary, free gift of
+the Company; the rescinding bill was the act of legislature, to which
+they and we owe submission: the author has nothing to do with the one or
+with the other. However, he cannot avoid rubbing himself against this
+subject merely for the pleasure of stirring controversies, and
+gratifying a certain pruriency of taxation that seems to infect his
+blood. It is merely to indulge himself in speculations of taxing, that
+he chooses to harangue on this subject. For he takes credit for no
+greater sum than the public is already in possession of. He does not
+hint that the Company means, or has ever shown any disposition, if
+managed with common prudence, to pay less in future; and he cannot doubt
+that the present ministry are as well inclined to drive them by their
+mock inquiries, and real rescinding bills, as he can possibly be with
+his taxes. Besides, it is obvious, that as great a sum might have been
+drawn from that Company, without affecting property, or shaking the
+constitution, or endangering the principle of public credit, or running
+into his golden dreams of cockets on the Ganges, or visions of
+stamp-duties on _Perwannas_, _Dusticks_, _Kistbundees_, and
+_Husbulhookums_. For once, I will disappoint him in this part of the
+dispute; and only in a very few words recommend to his consideration,
+how he is to get off the dangerous idea of taxing a public fund, if he
+levies those duties in England; and if he is to levy them in India, what
+provision he has made for a revenue establishment there; supposing that
+he undertakes this new scheme of finance independently of the Company,
+and against its inclinations.
+
+So much for these revenues; which are nothing but his visions, or
+already the national possessions without any act of his. It is easy to
+parade with a high talk of Parliamentary rights, of the universality of
+legislative powers, and of uniform taxation. Men of sense, when new
+projects come before them, always think a discourse proving the mere
+right or mere power of acting in the manner proposed, to be no more than
+a very unpleasant way of misspending time. They must see the object to
+be of proper magnitude to engage them; they must see the means of
+compassing it to be next to certain; the mischiefs not to counterbalance
+the profit; they will examine how a proposed imposition or regulation
+agrees with the opinion of those who are likely to be affected by it;
+they will not despise the consideration even of their habitudes and
+prejudices. They wish to know how it accords or disagrees with the true
+spirit of prior establishments, whether of government or of finance;
+because they well know, that in the complicated economy of great
+kingdoms, and immense revenues, which in a length of time, and by a
+variety of accidents have coalesced into a sort of body, an attempt
+towards a compulsory equality in all circumstances, and an exact
+practical definition of the supreme rights in every case, is the most
+dangerous and chimerical of all enterprises. The old building stands
+well enough, though part Gothic, part Grecian, and part Chinese, until
+an attempt is made to square it into uniformity. Then it may come down
+upon our heads altogether, in much uniformity of ruin; and great will be
+the fall thereof. Some people, instead of inclining to debate the
+matter, only feel a sort of nausea, when they are told, that "protection
+calls for supply," and that "all the parts ought to contribute to the
+support of the whole." Strange argument for great and grave
+deliberation! As if the same end may not, and must not, be compassed,
+according to its circumstances, by a great diversity of ways. Thus, in
+Great Britain, some of our establishments are apt for the support of
+credit. They stand therefore upon a principle of their own, distinct
+from, and in some respects contrary to, the relation between prince and
+subject. It is a new species of contract superinduced upon the old
+contract of the state. The idea of power must as much as possible be
+banished from it; for power and credit are things adverse, incompatible;
+_Non bene conveniunt, nec in una sede morantur_. Such establishments are
+our great _moneyed_ companies. To tax them would be critical and
+dangerous, and contradictory to the very purpose of their institution;
+which is credit, and cannot therefore be taxation. But the nation, when
+it gave up that power, did not give up the advantage; but supposed, and
+with reason, that government was overpaid in credit, for what it seemed
+to lose in authority. In such a case to talk of the rights of
+sovereignty is quite idle. Other establishments supply other modes of
+public contribution. Our _trading_ companies, as well as individual
+importers, are a fit subject of revenue by customs. Some establishments
+pay us by a _monopoly_ of their consumption and their produce. This,
+nominally no tax, in reality comprehends all taxes. Such establishments
+are our colonies. To tax them would be as erroneous in policy, as
+rigorous in equity. Ireland supplies us by furnishing troops in war; and
+by bearing part of our foreign establishment in peace. She aids us at
+all times by the money that her absentees spend amongst us; which is no
+small part of the rental of that kingdom. Thus Ireland contributes her
+part. Some objects bear port-duties. Some are fitter for an inland
+excise. The mode varies, the object is the same. To strain these from
+their old and inveterate leanings, might impair the old benefit, and not
+answer the end of the new project. Among all the great men of antiquity,
+_Procrustes_ shall never be my hero of legislation; with his iron bed,
+the allegory of his government, and the type of some modern policy, by
+which the long limb was to be cut short, and the short tortured into
+length. Such was the state-bed of uniformity! He would, I conceive, be a
+very indifferent farmer, who complained that his sheep did not plough,
+or his horses yield him wool, though it would be an idea full of
+equality. They may think this right in rustic economy, who think it
+available in the politic:
+
+    Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carimna, Mævi!
+    Atque idem jungat vulpes, et mulgeat hircos.
+
+
+As the author has stated this Indian taxation for no visible purpose
+relative to his plan of supply, so he has stated many other projects
+with as little, if any distinct end; unless perhaps to show you how full
+he is of projects for the public good; and what vast expectations may be
+formed of him or his friends, if they should be translated into
+administration. It is also from some opinion that these speculations may
+one day become our public measures, that I think it worth while to
+trouble the reader at all about them.
+
+Two of them stand out in high relievo beyond the rest. The first is a
+change in the internal representation of this country, by enlarging our
+number of constituents. The second is an addition to our
+representatives, by new American members of Parliament. I pass over here
+all considerations how far such a system will be an improvement of our
+constitution according to any sound theory. Not that I mean to condemn
+such speculative inquiries concerning this great object of the national
+attention. They may tend to clear doubtful points, and possibly may
+lead, as they have often done, to real improvements. What I object to,
+is their introduction into a discourse relating to the immediate state
+of our affairs, and recommending plans of practical government. In this
+view, I see nothing in them but what is usual with the author; an
+attempt to raise discontent in the people of England, to balance those
+discontents which the measures of his friends had already raised in
+America. What other reason can he have for suggesting, that we are not
+happy enough to enjoy a sufficient number of voters in England? I
+believe that most sober thinkers on this subject are rather of opinion,
+that our fault is on the other side; and that it would be more in the
+spirit of our constitution, and more agreeable to the pattern of our
+best laws, by lessening the number, to add to the weight and
+independency of our voters. And truly, considering the immense and
+dangerous charge of elections; the prostitute and daring venality, the
+corruption of manners, the idleness and profligacy of the lower sort of
+voters, no prudent man would propose to increase such an evil, if it be,
+as I fear it is, out of our power to administer to it any remedy. The
+author proposes nothing further. If he has any improvements that may
+balance or may lessen this inconvenience, he has thought proper to keep
+them as usual in his own breast. Since he has been so reserved, I should
+have wished he had been as cautious with regard to the project itself.
+First, because he observes justly, that his scheme, however it might
+improve the platform, can add nothing to the authority of the
+legislature; much I fear, it will have a contrary operation; for,
+authority depending on opinion at least as much as on duty, an idea
+circulated among the people that our constitution is not so perfect as
+it ought to be, before you are sure of mending it, is a certain method
+of lessening it in the public opinion. Of this irreverent opinion of
+Parliament, the author himself complains in one part of his book; and he
+endeavors to increase it in the other.
+
+Has he well considered what an immense operation any change in our
+constitution is? how many discussions, parties, and passions, it will
+necessarily excite; and when you open it to inquiry in one part, where
+the inquiry will stop? Experience shows us, that no time can be fit for
+such changes but a time of general confusion; when good men, finding
+everything already broken up, think it right to take advantage of the
+opportunity of such derangement in favor of an useful alteration.
+Perhaps a time of the greatest security and tranquillity both at home
+and abroad may likewise be fit; but will the author affirm this to be
+just such a time? Transferring an idea of military to civil prudence, he
+ought to know how dangerous it is to make an alteration of your
+disposition in the face of an enemy.
+
+Now comes his American representation. Here too, as usual, he takes no
+notice of any difficulty, nor says anything to obviate those objections
+that must naturally arise in the minds of his readers. He throws you his
+politics as he does his revenue; do you make something of them if you
+can. Is not the reader a little astonished at the proposal of an
+American representation from that quarter? It is proposed merely as a
+project[85] of speculative improvement; not from the necessity in the
+case, not to add anything to the authority of Parliament, but that we
+may afford a greater attention to the concerns of the Americans, and
+give them a better opportunity of stating their grievances, and of
+obtaining redress. I am glad to find the author has at length discovered
+that we have not given a sufficient attention to their concerns, or a
+proper redress to their grievances. His great friend would once have
+been exceedingly displeased with any person, who should tell him, that
+he did not attend sufficiently to those concerns. He thought he did so,
+when he regulated the colonies over and over again: he thought he did so
+when he formed two general systems of revenue; one of port-duties, and
+the other of internal taxation. These systems supposed, or ought to
+suppose, the greatest attention to and the most detailed information
+of, all their affairs. However, by contending for the American
+representation, he seems at last driven virtually to admit, that great
+caution ought to be used in the exercise of _all_ our legislative rights
+over an object so remote from our eye, and so little connected with our
+immediate feelings; that in prudence we ought not to be quite so ready
+with our taxes, until we can secure the desired representation in
+Parliament. Perhaps it may be some time before this hopeful scheme can
+be brought to perfect maturity, although the author seems to be in no
+wise aware of any obstructions that lie in the way of it. He talks of
+his union, just as he does of his taxes and his savings, with as much
+_sang froid_ and ease as if his wish and the enjoyment were exactly the
+same thing. He appears not to have troubled his head with the infinite
+difficulty of settling that representation on a fair balance of wealth
+and numbers throughout the several provinces of America and the West
+Indies, under such an infinite variety of circumstances. It costs him
+nothing to fight with nature, and to conquer the order of Providence,
+which manifestly opposes itself to the possibility of such a
+Parliamentary union.
+
+But let us, to indulge his passion for projects and power, suppose the
+happy time arrived, when the author comes into the ministry, and is to
+realize his speculations. The writs are issued for electing members for
+America and the West Indies. Some provinces receive them in six weeks,
+some in ten, some in twenty. A vessel may be lost, and then some
+provinces may not receive them at all. But let it be, that they all
+receive them at once, and in the shortest time. A proper space must be
+given for proclamation and for the election; some weeks at least. But
+the members are chosen; and if ships are ready to sail, in about six
+more they arrive in London. In the mean time the Parliament has sat and
+business far advanced without American representatives. Nay, by this
+time, it may happen that the Parliament is dissolved; and then the
+members ship themselves again, to be again elected. The writs may arrive
+in America, before the poor members of a Parliament in which they never
+sat, can arrive at their several provinces. A new interest is formed,
+and they find other members are chosen whilst they are on the high seas.
+But, if the writs and members arrive together, here is at best a new
+trial of skill amongst the candidates, after one set of them have well
+aired themselves with their two voyages of 6000 miles.
+
+However, in order to facilitate everything to the author, we will
+suppose them all once more elected, and steering again to Old England,
+with a good heart, and a fair westerly wind in their stern. On their
+arrival, they find all in a hurry and bustle; in and out; condolence and
+congratulation; the crown is demised. Another Parliament is to be
+called. Away back to America again on a fourth voyage, and to a third
+election. Does the author mean to make our kings as immortal in their
+personal as in their politic character? or whilst he bountifully adds to
+their life, will he take from them their prerogative of dissolving
+Parliaments, in favor of the American union? or are the American
+representatives to be perpetual, and to feel neither demises of the
+crown, nor dissolutions of Parliament?
+
+But these things may be granted to him, without bringing him much nearer
+to his point. What does he think of re-election? is the American member
+the only one who is not to take a place, or the only one to be exempted
+from the ceremony of re-election? How will this great politician
+preserve the rights of electors, the fairness of returns, and the
+privilege of the House of Commons, as the sole judge of such contests?
+It would undoubtedly be a glorious sight to have eight or ten petitions,
+or double returns, from Boston and Barbadoes, from Philadelphia and
+Jamaica, the members returned, and the petitioners, with all their train
+of attorneys, solicitors, mayors, selectmen, provost-marshals, and above
+five hundred or a thousand witnesses, come to the bar of the House of
+Commons. Possibly we might be interrupted in the enjoyment of this
+pleasing spectacle, if a war should break out, and our constitutional
+fleet, loaded with members of Parliament, returning-officers, petitions,
+and witnesses, the electors and elected, should become a prize to the
+French or Spaniards, and be conveyed to Carthagena, or to La Vera Cruz,
+and from thence perhaps to Mexico or Lima, there to remain until a
+cartel for members of Parliament can be settled, or until the war is
+ended.
+
+In truth the author has little studied this business; or he might have
+known, that some of the most considerable provinces of America, such,
+for instance, as Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay, have not in each of
+them two men who can afford, at a distance from their estates, to spend
+a thousand pounds a year. How can these provinces be represented at
+Westminster? If their province pays them, they are American agents, with
+salaries, and not independent members of Parliament. It is true, that
+formerly in England members had salaries from their constituents; but
+they all had salaries, and were all, in this way, upon a par. If these
+American representatives have no salaries, then they must add to the
+list of our pensioners and dependents at court, or they must starve.
+There is no alternative.
+
+Enough of this visionary union; in which much extravagance appears
+without any fancy, and the judgment is shocked without anything to
+refresh the imagination. It looks as if the author had dropped down from
+the moon, without any knowledge of the general nature of this globe, of
+the general nature of its inhabitants, without the least acquaintance
+with the affairs of this country. Governor Pownall has handled the same
+subject. To do him justice, he treats it upon far more rational
+principles of speculation; and much more like a man of business. He
+thinks (erroneously, I conceive; but he does think) that our legislative
+rights are incomplete without such a representation. It is no wonder,
+therefore, that he endeavors by every means to obtain it. Not like our
+author, who is always on velvet, he is aware of some difficulties; and
+he proposes some solutions. But nature is too hard for both these
+authors; and America is, and ever will be, without actual representation
+in the House of Commons; nor will any minister be wild enough even to
+propose such a representation in Parliament; however he may choose to
+throw out that project, together with others equally far from his real
+opinions, and remote from his designs, merely to fall in with the
+different views, and captivate the affections, of different sorts of
+men.
+
+Whether these projects arise from the author's real political
+principles, or are only brought out in subservience to his political
+views, they compose the whole of anything that is like precise and
+definite, which the author has given us to expect from that
+administration which is so much the subject of his praises and prayers.
+As to his general propositions, that "there is a deal of difference
+between impossibilities and great difficulties"; that "a great scheme
+cannot be carried unless made the business of successive
+administrations"; that "virtuous and able men are the fittest to serve
+their country"; all this I look on as no more than so much rubble to
+fill up the spaces between the regular masonry. Pretty much in the same
+light I cannot forbear considering his detached observations on
+commerce; such as, that "the system for colony regulations would be very
+simple, and mutually beneficial to Great Britain and her colonies, if
+the old navigation laws were adhered to."[86] That "the transportation
+should be in all cases in ships belonging to British subjects." That
+"even British ships should not be _generally_ received into the colonies
+from any part of Europe, except the dominions of Great Britain." That
+"it is unreasonable that corn and such like products should be
+restrained to come first to a British port." What do all these fine
+observations signify? Some of them condemn, as ill practices, things
+that were never practised at all. Some recommend to be done, things that
+always have been done. Others indeed convey, though obliquely and
+loosely, some insinuations highly dangerous to our commerce. If I could
+prevail on myself to think the author meant to ground any practice upon
+these general propositions, I should think it very necessary to ask a
+few questions about some of them. For instance, what does he mean by
+talking of an adherence to the old navigation laws? Does he mean, that
+the particular law, 12 Car. II. c. 19, commonly called "The Act of
+Navigation," is to be adhered to, and that the several subsequent
+additions, amendments, and exceptions, ought to be all repealed? If so,
+he will make a strange havoc in the whole system of our trade laws,
+which have been universally acknowledged to be full as well founded in
+the alterations and exceptions, as the act of Charles the Second in the
+original provisions; and to pursue full as wisely the great end of that
+very politic law, the increase of the British navigation. I fancy the
+writer could hardly propose anything more alarming to those immediately
+interested in that navigation than such a repeal. If he does not mean
+this, he has got no farther than a nugatory proposition, which nobody
+can contradict, and for which no man is the wiser.
+
+That "the regulations for the colony trade would be few and simple if
+the old navigation laws were adhered to," I utterly deny as a fact. That
+they ought to be so, sounds well enough; but this proposition is of the
+same nugatory nature with some of the former. The regulations for the
+colony trade ought not to be more nor fewer, nor more nor less complex,
+than the occasion requires. And, as that trade is in a great measure a
+system of art and restriction, they can neither be few nor simple. It is
+true, that the very principle may be destroyed, by multiplying to excess
+the means of securing it. Never did a minister depart more from the
+author's ideas of simplicity, or more embarrass the trade of America
+with the multiplicity and intricacy of regulations and ordinances, than
+his boasted minister of 1764. That minister seemed to be possessed with
+something, hardly short of a rage, for regulation and restriction. He
+had so multiplied bonds, certificates, affidavits, warrants,
+sufferances, and cockets; had supported them with such severe penalties,
+and extended them without the least consideration of circumstances to so
+many objects, that, had they all continued in their original force,
+commerce must speedily have expired under them. Some of them, the
+ministry which gave them birth was obliged to destroy: with their own
+hand they signed the condemnation of their own regulations; confessing
+in so many words, in the preamble of their act of the 5th Geo. III.,
+that some of these regulations had laid _an unnecessary restraint on the
+trade and correspondence of his Majesty's American subjects_. This, in
+that ministry, was a candid confession of a mistake; but every
+alteration made in those regulations by their successors is to be the
+effect of envy, and American misrepresentation. So much for the author's
+simplicity in regulation.
+
+I have now gone through all which I think immediately essential in the
+author's idea of war, of peace, of the comparative states of England and
+France, of our actual situation; in his projects of economy, of finance,
+of commerce, and of constitutional improvement. There remains nothing
+now to be considered, except his heavy censures upon the administration
+which was formed in 1765; which is commonly known by the name of the
+Marquis of Rockingham's administration, as the administration which
+preceded it is by that of Mr. Grenville. These censures relate chiefly
+to three heads:--1. To the repeal of the American Stamp Act. 2. To the
+commercial regulations then made. 3. To the course of foreign
+negotiations during that short period.
+
+A person who knew nothing of public affairs but from the writings of
+this author, would be led to conclude, that, at the time of the change
+in June, 1765, some well-digested system of administration, founded in
+national strength, and in the affections of the people, proceeding in
+all points with the most reverential and tender regard to the laws, and
+pursuing with equal wisdom and success everything which could tend to
+the internal prosperity, and to the external honor and dignity of this
+country, had been all at once subverted, by an irruption of a sort of
+wild, licentious, unprincipled invaders, who wantonly, and with a
+barbarous rage, had defaced a thousand fair monuments of the
+constitutional and political skill of their predecessors. It is natural
+indeed that this author should have some dislike to the administration
+which was formed in 1765. Its views, in most things, were different from
+those of his friends; in some, altogether opposite to them. It is
+impossible that both of these administrations should be the objects of
+public esteem. Their different principles compose some of the strongest
+political lines which discriminate the parties even now subsisting
+amongst us. The ministers of 1764 are not indeed followed by very many
+in their opposition; yet a large part of the people now in office
+entertain, or pretend to entertain, sentiments entirely conformable to
+theirs; whilst some of the former colleagues of the ministry which was
+formed in 1765, however they may have abandoned the connection, and
+contradicted by their conduct the principles of their former friends,
+pretend, on their parts, still to adhere to the same maxims. All the
+lesser divisions, which are indeed rather names of personal attachment
+than of party distinction, fall in with the one or the other of these
+leading parties.
+
+I intend to state, as shortly as I am able, the general condition of
+public affairs, and the disposition of the minds of men, at the time of
+the remarkable change of system in 1765. The reader will have thereby a
+more distinct view of the comparative merits of these several plans, and
+will receive more satisfaction concerning the ground and reason of the
+measures which were then pursued, than, I believe, can be derived from
+the perusal of those partial representations contained in the "State of
+the Nation," and the other writings of those who have continued, for now
+nearly three years, in the undisturbed possession of the press. This
+will, I hope, be some apology for my dwelling a little on this part of
+the subject.
+
+On the resignation of the Earl of Bute, in 1763, our affairs had been
+delivered into the hands of three ministers of his recommendation: Mr.
+Grenville, the Earl of Egremont, and the Earl of Halifax. This
+arrangement, notwithstanding the retirement of Lord Bute, announced to
+the public a continuance of the same measures; nor was there more reason
+to expect a change from the death of the Earl of Egremont. The Earl of
+Sandwich supplied his place. The Duke of Bedford, and the gentlemen who
+act in that connection, and whose general character and politics were
+sufficiently understood, added to the strength of the ministry, without
+making any alteration in their plan of conduct. Such was the
+constitution of the ministry which was changed in 1765.
+
+As to their politics, the principles of the peace of Paris governed in
+foreign affairs. In domestic, the same scheme prevailed, of
+contradicting the opinions, and disgracing most of the persons, who had
+been countenanced and employed in the late reign. The inclinations of
+the people were little attended to; and a disposition to the use of
+forcible methods ran through the whole tenor of administration. The
+nation in general was uneasy and dissatisfied. Sober men saw causes for
+it, in the constitution of the ministry and the conduct of the
+ministers. The ministers, who have usually a short method on such
+occasions, attributed their unpopularity wholly to the efforts of
+faction. However this might be, the licentiousness and tumults of the
+common people, and the contempt of government, of which our author so
+often and so bitterly complains, as owing to the mismanagement of the
+subsequent administrations, had at no time risen to a greater or more
+dangerous height. The measures taken to suppress that spirit were as
+violent and licentious as the spirit itself; injudicious, precipitate,
+and some of them illegal. Instead of allaying, they tended infinitely to
+inflame the distemper; and whoever will be at the least pains to
+examine, will find those measures not only the causes of the tumults
+which then prevailed, but the real sources of almost all the disorders
+which have arisen since that time. More intent on making a victim to
+party than an example of justice, they blundered in the method of
+pursuing their vengeance. By this means a discovery was made of many
+practices, common indeed in the office of Secretary of State, but wholly
+repugnant to our laws, and to the genius of the English constitution.
+One of the worst of these was, the wanton and indiscriminate seizure of
+papers, even in cases where the safety of the state was not pretended in
+justification of so harsh a proceeding. The temper of the ministry had
+excited a jealousy, which made the people more than commonly vigilant
+concerning every power which was exercised by government. The abuse,
+however sanctioned by custom, was evident; but the ministry, instead of
+resting in a prudent inactivity, or (what would have been still more
+prudent) taking the lead, in quieting the minds of the people, and
+ascertaining the law upon those delicate points, made use of the whole
+influence of government to prevent a Parliamentary resolution against
+these practices of office. And lest the colorable reasons, offered in
+argument against this Parliamentary procedure, should be mistaken for
+the real motives of their conduct, all the advantage of privilege, all
+the arts and finesses of pleading, and great sums of public money were
+lavished, to prevent any decision upon those practices in the courts of
+justice. In the mean time, in order to weaken, since they could not
+immediately destroy, the liberty of the press, the privilege of
+Parliament was voted away in all accusations for a seditious libel. The
+freedom of debate in Parliament itself was no less menaced. Officers of
+the army, of long and meritorious service, and of small fortunes, were
+chosen as victims for a single vote, by an exertion of ministerial
+power, which had been very rarely used, and which is extremely unjust,
+as depriving men not only of a place, but a profession, and is indeed of
+the most pernicious example both in a civil and a military light.
+
+Whilst all things were managed at home with such a spirit of disorderly
+despotism, abroad there was a proportionable abatement of all spirit.
+Some of our most just and valuable claims were in a manner abandoned.
+This indeed seemed not very inconsistent conduct in the ministers who
+had made the treaty of Paris. With regard to our domestic affairs, there
+was no want of industry; but there was a great deficiency of temper and
+judgment, and manly comprehension of the public interest. The nation
+certainly wanted relief, and government attempted to administer it. Two
+ways were principally chosen for this great purpose. The first by
+regulations; the second by new funds of revenue. Agreeably to this plan,
+a new naval establishment was formed at a good deal of expense, and to
+little effect, to aid in the collection of the customs. Regulation was
+added to regulation; and the strictest and most unreserved orders were
+given, for a prevention of all contraband trade here, and in every part
+of America. A teasing custom-house, and a multiplicity of perplexing
+regulations, ever have, and ever will appear, the masterpiece of finance
+to people of narrow views; as a paper against smuggling, and the
+importation of French finery, never fails of furnishing a very popular
+column in a newspaper.
+
+The greatest part of these regulations were made for America; and they
+fell so indiscriminately on all sorts of contraband, or supposed
+contraband, that some of the most valuable branches of trade were driven
+violently from our ports; which caused an universal consternation
+throughout the colonies. Every part of the trade was infinitely
+distressed by them. Men-of-war now for the first time, armed with
+regular commissions of custom-house officers, invested the coasts, and
+gave to the collection of revenue the air of hostile contribution. About
+the same time that these regulations seemed to threaten the destruction
+of the only trade from whence the plantations derived any specie, an act
+was made, putting a stop to the future emission of paper currency, which
+used to supply its place among them. Hand in hand with this went
+another act, for obliging the colonies to provide quarters for soldiers.
+Instantly followed another law, for levying throughout all America new
+port duties, upon a vast variety of commodities of their consumption,
+and some of which lay heavy upon objects necessary for their trade and
+fishery. Immediately upon the heels of these, and amidst the uneasiness
+and confusion produced by a crowd of new impositions and regulations,
+some good, some evil, some doubtful, all crude and ill-considered, came
+another act, for imposing an universal stamp-duty on the colonies; and
+this was declared to be little more than an experiment, and a foundation
+of future revenue. To render these proceedings the more irritating to
+the colonies, the principal argument used in favor of their ability to
+pay such duties was the liberality of the grants of their assemblies
+during the late war. Never could any argument be more insulting and
+mortifying to a people habituated to the granting of their own money.
+
+Taxes for the purpose of raising revenue had hitherto been sparingly
+attempted in America. Without ever doubting the extent of its lawful
+power, Parliament always doubted the propriety of such impositions. And
+the Americans on their part never thought of contesting a right by which
+they were so little affected. Their assemblies in the main answered all
+the purposes necessary to the internal economy of a free people, and
+provided for all the exigencies of government which arose amongst
+themselves. In the midst of that happy enjoyment, they never thought of
+critically settling the exact limits of a power, which was necessary to
+their union, their safety, their equality, and even their liberty. Thus
+the two very difficult points, superiority in the presiding state, and
+freedom in the subordinate, were on the whole sufficiently, that is,
+practically, reconciled; without agitating those vexatious questions,
+which in truth rather belong to metaphysics than politics, and which can
+never be moved without shaking the foundations of the best governments
+that have ever been constituted by human wisdom. By this measure was let
+loose that dangerous spirit of disquisition, not in the coolness of
+philosophical inquiry, but inflamed with all the passions of a haughty,
+resentful people, who thought themselves deeply injured, and that they
+were contending for everything that was valuable in the world.
+
+In England, our ministers went on without the least attention to these
+alarming dispositions; just as if they were doing the most common things
+in the most usual way, and among a people not only passive, but pleased.
+They took no one step to divert the dangerous spirit which began even
+then to appear in the colonies, to compromise with it, to mollify it, or
+to subdue it. No new arrangements were made in civil government; no new
+powers or instructions were given to governors; no augmentation was
+made, or new disposition, of forces. Never was so critical a measure
+pursued with so little provision against its necessary consequences. As
+if all common prudence had abandoned the ministers, and as if they meant
+to plunge themselves and us headlong into that gulf which stood gaping
+before them; by giving a year's notice of the project of their Stamp
+Act, they allowed time for all the discontents of that country to fester
+and come to a head, and for all the arrangements which factious men
+could make towards an opposition to the law. At the same time they
+carefully concealed from the eye of Parliament those remonstrances which
+they had actually received; and which in the strongest manner indicated
+the discontent of some of the colonies, and the consequences which might
+be expected; they concealed them even in defiance of an order of
+council, that they should be laid before Parliament. Thus, by concealing
+the true state of the case, they rendered the wisdom of the nation as
+improvident as their own temerity, either in preventing or guarding
+against the mischief. It has indeed, from the beginning to this hour,
+been the uniform policy of this set of men, in order at any hazard to
+obtain a present credit, to propose whatever might be pleasing, as
+attended with no difficulty; and afterwards to throw all the
+disappointment of the wild expectations they had raised, upon those who
+have the hard task of freeing the public from the consequences of their
+pernicious projects.
+
+Whilst the commerce and tranquillity of the whole empire were shaken in
+this manner, our affairs grew still more distracted by the internal
+dissensions of our ministers. Treachery and ingratitude were charged
+from one side; despotism and tyranny from the other; the vertigo of the
+regency bill; the awkward reception of the silk bill in the House of
+Commons, and the inconsiderate and abrupt rejection of it in the House
+of Lords; the strange and violent tumults which arose in consequence,
+and which were rendered more serious by being charged by the ministers
+upon one another; the report of a gross and brutal treatment of the
+----, by a minister at the same time odious to the people; all conspired
+to leave the public, at the close of the session of 1765, in as
+critical and perilous a situation, as ever the nation was, or could be,
+in a time when she was not immediately threatened by her neighbors.
+
+It was at this time, and in these circumstances, that a new
+administration was formed. Professing even industriously, in this public
+matter, to avoid anecdotes; I say nothing of those famous
+reconciliations and quarrels, which weakened the body that should have
+been the natural support of this administration. I run no risk in
+affirming, that, surrounded as they were with difficulties of every
+species, nothing but the strongest and most uncorrupt sense of their
+duty to the public could have prevailed upon some of the persons who
+composed it to undertake the king's business at such a time. Their
+preceding character, their measures while in power, and the subsequent
+conduct of many of them, I think, leave no room to charge this assertion
+to flattery. Having undertaken the commonwealth, what remained for them
+to do? to piece their conduct upon the broken chain of former measures?
+If they had been so inclined, the ruinous nature of those measures,
+which began instantly to appear, would not have permitted it. Scarcely
+had they entered into office, when letters arrived from all parts of
+America, making loud complaints, backed by strong reasons, against
+several of the principal regulations of the late ministry, as
+threatening destruction to many valuable branches of commerce. These
+were attended with representations from many merchants and capital
+manufacturers at home, who had all their interests involved in the
+support of lawful trade, and in the suppression of every sort of
+contraband. Whilst these things were under consideration, that
+conflagration blazed out at once in North America; an universal
+disobedience, and open resistance to the Stamp Act; and, in consequence,
+an universal stop to the course of justice, and to trade and navigation,
+throughout that great important country; an interval during which the
+trading interest of England lay under the most dreadful anxiety which it
+ever felt.
+
+The repeal of that act was proposed. It was much too serious a measure,
+and attended with too many difficulties upon every side, for the then
+ministry to have undertaken it, as some paltry writers have asserted,
+from envy and dislike to their predecessors in office. As little could
+it be owing to personal cowardice, and dread of consequences to
+themselves. Ministers, timorous from their attachment to place and
+power, will fear more from the consequences of one court intrigue, than
+from a thousand difficulties to the commerce and credit of their country
+by disturbances at three thousand miles distance. From which of these
+the ministers had most to apprehend at that time, is known, I presume,
+universally. Nor did they take that resolution from a want of the
+fullest sense of the inconveniences which must necessarily attend a
+measure of concession from the sovereign to the subject. That it must
+increase the insolence of the mutinous spirits in America, was but too
+obvious. No great measure indeed, at a very difficult crisis, can be
+pursued, which is not attended with some mischief; none but conceited
+pretenders in public business will hold any other language: and none but
+weak and unexperienced men will believe them, if they should. If we were
+found in such a crisis, let those, whose bold designs, and whose
+defective arrangements, brought us into it, answer for the consequences.
+The business of the then ministry evidently was, to take such steps, not
+as the wishes of our author, or as their own wishes dictated, but as the
+bad situation in which their predecessors had left them, absolutely
+required.
+
+The disobedience to this act was universal throughout America; nothing,
+it was evident, but the sending a very strong military, backed by a very
+strong naval force, would reduce the seditious to obedience. To send it
+to one town, would not be sufficient; every province of America must be
+traversed, and must be subdued. I do not entertain the least doubt but
+this could be done. We might, I think, without much difficulty, have
+destroyed our colonies. This destruction might be effected, probably in
+a year, or in two at the utmost. If the question was upon a foreign
+nation, where every successful stroke adds to your own power, and takes
+from that of a rival, a just war with such a certain superiority would
+be undoubtedly an advisable measure. But _four million_ of debt due to
+our merchants, the total cessation of a trade annually worth _four
+million_more, a large foreign traffic, much home manufacture, a very
+capital immediate revenue arising from colony imports, indeed the
+produce of every one of our revenues greatly depending on this trade,
+all these were very weighty accumulated considerations, at least well to
+be weighed, before that sword was drawn, which even by its victories
+must produce all the evil effects of the greatest national defeat. How
+public credit must have suffered, I need not say. If the condition of
+the nation, at the close of our foreign war, was what this author
+represents it, such a civil war would have been a bad couch, on which
+to repose our wearied virtue. Far from being able to have entered into
+new plans of economy, we must have launched into a new sea, I fear a
+boundless sea, of expense. Such an addition of debt, with such a
+diminution of revenue and trade, would have left us in no want of a
+"State of the Nation" to aggravate the picture of our distresses.
+
+Our trade felt this to its vitals; and our then ministers were not
+ashamed to say, that they sympathized with the feelings of our
+merchants. The universal alarm of the whole trading body of England,
+will never be laughed at by them as an ill-grounded or a pretended
+panic. The universal desire of that body will always have great weight
+with them in every consideration connected with commerce: neither ought
+the opinion of that body to be slighted (notwithstanding the
+contemptuous and indecent language of this author and his associates) in
+any consideration whatsoever of revenue. Nothing amongst us is more
+quickly or deeply affected by taxes of any kind than trade; and if an
+American tax was a real relief to England, no part of the community
+would be sooner or more materially relieved by it than our merchants.
+But they well know that the trade of England must be more burdened by
+one penny raised in America, than by three in England; and if that penny
+be raised with the uneasiness, the discontent, and the confusion of
+America, more than by ten.
+
+If the opinion and wish of the landed interest is a motive, and it is a
+fair and just one, for taking away a real and large revenue, the desire
+of the trading interest of England ought to be a just ground for taking
+away a tax of little better than speculation, which was to be collected
+by a war, which was to be kept up with the perpetual discontent of those
+who were to be affected by it, and the value of whose produce even after
+the _ordinary_ charges of collection, was very uncertain;[87] after the
+_extraordinary_, the dearest purchased revenue that ever was made by any
+nation.
+
+These were some of the motives drawn from principles of convenience for
+that repeal. When the object came to be more narrowly inspected, every
+motive concurred. These colonies were evidently founded in subservience
+to the commerce of Great Britain. From this principle, the whole system
+of our laws concerning them became a system of restriction. A double
+monopoly was established on the part of the parent country; 1. A
+monopoly of their whole import, which is to be altogether from Great
+Britain; 2. A monopoly of all their export, which is to be nowhere but
+to Great Britain, as far as it can serve any purpose here. On the same
+idea it was contrived that they should send all their products to us
+raw, and in their first state; and that they should take everything from
+us in the last stage of manufacture.
+
+Were ever a people under such circumstances, that is, a people who were
+to export raw, and to receive manufactured, and this, not a few
+luxurious articles, but all articles, even to those of the grossest,
+most vulgar, and necessary consumption, a people who were in the hands
+of a general monopolist, were ever such a people suspected of a
+possibility of becoming a just object of revenue? All the ends of their
+foundation must be supposed utterly contradicted before they could
+become such an object. Every trade law we have made must have been
+eluded, and become useless, before they could be in such a condition.
+
+The partisans of the new system, who, on most occasions, take credit for
+full as much knowledge as they possess, think proper on this occasion to
+counterfeit an extraordinary degree of ignorance, and in consequence of
+it to assert, "that the balance (between the colonies and Great Britain)
+is unknown, and that no important conclusion can be drawn from premises
+so very uncertain."[88] Now to what can this ignorance be owing? were
+the navigation laws made, that this balance should be unknown? is it
+from the course of exchange that it is unknown, which all the world
+knows to be greatly and perpetually against the colonies? is it from the
+doubtful nature of the trade we carry on with the colonies? are not
+these schemists well apprised that the colonists, particularly those of
+the northern provinces, import more from Great Britain, ten times more,
+than they send in return to us? that a great part of their foreign
+balance is and must be remitted to London? I shall be ready to admit
+that the colonies ought to be taxed to the revenues of this country,
+when I know that they are out of debt to its commerce. This author will
+furnish some ground to his theories, and communicate a discovery to the
+public, if he can show this by any medium. But he tells us that "their
+seas are covered with ships, and their rivers floating with
+commerce."[89] This is true. But it is with _our_ ships that these seas
+are covered; and their rivers float with British commerce. The American
+merchants are our factors; all in reality, most even in name. The
+Americans trade, navigate, cultivate, with English capitals; to their
+own advantage, to be sure; for without these capitals their ploughs
+would be stopped, and their ships wind-bound. But he who furnishes the
+capital must, on the whole, be the person principally benefited; the
+person who works upon it profits on his part too; but he profits in a
+subordinate way, as our colonies do; that is, as the servant of a wise
+and indulgent master, and no otherwise. We have all, except the
+_peculium_; without which even slaves will not labor.
+
+If the author's principles, which are the common notions, be right, that
+the price of our manufactures is so greatly enhanced by our taxes; then
+the Americans already pay in that way a share of our impositions. He is
+not ashamed to assert, that "France and China may be said, on the same
+principle, to bear a part of our charges, for they consume our
+commodities."[90] Was ever such a method of reasoning heard of? Do not
+the laws absolutely confine the colonies to buy from us, whether foreign
+nations sell cheaper or not? On what other idea are all our
+prohibitions, regulations, guards, penalties, and forfeitures, framed?
+To secure to us, not a commercial preference, which stands in need of no
+penalties to enforce it; it finds its own way; but to secure to us a
+trade, which is a creature of law and institution. What has this to do
+with the principles of a foreign trade, which is under no monopoly, and
+in which we cannot raise the price of our goods, without hazarding the
+demand for them? None but the authors of such measures could ever think
+of making use of such arguments.
+
+Whoever goes about to reason on any part of the policy of this country
+with regard to America, upon the mere abstract principles of government,
+or even upon those of our own ancient constitution, will be often
+misled. Those who resort for arguments to the most respectable
+authorities, ancient or modern, or rest upon the clearest maxims, drawn
+from the experience of other states and empires, will be liable to the
+greatest errors imaginable. The object is wholly new in the world. It is
+singular; it is grown up to this magnitude and importance within the
+memory of man; nothing in history is parallel to it. All the reasonings
+about it, that are likely to be at all solid, must be drawn from its
+actual circumstances. In this new system a principle of commerce, of
+artificial commerce, must predominate. This commerce must be secured by
+a multitude of restraints very alien from the spirit of liberty; and a
+powerful authority must reside in the principal state, in order to
+enforce them. But the people who are to be the subjects of these
+restraints are descendants of Englishmen; and of a high and free spirit.
+To hold over them a government made up of nothing but restraints and
+penalties, and taxes in the granting of which they can have no share,
+will neither be wise nor long practicable. People must be governed in a
+manner agreeable to their temper and disposition; and men of free
+character and spirit must be ruled with, at least, some condescension to
+this spirit and this character. The British, colonist must see something
+which will distinguish him from the colonists of other nations.
+
+Those seasonings, which infer from the many restraints under which we
+have already laid America, to our right to lay it under still more, and
+indeed under all manner of restraints, are conclusive; conclusive as to
+right; but the very reverse as to policy and practice. We ought rather
+to infer from our having laid the colonies under many restraints, that
+it is reasonable to compensate them by every indulgence that can by any
+means be reconciled to our interest. We have a great empire to rule,
+composed of a vast mass of heterogeneous governments, all more or less
+free and popular in their forms, all to be kept in peace, and kept out
+of conspiracy, with one another, all to be held in subordination to this
+country; while the spirit of an extensive and intricate and trading
+interest pervades the whole, always qualifying, and often controlling,
+every general idea of constitution and government. It is a great and
+difficult object; and I wish we may possess wisdom and temper enough to
+manage it as we ought. Its importance is infinite. I believe the reader
+will be struck, as I have been, with one singular fact. In the year
+1704, but sixty-five years ago, the whole trade with our plantations was
+but a few thousand pounds more in the export article, and a third less
+in the import, than that which we now carry on with the single island of
+Jamaica:--
+
+                                      Exports.    Imports.
+  Total English plantations in 1704  £488,265     £814,491
+  Jamaica, 1767                       467,681    1,243,742
+
+
+From the same information I find that our dealing with most of the
+European nations is but little increased: these nations have been pretty
+much at a stand since that time, and we have rivals in their trade. This
+colony intercourse is a new world of commerce in a manner created; it
+stands upon principles of its own; principles hardly worth endangering
+for any little consideration of extorted revenue.
+
+The reader sees, that I do not enter so fully into this matter as
+obviously I might. I have already been led into greater lengths than I
+intended. It is enough to say, that before the ministers of 1765 had
+determined to propose the repeal of the Stamp Act in Parliament, they
+had the whole of the American constitution and commerce very fully
+before them. They considered maturely; they decided with wisdom: let me
+add, with firmness. For they resolved, as a preliminary to that repeal,
+to assert in the fullest and least equivocal terms the unlimited
+legislative right of this country over its colonies; and, having done
+this, to propose the repeal, on principles, not of constitutional right,
+but on those of expediency, of equity, of lenity, and of the true
+interests present and future of that great object for which alone the
+colonies were founded, navigation and commerce. This plan I say,
+required an uncommon degree of firmness, when we consider that some of
+those persons who might be of the greatest use in promoting the repeal,
+violently withstood the declaratory act; and they who agreed with
+administration in the principles of that law, equally made, as well the
+reasons on which the declaratory act itself stood, as those on which it
+was opposed, grounds for an opposition to the repeal.
+
+If the then ministry resolved first to declare the right, it was not
+from any opinion they entertained of its future use in regular
+taxation. Their opinions were full and declared against the ordinary use
+of such a power. But it was plain, that the general reasonings which
+were employed against that power went directly to our whole legislative
+right; and one part of it could not be yielded to such arguments,
+without a virtual surrender of all the rest. Besides, if that very
+specific power of levying money in the colonies were not retained as a
+sacred trust in the hands of Great Britain (to be used, not in the first
+instance for supply, but in the last exigence for control), it is
+obvious, that the presiding authority of Great Britain, as the head, the
+arbiter, and director of the whole empire, would vanish into an empty
+name, without operation or energy. With the habitual exercise of such a
+power in the ordinary course of supply, no trace of freedom could remain
+to America.[91] If Great Britain were stripped of this right, every
+principle of unity and subordination in the empire was gone forever.
+Whether all this can be reconciled in legal speculation, is a matter of
+no consequence. It is reconciled in policy: and politics ought to be
+adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the
+reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part.
+
+Founding the repeal on this basis, it was judged proper to lay before
+Parliament the whole detail of the American affairs, as fully as it had
+been laid before the ministry themselves. Ignorance of those affairs had
+misled Parliament. Knowledge alone could bring it into the right road.
+Every paper of office was laid upon the table of the two Houses; every
+denomination of men, either of America, or connected with it by office,
+by residence, by commerce, by interest, even by injury; men of civil and
+military capacity, officers of the revenue, merchants, manufacturers of
+every species, and from every town in England, attended at the bar. Such
+evidence never was laid before Parliament. If an emulation arose among
+the ministers and members of Parliament, as the author rightly
+observes,[92] for the repeal of this act, as well as for the other
+regulations, it was not on the confident assertions, the airy
+speculations, or the vain promises of ministers, that it arose. It was
+the sense of Parliament on the evidence before them. No one so much as
+suspects that ministerial allurements or terrors had any share in it.
+
+Our author is very much displeased, that so much credit was given to the
+testimony of merchants. He has a habit of railing at them: and he may,
+if he pleases, indulge himself in it. It will not do great mischief to
+that respectable set of men. The substance of their testimony was, that
+their debts in America were very great: that the Americans declined to
+pay them, or to renew their orders, whilst this act continued: that,
+under these circumstances, they despaired of the recovery of their
+debts, or the renewal of their trade in that country: that they
+apprehended a general failure of mercantile credit. The manufacturers
+deposed to the same general purpose, with this addition, that many of
+them had discharged several of their artificers; and, if the law and the
+resistance to it should continue, must dismiss them all.
+
+This testimony is treated with great contempt by our author. It must be,
+I suppose, because it was contradicted by the plain nature of things.
+Suppose then that the merchants had, to gratify this author, given a
+contrary evidence; and had deposed, that while America remained in a
+state of resistance, whilst four million of debt remained unpaid, whilst
+the course of justice was suspended for want of stamped paper, so that
+no debt could be recovered, whilst there was a total stop to trade,
+because every ship was subject to seizure for want of stamped
+clearances, and while the colonies were to be declared in rebellion, and
+subdued by armed force, that in these circumstances they would still
+continue to trade cheerfully and fearlessly as before: would not such
+witnesses provoke universal indignation for their folly or their
+wickedness, and be deservedly hooted from the bar:[93] would any human
+faith have given credit to such assertions? The testimony of the
+merchants was necessary for the detail, and to bring the matter home to
+the feeling of the House; as to the general reasons, they spoke
+abundantly for themselves.
+
+Upon these principles was the act repealed, and it produced all the good
+effect which was expected from it: quiet was restored; trade generally
+returned to its ancient channels; time and means were furnished for the
+better strengthening of government there, as well as for recovering, by
+judicious measures, the affections of the people, had that ministry
+continued, or had a ministry succeeded with dispositions to improve that
+opportunity.
+
+Such an administration did not succeed. Instead of profiting of that
+season of tranquillity, in the very next year they chose to return to
+measures of the very same nature with those which had been so solemnly
+condemned; though upon a smaller scale. The effects have been
+correspondent, America is again in disorder; not indeed in the same
+degree as formerly, nor anything like it. Such good effects have
+attended the repeal of the Stamp Act, that the colonies have actually
+paid the taxes; and they have sought their redress (upon however
+improper principles) not in their own violence, as formerly;[94] but in
+the experienced benignity of Parliament. They are not easy indeed, nor
+ever will be so, under this author's schemes of taxation; but we see no
+longer the same general fury and confusion, which attended their
+resistance to the Stamp Act. The author may rail at the repeal, and
+those who proposed it, as he pleases. Those honest men suffer all his
+obloquy with pleasure, in the midst of the quiet which they have been
+the means of giving to their country; and would think his praises for
+their perseverance in a pernicious scheme, a very bad compensation for
+the disturbance of our peace, and the ruin of our commerce. Whether the
+return to the system of 1764, for raising a revenue in America, the
+discontents which have ensued in consequence of it, the general
+suspension of the assemblies in consequence of these discontents, the
+use of the military power, and the new and dangerous commissions which
+now hang over them, will produce equally good effects, is greatly to be
+doubted. Never, I fear, will this nation and the colonies fall back upon
+their true centre of gravity, and natural point of repose, until the
+ideas of 1766 are resumed, and steadily pursued.
+
+As to the regulations, a great subject of the author's accusation, they
+are of two sorts; one of a mixed nature, of revenue and trade; the other
+simply relative to trade. With regard to the former I shall observe,
+that, in all deliberations concerning America, the ideas of that
+administration were principally these; to take trade as the primary end,
+and revenue but as a very subordinate consideration. Where trade was
+likely to suffer, they did not hesitate for an instant to prefer it to
+taxes, whose produce at best was contemptible, in comparison of the
+object which they might endanger. The other of their principles was, to
+suit the revenue to the object. Where the difficulty of collection, from
+the nature of the country, and of the revenue establishment, is so very
+notorious, it was their policy to hold out as few temptations to
+smuggling as possible, by keeping the duties as nearly as they could on
+a balance with the risk. On these principles they made many alterations
+in the port-duties of 1764, both in the mode and in the quantity. The
+author has not attempted to prove them erroneous. He complains enough to
+show that he is in an ill-humor, not that his adversaries have done
+amiss.
+
+As to the regulations which were merely relative to commerce, many were
+then made; and they were all made upon this principle, that many of the
+colonies, and those some of the most abounding in people, were so
+situated as to have very few means of traffic with this country. It
+became therefore our interest to let them into as much foreign trade as
+could be given them without interfering with our own; and to secure by
+every method the returns to the mother country. Without some such scheme
+of enlargement, it was obvious that any benefit we could expect from
+these colonies must be extremely limited. Accordingly many facilities
+were given to their trade with the foreign plantations, and with the
+southern parts of Europe. As to the confining the returns to this
+country, administration saw the mischief and folly of a plan of
+indiscriminate restraint. They applied their remedy to that part where
+the disease existed, and to that only: on this idea they established
+regulations, far more likely to check the dangerous, clandestine trade
+with Hamburg and Holland, than this author's friends, or any of their
+predecessors had ever done.
+
+The friends of the author have a method surely a little whimsical in all
+this sort of discussions. They have made an innumerable multitude of
+commercial regulations, at which the trade of England exclaimed with one
+voice, and many of which have been altered on the unanimous opinion of
+that trade. Still they go on, just as before, in a sort of droning
+panegyric on themselves, talking of these regulations as prodigies of
+wisdom; and, instead of appealing to those who are most affected and the
+best judges, they turn round in a perpetual circle of their own
+reasonings and pretences; they hand you over from one of their own
+pamphlets to another: "See," say they, "this demonstrated in the
+'Regulations of the Colonies.'" "See this satisfactorily proved in 'The
+Considerations.'" By and by we shall have another: "See for this 'The
+State of the Nation.'" I wish to take another method in vindicating the
+opposite system. I refer to the petitions of merchants for these
+regulations; to their thanks when they were obtained; and to the strong
+and grateful sense they have ever since expressed of the benefits
+received under that administration.
+
+All administrations have in their commercial regulations been generally
+aided by the opinion of some merchants; too frequently by that of a few,
+and those a sort of favorites: they have been directed by the opinion of
+one or two merchants, who were to merit in flatteries, and to be paid in
+contracts; who frequently advised, not for the general good of trade,
+but for their private advantage. During the administration of which this
+author complains, the meetings of merchants upon the business of trade
+were numerous and public; sometimes at the house of the Marquis of
+Rockingham; sometimes at Mr. Dowdeswell's; sometimes at Sir George
+Savile's, a house always open to every deliberation favorable to the
+liberty or the commerce of his country. Nor were these meetings confined
+to the merchants of London. Merchants and manufacturers were invited
+from all the considerable towns in England. They conferred with the
+ministers and active members of Parliament. No private views, no local
+interests prevailed. Never were points in trade settled upon a larger
+scale of information. They who attended these meetings well know what
+ministers they were who heard the most patiently, who comprehended the
+most clearly, and who provided the most wisely. Let then this author and
+his friends still continue in possession of the practice of exalting
+their own abilities, in their pamphlets and in the newspapers. They
+never will persuade the public, that the merchants of England were in a
+general confederacy to sacrifice their own interests to those of North
+America, and to destroy the vent of their own goods in favor of the
+manufactures of France and Holland.
+
+Had the friends of this author taken these means of information, his
+extreme terrors of contraband in the West India islands would have been
+greatly quieted, and his objections to the opening of the ports would
+have ceased. He would have learned, from the most satisfactory analysis
+of the West India trade, that we have the advantage in every essential
+article of it; and that almost every restriction on our communication
+with our neighbors there, is a restriction unfavorable to ourselves.
+
+Such were the principles that guided, and the authority that sanctioned,
+these regulations. No man ever said, that, in the multiplicity of
+regulations made in the administration of their predecessors, none were
+useful; some certainly were so; and I defy the author to show a
+commercial regulation of that period, which he can prove, from any
+authority except his own, to have a tendency beneficial to commerce,
+that has been repealed. So far were that ministry from being guided by a
+spirit of contradiction or of innovation.
+
+The author's attack on that administration, for their neglect of our
+claims on foreign powers, is by much the most astonishing instance he
+has given, or that, I believe, any man ever did give, of an intrepid
+effrontery. It relates to the Manilla ransom; to the Canada bills; and
+to the Russian treaty. Could one imagine, that these very things, which
+he thus chooses to object to others, have been the principal subject of
+charge against his favorite ministry? Instead of clearing them of these
+charges, he appears not so much as to have heard of them; but throws
+them directly upon the administration which succeeded to that of his
+friends.
+
+It is not always very pleasant to be obliged to produce the detail of
+this kind of transactions to the public view. I will content myself
+therefore with giving a short state of facts, which, when the author
+chooses to contradict, he shall see proved, more, perhaps, to his
+conviction, than to his liking. The first fact then is, that the demand
+for the Manilla ransom had been in the author's favorite administration
+so neglected as to appear to have been little less than tacitly
+abandoned. At home, no countenance was given to the claimants; and when
+it was mentioned in Parliament, the then leader did not seem, at least,
+_a very sanguine advocate in favor of the claim_. These things made it a
+matter of no small difficulty to resume and press that negotiation with
+Spain. However, so clear was our right, that the then ministers resolved
+to revive it; and so little time was lost, that though that
+administration was not completed until the 9th of July, 1765, on the
+20th of the following August, General Conway transmitted a strong and
+full remonstrance on that subject to the Earl of Rochfort. The argument,
+on which the court of Madrid most relied, was the dereliction of that
+claim by the preceding ministers. However, it was still pushed with so
+much vigor, that the Spaniards, from a positive denial to pay, offered
+to refer the demand to arbitration. That proposition was rejected; and
+the demand being still pressed, there was all the reason in the world to
+expect its being brought to a favorable issue; when it was thought
+proper to change the administration. Whether under their circumstances,
+and in the time they continued in power, more could be done, the reader
+will judge; who will hear with astonishment a charge of remissness from
+those very men, whose inactivity, to call it by no worse a name, laid
+the chief difficulties in the way of the revived negotiation.
+
+As to the Canada bills, this author thinks proper to assert, "that the
+proprietors found themselves under a necessity of compounding their
+demands upon the French court, and accepting terms which they had often
+rejected, and which the Earl of Halifax had declared he would sooner
+forfeit his hand than sign."[95] When I know that the Earl of Halifax
+says so, the Earl of Halifax shall have an answer; but I persuade myself
+that his Lordship has given no authority for this ridiculous rant. In
+the mean time, I shall only speak of it as a common concern of that
+ministry.
+
+In the first place, then, I observe, that a convention, for the
+liquidation of the Canada bills, was concluded under the administration
+of 1766; when nothing was concluded under that of the favorites of this
+author.
+
+2. This transaction was, in every step of it, carried on in concert with
+the persons interested, and was terminated to their entire satisfaction.
+They would have acquiesced perhaps in terms somewhat lower than those
+which were obtained. The author is indeed too kind to them. He will,
+however, let them speak for themselves, and show what their own opinion
+was of the measures pursued in their favor.[96] In what manner the
+execution of the convention has been since provided for, it is not my
+present business to examine.
+
+3. The proprietors had absolutely despaired of being paid, at any time,
+any proportion, of their demand, until the change of that ministry. The
+merchants were checked and discountenanced; they had often been told, by
+some in authority, of the cheap rate at which these Canada bills had
+been procured; yet the author can talk of the composition of them as a
+necessity induced by the change in administration. They found themselves
+indeed, before that change, under a necessity of hinting somewhat of
+bringing the matter into Parliament; but they were soon silenced, and
+put in mind of the fate which the Newfoundland business had there met
+with. Nothing struck them more than the strong contrast between the
+spirit, and method of proceeding, of the two administrations.
+
+4. The Earl of Halifax never did, nor could, refuse to sign this
+convention; because this convention, as it stands, never was before
+him.[97]
+
+The author's last charge on that ministry, with regard to foreign
+affairs, is the Russian treaty of commerce, which the author thinks fit
+to assert, was concluded "on terms the Earl of Buckinghamshire had
+refused to accept of, and which had been deemed by former ministers
+disadvantageous to the nation, and by the merchants unsafe and
+unprofitable."[98]
+
+Both the assertions in this paragraph are equally groundless. The treaty
+then concluded by Sir George Macartney was not on the terms which the
+Earl of Buckinghamshire had refused. The Earl of Buckinghamshire never
+did refuse terms, because the business never came to the point of
+refusal, or acceptance; all that he did was, to receive the Russian
+project for a treaty of commerce, and to transmit it to England. This
+was in November, 1764; and he left Petersburg the January following,
+before he could even receive an answer from his own court. The
+conclusion of the treaty fell to his successor. Whoever will be at the
+trouble to compare it with the treaty of 1734, will, I believe, confess,
+that, if the former ministers could have obtained such terms, they were
+criminal in not accepting them.
+
+But the merchants "deemed them unsafe and unprofitable." What merchants?
+As no treaty ever was more maturely considered, so the opinion of the
+Russia merchants in London was all along taken; and all the instructions
+sent over were in exact conformity to that opinion. Our minister there
+made no step without having previously consulted our merchants resident
+in Petersburg, who, before the signing of the treaty, gave the most full
+and unanimous testimony in its favor. In their address to our minister
+at that court, among other things they say, "It may afford some
+additional satisfaction to your Excellency, to receive a public
+acknowledgment of _the entire and unreserved approbation of every
+article_ in this treaty, from us who are so immediately and so nearly
+concerned in its consequences." This was signed by the consul-general,
+and every British merchant in Petersburg.
+
+The approbation of those immediately concerned in the consequences is
+nothing to this author. He and his friends have so much tenderness for
+people's interests, and understand them so much better than they do
+themselves, that, whilst these politicians are contending for the best
+of possible terms, the claimants are obliged to go without any terms at
+all.
+
+One of the first and justest complaints against the administration of
+the author's friends, was the want of rigor in their foreign
+negotiations. Their immediate successors endeavored to correct that
+error, along with others; and there was scarcely a foreign court, in
+which the new spirit that had arisen was not sensibly felt,
+acknowledged, and sometimes complained of. On their coming into
+administration, they found the demolition of Dunkirk entirely at a
+stand: instead of demolition, they found construction; for the French
+were then at work on the repair of the jettees. On the remonstrances of
+General Conway, some parts of these jettees were immediately destroyed.
+The Duke of Richmond personally surveyed the place, and obtained a
+fuller knowledge of its true state and condition than any of our
+ministers had done; and, in consequence, had larger offers from the Duke
+of Choiseul than had ever been received. But, as these were short of our
+just expectations under the treaty, he rejected them. Our then
+ministers, knowing that, in their administration, the people's minds
+were set at ease upon all the essential points of public and private
+liberty, and that no project of theirs could endanger the concord of the
+empire, were under no restraint from pursuing every just demand upon
+foreign nations.
+
+The author, towards the end of this work, falls into reflections upon
+the state of public morals in this country: he draws use from this
+doctrine, by recommending his friend to the king and the public, as
+another Duke of Sully; and he concludes the whole performance with a
+very devout prayer.
+
+The prayers of politicians may sometimes be sincere; and as this prayer
+is in substance, that the author, or his friends, may be soon brought
+into power, I have great reason to believe it is very much from the
+heart. It must be owned too that after he has drawn such a picture, such
+a shocking picture, of the state of this country, he has great faith in
+thinking the means he prays for sufficient to relieve us: after the
+character he has given of its inhabitants of all ranks and classes, he
+has great charity in caring much about them; and indeed no less hope, in
+being of opinion, that such a detestable nation can ever become the care
+of Providence. He has not even found five good men in our devoted city.
+
+He talks indeed of men of virtue and ability. But where are his _men_ of
+virtue and ability to be found? Are they in the present administration?
+Never were a set of people more blackened by this author. Are they among
+the party of those (no small body) who adhere to the system of 1766?
+These it is the great purpose of this book to calumniate. Are they the
+persons who acted with his great friend, since the change in 1762, to
+his removal in 1765? Scarcely any of these are now out of employment;
+and we are in possession of his desideratum. Yet I think he hardly means
+to select, even some of the highest of them, as examples fit for the
+reformation of a corrupt world.
+
+He observes, that the virtue of the most exemplary prince that ever
+swayed a sceptre "can never warm or illuminate the body of his people,
+if foul mirrors are placed so near him as to refract and dissipate the
+rays at their first emanation."[99] Without observing upon the
+propriety of this metaphor, or asking how mirrors come to have lost
+their old quality of reflecting, and to have acquired that of
+refracting, and dissipating rays, and how far their foulness will
+account for this change; the remark itself is common and true: no less
+true, and equally surprising from him, is that which immediately
+precedes it: "It is in vain to endeavor to check the progress of
+irreligion and licentiousness, by punishing such crimes in _one
+individual_, if others equally culpable are rewarded with the honors and
+emoluments of the state."[100] I am not in the secret of the author's
+manner of writing; but it appears to me, that he must intend these
+reflections as a satire upon the administration of his happy years. Were
+over the honors and emoluments of the state more lavishly squandered
+upon persons scandalous in their lives than during that period? In these
+scandalous lives, was there anything more scandalous than the mode of
+punishing _one culpable individual_? In that individual, is anything
+more culpable than his having been seduced by the example of some of
+those very persons by whom he was thus persecuted?
+
+The author is so eager to attack others, that he provides but
+indifferently for his own defence. I believe, without going beyond the
+page I have now before me, he is very sensible, that I have sufficient
+matter of further, and, if possible, of heavier charge against his
+friends, upon his own principle. But it is because the advantage is too
+great, that I decline making use of it. I wish the author had not
+thought that all methods are lawful in party. Above all he ought to have
+taken care not to wound his enemies through the sides of his country.
+This he has done, by making that monstrous and overcharged picture of
+the distresses of our situation. No wonder that he, who finds this
+country in the same condition with that of France at the time of Henry
+the Fourth, could also find a resemblance between his political friend
+and the Duke of Sully. As to those personal resemblances, people will
+often judge of them from their affections: they may imagine in these
+clouds whatsoever figures they please; but what is the conformation of
+that eye which can discover a resemblance of this country and these
+times to those with which the author compares them? France, a country
+just recovered out of twenty-five years of the most cruel and desolating
+civil war that perhaps was ever known. The kingdom, under the veil of
+momentary quiet, full of the most atrocious political, operating upon
+the most furious fanatical factions. Some pretenders even to the crown;
+and those who did not pretend to the whole, aimed at the partition of
+the monarchy. There were almost as many competitors as provinces; and
+all abetted by the greatest, the most ambitious, and most enterprising
+power in Europe. No place safe from treason; no, not the bosoms on which
+the most amiable prince that ever lived reposed his head; not his
+mistresses; not even his queen. As to the finances, they had scarce an
+existence, but as a matter of plunder to the managers, and of grants to
+insatiable and ungrateful courtiers.
+
+How can our author have the heart to describe this as any sort of
+parallel to our situation? To be sure, an April shower has some
+resemblance to a waterspout; for they are both wet: and there is some
+likeness between a summer evening's breeze and a hurricane; they are
+both wind: but who can compare our disturbances, our situation, or our
+finances, to those of France in the time of Henry? Great Britain is
+indeed at this time wearied, but not broken, with the efforts of a
+victorious foreign war; not sufficiently relieved by an inadequate
+peace, but somewhat benefited by that peace, and infinitely by the
+consequences of that war. The powers of Europe awed by our victories,
+and lying in ruins upon every side of us. Burdened indeed we are with
+debt, but abounding with resources. We have a trade, not perhaps equal
+to our wishes, but more than ever we possessed. In effect, no pretender
+to the crown; nor nutriment for such desperate and destructive factions
+as have formerly shaken this kingdom.
+
+As to our finances, the author trifles with us. When Sully came to those
+of France, in what order was any part of the financial system? or what
+system was there at all? There is no man in office who must not be
+sensible that ours is, without the act of any parading minister, the
+most regular and orderly system perhaps that was ever known; the best
+secured against all frauds in the collection, and all misapplication in
+the expenditure of public money.
+
+I admit that, in this flourishing state of things, there are appearances
+enough to excite uneasiness and apprehension. I admit there is a
+cankerworm in the rose:
+
+             Medio de fonte leporum
+    Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat.
+
+This is nothing else than a spirit of disconnection, of distrust, and of
+treachery among public men. It is no accidental evil, nor has its effect
+been trusted to the usual frailty of nature; the distemper has been
+inoculated. The author is sensible of it, and we lament it together.
+This distemper is alone sufficient to take away considerably from the
+benefits of our constitution and situation, and perhaps to render their
+continuance precarious. If these evil dispositions should spread much
+farther, they must end in our destruction; for nothing can save a people
+destitute of public and private faith. However, the author, for the
+present state of things, has extended the charge by much too widely; as
+men are but too apt to take the measure of all mankind from their own
+particular acquaintance. Barren as this age may be in the growth of
+honor and virtue, the country does not want, at this moment, as strong,
+and those not a few examples, as were ever known, of an unshaken
+adherence to principle, and attachment to connection, against every
+allurement of interest. Those examples are not furnished by the great
+alone; nor by those, whose activity in public affairs may render it
+suspected that they make such a character one of the rounds in their
+ladder of ambition; but by men more quiet, and more in the shade, on
+whom an unmixed sense of honor alone could operate. Such examples indeed
+are not furnished in great abundance amongst those who are the subjects
+of the author's panegyric. He must look for them in another camp. He who
+complains of the ill effects of a divided and heterogeneous
+administration, is not justifiable in laboring to render odious in the
+eyes of the public those men, whose principles, whose maxims of policy,
+and whose personal character, can alone administer a remedy to this
+capital evil of the age: neither is he consistent with himself, in
+constantly extolling those whom he knows to be the authors of the very
+mischief of which he complains, and which the whole nation feels so
+deeply.
+
+The persons who are the objects of his dislike and complaint are many
+of them of the first families, and weightiest properties, in the
+kingdom; but infinitely more distinguished for their untainted honor,
+public and private, and their zealous, but sober attachment to the
+constitution of their country, than they can be by any birth, or any
+station. If they are the friends of any one great man rather than
+another, it is not that they make his aggrandizement the end of their
+union; or because they know him to be the most active in caballing for
+his connections the largest and speediest emoluments. It is because they
+know him, by personal experience, to have wise and enlarged ideas of the
+public good, and an invincible constancy in adhering to it; because they
+are convinced, by the whole tenor of his actions, that he will never
+negotiate away their honor or his own: and that, in or out of power,
+change of situation will make no alteration in his conduct. This will
+give to such a person in such a body, an authority and respect that no
+minister ever enjoyed among his venal dependents, in the highest
+plenitude of his power; such as servility never can give, such as
+ambition never can receive or relish.
+
+This body will often be reproached by their adversaries, for want of
+ability in their political transactions; they will be ridiculed for
+missing many favorable conjunctures, and not profiting of several
+brilliant opportunities of fortune; but they must be contented to endure
+that reproach; for they cannot acquire the reputation of _that kind_ of
+ability without losing all the other reputation they possess.
+
+They will be charged too with a dangerous spirit of exclusion and
+proscription, for being unwilling to mix in schemes of administration,
+which have no bond of union, or principle of confidence. That charge too
+they must suffer with patience. If the reason of the thing had not
+spoken loudly enough, the miserable examples of the several
+administrations constructed upon the idea of systematic discord would be
+enough to frighten them from such, monstrous and ruinous conjunctions.
+It is however false, that the idea of an united administration carries
+with it that of a proscription of any other party. It does indeed imply
+the necessity of having the great strongholds of government in
+well-united hands, in order to secure the predominance of right and
+uniform principles; of having the capital offices of deliberation and
+execution of those who can deliberate with mutual confidence, and who
+will execute what is resolved with firmness and fidelity. If this system
+cannot be rigorously adhered to in practice, (and what system can be
+so?) it ought to be the constant aim of good men to approach as nearly
+to it as possible. No system of that kind can be formed, which will not
+leave room fully sufficient for healing coalitions: but no coalition,
+which, under the specious name of independency, carries in its bosom the
+unreconciled principles of the original discord of parties, ever was, or
+will be, an healing coalition. Nor will the mind of our sovereign ever
+know repose, his kingdom settlement, or his business order, efficiency,
+or grace with his people, until things are established upon the basis of
+some set of men, who are trusted by the public, and who can trust one
+another.
+
+This comes rather nearer to the mark than the author's description of a
+proper administration, under the name of _men of ability and virtue_,
+which conveys no definite idea at all; nor does it apply specifically
+to our grand national distemper. All parties pretend to these qualities.
+The present ministry, no favorites of the author, will be ready enough
+to declare themselves persons of virtue and ability; and if they choose
+a vote for that purpose, perhaps it would not be quite impossible for
+them to procure it. But, if the disease be this distrust and
+disconnection, it is easy to know who are sound and who are tainted; who
+are fit to restore us to health, who to continue, and to spread the
+contagion. The present ministry being made up of draughts from all
+parties in the kingdom, if they should profess any adherence to the
+connections they have left, they must convict themselves of the blackest
+treachery. They therefore choose rather to renounce the principle
+itself, and to brand it with the name of pride and faction. This test
+with certainty discriminates the opinions of men. The other is a
+description vague and unsatisfactory.
+
+As to the unfortunate gentlemen who may at any time compose that system,
+which, under the plausible title of an administration, subsists but for
+the establishment of weakness and confusion; they fall into different
+classes, with different merits. I think the situation of some people in
+that state may deserve a certain degree of compassion; at the same time
+that they furnish an example, which, it is to be hoped, by being a
+severe one, will have its effect, at least, on the growing generation;
+if an original seduction, on plausible but hollow pretences, into loss
+of honor, friendship, consistency, security, and repose, can furnish it.
+It is possible to draw, even from the very prosperity of ambition,
+examples of terror, and motives to compassion.
+
+I believe the instances are exceedingly rare of men immediately passing
+over a clear, marked line of virtue into declared vice and corruption.
+There are a sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes;
+there is something uncertain on the confines of the two empires which
+they first pass through, and which renders the change easy and
+imperceptible. There are even a sort of splendid impositions so well
+contrived, that, at the very time the path of rectitude is quitted
+forever, men seem to be advancing into some higher and nobler road of
+public conduct. Not that such impositions are strong enough in
+themselves; but a powerful interest, often concealed from those whom it
+affects, works at the bottom, and secures the operation. Men are thus
+debauched away from those legitimate connections, which they had formed
+on a judgment, early perhaps, but sufficiently mature, and wholly
+unbiassed. They do not quit them upon any ground of complaint, for
+grounds of just complaint may exist, but upon the flattering and most
+dangerous of all principles, that of mending what is well. Gradually
+they are habituated to other company; and a change in their habitudes
+soon makes a way for a change in their opinions. Certain persons are no
+longer so very frightful, when they come to be known and to be
+serviceable. As to their old friends, the transition is easy; from
+friendship to civility; from civility to enmity: few are the steps from
+dereliction to persecution.
+
+People not very well grounded in the principles of public morality find
+a set of maxims in office ready made for them, which they assume as
+naturally and inevitably, as any of the insignia or instruments of the
+situation. A certain tone of the solid and practical is immediately
+acquired. Every former profession of public spirit is to be considered
+as a debauch of youth, or, at best, as a visionary scheme of
+unattainable perfection. The very idea of consistency is exploded. The
+convenience of the business of the day is to furnish the principle for
+doing it. Then the whole ministerial cant is quickly got by heart. The
+prevalence of faction is to be lamented. All opposition is to be
+regarded as the effect of envy and disappointed ambition. All
+administrations are declared to be alike. The same necessity justifies
+all their measures. It is no longer a matter of discussion, who or what
+administration is; but that administration is to be supported, is a
+general maxim. Flattering themselves that their power is become
+necessary to the support of all order and government; everything which
+tends to the support of that power is sanctified, and becomes a part of
+the public interest.
+
+Growing every day more formed to affairs, and better knit in their
+limbs, when the occasion (now the only rule) requires it, they become
+capable of sacrificing those very persons to whom they had before
+sacrificed their original friends. It is now only in the ordinary course
+of business to alter an opinion, or to betray a connection. Frequently
+relinquishing one set of men and adopting another, they grow into a
+total indifference to human feeling, as they had before to moral
+obligation; until at length, no one original impression remains upon
+their minds: every principle is obliterated; every sentiment effaced.
+
+In the mean time, that power, which all these changes aimed at securing,
+remains still as tottering and as uncertain as ever. They are delivered
+up into the hands of those who feel neither respect for their persons,
+nor gratitude for their favors; who are put about them in appearance to
+serve, in reality to govern them; and, when the signal is given, to
+abandon and destroy them in order to set up some new dupe of ambition,
+who in his turn is to be abandoned and destroyed. Thus living in a state
+of continual uneasiness and ferment, softened only by the miserable
+consolation of giving now and then preferments to those for whom they
+have no value; they are unhappy in their situation, yet find it
+impossible to resign. Until, at length, soured in temper, and
+disappointed by the very attainment of their ends, in some angry, in
+some haughty, or some negligent moment, they incur the displeasure of
+those upon whom they have rendered their very being dependent. Then
+_perierunt tempora longi servitii;_ they are cast off with scorn; they
+are turned out, emptied of all natural character, of all intrinsic
+worth, of all essential dignity, and deprived of every consolation of
+friendship. Having rendered all retreat to old principles ridiculous,
+and to old regards impracticable, not being able to counterfeit
+pleasure, or to discharge discontent, nothing being sincere, or right,
+or balanced in their minds, it is more than a chance, that, in the
+delirium of the last stage of their distempered power, they make an
+insane political testament, by which they throw all their remaining
+weight and consequence into the scale of their declared enemies, and the
+avowed authors of their destruction. Thus they finish their course. Had
+it been possible that the whole, or even a great part of these effects
+on their minds, I say nothing of the effect upon their fortunes, could
+have appeared to them in their first departure from the right line, it
+is certain they would have rejected every temptation with horror. The
+principle of these remarks, like every good principle in morality, is
+trite; but its frequent application is not the less necessary.
+
+As to others, who are plain practical men, they have been guiltless at
+all times of all public pretence. Neither the author nor any one else
+has reason to be angry with them. They belonged to his friend for their
+interest; for their interest they quitted him; and when it is their
+interest, he may depend upon it, they will return to their former
+connection. Such people subsist at all times, and, though the nuisance
+of all, are at no time a worthy subject of discussion. It is false
+virtue and plausible error that do the mischief.
+
+If men come to government with right dispositions, they have not that
+unfavorable subject which this author represents to work upon. Our
+circumstances are indeed critical; but then they are the critical
+circumstances of a strong and mighty nation. If corruption and meanness
+are greatly spread, they are not spread universally. Many public men are
+hitherto examples of public spirit and integrity. Whole parties, as far
+as large bodies can be uniform, have preserved character. However they
+may be deceived in some particulars, I know of no set of men amongst us,
+which does not contain persons on whom the nation, in a difficult
+exigence, may well value itself. Private life, which is the nursery of
+the commonwealth, is yet in general pure, and on the whole disposed to
+virtue; and the people at large want neither generosity nor spirit. No
+small part of that very luxury, which is so much the subject of the
+author's declamation, but which, in most parts of life, by being well
+balanced and diffused, is only decency and convenience, has perhaps as
+many, or more good than evil consequences attending it. It certainly
+excites industry, nourishes emulation, and inspires some sense of
+personal value into all ranks of people. What we want is to establish
+more fully an opinion of uniformity, and consistency of character, in
+the leading men of the state; such as will restore some confidence to
+profession and appearance, such as will fix subordination upon esteem.
+Without this, all schemes are begun at the wrong end. All who join in
+them are liable to their consequences. All men who, under whatever
+pretext, take a part in the formation or the support of systems
+constructed in such a manner as must, in their nature, disable them from
+the execution of their duty, have made themselves guilty of all the
+present distraction, and of the future ruin, which they may bring upon
+their country.
+
+It is a serious affair, this studied disunion in government. In cases
+where union is most consulted in the constitution of a ministry, and
+where persons are best disposed to promote it, differences, from the
+various ideas of men, will arise; and from their passions will often
+ferment into violent heats, so as greatly to disorder all public
+business. What must be the consequence, when the very distemper is made
+the basis of the constitution; and the original weakness of human nature
+is still further enfeebled by art and contrivance? It must subvert
+government from the very foundation. It turns our public councils into
+the most mischievous cabals; where the consideration is, not how the
+nation's business shall be carried on, but how those who ought to carry
+it on shall circumvent each other. In such a state of things, no order,
+uniformity, dignity, or effect, can appear in our proceedings, either at
+home or abroad. Nor will it make much difference, whether some of the
+constituent parts of such an administration are men of virtue or
+ability, or not; supposing it possible that such men, with their eyes
+open, should choose to make a part in such a body.
+
+The effects of all human contrivances are in the hand of Providence. I
+do not like to answer, as our author so readily does, for the event of
+any speculation. But surely the nature of our disorders, if anything,
+must indicate the proper remedy. Men who act steadily on the principles
+I have stated may in all events be very serviceable to their country; in
+one case, by furnishing (if their sovereign should be so advised) an
+administration formed upon ideas very different from those which have
+for some time been unfortunately fashionable. But, if this should not be
+the case, they may be still serviceable; for the example of a large body
+of men, steadily sacrificing ambition to principle, can never be without
+use. It will certainly be prolific, and draw others to an imitation.
+_Vera gloria radices agit, atque etiam propagatur_.
+
+I do not think myself of consequence enough to imitate my author, in
+troubling the world with the prayers or wishes I may form for the
+public: full as little am I disposed to imitate his professions; those
+professions are long since worn out in the political service. If the
+work will not speak for the author, his own declarations deserve but
+little credit.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[38] History of the Minority. History of the Repeal of the Stamp Act.
+Considerations on Trade and Finance. Political Register, &c., &c.
+
+[39] Pages 6-10.
+
+[40] Pages 9, 10.
+
+[41] Page 9.
+
+[42] Page 9.
+
+[43] Page 6.
+
+[44] Page 9.
+
+[45]
+  Total imports from the West Indies in 1764    £2,909,411
+  Exports to ditto in ditto                        896,511
+                                                ----------
+  Excess of imports                             £2,012,900
+
+In this, which is the common way of stating the balance, it will appear
+upwards of two millions against us, which is ridiculous.
+
+[46] Page 6.
+
+[47]
+            1754.                           £     _s.  d._
+  Total export of British goods  value, 8,317,506  15   3
+  Ditto of foreign goods in time        2,910,836  14   9
+  Ditto of ditto out of time              559,485   2  10
+                                       ------------------
+  Total exports of all kinds           11,787,828  12  10
+  Total imports                         8,093,479  15   0
+                                       ------------------
+  Balance in favor of England          £3,094,355  17  10
+                                       ------------------
+
+            1761.                           £      _s.  d._
+  Total export of British goods        10,649,581  12   6
+  Ditto of foreign goods in time        3,553,692   7   1
+  Ditto of ditto out of time              355,015   0   2
+                                       ------------------
+  Total exports of all kinds           14,558,288  19   9
+  Total imports                         9,294,915   1   6
+                                       ------------------
+  Balance in favor of England          £5,263,373  18   3
+                                       ------------------
+
+Here is the state of our trade in 1761, compared with a very good year
+of profound peace: both are taken from the authentic entries at the
+custom-house. How the author can contrive to make this increase of the
+export of English produce agree with his account of the dreadful want of
+hands in England, page 9, unless he supposes manufactures to be made
+without hands, I really do not see. It is painful to be so frequently
+obliged to set this author right in matters of fact. This state will
+fully refute all that he has said or insinuated upon the difficulties
+and decay of our trade, pages 6, 7, and 9.
+
+[48] Page 7. See also page 13.
+
+[49] Pages 12, 13.
+
+[50] Page 17.
+
+[51] Page 6.
+
+[52] "Our merchants suffered by the detention of the galleons, as their
+correspondents in Spain were disabled from paying them for their goods
+sent to America."--State of the Nation, p. 7.
+
+[53] Pages 12, 13.
+
+[54] Page 6.
+
+[55] Something however has transpired in the quarrels among those
+concerned in that transaction. It seems the _good Genius_ of Britain, so
+much vaunted by our author, did his duty nobly. Whilst we were gaining
+such advantages, the court of France was astonished at our concessions.
+"J'ai apporté à Versailles, il est vrai, les Ratifications du Roi
+d'Angleterre, _à vostre grand étonnement, et à celui de bien d'autres_.
+Je dois cela au bontés du Roi d'Angleterre, à celles de Milord Bute, à
+Mons. le Comte de Viry, à Mons. le Duc de Nivernois, et en fin à mon
+scavoir faire."--Lettres, &c., du Chev. D'Eon, p. 51.
+
+[56] "The navy bills are not due till six months after they have been
+issued; six months also of the seamen's wages by act of Parliament must
+be, and in consequence of the rules prescribed by that act, twelve
+months' wages generally, and often much more are retained; and there has
+been besides at all times a large arrear of pay, which, though kept in
+the account, could never be claimed, the persons to whom it was due
+having left neither assignees nor representatives. The precise amount of
+such sums cannot be ascertained; but they can hardly be reckoned less
+than thirteen or fourteen hundred thousand pounds. On 31st Dec, 1754,
+when the navy debt was reduced nearly as low as it could be, it still
+amounted to 1,296,567_l._ 18_s._ 11-3/4_d._ consisting chiefly of
+articles which could not then be discharged; such articles will be
+larger now, in proportion to the increase of the establishment; and an
+allowance must always be made for them in judging of the state of the
+navy debt, though they are not distinguishable in the account. In
+providing for that which is payable, the principal object of the
+legislature is always to discharge the bills, for they are the greatest
+article; they bear an interest of 4 per cent; and, when the quantity of
+them is large, they are a heavy incumbrance upon all money transactions"
+
+[57]
+  Navy                                            £1,450,900
+  Army                                             1,268,500
+  Ordnance                                           174,600
+  The four American governments                       19,200
+  General surveys in America                           1,600
+  Foundling Hospital                                  38,000
+  To the African committee                            13,000
+  For the civil establishment on the coast of Africa   5,500
+  Militia                                            100,000
+  Deficiency of land and malt                        300,000
+  Deficiency of funds                                202,400
+  Extraordinaries of the army and navy                35,000
+                                                  ----------
+                                   Total          £3,609,700
+
+[58] Upon the money borrowed in 1760, the premium of one per cent was
+for twenty-one years, not for twenty; this annuity has been paid eight
+years instead of seven; the sum paid is therefore 640,000_l._ instead of
+560,000_l._; the remaining term is worth, ten years and a quarter
+instead of eleven years;[59] its value is 820,000_l._ instead of
+880,000_l._; and the whole value of that premium is 1,460,000_l._
+instead of 1,440,000_l._ The like errors are observable in his
+computation on the additional capital of three per cent on the loan of
+that year. In like manner, on the loan of 1762, the author computes on
+five years' payment instead of six; and says in express terms, that take
+5 from 19, and there remain 13. These are not errors of the pen or the
+press; the several computations pursued in this part of the work with
+great diligence and earnestness prove them errors upon much
+deliberation. Thus the premiums in 1759 are cast up 90,000_l._ too
+little, an error in the first rule of arithmetic. "The annuities
+borrowed in 1756 and 1758 are," says he, "to continue till redeemed by
+Parliament." He does not take notice that the first are irredeemable
+till February, 1771, the other till July, 1782. In this the amount of
+the premiums is computed on the time which they have run. Weakly and
+ignorantly; for he might have added to this, and strengthened his
+argument, such as it is, by charging also the value of the additional
+one per cent from the day on which he wrote, to at least that day on
+which these annuities become redeemable. To make ample amends, however,
+he has added to the premiums of 15 per cent in 1759, and three per cent
+in 1760, the annuity paid for them since their commencement; the fallacy
+of which is manifest; for the premiums in these cases can he neither
+more nor less than the additional capital for which the public stands
+engaged, and is just the same whether five or five hundred years'
+annuity has been paid for it. In private life, no man persuades himself
+that he has borrowed 200_l._ because he happens to have paid twenty
+years' interest on a loan of 100_l._
+
+[59] See Smart and Demoivre.
+
+[60] Pages 30-32.
+
+[61] In a course of years a few manufacturers have been tempted abroad,
+not by cheap living, but by immense premiums, to set up as masters, and
+to introduce the manufacture. This must happen in every country eminent
+for the skill of its artificers, and has nothing to do with taxes and
+the price of provisions.
+
+[62] Although the public brewery has considerably increased in this
+latter period, the produce of the malt-tax has been something less than
+in the former; this cannot be attributed to the new malt-tax. Had this
+been the cause of the lessened consumption, the public brewery, so much
+more burdened, must have felt it more. The cause of this diminution of
+the malt-tax I take to have been principally owing to the greater
+dearness of corn in the second period than in the first, which, in all
+its consequences, affected the people in the country much more than
+those in the towns. But the revenue from consumption was not, on the
+whole, impaired; as we have seen in the foregoing page.
+
+[63]
+         Total Imports, value,                Exports, ditto.
+  1752           £7,889,369                    £11,694,912
+  1753            8,625,029                     12,243,604
+  1754            8,093,472                     11,787,828
+                  ---------                     ----------
+  Total         £24,607,870                     35,726,344
+                                                24,607,870
+                                                ----------
+           Exports exceed imports               11,118,474
+                                                ----------
+           Medium balance                       £3,706,158
+                                                ----------
+
+         Total Imports, value,                Exports, ditto.
+  1764          £10,818,946                    £16,104,532
+  1765           10,889,742                     14,550,507
+  1766           11,475,825                     14,024,964
+                -----------                    -----------
+  Total         £32,685,513                     44,740,003
+                -----------                     32,683,613
+                                               -----------
+           Exports exceed                       12,054,490
+                                               -----------
+  Medium balance for three last years           £4,018,163
+
+
+[64] It is dearer in some places, and rather cheaper in others; but it
+must soon all come to a level.
+
+[65] A tax rated by the intendant in each generality, on the presumed
+fortune of every person below the degree of a gentleman.
+
+[66] Before the war it was sold to, or rather forced on, the consumer at
+11 sous, or about 5_d._ the pound. What it is at present, I am not
+informed. Even this will appear no trivial imposition. In London, salt
+may be had at a penny farthing per pound from the last retailer.
+
+[67] Page 31.
+
+[68] Page 33.
+
+[69] Page 33.
+
+[70] Page 33.
+
+[71] The figures in the "Considerations" are wrongly cast up; it should
+be 3,608,700_l._
+
+[72] "Considerations," p. 43. "State of the Nation," p. 33.
+
+[73] Ibid.
+
+[74] Page 34.
+
+[75] The author of the "State of the Nation," p. 34, informs us, that
+the sum of 75,000_l._ allowed by him for the extras of the army and
+ordnance, is far less than was allowed for the same service in the years
+1767 and 1768. It is so undoubtedly, and by at least 200,000_l._ He sees
+that he cannot abide by the plan of the "Considerations" in this point,
+nor is he willing wholly to give it up. Such an enormous difference as
+that between 35,000_l._ and 300,000_l._ puts him to a stand. Should he
+adopt the latter plan of increased expense, he must then confess that he
+had, on a former occasion, egregiously trifled with the public; at the
+same time all his future promises of reduction must fall to the ground.
+If he stuck to the 35,000_l._ he was sure that every one must expect
+from him some account how this monstrous charge came to continue ever
+since the war, when it was clearly unnecessary; how all those
+successions of ministers (his own included) came to pay it, and why his
+great friend in Parliament, and his partisans without doors, came not to
+pursue to ruin, at least to utter shame, the authors of so groundless
+and scandalous a profusion. In this strait he took a middle way; and, to
+come nearer the real state of the service, he outbid the
+"Considerations," at one stroke, 40,000_l._; at the same time he hints
+to you, that you may _expect_ some benefit also from the original plan.
+But the author of the "Considerations" will not suffer him to escape it.
+He has pinned him down to his 35,000_l._; for that is the sum he has
+chosen, not as what he thinks will probably be required, but as making
+the most ample allowance for every possible contingency. See that
+author, p. 42 and 43.
+
+[76] He has done great injustice to the establishment of 1768; but I
+have not here time for this discussion; nor is it necessary to this
+argument.
+
+[77] Page 34.
+
+[78] In making up this account, he falls into a surprising error of
+arithmetic. "The deficiency of the land-tax in the year 1754 and
+1755,[80] when it was at 2_s._, amounted to no more, on a medium, than
+49,372_l._; to which, if we add _half the sum_, it will give us
+79,058_l._ as the peace deficiency at 3_s._"
+
+            Total                                 £49,372
+            Add the half                           24,686
+                                                  -------
+                                                  £74,058
+
+Which he makes 79,058_l._ This is indeed in disfavor of his argument;
+but we shall see that he has ways, by other errors, of reimbursing
+himself.
+
+[79] Page 34.
+
+[80] Page 33.
+
+[81] Page 43.
+
+[82] Page 35.
+
+[83] Page 37.
+
+[84] Pages 37, 38.
+
+[85] Pages 39, 40.
+
+[86] Page 39.
+
+[87] It is observable, that the partisans of American taxation, when
+they have a mind to represent this tax as wonderfully beneficial to
+England, state it as worth 100,000_l._ a year; when they are to
+represent it as very light on the Americans, it dwindles to 60,000_l._
+Indeed it is very difficult to compute what its produce might have been.
+
+[88] "Considerations," p. 74.
+
+[89] "Considerations," p. 79.
+
+[90] Ibid., p. 74.
+
+[91] I do not here enter into the unsatisfactory disquisition concerning
+representation real or presumed. I only say, that a great people who
+have their property, without any reserve, in all cases, disposed of by
+another people, at an immense distance from them, will not think
+themselves in the enjoyment of freedom. It will be hard to show to those
+who are in such a state, which of the usual parts of the definition or
+description of a free people are applicable to them; and it is neither
+pleasant nor wise to attempt to prove that they have no right to be
+comprehended in such a description.
+
+[92] Page 21.
+
+[93] Here the author has a note altogether in his usual strain of
+reasoning; he finds out that somebody, in the course of this
+multifarious evidence, had said, "that a very considerable part of the
+orders of 1765 transmitted from America had been afterwards suspended;
+but that in case the Stamp Act was repealed, those orders were to be
+executed in the present year, 1766"; and that, on the repeal of the
+Stamp Act, "the exports to the colonies would be at least double the
+value of the exports of the past year." He then triumphs exceedingly on
+their having fallen short of it on the state of the custom-house
+entries. I do not well know what conclusion he draws applicable to his
+purpose from these facts. He does not deny that all the orders which
+came from America subsequent to the disturbances of the Stamp Act were
+on the condition of that act being repealed; and he does not assert
+that, notwithstanding that act should be enforced by a strong hand,
+still the orders would be executed. Neither does he quite venture to say
+that this decline of the trade in 1766 was owing to the repeal. What
+does he therefore infer from it, favorable to the enforcement of that
+law? It only comes to this, and no more; those merchants, who thought
+our trade would be doubled in the subsequent year, were mistaken in
+their speculations. So that the Stamp Act was not to be repealed unless
+this speculation of theirs was a probable event. But it was not repealed
+in order to double our trade in that year, as everybody knows (whatever
+some merchants might have said), but lest in that year we should have no
+trade at all. The fact is, that during the greatest part of the year
+1755, that is, until about the month of October, when the accounts of
+the disturbances came thick upon us, the American trade went on as
+usual. Before this time, the Stamp Act could not affect it. Afterwards,
+the merchants fell into a great consternation; a general stagnation in
+trade ensued. But as soon as it was known that the ministry favored the
+repeal of the Stamp Act, several of the bolder merchants ventured to
+execute their orders; others more timid hung back; in this manner the
+trade continued in a state of dreadful fluctuation between the fears of
+those who had ventured, for the event of their boldness, and the anxiety
+of those whose trade was suspended, until the royal assent was finally
+given to the bill of repeal. That the trade of 1766 was not equal to
+that of 1765, could not be owing to the repeal; it arose from quite
+different causes, of which the author seems not to be aware: 1st, Our
+conquests during the war had laid open the trade of the French and
+Spanish West Indies to our colonies much more largely than they had ever
+enjoyed it; this continued for some time after the peace; but at length
+it was extremely contracted, and in some places reduced to nothing. Such
+in particular was the state of Jamaica. On the taking the Havannah all
+the stores of that island were emptied into that place, which produced
+unusual orders for goods, for supplying their own consumption, as well
+as for further speculations of trade. These ceasing, the trade stood on
+its own bottom. This is one cause of the diminished export to Jamaica,
+and not the childish idea of the author, of an impossible contraband
+from the opening of the ports.--2nd, The war had brought a great influx
+of cash into America, for the pay and provision of the troops; and this
+an unnatural increase of trade, which, as its cause failed, must in some
+degree return to its ancient and natural bounds.--3rd, When the
+merchants met from all parts, and compared their accounts, they were
+alarmed at the immensity of the debt due to them from America. They
+found that the Americans had over-traded their abilities. And, as they
+found too that several of them were capable of making the state of
+political events an excuse for their failure in commercial punctuality,
+many of our merchants in some degree contracted their trade from that
+moment. However, it is idle, in such an immense mass of trade, so liable
+to fluctuation, to infer anything from such a deficiency as one or even
+two hundred thousand pounds. In 1767, when the disturbances subsided,
+this deficiency was made up again.
+
+[94] The disturbances have been in Boston only; and were not in
+consequence of the late duties.
+
+[95] Page 24.
+
+[96] "They are happy in having found, in your zeal for the dignity of
+this nation, the means of liquidating their claims, and of concluding
+with the court of France a convention for the final satisfaction of
+their demands; and have given us commission, in their names, and on
+their behalf, most earnestly to entreat your acceptance of their
+grateful acknowledgments. Whether they consider themselves as Britons,
+or as men more particularly profiting by your generous and spirited
+interposition, they see great reasons to be thankful, for having been
+supported by a minister, in whose public affections, in whose wisdom and
+activity, both the national honor, and the interests of individuals,
+have been at once so well supported and secured."--Thanks of the Canada
+merchants to General Conway, London, April 28, 1766.
+
+[97] See the Convention itself, printed by Owen and Harrison,
+Warwick-lane, 1766; particularly the articles two and thirteen.
+
+[98] Page 23.
+
+[99] Page 46.
+
+[100] Page 46.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+So much misplaced industry has been used by the author of "The State of
+the Nation," as well as by other writers, to infuse discontent into the
+people, on account of the late war, and of the effects of our national
+debt; that nothing ought to be omitted which may tend to disabuse the
+public upon these subjects. When I had gone through the foregoing
+sheets, I recollected, that, in pages 58, 59, 60, I only gave the
+comparative states of the duties collected by the excise at large;
+together with the quantities of strong beer brewed in the two periods
+which are there compared. It might be still thought, that some other
+articles of popular consumption, of general convenience, and connected
+with our manufactures, might possibly have declined. I therefore now
+think it right to lay before the reader the state of the produce of
+three capital duties on such articles; duties which have frequently been
+made the subject of popular complaint. The duty on candles; that on
+soap, paper, &c.; and that on hides.
+
+  Average of net produce of duty on soap,
+    &c., for eight years ending 1767              £264,902
+  Average of ditto for eight years ending 1754     228,114
+                                                  --------
+                    Average increase               £36,788
+
+  Average of net produce of duty on candles
+    for eight years ending 1767                   £155,789
+  Average of ditto for eight years ending 1754     136,716
+                                                  --------
+                    Average increase               £19,073
+
+  Average net produce of duty on hides,
+    eight years, ending 1767                      £189,216
+  Ditto eight years, ending 1754                   168,200
+                                                  --------
+                    Average increase               £21,016
+
+This increase has not arisen from any additional duties. None have been
+imposed on these articles during the war. Notwithstanding the burdens of
+the war, and the late dearness of provisions, the consumption of all
+these articles has increased, and the revenue along with it.
+
+There is another point in "The State of the Nation," to which, I fear, I
+have not been so full in my answer as I ought to have been, and as I am
+well warranted to be. The author has endeavored to throw a suspicion, or
+something more, on that salutary, and indeed necessary measure of
+opening the ports in Jamaica. "Orders were given," says he, "in
+_August_, 1765, for the free admission of Spanish vessels into all the
+colonies."[101] He then observes, that the exports to Jamaica fell
+40,904_l._ short of those of 1764; and that the exports of the
+succeeding year, 1766, fell short of those of 1765, about eighty pounds;
+from whence he wisely infers, that this decline of exports being _since_
+the relaxation of the laws of trade, there is a just ground of
+suspicion, that the colonies have been supplied with foreign commodities
+instead of British.
+
+Here, as usual with him, the author builds on a fact which is
+absolutely false; and which, being so, renders his whole hypothesis
+absurd and impossible. He asserts, that the order for admitting Spanish
+vessels was given in _August_, 1765. That order was not _signed at the
+treasury board until the 15th day of the November following_; and
+therefore so far from affecting the exports of the year 1765, that,
+supposing all possible diligence in the commissioners of the customs in
+expediting that order, and every advantage of vessels ready to sail, and
+the most favorable wind, it would hardly even arrive in Jamaica, within
+the limits of that year.
+
+This order could therefore by no possibility be a cause of the decrease
+of exports in 1765. If it had any mischievous operation, it could not be
+before 1766. In that year, according to our author, the exports fell
+short of the preceding, just _eighty_ pounds. He is welcome to that
+diminution; and to all the consequences he can draw from it.
+
+But, as an auxiliary to account for this dreadful loss, he brings in the
+Free-port Act, which he observes (for his convenience) to have been made
+in spring, 1766; but (for his convenience likewise) he forgets, that, by
+the express provision of the act, the regulation was not to be in force
+in Jamaica until the November following. Miraculous must be the activity
+of that contraband whose operation in America could, before the end of
+that year, have reacted upon England, and checked the exportation from
+hence! Unless he chooses to suppose, that the merchants at whose
+solicitation this act had been obtained, were so frightened at the
+accomplishment of their own most earnest and anxious desire, that,
+before any good or evil effect from it could happen, they immediately
+put a stop to all further exportation.
+
+It is obvious that we must look for the true effect of that act at the
+time of its first possible operation, that is, in the year 1767. On this
+idea how stands the account?
+
+  1764, Exports to Jamaica                       £ 456,528
+  1765                                             415,624
+  1766                                             415,544
+  1767  (first year of the Free-port Act)          467,681
+
+This author, for the sake of a present momentary credit, will hazard any
+future and permanent disgrace. At the time he wrote, the account of 1767
+could not be made up. This was the very first year of the trial of the
+Free-port Act; and we find that the sale of British commodities is so
+far from being lessened by that act, that the export of 1767 amounts to
+52,000_l._ more than that of either of the two preceding years, and is
+11,000_l._ above that of his standard year 1764. If I could prevail on
+myself to argue in favor of a great commercial scheme from the
+appearance of things in a single year, I should from this increase of
+export infer the beneficial effects of that measure. In truth, it is not
+wanting. Nothing but the thickest ignorance of the Jamaica trade could
+have made any one entertain a fancy, that the least ill effect on our
+commerce could follow from this opening of the ports. But, if the author
+argues the effect of regulations in the American trade from the export
+of the year in which they are made, or even of the following; why did he
+not apply this rule to his own? He had the same paper before him which I
+have now before me. He must have seen that in his standard year (the
+year 1764), the principal year of his new regulations, the export fell
+no less than 128,450_l._ short of that in 1763! Did the export trade
+revive by these regulations in 1765, during which year they continued in
+their full force? It fell about 40,000_l._ still lower. Here is a fall
+of 168,000_l._; to account for which, would have become the author much
+better than piddling for an 80_l._ fall in the year 1766 (the only year
+in which _the order_ he objects to could operate), or in presuming a
+fall of exports from a regulation which took place only in November,
+1766; whose effects could not appear until the following year; and
+which, when they do appear, utterly overthrow all his flimsy reasons and
+affected suspicions upon the effect of opening the ports.
+
+This author, in the same paragraph, says, that "it was asserted by _the
+American factors and agents_, that the commanders of our ships of war
+and tenders, having custom-house commissions, and the strict orders
+given in 1764 for a due execution of the laws of trade in the colonies,
+had deterred the Spaniards from trading with us; that the sale of
+British manufactures in the West Indies had been greatly lessened, and
+the receipt of large sums of specie prevented."
+
+If the _American factors and agents_ asserted this, they had good ground
+for their assertion. They knew that the Spanish vessels had been driven
+from our ports. The author does not positively deny the fact. If he
+should, it will be proved. When the factors connected this measure, and
+its natural consequences, with an actual fall in the exports to Jamaica,
+to no less an amount than 128,460_l._ in one year, and with a further
+fall in the next, is their assertion very wonderful? The author himself
+is full as much alarmed by a fall of only 40,000_l._; for giving him
+the facts which he chooses to coin, it is no more. The expulsion of the
+Spanish vessels must certainly have been one cause, if not of the first
+declension of the exports, yet of their continuance in their reduced
+state. Other causes had their operation, without doubt. In what degree
+each cause produced its effect, it is hard to determine. But the fact of
+a fall of exports upon the restraining plan, and of a rise upon the
+taking place of the enlarging plan, is established beyond all
+contradiction.
+
+This author says, that the facts relative to the Spanish trade were
+asserted by _American factors and agents_; insinuating, that the
+ministry of 1766 had no better authority for their plan of enlargement
+than such assertions. The moment he chooses it, he shall see the very
+same thing asserted by governors of provinces, by commanders of
+men-of-war, and by officers of the customs; persons the most bound in
+duty to prevent contraband, and the most interested in the seizures to
+be made in consequence of strict regulation. I suppress them for the
+present; wishing that the author may not drive me to a more full
+discussion of this matter than it may be altogether prudent to enter
+into. I wish he had not made any of these discussions necessary.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[101] His note, p. 22.
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS
+
+ON
+
+THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS.
+
+     Hoc vero occultum, intestinum, domesticum malum, non modo non
+     existit, verum etiam opprimit, antequam perspicere atque explorare
+     potueris.
+                                        CIC.
+
+1770.
+
+
+
+It is an undertaking of some degree of delicacy to examine into the
+cause of public disorders. If a man happens not to succeed in such an
+inquiry, he will be thought weak and visionary; if he touches the true
+grievance, there is a danger that he may come near to persons of weight
+and consequence, who will rather be exasperated at the discovery of
+their errors, than thankful for the occasion of correcting them. If he
+should be obliged to blame the favorites of the people, he will be
+considered as the tool of power; if he censures those in power, he will
+be looked on as an instrument of faction. But in all exertions of duty
+something is to be hazarded. In cases of tumult and disorder, our law
+has invested every man, in some sort, with the authority of a
+magistrate. When the affairs of the nation are distracted, private
+people are, by the spirit of that law, justified in stepping a little
+out of their ordinary sphere. They enjoy a privilege, of somewhat more
+dignity and effect, than that of idle lamentation over the calamities of
+their country. They may look into them narrowly; they may reason upon
+them liberally; and if they should be so fortunate as to discover the
+true source of the mischief, and to suggest any probable method of
+removing it, though they may displease the rulers for the day, they are
+certainly of service to the cause of government. Government is deeply
+interested in everything which, even through the medium of some
+temporary uneasiness, may tend finally to compose the minds of the
+subject, and to conciliate their affections. I have nothing to do here
+with the abstract value of the voice of the people. But as long as
+reputation, the most precious possession of every individual, and as
+long as opinion, the great support of the state, depend entirely upon
+that voice, it can never be considered as a thing of little consequence
+either to individuals or to governments. Nations are not primarily ruled
+by laws: less by violence. Whatever original energy may be supposed
+either in force or regulation, the operation of both is, in truth,
+merely instrumental. Nations are governed by the same methods, and on
+the same principles, by which an individual without authority is often
+able to govern those who are his equals or his superiors; by a knowledge
+of their temper, and by a judicious management of it; I mean,--when
+public affairs are steadily and quietly conducted; not when government
+is nothing but a continued scuffle between the magistrate and the
+multitude; in which sometimes the one and sometimes the other is
+uppermost; in which they alternately yield and prevail, in a series of
+contemptible victories, and scandalous submissions. The temper of the
+people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be the first study of
+a statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is by no means
+impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being
+ignorant of what it is his duty to learn.
+
+To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors
+of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the
+future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind;
+indeed the necessary effects of the ignorance and levity of the vulgar.
+Such complaints and humors have existed in all times; yet as all times
+have _not_ been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself in
+distinguishing that complaint which only characterizes the general
+infirmity of human nature, from those which are symptoms of the
+particular distemperature of our own air and season.
+
+Nobody, I believe, will consider it merely as the language of spleen or
+disappointment, if I say, that there is something particularly alarming
+in the present conjuncture. There is hardly a man, in or out of power,
+who holds any other language. That government is at once dreaded and
+contemned; that the laws are despoiled of all their respected and
+salutary terrors; that their inaction is a subject of ridicule, and
+their exertion of abhorrence; that rank, and office and title, and all
+the solemn plausibilities of the world, have lost their reverence and
+effect; that our foreign politics are as much deranged as our domestic
+economy; that our dependencies are slackened in their affection, and
+loosened from their obedience; that we know neither how to yield nor how
+to enforce; that hardly anything above or below, abroad or at home, is
+sound and entire; but that disconnection and confusion, in offices, in
+parties, in families, in Parliament, in the nation, prevail beyond the
+disorders of any former time: these are facts universally admitted and
+lamented.
+
+This state of things is the more extraordinary, because the great
+parties which formerly divided and agitated the kingdom are known to be
+in a manner entirely dissolved. No great external calamity has visited
+the nation; no pestilence or famine. We do not labor at present under
+any scheme of taxation new or oppressive in the quantity or in the mode.
+Nor are we engaged in unsuccessful war; in which, our misfortunes might
+easily pervert our judgment; and our minds, sore from the loss of
+national glory, might feel every blow of fortune as a crime in
+government.
+
+It is impossible that the cause of this strange distemper should not
+sometimes become a subject of discourse. It is a compliment due, and
+which I willingly pay, to those who administer our affairs, to take
+notice in the first place of their speculation. Our ministers are of
+opinion, that the increase of our trade and manufactures, that our
+growth by colonization, and by conquest, have concurred to accumulate
+immense wealth in the hands of some individuals; and this again being
+dispersed among the people, has rendered them universally proud,
+ferocious, and ungovernable; that the insolence of some from their
+enormous wealth, and the boldness of others from a guilty poverty, have
+rendered them capable of the most atrocious attempts; so that they have
+trampled upon all subordination, and violently borne down the unarmed
+laws of a free government; barriers too feeble against the fury of a
+populace so fierce and licentious as ours. They contend, that no
+adequate provocation has been given for so spreading a discontent; our
+affairs having been conducted throughout with remarkable temper and
+consummate wisdom. The wicked industry of some libellers, joined to the
+intrigues of a few disappointed politicians, have, in their opinion,
+been able to produce this unnatural ferment in the nation.
+
+Nothing indeed can be more unnatural than the present convulsions of
+this country, if the above account be a true one. I confess I shall
+assent to it with great reluctance, and only on the compulsion of the
+clearest and firmest proofs; because their account resolves itself into
+this short, but discouraging proposition, "That we have a very good
+ministry, but that we are a very bad people"; that we set ourselves to
+bite the hand that feeds us; that with a malignant insanity, we oppose
+the measures, and ungratefully vilify the persons, of those whose sole
+object is our own peace and prosperity. If a few puny libellers, acting
+under a knot of factious politicians, without virtue, parts, or
+character, (such they are constantly represented by these gentlemen,)
+are sufficient to excite this disturbance, very perverse must be the
+disposition of that people, amongst whom such a disturbance can be
+excited by such means. It is besides no small aggravation of the public
+misfortune, that the disease, on this hypothesis, appears to be without
+remedy. If the wealth of the nation be the cause of its turbulence, I
+imagine it is not proposed to introduce poverty, as a constable to keep
+the peace. If our dominions abroad are the roots which feed all this
+rank luxuriance of sedition, it is not intended to cut them off in order
+to famish the fruit. If our liberty has enfeebled the executive power,
+there is no design, I hope, to call in the aid of despotism, to fill up
+the deficiencies of law. Whatever may be intended, these things are not
+yet professed. We seem therefore to be driven to absolute despair; for
+we have no other materials to work upon, but those out of which God has
+been pleased to form the inhabitants of this island. If these be
+radically and essentially vicious, all that can be said is, that those
+men are very unhappy, to whose fortune or duty it falls to administer
+the affairs of this untoward people. I hear it indeed sometimes
+asserted, that a steady perseverance in the present measures, and a
+rigorous punishment of those who oppose them, will in course of time
+infallibly put an end to these disorders. But this, in my opinion, is
+said without much observation of our present disposition, and without
+any knowledge at all of the general nature of mankind. If the matter of
+which this nation is composed be so very fermentable as these gentlemen
+describe it, leaven never will be wanting to work it up, as long as
+discontent, revenge, and ambition, have existence in the world.
+Particular punishments are the cure for accidental distempers in the
+state; they inflame rather than allay those heats which arise from the
+settled mismanagement of the government, or from a natural indisposition
+in the people. It is of the utmost moment not to make mistakes in the
+use of strong measures; and firmness is then only a virtue when it
+accompanies the most perfect wisdom. In truth, inconstancy is a sort of
+natural corrective of folly and ignorance.
+
+I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong.
+They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries
+and in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their
+rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favor of the people.
+Experience may perhaps justify me in going further. When popular
+discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed and
+supported, that there has been generally something found amiss in the
+constitution, or in the conduct of government. The people have no
+interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error, and not
+their crime. But with the governing part of the state, it is for
+otherwise. They certainly may act ill by design, as well as by mistake.
+"_Les révolutions qui arrivent dans les grands états ne sont point un
+effect du hazard, ni du caprice des peuples. Rien ne révolte _les
+grands_ d'un royaume comme _un gouvernement foible et dérangé_. Pour la
+_populace_, ce n'est jamais par envie d'attaquer qu'elle se soulève,
+mais par impatience de souffrir._"[102] These are the words of a great
+man; of a minister of state; and a zealous assertor of monarchy. They
+are applied to the _system of favoritism_ which was adopted by Henry the
+Third of France, and to the dreadful consequences it produced. What he
+says of revolutions, is equally true of all great disturbances. If this
+presumption in favor of the subjects against the trustees of power be
+not the more probable, I am sure it is the more comfortable speculation;
+because it is more easy to change an administration, than to reform a
+people.
+
+Upon a supposition, therefore, that, in the opening of the cause, the
+presumptions stand equally balanced between the parties, there seems
+sufficient ground to entitle any person to a fair hearing, who attempts
+some other scheme beside that easy one which is fashionable in some
+fashionable companies, to account for the present discontents. It is not
+to be argued that we endure no grievance, because our grievances are not
+of the same sort with those under which we labored formerly; not
+precisely those which we bore from the Tudors, or vindicated on the
+Stuarts. A great change has taken place in the affairs of this country.
+For in the silent lapse of events as material alterations have been
+insensibly brought about in the policy and character of governments and
+nations, as those which have been marked by the tumult of public
+revolutions.
+
+It is very rare indeed for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning
+public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon the
+cause of it. I have constantly observed, that the generality of people
+are fifty years, at least, behindhand in their politics. There are but
+very few who are capable of comparing and digesting what passes before
+their eyes at different times and occasions, so as to form the whole
+into a distinct system. But in books everything is settled for them,
+without the exertion of any considerable diligence or sagacity. For
+which reason men are wise with but little reflection, and good with
+little self-denial, in the business of all times except their own. We
+are very uncorrupt and tolerably enlightened judges of the transactions
+of past ages; where no passions deceive, and where the whole train of
+circumstances, from the trifling cause to the tragical event, is set in
+an orderly series before us. Few are the partisans of departed tyranny;
+and to be a Whig on the business of an hundred years ago, is very
+consistent with every advantage of present servility. This retrospective
+wisdom, and historical patriotism, are things of wonderful convenience,
+and serve admirably to reconcile the old quarrel between speculation and
+practice. Many a stern republican, after gorging himself with a full
+feast of admiration of the Grecian commonwealths and of our true Saxon
+constitution, and discharging all the splendid bile of his virtuous
+indignation on King John and King James, sits down perfectly satisfied
+to the coarsest work and homeliest job of the day he lives in. I believe
+there was no professed admirer of Henry the Eighth among the instruments
+of the last King James; nor in the court of Henry the Eighth was there,
+I dare say, to be found a single advocate for the favorites of Richard
+the Second.
+
+No complaisance to our court, or to our age, can make me believe nature
+to be so changed, but that public liberty will be among us as among our
+ancestors, obnoxious to some person or other; and that opportunities
+will be furnished for attempting, at least, some alteration to the
+prejudice of our constitution. These attempts will naturally vary in
+their mode according to times and circumstances. For ambition, though it
+has ever the same general views, has not at all times the same means,
+nor the same particular objects. A great deal of the furniture of
+ancient tyranny is worn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion.
+Besides, there are few statesmen so very clumsy and awkward in their
+business, as to fall into the identical snare which has proved fatal to
+their predecessors. When an arbitrary imposition is attempted upon the
+subject, undoubtedly it will not bear on its forehead the name of
+_Ship-money_. There is no danger that an extension of the _Forest laws_
+should be the chosen mode of oppression in this age. And when we hear
+any instance of ministerial rapacity, to the prejudice of the rights of
+private life, it will certainly not be the exaction of two hundred
+pullets, from a woman of fashion, for leave to lie with her own
+husband.[103]
+
+Every age has its own manners, and its politics dependent upon them;
+and the same attempts will not be made against a constitution fully
+formed and matured, that were used to destroy it in the cradle, or to
+resist its growth during its infancy.
+
+Against the being of Parliament, I am satisfied, no designs have ever
+been entertained since the revolution. Every one must perceive, that it
+is strongly the interest of the court, to have some second cause
+interposed between the ministers and the people. The gentlemen of the
+House of Commons have an interest equally strong in sustaining the part
+of that intermediate cause. However they may hire out the _usufruct_ of
+their voices, they never will part with the _fee and inheritance_.
+Accordingly those who have been of the most known devotion to the will
+and pleasure of a court have, at the same time, been most forward in
+asserting a high authority in the House of Commons. When they knew who
+were to use that authority, and how it was to be employed, they thought
+it never could be carried too far. It must be always the wish of an
+unconstitutional statesman, that a House of Commons, who are entirely
+dependent upon him, should have every right of the people entirely
+dependent upon their pleasure. It was soon discovered, that the forms of
+a free, and the ends of an arbitrary government, were things not
+altogether incompatible.
+
+The power of the crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown
+up anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the name of
+Influence. An influence, which operated without noise and without
+violence; an influence, which converted the very antagonist into the
+instrument of power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle of
+growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of
+the country equally tended to augment, was an admirable substitute for a
+prerogative, that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices,
+had moulded in its original stamina irresistible principles of decay and
+dissolution. The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a temporary
+system; the interest of active men in the state is a foundation
+perpetual and infallible. However, some circumstances, arising, it must
+be confessed, in a great degree from accident, prevented the effects of
+this influence for a long time from breaking out in a manner capable of
+exciting any serious apprehensions. Although government was strong and
+flourished exceedingly, the _court_ had drawn far less advantage than
+one would imagine from this great source of power.
+
+At the revolution, the crown, deprived, for the ends of the revolution
+itself, of many prerogatives, was found too weak to struggle against all
+the difficulties which pressed so new and unsettled a government. The
+court was obliged therefore to delegate a part of its powers to men of
+such interest as could support, and of such fidelity as would adhere to,
+its establishment. Such men were able to draw in a greater number to a
+concurrence in the common defence. This connection, necessary at first,
+continued long after convenient; and properly conducted might indeed, in
+all situations, be an useful instrument of government. At the same time,
+through the intervention of men of popular weight and character, the
+people possessed a security for their just proportion of importance in
+the state. But as the title to the crown grew stronger by long
+possession, and by the constant increase of its influence, these helps
+have of late seemed to certain persons no better than incumbrances. The
+powerful managers for government were not sufficiently submissive to the
+pleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal favor, sometimes
+from a confidence in their own strength, natural and acquired; sometimes
+from a fear of offending their friends, and weakening that lead in the
+country which gave them a consideration independent of the court. Men
+acted as if the court could receive, as well as confer, an obligation.
+The influence of government, thus divided in appearance between the
+court and the leaders of parties, became in many cases an accession
+rather to the popular than to the royal scale; and some part of that
+influence, which would otherwise have been possessed as in a sort of
+mortmain and unalienable domain, returned again to the great ocean from
+whence it arose, and circulated among the people. This method,
+therefore, of governing by men of great natural interest or great
+acquired consideration was viewed in a very invidious light by the true
+lovers of absolute monarchy. It is the nature of despotism to abhor
+power held by any means but its own momentary pleasure; and to
+annihilate all intermediate situations between boundless strength on its
+own part, and total debility on the part of the people.
+
+To get rid of all this intermediate and independent importance, and _to
+secure to the court the unlimited and uncontrolled use of its own vast
+influence, under the sole direction of its own private favor_, has for
+some years past been the great object of policy. If this were
+compassed, the influence of the crown must of course produce all the
+effects which the most sanguine partisans of the court could possibly
+desire. Government might then be carried on without any concurrence on
+the part of the people; without any attention to the dignity of the
+greater, or to the affections of the lower sorts. A new project was
+therefore devised by a certain set of intriguing men, totally different
+from the system of administration which had prevailed since the
+accession of the House of Brunswick. This project, I have heard, was
+first conceived by some persons in the court of Frederick Prince of
+Wales.
+
+The earliest attempt in the execution of this design was to set up for
+minister, a person, in rank indeed respectable, and very ample in
+fortune; but who, to the moment of this vast and sudden elevation, was
+little known or considered in the kingdom. To him the whole nation was
+to yield an immediate and implicit submission. But whether it was from
+want of firmness to bear up against the first opposition; or that things
+were not yet fully ripened, or that this method was not found the most
+eligible; that idea was soon abandoned. The instrumental part of the
+project was a little altered, to accommodate it to the time and to bring
+things more gradually and more surely to the one great end proposed.
+
+The first part of the reformed plan was to draw _a line which should
+separate the court from the ministry_. Hitherto these names had been
+looked upon as synonymous; but for the future, court and administration
+were to be considered as things totally distinct. By this operation, two
+systems of administration were to be formed; one which should be in the
+real secret and confidence; the other merely ostensible to perform the
+official and executory duties of government. The latter were alone to be
+responsible; whilst the real advisers, who enjoyed all the power, were
+effectually removed from all the danger.
+
+Secondly, _A party under these leaders was to be formed in favor of the
+court against the ministry_: this party was to have a large share in the
+emoluments of government, and to hold it totally separate from, and
+independent of, ostensible administration.
+
+The third point, and that on which the success of the whole scheme
+ultimately depended, was _to bring Parliament to an acquiescence in this
+project_. Parliament was therefore to be taught by degrees a total
+indifference to the persons, rank, influence, abilities, connections,
+and character of the ministers of the crown. By means of a discipline,
+on which I shall say more hereafter, that body was to be habituated to
+the most opposite interests, and the most discordant politics. All
+connections and dependencies among subjects were to be entirely
+dissolved. As, hitherto, business had gone through the hands of leaders
+of Whigs or Tories, men of talents to conciliate the people, and to
+engage their confidence; now the method was to be altered: and the lead
+was to be given to men of no sort of consideration or credit in the
+country. This want of natural importance was to be their very title to
+delegated power. Members of Parliament were to be hardened into an
+insensibility to pride as well as to duty. Those high and haughty
+sentiments, which are the great support of independence, were to be let
+down gradually. Points of honor and precedence were no more to be
+regarded in Parliamentary decorum than in a Turkish army. It was to be
+avowed, as a constitutional maxim, that the king might appoint one of
+his footmen, or one of your footmen for minister; and that he ought to
+be, and that he would be, as well followed as the first name for rank or
+wisdom in the nation. Thus Parliament was to look on as if perfectly
+unconcerned, while a cabal of the closet and back-stairs was substituted
+in the place of a national administration.
+
+With such a degree of acquiescence, any measure of any court might well
+be deemed thoroughly secure. The capital objects, and by much the most
+flattering characteristics of arbitrary power, would be obtained.
+Everything would be drawn from its holdings in the country to the
+personal favor and inclination of the prince. This favor would be the
+sole introduction to power, and the only tenure by which it was to be
+held; so that no person looking towards another, and all looking towards
+the court, it was impossible but that the motive which solely influenced
+every man's hopes must come in time to govern every man's conduct; till
+at last the servility became universal, in spite of the dead letter of
+any laws or institutions whatsoever.
+
+How it should happen that any man could be tempted to venture upon such
+a project of government, may at first view appear surprising. But the
+fact is that opportunities very inviting to such an attempt have
+offered; and the scheme itself was not destitute of some arguments, not
+wholly unplausible, to recommend it. These opportunities and these
+arguments, the use that has been made of both, the plan for carrying
+this new scheme of government into execution, and the effects which it
+has produced, are, in my opinion, worthy of our serious consideration.
+
+His Majesty came to the throne of these kingdoms with more advantages
+than any of his predecessors since the revolution. Fourth in descent,
+and third in succession of his royal family, even the zealots of
+hereditary right, in him, saw something to flatter their favorite
+prejudices; and to justify a transfer of their attachments, without a
+change in their principles. The person and cause of the Pretender were
+become contemptible; his title disowned throughout Europe; his party
+disbanded in England. His Majesty came, indeed, to the inheritance of a
+mighty war; but, victorious in every part of the globe, peace was always
+in his power, not to negotiate, but to dictate. No foreign habitudes or
+attachments withdrew him from the cultivation of his power at home. His
+revenue for the civil establishment, fixed (as it was then thought) at a
+large, but definite sum, was ample without being invidious. His
+influence, by additions from conquest, by an augmentation of debt, by an
+increase of military and naval establishment, much strengthened and
+extended. And coming to the throne in the prime and full vigor of youth,
+as from affection there was a strong dislike, so from dread there seemed
+to be a general averseness, from giving anything like offence to a
+monarch, against whose resentment opposition could not look for a refuge
+in any sort of reversionary hope.
+
+These singular advantages inspired his Majesty only with a more ardent
+desire to preserve unimpaired the spirit of that national freedom, to
+which he owed a situation so full of glory. But to others it suggested
+sentiments of a very different nature. They thought they now beheld an
+opportunity (by a certain sort of statesmen never long undiscovered or
+unemployed) of drawing to themselves by the aggrandizement of a court
+faction, a degree of power which they could never hope to derive from
+natural influence or from honorable service; and which it was impossible
+they could hold with the least security, whilst the system of
+administration rested upon its former bottom. In order to facilitate the
+execution of their design, it was necessary to make many alterations in
+political arrangement, and a signal change in the opinions, habits, and
+connections of the greatest part of those who at that time acted in
+public.
+
+In the first place, they proceeded gradually, but not slowly, to destroy
+everything of strength which did not derive its principal nourishment
+from the immediate pleasure of the court. The greatest weight of popular
+opinion and party connection were then with the Duke of Newcastle and
+Mr. Pitt. Neither of these held their importance by the _new tenure_ of
+the court; they were not therefore thought to be so proper as others for
+the services which were required by that tenure. It happened very
+favorably for the new system, that under a forced coalition there
+rankled an incurable alienation and disgust between the parties which
+composed the administration. Mr. Pitt was first attacked. Not satisfied
+with removing him from power, they endeavored by various artifices to
+ruin his character. The other party seemed rather pleased to get rid of
+so oppressive a support; not perceiving, that their own fall was
+prepared by his, and involved in it. Many other reasons prevented them
+from daring to look their true situation in the face. To the great Whig
+families it was extremely disagreeable, and seemed almost unnatural, to
+oppose the administration of a prince of the House of Brunswick. Day
+after day they hesitated, and doubted, and lingered, expecting that
+other counsels would take place; and were slow to be persuaded, that all
+which had been done by the cabal was the effect not of humor, but of
+system. It was more strongly and evidently the interest of the new court
+faction, to get rid of the great Whig connections, than to destroy Mr.
+Pitt. The power of that gentleman was vast indeed and merited; but it
+was in a great degree personal, and therefore transient. Theirs was
+rooted in the country. For, with a good deal less of popularity, they
+possessed a far more natural and fixed influence. Long possession of
+government; vast property; obligations of favors given and received;
+connection of office; ties of blood, of alliance, of friendship (things
+at that time supposed of some force); the name of Whig, dear to the
+majority of the people; the zeal early begun and steadily continued to
+the royal family: all these together formed a body of power in the
+nation, which was criminal and devoted. The great ruling principle of
+the cabal, and that which animated and harmonized all their proceedings,
+how various soever they may have been, was to signify to the world that
+the court would proceed upon its own proper forces only; and that the
+pretence of bringing any other into its service was an affront to it,
+and not a support. Therefore when the chiefs were removed, in order to
+go to the root, the whole party was put under a proscription, so general
+and severe, as to take their hard-earned bread from the lowest officers,
+in a manner which had never been known before, even in general
+revolutions. But it was thought necessary effectually to destroy all
+dependencies but one; and to show an example of the firmness and rigor
+with which the new system was to be supported.
+
+Thus for the time were pulled down, in the persons of the Whig leaders
+and of Mr. Pitt (in spite of the services of the one at the accession of
+the royal family, and the recent services of the other in the war), the
+_two only securities for the importance of the people; power arising
+from popularity; and power arising from connection_. Here and there
+indeed a few individuals were left standing, who gave security for their
+total estrangement from the odious principles of party connection and
+personal attachment; and it must be confessed that most of them have
+religiously kept their faith. Such a change could not however be made
+without a mighty shock to government.
+
+To reconcile the minds of the people to all these movements, principles
+correspondent to them had been preached up with great zeal. Every one
+must remember that the cabal set out with the most astonishing prudery,
+both moral and political. Those, who in a few months after soused over
+head and ears into the deepest and dirtiest pits of corruption, cried
+out violently against the indirect practices in the electing and
+managing of Parliaments, which had formerly prevailed. This marvellous
+abhorrence which the court had suddenly taken to all influence, was not
+only circulated in conversation through the kingdom, but pompously
+announced to the public, with many other extraordinary things, in a
+pamphlet[104] which had all the appearance of a manifesto preparatory to
+some considerable enterprise. Throughout it was a satire, though in
+terms managed and decent enough, on the politics of the former reign.
+It was indeed written with no small art and address.
+
+In this piece appeared the first dawning of the new system: there first
+appeared the idea (then only in speculation) of _separating the court
+from the administration_; of carrying everything from national
+connection to personal regards; and of forming a regular party for that
+purpose, under the name of _king's men_.
+
+To recommend this system to the people, a perspective view of the court,
+gorgeously painted, and finely illuminated from within, was exhibited to
+the gaping multitude. Party was to be totally done away, with all its
+evil works. Corruption was to be cast down from court, as _Atè_ was from
+heaven. Power was thenceforward to be the chosen residence of public
+spirit; and no one was to be supposed under any sinister influence,
+except those who had the misfortune to be in disgrace at court, which
+was to stand in lieu of all vices and all corruptions. A scheme of
+perfection to be realized in a monarchy far beyond the visionary
+republic of Plato. The whole scenery was exactly disposed to captivate
+those good souls, whose credulous morality is so invaluable a treasure
+to crafty politicians. Indeed there was wherewithal to charm everybody,
+except those few who are not much pleased with professions of
+supernatural virtue, who know of what stuff such professions are made,
+for what purposes they are designed, and in what they are sure
+constantly to end. Many innocent gentlemen, who had been talking prose
+all their lives without knowing anything of the matter, began at last to
+open their eyes upon their own merits, and to attribute their not having
+been lords of the treasury and lords of trade many years before, merely
+to the prevalence of party, and to the ministerial power, which had
+frustrated the good intentions of the court in favor of their abilities.
+Now was the time to unlock the sealed fountain of royal bounty, which
+had been infamously monopolized and huckstered, and to let it flow at
+large upon the whole people. The time was come, to restore royalty to
+its original splendor. _Mettre le Roy hors de page_, became a sort of
+watchword. And it was constantly in the mouths of all the runners of the
+court, that nothing could preserve the balance of the constitution from
+being overturned by the rabble, or by a faction of the nobility, but to
+free the sovereign effectually from that ministerial tyranny under which
+the royal dignity had been oppressed in the person of his Majesty's
+grandfather.
+
+These were some of the many artifices used to reconcile the people to
+the great change which was made in the persons who composed the
+ministry, and the still greater which was made and avowed in its
+constitution. As to individuals, other methods were employed with them;
+in order so thoroughly to disunite every party, and even every family,
+that _no concert, order, or effect, might appear in any future
+opposition_. And in this manner an administration without connection
+with the people, or with one another, was first put in possession of
+government. What good consequences followed from it, we have all seen;
+whether with regard to virtue, public or private; to the ease and
+happiness of the sovereign; or to the real strength of government. But
+as so much stress was then laid on the necessity of this new project, it
+will not be amiss to take a view of the effects of this royal servitude
+and vile durance, which was so deplored in the reign of the late
+monarch, and was so carefully to be avoided in the reign of his
+successor. The effects were these.
+
+In times full of doubt and danger to his person and family, George II.
+maintained the dignity of his crown connected with the liberty of his
+people, not only unimpaired, but improved, for the space of thirty-three
+years. He overcame a dangerous rebellion, abetted by foreign force, and
+raging in the heart of his kingdoms; and thereby destroyed the seeds of
+all future rebellion that could arise upon the same principle. He
+carried the glory, the power, the commerce of England, to a height
+unknown even to this renowned nation in the times of its greatest
+prosperity: and he left his succession resting on the true and only true
+foundations of all national and all regal greatness; affection at home,
+reputation abroad, trust in allies, terror in rival nations. The most
+ardent lover of his country cannot wish for Great Britain a happier fate
+than to continue as she was then left. A people, emulous as we are in
+affection to our present sovereign, know not how to form a prayer to
+heaven for a greater blessing upon his virtues, or a higher state of
+felicity and glory, than that he should live, and should reign, and when
+Providence ordains it, should die, exactly like his illustrious
+predecessor.
+
+A great prince may be obliged (though such a thing cannot happen very
+often) to sacrifice his private inclination to his public interest. A
+wise prince will not think that such a restraint implies a condition of
+servility; and truly, if such was the condition of the last reign, and
+the effects were also such as we have described, we ought, no less for
+the sake of the sovereign whom we love, than for our own, to hear
+arguments convincing indeed, before we depart from the maxims of that
+reign, or fly in the face of this great body of strong and recent
+experience.
+
+One of the principal topics which was then, and has been since, much
+employed by that political[105] school, is an affected terror of the
+growth of an aristocratic power, prejudicial to the rights of the crown,
+and the balance of the constitution. Any new powers exercised in the
+House of Lords, or in the House of Commons, or by the crown, ought
+certainly to excite the vigilant and anxious jealousy of a free people.
+Even a new and unprecedented course of action in the whole legislature,
+without great and evident reason, may be a subject of just uneasiness. I
+will not affirm, that there may not have lately appeared in the House of
+Lords, a disposition to some attempts derogatory to the legal rights of
+the subject. If any such have really appeared, they have arisen, not
+from a power properly aristocratic, but from the same influence which is
+charged with having excited attempts of a similar nature in the House of
+Commons; which House, if it should have been betrayed into an
+unfortunate quarrel with its constituents, and involved in a charge of
+the very same nature, could have neither power nor inclination to repel
+such attempts in others. Those attempts in the House of Lords can no
+more be called aristocratic proceedings, than the proceedings with
+regard to the county of Middlesex in the House of Commons can with any
+sense be called democratical.
+
+It is true, that the peers have a great influence in the kingdom, and
+in every part of the public concerns. While they are men of property, it
+is impossible to prevent it, except by such means as must prevent all
+property from its natural operation: an event not easily to be
+compassed, while property is power; nor by any means to be wished, while
+the least notion exists of the method by which the spirit of liberty
+acts, and of the means by which it is preserved. If any particular
+peers, by their uniform, upright, constitutional conduct, by their
+public and their private virtues, have acquired an influence in the
+country; the people, on whose favor that influence depends, and from
+whom it arose, will never be duped into an opinion, that such greatness
+in a peer is the despotism of an aristocracy, when they know and feel it
+to be the effect and pledge of their own importance.
+
+I am no friend to aristocracy, in the sense at least in which that word
+is usually understood. If it were not a bad habit to moot cases on the
+supposed ruin of the constitution, I should be free to declare, that if
+it must perish, I would rather by far see it resolved into any other
+form, than lost in that austere and insolent domination. But, whatever
+my dislikes may be, my fears are not upon that quarter. The question, on
+the influence of a court, and of a peerage, is not, which of the two
+dangers is the more eligible, but which is the more imminent. He is but
+a poor observer, who has not seen, that the generality of peers, far
+from supporting themselves in a state of independent greatness, are but
+too apt to fall into an oblivion of their proper dignity, and to run
+headlong into an abject servitude. Would to God it were true, that the
+fault of our peers were too much spirit. It is worthy of some
+observation that these gentlemen, so jealous of aristocracy, make no
+complaints of the power of those peers (neither few nor inconsiderable)
+who are always in the train of a court, and whose whole weight must be
+considered as a portion of the settled influence of the crown. This is
+all safe and right; but if some peers (I am very sorry they are not as
+many as they ought to be) set themselves, in the great concern of peers
+and commons, against a back-stairs influence and clandestine government,
+then the alarm begins; then the constitution is in danger of being
+forced into an aristocracy.
+
+I rest a little the longer on this court topic, because it was much
+insisted upon at the time of the great change, and has been since
+frequently revived by many of the agents of that party; for, whilst they
+are terrifying the great and opulent with the horrors of mob-government,
+they are by other managers attempting (though hitherto with little
+success) to alarm the people with a phantom of tyranny in the nobles.
+All this is done upon their favorite principle of disunion, of sowing
+jealousies amongst the different orders of the state, and of disjointing
+the natural strength of the kingdom; that it may be rendered incapable
+of resisting the sinister designs of wicked men, who have engrossed the
+royal power.
+
+Thus much of the topics chosen by the courtiers to recommend their
+system; it will be necessary to open a little more at large the nature
+of that party which was formed for its support. Without this, the whole
+would have been no better than a visionary amusement, like the scheme of
+Harrington's political club, and not a business in which the nation had
+a real concern. As a powerful party, and a party constructed on a new
+principle, it is a very inviting object of curiosity.
+
+It must be remembered, that since the revolution, until the period we
+are speaking of, the influence of the crown had been always employed in
+supporting the ministers of state, and in carrying on the public
+business according to their opinions. But the party now in question is
+formed upon a very different idea. It is to intercept the favor,
+protection, and confidence of the crown in the passage to its ministers;
+it is to come between them and their importance in Parliament; it is to
+separate them from all their natural and acquired dependencies; it is
+intended as the control, not the support, of administration. The
+machinery of this system is perplexed in its movements, and false in its
+principle. It is formed on a supposition that the king is something
+external to his government; and that he may be honored and aggrandized,
+even by its debility and disgrace. The plan proceeds expressly on the
+idea of enfeebling the regular executory power. It proceeds on the idea
+of weakening the state in order to strengthen the court. The scheme
+depending entirely on distrust, on disconnection, on mutability by
+principle, on systematic weakness in every particular member; it is
+impossible that the total result should be substantial strength of any
+kind.
+
+As a foundation of their scheme, the cabal have established a sort of
+_rota_ in the court. All sorts of parties, by this means, have been
+brought into administration; from whence few have had the good fortune
+to escape without disgrace; none at all without considerable losses. In
+the beginning of each arrangement no professions of confidence and
+support are wanting, to induce the leading men to engage. But while the
+ministers of the day appear in all the pomp and pride of power, while
+they have all their canvas spread out to the wind, and every sail filled
+with the fair and prosperous gale of royal favor, in a short time they
+find, they know not how, a current, which sets directly against them:
+which prevents all progress; and even drives them backwards. They grow
+ashamed and mortified in a situation, which, by its vicinity to power,
+only serves to remind them the more strongly of their insignificance.
+They are obliged either to execute the orders of their inferiors, or to
+see themselves opposed by the natural instruments of their office. With
+the loss of their dignity they lose their temper. In their turn they
+grow troublesome to that cabal which, whether it supports or opposes,
+equally disgraces and equally betrays them. It is soon found necessary
+to get rid of the heads of administration; but it is of the heads only.
+As there always are many rotten members belonging to the best
+connections, it is not hard to persuade several to continue in office
+without their leaders. By this means the party goes out much thinner
+than it came in; and is only reduced in strength by its temporary
+possession of power. Besides, if by accident, or in course of changes,
+that power should be recovered, the junto have thrown up a retrenchment
+of these carcasses, which may serve to cover themselves in a day of
+danger. They conclude, not unwisely, that such rotten members will
+become the first objects of disgust and resentment to their ancient
+connections.
+
+They contrive to form in the outward administration two parties at the
+least; which, whilst they are tearing one another to pieces, are both
+competitors for the favor and protection of the cabal; and, by their
+emulation, contribute to throw everything more and more into the hands
+of the interior managers.
+
+A minister of state will sometimes keep himself totally estranged from
+all his colleagues; will differ from them in their councils, will
+privately traverse, and publicly oppose, their measures. He will,
+however, continue in his employment. Instead of suffering any mark of
+displeasure, he will be distinguished by an unbounded profusion of court
+rewards and caresses; because he does what is expected, and all that is
+expected, from men in office. He helps to keep some form of
+administration in being, and keeps it at the same time as weak and
+divided as possible.
+
+However, we must take care not to be mistaken, or to imagine that such
+persons have any weight in their opposition. When, by them,
+administration is convinced of its insignificancy, they are soon to be
+convinced of their own. They never are suffered to succeed in their
+opposition. They and the world are to be satisfied, that neither office,
+nor authority, nor property, nor ability, eloquence, counsel, skill, or
+union, are of the least importance; but that the mere influence of the
+court, naked of all support, and destitute of all management, is
+abundantly sufficient for all its own purposes.
+
+When any adverse connection is to be destroyed, the cabal seldom appear
+in the work themselves. They find out some person of whom the party
+entertains a high opinion. Such a person they endeavor to delude with
+various pretences. They teach him first to distrust, and then to quarrel
+with his friends; among whom, by the same arts, they excite a similar
+diffidence of him; so that in this mutual fear and distrust, he may
+suffer himself to be employed as the instrument in the change which is
+brought about. Afterwards they are sure to destroy him in his turn, by
+setting up in his place some person in whom he had himself reposed the
+greatest confidence, and who serves to carry off a considerable part of
+his adherents.
+
+When such a person has broke in this manner with his connections, he is
+soon compelled to commit some flagrant act of iniquitous, personal
+hostility against some of them (such as an attempt to strip a particular
+friend of his family estate), by which the cabal hope to render the
+parties utterly irreconcilable. In truth, they have so contrived
+matters, that people have a greater hatred to the subordinate
+instruments than to the principal movers.
+
+As in destroying their enemies they make use of instruments not
+immediately belonging to their corps, so in advancing their own friends
+they pursue exactly the same method. To promote any of them to
+considerable rank or emolument, they commonly take care that the
+recommendation shall pass through the hands of the ostensible ministry:
+such a recommendation might however appear to the world, as some proof
+of the credit of ministers, and some means of increasing their strength.
+To prevent this, the persons so advanced are directed, in all companies,
+industriously to declare, that they are under no obligations whatsoever
+to administration; that they have received their office from another
+quarter; that they are totally free and independent.
+
+When the faction has any job of lucre to obtain, or of vengeance to
+perpetrate, their way is, to select, for the execution, those very
+persons to whose habits, friendships, principles, and declarations, such
+proceedings are publicly known to be the most adverse; at once to
+render the instruments the more odious, and therefore the more
+dependent, and to prevent the people from ever reposing a confidence in
+any appearance of private friendship or public principle.
+
+If the administration seem now and then, from remissness, or from fear
+of making themselves disagreeable, to suffer any popular excesses to go
+unpunished, the cabal immediately sets up some creature of theirs to
+raise a clamor against the ministers, as having shamefully betrayed the
+dignity of government. Then they compel the ministry to become active in
+conferring rewards and honors on the persons who have been the
+instruments of their disgrace; and, after having first vilified them
+with the higher orders for suffering the laws to sleep over the
+licentiousness of the populace, they drive them (in order to make amends
+for their former inactivity) to some act of atrocious violence, which
+renders them completely abhorred by the people. They, who remember the
+riots which attended the Middlesex election, the opening of the present
+Parliament, and the transactions relative to Saint George's Fields, will
+not be at a loss for an application of these remarks.
+
+That this body may be enabled to compass all the ends of its
+institution, its members are scarcely ever to aim at the high and
+responsible offices of the state. They are distributed with art and
+judgment through all the secondary, but efficient, departments of
+office, and through the households of all the branches of the royal
+family: so as on one hand to occupy all the avenues to the throne; and
+on the other to forward or frustrate the execution of any measure,
+according to their own interests. For with the credit and support which
+they are known to have, though for the greater part in places which are
+only a genteel excuse for salary, they possess all the influence of the
+highest posts; and they dictate publicly in almost everything, even with
+a parade of superiority. Whenever they dissent (as it often happens)
+from their nominal leaders, the trained part of the senate,
+instinctively in the secret, is sure to follow them: provided the
+leaders, sensible of their situation, do not of themselves recede in
+time from their most declared opinions. This latter is generally the
+case. It will not be conceivable to any one who has not seen it, what
+pleasure is taken by the cabal in rendering these heads of office
+thoroughly contemptible and ridiculous. And when they are become so,
+they have then the best chance for being well supported.
+
+The members of the court faction are fully indemnified for not holding
+places on the slippery heights of the kingdom, not only by the lead in
+all affairs, but also by the perfect security in which they enjoy less
+conspicuous, but very advantageous situations. Their places are in
+express legal tenure, or, in effect, all of them for life. Whilst the
+first and most respectable persons in the kingdom are tossed about like
+tennis-balls, the sport of a blind and insolent caprice, no minister
+dares even to cast an oblique glance at the lowest of their body. If an
+attempt be made upon one of this corps, immediately he flies to
+sanctuary, and pretends to the most inviolable of all promises. No
+conveniency of public arrangement is available to remove any one of them
+from the specific situation he holds; and the slightest attempt upon one
+of them, by the most powerful minister, is a certain preliminary to his
+own destruction.
+
+Conscious of their independence, they bear themselves with a lofty air
+to the exterior ministers. Like janissaries, they derive a kind of
+freedom from the very condition of their servitude. They may act just as
+they please; provided they are true to the great ruling principle of
+their institution. It is, therefore, not at all wonderful, that people
+should be so desirous of adding themselves to that body, in which they
+may possess and reconcile satisfactions the most alluring, and seemingly
+the most contradictory; enjoying at once all the spirited pleasure of
+independence, and all the gross lucre and fat emoluments of servitude.
+
+Here is a sketch, though a slight one, of the constitution, laws, and
+policy of this new court corporation. The name by which they choose to
+distinguish themselves, is that of _king's men_ or the _king's friends_,
+by an invidious exclusion of the rest of his Majesty's most loyal and
+affectionate subjects. The whole system, comprehending the exterior and
+interior administrations, is commonly called, in the technical language
+of the court, _double cabinet_; in French or English, as you choose to
+pronounce it.
+
+Whether all this be a vision of a distracted brain, or the invention of
+a malicious heart, or a real faction in the country, must be judged by
+the appearances which things have worn for eight years past. Thus far I
+am certain, that there is not a single public man, in or out of office,
+who has not, at some time or other, borne testimony to the truth of what
+I have now related. In particular, no persons have been more strong in
+their assertions, and louder and more indecent in their complaints, than
+those who compose all the exterior part of the present administration;
+in whose time that faction has arrived at such an height of power, and
+of boldness in the use of it, as may, in the end, perhaps bring about
+its total destruction.
+
+It is true, that about four years ago, during the administration of the
+Marquis of Rockingham, an attempt was made to carry on government
+without their concurrence. However, this was only a transient cloud;
+they were hid but for a moment; and their constellation blazed out with
+greater brightness, and a far more vigorous influence, some time after
+it was blown over. An attempt was at that time made (but without any
+idea of proscription) to break their corps, to discountenance their
+doctrines, to revive connections of a different kind, to restore the
+principles and policy of the Whigs, to reanimate the cause of liberty by
+ministerial countenance; and then for the first time were men seen
+attached in office to every principle they had maintained in opposition.
+No one will doubt, that such men were abhorred and violently opposed by
+the court faction, and that such a system could have but a short
+duration.
+
+It may appear somewhat affected, that in so much discourse upon this
+extraordinary party, I should say so little of the Earl of Bute, who is
+the supposed head of it. But this was neither owing to affectation nor
+inadvertence. I have carefully avoided the introduction of personal
+reflections of any kind. Much the greater part of the topics which have
+been used to blacken this nobleman are either unjust or frivolous. At
+best, they have a tendency to give the resentment of this bitter
+calamity a wrong direction, and to turn a public grievance into a mean,
+personal, or a dangerous national quarrel. Where there is a regular
+scheme of operations carried on, it is the system, and not any
+individual person who acts in it, that is truly dangerous. This system
+has not arisen solely from the ambition of Lord Bute, but from the
+circumstances which favored it, and from an indifference to the
+constitution which had been for some time growing among our gentry. We
+should have been tried with it, if the Earl of Bute had never existed;
+and it will want neither a contriving head nor active members, when the
+Earl of Bute exists no longer. It is not, therefore, to rail at Lord
+Bute, but firmly to embody against this court party and its practices,
+which can afford us any prospect of relief in our present condition.
+
+Another motive induces me to put the personal consideration of Lord Bute
+wholly out of the question. He communicates very little in a direct
+manner with the greater part of our men of business. This has never been
+his custom. It is enough for him that he surrounds them with his
+creatures. Several imagine, therefore, that they have a very good excuse
+for doing all the work of this faction, when they have no personal
+connection with Lord Bute. But whoever becomes a party to an
+administration, composed of insulated individuals, without faith
+plighted, tie, or common principle; an administration constitutionally
+impotent, because supported by no party in the nation; he who
+contributes to destroy the connections of men and their trust in one
+another, or in any sort to throw the dependence of public counsels upon
+private will and favor, possibly may have nothing to do with the Earl of
+Bute. It matters little whether he be the friend or the enemy of that
+particular person. But let him be who or what he will, he abets a
+faction that is driving hard to the ruin of his country. He is sapping
+the foundation of its liberty, disturbing the sources of its domestic
+tranquillity, weakening its government over its dependencies, degrading
+it from all its importance in the system of Europe.
+
+It is this unnatural infusion of a _system of favoritism_ into a
+government which in a great part of its constitution is popular, that
+has raised the present ferment in the nation. The people, without
+entering deeply into its principles, could plainly perceive its effects,
+in much violence, in a great spirit of innovation, and a general
+disorder in all the functions of government. I keep my eye solely on
+this system; if I speak of those measures which have arisen from it, it
+will be so far only as they illustrate the general scheme. This is the
+fountain of all those bitter waters of which, through an hundred
+different conduits, we have drunk until we are ready to burst. The
+discretionary power of the crown in the formation of ministry, abused by
+bad or weak men, has given rise to a system, which, without directly
+violating the letter of any law, operates against the spirit of the
+whole constitution.
+
+A plan of favoritism for our executory government is essentially at
+variance with the plan of our legislature. One great end undoubtedly of
+a mixed government like ours, composed of monarchy, and of controls, on
+the part of the higher people and the lower, is that the prince shall
+not be able to violate the laws. This is useful indeed and fundamental.
+But this, even at first view, is no more than a negative advantage; an
+armor merely defensive. It is therefore next in order, and equal in
+importance, _that the discretionary powers which are necessarily vested
+in the monarch, whether for the execution of the laws, or for the
+nomination to magistracy and office, or for conducting the affairs of
+peace and war, or for ordering the revenue, should all be exercised upon
+public principles and national grounds, and, not on the likings or
+prejudices, the intrigues or policies, of a court_. This, I said, is
+equal in importance to the securing a government according to law. The
+laws reach but a very little way. Constitute government how you please,
+infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the
+powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of
+ministers of state. Even all the use and potency of the laws depends
+upon them. Without them, your commonwealth is no better than a scheme
+upon paper; and not a living, active, effective constitution. It is
+possible that through negligence, or ignorance, or design artfully
+conducted, ministers may suffer one part of government to languish,
+another to be perverted from its purposes, and every valuable interest
+of the country to fall into ruin and decay, without possibility of
+fixing any single act on which a criminal prosecution can be justly
+grounded. The due arrangement of men in the active part of the state,
+far from being foreign to the purposes of a wise government, ought to be
+among its very first and dearest objects. When, therefore, the abettors
+of the new system tell us, that between them and their opposers there is
+nothing but a struggle for power, and that therefore we are no ways
+concerned in it; we must tell those who have the impudence to insult us
+in this manner, that, of all things, we ought to be the most concerned
+who, and what sort of men they are that hold the trust of everything
+that is dear to us. Nothing can render this a point of indifference to
+the nation, but what must either render us totally desperate, or soothe
+us into the security of idiots. We must soften into a credulity below
+the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted
+with a malignity truly diabolical to believe all the world to be equally
+wicked and corrupt. Men are in public life as in private, some good,
+some evil. The elevation of the one, and the depression of the other,
+are the first objects of all true policy. But that form of government,
+which, neither in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate
+tendency, has contrived to throw its affairs into the most trustworthy
+hands, but has left its whole executory system to be disposed of
+agreeably to the uncontrolled pleasure of any one man, however excellent
+or virtuous, is a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but
+consequentially erroneous in every part of it.
+
+In arbitrary governments, the constitution of the ministry follows the
+constitution of the legislature. Both the law and the magistrate are the
+creatures of will. It must be so. Nothing, indeed, will appear more
+certain, on any tolerable consideration of this matter, than that _every
+sort of government ought to have its administration correspondent to its
+legislature_. If it should be otherwise, things must fall into an
+hideous disorder. The people of a free commonwealth, who have taken such
+care that their laws should be the result of general consent, cannot be
+so senseless as to suffer their executory system to be composed of
+persons on whom they have no dependence, and whom no proofs of the
+public love and confidence have recommended to those powers, upon the
+use of which the very being of the state depends.
+
+The popular election of magistrates, and popular disposition of rewards
+and honors, is one of the first advantages of a free state. Without it,
+or something equivalent to it, perhaps the people cannot long enjoy the
+substance of freedom; certainly none of the vivifying energy of good
+government. The frame of our commonwealth did not admit of such an
+actual election: but it provided as well, and (while the spirit of the
+constitution is preserved) better for all the effects of it than by the
+method of suffrage in any democratic state whatsoever. It had always,
+until of late, been held the first duty of Parliament _to refuse to
+support government, until power was in the hands of persons who were
+acceptable to the people, or while factions predominated in the court in
+which the nation had no confidence_. Thus all the good effects of
+popular election were supposed to be secured to us, without the
+mischiefs attending on perpetual intrigue, and a distinct canvass for
+every particular office throughout the body of the people. This was the
+most noble and refined part of our constitution. The people, by their
+representatives and grandees, were intrusted with a deliberative power
+in making laws; the king with the control of his negative. The king was
+intrusted with the deliberative choice and the election to office; the
+people had the negative in a Parliamentary refusal to support. Formerly
+this power of control was what kept ministers in awe of Parliaments, and
+Parliaments in reverence with the people. If the use of this power of
+control on the system and persons of administration is gone, everything
+is lost, Parliament and all. We may assure ourselves, that if Parliament
+will tamely see evil men take possession of all the strongholds of their
+country, and allow them time and means to fortify themselves, under a
+pretence of giving them a fair trial, and upon a hope of discovering,
+whether they will not be reformed by power, and whether their measures
+will not be better than their morals; such a Parliament will give
+countenance to their measures also, whatever that Parliament may
+pretend, and whatever those measures may be.
+
+Every good political institution must have a preventive operation as
+well as a remedial. It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude bad
+men from government, and not to trust for the safety of the state to
+subsequent punishment alone; punishment, which has ever been tardy and
+uncertain; and which, when power is suffered in bad hands, may chance to
+fall rather on the injured than the criminal.
+
+Before men are put forward into the great trusts of the state, they
+ought by their conduct to have obtained such a degree of estimation in
+their country, as may be some sort of pledge and security to the public,
+that they will not abuse those trusts. It is no mean security for a
+proper use of power, that a man has shown by the general tenor of his
+actions, that the affection, the good opinion, the confidence of his
+fellow-citizens have been among the principal objects of his life; and
+that he has owed none of the gradations of his power or fortune to a
+settled contempt, or occasional forfeiture of their esteem.
+
+That man who before he comes into power has no friends, or who coming
+into power is obliged to desert his friends, or who losing it has no
+friends to sympathize with him; he who has no sway among any part of the
+landed or commercial interest, but whose whole importance has begun with
+his office, and is sure to end with it, is a person who ought never to
+be suffered by a controlling Parliament to continue in any of those
+situations which confer the lead and direction of all our public
+affairs; because such a man _has no connection with the interest of the
+people_.
+
+Those knots or cabals of men who have got together, avowedly without any
+public principle, in order to sell their conjunct iniquity at the higher
+rate, and are therefore universally odious, ought never to be suffered
+to domineer in the state; because they have _no connection with the
+sentiments and opinions of the people_.
+
+These are considerations which in my opinion enforce the necessity of
+having some better reason, in a free country, and a free Parliament, for
+supporting the ministers of the crown, than that short one, _That the
+king has thought proper to appoint them_. There is something very
+courtly in this. But it is a principle pregnant with all sorts of
+mischief, in a constitution like ours, to turn the views of active men
+from the country to the court. Whatever be the road to power, that is
+the road which will be trod. If the opinion of the country be of no use
+as a means of power or consideration, the qualities which usually
+procure that opinion will be no longer cultivated. And whether it will
+be right, in a state so popular in its constitution as ours, to leave
+ambition without popular motives, and to trust all to the operation of
+pure virtue in the minds of kings, and ministers, and public men, must
+be submitted to the judgment and good sense of the people of England.
+
+Cunning men are here apt to break in, and, without directly
+controverting the principle, to raise objections from the difficulty
+under which the sovereign labors, to distinguish the genuine voice and
+sentiments of his people, from the clamor of a faction, by which it is
+so easily counterfeited. The nation, they say, is generally divided into
+parties, with views and passions utterly irreconcilable. If the king
+should put his affairs into the hands of any one of them, he is sure to
+disgust the rest; if he select particular men from among them all, it is
+a hazard that he disgusts them all. Those who are left out, however
+divided before, will soon run into a body of opposition; which, being a
+collection of many discontents into one focus, will without doubt be hot
+and violent enough. Faction will make its cries resound through the
+nation, as if the whole were in an uproar, when by far the majority, and
+much the better part, will seem for a while as it were annihilated by
+the quiet in which their virtue and moderation incline them to enjoy the
+blessings of government. Besides that the opinion of the mere vulgar is
+a miserable rule even with regard to themselves, on account of their
+violence and instability. So that if you were to gratify them in their
+humor to-day, that very gratification would be a ground of their
+dissatisfaction on the next. Now as all these rules of public opinion
+are to be collected with great difficulty, and to be applied with equal
+uncertainty as to the effect, what better can a king of England do, than
+to employ such men as he finds to have views and inclinations most
+conformable to his own; who are least infected with pride and self-will;
+and who are least moved by such popular humors as are perpetually
+traversing his designs, and disturbing his service; trusting that, when
+he means no ill to his people, he will be supported in his appointments,
+whether he chooses to keep or to change, as his private judgment or his
+pleasure leads him? He will find a sure resource in the real weight and
+influence of the crown, when it is not suffered to become an instrument
+in the hands of a faction.
+
+I will not pretend to say, that there is nothing at all in this mode of
+reasoning; because I will not assert that there is no difficulty in the
+art of government. Undoubtedly the very best administration must
+encounter a great deal of opposition; and the very worst will find more
+support than it deserves. Sufficient appearances will never be wanting
+to those who have a mind to deceive themselves. It is a fallacy in
+constant use with those who would level all things, and confound right
+with wrong, to insist upon the inconveniences which are attached to
+every choice, without taking into consideration the different weight and
+consequence of those inconveniences. The question is not concerning
+_absolute_ discontent or _perfect_ satisfaction in government; neither
+of which can be pure and unmixed at any time, or upon any system. The
+controversy is about that degree of good humor in the people, which may
+possibly be attained, and ought certainly to be looked for. While some
+politicians may be waiting to know whether the sense of every individual
+be against them, accurately distinguishing the vulgar from the better
+sort, drawing lines between the enterprises of a faction and the efforts
+of a people, they may chance to see the government, which they are so
+nicely weighing, and dividing, and distinguishing, tumble to the ground
+in the midst of their wise deliberation. Prudent men, when so great an
+object as the security of government, or even its peace, is at stake,
+will not run the risk of a decision which may be fatal to it. They who
+can read the political sky will see a hurricane in a cloud no bigger
+than a hand at the very edge of the horizon, and will run into the first
+harbor. No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. They
+are a matter incapable of exact definition. But, though no man can draw
+a stroke between the confines of day and night, yet light and darkness
+are upon the whole tolerably distinguishable. Nor will it be impossible
+for a prince to find out such a mode of government, and such persons to
+administer it, as will give a great degree of content to his people;
+without any curious and anxious research for that abstract, universal,
+perfect harmony, which while he is seeking, he abandons those means of
+ordinary tranquillity which are in his power without any research at
+all.
+
+It is not more the duty than it is the interest of a prince, to aim at
+giving tranquillity to his government. But those who advise him may have
+an interest in disorder and confusion. If the opinion of the people is
+against them, they will naturally wish that it should have no
+prevalence. Here it is that the people must on their part show
+themselves sensible of their own value. Their whole importance, in the
+first instance, and afterwards their whole freedom, is at stake. Their
+freedom cannot long survive their importance. Here it is that the
+natural strength of the kingdom, the great peers, the leading landed
+gentlemen, the opulent merchants and manufacturers, the substantial
+yeomanry, must interpose, to rescue their prince, themselves, and their
+posterity.
+
+We are at present at issue upon this point. We are in the great crisis
+of this contention; and the part which men take, one way or other, will
+serve to discriminate their characters and their principles. Until the
+matter is decided, the country will remain in its present confusion. For
+while a system of administration is attempted, entirely repugnant to the
+genius of the people, and not conformable to the plan of their
+government, everything must necessarily be disordered for a time, until
+this system destroys the constitution, or the constitution gets the
+better of this system.
+
+There is, in my opinion, a peculiar venom and malignity in this
+political distemper beyond any that I have heard or read of. In former
+times the projectors of arbitrary government attacked only the liberties
+of their country; a design surely mischievous enough to have satisfied a
+mind of the most unruly ambition. But a system unfavorable to freedom
+may be so formed, as considerably to exalt the grandeur of the state;
+and men may find, in the pride and splendor of that prosperity, some
+sort of consolation for the loss of their solid privileges. Indeed the
+increase of the power of the state has often been urged by artful men,
+as a pretext for some abridgment of the public liberty. But the scheme
+of the junto under consideration, not only strikes a palsy into every
+nerve of our free constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and
+stupefies the whole executive power: rendering government in all its
+grand operations languid, uncertain, ineffective; making ministers
+fearful of attempting, and incapable of executing any useful plan of
+domestic arrangement, or of foreign politics. It tends to produce
+neither the security of a free government, nor the energy of a monarchy
+that is absolute. Accordingly the crown has dwindled away, in proportion
+to the unnatural and turgid growth of this excrescence on the court.
+
+The interior ministry are sensible, that war is a situation which sets
+in its full light the value of the hearts of a people; and they well
+know, that the beginning of the importance of the people must be the end
+of theirs. For this reason they discover upon all occasions the utmost
+fear of everything, which by possibility may lead to such an event. I do
+not mean that they manifest any of that pious fear which is backward to
+commit the safety of the country to the dubious experiment of war. Such
+a fear, being the tender sensation of virtue, excited, as it is
+regulated, by reason, frequently shows itself in a seasonable boldness,
+which keeps danger at a distance, by seeming to despise it. Their fear
+betrays to the first glance of the eye, its true cause, and its real
+object. Foreign powers, confident in the knowledge of their character,
+have not scrupled to violate the most solemn treaties; and, in defiance
+of them, to make conquests in the midst of a general peace, and in the
+heart of Europe. Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professed
+enemies of the freedom of mankind, in defiance of those who were
+formerly its professed defenders. We have had just claims upon the same
+powers: rights which ought to have been sacred to them as well as to us,
+as they had their origin in our lenity and generosity towards France and
+Spain in the day of their great humiliation. Such I call the ransom of
+Manilla, and the demand on France for the East India prisoners. But
+these powers put a just confidence in their resource of the _double
+cabinet_. These demands (one of them at least) are hastening fast
+towards an acquittal by prescription. Oblivion begins to spread her
+cobwebs over all our spirited remonstrances. Some of the most valuable
+branches of our trade are also on the point of perishing from the same
+cause. I do not mean those branches which bear without the hand of the
+vine-dresser; I mean those which the policy of treaties had formerly
+secured to us; I mean to mark and distinguish the trade of Portugal, the
+loss of which, and the power of the cabal, have one and the same era.
+
+If by any chance, the ministers who stand before the curtain possess or
+affect any spirit, it makes little or no impression. Foreign courts and
+ministers, who were among the first to discover and to profit by this
+invention of the _double cabinet_, attend very little to their
+remonstrances. They know that those shadows of ministers have nothing to
+do in the ultimate disposal of things. Jealousies and animosities are
+sedulously nourished in the outward administration, and have been even
+considered as a _causa sine qua non_ in its constitution: thence foreign
+courts have a certainty, that nothing can be done by common counsel in
+this nation. If one of those ministers officially takes up a business
+with spirit, it serves only the better to signalize the meanness of the
+rest, and the discord of them all. His colleagues in office are in haste
+to shake him off, and to disclaim the whole of his proceedings. Of this
+nature was that astonishing transaction, in which Lord Rochford, our
+ambassador at Paris, remonstrated against the attempt upon Corsica, in
+consequence of a direct authority from Lord Shelburne. This remonstrance
+the French minister treated with the contempt that was natural: as he
+was assured, from the ambassador of his court to ours, that these orders
+of Lord Shelburne were not supported by the rest of the (I had like to
+have said British) administration. Lord Rochford, a man of spirit,
+could not endure this situation. The consequences were, however,
+curious. He returns from Paris, and comes home full of anger. Lord
+Shelburne, who gave the orders, is obliged to give up the seals. Lord
+Rochford, who obeyed these orders, receives them. He goes, however, into
+another department of the same office, that he might not be obliged
+officially to acquiesce, in one situation, under what he had officially
+remonstrated against, in another. At Paris, the Duke of Choiseul
+considered this office arrangement as a compliment to him: here it was
+spoken of as an attention to the delicacy of Lord Rochford. But whether
+the compliment was to one or both, to this nation it was the same. By
+this transaction the condition of our court lay exposed in all its
+nakedness. Our office correspondence has lost all pretence to
+authenticity: British policy is brought into derision in those nations,
+that a while ago trembled at the power of our arms, whilst they looked
+up with confidence to the equity, firmness, and candor, which shone in
+all our negotiations. I represent this matter exactly in the light in
+which it has been universally received.
+
+Such has been the aspect of our foreign politics, under the influence of
+a _double cabinet_. With such an arrangement at court, it is impossible
+it should have been otherwise. Nor is it possible that this scheme
+should have a better effect upon the government of our dependencies, the
+first, the dearest, and most delicate objects, of the interior policy of
+this empire. The colonies know, that administration is separated from
+the court, divided within itself, and detested by the nation. The
+_double cabinet_ has, in both the parts of it, shown the most malignant
+dispositions towards them, without being able to do them the smallest
+mischief.
+
+They are convinced, by sufficient experience, that no plan, either of
+lenity, or rigor, can be pursued with uniformity and perseverance.
+Therefore they turn their eyes entirely from Great Britain, where they
+have neither dependence on friendship, nor apprehension from enmity.
+They look to themselves, and their own arrangements. They grow every day
+into alienation from this country; and whilst they are becoming
+disconnected with our government, we have not the consolation to find,
+that they are even friendly in their new independence. Nothing can equal
+the futility, the weakness, the rashness, the timidity, the perpetual
+contradiction in the management of our affairs in that part of the
+world. A volume might be written on this melancholy subject; but it were
+better to leave it entirely to the reflections of the reader himself,
+than not to treat it in the extent it deserves.
+
+In what manner our domestic economy is affected by this system, it is
+needless to explain. It is the perpetual subject of their own
+complaints.
+
+The court party resolve the whole into faction Having said something
+before upon this subject, I shall only observe here, that, when they
+give this account of the prevalence of faction, they present no very
+favorable aspect of the confidence of the people in their own
+government. They may be assured, that however they amuse themselves with
+a variety of projects for substituting something else in the place of
+that great and only foundation of government, the confidence of the
+people, every attempt will but make their condition worse. When men
+imagine that their food is only a cover for poison, and when they
+neither love nor trust the hand that serves it, it is not the name of
+the roast beef of Old England, that will persuade them to sit down to
+the table that is spread for them. When the people conceive that laws,
+and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends
+of their institution, they find in those names of degenerated
+establishments only new motives to discontent. Those bodies, which, when
+full of life and beauty, lay in their arms, and were their joy and
+comfort, when dead and putrid, become but the more loathsome from
+remembrance of former endearments. A sullen gloom and furious disorder
+prevail by fits; the nation loses its relish for peace and prosperity;
+as it did in that season of fulness which opened our troubles in the
+time of Charles the First. A species of men to whom a state of order
+would become a sentence of obscurity are nourished into a dangerous
+magnitude by the heat of intestine disturbances; and it is no wonder
+that, by a sort of sinister piety, they cherish, in their turn, the
+disorders which are the parents of all their consequence. Superficial
+observers consider such persons as the cause of the public uneasiness,
+when, in truth, they are nothing more than the effect of it. Good men
+look upon this distracted scene with sorrow and indignation. Their hands
+are tied behind them. They are despoiled of all the power which might
+enable them to reconcile the strength of government with the rights of
+the people. They stand in a most distressing alternative. But in the
+election among evils they hope better things from temporary confusion,
+than from established servitude. In the mean time, the voice of law is
+not to be heard. Fierce licentiousness begets violent restraints. The
+military arm is the sole reliance; and then, call your constitution what
+you please, it is the sword that governs. The civil power, like every
+other that calls in the aid of an ally stronger than itself, perishes by
+the assistance it receives. But the contrivers of this scheme of
+government will not trust solely to the military power; because they are
+cunning men. Their restless and crooked spirit drives them to rake in
+the dirt of every kind of expedient. Unable to rule the multitude, they
+endeavor to raise divisions amongst them. One mob is hired to destroy
+another; a procedure which at once encourages the boldness of the
+populace, and justly increases their discontent. Men become pensioners
+of state on account of their abilities in the array of riot, and the
+discipline of confusion. Government is put under the disgraceful
+necessity of protecting from the severity of the laws that very
+licentiousness, which the laws had been before violated to repress.
+Everything partakes of the original disorder. Anarchy predominates
+without freedom, and servitude without submission or subordination.
+These are the consequences inevitable to our public peace, from the
+scheme of rendering the executory government at once odious and feeble;
+of freeing administration from the constitutional and salutary control
+of Parliament, and inventing for it a _new control_, unknown to the
+constitution, an _interior cabinet_; which brings the whole body of
+government into confusion and contempt.
+
+After having stated, as shortly as I am able, the effects of this system
+on our foreign affairs, on the policy of our government with regard to
+our dependencies, and on the interior economy of the commonwealth;
+there remains only, in this part of my design, to say something of the
+grand principle which first recommended this system at court. The
+pretence was, to prevent the king from being enslaved by a faction, and
+made a prisoner in his closet. This scheme might have been expected to
+answer at least its own end, and to indemnify the king, in his personal
+capacity, for all the confusion into which it has thrown his government.
+But has it in reality answered this purpose? I am sure, if it had, every
+affectionate subject would have one motive for enduring with patience
+all the evils which attend it.
+
+In order to come at the truth in this matter, it may not be amiss to
+consider it somewhat in detail. I speak here of the king, and not of the
+crown; the interests of which we have already touched. Independent of
+that greatness which a king possesses merely by being a representative
+of the national dignity, the things in which he may have an individual
+interest seem to be these:--wealth accumulated; wealth spent in
+magnificence, pleasure, or beneficence; personal respect and attention;
+and, above all, private ease and repose of mind. These compose the
+inventory of prosperous circumstances, whether they regard a prince or a
+subject; their enjoyments differing only in the scale upon which they
+are formed.
+
+Suppose then we were to ask, whether the king has been richer than his
+predecessors in accumulated wealth, since the establishment of the plan
+of favoritism? I believe it will be found that the picture of royal
+indigence, which our court has presented until this year, has been truly
+humiliating. Nor has it been relieved from this unseemly distress, but
+by means which have hazarded the affection of the people, and shaken
+their confidence in Parliament. If the public treasures had been
+exhausted in magnificence and splendor, this distress would have been
+accounted for, and in some measure justified. Nothing would be more
+unworthy of this nation, than with a mean and mechanical rule, to mete
+out the splendor of the crown. Indeed I have found very few persons
+disposed to so ungenerous a procedure. But the generality of people, it
+must be confessed, do feel a good deal mortified, when they compare the
+wants of the court with its expenses. They do not behold the cause of
+this distress in any part of the apparatus of royal magnificence. In all
+this, they see nothing but the operations of parsimony, attended with
+all the consequences of profusion. Nothing expended, nothing saved.
+Their wonder is increased by their knowledge, that besides the revenue
+settled on his Majesty's civil list to the amount of 800,000_l._ a year,
+he has a farther aid from a large pension list, near 90,000_l._ a year,
+in Ireland; from the produce of the duchy of Lancaster (which we are
+told has been greatly improved); from the revenue of the duchy of
+Cornwall; from the American quit-rents; from the four and a half per
+cent duty in the Leeward Islands; this last worth to be sure
+considerably more than 40,000_l._ a year. The whole is certainly not
+much short of a million annually.
+
+These are revenues within the knowledge and cognizance of our national
+councils. We have no direct right to examine into the receipts from his
+Majesty's German dominions, and the bishopric of Osnaburg. This is
+unquestionably true. But that which is not within the province of
+Parliament, is yet within the sphere of every man's own reflection. If
+a foreign prince resided amongst us, the state of his revenues could not
+fail of becoming the subject of our speculation. Filled with an anxious
+concern for whatever regards the welfare of our sovereign, it is
+impossible, in considering the miserable circumstances into which he has
+been brought, that this obvious topic should be entirely passed over.
+There is an opinion universal, that these revenues produce something not
+inconsiderable, clear of all charges and establishments. This produce
+the people do not believe to be hoarded, nor perceive to be spent. It is
+accounted for in the only manner it can, by supposing that it is drawn
+away, for the support of that court faction, which, whilst it distresses
+the nation, impoverishes the prince in every one of his resources. I
+once more caution the reader, that I do not urge this consideration
+concerning the foreign revenue, as if I supposed we had a direct right
+to examine into the expenditure of any part of it; but solely for the
+purpose of showing how little this system of favoritism has been
+advantageous to the monarch himself; which, without magnificence, has
+sunk him into a state of unnatural poverty; at the same time that he
+possessed every means of affluence, from ample revenues, both in this
+country, and in other parts of his dominions.
+
+Has this system provided better for the treatment becoming his high and
+sacred character, and secured the king from those disgusts attached to
+the necessity of employing men who are not personally agreeable? This is
+a topic upon which for many reasons I could wish to be silent; but the
+pretence of securing against such causes of uneasiness, is the
+corner-stone of the court-party. It has however so happened, that if I
+were to fix upon any one point, in which this system has been more
+particularly and shamefully blamable, the effects which it has produced
+would justify me in choosing for that point its tendency to degrade the
+personal dignity of the sovereign, and to expose him to a thousand
+contradictions and mortifications. It is but too evident in what manner
+these projectors of royal greatness have fulfilled all their magnificent
+promises. Without recapitulating all the circumstances of the reign,
+every one of which is, more or less, a melancholy proof of the truth of
+what I have advanced, let us consider the language of the court but a
+few years ago, concerning most of the persons now in the external
+administration: let me ask, whether any enemy to the personal feelings
+of the sovereign could possibly contrive a keener instrument of
+mortification, and degradation of all dignity, than almost every part
+and member of the present arrangement? Nor, in the whole course of our
+history, has any compliance with the will of the people ever been known
+to extort from any prince a greater contradiction to all his own
+declared affections and dislikes, than that which is now adopted, in
+direct opposition to everything the people approve and desire.
+
+An opinion prevails, that greatness has been more than once advised to
+submit to certain condescensions towards individuals, which have been
+denied to the entreaties of a nation. For the meanest and most dependent
+instrument of this system knows, that there are hours when its existence
+may depend upon his adherence to it; and he takes his advantage
+accordingly. Indeed it is a law of nature, that whoever is necessary to
+what we have made our object is sure, in some way, or in some time or
+other, to become our master. All this however is submitted to, in order
+to avoid that monstrous evil of governing in concurrence with the
+opinion of the people. For it seems to be laid down as a maxim, that a
+king has some sort of interest in giving uneasiness to his subjects:
+that all who are pleasing to them, are to be of course disagreeable to
+him: that as soon as the persons who are odious at court are known to be
+odious to the people, it is snatched at as a lucky occasion of showering
+down upon them all kinds of emoluments and honors. None are considered
+as well-wishers to the crown, but those who advise to some unpopular
+course of action; none capable of serving it, but those who are obliged
+to call at every instant upon all its power for the safety of their
+lives. None are supposed to be fit priests in the temple of government,
+but the persons who are compelled to fly into it for sanctuary. Such is
+the effect of this refined project; such is ever the result of all the
+contrivances, which are used to free men from the servitude of their
+reason, and from the necessity of ordering their affairs according to
+their evident interests. These contrivances oblige them to run into a
+real and ruinous servitude, in order to avoid a supposed restraint, that
+might be attended with advantage.
+
+If therefore this system has so ill answered its own grand pretence of
+saving the king from the necessity of employing persons disagreeable to
+him, has it given more peace and tranquillity to his Majesty's private
+hours? No, most certainly. The father of his people cannot possibly
+enjoy repose, while his family is in such a state of distraction. Then
+what has the crown or the king profited by all this fine-wrought scheme?
+Is he more rich, or more splendid, or more powerful, or more at his
+ease, by so many labors and contrivances? Have they not beggared his
+exchequer, tarnished the splendor of his court, sunk his dignity, galled
+his feelings, discomposed the whole order and happiness of his private
+life?
+
+It will be very hard, I believe, to state in what respect the king has
+profited by that faction which presumptuously choose to call themselves
+_his friends_.
+
+If particular men had grown into an attachment, by the distinguished
+honor of the society of their sovereign; and, by being the partakers of
+his amusements, came sometimes to prefer the gratification of his
+personal inclinations to the support of his high character, the thing
+would be very natural, and it would be excusable enough. But the
+pleasant part of the story is, that these _king's friends_ have no more
+ground for usurping such a title, than a resident freeholder in
+Cumberland or in Cornwall. They are only known to their sovereign by
+kissing his hand, for the offices, pensions, and grants, into which they
+have deceived his benignity. May no storm ever come, which will put the
+firmness of their attachment to the proof; and which, in the midst of
+confusions, and terrors, and sufferings, may demonstrate the eternal
+difference between a true and severe friend to the monarchy, and a
+slippery sycophant of the court! _Quantum infido scurræ distabit
+amicus._
+
+So far I have considered the effect of the court system, chiefly as it
+operates upon the executive government, on the temper of the people, and
+on the happiness of the sovereign. It remains that we should consider,
+with a little attention, its operation upon Parliament.
+
+Parliament was indeed the great object of all these politics, the end
+at which they aimed, as well as the instrument by which they were to
+operate. But, before Parliament could be made subservient to a system,
+by which it was to be degraded from the dignity of a national council
+into a mere member of the court, it must be greatly changed from its
+original character.
+
+In speaking of this body, I have my eye chiefly on the House of Commons.
+I hope I shall be indulged in a few observations on the nature and
+character of that assembly; not with regard to its _legal form and
+power_, but to its _spirit_, and to the purposes it is meant to answer
+in the constitution.
+
+The House of Commons was supposed originally to be _no part of the
+standing government of this country_. It was considered as a _control_
+issuing _immediately_ from the people, and speedily to be resolved into
+the mass from whence it arose. In this respect it was in the higher part
+of government what juries are in the lower. The capacity of a magistrate
+being transitory, and that of a citizen permanent, the latter capacity
+it was hoped would of course preponderate in all discussions, not only
+between the people and the standing authority of the crown, but between
+the people and the fleeting authority of the House of Commons itself. It
+was hoped that, being of a middle nature between subject and government,
+they would feel with a more tender and a nearer interest everything that
+concerned the people, than the other remoter and more permanent parts of
+legislature.
+
+Whatever alterations time and the necessary accommodation of business
+may have introduced, this character can never be sustained, unless the
+House of Commons shall be made to bear some stamp of the actual
+disposition of the people at large. It would (among public misfortunes)
+be an evil more natural and tolerable, that the House of Commons should
+be infected with every epidemical frenzy of the people, as this would
+indicate some consanguinity, some sympathy of nature with their
+constituents, than that they should in all cases be wholly untouched by
+the opinions and feelings of the people out of doors. By this want of
+sympathy they would cease to be a House of Commons. For it is not the
+derivation of the power of that House from the people, which makes it in
+a distinct sense their representative. The king is the representative of
+the people; so are the lords; so are the judges. They all are trustees
+for the people, as well as the commons; because no power is given for
+the sole sake of the holder; and although government certainly is an
+institution of divine authority, yet its forms, and the persons who
+administer it, all originate from the people.
+
+A popular origin cannot therefore be the characteristical distinction of
+a popular representative. This belongs equally to all parts of
+government and in all forms. The virtue, spirit, and essence of a House
+of Commons consists in its being the express image of the feelings of
+the nation. It was not instituted to be a control _upon_ the people, as
+of late it has been taught, by a doctrine of the most pernicious
+tendency. It was designed as a control _for_ the people. Other
+institutions have been formed for the purpose of checking popular
+excesses; and they are, I apprehend, fully adequate to their object. If
+not, they ought to be made so. The House of Commons, as it was never
+intended for the support of peace and subordination, is miserably
+appointed for that service; having no stronger weapon than its mace,
+and no better officer than its serjeant-at-arms, which it can command of
+its own proper authority. A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and
+judicial magistracy; an anxious care of public money; an openness,
+approaching towards facility, to public complaint: these seem to be the
+true characteristics of a House of Commons. But an addressing House of
+Commons, and a petitioning nation; a House of Commons full of
+confidence, when the nation is plunged in despair; in the utmost harmony
+with ministers, whom the people regard with the utmost abhorrence; who
+vote thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them for impeachments;
+who are eager to grant, when the general voice demands account; who, in
+all disputes between the people and administration, presume against the
+people; who punish their disorders, but refuse even to inquire into the
+provocations to them; this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things
+in this constitution. Such an assembly may be a great, wise, awful
+senate; but it is not, to any popular purpose, a House of Commons. This
+change from an immediate state of procuration and delegation to a course
+of acting as from original power, is the way in which all the popular
+magistracies in the world have been perverted from their purposes. It is
+indeed their greatest and sometimes their incurable corruption. For
+there is a material distinction between that corruption by which
+particular points are carried against reason, (this is a thing which
+cannot be prevented by human wisdom, and is of loss consequence,) and
+the corruption of the principle itself For then the evil is not
+accidental, but settled. The distemper becomes the natural habit.
+
+For my part, I shall be compelled to conclude the principle of
+Parliament to be totally corrupted, and therefore its ends entirely
+defeated, when I see two symptoms: first, a rule of indiscriminate
+support to all ministers; because this destroys the very end of
+Parliament as a control, and is a general, previous sanction to
+misgovernment: and secondly, the setting up any claims adverse to the
+right of free election; for this tends to subvert the legal authority by
+which the House of Commons sits.
+
+I know that, since the Revolution, along with many dangerous, many
+useful powers of government have been weakened. It is absolutely
+necessary to have frequent recourse to the legislature. Parliaments must
+therefore sit every year, and for great part of the year. The dreadful
+disorders of frequent elections have also necessitated a septennial
+instead of a triennial duration. These circumstances, I mean the
+constant habit of authority, and the unfrequency of elections, have
+tended very much to draw the House of Commons towards the character of a
+standing senate. It is a disorder which has arisen from the cure of
+greater disorders; it has arisen from the extreme difficulty of
+reconciling liberty under a monarchical government, with external
+strength and with internal tranquillity.
+
+It is very clear that we cannot free ourselves entirely from this great
+inconvenience; but I would not increase an evil, because I was not able
+to remove it; and because it was not in my power to keep the House of
+Commons religiously true to its first principles, I would not argue for
+carrying it to a total oblivion of them. This has been the great scheme
+of power in our time. They, who will not conform their conduct to the
+public good, and cannot support it by the prerogative of the crown, have
+adopted a new plan. They have totally abandoned the shattered and
+old-fashioned fortress of prerogative, and made a lodgment in the
+stronghold of Parliament itself. If they have any evil design to which
+there is no ordinary legal power commensurate, they bring it into
+Parliament. In Parliament the whole is executed from the beginning to
+the end. In Parliament the power of obtaining their object is absolute;
+and the safety in the proceeding perfect: no rules to confine, no
+after-reckonings to terrify. Parliament cannot, with any great
+propriety, punish others for things in which they themselves have been
+accomplices. Thus the control of Parliament upon the executory power is
+lost; because Parliament is made to partake in every considerable act of
+government. _Impeachment, that great guardian of the purity of the
+constitution, is in danger of being lost, even to the idea of it._
+
+By this plan several important ends are answered to the cabal. If the
+authority of Parliament supports itself, the credit of every act of
+government, which they contrive, is saved; but if the act be so very
+odious that the whole strength of Parliament is insufficient to
+recommend it, then Parliament is itself discredited; and this discredit
+increases more and more that indifference to the constitution, which it
+is the constant aim of its enemies, by their abuse of Parliamentary
+powers, to render general among the people. Whenever Parliament is
+persuaded to assume the offices of executive government, it will lose
+all the confidence, love, and veneration, which it has ever enjoyed
+whilst it was supposed the _corrective and control_ of the acting powers
+of the state. This would be the event, though its conduct in such a
+perversion of its functions should be tolerably just and moderate; but
+if it should be iniquitous, violent, full of passion, and full of
+faction, it would be considered as the most intolerable of all the modes
+of tyranny.
+
+For a considerable time this separation of the representatives from
+their constituents went on with a silent progress; and had those, who
+conducted the plan for their total separation, been persons of temper
+and abilities any way equal to the magnitude of their design, the
+success would have been infallible: but by their precipitancy they have
+laid it open in all its nakedness; the nation is alarmed at it: and the
+event may not be pleasant to the contrivers of the scheme. In the last
+session, the corps called the _king's friends_ made a hardy attempt, all
+at once, _to alter the right of election itself_; to put it into the
+power of the House of Commons to disable any person disagreeable to them
+from sitting in Parliament, without any other rule than their own
+pleasure; to make incapacities, either general for descriptions of men,
+or particular for individuals; and to take into their body, persons who
+avowedly had never been chosen by the majority of legal electors, nor
+agreeably to any known rule of law.
+
+The arguments upon which this claim was founded and combated, are not my
+business here. Never has a subject been more amply and more learnedly
+handled, nor upon one side, in my opinion, more satisfactorily; they who
+are not convinced by what is already written would not receive
+conviction _though, one arose from the dead_.
+
+I too have thought on this subject: but my purpose here, is only to
+consider it as a part of the favorite project of government; to observe
+on the motives which led to it; and to trace its political consequences.
+
+A violent rage for the punishment of Mr. Wilkes was the pretence of the
+whole. This gentleman, by setting himself strongly in opposition to the
+court cabal, had become at once an object of their persecution, and of
+the popular favor. The hatred of the court party pursuing, and the
+countenance of the people protecting him, it very soon became not at all
+a question on the man, but a trial of strength between the two parties.
+The advantage of the victory in this particular contest was the present,
+but not the only, nor by any means the principal object. Its operation
+upon the character of the House of Commons was the great point in view.
+The point to be gained by the cabal was this; that a precedent should be
+established, tending to show, _That the favor of the people was not so
+sure a road as the favor of the court even to popular honors and popular
+trusts_. A strenuous resistance to every appearance of lawless power; a
+spirit of independence carried to some degree of enthusiasm; an
+inquisitive character to discover, and a bold one to display, every
+corruption and every error of government; these are the qualities which
+recommend a man to a seat in the House of Commons, in open and merely
+popular elections. An indolent and submissive disposition; a disposition
+to think charitably of all the actions of men in power, and to live in a
+mutual intercourse of favors with them; an inclination rather to
+countenance a strong use of authority, than to bear any sort of
+licentiousness on the part of the people; these are unfavorable
+qualities in an open election for members of Parliament.
+
+The instinct which carries the people towards the choice of the former,
+is justified by reason; because a man of such a character, even in its
+exorbitances, does not directly contradict the purposes of a trust, the
+end of which is a control on power. The latter character, even when it
+is not in its extreme, will execute this trust but very imperfectly;
+and, if deviating to the least excess, will certainly frustrate instead
+of forwarding the purposes of a control on government. But when the
+House of Commons was to be new modelled, this principle was not only to
+be changed but reversed. Whilst any errors committed in support of power
+were left to the law, with every advantage of favorable construction, of
+mitigation, and finally of pardon; all excesses on the side of liberty,
+or in pursuit of popular favor, or in defence of popular rights and
+privileges, were not only to be punished by the rigor of the known law,
+but by a _discretionary_ proceeding, which brought on _the loss of the
+popular object itself_. Popularity was to be rendered, if not directly
+penal, at least highly dangerous. The favor of the people might lead
+even to a disqualification of representing them. Their odium might
+become, strained through the medium of two or three constructions, the
+means of sitting as the trustee of all that was dear to them. This is
+punishing the offence in the offending part. Until this time, the
+opinion of the people, through the power of an assembly, still in some
+sort popular, led to the greatest honors and emoluments in the gift of
+the crown. Now the principle is reversed; and the favor of the court is
+the only sure way of obtaining and holding those honors which ought to
+be in the disposal of the people.
+
+It signifies very little how this matter may be quibbled away. Example,
+the only argument of effect in civil life, demonstrates the truth of my
+proposition. Nothing can alter my opinion concerting the pernicious
+tendency of this example, until I see some man for his indiscretion in
+the support of power, for his violent and intemperate servility,
+rendered incapable of sitting in Parliament. For as it now stands, the
+fault of overstraining popular qualities, and, irregularly if you
+please, asserting popular privileges, has led to disqualification; the
+opposite fault never has produced the slightest punishment. Resistance
+to power has shut the door of the House of Commons to one man;
+obsequiousness and servility, to none.
+
+Not that I would encourage popular disorder, or any disorder. But I
+would leave such offences to the law, to be punished in measure and
+proportion. The laws of this country are for the most part constituted,
+and wisely so, for the general ends of government, rather than for the
+preservation of our particular liberties. Whatever therefore is done in
+support of liberty, by persons not in public trust, or not acting merely
+in that trust, is liable to be more or less out of the ordinary course
+of the law; and the law itself is sufficient to animadvert upon it with
+great severity. Nothing indeed can hinder that severe letter from
+crushing us, except the temperaments it may receive from a trial by
+jury. But if the habit prevails of _going beyond the law_, and
+superseding this judicature, of carrying offences, real or supposed,
+into the legislative bodies, who shall establish themselves into _courts
+of criminal equity_ (so the _Star Chamber_ has been called by Lord
+Bacon), all the evils of the _Star Chamber_ are revived. A large and
+liberal construction in ascertaining offences, and a discretionary
+power in punishing them, is the idea of _criminal equity_; which is in
+truth a monster in jurisprudence. It signifies nothing whether a court
+for this purpose be a committee of council, or a House of Commons, or a
+House of Lords; the liberty of the subject will be equally subverted by
+it. The true end and purpose of that House of Parliament, which
+entertains such a jurisdiction, will be destroyed by it.
+
+I will not believe, what no other man living believes, that Mr. Wilkes
+was punished for the indecency of his publications, or the impiety of
+his ransacked closet. If he had fallen in a common slaughter of
+libellers and blasphemers, I could well believe that nothing more was
+meant than was pretended. But when I see, that, for years together, full
+as impious, and perhaps more dangerous writings to religion, and virtue,
+and order, have not been punished, nor their authors discountenanced;
+that the most audacious libels on royal majesty have passed without
+notice; that the most treasonable invectives against the laws,
+liberties, and constitution of the country, have not met with the
+slightest animadversion; I must consider this as a shocking and
+shameless pretence. Never did an envenomed scurrility against everything
+sacred and civil, public and private, rage through the kingdom with such
+a furious and unbridled license. All this while the peace of the nation
+must be shaken, to ruin one libeller, and to tear from the populace a
+single favorite.
+
+Nor is it that vice merely skulks in an obscure and contemptible
+impunity. Does not the public behold with indignation, persons not only
+generally scandalous in their lives, but the identical persons who, by
+their society, their instruction, their example, their encouragement,
+have drawn this man into the very faults which have furnished the cabal
+with a pretence for his persecution, loaded with every kind of favor,
+honor, and distinction, which a court can bestow? Add but the crime of
+servility (the _foedum crimen servitutis_) to every other crime, and the
+whole mass is immediately transmuted into virtue, and becomes the just
+subject of reward and honor. When therefore I reflect upon this method
+pursued by the cabal in distributing rewards and punishments, I must
+conclude that Mr. Wilkes is the object of persecution, not on account of
+what he has done in common with others who are the objects of reward,
+but for that in which he differs from many of them: that he is pursued
+for the spirited dispositions which are blended with his vices; for his
+unconquerable firmness, for his resolute, indefatigable, strenuous
+resistance against oppression.
+
+In this case, therefore, it was not the man that was to be punished, nor
+his faults that were to be discountenanced. Opposition to acts of power
+was to be marked by a kind of civil proscription. The popularity which
+should arise from such an opposition was to be shown unable to protect
+it. The qualities by which court is made to the people, were to render
+every fault inexpiable, and every error irretrievable. The qualities by
+which court is made to power, were to cover and to sanctify everything.
+He that will have a sure and honorable seat in the House of Commons must
+take care how he adventures to cultivate popular qualities; otherwise he
+may remember the old maxim, _Breves et infaustos populi Romani amores_.
+If, therefore, a pursuit of popularity expose a man to greater dangers
+than a disposition to servility, the principle which is the life and
+soul of popular elections will perish out of the constitution.
+
+It behoves the people of England to consider how the House of Commons,
+under the operation of these examples, must of necessity be constituted.
+On the side of the court will be, all honors, offices, emoluments; every
+sort of personal gratification to avarice or vanity; and, what is of
+more moment to most gentlemen, the means of growing, by innumerable
+petty services to individuals, into a spreading interest in their
+country. On the other hand, let us suppose a person unconnected with the
+court, and in opposition to its system. For his own person, no office,
+or emolument, or title; no promotion, ecclesiastical, or civil, or
+military, or naval, for children, or brothers, or kindred. In vain an
+expiring interest in a borough calls for offices, or small livings, for
+the children of mayors, and aldermen, and capital burgesses. His court
+rival has them all. He can do an infinite number of acts of generosity
+and kindness, and even of public spirit. He can procure indemnity from
+quarters. He can procure advantages in trade. He can get pardons for
+offences. He can obtain a thousand favors, and avert a thousand evils.
+He may, while he betrays every valuable interest of the kingdom, be a
+benefactor, a patron, a father, a guardian angel to his borough. The
+unfortunate independent member has nothing to offer, but harsh refusal,
+or pitiful excuse, or despondent representation of a hopeless interest.
+Except from his private fortune, in which he may be equalled, perhaps
+exceeded, by his court competitor, he has no way of showing any one good
+quality, or of making a single friend. In the House, he votes forever in
+a dispirited minority. If he speaks, the doors are locked. A body of
+loquacious placemen go out to tell the world that all he aims at is to
+get into office. If he has not the talent of elocution, which is the
+case of many as wise and knowing men as any in the House, he is liable
+to all these inconveniences, without the _éclat_ which attends upon any
+tolerably successful exertion of eloquence. Can we conceive a more
+discouraging post of duty than this? Strip it of the poor reward of
+popularity; suffer even the excesses committed in defence of the popular
+interest to become a ground for the majority of that House to form a
+disqualification out of the line of the law, and at their pleasure,
+attended not only with the loss of the franchise, but with every kind of
+personal disgrace.--If this shall happen, the people of this kingdom may
+be assured that they cannot be firmly or faithfully served by any man.
+It is out of the nature of men and things that they should; and their
+presumption will be equal to their folly if they expect it. The power of
+the people, within the laws, must show itself sufficient to protect
+every representative in the animated performance of his duty, or that
+duty cannot be performed. The House of Commons can never be a control on
+other parts of government, unless they are controlled themselves by
+their constituents; and unless those constituents possess some right in
+the choice of that House, which it is not in the power of that House to
+take away. If they suffer this power of arbitrary incapacitation to
+stand, they have utterly perverted every other power of the House of
+Commons. The late proceeding I will not say _is_ contrary to law; it
+_must_ be so; for the power which is claimed cannot, by any possibility,
+be a legal power in any limited member of government.
+
+The power which they claim, of declaring incapacities, would not be
+above the just claims of a final judicature, if they had not laid it
+down as a leading principle, that they had no rule in the exercise of
+this claim, but their own _discretion_. Not one of their abettors has
+ever undertaken to assign the principle of unfitness, the species or
+degree of delinquency, on which the House of Commons will expel, nor the
+mode of proceeding upon it, nor the evidence upon which it is
+established. The direct consequence of which is, that the first
+franchise of an Englishman, and that on which all the rest vitally
+depend, is to be forfeited for some offence which no man knows, and
+which is to be proved by no known rule whatsoever of legal evidence.
+This is so anomalous to our whole constitution, that I will venture to
+say, the most trivial right, which the subject claims, never was, nor
+can be, forfeited in such a manner.
+
+The whole of their usurpation is established upon this method of
+arguing. We do not _make_ laws. No; we do not contend for this power. We
+only _declare_ law; and as we are a tribunal both competent and supreme,
+what we declare to be law becomes law, although it should not have been
+so before. Thus the circumstance of having no _appeal_ from their
+jurisdiction is made to imply that they have no _rule_ in the exercise
+of it: the judgment does not derive its validity from its conformity to
+the law; but preposterously the law is made to attend on the judgment;
+and the rule of the judgment is no other than the _occasional will of
+the House_. An arbitrary discretion leads, legality follows; which is
+just the very nature and description of a legislative act.
+
+This claim in their hands was no barren theory. It was pursued into its
+utmost consequences; and a dangerous principle has begot a correspondent
+practice. A systematic spirit has been shown upon both sides. The
+electors of Middlesex chose a person whom the House of Commons had voted
+incapable; and the House of Commons has taken in a member whom the
+electors of Middlesex had not chosen. By a construction on that
+legislative power which had been assumed, they declared that the true
+legal sense of the country was contained in the minority, on that
+occasion; and might, on a resistance to a vote of incapacity, be
+contained in any minority.
+
+When any construction of law goes against the spirit of the privilege it
+was meant to support, it is a vicious construction. It is material to us
+to be represented really and _bonâ fide_, and not in forms, in types,
+and shadows, and fictions of law. The right of election was not
+established merely as a _matter of form_, to satisfy some method and
+rule of technical reasoning; it was not a principle which might
+substitute a _Titius_ or a _Mævius_, a _John Doe_ or _Richard Roe_, in
+the place of a man specially chosen; not a principle which was just as
+well satisfied with one man as with another. It is a right, the effect
+of which is to give to the people that man, and _that man only_, whom,
+by their voices actually, not constructively given, they declare that
+they know, esteem, love, and trust. This right is a matter within their
+own power of judging and feeling; not an _ens rationis_ and creature of
+law: nor can those devices, by which anything else is substituted in the
+place of such an actual choice, answer in the least degree the end of
+representation.
+
+I know that the courts of law have made as strained constructions in
+other cases. Such is the construction in common recoveries. The method
+of construction which in that case gives to the persons in remainder,
+for their security and representative, the door-keeper, crier, or
+sweeper of the court, or some other shadowy being without substance or
+effect, is a fiction of a very coarse texture. This was however suffered
+by the acquiescence of the whole kingdom, for ages; because the evasion
+of the old statute of Westminster, which authorized perpetuities, had
+more sense and utility than the law which was evaded. But an attempt to
+turn the right of election into such a farce and mockery as a fictitious
+fine and recovery, will, I hope, have another fate; because the laws
+which give it are infinitely dear to us, and the evasion is infinitely
+contemptible.
+
+The people indeed have been told, that this power of discretionary
+disqualification is vested in hands that they may trust, and who will be
+sure not to abuse it to their prejudice. Until I find something in this
+argument differing from that on which every mode of despotism has been
+defended, I shall not be inclined to pay it any great compliment. The
+people are satisfied to trust themselves with the exercise of their own
+privileges, and do not desire this kind intervention of the House of
+Commons to free them from the burden. They are certainly in the right.
+They ought not to trust the House of Commons with a power over their
+franchises; because the constitution, which placed two other co-ordinate
+powers to control it, reposed no such confidence in that body. It were a
+folly well deserving servitude for its punishment, to be full of
+confidence where the laws are full of distrust; and to give to a House
+of Commons, arrogating to its sole resolution the most harsh and odious
+part of legislative authority, that degree of submission which is due
+only to the legislature itself.
+
+When the House of Commons, in an endeavor to obtain new advantages at
+the expense of the other orders of the state, for the benefit of the
+_commons at large_, have pursued strong measures; if it were not just,
+it was at least natural, that the constituents should connive at all
+their proceedings; because we were ourselves ultimately to profit. But
+when this submission is urged to us, in a contest between the
+representatives and ourselves, and where nothing can be put into their
+scale which is not taken from ours, they fancy us to be children when
+they tell us they are our representatives, our own flesh and blood, and
+that all the stripes they give us are for our good. The very desire of
+that body to have such a trust contrary to law reposed in them, shows
+that they are not worthy of it. They certainly will abuse it; because
+all men possessed of an uncontrolled discretionary power leading to the
+aggrandizement and profit of their own body have always abused it: and I
+see no particular sanctity in our times, that is at all likely, by a
+miraculous operation, to overrule the course of nature.
+
+But we must purposely shut our eyes, if we consider this matter merely
+as a contest between the House of Commons and the electors. The true
+contest is between the electors of the kingdom and the crown; the crown
+acting by an instrumental House of Commons. It is precisely the same,
+whether the ministers of the crown can disqualify by a dependent House
+of Commons, or by a dependent Court of _Star Chamber_, or by a dependent
+Court of King's Bench If once members of Parliament can be practically
+convinced that they do not depend on the affection or opinion of the
+people for their political being, they will give themselves over,
+without even an appearance of reserve, to the influence of the court.
+
+Indeed a Parliament unconnected with the people is essential to a
+ministry unconnected with the people; and therefore those who saw
+through what mighty difficulties the interior ministry waded, and the
+exterior were dragged, in this business, will conceive of what
+prodigious importance, the new corps of _king's men_ held this principle
+of occasional and personal incapacitation, to the whole body of their
+design.
+
+When the House of Commons was thus made to consider itself as the master
+of its constituents, there wanted but one thing to secure that House
+against all possible future deviation towards popularity: an _unlimited_
+fund of money to be laid out according to the pleasure of the court.
+
+To complete the scheme of bringing our court to a resemblance to the
+neighboring monarchies, it was necessary, in effect, to destroy those
+appropriations of revenue, which seem to limit the property, as the
+other laws had done the powers, of the crown. An opportunity for this
+purpose was taken, upon an application to Parliament for payment of the
+debts of the civil list; which in 1769 had amounted to 513,000_l._ Such
+application had been made upon former occasions; but to do it in the
+former manner would by no means answer the present purpose.
+
+Whenever the crown had come to the commons to desire a supply for the
+discharging of debts due on the civil list, it was always asked and
+granted with one of the three following qualifications; sometimes with
+all of them. Either it was stated, that the revenue had been diverted
+from its purposes by Parliament; or that those duties had fallen short
+of the sum for which they were given by Parliament, and that the
+intention of the legislature had not been fulfilled; or that the money
+required to discharge the civil list debt was to be raised chargeable on
+the civil list duties. In the reign of Queen Anne, the crown was found
+in debt. The lessening and granting away some part of her revenue by
+Parliament was alleged as the cause of that debt, and pleaded as an
+equitable ground, such it certainly was, for discharging it. It does not
+appear that the duties which were then applied to the ordinary
+government produced clear above 580,000_l._ a year; because, when they
+were afterwards granted to George the First, 120,000_l._ was added to
+complete the whole to 700,000_l._ a year. Indeed it was then asserted,
+and, I have no doubt, truly, that for many years the net produce did not
+amount to above 550,000_l._ The queen's extraordinary charges were
+besides very considerable; equal, at least, to any we have known in our
+time. The application to Parliament was not for an absolute grant of
+money; but to empower the queen to raise it by borrowing upon the civil
+list funds.
+
+The civil list debt was twice paid in the reign of George the First. The
+money was granted upon the same plan which had been followed in the
+reign of Queen Anne. The civil list revenues were then mortgaged for the
+sum to be raised, and stood charged with the ransom of their own
+deliverance.
+
+George the Second received an addition to his civil list. Duties were
+granted for the purpose of raising 800,000_l._ a year. It was not until
+he had reigned nineteen years, and after the last rebellion, that he
+called upon Parliament for a discharge of the civil list debt. The
+extraordinary charges brought on by the rebellion, account fully for the
+necessities of the crown. However, the extraordinary charges of
+government were not thought a ground fit to be relied on.
+
+A deficiency of the civil list duties for several years before was
+stated as the principal, if not the sole ground on which an application
+to Parliament could be justified. About this time the produce of these
+duties had fallen pretty low; and even upon an average of the whole
+reign they never produced 800,000_l._ a year clear to the treasury.
+
+That prince reigned fourteen years afterwards: not only no new demands
+were made; but with so much good order were his revenues and expenses
+regulated, that, although many parts of the establishment of the court
+were upon a larger and more liberal scale than they have been since,
+there was a considerable sum in hand, on his decease, amounting to about
+170,000_l._ applicable to the service of the civil list of his present
+Majesty. So that, if this reign commenced with a greater charge than
+usual, there was enough and more than enough, abundantly to supply all
+the extraordinary expense. That the civil list should have been exceeded
+in the two former reigns, especially in the reign of George the First,
+was not at all surprising. His revenue was but 700,000_l._ annually; if
+it ever produced so much clear. The prodigious and dangerous
+disaffection to the very being of the establishment, and the cause of a
+pretender then powerfully abetted from abroad, produced many demands of
+an extraordinary nature both abroad and at home. Much management and
+great expenses were necessary. But the throne of no prince has stood
+upon more unshaken foundations than that of his present Majesty.
+
+To have exceeded the sum given for the civil list, and to have incurred
+a debt without special authority of Parliament, was _prima facie_, a
+criminal act: as such, ministers ought naturally rather to have
+withdrawn it from the inspection, than to have exposed it to the
+scrutiny of Parliament. Certainly they ought, of themselves, officially
+to have come armed with every sort of argument, which, by explaining,
+could excuse, a matter in itself of presumptive guilt. But the terrors
+of the House of Commons are no longer for ministers.
+
+On the other hand, the peculiar character of the House of Commons, as
+trustee of the public purse, would have led them to call with a
+punctilious solicitude for every public account, and to have examined
+into them with the most rigorous accuracy.
+
+The capital use of an account is, that the reality of the charge, the
+reason of incurring it, and the justice and necessity of discharging it,
+should all appear antecedent to the payment. No man ever pays first, and
+calls for his account afterwards; because he would thereby let out of
+his hands the principal, and indeed only effectual, means of compelling
+a full and fair one. But, in national business, there is an additional
+reason for a previous production of every account. It is a check,
+perhaps the only one, upon a corrupt and prodigal use of public money.
+An account after payment is to no rational purpose an account. However,
+the House of Commons thought all these to be antiquated principles:
+they were of opinion, that the most Parliamentary way of proceeding was,
+to pay first what the court thought proper to demand, and to take its
+chance for an examination into accounts at some time of greater leisure.
+
+The nation had settled 800,000_l._ a year on the crown, as sufficient
+for the support of its dignity, upon the estimate of its own ministers.
+When ministers came to Parliament, and said that this allowance had not
+been sufficient for the purpose, and that they had incurred a debt of
+500,000_l._, would it not have been natural for Parliament first to have
+asked how, and by what means, their appropriated allowance came to be
+insufficient? Would it not have savored of some attention to justice, to
+have seen in what periods of administration this debt had been
+originally incurred; that they might discover, and if need were,
+animadvert on the persons who were found the most culpable? To put their
+hands upon such articles of expenditure as they thought improper or
+excessive, and to secure, in future, against such misapplication or
+exceeding? Accounts for any other purposes are but a matter of
+curiosity, and no genuine Parliamentary object. All the accounts which
+could answer any Parliamentary end were refused, or postponed by
+previous questions. Every idea of prevention was rejected, as conveying
+an improper suspicion of the ministers of the crown.
+
+When every loading account had been refused, many others were granted
+with sufficient facility.
+
+But with great candor also, the House was informed, that hardly any of
+them could be ready until the next session; some of them perhaps not so
+soon. But, in order firmly to establish the precedent of _payment
+previous to account_, and to form it into a settled rule of the House,
+the god in the machine was brought down, nothing less than the
+wonder-working _law of Parliament_. It was alleged, that it is the law
+of Parliament, when any demand comes from the crown, that the House must
+go immediately into the committee of supply; in which committee it was
+allowed, that the production and examination of accounts would be quite
+proper and regular. It was therefore carried, that they should go into
+the committee without delay, and without accounts, in order to examine
+with great order and regularity things that could not possibly come
+before them. After this stroke of orderly and Parliamentary wit and
+humor, they went into the committee; and very generously voted the
+payment.
+
+There was a circumstance in that debate too remarkable to be overlooked.
+This debt of the civil list was all along argued upon the same footing
+as a debt of the state, contracted upon national authority. Its payment
+was urged as equally pressing upon the public faith and honor; and when
+the whole year's account was stated, in what is called _the budget_, the
+ministry valued themselves on the payment of so much public debt, just
+as if they had discharged 500,000_l._ of navy or exchequer bills.
+Though, in truth, their payment, from the sinking fund, of debt which
+was never contracted by Parliamentary authority, was, to all intents and
+purposes, so much debt incurred. But such is the present notion of
+public credit, and payment of debt. No wonder that it produces such
+effects.
+
+Nor was the House at all more attentive to a provident security against
+future, than it had been to a vindictive retrospect to past
+mismanagements. I should have thought indeed that a ministerial promise,
+during their own continuance in office, might have been given, though
+this would have been but a poor security for the public. Mr. Pelham gave
+such an assurance, and he kept his word. But nothing was capable of
+extorting from our ministers anything which had the least resemblance to
+a promise of confining the expenses of the civil list within the limits
+which had been settled by Parliament. This reserve of theirs I look upon
+to be equivalent to the clearest declaration, that they were resolved
+upon a contrary course.
+
+However, to put the matter beyond all doubt, in the speech from the
+throne, after thanking Parliament for the relief so liberally granted,
+the ministers inform the two Houses, that they will _endeavor_ to
+confine the expenses of the civil government--within what limits, think
+you? those which the law had prescribed? Not in the least--"such limits
+as the _honor of the crown_ can possibly admit."
+
+Thus they established an _arbitrary_ standard for that dignity which
+Parliament had defined and limited to a _legal_ standard. They gave
+themselves, under the lax and indeterminate idea of the _honor of the
+crown_, a full loose for all manner of dissipation, and all manner of
+corruption. This arbitrary standard they were not afraid to hold out to
+both Houses; while an idle and unoperative act of Parliament, estimating
+the dignity of the crown at 800,000_l._ and confining it to that sum,
+adds to the number of obsolete statutes which load the shelves of
+libraries, without any sort of advantage to the people.
+
+After this proceeding, I suppose that no man can be so weak as to think
+that the crown is limited to any settled allowance whatsoever. For if
+the ministry has 800,000_l._ a year by the law of the land; and if by
+the law of Parliament all the debts which exceed it are to be paid
+previously to the production of any account; I presume that this is
+equivalent to an income with no other limits than the abilities of the
+subject and the moderation of the court; that is to say, it is such an
+income as is possessed by every absolute monarch in Europe. It amounts,
+as a person of great ability said in the debate, to an unlimited power
+of drawing upon the sinking fund. Its effect on the public credit of
+this kingdom must be obvious; for in vain is the sinking fund the great
+buttress of all the rest, if it be in the power of the ministry to
+resort to it for the payment of any debts which they may choose to
+incur, under the name of the civil list, and through the medium of a
+committee, which thinks itself obliged by law to vote supplies without
+any other account than that of the mere existence of the debt.
+
+Five hundred thousand pounds is a serious sum. But it is nothing to the
+prolific principle upon which the sum was voted: a principle that may be
+well called, _the fruitful mother of an hundred more_. Neither is the
+damage to public credit of very great consequence, when compared with
+that which results to public morals and to the safety of the
+constitution, from the exhaustless mine of corruption opened by the
+precedent, and to be wrought by the principle, of the late payment of
+the debts of the civil list. The power of discretionary disqualification
+by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the
+civil list by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed,
+must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make
+Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever
+was invented by the wit of man. This is felt. The quarrel is begun
+between the representatives and the people. The court faction have at
+length committed them.
+
+In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed, and the boldest
+staggered. The circumstances are in a great measure new. We have hardly
+any landmarks from the wisdom of our ancestors, to guide us. At best we
+can only follow the spirit of their proceeding in other cases. I know
+the diligence with which my observations on our public disorders have
+been made; I am very sure of the integrity of the motives on which they
+are published; I cannot be equally confident in any plan for the
+absolute cure of those disorders, or for their certain future
+prevention. My aim is to bring this matter into more public discussion.
+Let the sagacity of others work upon it. It is not uncommon for medical
+writers to describe histories of diseases very accurately, on whose cure
+they can say but very little.
+
+The first ideas which generally suggest themselves, for the cure of
+Parliamentary disorders, are, to shorten the duration of Parliaments;
+and to disqualify all, or a great number of placemen, from a seat in the
+House of Commons. Whatever efficacy there may be in those remedies, I am
+sure in the present state of things it is impossible to apply them. A
+restoration of the right of free election is a preliminary indispensable
+to every other reformation. What alterations ought afterwards to be made
+in the constitution, is a matter of deep and difficult research.
+
+If I wrote merely to please the popular palate, it would indeed be as
+little troublesome to me as to another, to extol these remedies, so
+famous in speculation, but to which their greatest admirers have never
+attempted seriously to resort in practice. I confess then, that I have
+no sort of reliance upon either a triennial Parliament, or a place-bill.
+With regard to the former, perhaps it might rather serve to counteract,
+than to promote the ends that are proposed by it. To say nothing of the
+horrible disorders among the people attending frequent elections, I
+should be fearful of committing, every three years, the independent
+gentlemen of the country into a contest with the treasury. It is easy to
+see which of the contending parties would be ruined first. Whoever has
+taken a careful view of public proceedings, so as to endeavor to ground
+his speculations on his experience, must have observed how prodigiously
+greater the power of ministry is in the first and last session of a
+Parliament, than it is in the intermediate period, when members sit a
+little firm on their seats. The persons of the greatest Parliamentary
+experience, with whom I have conversed, did constantly, in canvassing
+the fate of questions, allow something to the court side, upon account
+of the elections depending or imminent. The evil complained of, if it
+exists in the present state of things, would hardly be removed by a
+triennial Parliament: for, unless the influence of government in
+elections can be entirely taken away, the more frequently they return,
+the more they will harass private independence; the more generally men
+will be compelled to fly to the settled systematic interest of
+government, and to the resources of a boundless civil list. Certainly
+something may be done, and ought to be done, towards lessening that
+influence in elections; and this will be necessary upon a plan either
+of longer or shorter duration of Parliament. But nothing can so
+perfectly remove the evil, as not to render such contentions, too
+frequently repeated, utterly ruinous, first to independence of fortune,
+and then to independence of spirit. As I am only giving an opinion on
+this point, and not at all debating it in an adverse line, I hope I may
+be excused in another observation. With great truth I may aver, that I
+never remember to have talked on this subject with any man much
+conversant with public business, who considered short Parliaments as a
+real improvement of the constitution. Gentlemen, warm in a popular
+cause, are ready enough to attribute all the declarations of such
+persons to corrupt motives. But the habit of affairs, if, on one hand,
+it tends to corrupt the mind, furnishes it, on the other, with the means
+of better information. The authority of such persons will always have
+some weight. It may stand upon a par with the speculations of those who
+are less practised in business; and who, with perhaps purer intentions,
+have not so effectual means of judging. It is besides an effect of
+vulgar and puerile malignity to imagine, that every statesman is of
+course corrupt; and that his opinion, upon every constitutional point,
+is solely formed upon some sinister interest.
+
+The next favorite remedy is a place-bill. The same principle guides in
+both; I mean, the opinion which is entertained by many, of the
+infallibility of laws and regulations, in the cure of public distempers.
+Without being as unreasonably doubtful as many are unwisely confident, I
+will only say, that this also is a matter very well worthy of serious
+and mature reflection. It is not easy to foresee, what the effect would
+be, of disconnecting with Parliament the greatest part of those who hold
+civil employments, and of such mighty and important bodies as the
+military and naval establishments. It were better, perhaps, that they
+should have a corrupt interest in the forms of the constitution, than
+that they should have none at all. This is a question altogether
+different from the disqualification of a particular description of
+revenue-officers from seats in Parliament; or, perhaps, of all the lower
+sorts of them from votes in elections. In the former case, only the few
+are affected; in the latter, only the inconsiderable. But a great
+official, a great professional, a great military and naval interest, all
+necessarily comprehending many people of the first weight, ability,
+wealth, and spirit, has been gradually formed in the kingdom. These new
+interests must be let into a share of representation, else possibly they
+may be inclined to destroy those institutions of which they are not
+permitted to partake. This is not a thing to be trifled with; nor is it
+every well-meaning man that is fit to put his hands to it. Many other
+serious considerations occur. I do not open them here, because they are
+not directly to my purpose; proposing only to give the reader some taste
+of the difficulties that attend all capital changes in the constitution;
+just to hint the uncertainty, to say no worse, of being able to prevent
+the court, as long as it has the means of influence abundantly in its
+power, of applying that influence to Parliament; and perhaps, if the
+public method were precluded, of doing it in some worse and more
+dangerous method. Underhand and oblique ways would be studied. The
+science of evasion, already tolerably understood, would then be brought
+to the greatest perfection. It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to
+know how much of an evil ought to be tolerated; lest, by attempting a
+degree of purity impracticable in degenerate times and manners, instead
+of cutting off the subsisting ill-practices, new corruptions might be
+produced for the concealment and security of the old. It were better,
+undoubtedly, that no influence at all could affect the mind of a member
+of Parliament. But of all modes of influence, in my opinion, a place
+under the government is the least disgraceful to the man who holds it,
+and by far the most safe to the country. I would not shut out that sort
+of influence which is open and visible, which is connected with the
+dignity and the service of the state, when it is not in my power to
+prevent the influence of contracts, of subscriptions, of direct bribery,
+and those innumerable methods of clandestine corruption, which are
+abundantly in the hands of the court, and which will be applied as long
+as these means of corruption, and the disposition to be corrupted, have
+existence amongst us. Our constitution stands on a nice equipoise, with
+steep precipices and deep waters upon all sides of it. In removing it
+from a dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be a risk of
+oversetting it on the other. Every project of a material change in a
+government so complicated as ours, combined at the same time with
+external circumstances still more complicated, is a matter full of
+difficulties: in which a considerate man will not be too ready to
+decide; a prudent man too ready to undertake; or an honest man too ready
+to promise. They do not respect the public nor themselves, who engage
+for more than they are sure that they ought to attempt, or that they are
+able to perform. These are my sentiments, weak perhaps, but honest and
+unbiassed; and submitted entirely to the opinion of grave men,
+well-affected to the constitution of their country, and of experience in
+what may best promote or hurt it.
+
+Indeed, in the situation in which we stand, with an immense revenue, an
+enormous debt, mighty establishments, government itself a great banker
+and a great merchant, I see no other way for the preservation of a
+decent attention to public interest in the representatives, but _the
+interposition of the body of the people itself_, whenever it shall
+appear, by some flagrant and notorious act, by some capital innovation,
+that these representatives are going to overleap the fences of the law,
+and to introduce an arbitrary power. This interposition is a most
+unpleasant remedy. But, if it be a legal remedy, it is intended on some
+occasion to be used; to be used then only, when it is evident that
+nothing else can hold the constitution to its true principles.
+
+The distempers of monarchy were the great subjects of apprehension and
+redress, in the last century; in this the distempers of Parliament. It
+is not in Parliament alone that the remedy for Parliamentary disorders
+can be completed; hardly indeed can it begin there. Until a confidence
+in government is re-established, the people ought to be excited to a
+more strict and detailed attention to the conduct of their
+representatives. Standards for judging more systematically upon their
+conduct ought to be settled in the meetings of counties and
+corporations. Frequent and correct lists of the voters in all important
+questions ought to be procured.
+
+By such means something may be done. By such means it may appear who
+those are, that, by an indiscriminate support of all administrations,
+have totally banished all integrity and confidence out of public
+proceedings; have confounded the best men with the worst; and weakened
+and dissolved, instead of strengthening and compacting, the general
+frame of government. If any person is more concerned for government and
+order, than for the liberties of his country; even he is equally
+concerned to put an end to this course of indiscriminate support. It is
+this blind and undistinguishing support, that feeds the spring of those
+very disorders, by which he is frightened into the arms of the faction
+which contains in itself the source of all disorders, by enfeebling all
+the visible and regular authority of the state. The distemper is
+increased by his injudicious and preposterous endeavors, or pretences,
+for the cure of it.
+
+An exterior administration, chosen for its impotency, or after it is
+chosen purposely rendered impotent, in order to be rendered subservient,
+will not be obeyed. The laws themselves will not be respected, when
+those who execute them are despised: and they will be despised, when
+their power is not immediate from the crown, or natural in the kingdom.
+Never were ministers better supported in Parliament. Parliamentary
+support comes and goes with office, totally regardless of the man, or
+the merit. Is government strengthened? It grows weaker and weaker. The
+popular torrent gains upon it every hour. Let us learn from our
+experience. It is not support that is wanting to government, but
+reformation. When ministry rests upon public opinion, it is not indeed
+built upon a rock of adamant; it has, however, some stability. But when
+it stands upon private humor, its structure is of stubble, and its
+foundation is on quicksand. I repeat it again,--He that supports every
+administration subverts all government. The reason is this: The whole
+business in which a court usually takes an interest goes on at present
+equally well, in whatever hands, whether high or low, wise or foolish,
+scandalous or reputable; there is nothing therefore to hold it firm to
+any one body of men, or to any one consistent scheme of politics.
+Nothing interposes, to prevent the full operation of all the caprices
+and all the passions of a court upon the servants of the public. The
+system of administration is open to continual shocks and changes, upon
+the principles of the meanest cabal, and the most contemptible intrigue.
+Nothing can be solid and permanent. All good men at length fly with
+horror from such a service. Men of rank and ability, with the spirit
+which ought to animate such men in a free state, while they decline the
+jurisdiction of dark cabal on their actions and their fortunes, will,
+for both, cheerfully put themselves upon their country. They will trust
+an inquisitive and distinguishing Parliament; because it does inquire,
+and does distinguish. If they act well, they know, that, in such a
+Parliament they will be supported against any intrigue; if they act ill,
+they know that no intrigue can protect them. This situation, however
+awful, is honorable. But in one hour, and in the self-same assembly,
+without any assigned or assignable cause, to be precipitated from the
+highest authority to the most marked neglect, possibly into the greatest
+peril of life and reputation, is a situation full of danger, and
+destitute of honor. It will be shunned equally by every man of prudence,
+and every man of spirit.
+
+Such are the consequences of the division of court from the
+administration; and of the division of public men among themselves. By
+the former of these, lawful government is undone; by the latter, all
+opposition to lawless power is rendered impotent. Government may in a
+great measure be restored, if any considerable bodies of men have
+honesty and resolution enough never to accept administration, unless
+this garrison of _king's men_, which is stationed, as in a citadel, to
+control and enslave it, be entirely broken and disbanded, and every work
+they have thrown up be levelled with the ground. The disposition of
+public men to keep this corps together, and to act under it, or to
+co-operate with it, is a touchstone by which every administration ought
+in future to be tried. There has not been one which has not sufficiently
+experienced the utter incompatibility of that faction with the public
+peace, and with all the ends of good government: since, if they opposed
+it, they soon lost every power of serving the crown; if they submitted
+to it, they lost all the esteem of their country. Until ministers give
+to the public a full proof of their entire alienation from that system,
+however plausible their pretences, we may be sure they are more intent
+on the emoluments than the duties of office. If they refuse to give this
+proof, we know of what stuff they are made. In this particular, it ought
+to be the electors' business to look to their representatives. The
+electors ought to esteem it no less culpable in their member to give a
+single vote in Parliament to such an administration, than to take an
+office under it; to endure it, than to act in it. The notorious
+infidelity and versatility of members of Parliament, in their opinions
+of men and things, ought in a particular manner to be considered by the
+electors in the inquiry which is recommended to them. This is one of
+the principal holdings of that destructive system, which has endeavored
+to unhinge all the virtuous, honorable, and useful connections in the
+kingdom.
+
+This cabal has, with great success, propagated a doctrine which serves
+for a color to those acts of treachery; and whilst it receives any
+degree of countenance it will be utterly senseless to look for a
+vigorous opposition to the court party. The doctrine is this: That all
+political connections are in their nature factious, and as such ought to
+be dissipated and destroyed; and that the rule for forming
+administrations is more personal ability, rated by the judgment of this
+cabal upon it, and taken by draughts from every division and
+denomination of public men. This decree was solemnly promulgated by the
+head of the court corps, the Earl of Bute himself, in a speech which he
+made, in the year 1766, against the then administration, the only
+administration which he has ever been known directly and publicly to
+oppose.
+
+It is indeed in no way wonderful, that such persons should make such
+declarations. That connection and faction are equivalent terms, is an
+opinion which has been carefully inculcated at all times by
+unconstitutional statesmen. The reason is evident. Whilst men are linked
+together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil
+design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose
+it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without
+concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel
+difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted
+with each other's principles, nor experienced in each other's talents,
+nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by
+joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no
+common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that
+they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy.
+In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of
+the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents
+are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by
+vainglory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single,
+unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavors are of power to defeat
+the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men
+combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an
+unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
+
+It is not enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth, that a man
+means well to his country; it is not enough that in his single person he
+never did an evil act, but always voted according to his conscience, and
+even harangued against every design which he apprehended to be
+prejudicial to the interests of his country. This innoxious and
+ineffectual character, that seems formed upon a plan of apology and
+disculpation, falls miserably short of the mark of public duty. That
+duty demands and requires, that what is right should not only be made
+known, but made prevalent; that what is evil should not only be
+detected, but defeated. When the public man omits to put himself in a
+situation of doing his duty with effect, it is an omission that
+frustrates the purposes of his trust almost as much as if he had
+formally betrayed it. It is surely no very rational account of a man's
+life, that he has always acted right; but has taken special care, to act
+in such a manner that his endeavors could not possibly be productive of
+any consequence.
+
+I do not wonder that the behavior of many parties should have made
+persons of tender and scrupulous virtue somewhat out of humor with all
+sorts of connection in politics. I admit that people frequently acquire
+in such confederacies a narrow, bigoted, and prescriptive spirit; that
+they are apt to sink the idea of the general good in this circumscribed
+and partial interest. But, where duty renders a critical situation a
+necessary one, it is our business to keep free from the evils attendant
+upon it; and not to fly from the situation itself. If a fortress is
+seated in an unwholesome air, an officer of the garrison is obliged to
+be attentive to his health, but he must not desert his station. Every
+profession, not excepting the glorious one of a soldier, or the sacred
+one of a priest, is liable to its own particular vices; which, however,
+form no argument against those ways of life; nor are the vices
+themselves inevitable to every individual in those professions. Of such
+a nature are connections in politics; essentially necessary for the full
+performance of our public duty, accidentally liable to degenerate into
+faction. Commonwealths are made of families, free commonwealths of
+parties also; and we may as well affirm, that our natural regards and
+ties of blood tend inevitably to make men bad citizens, as that the
+bonds of our party weaken those by which we are held to our country.
+
+Some legislators went so far as to make neutrality in party a crime
+against the state. I do not know whether this might not have been rather
+to overstrain the principle. Certain it is, the best patriots in the
+greatest commonwealths have always commended and promoted such
+connections. _Idem sentire de republica_, was with them a principal
+ground of friendship and attachment; nor do I know any other capable of
+forming firmer, dearer, more pleasing, more honorable, and more virtuous
+habitudes. The Romans carried this principle a great way. Even the
+holding of offices together, the disposition of which arose from chance,
+not selection, gave rise to a relation which continued for life. It was
+called _necessitudo sortis_; and it was looked upon with a sacred
+reverence. Breaches of any of these kinds of civil relation were
+considered as acts of the most distinguished turpitude. The whole people
+was distributed into political societies, in which they acted in support
+of such interests in the state as they severally affected. For it was
+then thought no crime to endeavor by every honest means to advance to
+superiority and power those of your own sentiments and opinions. This
+wise people was far from imagining that those connections had no tie,
+and obliged to no duty; but that men might quit them without shame, upon
+every call of interest. They believed private honor to be the great
+foundation of public trust; that friendship was no mean step towards
+patriotism; that he who, in the common intercourse of life, showed he
+regarded somebody besides himself, when he came to act in a public
+situation, might probably consult some other interest than his own.
+Never may we become _plus sages que les sages_, as the French comedian
+has happily expressed it, wiser than all the wise and good men who have
+lived before us. It was their wish, to see public and private virtues,
+not dissonant and jarring, and mutually destructive, but harmoniously
+combined, growing out of one another in a noble and orderly gradation,
+reciprocally supporting and supported. In one of the most fortunate
+periods of our history this country was governed by a _connection_; I
+mean, the great connection of Whigs in the reign of Queen Anne. They
+were complimented upon the principle of this connection by a poet who
+was in high esteem with them. Addison, who knew their sentiments, could
+not praise them for what they considered as no proper subject of
+commendation. As a poet who knew his business, he could not applaud them
+for a thing which in general estimation was not highly reputable.
+Addressing himself to Britain,--
+
+   "Thy favorites grow not up by fortune's sport,
+    Or from the crimes or follies of a court.
+    On the firm basis of desert they rise,
+    From long-tried faith, and friendship's holy ties."
+
+
+The Whigs of those days believed that the only proper method of rising
+into power was through hard essays of practised friendship and
+experimented fidelity. At that time it was not imagined, that patriotism
+was a bloody idol, which required the sacrifice of children and parents,
+or dearest connections in private life, and of all the virtues that rise
+from those relations. They were not of that ingenious paradoxical
+morality, to imagine that a spirit of moderation was properly shown in
+patiently bearing the sufferings of your friends; or that
+disinterestedness was clearly manifested at the expense of other
+people's fortune. They believed that no men could act with effect, who
+did not act in concert; that no men could act in concert, who did not
+act with confidence; that no men could act with confidence, who were not
+bound together by common opinions, common affections, and common
+interests.
+
+These wise men, for such I must call Lord Sunderland, Lord Godolphin,
+Lord Somers, and Lord Marlborough, were too well principled in these
+maxims upon which the whole fabric of public strength is built, to be
+blown off their ground by the breath of every childish talker. They were
+not afraid that they should be called an ambitious junto; or that their
+resolution to stand or fall together should, by placemen, be interpreted
+into a scuffle for places.
+
+Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the
+national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all
+agreed. For my part, I find it impossible to conceive, that any one
+believes in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any weight, who
+refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into practice. It is
+the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of
+government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher
+in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ
+them with effect. Therefore every honorable connection will avow it is
+their first purpose, to pursue every just method to put the men who hold
+their opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry their
+common plans into execution, with all the power and authority of the
+state. As this power is attached to certain situations, it is their duty
+to contend for these situations. Without a proscription of others, they
+are bound to give to their own party the preference in all things; and
+by no means, for private considerations, to accept any offers of power
+in which the whole body is not included; nor to suffer themselves to be
+led, or to be controlled, or to be overbalanced, in office or in
+council, by those who contradict the very fundamental principles on
+which their party is formed, and even those upon which every fair
+connection must stand. Such a generous contention for power, on such
+manly and honorable maxims, will easily be distinguished from the mean
+and interested struggle for place and emolument. The very style of such
+persons will serve to discriminate them from those numberless impostors,
+who have deluded the ignorant with professions incompatible with human
+practice, and have afterwards incensed them by practices below the level
+of vulgar rectitude.
+
+It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals, that their
+maxims have a plausible air: and, on a cursory view, appear equal to
+first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as
+copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first
+capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the
+worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of _Not men, but
+measures_; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every
+honorable engagement. When I see a man acting this desultory and
+disconnected part, with as much detriment to his own fortune as
+prejudice to the cause of any party, I am not persuaded that he is
+right; but I am ready to believe he is in earnest. I respect virtue in
+all its situations; even when it is found in the unsuitable company of
+weakness. I lament to see qualities, rare and valuable, squandered away
+without any public utility. But when a gentleman with great visible
+emoluments abandons the party in which he has long acted, and tells you,
+it is because he proceeds upon his own judgment; that he acts on the
+merits of the several measures as they arise; and that he is obliged to
+follow his own conscience, and not that of others; he gives reasons
+which it is impossible to controvert, and discovers a character which it
+is impossible to mistake. What shall we think of him who never differed
+from a certain set of men until the moment they lost their power, and
+who never agreed with them in a single instance afterwards? Would not
+such a coincidence of interest and opinion be rather fortunate? Would it
+not be an extraordinary cast upon the dice, that a man's connections
+should degenerate into faction, precisely at the critical moment when
+they lose their power, or he accepts a place? When people desert their
+connections, the desertion is a manifest _fact_, upon which a direct
+simple issue lies, triable by plain men. Whether a _measure_ of
+government be right or wrong, is _no matter of fact_, but a mere affair
+of opinion, on which men may, as they do, dispute and wrangle without
+end. But whether the individual _thinks_ the measure right or wrong, is
+a point at still a greater distance from the reach of all human
+decision. It is therefore very convenient to politicians, not to put the
+judgment of their conduct on overt acts, cognizable in any ordinary
+court, but upon such matter as can be triable only in that secret
+tribunal, where they are sure of being heard with favor, or where at
+worst the sentence will be only private whipping.
+
+I believe the reader would wish to find no substance in a doctrine which
+has a tendency to destroy all test of character as deduced from conduct.
+He will therefore excuse my adding something more, towards the further
+clearing up a point, which the great convenience of obscurity to
+dishonesty has been able to cover with some degree of darkness and
+doubt.
+
+In order to throw an odium on political connection, those politicians
+suppose it a necessary incident to it, that you are blindly to follow
+the opinions of your party, when in direct opposition to your own clear
+ideas; a degree of servitude that no worthy man could bear the thought
+of submitting to; and such as, I believe, no connections (except some
+court factions) ever could be so senselessly tyrannical as to impose.
+Men thinking freely, will, in particular instances, think differently.
+But still as the greater part of the measures which arise in the course
+of public business are related to, or dependent on, some great,
+_leading_, _general principles in government_, a man must be peculiarly
+unfortunate in the choice of his political company, if he does not agree
+with them at least nine times in ten. If he does not concur in these
+general principles upon which the party is founded, and which
+necessarily draw on a concurrence in their application, he ought from
+the beginning to have chosen some other, more conformable to his
+opinions. When the question is in its nature doubtful, or not very
+material, the modesty which becomes an individual, and, (in spite of our
+court moralists) that partiality which becomes a well-chosen friendship,
+will frequently bring on an acquiescence in the general sentiment. Thus
+the disagreement will naturally be rare; it will be only enough to
+indulge freedom, without violating concord, or disturbing arrangement.
+And this is all that ever was required for a character of the greatest
+uniformity and steadiness in connection. How men can proceed without any
+connection at all, is to me utterly incomprehensible. Of what sort of
+materials must that man be made, how must he be tempered and put
+together, who can sit whole years in Parliament, with five hundred and
+fifty of his fellow-citizens, amidst the storm of such tempestuous
+passions, in the sharp conflict of so many wits, and tempers, and
+characters, in the agitation of such mighty questions, in the discussion
+of such vast and ponderous interests, without seeing any one sort of
+men, whose character, conduct, or disposition, would lead him to
+associate himself with them, to aid and be aided, in any one system of
+public utility?
+
+I remember an old scholastic aphorism, which says, "that the man who
+lives wholly detached from others, must be either an angel or a devil."
+When I see in any of these detached gentlemen of our times the angelic
+purity, power, and beneficence, I shall admit them to be angels. In the
+mean time we are born only to be men. We shall do enough if we form
+ourselves to be good ones. It is therefore our business carefully to
+cultivate in our minds, to rear to the most perfect vigor and maturity,
+every sort of generous and honest feeling, that belongs to our nature.
+To bring the dispositions that are lovely in private life into the
+service and conduct of the commonwealth; so to be patriots, as not to
+forget we are gentlemen. To cultivate friendships, and to incur
+enmities. To have both strong, but both selected: in the one, to be
+placable; in the other immovable. To model our principles to our duties
+and our situation. To be fully persuaded, that all virtue which is
+impracticable is spurious; and rather to run the risk of falling into
+faults in a course which leads us to act with effect and energy, than to
+loiter out our days without blame, and without use. Public life is a
+situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps
+upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.
+
+There is, however, a time for all things. It is not every conjuncture
+which calls with equal force upon the activity of honest men; but
+critical exigencies now and then arise; and I am mistaken, if this be
+not one of them. Men will see the necessity of honest combination; but
+they may see it when it is too late. They may embody, when it will be
+ruinous to themselves, and of no advantage to the country; when, for
+want of such a timely union as may enable them to oppose in favor of the
+laws, with the laws on their side, they may at length find themselves
+under the necessity of conspiring, instead of consulting. The law, for
+which they stand, may become a weapon in the hands of its bitterest
+enemies; and they will be cast, at length, into that miserable
+alternative between slavery and civil confusion, which no good man can
+look upon without horror; an alternative in which it is impossible he
+should take either part, with a conscience perfectly at repose. To keep
+that situation of guilt and remorse at the utmost distance is,
+therefore, our first obligation. Early activity may prevent late and
+fruitless violence. As yet we work in the light. The scheme of the
+enemies of public tranquillity has disarranged, it has not destroyed us.
+
+If the reader believes that there really exists such a faction as I have
+described; a faction ruling by the private inclinations of a court,
+against the general sense of the people; and that this faction, whilst
+it pursues a scheme for undermining all the foundations of our freedom,
+weakens (for the present at least) all the powers of executory
+government, rendering us abroad contemptible, and at home distracted; he
+will believe also, that nothing but a firm combination of public men
+against this body, and that, too, supported by the hearty concurrence of
+the people at large, can possibly get the better of it. The people will
+see the necessity of restoring public men to an attention to the public
+opinion, and of restoring the constitution to its original principles.
+Above all, they will endeavor to keep the House of Commons from assuming
+a character which does not belong to it. They will endeavor to keep that
+House, for its existence, for its powers, and its privileges, as
+independent of every other, and as dependent upon themselves, as
+possible. This servitude is to a House of Commons (like obedience to the
+Divine law) "perfect freedom." For if they once quit this natural,
+rational, and liberal obedience, having deserted the only proper
+foundation of their power, they must seek a support in an abject and
+unnatural dependence somewhere else. When, through the medium of this
+just connection with their constituents, the genuine dignity of the
+House of Commons is restored, it will begin to think of casting from it,
+with scorn, as badges of servility, all the false ornaments of illegal
+power, with which it has been, for some time, disgraced. It will begin
+to think of its old office of CONTROL. It will not suffer that last of
+evils to predominate in the country: men without popular confidence,
+public opinion, natural connection, or mutual trust, invested with all
+the powers of government.
+
+When they have learned this lesson themselves, they will be willing and
+able to teach the court, that it is the true interest of the prince to
+have but one administration; and that one composed of those who
+recommend themselves to their sovereign through the opinion of their
+country, and not by their obsequiousness to a favorite. Such men will
+serve their sovereign with affection and fidelity; because his choice of
+them, upon such principles, is a compliment to their virtue. They will
+be able to serve him effectually; because they will add the weight of
+the country to the force of the executory power. They will be able to
+serve their king with dignity; because they will never abuse his name to
+the gratification of their private spleen or avarice. This, with
+allowances for human frailty, may probably be the general character of a
+ministry, which thinks itself accountable to the House of Commons; when
+the House of Commons thinks itself accountable to its constituents. If
+other ideas should prevail, things must remain in their present
+confusion, until they are hurried into all the rage of civil violence,
+or until they sink into the dead repose of despotism.
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[102] Mém. de Sully, tom. i. p. 133.
+
+[103] "Uxor Hugonis de Nevill dat Domino Regi ducentas Gallinas, eo quod
+possit jacere una nocte cum Domino suo Hugone de Nevill."--Maddox, Hist.
+Exch. c. xiii. p. 326.
+
+[104] Sentiments of an Honest Man.
+
+[105] See the political writings of the late Dr. Brown, and many others.
+
+
+
+
+*** Transcriber's notes, corrections ***
+
+p329 behindhand         : was "behind-hand", inconsistent with p442
+p403 pernicious         : was "prenicious"
+
+(see HTML version for pagenumbers)
+*** End Transcriber's notes ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable
+Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12), by Edmund Burke
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDMUND BURKE, VOL. I. (OF 12) ***
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diff --git a/15043-8.zip b/15043-8.zip
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+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Burke's Writings and Speeches, Volume the First, by Edmund Burke.
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+ *	- <p class="citation"> right-just and italicized
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+	div.ctr img { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; }
+
+/*
+ * Use of <ins> ... < /ins> for marking corrected typos:
+ * Surround the corrected text with:
+ *   <ins class="correction"
+ *		title="Transcriber's Note: original read 'txet'">text< /ins>
+ * Very fine underline is not intrusive. Explanation pops up on hover.
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+ */
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+/*
+ * style floating images just like sidebars but no border
+ * Use image class="plain", as div border encloses all.
+ * Use div when caption accompanies image, span for image-only
+ * Note: guiguts expects class names figleft, figright
+ */
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+			margin-left: 4px; /* keep body text away from border */
+			padding: 3px; /* keep caption text away border */
+		}
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+	.floatl, .figleft {
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+			clear: left; /* don't allow overlaps */
+			text-align: center; /* img, caption centered in box */
+			border: 1px solid black; /* thin border */
+			margin-right: 4px; /* keep body text away from border */
+			padding: 3px; /* keep caption text from touching border */
+		}
+/*
+ *   Styling tables and their content
+ */
+
+	table { /* style all < table> elements */
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+		font-weight: bold;
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+		/* font-size: 90%; OLD */
+		/* text-align: left; OLD*/
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+                     allows rewrap with indent.
+                     set padding-left: to 1 on main table...
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+ * Styling Poetry the method generated by Guiguts:
+ *  div class=poem encloses poem
+ *  h4 within the poem div for poem title
+ *  div class=stanza encloses stanza
+ *	p [class=iN] encloses line
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+ */
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+		text-align: left;
+		margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;
+		position: relative;  /* basis of .linenum positions */
+		/* background-color: #fdc; /* Demonstration only: DELETE */
+		}
+	.poem h4 {
+		margin-left: 5em;
+		text-decoration: underline;
+		}
+	.poem .stanza {
+		margin-top: 1em; /* vertical break between stanzas */
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+	.stanza div { /* default line */
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+		margin-top: 0em;
+		margin-left: 2em;
+		text-indent: -2em;
+		}
+	.poem .i1 {margin-left: 3em;} /* p or span indents */
+	.poem .i2 {margin-left: 4em;} /* indents */
+	.poem .i3 {margin-left: 5em;} /* indents */
+	.poem .i4 {margin-left: 6em;} /* indents */
+	.poem .i5 {margin-left: 7em;} /* indents */
+	.poem .i6 {margin-left: 8em;} /* indents */
+	.poem .i7 {margin-left: 9em;} /* indents */
+	.poem .i8 {margin-left: 10em;} /* indents */
+	.poem .i9 {margin-left: 11em;} /* indents */
+    .poem .caesura	{	/* vertical break in mid-line */
+    	vertical-align: -200%;
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+
+	.poem .linenum {
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+		font-size: 90%;			/* they are smaller */
+		text-align: center;		/* centered in a space... */
+		width: 1.75em;				/* ...about 3+ digits wide */
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+/* THESE LINES ADDED BY MP */
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+ * Problem: display is within the text between words. (you can't do
+ * absolute positioning of generated content.)
+ */
+	.page1:after {
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+				content: "[" attr(title) "]";
+				font-size: 50%;
+				background-color: rgb(95%,95%,95%);
+				vertical-align: 0.25em; /* raise its baseline */
+				}
+/*
+ * This code uses absolute positioning to display page numbers in the
+ * right margin. It presumes that every page-number anchor is augmented
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+ *	<a id="Page_NN">< /a> <span class="page2">NN< /span>
+ *
+ * Advantage: absolute positioning lets you put #s in the margin.
+ * Drawback: non-CSS browsers display the number inline instead.
+ * Drawback: multiple pagenumbers in the same text line overlap in the margin
+ */
+
+	.page2 {	display: inline; /* none or inline	*/
+				font-size:50%;
+				text-align: right;
+				padding: 0 0 0 0 ;
+				margin: 0 0 0 0;
+				position: absolute; right: 1%;}
+
+/*
+ * Styling footnotes and their references. See text for discussion.
+ * NOTE: Guiguts keeps changing the classnames it uses for the
+ * footnote div and p's. Be prepared to change these to match.
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+			font-size: smaller; /* discreet [X] */
+			vertical-align: 2px; /* bumped up a trace from baseline */
+		}
+
+	.note {
+			font-size: 90%;  /* somewhat smaller */
+			margin: 0 2em 2em 1em;
+                        text-align: justify;
+		}
+
+	.footnotes {  /* ADDED BY MP */
+                      border: dashed 1px;  /* Added by MP */
+                /*but note that knoqueror messes it up (though readable)*/
+		}
+/*
+ * Stylings for drama:
+ *    h4.scn is the scene-header, centered, italic
+ *    span.cnm is for all character-names
+ *    p.sdn is the stage-direction paragraph
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+ *    span.sdm is the mid-line embedded direction
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+	h4.scn {
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+		text-align: center; font-style: italic;
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+	span.sdm { font-style: italic; 	}
+	span.sdm:before {  font-style:normal; content: "[" }
+	span.sdm:after { font-style:normal; content: "]" }
+	span.sdr {
+		font-style: italic;
+		position: absolute;
+		text-align: right;
+		right: 0; top:auto;
+	}
+	span.sdr:before { font-style:normal; content: "[" }
+	.cnm { /* Character NaMe default (dialog) */
+		font-style: italic;
+	}
+	.sdn .cnm, sdm .cnm, .sdr .cnm { /* Character NaMe inside Stage DirectioN */
+		font-style: normal;
+	}
+	.dlg .linenum {
+		margin: 0; text-indent:0;
+		font-size: 90%;			/* they are smaller */
+		text-align: center;		/* centered in a space... */
+		width: 1.75em;			/* ...about 3+ digits wide */
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+		/*  left: -5em; 		  ...positioned in LEFT margin */
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+
+    /* XML end  ]]> */ /*old browser end */ -->
+    </style>
+   </head>
+
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund
+Burke, Vol. I. (of 12), by Edmund Burke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12)
+
+Author: Edmund Burke
+
+Release Date: March 27, 2005 [EBook #15043]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDMUND BURKE, VOL. I. (OF 12) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Michael Punch and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from
+images generously made available by the Bibliotheque
+nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p><!-- Page 1 --><a name="Page_-3" id="Page_-3"></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p />
+<h1 style="text-align: center"><a name="BURKES_WRITINGS_AND_SPEECHES" id="BURKES_WRITINGS_AND_SPEECHES"></a>BURKE'S WRITINGS AND SPEECHES</h1>
+<p />
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2>VOLUME THE FIRST</h2>
+
+<!-- Page 2 --><div><a name="Page_-2" id="Page_-2"></a><!-- Page 3 --></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<!-- Page 4 --><div><a name="Page_0" id="Page_0"></a></div>
+<p />
+<div style="text-align: center">
+<img src="images/edburke.jpg" alt="EDMUND BURKE." title="EDMUND BURKE" />
+<p><b>EDMUND BURKE.</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<!-- Transcriber's note: line of writing immediately below the illustration (probably engraver's name, etc.) is unreadable -->
+<div><!-- Page 5 --><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i" title="i"></a></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><span style="text-align: center">THE WORKS
+<br /><br />
+<span style="font-size: 71%">OF</span>
+<br /><br />
+THE RIGHT HONOURABLE<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 200%">EDMUND BURKE</span></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span style="text-align: center">IN TWELVE VOLUMES<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: smaller">VOLUME THE FIRST</span></span></h3>
+<p />
+<div style="text-align: center">
+<img src="images/001.png" alt="BURKE COAT OF ARMS." title="BURKE COAT OF ARMS"/>
+</div>
+<p />
+<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0"><b>London</b><br />
+<br />
+JOHN C. NIMMO<br />
+<br />
+14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.<br />
+<br />
+MDCCCLXXXVII<br /></p>
+<!-- Page 6 --><div><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii" title="ii" class="pagenum"></a><!-- Page 7 --><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii" title="iii" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS_OF_VOL_I" id="CONTENTS_OF_VOL_I"></a>CONTENTS OF VOL. I.</h2>
+
+<p /> <!-- bizarrely, without this line, IE5 doesn't show the TOC at all!! (just a big blank) -->
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li><a href="#ADVERTISEMENT">
+ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER, PREFIXED TO THE FIRST
+OCTAVO EDITION</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_v">v</a></span></li>
+<li /><li>  <!-- Empty list element gives better spacing in IE -->
+<a href="#ADVERTISEMENT2">ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND OCTAVO EDITION</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_xvii">xvii</a></span></li>
+<li /><li>
+<a href="#A_VINDICATION_OF_NATURAL_SOCIETY">A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY: OR, A VIEW OF
+THE MISERIES AND EVILS ARISING TO MANKIND FROM
+EVERY SPECIES OF ARTIFICIAL SOCIETY</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></span></li>
+<li>
+<ul class="TOCSub">
+<li><a href="#PREFACE">PREFACE</a></li>
+<li><a href="#A_LETTER_TO_LORD__mdash">A LETTER TO LORD ****</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li /><li>
+<a href="#A_PHILOSOPHICAL_INQUIRY">A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR
+IDEAS OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL; WITH AN INTRODUCTORY
+DISCOURSE CONCERNING TASTE</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></span></li>
+<li>
+<ul class="TOCSub">
+<li><a href="#PREFACE2">PREFACE</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></li>
+<li><a href="#INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PART_I">PART I</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PART_II">PART II</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PART_III">PART III</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PART_IV">PART IV</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PART_V">PART V</a></li>
+<li><a href="#APPENDIX">APPENDIX</a></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li /><li>
+<a href="#A_SHORT_ACCOUNT_OF_A_LATE_SHORT_ADMINISTRATION">
+A SHORT ACCOUNT OF A LATE SHORT ADMINISTRATION</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_263">263</a></span></li>
+<li /><li>
+<a href="#OBSERVATIONS_ON_A_LATE_PUBLICATION">OBSERVATIONS ON A LATE PUBLICATION, INTITULED, &quot;THE
+PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION&quot;</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></span></li>
+<li /><li>
+<a href="#THOUGHTS_ON_THE_CAUSE_OF_THE_PRESENT_DISCONTENTS_">
+THOUGHTS ON THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_433">433</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<!-- Page 8 --><div><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv" title="iv" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+<!-- Page 9 --><div><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v" title="v" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ADVERTISEMENT" id="ADVERTISEMENT"></a>ADVERTISEMENT</h2>
+
+<p>TO THE READER.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor"
+title="Prefixed to the first octavo edition: London, F. and C. Rivington,
+1801: comprising Vols. I.-VIII. of the edition in sixteen volumes issued
+by these publishers at intervals between the years 1801 and 1827.">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>The late Mr. Burke, from a principle of unaffected
+humility, which they who were the most intimately
+acquainted with his character best know to
+have been in his estimation one of the most important
+moral duties, never himself made any collection
+of the various publications with which, during a
+period of forty years, he adorned and enriched the
+literature of this country. When, however, the rapid
+and unexampled demand for his &quot;Reflections on the
+Revolution in France&quot; had unequivocally testified
+his celebrity as a writer, some of his friends so far
+prevailed upon him, that he permitted them to put
+forth a regular edition of his works. Accordingly,
+three volumes in quarto appeared under that title in
+1792, printed for the late Mr. Dodsley. That edition,
+therefore, has been made the foundation of the present,
+for which a form has been chosen better adapted
+to public convenience. Such errors of the press as
+have been discovered in it are here rectified: in other
+<!-- Page 10 --><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi" title="vi" class="pagenum"></a>respects it is faithfully followed, except that in one
+instance an accident of little moment has occasioned
+a slight deviation from the strict chronological arrangement,
+and that, on the other hand, a speech of
+conspicuous excellence, on his declining the poll at
+Bristol, in 1780, is here, for the first time, inserted
+in its proper place.</p>
+
+<p>As the activity of the author's mind, and the lively
+interest which he took in the welfare of his country,
+ceased only with his life, many subsequent productions
+issued from his pen, which were received in a
+manner corresponding with his distinguished reputation.
+He wrote also various tracts, of a less popular
+description, which he designed for private circulation
+in quarters where he supposed they might produce
+most benefit to the community, but which, with some
+other papers, have been printed since his death, from
+copies which he left behind him fairly transcribed,
+and most of them corrected as for the press. All
+these, now first collected together, form the contents
+of the last two volumes.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor"
+title="Comprising the last four papers of the fourth volume, and the whole
+of the fifth volume, of the present edition.">[2]</a> They are disposed in
+chronological order, with the exception of the &quot;Preface
+to Brissot's Address,&quot; which having appeared
+in the author's lifetime, and from delicacy not being
+avowed by him, did not come within the plan of this
+edition, but has been placed at the end of the last
+volume, on its being found deficient in its just bulk.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 11 --><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii" title="vii" class="pagenum"></a>The several posthumous publications, as they from
+time to time made their appearance, were accompanied
+by appropriate prefaces. These, however, as
+they were principally intended for temporary purposes,
+have been omitted. Some few explanations
+only, which they contained, seem here to be necessary.</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;Observations on the Conduct of the Minority&quot;
+in the Session of 1793 had been written and
+sent by Mr. Burke as a paper entirely and strictly
+confidential; but it crept surreptitiously into the
+world, through the fraud and treachery of the man
+whom he had employed to transcribe it, and, as
+usually happens in such cases, came forth in a very
+mangled state, under a false title, and without the
+introductory letter. The friends of the author, without
+waiting to consult him, instantly obtained an injunction
+from the Court of Chancery to stop the sale.
+What he himself felt, on receiving intelligence of the
+injury done him by one from whom his kindness deserved
+a very different return, will be best conveyed
+in his own words. The following is an extract of a
+letter to a friend, which he dictated on this subject
+from a sick-bed.</p>
+
+<p>BATH, 15th Feb., 1797.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My Dear Laurence,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On the appearance of the advertisement, all
+newspapers and all letters have been kept back
+from me till this time. Mrs. Burke opened yours,
+<!-- Page 12 --><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii" title="viii" class="pagenum"></a>and finding that all the measures in the power
+of Dr. King, yourself, and Mr. Woodford, had been
+taken to suppress the publication, she ventured to
+deliver me the letters to-day, which were read to me
+in my bed, about two o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This affair does vex me; but I am not in a state
+of health at present to be deeply vexed at anything.
+Whenever this matter comes into discussion, I authorize
+you to contradict the infamous reports which
+(I am informed) have been given out, that this
+paper had been circulated through the ministry, and
+was intended gradually to slide into the press. To
+the best of my recollection I never had a clean copy
+of it but one, which is now in my possession; I never
+communicated that, but to the Duke of Portland,
+from whom I had it back again. But the Duke will
+set this matter to rights, if in reality there were two
+copies, and he has one. I never showed it, as they
+know, to any one of the ministry. If the Duke has
+really a copy, I believe his and mine are the only
+ones that exist, except what was taken by fraud from
+loose and incorrect papers by S&mdash;&mdash;, to whom I gave
+the letter to copy. As soon as I began to suspect
+him capable of any such scandalous breach of trust,
+you know with what anxiety I got the loose papers
+out of his hands, not having reason to think that he
+kept any other. Neither do I believe in fact (unless
+he meditated this villany long ago) that he did or
+does now possess any clean copy. I never commu<!-- Page 13 --><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix" title="ix" class="pagenum"></a>nicated
+that paper to any one out of the very small
+circle of those private friends from whom I concealed
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I beg you and my friends to be cautious how
+you let it be understood that I disclaim anything
+but the mere act and intention of publication. I do
+not retract any one of the sentiments contained in
+that memorial, which was and is my justification, addressed
+to the friends for whose use alone I intended
+it. Had I designed it for the public, I should have
+been more exact and full. It was written in a tone
+of indignation, in consequence of the resolutions of
+the Whig Club, which were directly pointed against
+myself and others, and occasioned our secession from
+that club; which is the last act of my life that I shall
+under any circumstances repent. Many temperaments
+and explanations there would have been, if I
+had ever had a notion that it should meet the public
+eye.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<p>In the mean time a large impression, amounting, it
+is believed, to three thousand copies, had been dispersed
+over the country. To recall these was impossible;
+to have expected that any acknowledged
+production of Mr. Burke, full of matter likely to
+interest the future historian, could remain forever
+in obscurity, would have been folly; and to have
+passed it over in silent neglect, on the one hand,
+or, on the other, to have then made any considerable
+<!-- Page 14 --><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x" title="x" class="pagenum"></a>changes in it, might have seemed an abandonment of
+the principles which it contained. The author, therefore,
+discovering, that, with the exception of the introductory
+letter, he had not in fact kept any clean
+copy, as he had supposed, corrected one of the pamphlets
+with his own hand. From this, which was
+found preserved with his other papers, his friends
+afterwards thought it their duty to give an authentic
+edition.</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;Thoughts and Details on Scarcity&quot; were
+originally presented in the form of a memorial to
+Mr. Pitt. The author proposed afterwards to recast
+the same matter in a new shape. He even advertised
+the intended work under the title of &quot;Letters
+on Rural Economics, addressed to Mr. Arthur
+Young&quot;; but he seems to have finished only two
+or three detached fragments of the first letter.
+These being too imperfect to be printed alone, his
+friends inserted them in the memorial, where they
+seemed best to cohere. The memorial had been
+fairly copied, but did not appear to have been examined
+or corrected, as some trifling errors of the transcriber
+were perceptible in it. The manuscript of the
+fragments was a rough draft from the author's own
+hand, much blotted and very confused.</p>
+
+<p>The Third Letter on the Proposals for Peace was
+in its progress through the press when the author
+died. About one half of it was actually revised in
+print by himself, though not in the exact order of the
+<!-- Page 15 --><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi" title="xi" class="pagenum"></a>pages as they now stand. He enlarged his first draft,
+and separated one great member of his subject, for
+the purpose of introducing some other matter between.
+The different parcels of manuscript designed
+to intervene were discovered. One of them he seemed
+to have gone over himself, and to have improved and
+augmented. The other (fortunately the smaller) was
+much more imperfect, just as it was taken from his
+mouth by dictation. The former reaches from the
+two hundred and forty-sixth to near the end of the
+two hundred and sixty-second page; the latter nearly
+occupies the twelve pages which follow.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor"
+title="The former comprising the matter included between the paragraph
+commencing, &quot;I hear it has been said,&quot; &amp;c., and that ending with the
+words, &quot;there were little or no materials&quot;; and the latter extending
+through the paragraph concluding with the words, &quot;disgraced and plagued
+mankind.&quot;">[3]</a> No important
+change, none at all affecting the meaning of any
+passage, has been made in either, though in the more
+imperfect parcel some latitude of discretion in subordinate
+points was necessarily used.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, a considerable member for the
+greater part of which Mr. Burke's reputation is not
+responsible: this is the inquiry into the condition of
+the higher classes, which commences in the two hundred
+and ninety-fifth page.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor"
+title="At the paragraph commencing with the words, &quot;In turning our
+view from the lower to the higher classes,&quot; &amp;c.">[4]</a> The summary of the
+whole topic, indeed, nearly as it stands in the three
+hundred and seventy-third and fourth pages,<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor"
+title="In the first half of the paragraph commencing, &quot;If, then, the real
+state of this nation,&quot; &amp;c.">[5]</a> was
+<!-- Page 16 --><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii" title="xii" class="pagenum"></a>found, together with a marginal reference to the
+Bankrupt List, in his own handwriting; and the
+actual conclusion of the Letter was dictated by him,
+but never received his subsequent correction. He
+had also preserved, as materials for this branch of his
+subject, some scattered hints, documents, and parts
+of a correspondence on the state of the country. He
+was, however, prevented from working on them by
+the want of some authentic and official information,
+for which he had been long anxiously waiting, in
+order to ascertain, to the satisfaction of the public,
+what, with his usual sagacity, he had fully anticipated
+from his own personal observation, to his own
+private conviction. At length the reports of the different
+committees which had been appointed by the
+two Houses of Parliament amply furnished him with
+evidence for this purpose. Accordingly he read and
+considered them with attention: but for anything
+beyond this the season was now past. The Supreme
+Disposer of All, against whose inscrutable counsels it
+is vain as well as impious to murmur, did not permit
+him to enter on the execution of the task which he
+meditated. It was resolved, therefore, by one of his
+friends, after much hesitation, and under a very painful
+responsibility, to make such an attempt as he could
+at supplying the void; especially because the insufficiency
+of our resources for the continuance of the war
+was understood to have been the principal objection
+urged against the two former Letters on the Proposals
+<!-- Page 17 --><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii" title="xiii" class="pagenum"></a>for Peace. In performing with reverential diffidence
+this duty of friendship, care has been taken not to
+attribute to Mr. Burke any sentiment which is not
+most explicitly known, from repeated conversations,
+and from much correspondence, to have been decidedly
+entertained by that illustrious man. One passage
+of nearly three pages, containing a censure of
+our defensive system, is borrowed from a private letter,
+which he began to dictate with an intention of
+comprising in it the short result of his opinions, but
+which he afterwards abandoned, when, a little time
+before his death, his health appeared in some degree
+to amend, and he hoped that Providence might have
+spared him at least to complete the larger public letter,
+which he then proposed to resume.</p>
+
+<p>In the preface to the former edition of this Letter
+a fourth was mentioned as being in possession of Mr.
+Burke's friends. It was in fact announced by the
+author himself, in the conclusion of the second, which
+it was then designed to follow. He intended, he said,
+to proceed next on the question of the facilities possessed
+by the French Republic, <i>from the internal state
+of other nations, and particularly of this</i>, for obtaining
+her ends,&mdash;and as his notions were controverted, to
+take notice of what, in that way, had been recommended
+to him. The vehicle which he had chosen
+for this part of his plan was an answer to a pamphlet
+which was supposed to come from high authority, and
+was circulated by ministers with great industry, at the
+<!-- Page 18 --><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv" title="xiv" class="pagenum"></a>time of its appearance, in October, 1795, immediately
+previous to that session of Parliament when his Majesty
+for the first time declared that the appearance
+of any disposition in the enemy to negotiate for general
+peace should not fail to be met with an earnest
+desire to give it the fullest and speediest effect. In
+truth, the answer, which is full of spirit and vivacity,
+was written the latter end of the same year, but
+was laid aside when the question assumed a more
+serious aspect, from the commencement of an actual
+negotiation, which gave rise to the series of printed
+letters. Afterwards, he began to rewrite it, with a
+view of accommodating it to his new purpose. The
+greater part, however, still remained in its original
+state; and several heroes of the Revolution, who are
+there celebrated, having in the interval passed off the
+public stage, a greater liberty of insertion and alteration
+than his friends on consideration have thought
+allowable would be necessary to adapt it to that
+place in the series for which it was ultimately designed
+by the author. This piece, therefore, addressed,
+as the title originally stood, to his noble
+friend, Earl Fitzwilliam, will be given the first in the
+supplemental volumes which will be hereafter added
+to complete this edition of the author's works.</p>
+
+<p>The tracts, most of them in manuscript, which have
+been already selected as fit for this purpose, will
+probably furnish four or five volumes more, to be
+printed uniformly with this edition. The principal
+<!-- Page 19 --><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv" title="xv" class="pagenum"></a>piece is an Essay on the History of England, from the
+earliest period to the conclusion of the reign of King
+John. It is written with much depth of antiquarian
+research, directed by the mind of an intelligent statesman.
+This alone, as far as can be conjectured, will
+form more than one volume. Another entire volume
+also, at least, will be filled with his letters to public
+men on public affairs, especially those of France.
+This supplement will be sent to the press without
+delay.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Burke's more familiar correspondence will be
+reserved as authorities to accompany a narrative of
+his life, which will conclude the whole. The period
+during which he flourished was one of the most memorable
+of our annals. It comprehended the acquisition
+of one empire in the East, the loss of another in
+the West, and the total subversion of the ancient system
+of Europe by the French Revolution, with all
+which events the history of his life is necessarily and
+intimately connected,&mdash;as indeed it also is, much
+more than is generally known, with the state of literature
+and the elegant arts. Such a subject of biography
+cannot be dismissed with a slight and rapid
+touch; nor can it be treated in a manner worthy of
+it, from the information, however authentic and extensive,
+which the industry of any one man may have
+accumulated. Many important communications have
+been received; but some materials, which relate to
+the pursuits of his early years, and which are known
+<!-- Page 20 --><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi" title="xvi" class="pagenum"></a>to be in existence, have been hitherto kept back, notwithstanding
+repeated inquiries and applications. It
+is, therefore, once more earnestly requested, that all
+persons who call themselves the friends or admirers
+of the late Edmund Burke will have the goodness to
+transmit, without delay, any notices of that or of any
+other kind which may happen to be in their possession
+or within their reach, to Messrs. Rivingtons,&mdash;a
+respect and kindness to his memory which will be
+thankfully acknowledged by those friends to whom,
+in dying, he committed the sacred trust of his reputation.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Prefixed to the first octavo edition: London, F. and C. Rivington,
+1801: comprising Vols. I.-VIII. of the edition in sixteen volumes
+issued by these publishers at intervals between the years 1801 and 1827.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Comprising the last four papers of the fourth volume, and the
+whole of the fifth volume, of the present edition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The former comprising the matter included between the paragraph
+commencing, &quot;I hear it has been said,&quot; &amp;c., and that ending
+with the words, &quot;there were little or no materials&quot;; and the latter
+extending through the paragraph concluding with the words, &quot;disgraced
+and plagued mankind.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> At the paragraph commencing with the words, &quot;In turning our
+view from the lower to the higher classes,&quot; &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> In the first half of the paragraph commencing, &quot;If, then, the real
+state of this nation,&quot; &amp;c.</p></div><!-- Page 21 --><div><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii" title="xvii" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ADVERTISEMENT2" id="ADVERTISEMENT2"></a>ADVERTISEMENT</h2>
+
+<p>TO THE SECOND OCTAVO EDITION.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor"
+title="London, F. and C. Rivington, 1803. 8 vols.">[6]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>A new edition of the works of Mr. Burke having
+been called for by the public, the opportunity
+has been taken to make some slight changes, it is
+hoped for the better.</p>
+
+<p>A different distribution of the contents, while it has
+made the volumes, with the exception of the first and
+sixth, more nearly equal in their respective bulk, has,
+at the same time, been fortunately found to produce
+a more methodical arrangement of the whole. The
+first and second volumes, as before, severally contain
+those literary and philosophical works by which Mr.
+Burke was known previous to the commencement of
+his public life as a statesman, and the political pieces
+which were written by him between the time of his
+first becoming connected with the Marquis of Rockingham
+and his being chosen member for Bristol.
+In the third are comprehended all his speeches and
+pamphlets from his first arrival at Bristol, as a candidate,
+in the year 1774, to his farewell address
+from the hustings of that city, in the year 1780.
+<!-- Page 22 --><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii" title="xviii" class="pagenum"></a>What he himself published relative to the affairs of
+India occupies the fourth volume. The remaining
+four comprise his works since the French Revolution,
+with the exception of the Letter to Lord Kenmare on
+the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics, which was
+probably inserted where it stands from its relation to
+the subject of the Letter addressed by him, at a later
+period, to Sir Hercules Langrishe. With the same
+exception, too, strict regard has been paid to chronological
+order, which, in the last edition, was in some
+instances broken, to insert pieces that wore not discovered
+till it was too late to introduce them in their
+proper places.</p>
+
+<p>In the Appendix to the Speech on the Nabob of
+Arcot's Debts the references were found to be confused,
+and, in many places, erroneous. This probably
+had arisen from the circumstance that a larger
+and differently constructed appendix seems to have
+been originally designed by Mr. Burke, which, however,
+he afterwards abridged and altered, while the
+speech and the notes upon it remained as they were.
+The text and the documents that support it have
+throughout been accommodated to each other.</p>
+
+<p>The orthography has been in many cases altered,
+and an attempt made to reduce it to some certain
+standard. The rule laid down for the discharge of
+this task was, that, whenever Mr. Burke could be perceived
+to have been uniform in his mode of spelling,
+that was considered as decisive; but where he varied,
+<!-- Page 23 --><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix" title="xix" class="pagenum"></a>(and as he was in the habit of writing by dictation,
+and leaving to others the superintendence of the
+press, he was peculiarly liable to variations of this
+sort) the best received authorities were directed to be
+followed. The reader, it is trusted, will find this object,
+too much disregarded in modern books, has here
+been kept in view throughout. The quotations which
+are interspersed through the works of Mr Burke, and
+which were frequently made by him from memory,
+have been generally compared with the original authors.
+Several mistakes in printing, of one word for
+another, by which the sense was either perverted or
+obscured, are now rectified. Two or three small insertions
+have also been made from a quarto copy corrected
+by Mr. Burke himself. From the same source
+something more has been drawn in the shape of notes,
+to which are subscribed his initials. Of this number
+is the explanation of that celebrated phrase, &quot;the
+swinish multitude&quot;: an explanation which was uniformly
+given by him to his friends, in conversation
+on the subject. But another note will probably interest
+the reader still more, as being strongly expressive
+of that parental affection which formed so amiable a
+feature in the character of Mr. Burke. It is in page
+203 of Vol. V., where he points out a considerable
+passage as having been supplied by his &quot;lost son&quot;.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor"
+title="In &quot;Reflections on the Revolution in France,&quot;&mdash;indicated by
+foot-note _in loco_.">[7]</a>
+Several other parts, possibly amounting altogether to
+<!-- Page 24 --><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx" title="xx" class="pagenum"></a>a page or thereabout, were indicated in the same
+manner; but, as they in general consist of single sentences,
+and as the meaning of the mark by which they
+were distinguished was not actually expressed, it has
+not been thought necessary to notice them particularly.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> London, F. and C. Rivington, 1803. 8 vols.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> In &quot;Reflections on the Revolution in France,&quot;&mdash;indicated by
+foot-note <i>in loco</i>.</p></div><!-- Page 25 --><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" title="1" class="pagenum"></a>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_VINDICATION_OF_NATURAL_SOCIETY" id="A_VINDICATION_OF_NATURAL_SOCIETY"></a>
+<span style="font-size: 60%">A</span><br />
+<br />
+VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY:<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 60%">OR,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 71%">A VIEW OF THE MISERIES AND EVILS ARISING TO MANKIND<br />
+FROM EVERY SPECIES OF ARTIFICIAL SOCIETY.</span><br />
+<br />
+IN A LETTER TO LORD ****,<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 60%">BY A LATE NOBLE WRITER.<br />
+<br />
+1756.</span><br />
+</h2>
+<!-- Page 26 --><div><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" title="2" class="pagenum"></a><!-- Page 27 --><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" title="3" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Before the philosophical works of Lord Bolingbroke
+had appeared, great things were expected
+from the leisure of a man, who, from the splendid
+scene of action in which his talents had enabled him
+to make so conspicuous a figure, had retired to employ
+those talents in the investigation of truth. Philosophy
+began to congratulate herself upon such a
+proselyte from the world of business, and hoped to
+have extended her power under the auspices of
+such a leader. In the midst of these pleasing expectations,
+the works themselves at last appeared in
+<i>full body</i>, and with great pomp. Those who searched
+in them for new discoveries in the mysteries of nature;
+those who expected something which might
+explain or direct the operations of the mind; those
+who hoped to see morality illustrated and enforced;
+those who looked for new helps to society and government;
+those who desired to see the characters
+and passions of mankind delineated; in short, all
+who consider such things as philosophy, and require
+some of them at least in every philosophical
+work, all these were certainly disappointed; they
+found the landmarks of science precisely in their
+former places: and they thought they received but
+a poor recompense for this disappointment, in seeing
+every mode of religion attacked in a lively manner,
+<!-- Page 28 --><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" title="4" class="pagenum"></a>and the foundation of every virtue, and of all government,
+sapped with great art and much ingenuity.
+What advantage do we derive from such writings?
+What delight can a man find in employing a capacity
+which might be usefully exerted for the noblest
+purposes, in a sort of sullen labor, in which, if
+the author could succeed, he is obliged to own, that
+nothing could be more fatal to mankind than his
+success?</p>
+
+<p>I cannot conceive how this sort of writers propose
+to compass the designs they pretend to have in view,
+by the instruments which they employ. Do they
+pretend to exalt the mind of man, by proving him
+no better than a beast? Do they think to enforce
+the practice of virtue, by denying that vice and virtue
+are distinguished by good or ill fortune here, or
+by happiness or misery hereafter? Do they imagine
+they shall increase our piety, and our reliance
+on God, by exploding his providence, and insisting
+that he is neither just nor good? Such are the doctrines
+which, sometimes concealed, sometimes openly
+and fully avowed, are found to prevail throughout the
+writings of Lord Bolingbroke; and such are the reasonings
+which this noble writer and several others
+have been pleased to dignify with the name of philosophy.
+If these are delivered in a specious manner,
+and in a style above the common, they cannot want a
+number of admirers of as much docility as can be
+wished for in disciples. To these the editor of the
+following little piece has addressed it: there is no
+reason to conceal the design of it any longer.</p>
+
+<p>The design was to show that, without the exertion
+of any considerable forces, the same engines which
+were employed for the destruction of religion, might
+<!-- Page 29 --><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" title="5" class="pagenum"></a>be employed with equal success for the subversion of
+government; and that specious arguments might be
+used against those things which they, who doubt of
+everything else, will never permit to be questioned.
+It is an observation which I think Isocrates makes in
+one of his orations against the sophists, that it is far
+more easy to maintain a wrong cause, and to support
+paradoxical opinions to the satisfaction of a common
+auditory, than to establish a doubtful truth by solid
+and conclusive arguments. When men find that
+something can be said in favor of what, on the very
+proposal, they have thought utterly indefensible,
+they grow doubtful of their own reason; they are
+thrown into a sort of pleasing surprise; they run
+along with the speaker, charmed and captivated to
+find such a plentiful harvest of reasoning, where all
+seemed barren and unpromising. This is the fairy
+land of philosophy. And it very frequently happens,
+that those pleasing impressions on the imagination
+subsist and produce their effect, even after the
+understanding has been satisfied of their unsubstantial
+nature. There is a sort of gloss upon ingenious
+falsehoods that dazzles the imagination, but which
+neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober aspect of
+truth. I have met with a quotation in Lord Coke's
+Reports that pleased me very much, though I do not
+know from whence he has taken it: &quot;<i>Interdum fucata
+falsitas</i> (says he), <i>in multis est probabilior, at s&aelig;pe rationibus
+vincit nudam veritatem</i>.&quot; In such cases the
+writer has a certain fire and alacrity inspired into
+him by a consciousness, that, let it fare how it will
+with the subject, his ingenuity will be sure of applause;
+and this alacrity becomes much greater if
+he acts upon the offensive, by the impetuosity that
+<!-- Page 30 --><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" title="6" class="pagenum"></a>always accompanies an attack, and the unfortunate
+propensity which mankind have to the finding and
+exaggerating faults. The editor is satisfied that a
+mind which has no restraint from a sense of its own
+weakness, of its subordinate rank in the creation,
+and of the extreme danger of letting the imagination
+loose upon some subjects, may very plausibly attack
+everything the most excellent and venerable; that
+it would not be difficult to criticise the creation itself;
+and that if we were to examine the divine fabrics
+by our ideas of reason and fitness, and to use
+the same method of attack by which some men have
+assaulted revealed religion, we might with as good
+color, and with the same success, make the wisdom
+and power of God in his creation appear to many no
+better than foolishness. There is an air of plausibility
+which accompanies vulgar reasonings and
+notions, taken from the beaten circle of ordinary
+experience, that is admirably suited to the narrow
+capacities of some, and to the laziness of others. But
+this advantage is in a great measure lost, when a
+painful, comprehensive survey of a very complicated
+matter, and which requires a great variety of considerations,
+is to be made; when we must seek in a profound
+subject, not only for arguments, but for new
+materials of argument, their measures and their
+method of arrangement; when we must go out of
+the sphere of our ordinary ideas, and when we can
+never walk surely, but by being sensible of our blindness.
+And this we must do, or we do nothing, whenever
+we examine the result of a reason which is not
+our own. Even in matters which are, as it were,
+just within our reach, what would become of the
+world, if the practice of all moral duties, and the
+<!-- Page 31 --><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" title="7" class="pagenum"></a>foundations of society, rested upon having their reasons
+made clear and demonstrative to every individual?</p>
+
+<p>The editor knows that the subject of this letter is
+not so fully handled as obviously it might; it was
+not his design to say all that could possibly be
+said. It had been inexcusable to fill a large volume
+with the abuse of reason; nor would such an
+abuse have been tolerable, even for a few pages, if
+some under-plot, of more consequence than the apparent
+design, had not been carried on.</p>
+
+<p>Some persons have thought that the advantages of
+the state of nature ought to have been more fully
+displayed. This had undoubtedly been a very ample
+subject for declamation; but they do not consider the
+character of the piece. The writers against religion,
+whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful
+never to set up any of their own. If some inaccuracies
+in calculation, in reasoning, or in method, be
+found, perhaps these will not be looked upon as
+faults by the admirers of Lord Bolingbroke; who
+will, the editor is afraid, observe much more of his
+lordship's character in such particulars of the following
+letter, than they are likely to find of that rapid
+torrent of an impetuous and overbearing eloquence,
+and the variety of rich imagery for which that writer
+is justly admired.<!-- Page 32 --><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8" title="8" class="pagenum"></a><!-- Page 33 --><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" title="9" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_LETTER_TO_LORD__mdash" id="A_LETTER_TO_LORD__mdash"></a>A LETTER TO LORD ****.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Shall I venture to say, my lord, that in our
+late conversation, you were inclined to the
+party which you adopted rather by the feelings of
+your good nature, than by the conviction of your
+judgment? We laid open the foundations of society;
+and you feared that the curiosity of this search
+might endanger the ruin of the whole fabric. You
+would readily have allowed my principle, but you
+dreaded the consequences; you thought, that having
+once entered upon these reasonings, we might be carried
+insensibly and irresistibly farther than at first
+we could either have imagined or wished. But for
+my part, my lord, I then thought, and am still of the
+same opinion, that error, and not truth of any kind,
+is dangerous; that ill conclusions can only flow from
+false propositions; and that, to know whether any
+proposition be true or false, it is a preposterous
+method to examine it by its apparent consequences.</p>
+
+<p>These were the reasons which induced me to go so
+far into that inquiry; and they are the reasons which
+direct me in all my inquiries. I had indeed often
+reflected on that subject before I could prevail on
+myself to communicate my reflections to anybody.
+They were generally melancholy enough; as those
+usually are which carry us beyond the mere surface
+of things; and which would undoubtedly make the
+<!-- Page 34 --><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" title="10" class="pagenum"></a>lives of all thinking men extremely miserable, if the
+same philosophy which caused the grief, did not at
+the same time administer the comfort.</p>
+
+<p>On considering political societies, their origin, their
+constitution, and their effects, I have sometimes been
+in a good deal more than doubt, whether the Creator
+did ever really intend man for a state of happiness.
+He has mixed in his cup a number of natural evils,
+(in spite of the boasts of stoicism they are evils,) and
+every endeavor which the art and policy of mankind
+has used from the beginning of the world to this day,
+in order to alleviate or cure them, has only served to
+introduce new mischiefs, or to aggravate and inflame
+the old. Besides this, the mind of man itself is too
+active and restless a principle ever to settle on the
+true point of quiet. It discovers every day some
+craving want in a body, which really wants but little.
+It every day invents some new artificial rule to
+guide that nature which, if left to itself, were the best
+and surest guide. It finds out imaginary beings prescribing
+imaginary laws; and then, it raises imaginary
+terrors to support a belief in the beings, and an
+obedience to the laws.&mdash;Many things have been
+said, and very well undoubtedly, on the subjection
+in which we should preserve our bodies to the government
+of our understanding; but enough has not
+been said upon the restraint which our bodily necessities
+ought to lay on the extravagant sublimities and
+eccentric rovings of our minds. The body, or as
+some love to call it, our inferior nature, is wiser
+in its own plain way, and attends its own business
+more directly than the mind with all its boasted subtlety.</p>
+
+<p>In the state of nature, without question, mankind
+<!-- Page 35 --><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" title="11" class="pagenum"></a>was subjected to many and great inconveniences.
+Want of union, want of mutual assistance, want of a
+common arbitrator to resort to in their differences.
+These were evils which they could not but have felt
+pretty severely on many occasions. The original
+children of the earth lived with their brethren of the
+other kinds in much equality. Their diet must have
+been confined almost wholly to the vegetable kind;
+and the same tree, which in its flourishing state produced
+them berries, in its decay gave them an habitation.
+The mutual desires of the sexes uniting
+their bodies and affections, and the children which
+are the results of these intercourses, introduced first
+the notion of society, and taught its conveniences.
+This society, founded in natural appetites and instincts,
+and not in any positive institution, I shall
+call <i>natural society</i>. Thus far nature went and succeeded:
+but man would go farther. The great error
+of our nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be
+satisfied with any reasonable acquirement; not to
+compound with our condition; but to lose all we
+have gained by an insatiable pursuit after more.
+Man found a considerable advantage by this union
+of many persons to form one family; he therefore
+judged that he would find his account proportionably
+in an union of many families into one body politic.
+And as nature has formed no bond of union to
+hold them together, he supplied this defect by <i>laws</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This is <i>political society</i>. And hence the sources of
+what are usually called states, civil societies, or governments;
+into some form of which, more extended
+or restrained, all mankind have gradually fallen.
+And since it has so happened, and that we owe an
+implicit reverence to all the institutions of our ances<!-- Page 36 --><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" title="12" class="pagenum"></a>tors,
+we shall consider these institutions with all that
+modesty with which we ought to conduct ourselves
+in examining a received opinion; but with all that
+freedom and candor which we owe to truth wherever
+we find it, or however it may contradict our own
+notions, or oppose our own interests. There is a
+most absurd and audacious method of reasoning
+avowed by some bigots and enthusiasts, and through
+fear assented to by some wiser and better men; it is
+this: they argue against a fair discussion of popular
+prejudices, because, say they, though they would be
+found without any reasonable support, yet the discovery
+might be productive of the most dangerous
+consequences. Absurd and blasphemous notion! as
+if all happiness was not connected with the practice
+of virtue, which necessarily depends upon the knowledge
+of truth; that is, upon the knowledge of those
+unalterable relations which Providence has ordained
+that every thing should bear to every other. These
+relations, which are truth itself, the foundation of
+virtue, and consequently the only measures of happiness,
+should be likewise the only measures by which
+we should direct our reasoning. To these we should
+conform in good earnest; and not think to force nature,
+and the whole order of her system, by a compliance
+with our pride and folly, to conform to our artificial
+regulations. It is by a conformity to this
+method we owe the discovery of the few truths we
+know, and the little liberty and rational happiness
+we enjoy. We have something fairer play than a
+reasoner could have expected formerly; and we derive
+advantages from it which are very visible.</p>
+
+<p>The fabric of superstition has in this our age and
+nation received much ruder shocks than it had ever
+<!-- Page 37 --><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" title="13" class="pagenum"></a>felt before; and through the chinks and breaches of
+our prison, we see such glimmerings of light, and
+feel such refreshing airs of liberty, as daily raise our
+ardor for more. The miseries derived to mankind
+from superstition under the name of religion, and of
+ecclesiastical tyranny under the name of church government,
+have been clearly and usefully exposed.
+We begin to think and to act from reason and from
+nature alone. This is true of several, but by far the
+majority is still in the same old state of blindness
+and slavery; and much is it to be feared that we
+shall perpetually relapse, whilst the real productive
+cause of all this superstitious folly, enthusiastical
+nonsense, and holy tyranny, holds a reverend place
+in the estimation even of those who are otherwise
+enlightened.</p>
+
+<p>Civil government borrows a strength from ecclesiastical;
+and artificial laws receive a sanction from
+artificial revelations. The ideas of religion and
+government are closely connected; and whilst we receive
+government as a thing necessary, or even useful
+to our well-being, we shall in spite of us draw in,
+as a necessary, though undesirable consequence, an
+artificial religion of some kind or other. To this the
+vulgar will always be voluntary slaves; and even
+those of a rank of understanding superior, will now
+and then involuntarily feel its influence. It is therefore
+of the deepest concernment to us to be set right in
+this point; and to be well satisfied whether civil government
+be such a protector from natural evils, and
+such a nurse and increaser of blessings, as those of
+warm imaginations promise. In such a discussion,
+far am I from proposing in the least to reflect on
+our most wise form of government; no more than
+<!-- Page 38 --><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" title="14" class="pagenum"></a>I would, in the freer parts of my philosophical writings,
+mean to object to the piety, truth, and perfection
+of our most excellent Church. Both, I am sensible,
+have their foundations on a rock. No discovery
+of truth can prejudice them. On the contrary, the
+more closely the origin of religion and government
+is examined, the more clearly their excellences must
+appear. They come purified from the fire. My business
+is not with them. Having entered a protest
+against all objections from these quarters, I may the
+more freely inquire, from history and experience,
+how far policy has contributed in all times to alleviate
+those evils which Providence, that perhaps has
+designed us for a state of imperfection, has imposed;
+how far our physical skill has cured our constitutional
+disorders; and whether it may not have introduced
+new ones, curable perhaps by no skill.</p>
+
+<p>In looking over any state to form a judgment on
+it, it presents itself in two lights; the external, and
+the internal. The first, that relation which it bears
+in point of friendship or enmity to other states. The
+second, that relation which its component parts, the
+governing and the governed, bear to each other.
+The first part of the external view of all states,
+their relation as friends, makes so trifling a figure in
+history, that I am very sorry to say, it affords me but
+little matter on which to expatiate. The good offices
+done by one nation to its neighbor;<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor"
+title="Had his lordship lived to our days, to have seen the noble relief
+given by this nation to the distressed Portuguese, he had perhaps
+owned this part of his argument a little weakened; but we do not
+think ourselves entitled to alter his lordship's words, but that we are
+bound to follow him exactly.">[8]</a> the support
+given in public distress; the relief afforded in gen<!-- Page 39 --><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" title="15" class="pagenum"></a>eral
+calamity; the protection granted in emergent
+danger; the mutual return of kindness and civility,
+would afford a very ample and very pleasing subject
+for history. But, alas! all the history of all times,
+concerning all nations, does not afford matter enough
+to fill ten pages, though it should be spun out by the
+wire-drawing amplification of a Guicciardini himself.
+The glaring side is that of enmity. War is the matter
+which fills all history, and consequently the only
+or almost the only view in which we can see the
+external of political society is in a hostile shape;
+and the only actions to which we have always seen,
+and still see all of them intent, are such as tend to the
+destruction of one another. &quot;War,&quot; says Machiavel,
+&quot;ought to be the only study of a prince&quot;; and by a
+prince, he means every sort of state, however constituted.
+&quot;He ought,&quot; says this great political doctor,
+&quot;to consider peace only as a breathing-time,
+which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes
+ability to execute military plans.&quot; A meditation on
+the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes
+imagine, that war was the state of nature; and truly,
+if a man judged of the individuals of our race by
+their conduct when united and packed into nations
+and kingdoms, he might imagine that every sort of
+virtue was unnatural and foreign to the mind of
+man.</p>
+
+<p>The first accounts we have of mankind are but so
+many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have
+been cemented in blood; and, in those early periods,
+when the race of mankind began first to form themselves
+into parties and combinations, the first effect
+of the combination, and indeed the end for which it
+seems purposely formed, and best calculated, was
+<!-- Page 40 --><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" title="16" class="pagenum"></a>their mutual destruction. All ancient history is dark
+and uncertain. One thing, however, is clear,&mdash;there
+were conquerors, and conquests in those days; and,
+consequently, all that devastation by which they are
+formed, and all that oppression by which they are
+maintained. We know little of Sesostris, but that he
+led out of Egypt an army of above 700,000 men;
+that he overran the Mediterranean coast as far as
+Colchis; that in some places he met but little resistance,
+and of course shed not a great deal of blood;
+but that he found in others a people who knew the
+value of their liberties, and sold them dear. Whoever
+considers the army this conqueror headed, the
+space he traversed, and the opposition he frequently
+met, with the natural accidents of sickness, and the
+dearth and badness of provision to which he must
+have been subject in the variety of climates and countries
+his march lay through, if he knows anything,
+he must know that even the conqueror's army must
+have suffered greatly; and that of this immense number
+but a very small part could have returned to enjoy
+the plunder accumulated by the loss of so many
+of their companions, and the devastation of so considerable
+a part of the world. Considering, I say, the
+vast army headed by this conqueror, whose unwieldy
+weight was almost alone sufficient to wear down its
+strength, it will be far from excess to suppose that
+one half was lost in the expedition. If this was the
+state of the victorious, and from the circumstances it
+must have been this at the least; the vanquished
+must have had a much heavier loss, as the greatest
+slaughter is always in the flight, and great carnage
+did in those times and countries ever attend the first
+rage of conquest. It will, therefore, be very reason<!-- Page 41 --><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" title="17" class="pagenum"></a>able
+to allow on their account as much as, added to
+the losses of the conqueror, may amount to a million
+of deaths, and then we shall see this conqueror, the
+oldest we have on the records of history, (though, as
+we have observed before, the chronology of these remote
+times is extremely uncertain), opening the scene
+by a destruction of at least one million of his species,
+unprovoked but by his ambition, without any motives
+but pride, cruelty, and madness, and without any
+benefit to himself (for Justin expressly tells us he did
+not maintain his conquests), but solely to make so
+many people, in so distant countries, feel experimentally
+how severe a scourge Providence intends for the
+human race, when he gives one man the power over
+many, and arms his naturally impotent and feeble
+rage with the hands of millions, who know no common
+principle of action, but a blind obedience to the
+passions of their ruler.</p>
+
+<p>The next personage who figures in the tragedies of
+this ancient theatre is Semiramis; for we have no
+particulars of Ninus, but that he made immense and
+rapid conquests, which doubtless were not compassed
+without the usual carnage. We see an army of about
+three millions employed by this martial queen in a
+war against the Indians. We see the Indians arming
+a yet greater; and we behold a war continued with
+much fury, and with various success. This ends in
+the retreat of the queen, with scarce a third of the
+troops employed in the expedition; an expedition
+which, at this rate, must have cost two millions of
+souls on her part; and it is not unreasonable to judge
+that the country which was the seat of war must have
+been an equal sufferer. But I am content to detract
+from this, and to suppose that the Indians lost only
+<!-- Page 42 --><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" title="18" class="pagenum"></a>half so much, and then the account stands thus: in
+this war alone (for Semiramis had other wars) in this
+single reign, and in this one spot of the globe, did
+three millions of souls expire, with all the horrid and
+shocking circumstances which attend all wars, and in
+a quarrel, in which none of the sufferers could have
+the least rational concern.</p>
+
+<p>The Babylonian, Assyrian, Median, and Persian
+monarchies must have poured out seas of blood in
+their formation, and in their destruction. The armies
+and fleets of Xerxes, their numbers, the glorious stand
+made against them, and the unfortunate event of all
+his mighty preparations, are known to everybody.
+In this expedition, draining half Asia of its inhabitants,
+he led an army of about two millions to be
+slaughtered, and wasted by a thousand fatal accidents,
+in the same place where his predecessors had
+before by a similar madness consumed the flower of
+so many kingdoms, and wasted the force of so extensive
+an empire. It is a cheap calculation to say, that
+the Persian empire, in its wars against the Greeks and
+Scythians, threw away at least four millions of its
+subjects; to say nothing of its other wars, and the
+losses sustained in them. These were their losses
+abroad; but the war was brought home to them, first
+by Agesilaus, and afterwards by Alexander. I have
+not, in this retreat, the books necessary to make very
+exact calculations; nor is it necessary to give more
+than hints to one of your lordship's erudition. You
+will recollect his uninterrupted series of success.
+You will run over his battles. You will call to mind
+the carnage which was made. You will give a glance
+at the whole, and you will agree with me, that to
+form this hero no less than twelve hundred thousand
+<!-- Page 43 --><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" title="19" class="pagenum"></a>lives must have been sacrificed; but no sooner had
+he fallen himself a sacrifice to his vices, than a thousand
+breaches were made for ruin to enter, and give
+the last hand to this scene of misery and destruction.
+His kingdom was rent and divided; which served to
+employ the more distinct parts to tear each other to
+pieces, and bury the whole in blood and slaughter.
+The kings of Syria and of Egypt, the kings of Pergamus
+and Macedon, without intermission worried
+each other for above two hundred years; until at last
+a strong power, arising in the west, rushed in upon
+them and silenced their tumults, by involving all the
+contending parties in the same destruction. It is
+little to say, that the contentions between the successors
+of Alexander depopulated that part of the
+world of at least two millions.</p>
+
+<p>The struggle between the Macedonians and Greeks,
+and, before that, the disputes of the Greek commonwealths
+among themselves, for an unprofitable superiority,
+form one of the bloodiest scenes in history.
+One is astonished how such a small spot could furnish
+men sufficient to sacrifice to the pitiful ambition of
+possessing five or six thousand more acres, or two or
+three more villages; yet to see the acrimony and
+bitterness with which this was disputed between the
+Athenians and Lacedemonians; what armies cut off;
+what fleets sunk and burnt; what a number of cities
+sacked, and their inhabitants slaughtered and captived;
+one would be induced to believe the decision
+of the fate of mankind, at least, depended upon it!
+But those disputes ended as all such ever have done,
+and ever will do; in a real weakness of all parties;
+a momentary shadow, and dream of power in some
+one; and the subjection of all to the yoke of a stran<!-- Page 44 --><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" title="20" class="pagenum"></a>ger,
+who knows how to profit of their divisions. This,
+at least, was the case of the Greeks; and surely, from
+the earliest accounts of them, to their absorption into
+the Roman empire, we cannot judge that their intestine
+divisions, and their foreign wars, consumed less
+than three millions of their inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>What an Aceldama, what a field of blood Sicily
+has been in ancient times, whilst the mode of its
+government was controverted between the republican
+and tyrannical parties, and the possession struggled
+for by the natives, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, and
+the Romans, your lordship will easily recollect. You
+will remember the total destruction of such bodies as
+an army of 300,000 men. You will find every page
+of its history dyed in blood, and blotted and confounded
+by tumults, rebellions, massacres, assassinations,
+proscriptions, and a series of horror beyond the
+histories perhaps of any other nation in the world;
+though the histories of all nations are made up of
+similar matter. I once more excuse myself in point
+of exactness for want of books. But I shall estimate
+the slaughters in this island but at two millions; which
+your lordship will find much short of the reality.</p>
+
+<p>Let us pass by the wars, and the consequences of
+them, which wasted Grecia-Magna, before the Roman
+power prevailed in that part of Italy. They are perhaps
+exaggerated; therefore I shall only rate them
+at one million. Let us hasten to open that great
+scene which establishes the Roman empire, and forms
+the grand catastrophe of the ancient drama. This
+empire, whilst in its infancy, began by an effusion of
+human blood scarcely credible. The neighboring
+little states teemed for new destruction: the Sabines,
+the Samnites, the &AElig;qui, the Volsci, the Hetrurians,
+<!-- Page 45 --><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" title="21" class="pagenum"></a>were broken by a series of slaughters which had no
+interruption, for some hundreds of years; slaughters
+which upon all sides consumed more than two millions
+of the wretched people. The Gauls, rushing
+into Italy about this time, added the total destruction
+of their own armies to those of the ancient inhabitants.
+In short, it were hardly possible to conceive
+a more horrid and bloody picture, if that the
+Punic wars that ensued soon after did not present
+one that far exceeds it. Here we find that climax of
+devastation, and ruin, which seemed to shake the
+whole earth. The extent of this war, which vexed
+so many nations, and both elements, and the havoc
+of the human species caused in both, really astonishes
+beyond expression, when it is nakedly considered,
+and those matters which are apt to divert our attention
+from it, the characters, actions, and designs of
+the persons concerned, are not taken into the account.
+These wars, I mean those called the Punic wars, could
+not have stood the human race in less than three
+millions of the species. And yet this forms but a
+part only, and a very small part, of the havoc caused
+by the Roman ambition. The war with Mithridates
+was very little less bloody; that prince cut off at one
+stroke 150,000 Romans by a massacre. In that war
+Sylla destroyed 300,000 men at Cheronea. He defeated
+Mithridates' army under Dorilaus, and slew
+300,000. This great and unfortunate prince lost
+another 300,000 before Cyzicum. In the course of
+the war he had innumerable other losses; and having
+many intervals of success, he revenged them severely.
+He was at last totally overthrown; and he crushed
+to pieces the king of Armenia, his ally, by the greatness
+of his ruin. All who had connections with him
+<!-- Page 46 --><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" title="22" class="pagenum"></a>shared the same fate. The merciless genius of Sylla
+had its full scope; and the streets of Athens were not
+the only ones which ran with blood. At this period,
+the sword, glutted with foreign slaughter, turned
+its edge upon the bowels of the Roman republic itself;
+and presented a scene of cruelties and treasons
+enough almost to obliterate the memory of all the
+external devastations. I intended, my lord, to have
+proceeded in a sort of method in estimating the numbers
+of mankind cut off in these wars which we have
+on record. But I am obliged to alter my design.
+Such a tragical uniformity of havoc and murder
+would disgust your lordship as much as it would me;
+and I confess I already feel my eyes ache by keeping
+them so long intent on so bloody a prospect. I shall
+observe little on the Servile, the Social, the Gallic,
+and Spanish wars; nor upon those with Jugurtha,
+nor Antiochus, nor many others equally important,
+and carried on with equal fury. The butcheries of
+Julius C&aelig;sar alone are calculated by somebody else;
+the numbers he has been the means of destroying
+have been reckoned at 1,200,000. But to give your
+lordship an idea that may serve as a standard, by
+which to measure, in some degree, the others; you
+will turn your eyes on Judea; a very inconsiderable
+spot of the earth in itself, though ennobled by the
+singular events which had their rise in that country.</p>
+
+<p>This spot happened, it matters not here by what
+means, to become at several times extremely populous,
+and to supply men for slaughters scarcely credible,
+if other well-known and well-attested ones had not
+given them a color. The first settling of the Jews
+here was attended by an almost entire extirpation of
+all the former inhabitants. Their own civil wars, and
+<!-- Page 47 --><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" title="23" class="pagenum"></a>those with their petty neighbors, consumed vast multitudes
+almost every year for several centuries; and
+the irruptions of the kings of Babylon and Assyria
+made immense ravages. Yet we have their history
+but partially, in an indistinct, confused manner; so
+that I shall only throw the strong point of light upon
+that part which coincides with Roman history, and
+of that part only on the point of time when they received
+the great and final stroke which made them,
+no more a nation; a stroke which is allowed to have
+cut off little less than two millions of that people. I
+say nothing of the loppings made from that stock
+whilst it stood; nor from the suckers that grew out
+of the old root ever since. But if, in this inconsiderable
+part of the globe, such a carnage has been made
+in two or three short reigns, and that this great carnage,
+great as it is, makes but a minute part of what
+the histories of that people inform us they suffered;
+what shall we judge of countries more extended, and
+which have waged wars by far more considerable?</p>
+
+<p>Instances of this sort compose the uniform of history.
+But there have been periods when no less than
+universal destruction to the race of mankind seems
+to have been threatened. Such was that when the
+Goths, the Vandals, and the Huns, poured into Gaul,
+Italy, Spain, Greece, and Africa, carrying destruction
+before them as they advanced, and leaving horrid
+deserts every way behind them. <i>Vastum ubique silentium,
+secreti colles; fumantia procul tecta; nemo exploratoribus
+obvius</i>, is what Tacitus calls <i>facies victori&aelig;</i>.
+It is always so; but was here emphatically so. From
+the north proceeded the swarms of Goths, Vandals,
+Huns, Ostrogoths, who ran towards the south, into
+Africa itself, which suffered as all to the north had
+<!-- Page 48 --><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" title="24" class="pagenum"></a>done. About this time, another torrent of barbarians,
+animated by the same fury, and encouraged by
+the same success, poured out of the south, and ravaged
+all to the northeast and west, to the remotest
+parts of Persia on one hand, and to the banks of the
+Loire or farther on the other; destroying all the
+proud and curious monuments of human art, that
+not even the memory might seem to survive of the
+former inhabitants. What has been done since, and
+what will continue to be done while the same inducements
+to war continue, I shall not dwell upon. I
+shall only in one word mention the horrid effects of
+bigotry and avarice, in the conquest of Spanish
+America; a conquest, on a low estimation, effected
+by the murder of ten millions of the species. I shall
+draw to a conclusion of this part, by making a general
+calculation of the whole. I think I have actually
+mentioned above thirty-six millions. I have not particularized
+any more. I don't pretend to exactness;
+therefore, for the sake of a general view, I shall lay
+together all those actually slain in battles, or who
+have perished in a no less miserable manner by the
+other destructive consequences of war from the beginning
+of the world to this day, in the four parts of it,
+at a thousand times as much; no exaggerated calculation,
+allowing for time and extent. We have not
+perhaps spoke of the five-hundredth part; I am sure
+I have not of what is actually ascertained in history;
+but how much of these butcheries are only expressed
+in generals, what part of time history has never
+reached, and what vast spaces of the habitable globe
+it has not embraced, I need not mention to your
+lordship. I need not enlarge on those torrents of
+silent and inglorious blood which have glutted the
+<!-- Page 49 --><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" title="25" class="pagenum"></a>thirsty sands of Afric, or discolored the polar snow,
+or fed the savage forests of America for so many ages
+of continual war. Shall I, to justify my calculations
+from the charge of extravagance, add to the account
+those skirmishes which happen in all wars, without
+being singly of sufficient dignity in mischief, to merit
+a place in history, but which by their frequency compensate
+for this comparative innocence? shall I inflame
+the account by those general massacres which
+have devoured whole cities and nations; those wasting
+pestilences, those consuming famines, and all
+those furies that follow in the train of war? I have
+no need to exaggerate; and I have purposely avoided
+a parade of eloquence on this occasion. I should
+despise it upon any occasion; else in mentioning
+these slaughters, it is obvious how much the whole
+might be heightened, by an affecting description of
+the horrors that attend the wasting of kingdoms, and
+sacking of cities. But I do not write to the vulgar,
+nor to that which only governs the vulgar, their passions.
+I go upon a naked and moderate calculation,
+just enough, without a pedantical exactness, to give
+your lordship some feeling of the effects of political
+society. I charge the whole of these effects on political
+society. I avow the charge, and I shall presently
+make it good to your lordship's satisfaction. The
+numbers I particularized are about thirty-six millions.
+Besides those killed in battles I have said something,
+not half what the matter would have justified, but
+something I have said concerning the consequences
+of war even more dreadful than that monstrous carnage
+itself which shocks our humanity, and almost
+staggers our belief. So that, allowing me in my exuberance
+one way for my deficiencies in the other,
+<!-- Page 50 --><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" title="26" class="pagenum"></a>you will find me not unreasonable. I think the
+numbers of men now upon earth are computed at
+five hundred millions at the most. Here the slaughter
+of mankind, on what you will call a small calculation,
+amounts to upwards of seventy times the
+number of souls this day on the globe: a point which
+may furnish matter of reflection to one less inclined
+to draw consequences than your lordship.</p>
+
+<p>I now come to show that political society is justly
+chargeable with much the greatest part of this destruction
+of the species. To give the fairest play to
+every side of the question, I will own that there is a
+haughtiness and fierceness in human nature, which
+will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation
+you please; but owning this, I still insist in
+charging it to political regulations, that these broils
+are so frequent, so cruel, and attended with consequences
+so deplorable. In a state of nature, it had
+been impossible to find a number of men, sufficient for
+such slaughters, agreed in the same bloody purpose;
+or allowing that they might have come to such an
+agreement (an impossible supposition), yet the means
+that simple nature has supplied them with, are by no
+means adequate to such an end; many scratches,
+many bruises undoubtedly would be received upon all
+hands; but only a few, a very few deaths. Society
+and politics, which have given us these destructive
+views, have given us also the means of satisfying
+them. From the earliest dawnings of policy to this
+day, the invention of men has been sharpening and
+improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude
+essays of clubs and stones, to the present perfection
+of gunnery, cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and
+all those species of artificial, learned, and refined cru<!-- Page 51 --><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" title="27" class="pagenum"></a>elty,
+in which we are now so expert, and which make
+a principal part of what politicians have taught us to
+believe is our principal glory.</p>
+
+<p>How far mere nature would have carried us, we
+may judge by the example of those animals who still
+follow her laws, and even of those to whom she has
+given dispositions more fierce, and arms more terrible
+than ever she intended we should use. It is an incontestable
+truth that there is more havoc made in one
+year by men of men, than has been made by all the
+lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, leopards, hyenas, rhinoceroses,
+elephants, bears and wolves, upon their
+several species, since the beginning of the world;
+though these agree ill enough with each other, and
+have a much greater proportion of rage and fury in
+their composition than we have. But with respect to
+you, ye legislators, ye civilizers of mankind! ye
+Orpheuses, Moseses, Minoses, Solons, Theseuses, Lycurguses,
+Numas! with respect to you be it spoken,
+your regulations have done more mischief in cold
+blood, than all the rage of the fiercest animals in their
+greatest terrors, or furies, has ever done, or ever
+could do!</p>
+
+<p>These evils are not accidental. Whoever will take
+the pains to consider the nature of society will find
+that they result directly from its constitution. For
+as <i>subordination</i>, or, in other words, the reciprocation
+of tyranny and slavery, is requisite to support these
+societies; the interest, the ambition, the malice, or
+the revenge, nay, even the whim and caprice of one
+ruling man among them, is enough to arm all the
+rest, without any private views of their own, to the
+worst and blackest purposes: and what is at once
+lamentable, and ridiculous, these wretches engage
+<!-- Page 52 --><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" title="28" class="pagenum"></a>under those banners with a fury greater than if they
+were animated by revenge for their own proper
+wrongs.</p>
+
+<p>It is no less worth observing, that this artificial
+division of mankind into separate societies is a
+perpetual source in itself of hatred and dissension
+among them. The names which distinguish them
+are enough to blow up hatred and rage. Examine
+history; consult present experience; and you will
+find that far the greater part of the quarrels between
+several nations had scarce any other occasion than
+that these nations were different combinations of people,
+and called by different names: to an Englishman,
+the name of a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an
+Italian, much more a Turk, or a Tartar, raises of
+course ideas of hatred and contempt. If you would
+inspire this compatriot of ours with pity or regard
+for one of these, would you not hide that distinction?
+You would not pray him to compassionate the poor
+Frenchman, or the unhappy German. Far from it;
+you would speak of him as a <i>foreigner</i>; an accident
+to which all are liable. You would represent him as
+a <i>man</i>; one partaking with us of the same common
+nature, and subject to the same law. There is something
+so averse from our nature in these artificial
+political distinctions, that we need no other trumpet
+to kindle us to war and destruction. But there is
+something so benign and healing in the general voice
+of humanity that, maugre all our regulations to prevent
+it, the simple name of man applied properly,
+never fails to work a salutary effect.</p>
+
+<p>This natural unpremeditated effect of policy on the
+unpossessed passions of mankind appears on other
+occasions. The very name of a politician, a states<!-- Page 53 --><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" title="29" class="pagenum"></a>man,
+is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has
+always connected with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty,
+fraud, and tyranny; and those writers who have
+faithfully unveiled the mysteries of state-freemasonry,
+have ever been held in general detestation, for even
+knowing so perfectly a theory so detestable. The
+case of Machiavel seems at first sight something hard
+in that respect. He is obliged to bear the iniquities
+of those whose maxims and rules of government he
+published. His speculation is more abhorred than
+their practice.</p>
+
+<p>But if there were no other arguments against artificial
+society than this I am going to mention, methinks
+it ought to fall by this one only. All writers
+on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree
+with experience, that, all governments must frequently
+infringe the rules of justice to support themselves;
+that truth must give way to dissimulation; honesty
+to convenience; and humanity itself to the reigning
+interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is
+called the reason of state. It is a reason which I
+own I cannot penetrate. What sort of a protection
+is this of the general right, that is maintained by
+infringing the rights of particulars? What sort of
+justice is this, which is enforced by breaches of its
+own laws? These paradoxes I leave to be solved by
+the able heads of legislators and politicians. For my
+part, I say what a plain man would say on such an
+occasion. I can never believe that any institution,
+agreeable to nature, and proper for mankind, could
+find it necessary, or even expedient, in any case
+whatsoever, to do what the best and worthiest instincts
+of mankind warn us to avoid. But no wonder,
+that what is set up in opposition to the state of
+<!-- Page 54 --><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" title="30" class="pagenum"></a>nature should preserve itself by trampling upon the
+law of nature.</p>
+
+<p>To prove that these sorts of policed societies are a
+violation offered to nature, and a constraint upon the
+human mind, it needs only to look upon the sanguinary
+measures, and instruments of violence, which
+are everywhere used to support them. Let us take a
+review of the dungeons, whips, chains, racks, gibbets,
+with which every society is abundantly stored; by
+which hundreds of victims are annually offered up
+to support a dozen or two in pride and madness,
+and millions in an abject servitude and dependence.
+There was a time when I looked with a reverential
+awe on these mysteries of policy; but age, experience,
+and philosophy, have rent the veil; and I view this
+<i>sanctum sanctorum</i>, at least, without any enthusiastic
+admiration. I acknowledge, indeed, the necessity of
+such a proceeding in such institutions; but I must
+have a very mean opinion of institutions where such
+proceedings are necessary.</p>
+
+<p>It is a misfortune that in no part of the globe natural
+liberty and natural religion are to be found
+pure, and free from the mixture of political adulterations.
+Yet we have implanted in us by Providence,
+ideas, axioms, rules, of what is pious, just, fair, honest,
+which no political craft, nor learned sophistry
+can entirely expel from our breasts. By these we
+judge, and we cannot otherwise judge, of the several
+artificial modes of religion and society, and determine
+of them as they approach to or recede from this
+standard.</p>
+
+<p>The simplest form of government is <i>despotism</i>,
+where all the inferior orbs of power are moved
+merely by the will of the Supreme, and all that
+<!-- Page 55 --><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" title="31" class="pagenum"></a>are subjected to them directed in the same manner,
+merely by the occasional will of the magistrate.
+This form, as it is the most simple, so it is infinitely
+the most general. Scarcely any part of the world
+is exempted from its power. And in those few places
+where men enjoy what they call liberty, it is continually
+in a tottering situation, and makes greater and
+greater strides to that gulf of despotism which at
+last swallows up every species of government. The
+manner of ruling being directed merely by the will
+of the weakest, and generally the worst man in the
+society, becomes the most foolish and capricious
+thing, at the same time that it is the most terrible
+and destructive that well can be conceived.
+In a despotism, the principal person finds that, let
+the want, misery, and indigence of his subjects
+be what they will, he can yet possess abundantly
+of everything to gratify his most insatiable wishes.
+He does more. He finds that these gratifications increase
+in proportion to the wretchedness and slavery
+of his subjects. Thus encouraged both by passion
+and interest to trample on the public welfare, and by
+his station placed above both shame and fear, he proceeds
+to the most horrid and shocking outrages upon
+mankind. Their persons become victims of his suspicions.
+The slightest displeasure is death; and a
+disagreeable aspect is often as great a crime as high
+treason. In the court of Nero, a person of learning,
+of unquestioned merit, and of unsuspected loyalty,
+was put to death for no other reason, than that he
+had a pedantic countenance which displeased the
+emperor. This very monster of mankind appeared
+in the beginning of his reign to be a person of virtue.
+Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of
+<!-- Page 56 --><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" title="32" class="pagenum"></a>history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner.
+But the truth is, this unnatural power corrupts both
+the heart and the understanding. And to prevent
+the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded
+by a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find
+their account in keeping him from the least light of
+reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice are utterly
+erased from his mind. When Alexander had
+in his fury inhumanly butchered one of his best
+friends and bravest captains; on the return of reason
+he began to conceive an horror suitable to the guilt
+of such a murder. In this juncture his council came
+to his assistance. But what did his council? They
+found him out a philosopher who gave him comfort.
+And in what manner did this philosopher comfort
+him for the loss of such a man, and heal his conscience,
+flagrant with the smart of such a crime?
+You have the matter at length in Plutarch. He told
+him, &quot;<i>that let a sovereign do what he wilt, all his actions
+are just and lawful, because they are his</i>.&quot; The palaces
+of all princes abound with such courtly philosophers.
+The consequence was such as might be expected.
+He grew every day a monster more abandoned
+to unnatural lust, to debauchery, to drunkenness,
+and to murder. And yet this was originally a
+great man, of uncommon capacity, and a strong propensity
+to virtue. But unbounded power proceeds
+step by step, until it has eradicated every laudable
+principle. It has been remarked, that there is no
+prince so bad, whose favorites and ministers are not
+worse. There is hardly any prince without a favorite,
+by whom he is governed in as arbitrary a manner
+as he governs the wretches subjected to him. Here
+the tyranny is doubled. There are two courts, and
+<!-- Page 57 --><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" title="33" class="pagenum"></a>two interests; both very different from the interests
+of the people. The favorite knows that the regard
+of a tyrant is as unconstant and capricious as that
+of a woman; and concluding his time to be short, he
+makes haste to fill up the measure of his iniquity, in
+rapine, in luxury, and in revenge. Every avenue to
+the throne is shut up. He oppresses and ruins the
+people, whilst he persuades the prince that those murmurs
+raised by his own oppression are the effects of
+disaffection to the prince's government. Then is the
+natural violence of despotism inflamed and aggravated
+by hatred and revenge. To deserve well of
+the state is a crime against the prince. To be popular,
+and to be a traitor, are considered as synonymous
+terms. Even virtue is dangerous, as an aspiring
+quality, that claims an esteem by itself, and independent
+of the countenance of the court. What has
+been said of the chief, is true of the inferior officers
+of this species of government; each in his province
+exercising the same tyranny, and grinding the people
+by an oppression, the more severely felt, as it is near
+them, and exercised by base and subordinate persons.
+For the gross of the people, they are considered as a
+mere herd of cattle; and really in a little time become
+no better; all principle of honest pride, all
+sense of the dignity of their nature, is lost in their
+slavery. The day, says Homer, which makes a man
+a slave, takes away half his worth; and, in fact, he
+loses every impulse to action, but that low and base
+one of fear. In this kind of government human
+nature is not only abused and insulted, but it is
+actually degraded and sunk into a species of brutality.
+The consideration of this made Mr. Locke say,
+with great justice, that a government of this kind
+<!-- Page 58 --><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" title="34" class="pagenum"></a>was worse than anarchy: indeed it is so abhorred
+and detested by all who live under forms that have a
+milder appearance, that there is scarcely a rational
+man in Europe that would not prefer death to Asiatic
+despotism. Here then we have the acknowledgment
+of a great philosopher, that an irregular state
+of nature is preferable to such a government; we
+have the consent of all sensible and generous men,
+who carry it yet further, and avow that death itself
+is preferable; and yet this species of government, so
+justly condemned, and so generally detested, is what
+infinitely the greater part of mankind groan under,
+and have groaned under from the beginning. So
+that, by sure and uncontested principles, the greatest
+part of the governments on earth must be concluded
+tyrannies, impostures, violations of the natural rights
+of mankind, and worse than the most disorderly
+anarchies. How much other forms exceed this we
+shall consider immediately.</p>
+
+<p>In all parts of the world, mankind, however debased,
+retains still the sense of <i>feeling</i>; the weight
+of tyranny at last becomes insupportable; but the
+remedy is not so easy: in general, the only remedy
+by which they attempt to cure the tyranny is to
+change the tyrant. This is, and always was, the case
+for the greater part. In some countries, however,
+were found men of more penetration, who discovered
+&quot;<i>that to live by one man's will was the cause of all men's
+misery</i>.&quot; They therefore changed their former
+method, and assembling the men in their several
+societies the most respectable for their understanding
+and fortunes, they confided to them the charge of the
+public welfare. This originally formed what is called
+an <i>aristocracy</i>. They hoped it would be impossible
+<!-- Page 59 --><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" title="35" class="pagenum"></a>that such a number could ever join in any design
+against the general good; and they promised themselves
+a great deal of security and happiness from the
+united counsels of so many able and experienced persons.
+But it is now found by abundant experience,
+that an <i>aristocracy</i>, and a <i>despotism</i>, differ but in
+name; and that a people who are in general excluded
+from any share of the legislative, are, to all intents
+and purposes, as much slaves, when twenty, independent
+of them, govern, as when but one domineers.
+The tyranny is even more felt, as every individual of
+the nobles has the haughtiness of a sultan; the people
+are more miserable, as they seem on the verge of
+liberty, from which they are forever debarred; this
+fallacious idea of liberty, whilst it presents a vain
+shadow of happiness to the subject, binds faster the
+chains of his subjection. What is left undone by the
+natural avarice and pride of those who are raised
+above the others, is completed by their suspicions, and
+their dread of losing an authority, which has no support
+in the common utility of the nation. A Genoese
+or a Venetian republic is a concealed <i>despotism</i>;
+where you find the same pride of the rulers, the same
+base subjection of the people, the same bloody maxims
+of a suspicious policy. In one respect the <i>aristocracy</i>
+is worse than the <i>despotism</i>. A body politic, whilst it
+retains its authority, never changes its maxims; a
+<i>despotism</i>, which is this day horrible to a supreme degree,
+by the caprice natural to the heart of man, may,
+by the same caprice otherwise exerted, be as lovely
+the next; in a succession, it is possible to meet with
+some good princes. If there have been Tiberiuses,
+Caligulas, Neros, there have been likewise the serener
+days of Vespasians, Tituses, Trajans, and Antonines;
+<!-- Page 60 --><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" title="36" class="pagenum"></a>but a body politic is not influenced by caprice or
+whim, it proceeds in a regular manner, its succession
+is insensible; and every man as he enters it, either
+has, or soon attains, the spirit of the whole body.
+Never was it known that an <i>aristocracy</i>, which was
+haughty and tyrannical in one century, became easy
+and mild in the next. In effect, the yoke of this species
+of government is so galling, that whenever the
+people have got the least power, they have shaken it
+off with the utmost indignation, and established a
+popular form. And when they have not had strength
+enough to support themselves, they have thrown
+themselves into the arms of <i>despotism</i>, as the more
+eligible of the two evils. This latter was the case of
+Denmark, who sought a refuge from the oppression
+of its nobility, in the strong hold of arbitrary power.
+Poland has at present the name of republic, and it is
+one of the <i>aristocratic</i> form; but it is well known that
+the little finger of this government is heavier than the
+loins of arbitrary power in most nations. The people
+are not only politically, but personally slaves, and
+treated with the utmost indignity. The republic of
+Venice is somewhat more moderate; yet even here,
+so heavy is the <i>aristocratic</i> yoke, that the nobles have
+been obliged to enervate the spirit of their subjects
+by every sort of debauchery; they have denied them
+the liberty of reason, and they have made them
+amends by what a base soul will think a more valuable
+liberty, by not only allowing, but encouraging
+them to corrupt themselves in the most scandalous
+manner. They consider their subjects as the farmer
+does the hog he keeps to feast upon. He holds him
+fast in his sty, but allows him to wallow as much as
+he pleases in his beloved filth and gluttony. So
+<!-- Page 61 --><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" title="37" class="pagenum"></a>scandalously debauched a people as that of Venice
+is to be met with nowhere else. High, low, men,
+women, clergy, and laity, are all alike. The ruling
+nobility are no less afraid of one another than they
+are of the people; and, for that reason, politically
+enervate their own body by the same effeminate luxury
+by which they corrupt their subjects. They are
+impoverished by every means which can be invented;
+and they are kept in a perpetual terror by the horrors
+of a state inquisition. Here you see a people deprived
+of all rational freedom, and tyrannized over by about
+two thousand men; and yet this body of two thousand
+are so far from enjoying any liberty by the subjection
+of the rest, that they are in an infinitely
+severer state of slavery; they make themselves the
+most degenerate and unhappy of mankind, for no
+other purpose than that they may the more effectually
+contribute to the misery of a whole nation. In
+short, the regular and methodical proceedings of an
+<i>aristocracy</i> are more intolerable than the very excesses
+of a <i>despotism</i>, and, in general, much further from
+any remedy.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, my lord, we have pursued <i>aristocracy</i> through
+its whole progress; we have seen the seeds, the
+growth, and the fruit. It could boast none of the
+advantages of a <i>despotism</i>, miserable as those advantages
+were, and it was overloaded with an exuberance
+of mischiefs, unknown even to <i>despotism</i> itself. In
+effect, it is no more than a disorderly tyranny. This
+form, therefore, could be little approved, even in
+speculation, by those who were capable of thinking,
+and could be less borne in practice by any who were
+capable of feeling. However, the fruitful policy of
+man was not yet exhausted. He had yet another
+<!-- Page 62 --><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" title="38" class="pagenum"></a>farthing candle to supply the deficiencies of the sun.
+This was the third form, known by political writers
+under the name of <i>democracy</i>. Here the people
+transacted all public business, or the greater part of
+it, in their own persons; their laws were made by
+themselves, and, upon any failure of duty, their officers
+were accountable to themselves, and to them
+only. In all appearance, they had secured by this
+method the advantages of order and good government,
+without paying their liberty for the purchase. Now,
+my lord, we are come to the masterpiece of Grecian
+refinement, and Roman solidity,&mdash;a popular government.
+The earliest and most celebrated republic of
+this model was that of Athens. It was constructed
+by no less an artist than the celebrated poet and
+philosopher, Solon. But no sooner was this political
+vessel launched from the stocks, than it overset, even
+in the lifetime of the builder. A tyranny immediately
+supervened; not by a foreign conquest, not by
+accident, but by the very nature and constitution of
+a <i>democracy</i>. An artful man became popular, the
+people had power in their hands, and they devolved a
+considerable share of their power upon their favorite;
+and the only use he made of this power was, to plunge
+those who gave it into slavery. Accident restored
+their liberty, and the same good fortune produced
+men of uncommon abilities and uncommon virtues
+amongst them. But these abilities were suffered to
+be of little service either to their possessors or to the
+state. Some of these men, for whose sakes alone we
+read their history, they banished; others they imprisoned,
+and all they treated with various circumstances
+of the most shameful ingratitude. Republics have
+many things in the spirit of absolute monarchy, but
+<!-- Page 63 --><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" title="39" class="pagenum"></a>none more than this. A shining merit is ever hated
+or suspected in a popular assembly, as well as in a
+court; and all services done the state are looked
+upon as dangerous to the rulers, whether sultans or
+senators. The <i>ostracism</i> at Athens was built upon
+this principle. The giddy people whom we have now
+under consideration, being elated with some flashes
+of success, which they owed to nothing less than any
+merit of their own, began to tyrannize over their
+equals, who had associated with them for their common
+defence. With their prudence they renounced
+all appearance of justice. They entered into wars
+rashly and wantonly. If they were unsuccessful, instead
+of growing wiser by their misfortune, they threw
+the whole blame of their own misconduct on the ministers
+who had advised, and the generals who had
+conducted, those wars; until by degrees they had cut
+off all who could serve them in their councils or their
+battles. If at any time these wars had a happier
+issue, it was no less difficult to deal with them on
+account of their pride and insolence. Furious in their
+adversity, tyrannical in their successes, a commander
+had more trouble to concert his defence before the
+people, than to plan the operations of the campaign.
+It was not uncommon for a general, under the horrid
+<i>despotism</i> of the Roman emperors, to be ill received
+in proportion to the greatness of his services. Agricola
+is a strong instance of this. No man had done
+greater things, nor with more honest ambition. Yet,
+on his return to court, he was obliged to enter Rome
+with all the secrecy of a criminal. He went to the
+palace, not like a victorious commander who had
+merited and might demand the greatest rewards, but
+like an offender who had come to supplicate a pardon
+<!-- Page 64 --><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" title="40" class="pagenum"></a>for his crimes. His reception was answerable;
+&quot;<i>Exceptusque brevi osculo et nullo sermone, turb&aelig; servientium
+immixtus est</i>.&quot; Yet in that worst season of
+this worst of monarchical<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor"
+title="Sciant quibus moris illicita mirari, posse etiam sub malis principibus
+magnos viros, &amp;c. See 42, to the end of it.">[9]</a> tyrannies, modesty, discretion,
+and a coolness of temper, formed some kind
+of security, even for the highest merit. But at
+Athens, the nicest and best studied behavior was not
+a sufficient guard for a man of great capacity. Some
+of their bravest commanders were obliged to fly their
+country, some to enter into the service of its enemies,
+rather than abide a popular determination on their
+conduct, lest, as one of them said, their giddiness
+might make the people condemn where they meant
+to acquit; to throw in a black bean even when they
+intended a white one.</p>
+
+<p>The Athenians made a very rapid progress to the
+most enormous excesses. The people, under no restraint,
+soon grew dissolute, luxurious, and idle.
+They renounced all labor, and began to subsist themselves
+from the public revenues. They lost all concern
+for their common honor or safety, and could
+bear no advice that tended to reform them. At this
+time truth became offensive to those lords the people,
+and most highly dangerous to the speaker. The orators
+no longer ascended the <i>rostrum</i>, but to corrupt
+them further with the most fulsome adulation. These
+orators were all bribed by foreign princes on the one
+side or the other. And besides its own parties, in
+this city there were parties, and avowed ones too, for
+the Persians, Spartans, and Macedonians, supported
+each of them by one or more demagogues pensioned
+and bribed to this iniquitous service. The people,
+<!-- Page 65 --><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" title="41" class="pagenum"></a>forgetful of all virtue and public spirit, and intoxicated
+with the flatteries of their orators (these courtiers
+of republics, and endowed with the distinguishing
+characteristics of all other courtiers), this people, I
+say, at last arrived at that pitch of madness, that they
+coolly and deliberately, by an express law, made it
+capital for any man to propose an application of the
+immense sums squandered in public shows, even to
+the most necessary purposes of the state. When you
+see the people of this republic banishing and murdering
+their best and ablest citizens, dissipating the public
+treasure with the most senseless extravagance, and
+spending their whole time, as spectators or actors, in
+playing, fiddling, dancing, and singing, does it not,
+my lord, strike your imagination with the image of a
+sort of complex Nero? And does it not strike you
+with the greater horror, when you observe, not one
+man only, but a whole city, grown drunk with pride
+and power, running with a rage of folly into the same
+mean and senseless debauchery and extravagance?
+But if this people resembled Nero in their extravagance,
+much more did they resemble and even exceed
+him in cruelty and injustice. In the time of Pericles,
+one of the most celebrated times in the history of that
+commonwealth, a king of Egypt sent them a donation
+of corn. This they were mean enough to accept.
+And had the Egyptian prince intended the ruin of
+this city of wicked Bedlamites, he could not have
+taken a more effectual method to do it than by such
+an ensnaring largess. The distribution of this bounty
+caused a quarrel; the majority set on foot an inquiry
+into the title of the citizens; and upon a vain pretence
+of illegitimacy, newly and occasionally set up,
+they deprived of their share of the royal donation no
+<!-- Page 66 --><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" title="42" class="pagenum"></a>less than five thousand of their own body. They went
+further; they disfranchised them; and, having once
+begun with an act of injustice, they could set no
+bounds to it. Not content with cutting them off from
+the rights of citizens, they plundered these unfortunate
+wretches of all their substance; and, to crown
+this masterpiece of violence and tyranny, they actually
+sold every man of the five thousand as slaves in
+the public market. Observe, my lord, that the five
+thousand we here speak of were cut off from a body
+of no more than nineteen thousand; for the entire
+number of citizens was no greater at that time.
+Could the tyrant who wished the Roman people but
+one neck; could the tyrant Caligula himself have
+done, nay, he could scarcely wish for, a greater mischief
+than to have cut off, at one stroke, a fourth of
+his people? Or has the cruelty of that series of sanguine
+tyrants, the C&aelig;sars, ever presented such a piece
+of flagrant and extensive wickedness? The whole
+history of this celebrated republic is but one tissue of
+rashness, folly, ingratitude, injustice, tumult, violence,
+and tyranny, and, indeed, of every species of wickedness
+that can well be imagined. This was a city of
+wise men, in which a minister could not exercise his
+functions; a warlike people, amongst whom a general
+did not dare either to gain or lose a battle; a
+learned nation, in which a philosopher could not venture
+on a free inquiry. This was the city which banished
+Themistocles, starved Aristides, forced into exile
+Miltiades, drove out Anaxagoras, and poisoned
+Socrates. This was a city which changed the form
+of its government with the moon; eternal conspiracies,
+revolutions daily, nothing fixed and established.
+A republic, as an ancient philosopher has observed, is
+<!-- Page 67 --><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" title="43" class="pagenum"></a>no one species of government, but a magazine of every
+species; here you find every sort of it, and that in the
+worst form. As there is a perpetual change, one rising
+and the other falling, you have all the violence
+and wicked policy by which a beginning power must
+always acquire its strength, and all the weakness by
+which falling states are brought to a complete destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Rome has a more venerable aspect than Athens;
+and she conducted her affairs, so far as related to the
+ruin and oppression of the greatest part of the world,
+with greater wisdom and more uniformity. But the
+domestic economy of these two states was nearly or
+altogether the same. An internal dissension constantly
+tore to pieces the bowels of the Roman commonwealth.
+You find the same confusion, the same
+factions, which subsisted at Athens, the same tumults,
+the same revolutions, and, in fine, the same
+slavery; if, perhaps, their former condition did not
+deserve that name altogether as well. All other republics
+were of the same character. Florence was a
+transcript of Athens. And the modern republics, as
+they approach more or less to the democratic form,
+partake more or less of the nature of those which I
+have described.</p>
+
+<p>We are now at the close of our review of the three
+simple forms of artificial society; and we have shown
+them, however they may differ in name, or in some
+slight circumstances, to be all alike in effect: in
+effect, to be all tyrannies. But suppose we were
+inclined to make the most ample concessions; let
+us concede Athens, Rome, Carthage, and two or
+three more of the ancient, and as many of the modern,
+commonwealths, to have been, or to be, free
+<!-- Page 68 --><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" title="44" class="pagenum"></a>and happy, and to owe their freedom and happiness
+to their political constitution. Yet, allowing all this,
+what defence does this make for artificial society in
+general, that these inconsiderable spots of the globe
+have for some short space of time stood as exceptions
+to a charge so general? But when we call these
+governments free, or concede that their citizens were
+happier than those which lived under different forms,
+it is merely <i>ex abundanti</i>. For we should be greatly
+mistaken, if we really thought that the majority of
+the people which filled these cities enjoyed even that
+nominal political freedom of which I have spoken so
+much already. In reality, they had no part of it.
+In Athens there were usually from ten to thirty
+thousand freemen; this was the utmost. But the
+slaves usually amounted to four hundred thousand,
+and sometimes to a great many more. The freemen
+of Sparta and Rome were not more numerous in proportion
+to those whom they held in a slavery even
+more terrible than the Athenian. Therefore state
+the matter fairly: the free states never formed,
+though they were taken altogether, the thousandth
+part of the habitable globe; the freemen in these
+states were never the twentieth part of the people,
+and the time they subsisted is scarce anything in
+that immense ocean of duration in which time and
+slavery are so nearly commensurate. Therefore call
+these free states, or popular governments, or what
+you please; when we consider the majority of their
+inhabitants, and regard the natural rights of mankind,
+they must appear, in reality and truth, no better
+than pitiful and oppressive oligarchies.</p>
+
+<p>After so fair an examen, wherein nothing has
+been exaggerated; no fact produced which cannot
+<!-- Page 69 --><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" title="45" class="pagenum"></a>be proved, and none which has been produced in
+any wise forced or strained, while thousands have,
+for brevity, been omitted; after so candid a discussion
+in all respects; what slave so passive, what bigot
+so blind, what enthusiast so headlong, what politician
+so hardened, as to stand up in defence of a system
+calculated for a curse to mankind? a curse under
+which they smart and groan to this hour, without
+thoroughly knowing the nature of the disease, and
+wanting understanding or courage to supply the
+remedy.</p>
+
+<p>I need not excuse myself to your lordship, nor,
+I think, to any honest man, for the zeal I have
+shown in this cause; for it is an honest zeal, and
+in a good cause. I have defended natural religion
+against a confederacy of atheists and divines. I
+now plead for natural society against politicians, and
+for natural reason against all three. When the
+world is in a fitter temper than it is at present to
+hear truth, or when I shall be more indifferent about
+its temper, my thoughts may become more public.
+In the mean time, let them repose in my own bosom,
+and in the bosoms of such men as are fit to be initiated
+in the sober mysteries of truth and reason.
+My antagonists have already done as much as I could
+desire. Parties in religion and politics make sufficient
+discoveries concerning each other, to give a
+sober man a proper caution against them all. The
+monarchic, and aristocratical, and popular partisans,
+have been jointly laying their axes to the root of all
+government, and have, in their turns, proved each
+other absurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell me
+that artificial government is good, but that I fall out
+only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is
+<!-- Page 70 --><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" title="46" class="pagenum"></a>the abuse! Observe, my lord, I pray you, that grand
+error upon which all artificial legislative power is
+founded. It was observed, that men had ungovernable
+passions, which made it necessary to guard
+against the violence they might offer to each other.
+They appointed governors over them for this reason.
+But a worse and more perplexing difficulty arises,
+how to be defended against the governors? <i>Quis
+custodiet ipsos custodes?</i> In vain they change from a
+single person to a few. These few have the passions
+of the one; and they unite to strengthen themselves,
+and to secure the gratification of their lawless passions
+at the expense of the general good. In vain
+do we fly to the many. The case is worse; their
+passions are less under the government of reason,
+they are augmented by the contagion, and defended
+against all attacks by their multitude.</p>
+
+<p>I have purposely avoided the mention of the mixed
+form of government, for reasons that will be very
+obvious to your lordship. But my caution can avail
+me but little. You will not fail to urge it against
+me in favor of political society. You will not fail to
+show how the errors of the several simple modes
+are corrected by a mixture of all of them, and a
+proper balance of the several powers in such a state.
+I confess, my lord, that this has been long a darling
+mistake of my own; and that of all the sacrifices I
+have made to truth, this has been by far the greatest.
+When I confess that I think this notion a mistake, I
+know to whom I am speaking, for I am satisfied that
+reasons are like liquors, and there are some of such
+a nature as none but strong heads can bear. There
+are few with whom I can communicate so freely as
+with Pope. But Pope cannot bear every truth. He
+<!-- Page 71 --><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" title="47" class="pagenum"></a>has a timidity which hinders the full exertion of his
+faculties, almost as effectually as bigotry cramps those
+of the general herd of mankind. But whoever is a
+genuine follower of truth keeps his eye steady upon
+his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that
+she is the leader. And, my lord, if it be properly considered,
+it were infinitely better to remain possessed
+by the whole legion of vulgar mistakes, than to reject
+some, and at the same time to retain a fondness
+for others altogether as absurd and irrational. The
+first has at least a consistency, that makes a man,
+however erroneously, uniform at least; but the latter
+way of proceeding is such an inconsistent chimera
+and jumble of philosophy and vulgar prejudice, that
+hardly anything more ridiculous can be conceived.
+Let us therefore freely, and without fear or prejudice,
+examine this last contrivance of policy. And, without
+considering how near the quick our instruments
+may come, let us search it to the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>First, then, all men are agreed that this junction of
+regal, aristocratic, and popular power, must form a
+very complex, nice, and intricate machine, which
+being composed of such a variety of parts, with such
+opposite tendencies and movements, it must be liable
+on every accident to be disordered. To speak without
+metaphor, such a government must be liable to
+frequent cabals, tumults, and revolutions, from its
+very constitution. These are undoubtedly as ill
+effects as can happen in a society; for in such a case,
+the closeness acquired by community, instead of serving
+for mutual defence, serves only to increase the
+danger. Such a system is like a city, where trades
+that require constant fires are much exercised, where
+the houses are built of combustible materials, and
+where they stand extremely close.<!-- Page 72 --><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" title="48" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+<p>In the second place, the several constituent parts
+having their distinct rights, and these many of them
+so necessary to be determined with exactness, are yet
+so indeterminate in their nature, that it becomes a
+new and constant source of debate and confusion.
+Hence it is, that whilst the business of government
+should be carrying on, the question is, Who has a
+right to exercise this or that function of it, or what
+men have power to keep their offices in any function?
+Whilst this contest continues, and whilst the balance
+in any sort continues, it has never any remission; all
+manner of abuses and villanies in officers remain
+unpunished; the greatest frauds and robberies in the
+public revenues are committed in defiance of justice;
+and abuses grow, by time and impunity, into customs;
+until they prescribe against the laws, and
+grow too inveterate often to admit a cure, unless such
+as may be as bad as the disease.</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly, the several parts of this species of government,
+though united, preserve the spirit which each
+form has separately. Kings are ambitious; the nobility
+haughty; and the populace tumultuous and
+ungovernable. Each party, however in appearance
+peaceable, carries on a design upon the others; and it
+is owing to this, that in all questions, whether concerning
+foreign or domestic affairs, the whole generally
+turns more upon some party-matter than upon
+the nature of the thing itself; whether such a step
+will diminish or augment the power of the crown, or
+how far the privileges of the subject are likely to be
+extended or restricted by it. And these questions
+are constantly resolved, without any consideration of
+the merits of the cause, merely as the parties who
+uphold these jarring interests may chance to prevail;
+<!-- Page 73 --><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" title="49" class="pagenum"></a>and as they prevail, the balance is overset, now upon
+one side, now upon the other. The government is,
+one day, arbitrary power in a single person; another,
+a juggling confederacy of a few to cheat the prince
+and enslave the people; and the third, a frantic and
+unmanageable democracy. The great instrument of
+all these changes, and what infuses a peculiar venom
+into all of them, is party. It is of no consequence
+what the principles of any party, or what their pretensions
+are; the spirit which actuates all parties is the
+same; the spirit of ambition, of self-interest, of oppression
+and treachery. This spirit entirely reverses
+all the principles which a benevolent nature has
+erected within us; all honesty, all equal justice, and
+even the ties of natural society, the natural affections.
+In a word, my lord, we have all <i>seen</i>, and, if any outward
+considerations were worthy the lasting concern
+of a wise man, we have some of us <i>felt</i>, such oppression
+from party government as no other tyranny can
+parallel. We behold daily the most important rights,
+rights upon which all the others depend, we behold
+these rights determined in the last resort, without the
+least attention even to the appearance or color of
+justice; we behold this without emotion, because we
+have grown up in the constant view of such practices;
+and we are not surprised to hear a man requested to
+be a knave and a traitor, with as much indifference
+as if the most ordinary favor were asked; and we
+hear this request refused, not because it is a most
+unjust and unreasonable desire, but because this
+worthy has already engaged his injustice to another.
+These and many more points I am for from spreading
+to their full extent. You are sensible that I do not
+put forth half my strength; and you cannot be at a
+<!-- Page 74 --><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" title="50" class="pagenum"></a>loss for the reason. A man is allowed sufficient freedom
+of thought, provided he knows how to choose
+his subject properly. You may criticise freely upon
+the Chinese constitution, and observe with as much
+severity as you please upon the absurd tricks, or destructive
+bigotry of the bonzees. But the scene is
+changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason
+may be the names given in Britain, to what would
+be reason and truth if asserted of China. I submit
+to the condition, and though I have a notorious advantage
+before me, I waive the pursuit. For else,
+my lord, it is very obvious what a picture might be
+drawn of the excesses of party even in our own nation.
+I could show, that the same faction has, in
+one reign, promoted popular seditions, and, in the
+next, been a patron of tyranny: I could show that
+they have all of them betrayed the public safety at
+all times, and have very frequently with equal perfidy
+made a market of their own cause and their own
+associates. I could show how vehemently they have
+contended for names, and how silently they have
+passed over things of the last importance. And I
+could demonstrate that they have had the opportunity
+of doing all this mischief, nay, that they themselves
+had their origin and growth from that complex form
+of government, which we are wisely taught to look
+upon as so great a blessing. Revolve, my lord, our
+history from the Conquest. We scarcely ever had a
+prince, who, by fraud or violence, had not made some
+infringement on the constitution. We scarcely ever
+had a Parliament which knew, when it attempted to
+set limits to the royal authority, how to set limits to
+its own. Evils we have had continually calling for
+reformation, and reformations more grievous than any
+<!-- Page 75 --><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" title="51" class="pagenum"></a>evils. Our boasted liberty sometimes trodden down,
+sometimes giddily set up, and ever precariously fluctuating
+and unsettled; it has only been kept alive by the
+blasts of continual feuds, wars, and conspiracies. In
+no country in Europe has the scaffold so often blushed
+with the blood of its nobility. Confiscations, banishments,
+attainders, executions, make a large part of
+the history of such of our families as are not utterly
+extinguished by them. Formerly, indeed, things had
+a more ferocious appearance than they have at this
+day. In these early and unrefined ages, the jarring
+part of a certain chaotic constitution supported their
+several pretensions by the sword. Experience and
+policy have since taught other methods.</p>
+
+<blockquote style="text-align: center">
+<p>At nunc res agitur tenui pulmone rubet&aelig;.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">But how far corruption, venality, the contempt of
+honor, the oblivion of all duty to our country, and
+the most abandoned public prostitution, are preferable
+to the more glaring and violent effects of faction,
+I will not presume to determine. Sure I am that
+they are very great evils.</p>
+
+<p>I have done with the forms of government. During
+the course of my inquiry you may have observed
+a very material difference between my manner of reasoning
+and that which is in use amongst the abettors
+of artificial society. They form their plans upon
+what seems most eligible to their imaginations, for
+the ordering of mankind. I discover the mistakes in
+those plans, from the real known consequences which
+have resulted from them. They have enlisted reason
+to fight against itself, and employ its whole force to
+prove that it is an insufficient guide to them in the
+conduct of their lives. But unhappily for us, in proportion
+as we have deviated from the plain rule of our
+<!-- Page 76 --><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" title="52" class="pagenum"></a>nature, and turned our reason against itself, in that
+proportion have we increased the follies and miseries
+of mankind. The more deeply we penetrate into the
+labyrinth of art, the further we find ourselves from
+those ends for which we entered it. This has happened
+in almost every species of artificial society, and
+in all times. We found, or we thought we found, an
+inconvenience in having every man the judge of his
+own cause. Therefore judges were set up, at first,
+with discretionary powers. But it was soon found a
+miserable slavery to have our lives and properties precarious,
+and hanging upon the arbitrary determination
+of any one man, or set of men. We fled to laws
+as a remedy for this evil. By these we persuaded
+ourselves we might know with some certainty upon
+what ground we stood. But lo! differences arose upon
+the sense and interpretation of those laws. Thus
+we were brought back to our old incertitude. New
+laws were made to expound the old; and new
+difficulties arose upon the new laws; as words multiplied,
+opportunities of cavilling upon them multiplied also.
+Then recourse was had to notes, comments, glosses,
+reports, <i>responsa prudentum</i>, learned readings: eagle
+stood against eagle: authority was set up against
+authority. Some were allured by the modern, others
+reverenced the ancient. The new were more enlightened,
+the old were more venerable. Some adopted
+the comment, others stuck to the text. The confusion
+increased, the mist thickened, until it could be discovered
+no longer what was allowed or forbidden,
+what things were in property, and what common. In
+this uncertainty, (uncertain even to the professors,
+an Egyptian darkness to the rest of mankind), the
+contending parties felt themselves more effectually
+<!-- Page 77 --><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" title="53" class="pagenum"></a>ruined by the delay, than they could have been by
+the injustice of any decision. Our inheritances are
+become a prize for disputation; and disputes and litigations
+are become an inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>The professors of artificial law have always walked
+hand in hand with the professors of artificial theology.
+As their end, in confounding the reason of man, and
+abridging his natural freedom, is exactly the same,
+they have adjusted the means to that end in a way
+entirely similar. The divine thunders out his <i>anathemas</i>
+with more noise and terror against the breach
+of one of his positive institutions, or the neglect of
+some of his trivial forms, than against the neglect or
+breach of those duties and commandments of natural
+religion, which by these forms and institutions he pretends
+to enforce. The lawyer has his forms, and his
+positive institutions too, and he adheres to them with
+a veneration altogether as religious. The worst cause
+cannot be so prejudicial to the litigant, as his advocate's
+or attorney's ignorance or neglect of these
+forms. A lawsuit is like an ill-managed dispute, in
+which the first object is soon out of sight, and the
+parties end upon a matter wholly foreign to that on
+which they began. In a lawsuit the question is, who
+has a right to a certain house or farm? And this
+question is daily determined, not upon the evidence
+of the right, but upon the observance or neglect of
+some forms of words in use with the gentlemen of the
+robe, about which there is even amongst themselves
+such a disagreement, that the most experienced veterans
+in the profession can never be positively assured
+that they are not mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>Let us expostulate with these learned sages, these
+priests of the sacred temple of justice. Are we judges
+<!-- Page 78 --><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" title="54" class="pagenum"></a>of our own property? By no means. You then, who
+are initiated into the mysteries of the blindfold goddess,
+inform me whether I have a right to eat the
+bread I have earned by the hazard of my life or the
+sweat of my brow? The grave doctor answers me in
+the affirmative; the reverend serjeant replies in the
+negative; the learned barrister reasons upon one side
+and upon the other, and concludes nothing. What
+shall I do? An antagonist starts up and presses me
+hard. I enter the field, and retain these three persons
+to defend my cause. My cause, which two farmers
+from the plough could have decided in half an
+hour, takes the court twenty years. I am however at
+the end of my labor, and have in reward for all my
+toil and vexation a judgment in my favor. But hold&mdash;a
+sagacious commander, in the adversary's army,
+has found a flaw in the proceeding. My triumph is
+turned into mourning. I have used <i>or</i>, instead of
+<i>and</i>, or some mistake, small in appearance, but dreadful
+in its consequences; and have the whole of my
+success quashed in a writ of error. I remove my
+suit; I shift from court to court; I fly from equity
+to law, and from law to equity; equal uncertainty
+attends me everywhere; and a mistake in which I
+had no share, decides at once upon my liberty and
+property, sending me from the court to a prison, and
+adjudging my family to beggary and famine. I am
+innocent, gentlemen, of the darkness and uncertainty
+of your science. I never darkened it with absurd and
+contradictory notions, nor confounded it with chicane
+and sophistry. You have excluded me from any
+share in the conduct of my own cause; the science
+was too deep for me; I acknowledged it; but it was
+too deep even for yourselves: you have made the way
+<!-- Page 79 --><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" title="55" class="pagenum"></a>so intricate, that you are yourselves lost in it; you
+err, and you punish me for your errors.</p>
+
+<p>The delay of the law is, your lordship will tell me,
+a trite topic, and which of its abuses have not been
+too severely felt not to be complained of? A man's
+property is to serve for the purposes of his support;
+and therefore, to delay a determination concerning
+that, is the worst injustice, because it cuts off the
+very end and purpose for which I applied to the
+judicature for relief. Quite contrary in the case of
+a man's life; there the determination can hardly be
+too much protracted. Mistakes in this case are as
+often fallen into as many other; and if the judgment
+is sudden, the mistakes are the most irretrievable of
+all others. Of this the gentlemen of the robe are
+themselves sensible, and they have brought it into a
+maxim. <i>De morte hominis nulla est cunctatio longa.</i>
+But what could have induced them to reverse the
+rules, and to contradict that reason which dictated
+them, I am utterly unable to guess. A point concerning
+property, which ought, for the reasons I have
+just mentioned, to be most speedily decided, frequently
+exercises the wit of successions of lawyers,
+for many generations. <i>Multa vir&ucirc;m volvens durando
+s&aelig;cula vincit.</i> But the question concerning a man's
+life, that great question in which no delay ought to
+be counted tedious, is commonly determined in
+twenty-four hours at the utmost. It is not to be
+wondered at, that injustice and absurdity should be
+inseparable companions.</p>
+
+<p>Ask of politicians the end for which laws were originally
+designed; and they will answer, that the laws
+were designed as a protection for the poor and weak,
+against the oppression of the rich and powerful.
+<!-- Page 80 --><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" title="56" class="pagenum"></a>But surely no pretence can be so ridiculous; a man
+might as well tell me he has taken off my load, because
+he has changed the burden. If the poor man
+is not able to support his suit, according to the vexatious
+and expensive manner established in civilized
+countries, has not the rich as great an advantage
+over him as the strong has over the weak in a state
+of nature? But we will not place the state of nature,
+which is the reign of God, in competition with
+political society, which is the absurd usurpation of
+man. In a state of nature, it is true that a man of
+superior force may beat or rob me; but then it is
+true, that I am at full liberty to defend myself, or
+make reprisal by surprise or by cunning, or by any
+other way in which I may be superior to him. But
+in political society, a rich man may rob me in another
+way. I cannot defend myself; for money is
+the only weapon with which we are allowed to fight.
+And if I attempt to avenge myself the whole force of
+that society is ready to complete my ruin.</p>
+
+<p>A good parson once said, that where mystery begins,
+religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least,
+of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice
+ends? It is hard to say, whether the doctors of law
+or divinity have made the greater advances in the
+lucrative business of mystery. The lawyers, as well
+as the theologians, have erected another reason besides
+natural reason; and the result has been, another
+justice besides natural justice. They have so
+bewildered the world and themselves in unmeaning
+forms and ceremonies, and so perplexed the plainest
+matters with metaphysical jargon, that it carries the
+highest danger to a man out of that profession, to
+make the least step without their advice and as<!-- Page 81 --><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" title="57" class="pagenum"></a>sistance.
+Thus, by confining to themselves the
+knowledge of the foundation of all men's lives and
+properties, they have reduced all mankind into the
+most abject and servile dependence. We are tenants
+at the will of these gentlemen for everything;
+and a metaphysical quibble is to decide whether the
+greatest villain breathing shall meet his deserts, or
+escape with impunity, or whether the best man in
+the society shall not be reduced to the lowest and most
+despicable condition it affords. In a word, my lord,
+the injustice, delay, puerility, false refinement, and
+affected mystery of the law are such, that many who
+live under it come to admire and envy the expedition,
+simplicity, and equality of arbitrary judgments.
+I need insist the less on this article to your lordship,
+as you have frequently lamented the miseries derived
+to us from artificial law, and your candor is the more
+to be admired and applauded in this, as your lordship's
+noble house has derived its wealth and its
+honors from that profession.</p>
+
+<p>Before we finish our examination of artificial society,
+I shall lead your lordship into a closer consideration
+of the relations which it gives birth to, and the
+benefits, if such they are, which result from these relations.
+The most obvious division of society is into
+rich and poor; and it is no less obvious, that the
+number of the former bear a great disproportion to
+those of the latter. The whole business of the poor
+is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of
+the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find
+the best methods of confirming the slavery and increasing
+the burdens of the poor. In a state of nature,
+it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions
+are in proportion to his labors. In a state of artificial
+<!-- Page 82 --><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" title="58" class="pagenum"></a>society, it is a law as constant and as invariable, that
+those who labor most enjoy the fewest things; and
+that those who labor not at all have the greatest number
+of enjoyments. A constitution of things this,
+strange and ridiculous beyond expression! We scarce
+believe a thing when we are told it, which we actually
+see before our eyes every day without being in
+the least surprised. I suppose that there are in
+Great Britain upwards of a hundred thousand people
+employed in lead, tin, iron, copper, and coal mines;
+these unhappy wretches scarce ever see the light of
+the sun; they are buried in the bowels of the earth;
+there they work at a severe and dismal task, without
+the least prospect of being delivered from it; they
+subsist upon the coarsest and worst sort of fare; they
+have their health miserably impaired, and their lives
+cut short, by being perpetually confined in the close
+vapor of these malignant minerals. A hundred thousand
+more at least are tortured without remission by
+the suffocating smoke, intense fires, and constant
+drudgery necessary in refining and managing the
+products of those mines. If any man informed us
+that two hundred thousand innocent persons were
+condemned to so intolerable slavery, how should we
+pity the unhappy sufferers, and how great would be
+our just indignation against those who inflicted so
+cruel and ignominious a punishment! This is an instance&mdash;I
+could not wish a stronger&mdash;of the numberless
+things which we pass by in their common
+dress, yet which shock us when they are nakedly represented.
+But this number, considerable as it is, and
+the slavery, with all its baseness and horror, which
+we have at home, is nothing to what the rest of the
+world affords of the same nature. Millions daily
+<!-- Page 83 --><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" title="59" class="pagenum"></a>bathed in the poisonous damps and destructive effluvia
+of lead, silver, copper, and arsenic. To say nothing
+of those other employments, those stations of
+wretchedness and contempt, in which civil society
+has placed the numerous <i>enfans perdus</i> of her army.
+Would any rational man submit to one of the most
+tolerable of these drudgeries, for all the artificial enjoyments
+which policy has made to result from them?
+By no means. And yet need I suggest to your lordship,
+that those who find the means, and those who
+arrive at the end, are not at all the same persons?
+On considering the strange and unaccountable fancies
+and contrivances of artificial reason, I have somewhere
+called this earth the Bedlam of our system.
+Looking now upon the effects of some of those fancies,
+may we not with equal reason call it likewise
+the Newgate and the Bridewell of the universe? Indeed
+the blindness of one part of mankind co-operating
+with the frenzy and villany of the other, has been
+the real builder of this respectable fabric of political
+society: and as the blindness of mankind has caused
+their slavery, in return their state of slavery is made
+a pretence for continuing them in a state of blindness;
+for the politician will tell you gravely, that
+their life of servitude disqualifies the greater part of
+the race of man for a search of truth, and supplies
+them with no other than mean and insufficient ideas.
+This is but too true; and this is one of the reasons
+for which I blame such institutions.</p>
+
+<p>In a misery of this sort, admitting some few lenitives,
+and those too but a few, nine parts in ten of the
+whole race of mankind drudge through life. It may
+be urged perhaps, in palliation of this, that at least
+the rich few find a considerable and real benefit from
+<!-- Page 84 --><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" title="60" class="pagenum"></a>the wretchedness of the many. But is this so in fact?
+Let us examine the point with a little more attention.
+For this purpose the rich in all societies may he
+thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are
+powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations
+of the vast political machine. The other is of those
+who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of
+pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care
+and anxiety, their toilsome days, and sleepless nights,
+are next to proverbial. These circumstances are sufficient
+almost to level their condition to that of the
+unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances
+which place them, in a far lower condition. Not only
+their understandings labor continually, which is the
+severest labor, but their hearts are torn by the worst,
+most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by
+avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part
+of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates
+from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity,
+benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown
+in high stations. <i>Ver&aelig; amiciti&aelig; rarissime inveniuntur
+in iis qui in honoribus reque publica versantur</i>, says
+Cicero. And indeed courts are the schools where
+cruelty, pride, dissimulation, and treachery are studied
+and taught in the most vicious perfection. This
+is a point so clear and acknowledged, that if it did
+not make a necessary part of my subject, I should
+pass it by entirely. And this has hindered me from
+drawing at full length, and in the most striking colors,
+this shocking picture of the degeneracy and
+wretchedness of human nature, in that part which is
+vulgarly thought its happiest and most amiable state.
+You know from what originals I could copy such
+pictures. Happy are they who know enough of them
+<!-- Page 85 --><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" title="61" class="pagenum"></a>to know the little value of the possessors of such
+things, and of all that they possess; and happy they
+who have been snatched from that post of danger
+which they occupy, with the remains of their virtue;
+loss of honors, wealth, titles, and even the loss of
+one's country, is nothing in balance with so great an
+advantage.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now view the other species of the rich, those
+who devote their time and fortunes to idleness and
+pleasure. How much happier are they? The pleasures
+which are agreeable to nature are within the
+reach of all, and therefore can form no distinction in
+favor of the rich. The pleasures which art forces up
+are seldom sincere, and never satisfying. What is
+worse, this constant application to pleasure takes
+away from the enjoyment, or rather turns it into the
+nature of a very burdensome and laborious business.
+It has consequences much more fatal. It produces
+a weak valetudinary state of body, attended by all
+those horrid disorders, and yet more horrid methods
+of cure, which are the result of luxury on the one
+hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human
+art on the other. The pleasures of such men are
+scarcely felt as pleasures; at the same time that they
+bring on pains and diseases, which are felt but too
+severely. The mind has its share of the misfortune;
+it grows lazy and enervate, unwilling and unable to
+search for truth, and utterly uncapable of knowing,
+much less of relishing, real happiness. The poor by
+their excessive labor, and the rich by their enormous
+luxury, are set upon a level, and rendered equally
+ignorant of any knowledge which might conduce to
+their happiness. A dismal view of the interior of all
+civil society! The lower part broken and ground down
+<!-- Page 86 --><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" title="62" class="pagenum"></a>by the most cruel oppression; and the rich by their
+artificial method of life bringing worse evils on themselves
+than their tyranny could possibly inflict on those
+below them. Very different is the prospect of the natural
+state. Here there are no wants which nature
+gives, and in this state men can be sensible of no
+other wants, which are not to be supplied by a very
+moderate degree of labor; therefore there is no slavery.
+Neither is there any luxury, because no single
+man can supply the materials of it. Life is simple,
+and therefore it is happy.</p>
+
+<p>I am conscious, my lord, that your politician will
+urge in his defence, that this unequal state is highly
+useful. That without dooming some part of mankind
+to extraordinary toil, the arts which cultivate life
+could not be exercised. But I demand of this politician,
+how such arts came to be necessary? He answers,
+that civil society could not well exist without
+them. So that these arts are necessary to civil society,
+and civil society necessary again to these arts.
+Thus are we running in a circle, without modesty,
+and without end, and making one error and extravagance
+an excuse for the other. My sentiments about
+these arts and their cause, I have often discoursed
+with my friends at large. Pope has expressed them
+in good verse, where he talks with so much force of
+reason and elegance of language, in praise of the
+state of nature:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>&quot;Then was not pride, nor arts that pride to aid,</div>
+<div>Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>On the whole, my lord, if political society, in whatever
+form, has still made the many the property of the
+few; if it has introduced labors unnecessary, vices
+and diseases unknown, and pleasures incompatible
+<!-- Page 87 --><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" title="63" class="pagenum"></a>with nature; if in all countries it abridges the lives of
+millions, and renders those of millions more utterly
+abject and miserable, shall we still worship so destructive
+an idol, and daily sacrifice to it our health, our
+liberty, and our peace? Or shall we pass by this monstrous
+heap of absurd notions, and abominable practices,
+thinking we have sufficiently discharged our
+duty in exposing the trifling, cheats, and ridiculous
+juggles of a few mad, designing, or ambitious priests?
+Alas! my lord, we labor under a mortal consumption,
+whilst we are so anxious about the cure of a sore finger.
+For has not this leviathan of civil power overflowed
+the earth with a deluge of blood, as if he were
+made to disport and play therein? We have shown
+that political society, on a moderate calculation, has
+been the means of murdering several times the number
+of inhabitants now upon the earth, during its
+short existence, not upwards of four thousand years
+in any accounts to be depended on. But we have
+said nothing of the other, and perhaps as bad, consequence
+of these wars, which have spilled such seas of
+blood, and reduced so many millions to a merciless
+slavery. But these are only the ceremonies performed
+in the porch of the political temple. Much more horrid
+ones are seen as you enter it. The several species
+of government vie with each other in the absurdity
+of their constitutions, and the oppression which they
+make their subjects endure. Take them under what
+form you please, they are in effect but a despotism,
+and they fall, both in effect and appearance too, after
+a very short period, into that cruel and detestable species
+of tyranny: which I rather call it, because we have
+been educated under another form, than that this is
+of worse consequences to mankind. For the free gov<!-- Page 88 --><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" title="64" class="pagenum"></a>ernments,
+for the point of their space, and the moment
+of their duration, have felt more confusion, and
+committed more flagrant acts of tyranny, than the
+most perfect despotic governments which we have
+ever known. Turn your eye next to the labyrinth
+of the law, and the iniquity conceived in its intricate
+recesses. Consider the ravages committed in the
+bowels of all commonwealths by ambition, by avarice,
+envy, fraud, open injustice, and pretended friendship;
+vices which could draw little support from a state of
+nature, but which blossom and flourish in the rankness
+of political society. Revolve our whole discourse;
+add to it all those reflections which your own good
+understanding shall suggest, and make a strenuous
+effort beyond the reach of vulgar philosophy, to confess
+that the cause of artificial society is more defenceless
+even than that of artificial religion; that it
+is as derogatory from the honor of the Creator, as subversive
+of human reason, and productive of infinitely
+more mischief to the human race.</p>
+
+<p>If pretended revelations have caused wars where
+they were opposed, and slavery where they were received,
+the pretended wise inventions of politicians
+have done the same. But the slavery has been much
+heavier, the wars far more bloody, and both more
+universal by many degrees. Show me any mischief
+produced by the madness or wickedness of theologians,
+and I will show you a hundred resulting
+from the ambition and villany of conquerors and
+statesmen. Show me an absurdity in religion, and I
+will undertake to show you a hundred for one in political
+laws and institutions. If you say that natural
+religion is a sufficient guide without the foreign aid
+of revelation, on what principle should political laws
+<!-- Page 89 --><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" title="65" class="pagenum"></a>become necessary? Is not the same reason available
+in theology and in politics? If the laws of nature are
+the laws of God, is it consistent with the Divine wisdom
+to prescribe rules to us, and leave the enforcement
+of them to the folly of human institutions?
+Will you follow truth but to a certain point?</p>
+
+<p>We are indebted for all our miseries to our distrust
+of that guide which Providence thought sufficient for
+our condition, our own natural reason, which rejecting
+both in human and divine things, we have given
+our necks to the yoke of political and theological slavery.
+We have renounced the prerogative of man,
+and it is no wonder that we should be treated like
+beasts. But our misery is much greater than theirs,
+as the crime we commit in rejecting the lawful dominion
+of our reason is greater than any which they
+can commit. If, after all, you should confess all these
+things, yet plead the necessity of political institutions,
+weak and wicked as they are, I can argue with equal,
+perhaps superior, force, concerning the necessity of
+artificial religion; and every step you advance in
+your argument, you add a strength to mine. So that
+if we are resolved to submit our reason, and our liberty
+to civil usurpation, we have nothing to do but
+to conform as quietly as we can to the vulgar notions
+which are connected with this, and take up the theology
+of the vulgar as well as their politics. But if
+we think this necessity rather imaginary than real,
+we should renounce their dreams of society, together
+with their visions of religion, and vindicate ourselves
+into perfect liberty.</p>
+
+<p>You are, my lord, but just entering into the world;
+I am going out of it. I have played long enough to
+be heartily tired of the drama. Whether I have acted
+<!-- Page 90 --><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" title="66" class="pagenum"></a>my part in it well or ill, posterity will judge with
+more candor than I, or than the present age, with
+our present passions, can possibly pretend to. For
+my part, I quit it without a sigh, and submit to the
+sovereign order without murmuring. The nearer we
+approach to the goal of life, the better we begin to
+understand the true value of our existence, and the
+real weight of our opinions. We set out much in
+love with both; but we leave much behind us as we
+advance. We first throw away the tales along with
+the rattles of our nurses: those of the priest keep
+their hold a little longer; those of our governors the
+longest of all. But the passions which prop these
+opinions are withdrawn one after another; and the
+cool light of reason, at the setting of our life, shows
+us what a false splendor played upon these objects
+during our more sanguine seasons. Happy, my lord,
+if instructed by my experience, and even by my errors,
+you come early to make such an estimate of things, as
+may give freedom and ease to your life. I am happy
+that such an estimate promises me comfort at my
+death.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p>
+<a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>
+Had his lordship lived to our days, to have seen the noble relief
+given by this nation to the distressed Portuguese, he had perhaps
+owned this part of his argument a little weakened; but we do not
+think ourselves entitled to alter his lordship's words, but that we are
+bound to follow him exactly.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p>
+<a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>
+Sciant quibus moris illicita mirari, posse etiam sub malis principibus
+magnos viros, &amp;c. See 42, to the end of it.</p></div>
+<!-- Page 91 --><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" title="67" class="pagenum"></a>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_PHILOSOPHICAL_INQUIRY" id="A_PHILOSOPHICAL_INQUIRY"></a>
+<span style="font-size: 60%">A</span><br />
+<br />
+PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 71%">INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF</span><br />
+<br />
+THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 60%">WITH</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 71%">AN INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 60%">CONCERNING</span><br />
+<br />
+TASTE,<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 71%">AND SEVERAL OTHER ADDITIONS</span><br />
+</h2>
+<p />
+<p style="text-indent: 0">*** <i>The first edition of this work was published in 1756;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;the second with large additions, in the year 1757.</i><br />
+<!-- Page 92 --><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" title="68" class="pagenum"></a><!-- Page 93 --><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" title="69" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE2" id="PREFACE2"></a>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I have endeavored to make this edition something
+more full and satisfactory than the first. I
+have sought with the utmost care, and read with
+equal attention, everything which has appeared in
+public against my opinions; I have taken advantage
+of the candid liberty of my friends; and if by these
+means I have been better enabled to discover the
+imperfections of the work, the indulgence it has
+received, imperfect as it was, furnished me with a
+new motive to spare no reasonable pains for its improvement.
+Though I have not found sufficient reason,
+or what appeared to me sufficient, for making
+any material change in my theory, I have found it
+necessary in many places to explain, illustrate, and
+enforce it. I have prefixed an introductory discourse
+concerning Taste; it is a matter curious in
+itself; and it leads naturally enough to the principal
+inquiry. This, with the other explanations, has
+made the work considerably larger; and by increasing
+its bulk has, I am afraid, added to its faults; so
+that notwithstanding all my attention, it may stand
+in need of a yet greater share of indulgence than it
+required at its first appearance.</p>
+
+<p>They who are accustomed to studies of this nature
+will expect, and they will allow too for many faults.
+They know that many of the objects of our inquiry
+<!-- Page 94 --><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" title="70" class="pagenum"></a>are in themselves obscure and intricate; and that
+many others have been rendered so by affected refinements,
+or false learning; they know that there are
+many impediments in the subject, in the prejudices
+of others, and even in our own, that render it a matter
+of no small difficulty to show in a clear light the
+genuine face of nature. They know that whilst the
+mind is intent on the general scheme of things, some
+particular parts must be neglected; that we must
+often submit the style to the matter, and frequently
+give up the praise of elegance, satisfied with being
+clear.</p>
+
+<p>The characters of nature are legible, it is true;
+but they are not plain enough to enable those who
+run, to read them. We must make use of a cautious,
+I had almost said, a timorous method of proceeding.
+We must not attempt to fly, when we can
+scarcely pretend to creep. In considering any complex
+matter, we ought to examine every distinct
+ingredient in the composition, one by one; and reduce
+everything to the utmost simplicity; since the
+condition of our nature binds us to a strict law
+and very narrow limits. We ought afterwards to
+re-examine the principles by the effect of the composition,
+as well as the composition by that of the
+principles. We ought to compare our subject with
+things of a similar nature, and even with things of
+a contrary nature; for discoveries may be, and often
+are made by the contrast, which would escape us on
+the single view. The greater number of the comparisons
+we make, the more general and the more
+certain our knowledge is likely to prove, as built
+upon a more extensive and perfect induction.</p>
+
+<p>If an inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail
+<!-- Page 95 --><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" title="71" class="pagenum"></a>at last of discovering the truth, it may answer an end
+perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of
+our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing,
+it may make us modest. If it does not preserve
+us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error;
+and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness
+or with haste, when so much labor may end in so much
+uncertainty.</p>
+
+<p>I could wish that, in examining this theory, the
+same method were pursued which I endeavored to
+observe in forming it. The objections, in my opinion,
+ought to be proposed, either to the several principles
+as they are distinctly considered, or to the
+justness of the conclusion which is drawn from them.
+But it is common to pass over both the premises and
+conclusion in silence, and to produce, as an objection,
+some poetical passage which does not seem
+easily accounted for upon the principles I endeavor
+to establish. This manner of proceeding I should
+think very improper. The task would be infinite, if
+we could establish no principle until we had previously
+unravelled the complex texture of every
+image or description to be found in poets and orators.
+And though we should never be able to reconcile
+the effect of such images to our principles,
+this can never overturn the theory itself, whilst it is
+founded on certain and indisputable facts. A theory
+founded on experiment, and not assumed, is always
+good for so much as it explains. Our inability to
+push it indefinitely is no argument at all against it.
+This inability may be owing to our ignorance of some
+necessary <i>mediums</i>; to a want of proper application;
+to many other causes besides a defect in the principles
+we employ. In reality, the subject requires a
+<!-- Page 96 --><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" title="72" class="pagenum"></a>much closer attention than we dare claim from our
+manner of treating it.</p>
+
+<p>If it should not appear on the face of the work, I
+must caution the reader against imagining that I intended
+a full dissertation on the Sublime and Beautiful.
+My inquiry went no farther than to the origin
+of these ideas. If the qualities which I have ranged
+under the head of the Sublime be all found consistent
+with each other, and all different from those which I
+place under the head of Beauty; and if those which
+compose the class of the Beautiful have the same
+consistency with themselves, and the same opposition
+to those which are classed under the denomination of
+Sublime, I am in little pain whether anybody chooses
+to follow the name I give them or not, provided he
+allows that what I dispose under different heads are
+in reality different things in nature. The use I
+make of the words may be blamed, as too confined
+or too extended; my meaning cannot well be misunderstood.</p>
+
+<p>To conclude: whatever progress may be made
+towards the discovery of truth in this matter, I do
+not repent the pains I have taken in it. The use of
+such inquiries may be very considerable. Whatever
+turns the soul inward on itself, tends to concentre its
+forces, and to fit it for greater and stronger flights of
+science. By looking into physical causes our minds
+are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether
+we take or whether we lose our game, the chase is
+certainly of service. Cicero, true as he was to the
+academic philosophy, and consequently led to reject
+the certainty of physical, as of every other kind of
+knowledge, yet freely confesses its great importance
+to the human understanding: &quot;<i>Est animorum inge</i><!-- Page 97 --><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" title="73" class="pagenum"></a><i>niorumque
+nostrorum naturale quoddam quasi pabulum
+consideratio contemplatioque natur&aelig;</i>.&quot; If we can
+direct the lights we derive from such exalted
+speculations upon the humbler field of the imagination,
+whilst we investigate the springs, and trace the
+courses of our passions, we may not only communicate
+to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but
+we may reflect back on the severer sciences some of
+the graces and elegances of taste, without which the
+greatest proficiency in those sciences will always have
+the appearance of something illiberal.
+<!-- Page 98 --><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" title="74" class="pagenum"></a>
+<!-- Page 99 --><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" title="75" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<p /> <!-- see comment above on TOC -->
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li>&nbsp; <!-- without this &nbsp;, firefox puts the 1st numbers in wrong place ! -->
+<span class="tocright">Page</span></li>
+<li>
+<a href="#INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION: On Taste</a>
+<span class="tocright">&nbsp;<a href="#Page_79">79</a></span></li>
+<li /><li>  <!-- Empty list element gives better spacing in IE -->
+<a href="#PART_I">PART I</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></span></li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub">
+<li>
+I.     Novelty
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></span></li>
+<li>
+II.    Pain and Pleasure
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_102">102</a></span></li>
+<li>
+III.   The Difference between the Removal of Pain and Positive
+Pleasure
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></span></li>
+<li>
+IV.    Of Delight and Pleasure, as opposed to each other
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></span></li>
+<li>
+V.     Joy and Grief
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VI.    Of the Passions which belong to Self-Preservation
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VII.   Of the Sublime
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VIII.  Of the Passions which belong to Society
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></span></li>
+<li>
+IX.    The Final Cause of the Difference between the Passions
+belonging to Self-Preservation, and those which regard
+the Society of the Sexes
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></span></li>
+<li>
+X.     Of Beauty
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XI.    Society and Solitude
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XII.   Sympathy, Imitation, and Ambition
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XIII.  Sympathy
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XIV.   The Effects of Sympathy in the Distresses of Others
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XV.    Of the Effects of Tragedy
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVI.   Imitation
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVII.  Ambition
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_123">123</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVIII. The Recapitulation
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XIX.   The Conclusion
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></span></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li /><li>
+<a href="#PART_II">PART II.</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_130">130</a></span></li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub">
+<li>
+I.     Of the Passion caused by the Sublime
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_130">130</a></span></li>
+<li>
+II.    Terror
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_130">130</a></span></li>
+<li>
+III.   Obscurity
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></span></li>
+<li><!-- Page 100 --><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" title="76" class="pagenum"></a>
+IV.    Of the Difference between Clearness and Obscurity
+with regard to the Passions
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></span></li>
+<li>
+[IV.]  The Same Subject continued
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></span></li>
+<li>
+V.     Power
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_138">138</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VI.    Privation
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VII.   Vastness
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VIII.  Infinity
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></span></li>
+<li>
+IX.    Succession and Uniformity
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></span></li>
+<li>
+X.     Magnitude in Building
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XI.    Infinity in Pleasing Objects
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XII.   Difficulty
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XIII.  Magnificence
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_154">154</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XIV.   Light
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XV.    Light in Building
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVI.   Color considered as productive of the Sublime
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVII.  Sound and Loudness
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVIII. Suddenness
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XIX.   Intermitting
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XX.    The Cries of Animals
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXI.   Smell and Taste&mdash;Bitters and Stenches
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXII.  Feeling.&mdash;Pain
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_164">164</a></span></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li /><li>
+<a href="#PART_III">PART III.</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></span></li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub">
+<li>
+I.     Of Beauty
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></span></li>
+<li>
+II.    Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in Vegetables
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_166">166</a></span></li>
+<li>
+III.   Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in Animals
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_170">170</a></span></li>
+<li>
+IV.    Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in the Human
+Species
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></span></li>
+<li>
+V.     Proportion further considered
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VI.    Fitness not the Cause of Beauty
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VII.   The Real Effects of Fitness
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VIII.  The Recapitulation
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></span></li>
+<li>
+IX.    Perfection not the Cause of Beauty
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></span></li>
+<li>
+X.     How far the Idea of Beauty may be applied to the
+Qualities of the Mind
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XI.    How far the Idea of Beauty may be applied to Virtue
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_190">190</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XII.   The Real Cause of Beauty
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></span></li>
+<li><!-- Page 101 --><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" title="77" class="pagenum"></a>
+XIII.  Beautiful Objects Small
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XIV.   Smoothness
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XV.    Gradual Variation
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_194">194</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVI.   Delicacy
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVII.  Beauty in Color
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVIII. Recapitulation
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XIX.   The Physiognomy
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XX.    The Eye
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXI.   Ugliness
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXII.  Grace
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXIII. Elegance and Speciousness
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXIV.  The Beautiful in Feeling
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXV.   The Beautiful in Sounds
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_203">203</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXVI.  Taste and Smell
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXVII. The Sublime and Beautiful compared
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></span></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li />
+<li><a href="#PART_IV">PART IV.</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_208">208</a></span></li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub">
+<li>
+I.     Of the Efficient Cause of the Sublime and Beautiful
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_208">208</a></span></li>
+<li>
+II.    Association
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></span></li>
+<li>
+III.   Cause of Pain and Fear
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_210">210</a></span></li>
+<li>
+IV.    Continued
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></span></li>
+<li>
+V.     How the Sublime is produced
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VI.    How Pain can be a Cause of Delight
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VII.   Exercise necessary for the Finer Organs
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VIII.  Why Things not Dangerous sometimes produce a
+Passion like Terror
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></span></li>
+<li>
+IX.    Why Visual Objects of Great Dimensions are Sublime
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></span></li>
+<li>
+X.     Unity, why requisite to Vastness
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XI.    The Artificial Infinite
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XII.   The Vibrations must be Similar
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XIII.  The Effects of Succession in Visual Objects explained
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XIV.   Locke's Opinion concerning Darkness considered
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XV.    Darkness Terrible in its own Nature
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_226">226</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVI.   Why Darkness is Terrible
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVII.  The Effects of Blackness
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XVIII. The Effects of Blackness moderated
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_231">231</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XIX.   The Physical Cause of Love
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XX.    Why Smoothness is Beautiful
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_234">234</a></span></li>
+<li><!-- Page 102 --><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" title="78" class="pagenum"></a>
+XXI.   Sweetness, its Nature
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXII.  Sweetness relaxing
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXIII. Variation, why Beautiful
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_239">239</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXIV.  Concerning Smallness
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_240">240</a></span></li>
+<li>
+XXV.   Of Color
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></span></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li /><li>
+<a href="#PART_V">PART V.</a>
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_246">246</a></span></li>
+<li><ul class="TOCSub">
+<li>
+I.     Of Words
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_246">246</a></span></li>
+<li>
+II.    The Common Effect of Poetry, not by raising Ideas
+of Things
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_246">246</a></span></li>
+<li>
+III.   General Words before Ideas
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></span></li>
+<li>
+IV.    The Effect of Words
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></span></li>
+<li>
+V.     Examples that Words may affect without raising
+Images
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VI.    Poetry not strictly an Imitative Art
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></span></li>
+<li>
+VII.   How Words influence the Passions
+<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_258">258</a></span></li>
+</ul></li>
+</ul>
+<!-- Page 103 --><div><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" title="79" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+
+<h3>ON TASTE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>On a superficial view we may seem to differ very
+widely from each other in our reasonings, and
+no less in our pleasures: but, notwithstanding this
+difference, which I think to be rather apparent than
+real, it is probable that the standard both of reason
+and taste is the same in all human creatures. For if
+there were not some principles of judgment as well
+as of sentiment common to all mankind, no hold
+could possibly be taken either on their reason or their
+passions, sufficient to maintain the ordinary correspondence
+of life. It appears, indeed, to be generally
+acknowledged, that with regard to truth and falsehood
+there is something fixed. We find people in
+their disputes continually appealing to certain tests
+and standards, which are allowed on all sides, and
+are supposed to be established in our common nature.
+But there is not the same obvious concurrence in
+any uniform or settled principles which relate to
+taste. It is even commonly supposed that this delicate
+and aerial faculty, which seems too volatile to
+endure even the chains of a definition, cannot be
+properly tried by any test, nor regulated by any
+standard. There is so continual a call for the exercise
+of the reasoning facility; and it is so much
+strengthened by perpetual contention, that certain
+<!-- Page 104 --><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" title="80" class="pagenum"></a>maxims of right reason seem to be tacitly settled
+amongst the most ignorant. The learned have improved
+on this rude science, and reduced those maxims
+into a system. If taste has not been so happily
+cultivated, it was not that the subject was barren, but
+that the laborers were few or negligent; for, to say
+the truth, there are not the same interesting motives
+to impel us to fix the one, which urge us to ascertain
+the other. And, after all, if men differ in their opinion
+concerning such matters, their difference is not
+attended with the same important consequences; else
+I make no doubt but that the logic of taste, if I may
+be allowed the expression, might very possibly be as
+well digested, and we might come to discuss matters
+of this nature with as much certainty, as those which
+seem more immediately within the province of mere
+reason. And, indeed, it is very necessary, at the entrance
+into such an inquiry as our present, to make
+this point as clear as possible; for if taste has no
+fixed principles, if the imagination is not affected according
+to some invariable and certain laws, our labor
+is likely to be employed to very little purpose; as
+it must be judged an useless, if not an absurd undertaking,
+to lay down rules for caprice, and to set up
+for a legislator of whims and fancies.</p>
+
+<p>The term taste, like all other figurative terms, is
+not extremely accurate; the thing which we understand
+by it is far from a simple and determinate idea
+in the minds of most men, and it is therefore liable
+to uncertainty and confusion. I have no great opinion
+of a definition, the celebrated remedy for the
+cure of this disorder. For, when we define, we seem
+in danger of circumscribing nature within the bounds
+of our own notions, which we often take up by hazard
+<!-- Page 105 --><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" title="81" class="pagenum"></a>or embrace on trust, or form out of a limited and partial
+consideration of the object before us; instead of
+extending our ideas to take in all that nature comprehends,
+according to her manner of combining. We
+are limited in our inquiry by the strict laws to which
+we have submitted at our setting out.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Circa vilem patulumque morabimur orbem,</div>
+<div>Unde pudor proferre pedem vetat aut operis lex.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a
+very little way towards informing us of the nature of
+the thing defined; but let the virtue of a definition
+be what it will, in the order of things, it seems rather
+to follow than to precede our inquiry, of which it
+ought to be considered as the result. It must be acknowledged
+that the methods of disquisition and
+teaching may be sometimes different, and on very
+good reason undoubtedly; but, for my part, I am
+convinced that the method of teaching which approaches
+most nearly to the method of investigation
+is incomparably the best; since, not content with
+serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to
+the stock on which they grew; it tends to set the
+reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct
+him into those paths in which the author has
+made his own discoveries, if he should be so happy
+as to have made any that are valuable.</p>
+
+<p>But to cut off all pretence for cavilling, I mean by
+the word taste, no more than that faculty or those
+faculties of the mind, which are affected with, or
+which form a judgment of, the works of imagination
+and the elegant arts. This is, I think, the most general
+idea of that word, and what is the least connected
+with any particular theory. And my point in
+<!-- Page 106 --><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" title="82" class="pagenum"></a>this inquiry is, to find whether there are any principles,
+on which the imagination is affected, so common
+to all, so grounded and certain, as to supply the
+means of reasoning satisfactorily about them. And
+such principles of taste I fancy there are; however
+paradoxical it may seem to those, who on a superficial
+view imagine that there is so great a diversity of
+tastes, both in kind and degree, that nothing can be
+more indeterminate.</p>
+
+<p>All the natural powers in man, which I know, that
+are conversant about external objects, are the senses;
+the imagination; and the judgment. And first with
+regard to the senses. We do and we must suppose,
+that as the conformation of their organs are nearly or
+altogether the same in all men, so the manner of perceiving
+external objects is in all men the same, or
+with little difference. We are satisfied that what appears
+to be light to one eye, appears light to another;
+that what seems sweet to one palate, is sweet to
+another; that what is dark and bitter to this man, is
+likewise dark and bitter to that; and we conclude in
+the same manner of great and little, hard and soft,
+hot and cold, rough and smooth; and indeed of all
+the natural qualities and affections of bodies. If we
+suffer ourselves to imagine, that their senses present
+to different men different images of things, this sceptical
+proceeding will make every sort of reasoning on
+every subject vain and frivolous, even that sceptical
+reasoning itself which had persuaded us to entertain
+a doubt concerning the agreement of our perceptions.
+But as there will be little doubt that bodies present
+similar images to the whole species, it must necessarily
+be allowed, that the pleasures and the pains which
+every object excites in one man, it must raise in all
+<!-- Page 107 --><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" title="83" class="pagenum"></a>mankind, whilst it operates naturally, simply, and by
+its proper powers only: for if we deny this, we must
+imagine that the same cause, operating in the same
+manner, and on subjects of the same kind, will produce
+different effects; which would be highly absurd.
+Let us first consider this point in the sense of taste,
+and the rather as the faculty in question has taken
+its name from that sense. All men are agreed to call
+vinegar sour, honey sweet, and aloes bitter; and as
+they are all agreed in finding those qualities in those
+objects, they do not in the least differ concerning their
+effects with regard to pleasure and pain. They all
+concur in calling sweetness pleasant, and sourness
+and bitterness unpleasant. Here there is no diversity
+in their sentiments; and that there is not,
+appears fully from the consent of all men in the metaphors
+which are taken, from the souse of taste. A
+sour temper, bitter expressions, bitter curses, a bitter
+fate, are terms well and strongly understood by all.
+And we are altogether as well understood when we
+say, a sweet disposition, a sweet person, a sweet condition
+and the like. It is confessed, that custom
+and some other causes have made many deviations
+from the natural pleasures or pains which belong to
+these several tastes; but then the power of distinguishing
+between the natural and the acquired relish remains
+to the very last. A man frequently comes to
+prefer the taste of tobacco to that of sugar, and the
+flavor of vinegar to that of milk; but this makes no
+confusion in tastes, whilst he is sensible that the tobacco
+and vinegar are not sweet, and whilst he knows
+that habit alone has reconciled his palate to these alien
+pleasures. Even with such a person we may speak,
+and with sufficient precision, concerning tastes. But
+<!-- Page 108 --><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" title="84" class="pagenum"></a>should any man be found who declares, that to him
+tobacco has a taste like sugar, and that he cannot
+distinguish between milk and vinegar; or that tobacco
+and vinegar are sweet, milk bitter, and sugar
+sour; we immediately conclude that the organs of
+this man are out of order, and that his palate is utterly
+vitiated. We are as far from conferring with
+such a person upon tastes, as from reasoning concerning
+the relations of quantity with one who should
+deny that all the parts together were equal to the
+whole. We do not call a man of this kind wrong in
+his notions, but absolutely mad. Exceptions of this
+sort, in either way, do not at all impeach our general
+rule, nor make us conclude that men have various
+principles concerning the relations of quantity or the
+taste of things. So that when it is said, taste cannot
+be disputed, it can only mean, that no one can strictly
+answer what pleasure or pain some particular man
+may find from the taste of some particular thing.
+This indeed cannot be disputed; but we may dispute,
+and with sufficient clearness too, concerning the
+things which are naturally pleasing or disagreeable
+to the sense. But when we talk of any peculiar or
+acquired relish, then we must know the habits, the
+prejudices, or the distempers of this particular man,
+and we must draw our conclusion from those.</p>
+
+<p>This agreement of mankind is not confined to the
+taste solely. The principle of pleasure derived from
+sight is the same in all. Light is more pleasing than
+darkness. Summer, when the earth is clad in green,
+when the heavens are serene and bright, is more
+agreeable than winter, when everything makes a
+different appearance. I never remember that anything
+beautiful, whether a man, a beast, a bird, or a
+<!-- Page 109 --><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" title="85" class="pagenum"></a>plant, was ever shown, though it were to a hundred
+people, that they did not all immediately agree that
+it was beautiful, though some might have thought
+that it fell short of their expectation, or that other
+things were still finer. I believe no man thinks a
+goose to be more beautiful than a swan, or imagines
+that what they call a Friesland hen excels a peacock.
+It must be observed too, that the pleasures of
+the sight are not near so complicated, and confused,
+and altered by unnatural habits and associations, as
+the pleasures of the taste are; because the pleasures
+of the sight more commonly acquiesce in themselves;
+and are not so often altered by considerations which
+are independent of the sight itself. But things do
+not spontaneously present themselves to the palate as
+they do to the sight; they are generally applied to it,
+either as food or as medicine; and from the qualities
+which they possess for nutritive or medicinal purposes
+they often form the palate by degrees, and by force
+of these associations. Thus opium is pleasing to
+Turks, on account of the agreeable delirium it produces.
+Tobacco is the delight of Dutchmen, as it
+diffuses a torpor and pleasing stupefaction. Fermented
+spirits please our common people, because
+they banish care, and all consideration of future or
+present evils. All of these would lie absolutely neglected
+if their properties had originally gone no
+further than the taste; but all these, together with
+tea and coffee, and some other things, have passed
+from the apothecary's shop to our tables, and were
+taken for health long before they were thought of for
+pleasure. The effect of the drug has made us use it
+frequently; and frequent use, combined with the
+agreeable effect, has made the taste itself at last
+<!-- Page 110 --><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" title="86" class="pagenum"></a>agreeable. But this does not in the least perplex
+our reasoning; because we distinguish to the last the
+acquired from the natural relish. In describing the
+taste of an unknown fruit, you would scarcely say
+that it had a sweet and pleasant flavor like tobacco,
+opium, or garlic, although you spoke to those who
+were in the constant use of those drugs, and had great
+pleasure in them. There is in all men a sufficient remembrance
+of the original natural causes of pleasure,
+to enable them to bring all things offered to their
+senses to that standard, and to regulate their feelings
+and opinions by it. Suppose one who had so vitiated
+his palate as to take more pleasure in the taste of
+opium than in that of butter or honey, to be presented
+with a bolus of squills; there is hardly any doubt but
+that he would prefer the butter or honey to this nauseous
+morsel, or to any other bitter drug to which he
+had not been accustomed; which proves that his palate
+was naturally like that of other men in all things,
+that it is still like the palate of other men in many
+things, and only vitiated in some particular points.
+For in judging of any new thing, even of a taste
+similar to that which he has been formed by habit to
+like, he finds his palate affected in the natural manner,
+and on the common principles. Thus the pleasure
+of all the senses, of the sight, and even of the
+taste, that most ambiguous of the senses, is the same
+in all, high and low, learned and unlearned.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the ideas, with their annexed pains and
+pleasures, which are presented by the sense; the
+mind of man possesses a sort of creative power of
+its own; either in representing at pleasure the images
+of things in the order and manner in which they
+were received by the senses, or in combining those
+<!-- Page 111 --><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" title="87" class="pagenum"></a>images in a new manner, and according to a different
+order. This power is called imagination; and to this
+belongs whatever is called wit, fancy, invention, and
+the like. But it must be observed, that this power of
+the imagination is incapable of producing anything
+absolutely new; it can only vary the disposition of
+those ideas which it has received from the senses.
+Now the imagination is the most extensive province
+of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our fears
+and our hopes, and of all our passions that are connected
+with them; and whatever is calculated to affect
+the imagination with these commanding ideas,
+by force of any original natural impression, must have
+the same power pretty equally over all men. For
+since the imagination is only the representation of the
+senses, it can only be pleased or displeased with the
+images, from the same principle on which the sense is
+pleased or displeased with the realities; and consequently
+there must be just as close an agreement in
+the imaginations as in the senses of men. A little attention
+will convince us that this must of necessity
+be the case.</p>
+
+<p>But in the imagination, besides the pain or pleasure
+arising from the properties of the natural object, a
+pleasure is perceived from the resemblance which the
+imitation has to the original: the imagination, I conceive,
+can have no pleasure but what results from one
+or other of these causes. And these causes operate
+pretty uniformly upon all men, because they operate
+by principles in nature, and which are not derived
+from any particular habits or advantages. Mr. Locke
+very justly and finely observes of wit, that it is chiefly
+conversant in tracing resemblances; he remarks, at the
+same time, that the business of judgment is rather in
+<!-- Page 112 --><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" title="88" class="pagenum"></a>finding differences. It may perhaps appear, on this
+supposition, that there is no material distinction between
+the wit and the judgment, as they both seem to
+result from different operations of the same faculty
+of <i>comparing</i>. But in reality, whether they are or are
+not dependent on the same power of the mind, they
+differ so very materially in many respects, that a perfect
+union of wit and judgment is one of the rarest
+things in the world. When two distinct objects are
+unlike to each other, it is only what we expect; things
+are in their common way; and therefore they make
+no impression on the imagination: but when two distinct
+objects have a resemblance, we are struck, we
+attend to them, and we are pleased. The mind of
+man has naturally a far greater alacrity and satisfaction
+in tracing resemblances than in searching for differences;
+because by making resemblances we produce
+<i>new images</i>; we unite, we create, we enlarge our stock;
+but in making distinctions we offer no food at all to
+the imagination; the task itself is more severe and irksome,
+and what pleasure we derive from it is something
+of a negative and indirect nature. A piece of
+news is told me in the morning; this, merely as a
+piece of news, as a fact added to my stock, gives me
+some pleasure. In the evening I find there was nothing
+in it. What do I gain by this, but the dissatisfaction
+to find that I had been imposed upon? Hence it is
+that men are much more naturally inclined to belief
+than to incredulity. And it is upon this principle, that
+the most ignorant and barbarous nations have frequently
+excelled in similitudes, comparisons, metaphors, and
+allegories, who have been weak and backward in distinguishing
+and sorting their ideas. And it is for a
+reason of this kind, that Homer and the oriental writ<!-- Page 113 --><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" title="89" class="pagenum"></a>ers,
+though very fond of similitudes, and though they
+often strike out such as are truly admirable, seldom
+take care to have them exact; that is, they are taken
+with the general resemblance, they paint it strongly,
+and they take no notice of the difference which may
+be found between the things compared.</p>
+
+<p>Now as the pleasure of resemblance is that which
+principally flatters the imagination, all men are nearly
+equal in this point, as far as their knowledge of the
+things represented or compared extends. The principle
+of this knowledge is very much accidental, as it
+depends upon experience and observation, and not on
+the strength or weakness of any natural faculty; and
+it is from this difference in knowledge, that what we
+commonly, though with no great exactness, call a difference
+in taste proceeds. A man to whom sculpture
+is new, sees a barber's block, or some ordinary piece
+of statuary; he is immediately struck and pleased,
+because he sees something like a human figure; and,
+entirely taken up with this likeness, he does not at
+all attend to its defects. No person, I believe, at the
+first time of seeing a piece of imitation ever did.
+Some time after, we suppose that this novice lights
+upon a more artificial work of the same nature; he
+now begins to look with contempt on what he admired
+at first; not that he admired it even then for
+its unlikeness to a man, but for that general though
+inaccurate resemblance which it bore to the human
+figure. What he admired at different times in these
+so different figures, is strictly the same; and though
+his knowledge is improved, his taste is not altered.
+Hitherto his mistake was from a want of knowledge in
+art, and this arose from his inexperience; but he may
+be still deficient from a want of knowledge in nature.
+<!-- Page 114 --><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" title="90" class="pagenum"></a>For it is possible that the man in question may stop
+here, and that the masterpiece of a great hand may
+please him no more than the middling performance
+of a vulgar artist; and this not for want of better or
+higher relish, but because all men do not observe with
+sufficient accuracy on the human figure to enable them
+to judge properly of an imitation of it. And that the
+critical taste does not depend upon a superior principle
+in men, but upon superior knowledge, may appear
+from several instances. The story of the ancient painter
+and the shoemaker is very well known. The shoemaker
+set the painter right with regard to some
+mistakes he had made in the shoe of one of his figures,
+which the painter, who had not made such accurate
+observations on shoes, and was content with a
+general resemblance, had never observed. But this
+was no impeachment to the taste of the painter; it
+only showed some want of knowledge in the art of
+making shoes. Let us imagine, that an anatomist
+had come into the painter's working-room. His piece
+is in general well done, the figure in question in a good
+attitude, and the parts well adjusted to their various
+movements; yet the anatomist, critical in his art,
+may observe the swell of some muscle not quite just
+in the peculiar action of the figure. Here the anatomist
+observes what the painter had not observed;
+and he passes by what the shoemaker had remarked.
+But a want of the last critical knowledge in anatomy
+no more reflected on the natural good taste of the
+painter, or of any common observer of his piece, than
+the want of an exact knowledge in the formation of
+a shoe. A fine piece of a decollated head of St. John
+the Baptist was shown to a Turkish emperor: he
+praised many things, but he observed one defect:
+<!-- Page 115 --><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" title="91" class="pagenum"></a>he observed that the skin did not shrink from the
+wounded part of the neck. The sultan on this
+occasion, though his observation was very just, discovered
+no more natural taste than the painter who
+executed this piece, or than a thousand European
+connoisseurs, who probably never would have made
+the same observation. His Turkish majesty had
+indeed been well acquainted with that terrible spectacle,
+which the others could only have represented
+in their imagination. On the subject of their dislike
+there is a difference between all these people, arising
+from the different kinds and degrees of their
+knowledge; but there is something in common to
+the painter, the shoemaker, the anatomist, and the
+Turkish emperor, the pleasure arising from a natural
+object, so far as each perceives it justly imitated;
+the satisfaction in seeing an agreeable figure; the
+sympathy proceeding from a striking and affecting
+incident. So far as taste is natural, it is nearly
+common to all.</p>
+
+<p>In poetry, and other pieces of imagination, the
+same parity may be observed. It is true, that one
+man is charmed with Don Bellianis, and reads Virgil
+coldly; whilst another is transported with the &AElig;neid,
+and leaves Don Bellianis to children. These two men
+seem to have a taste very different from each other;
+but in fact they differ very little. In both these
+pieces, which inspire such opposite sentiments, a tale
+exciting admiration is told; both are full of action,
+both are passionate; in both are voyages, battles,
+triumphs, and continual changes of fortune. The
+admirer of Don Bellianis perhaps does not understand
+the refined language of the &AElig;neid, who, if it
+was degraded into the style of the &quot;Pilgrim's Pro<!-- Page 116 --><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" title="92" class="pagenum"></a>gress,&quot;
+might feel it in all its energy, on the same
+principle which made him an admirer of Don Bellianis.</p>
+
+<p>In his favorite author he is not shocked with the
+continual breaches of probability, the confusion of
+times, the offences against manners, the trampling
+upon geography; for he knows nothing of geography
+and chronology, and he has never examined the
+grounds of probability. He perhaps reads of a shipwreck
+on the coast of Bohemia: wholly taken up
+with so interesting an event, and only solicitous for
+the fate of his hero, he is not in the least troubled at
+this extravagant blunder. For why should he be
+shocked at a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia, who
+does not know but that Bohemia may be an island
+in the Atlantic ocean? and after all, what reflection
+is this on the natural good taste of the person here
+supposed?</p>
+
+<p>So far then as taste belongs to the imagination, its
+principle is the same in all men; there is no difference
+in the manner of their being affected, nor in the
+causes of the affection; but in the <i>degree</i> there is a
+difference, which arises from two causes principally;
+either from a greater degree of natural sensibility, or
+from a closer and longer attention to the object. To
+illustrate this by the procedure of the senses, in
+which the same difference is found, let us suppose
+a very smooth marble table to be set before two men;
+they both perceive it to be smooth, and they are both
+pleased with it because of this quality. So far they
+agree. But suppose another, and after that another
+table, the latter still smoother than the former, to be
+set before them. It is now very probable that these
+men, who are so agreed upon what is smooth, and
+<!-- Page 117 --><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" title="93" class="pagenum"></a>in the pleasure from thence, will disagree when
+they come to settle which table has the advantage in
+point of polish. Here is indeed the great difference
+between tastes, when men come to compare the excess
+or diminution of things which are judged by degree
+and not by measure. Nor is it easy, when such a
+difference arises, to settle the point, if the excess or
+diminution be not glaring. If we differ in opinion
+about two quantities, we can have recourse to a common
+measure, which may decide the question with
+the utmost exactness; and this, I take it, is what
+gives mathematical knowledge a greater certainty
+than any other. But in things whose excess is not
+judged by greater or smaller, as smoothness and
+roughness, hardness and softness, darkness and
+light, the shades of colors, all these are very easily
+distinguished when the difference is any way considerable,
+but not when it is minute, for want of
+some common measures, which perhaps may never
+come to be discovered. In these nice cases, supposing
+the acuteness of the sense equal, the greater
+attention and habit in such things will have the
+advantage. In the question about the tables, the
+marble-polisher will unquestionably determine the
+most accurately. But notwithstanding this want
+of a common measure for settling many disputes
+relative to the senses, and their representative the
+imagination, we find that the principles are the same
+in all, and that there is no disagreement until we
+come to examine into the pre-eminence or difference
+of things, which brings us within the province of the
+judgment.</p>
+
+<p>So long as we are conversant with the sensible
+qualities of things, hardly any more than the imagi<!-- Page 118 --><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" title="94" class="pagenum"></a>nation
+seems concerned; little more also than the
+imagination seems concerned when the passions are
+represented, because by the force of natural sympathy
+they are felt in all men without any recourse
+to reasoning, and their justness recognized in every
+breast. Love, grief, fear, anger, joy, all these passions
+have, in their turns, affected every mind; and
+they do not affect it in an arbitrary or casual manner,
+but upon certain, natural, and uniform principles.
+But as many of the works of imagination are
+not confined to the representation of sensible objects,
+nor to efforts upon the passions, but extend themselves
+to the manners, the characters, the actions,
+and designs of men, their relations, their virtues and
+vices, they come within the province of the judgment,
+which is improved by attention, and by the
+habit of reasoning. All these make a very considerable
+part of what are considered as the objects of
+taste; and Horace sends us to the schools of philosophy
+and the world for our instruction in them.
+Whatever certainty is to be acquired in morality
+and the science of life; just the same degree of certainty
+have we in what relates to them in works of
+imitation. Indeed it is for the most part in our skill
+in manners, and in the observances of time and
+place, and of decency in general, which is only to
+be learned in those schools to which Horace recommends
+us, that what is called taste, by way of distinction,
+consists: and which is in reality no other
+than a more refined judgment. On the whole, it
+appears to me, that what is called taste, in its most
+general acceptation, is not a simple idea, but is partly
+made up of a perception of the primary pleasures of
+sense, of the secondary pleasures of the imagination,
+<!-- Page 119 --><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" title="95" class="pagenum"></a>and of the conclusions of the reasoning faculty, concerning
+the various relations of these, and concerning
+the human passions, manners, and actions. All
+this is requisite to form taste, and the groundwork of
+all these is the same in the human mind; for as the
+senses are the great originals of all our ideas, and
+consequently of all our pleasures, if they are not
+uncertain and arbitrary, the whole groundwork of
+taste is common to all, and therefore there is a sufficient
+foundation for a conclusive reasoning on these
+matters.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst we consider taste merely according to its
+nature and species, we shall find its principles entirely
+uniform; but the degree in which these principles
+prevail, in the several individuals of mankind, is altogether
+as different as the principles themselves are
+similar. For sensibility and judgment, which are the
+qualities that compose what we commonly call a <i>taste</i>,
+vary exceedingly in various people. From a defect in
+the former of these qualities arises a want of taste; a
+weakness in the latter constitutes a wrong or a bad
+one. There are some men formed with feelings so
+blunt, with tempers so cold and phlegmatic, that they
+can hardly be said to be awake during the whole
+course of their lives. Upon such persons the most
+striking objects make but a faint and obscure impression.
+There are others so continually in the agitation
+of gross and merely sensual pleasures, or so occupied
+in the low drudgery of avarice, or so heated in the
+chase of honors and distinction, that their minds,
+which had been used continually to the storms of
+these violent and tempestuous passions, can hardly be
+put in motion by the delicate and refined play of the
+imagination. These men, though from a different
+<!-- Page 120 --><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" title="96" class="pagenum"></a>cause, become as stupid and insensible as the former;
+but whenever either of these happen to be struck with
+any natural elegance or greatness, or with these qualities
+in any work of art, they are moved upon the
+same principle.</p>
+
+<p>The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
+And this may arise from a natural weakness of understanding
+(in whatever the strength of that faculty
+may consist), or, which is much more commonly the
+case, it may arise from a want of a proper and well-directed
+exercise, which alone can make it strong and
+ready. Besides, that ignorance, inattention, prejudice,
+rashness, levity, obstinacy, in short, all those passions,
+and all those vices, which pervert the judgment in
+other matters, prejudice it no less in this its more refined
+and elegant province. These causes produce
+different opinions upon everything which is an object
+of the understanding, without inducing us to suppose
+that there are no settled principles of reason. And
+indeed, on the whole, one may observe, that there
+is rather less difference upon matters of taste among
+mankind, than upon most of those which depend upon
+the naked reason; and that men are far better agreed
+on the excellence of a description in Virgil, than on
+the truth or falsehood of a theory of Aristotle.</p>
+
+<p>A rectitude of judgment in the arts, which may be
+called a good taste, does in a great measure depend
+upon sensibility; because if the mind has no bent to
+the pleasures of the imagination, it will never apply
+itself sufficiently to works of that species to acquire
+a competent knowledge in them. But though a degree
+of sensibility is requisite to form a good judgment,
+yet a good judgment does not necessarily arise
+from a quick sensibility of pleasure; it frequently
+<!-- Page 121 --><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" title="97" class="pagenum"></a>happens that a very poor judge, merely by force of
+a greater complexional sensibility, is more affected
+by a very poor piece, than the best judge by the most
+perfect; for as everything now, extraordinary, grand,
+or passionate, is well calculated to affect such a person,
+and that the faults do not affect him, his pleasure
+is more pure and unmixed; and as it is merely
+a pleasure of the imagination, it is much higher than
+any which is derived from a rectitude of the judgment;
+the judgment is for the greater part employed
+in throwing stumbling-blocks in the way of the imagination,
+in dissipating the scenes of its enchantment,
+and in tying us down to the disagreeable yoke
+of our reason: for almost the only pleasure that
+men have in judging better than others, consists in a
+sort of conscious pride and superiority, which arises
+from thinking rightly; but then this is an indirect
+pleasure, a pleasure which does not immediately result
+from the object which is under contemplation.
+In the morning of our days, when the senses are unworn
+and tender, when the whole man is awake in
+every part, and the gloss of novelty fresh upon all
+the objects that surround us, how lively at that time
+are our sensations, but how false and inaccurate the
+judgments we form of things! I despair of ever receiving
+the same degree of pleasure from the most
+excellent performances of genius, which I felt at that
+age from pieces which my present judgment regards
+as trifling and contemptible. Every trivial cause of
+pleasure is apt to affect the man of too sanguine a
+complexion: his appetite is too keen to suffer his taste
+to be delicate; and he is in all respects what Ovid
+says of himself in love,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Molle meum levibus cor est violabile telis,</div>
+<div>Et semper causa est, cur ego semper amem.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent"><!-- Page 122 --><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" title="98" class="pagenum"></a>One of this character can never be a refined judge;
+never what the comic poet calls <i>elegans formarum
+spectator</i>. The excellence and force of a composition
+must always he imperfectly estimated from its effect
+on the minds of any, except we know the temper and
+character of those minds. The most powerful effects
+of poetry and music have been displayed, and perhaps
+are still displayed, where these arts are but in
+a very low and imperfect state. The rude hearer is
+affected by the principles which operate in these arts
+even in their rudest condition; and he is not skilful
+enough to perceive the defects. But as the arts
+advance towards their perfection, the science of criticism
+advances with equal pace, and the pleasure of
+judges is frequently interrupted by the faults which
+we discovered in the most finished compositions.</p>
+
+<p>Before I leave this subject, I cannot help taking
+notice of an opinion which many persons entertain,
+as if the taste were a separate faculty of the mind,
+and distinct from the judgment and imagination; a
+species of instinct, by which we are struck naturally,
+and at the first glance, without any previous reasoning,
+with the excellences or the defects of a composition.
+So far as the imagination, and the passions are concerned,
+I believe it true, that the reason is little consulted;
+but where disposition, where decorum, where
+congruity are concerned, in short, wherever the best
+taste differs from the worst, I am convinced that the
+understanding operates, and nothing else; and its
+operation is in reality far from being always sudden,
+or, when it is sudden, it is often far from being
+right. Men of the best taste by consideration come
+frequently to change these early and precipitate judgments,
+which the mind, from its aversion to neutrality
+and doubt, loves to form on the spot. It is
+<!-- Page 123 --><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" title="99" class="pagenum"></a>known that the taste (whatever it is) is improved
+exactly as we improve our judgment, by extending
+our knowledge, by a steady attention to our object,
+and by frequent exercise. They who have not taken
+these methods, if their taste decides quickly, it is
+always uncertainly; and their quickness is owing to
+their presumption and rashness, and not to any sudden
+irradiation, that in a moment dispels all darkness
+from their minds. But they who have cultivated
+that species of knowledge which makes the object of
+taste, by degrees and habitually attain not only a
+soundness but a readiness of judgment, as men do
+by the same methods on all other occasions. At
+first they are obliged to spell, but at last they read
+with ease and with celerity; but this celerity of its
+operation is no proof that the taste is a distinct faculty.
+Nobody, I believe, has attended the course of
+a discussion which turned upon matters within the
+sphere of mere naked reason, but must have observed
+the extreme readiness with which the whole process
+of the argument is carried on, the grounds discovered,
+the objections raised and answered, and the
+conclusions drawn from premises, with a quickness
+altogether as great as the taste can be supposed to
+work with; and yet where nothing but plain reason
+either is or can be suspected to operate. To multiply
+principles for every different appearance is useless,
+and unphilosophical too in a high degree.</p>
+
+<p>This matter might be pursued much farther; but
+it is not the extent of the subject which must prescribe
+our bounds, for what subject does not branch
+out to infinity? It is the nature of our particular
+scheme, and the single point of view in which we
+consider it, which ought to put a stop to our researches.<!-- Page 124 --><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" title="100" class="pagenum"></a><!-- Page 125 --><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" title="101" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<!-- DONT SEE THE NEED TO REPEAT THE TITLE
+<h2>A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY ****</h2>
+
+<p>
+A<br />
+<br />
+PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY<br />
+<br />
+INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF<br />
+<br />
+THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL<br />
+</p>
+
+-->
+
+<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION I.<br />
+<br />
+NOVELTY.</h3>
+
+<p>The first and the simplest emotion which we discover
+in the human mind is curiosity. By curiosity
+I mean whatever desire we have for, or whatever
+pleasure we take in, novelty. We see children
+perpetually running from place to place, to hunt out
+something new: they catch with great eagerness, and
+with very little choice, at whatever comes before
+them; their attention is engaged by everything,
+because everything has, in that stage of life, the
+charm of novelty to recommend it. But as those
+things, which engage us merely by their novelty, cannot
+attach us for any length of time, curiosity is the
+most superficial of all the affections; it changes its
+object perpetually; it has an appetite which is very
+sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an
+appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and anxiety.
+Curiosity, from its nature, is a very active principle;
+it quickly runs over the greatest part of its objects,
+and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to
+be met with in nature; the same things make frequent
+returns, and they return with less and less of any
+<!-- Page 126 --><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" title="102" class="pagenum"></a>agreeable effect. In short, the occurrences of life, by
+the time we come to know it a little, would be incapable
+of affecting the mind with any other sensations
+than those of loathing and weariness, if many things
+were not adapted to affect the mind by means of
+other powers besides novelty in them, and of other
+passions besides curiosity in ourselves. These powers
+and passions shall be considered in their place.
+But, whatever these powers are, or upon what principle
+soever they affect the mind, it is absolutely necessary
+that they should not be exerted in those things
+which a daily and vulgar use have brought into a
+stale unaffecting familiarity. Some degree of novelty
+must be one of the materials in every instrument
+which works upon the mind; and curiosity
+blends itself more or less with all our passions.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION II.<br />
+<br />
+PAIN AND PLEASURE.</h3>
+
+<p>It seems, then, necessary towards moving the passions
+of people advanced in life to any considerable
+degree, that the objects designed for that purpose,
+besides their being in some measure new,
+should be capable of exciting pain or pleasure from
+other causes. Pain and pleasure are simple ideas,
+incapable of definition. People are not liable to be
+mistaken in their feelings, but they are very frequently
+wrong in the names they give them, and in
+their reasonings about them. Many are of opinion,
+that pain arises necessarily from the removal of some
+pleasure; as they think pleasure does from the ceasing
+or diminution of some pain. For my part, I am
+<!-- Page 127 --><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" title="103" class="pagenum"></a>rather inclined to imagine, that pain and pleasure,
+in their most simple and natural manner of affecting,
+are each of a positive nature, and by no means necessarily
+dependent on each other for their existence.
+The human mind is often, and I think it is for the
+most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure,
+which I call a state of indifference. When I am carried
+from this state into a state of actual pleasure, it
+does not appear necessary that I should pass through
+the medium of any sort of pain. If in such a state
+of indifference, or ease, or tranquillity, or call it what
+you please, you were to be suddenly entertained with
+a concert of music; or suppose some object of a fine
+shape, and bright, lively colors, to be presented before
+you; or imagine your smell is gratified with
+the fragrance of a rose; or if, without any previous
+thirst, you were to drink of some pleasant kind of
+wine, or to taste of some sweetmeat without being
+hungry; in all the several senses, of hearing, smelling,
+and tasting, you undoubtedly find a pleasure;
+yet, if I inquire into the state of your mind previous
+to these gratifications, you will hardly tell me that
+they found you in any kind of pain; or, having satisfied
+these several senses with their several pleasures,
+will you say that any pain has succeeded, though the
+pleasure is absolutely over? Suppose, on the other
+hand, a man in the same state of indifference to
+receive a violent blow, or to drink of some bitter potion,
+or to have his ears wounded with some harsh
+and grating sound; here is no removal of pleasure;
+and yet here is felt, his every sense which is affected,
+a pain very distinguishable. It may be said, perhaps,
+that the pain in these cases had its rise from the
+removal of the pleasure which the man enjoyed
+<!-- Page 128 --><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" title="104" class="pagenum"></a>before, though that pleasure was of so low a degree as
+to be perceived only by the removal. But this seems
+to me a subtilty that is not discoverable in nature.
+For if, previous to the pain, I do not feel any actual
+pleasure, I have no reason to judge that any such
+thing exists; since pleasure is only pleasure as it is
+felt. The same may be said of pain, and with equal
+reason. I can never persuade myself that pleasure
+and pain are mere relations, which can only exist as
+they are contrasted; but I think I can discern clearly
+that there are positive pains and pleasures, which do
+not at all depend upon each other. Nothing is more
+certain to my own feelings than this. There is nothing
+which I can distinguish in my mind with more
+clearness than the three states, of indifference, of
+pleasure, and of pain. Every one of these I can perceive
+without any sort of idea of its relation to anything
+else. Caius is afflicted with a fit of the colic;
+this man is actually in pain; stretch Caius upon the
+rack, he will feel a much greater pain: but does this
+pain of the rack arise from the removal of any pleasure?
+or is the fit of the colic a pleasure or a pain
+just as we are pleased to consider it?</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION III.<br />
+<br />
+THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE REMOVAL OF PAIN
+AND POSITIVE PLEASURE.</h3>
+
+<p>We shall carry this proposition yet a step further.
+We shall venture to propose, that pain and pleasure are
+not only not necessarily dependent for their existence
+on their mutual diminution or removal, but that, in
+reality, the diminution or ceasing of pleasure does not
+<!-- Page 129 --><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" title="105" class="pagenum"></a>operate like positive pain; and that the removal or
+diminution of pain, in its effect, has very little resemblance
+to positive pleasure.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor"
+title="Mr. Locke [Essay on Human Understanding, l. ii. c. 20, sect. 16,]
+thinks that the removal or lessening of a pain is considered and operates
+as a pleasure, and the loss or diminishing of pleasure as a pain.
+It is this opinion which we consider here.">[10]</a> The former of these
+propositions will, I believe, be much more readily allowed
+than the latter; because it is very evident that
+pleasure, when it has run its career, sets us down
+very nearly where it found us. Pleasure of every
+kind quickly satisfies; and, when it is over, we relapse
+into indifference, or, rather, we fall into a soft
+tranquillity which is tinged with the agreeable color
+of the former sensation. I own it is not at first view
+so apparent that the removal of a great pain does not
+resemble positive pleasure: but let us recollect in what
+state we have found our minds upon escaping some imminent
+danger, or on being released from the severity
+of some cruel pain. We have on such occasions found,
+if I am not much mistaken, the temper of our minds in
+a tenor very remote from that which attends the presence
+of positive pleasure; we have found them in a
+state of much sobriety, impressed with a sense of awe,
+in a sort of tranquillity shadowed with horror. The
+fashion of the countenance and the gesture of the
+body on such occasions is so correspondent to this
+state of mind, that any person, a stranger to the cause
+of the appearance, would rather judge us under some
+consternation, than in the enjoyment of anything like
+positive pleasure.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="H&ocirc;s d' hotan andr' at&ecirc; pykin&ecirc; lab&ecirc;, host' eni patr&ecirc;,">
+Ὡς δ' ὅταν ἄνδ�' ἄτη πυκινὴ λ�βῃ, ὅστ' �νὶ π�τ�ῃ,
+</span></div>
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="Ph&ocirc;ta katakteinas, all&ocirc;n exiketo d&ecirc;mon,">
+Φὢτα κατακτεἱνας, ἄλλων �ξἱκετο δἢμον,
+</span></div>
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="Andros es aphneiou, thambos d' echei eisoro&ocirc;ntas.">
+Ἁνδ�ὀς �ς ἀφνειοὒ, θ�μβος δ' ἔcἑι εἰσο�ὀωντας.
+</span></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<!-- Transliteration
+H&ocirc;s d' hotan andr' at&ecirc; pykin&ecirc; lab&ecirc;, host' eni patr&ecirc;,
+Ph&ocirc;ta katakteinas, all&ocirc;n exiketo d&ecirc;mon,
+Andros es aphneiou, thambos d' echei eisoro&ocirc;ntas.
+-->
+<!-- Unicode
+Ὡς δ' ὅταν ἄνδ�' ἄτη πυκινὴ λ�βῃ, ὅστ' �νὶ π�τ�ῃ,
+Φὢτα κατακτεἱνας, ἄλλων �ξἱκετο δἢμον,
+Ἁνδ�ὀς �ς ἀφνειοὒ, θ�μβος δ' ἔcἑι εἰσο�ὀωντας.
+-->
+<!-- Betacode
+Ô(s d' o(/tan a)/ndr' a)/tê pykinê\ la(bê|, o(/st' e)ni\ pa(trê|,
+Phô)\ta kataktei(nas, a)/llôn e)xi(keto dê)\mon,
+A(ndro)s e)s a)phneioy)\, tha(mbos d' e)/ce(i ei)soro)ôntas.
+-->
+<!-- HTML Entities
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+
+<p class="citation">Iliad,
+<span lang="el" title="&Ocirc;">Ω</span><!-- HTML Entity &#937; -->. 480.
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="margin-left: 4em; font-size: 95%"><div class="stanza"><!-- Page 130 --><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" title="106" class="pagenum"></a>
+<div><span style="margin-left: -.5em;">&quot;As when a wretch, who, conscious of his crime,</span></div>
+<div>Pursued for murder from his native clime,</div>
+<div>Just gains some frontier, breathless, pale, amazed;</div>
+<div>All gaze, all wonder!&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">This striking appearance of the man whom Homer
+supposes to have just escaped an imminent danger,
+the sort of mixed passion of terror and surprise, with
+which he affects the spectators, paints very strongly
+the manner in which we find ourselves affected upon
+occasions any way similar. For when we have suffered
+from any violent emotion, the mind naturally
+continues in something like the same condition, after
+the cause which first produced it has ceased to operate.
+The tossing of the sea remains after the storm;
+and when this remain of horror has entirely subsided,
+all the passion which the accident raised subsides
+along with it; and the mind returns to its usual
+state of indifference. In short, pleasure (I mean
+anything either in the inward sensation, or in the
+outward appearance, like pleasure from a positive
+cause) has never, I imagine, its origin from the removal
+of pain or danger.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION IV.<br />
+<br />
+OF DELIGHT AND PLEASURE, AS OPPOSED TO EACH
+OTHER.</h3>
+
+<p>But shall we therefore say, that the removal of
+pain or its diminution is always simply painful? or
+affirm that the cessation or the lessening of pleasure
+is always attended itself with a pleasure? By no
+means. What I advance is no more than this; first,
+that there are pleasures and pains of a positive and
+<!-- Page 131 --><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" title="107" class="pagenum"></a>independent nature; and, secondly, that the feeling
+which results from the ceasing or diminution of pain
+does not bear a sufficient resemblance to positive
+pleasure, to have it considered as of the same nature,
+or to entitle it to be known by the same name; and
+thirdly, that upon the same principle the removal or
+qualification of pleasure has no resemblance to positive
+pain. It is certain that the former feeling (the
+removal or moderation of pain) has something in it
+far from distressing, or disagreeable in its nature.
+This feeling, in many cases so agreeable, but in all so
+different from positive pleasure, has no name which I
+know; but that hinders not its being a very real one,
+and very different from all others. It is most certain,
+that every species of satisfaction or pleasure,
+how different soever in its manner of affecting, is
+of a positive nature in the mind of him who feels it.
+The affection is undoubtedly positive; but the cause
+may be, as in this case it certainly is, a sort of <i>privation</i>.
+And it is very reasonable that we should distinguish
+by some term two things so distinct in
+nature, as a pleasure that is such simply, and without
+any relation, from that pleasure which cannot
+exist without a relation, and that, too, a relation to
+pain. Very extraordinary it would be, if these affections,
+so distinguishable in their causes, so different in
+their effects, should be confounded with each other,
+because vulgar use has ranged them under the same
+general title. Whenever I have occasion to speak of
+this species of relative pleasure, I call it <i>delight</i>; and
+I shall take the best care I can to use that word
+in no other sense. I am satisfied the word is not
+commonly used in this appropriated signification;
+but I thought it better to take up a word already
+<!-- Page 132 --><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" title="108" class="pagenum"></a>known, and to limit its signification, than to introduce
+a new one, which would not perhaps incorporate
+so well with the language. I should never have
+presumed the least alteration in our words, if the
+nature of the language, framed for the purposes of
+business rather than those of philosophy, and the
+nature of my subject, that leads me out of the
+common track of discourse, did not in a manner
+necessitate me to it. I shall make use of this liberty
+with all possible caution. As I make use of the
+word <i>delight</i> to express the sensation which accompanies
+the removal of pain or danger, so, when I speak
+of positive pleasure, I shall for the most part call it
+simply <i>pleasure</i>.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION V.<br />
+<br />
+JOY AND GRIEF.</h3>
+
+<p>It must be observed, that the cessation of pleasure
+affects the mind three ways. If it simply ceases
+after having continued a proper time, the effect
+is <i>indifference</i>; if it be abruptly broken off, there
+ensues an uneasy sense called <i>disappointment</i>; if
+the object be so totally lost that there is no chance
+of enjoying it again, a passion arises in the mind
+which is called <i>grief</i>. Now there is none of these,
+not even grief, which is the most violent, that I think
+has any resemblance to positive pain. The person
+who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him;
+he indulges it, he loves it: but this never happens
+in the case of actual pain, which no man ever
+willingly endured for any considerable time. That
+grief should be willingly endured, though far from
+a simply pleasing sensation, is not so difficult to be
+<!-- Page 133 --><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" title="109" class="pagenum"></a>understood. It is the nature of grief to keep its
+object perpetually in its eye, to present it in its most
+pleasurable views, to repeat all the circumstances
+that attend it, even to the last minuteness; to go
+back to every particular enjoyment, to dwell upon
+each, and to find a thousand new perfections in all,
+that were not sufficiently understood before; in grief,
+the <i>pleasure</i> is still uppermost; and the affliction we
+suffer has no resemblance to absolute pain, which is
+always odious, and which we endeavor to shake off as
+soon as possible. The Odyssey of Homer, which
+abounds with so many natural and affecting images,
+has none more striking than those which Menelaus
+raises of the calamitous fate of his friends, and his
+own manner of feeling it. He owns, indeed, that he
+often gives himself some intermission from such melancholy
+reflections; but he observes, too, that, melancholy
+as they are, they give him pleasure.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="All emp&ecirc;s pantas men odyromenos kai acheu&ocirc;n,">
+Ἁλλ' ἔμπηστ πάντας μ�v ὀδυ�όμενοστ καὶ ἀχε�ων,
+</span></div>
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="Pollakis en megaroisi kath&ecirc;menos h&ecirc;meteroisin,">
+Πολλάκις �v μεγά�οισι καθήμενος ἡμετέ�οισιν,
+</span></div>
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="Allote men te go&ocirc; phrena terpomai, allote d' aute">
+Ἁλλοτε μέν τε γόῳ φ�ένα τέ�πομαι, ἄλλοτε δ' α�τε
+</span></div>
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="Pauomai; aips&ecirc;ros de koros kryeroio gooio.">
+Παύομαι; αἰψη�ὀς δ� κό�ος κ�υε�οἲο γόοιο.
+</span></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<!-- Transliteration
+All emp&ecirc;s pantas men odyromenos kai acheu&ocirc;n,
+Pollakis en megaroisi kath&ecirc;menos h&ecirc;meteroisin,
+Allote men te go&ocirc; phrena terpomai, allote d' aute
+Pauomai; aips&ecirc;ros de koros kryeroio gooio.
+-->
+<!-- Unicode
+Ἁλλ' ἔμπηστ πάντας μ�v ὀδυ�όμενοστ καὶ ἀχε�ων,
+Πολλάκις �v μεγά�οισι καθήμενος ἡμετέ�οισιν,
+Ἁλλοτε μέν τε γόῳ φ�ένα τέ�πομαι, ἄλλοτε δ' α�τε
+Παύομαι; αἰψη�ὀς δ� κό�ος κ�υε�οἲο γόοιο.
+-->
+<!-- Betacode
+A(ll' e)/mpêst pa/ntas me)v o)dyro/menost kai\ a)ch-ey)ôn,
+Polla/kis e)v mega/roisi kathê/menos ê(mete/roisin,
+A(llote me/n te go/ô| phre/na te/rpomai, a)/llote d' ay)te
+Pay/omai; ai)psêro)s de) ko/ros kryeroi)\o go/oio.
+-->
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+
+<p class="citation">Hom. Od.
+<span lang="el" title="D">Δ</span><!-- HTML Entity &#916; -->. 100.
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="margin-left: 4em; font-size: 95%"><div class="stanza">
+<div><span style="margin-left: -.5em;">&quot;Still in short intervals of <i>pleasing woe</i>,</span></div>
+<div>Regardful of the friendly dues I owe,</div>
+<div>I to the glorious dead, forever dear,</div>
+<div><i>Indulge</i> the tribute of a <i>grateful</i> tear.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">On the other hand, when we recover our health,
+when we escape an imminent danger, is it with joy
+that we are affected? The sense on these occasions
+is far from that smooth and voluptuous satisfaction
+which the assured prospect of pleasure bestows. The
+delight which arises from the modifications of pain
+confesses the stock from whence it sprung, in its
+solid, strong, and severe nature.<!-- Page 134 --><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" title="110" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VI.<br />
+<br />
+OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SELF-PRESERVATION.</h3>
+
+<p>Most of the ideas which are capable of making a
+powerful impression on the mind, whether simply of
+pain or pleasure, or of the modifications of those, may
+be reduced very nearly to these two heads, <i>self-preservation</i>,
+and <i>society</i>; to the ends of one or the other
+of which all our passions are calculated to answer.
+The passions which concern self-preservation, turn
+mostly on <i>pain</i> or <i>danger</i>. The ideas of <i>pain</i>, <i>sickness</i>,
+and <i>death</i>, fill the mind with strong emotions of
+horror; but <i>life</i> and <i>health</i>, though they put us in a
+capacity of being affected with pleasure, make no
+such impression by the simple enjoyment. The passions
+therefore which are conversant about the preservation
+of the individual turn chiefly on <i>pain</i> and
+<i>danger</i>, and they are the most powerful of all the
+passions.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VII.<br />
+<br />
+OF THE SUBLIME.</h3>
+
+<p>Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas
+of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any
+sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects,
+or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a
+source of the <i>sublime</i>; that is, it is productive of the
+strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.
+I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied
+the ideas of pain are much more powerful than
+those which enter on the part of pleasure. Without
+all doubt, the torments which we may be made to
+<!-- Page 135 --><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" title="111" class="pagenum"></a>suffer are much greater in their effect on the body
+and mind, than any pleasures which the most learned
+voluptuary could suggest, or than the liveliest imagination,
+and the most sound and exquisitely sensible
+body, could enjoy. Nay, I am in great doubt whether
+any man could be found, who would earn a life of
+the most perfect satisfaction at the price of ending it
+in the torments, which justice inflicted in a few hours
+on the late unfortunate regicide in France. But as
+pain is stronger in its operation than pleasure, so
+death is in general a much more affecting idea than
+pain; because there are very few pains, however exquisite,
+which are not preferred to death: nay, what
+generally makes pain itself, if I may say so, more
+painful, is, that it is considered as an emissary of this
+king of terrors. When danger or pain press too nearly,
+they are incapable of giving any delight, and are
+simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with
+certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful,
+as we every day experience. The cause of
+this I shall endeavor to investigate hereafter.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VIII.<br />
+<br />
+OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SOCIETY.</h3>
+
+<p>The other head under which I class our passions,
+is that of <i>society</i>, which may be divided into two sorts.
+1. The society of the <i>sexes</i>, which answers the purpose
+of propagation; and next, that more <i>general
+society</i>, which we have with men and with other
+animals, and which we may in some sort be said to
+have even with the inanimate world. The passions
+<!-- Page 136 --><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" title="112" class="pagenum"></a>belonging to the preservation of the individual turn
+wholly on pain and danger: those which belong to
+<i>generation</i> have their origin in gratifications and <i>pleasures</i>;
+the pleasure most directly belonging to this purpose
+is of a lively character, rapturous and violent,
+and confessedly the highest pleasure of sense; yet the
+absence of this so great an enjoyment scarce amounts
+to an uneasiness; and, except at particular times, I
+do not think it affects at all. When men describe in
+what manner they are affected by pain and danger,
+they do not dwell on the pleasure of health and the
+comfort of security, and then lament the <i>loss</i> of these
+satisfactions: the whole turns upon the actual pains
+and horrors which they endure. But if you listen to
+the complaints of a forsaken lover, you observe that
+he insists largely on the pleasures which he enjoyed,
+or hoped to enjoy, and on the perfection of the object
+of his desires; it is the <i>loss</i> which is always uppermost
+in his mind. The violent effects produced
+by love, which has sometimes been even wrought up
+to madness, is no objection to the rule which we seek
+to establish. When men have suffered their imaginations
+to be long affected with any idea, it so wholly
+engrosses them as to shut out by degrees almost
+every other, and to break down every partition of the
+mind which would confine it. Any idea is sufficient
+for the purpose, as is evident from the infinite variety
+of causes, which give rise to madness: but this at
+most can only prove, that the passion of love is capable
+of producing very extraordinary effects, not that
+its extraordinary emotions have any connection with
+positive pain.</p>
+
+
+<h3><!-- Page 137 --><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" title="113" class="pagenum"></a>SECTION IX.<br />
+<br />
+THE FINAL CAUSE OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE
+PASSIONS BELONGING TO SELF-PRESERVATION AND
+THOSE WHICH REGARD THE SOCIETY OF THE SEXES.</h3>
+
+<p>The final cause of the difference in character between
+the passions which regard self-preservation,
+and those which are directed to the multiplication of
+the species, will illustrate the foregoing remarks yet
+further; and it is, I imagine, worthy of observation
+even upon its own account. As the performance of
+our duties of every kind depends upon life, and the
+performing them with vigor and efficacy depends upon
+health, we are very strongly affected with whatever
+threatens the destruction of either: but as we were not
+made to acquiesce in life and health, the simple
+enjoyment of them is not attended with any real
+pleasure, lest, satisfied with that, we should give ourselves
+over to indolence and inaction. On the other
+hand, the generation of mankind is a great purpose,
+and it is requisite that men should be animated to
+the pursuit of it by some great incentive. It is therefore
+attended with a very high pleasure; but as it is
+by no means designed to be our constant business, it
+is not fit that the absence of this pleasure should be
+attended with any considerable pain. The difference
+between men and brutes, in this point, seems to be
+remarkable. Men are at all times pretty equally disposed
+to the pleasures of love, because they are to be
+guided by reason in the time and manner of indulging
+them. Had any great pain arisen from the want
+of this satisfaction, reason, I am afraid, would find
+great difficulties in the performance of its office. But
+<!-- Page 138 --><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" title="114" class="pagenum"></a>brutes that obey laws, in the execution of which their
+own reason has but little share, have their stated
+seasons; at such times it is not improbable that the
+sensation from the want is very troublesome, because
+the end must be then answered, or be missed in many,
+perhaps forever; as the inclination returns only with
+its season.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION X.<br />
+<br />
+OF BEAUTY.</h3>
+
+<p>The passion which belongs to generation, merely
+as such, is lust only. This is evident in brutes,
+whose passions are more unmixed, and which pursue
+their purposes more directly than ours. The only
+distinction they observe with regard to their mates,
+is that of sex. It is true, that they stick severally to
+their own species in preference to all others. But
+this preference, I imagine, does not arise from any
+sense of beauty which they find in their species, as
+Mr. Addison supposes, but from a law of some other
+kind, to which they are subject; and this we may
+fairly conclude, from their apparent want of choice
+amongst those objects to which the barriers of their
+species have confined them. But man, who is a creature
+adapted to a greater variety and intricacy of
+relation, connects with the general passion the idea
+of some <i>social</i> qualities, which direct and heighten
+the appetite which he has in common with all
+other animals; and as he is not designed like them
+to live at large, it is fit that he should have some
+thing to create a preference, and fix his choice; and
+this in general should be some sensible quality; as
+no other can so quickly, so powerfully, or so surely
+<!-- Page 139 --><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" title="115" class="pagenum"></a>produce its effect. The object therefore of this mixed
+passion, which we call love, is the <i>beauty</i> of the <i>sex</i>.
+Men are carried to the sex in general, as it is the
+sex, and by the common law of nature; but they are
+attached to particulars by personal <i>beauty</i>. I call
+beauty a social quality; for where women and men,
+and not only they, but when other animals give us a
+sense of joy and pleasure in beholding them (and
+there are many that do so), they inspire us with sentiments
+of tenderness and affection towards their
+persons; we like to have them near us, and we enter
+willingly into a kind of relation with them, unless we
+should have strong reasons to the contrary. But to
+what end, in many cases, this was designed, I am
+unable to discover; for I see no greater reason for a
+connection between man and several animals who are
+attired in so engaging a manner, than between him
+and some others who entirely want this attraction, or
+possess it in a far weaker degree. But it is probable
+that Providence did not make even this distinction,
+but with a view to some great end; though we cannot
+perceive distinctly what it is, as his wisdom is
+not our wisdom, nor our ways his ways.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XI.<br />
+<br />
+SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE.</h3>
+
+<p>The second branch of the social passions is that
+which administers to <i>society in general</i>. With regard
+to this, I observe, that society, merely as society,
+without any particular heightenings, gives us no positive
+pleasure in the enjoyment; but absolute and
+entire <i>solitude</i>, that is, the total and perpetual exclu<!-- Page 140 --><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" title="116" class="pagenum"></a>sion
+from all society, is as great a positive pain as can
+almost be conceived. Therefore in the balance between
+the pleasure of general <i>society</i>, and the pain of
+absolute solitude, <i>pain</i> is the predominant idea. But
+the pleasure of any particular social enjoyment outweighs
+very considerably the uneasiness caused by
+the want of that particular enjoyment; so that the
+strongest sensations relative to the habitudes of <i>particular
+society</i> are sensations of pleasure. Good company,
+lively conversations, and the endearments of
+friendship, fill the mind with great pleasure; a temporary
+solitude, on the other hand, is itself agreeable.
+This may perhaps prove that we are creatures designed
+for contemplation as well as action; since
+solitude as well as society has its pleasures; as from
+the former observation we may discern, that an entire
+life of solitude contradicts the purposes of our being,
+since death itself is scarcely an idea of more terror.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XII.<br />
+<br />
+SYMPATHY, IMITATION, AND AMBITION.</h3>
+
+<p>Under this denomination of society, the passions
+are of a complicated kind, and branch out into a variety
+of forms, agreeably to that variety of ends they
+are to serve in the great chain of society. The three
+principal links in this chain are <i>sympathy</i>, <i>imitation,</i>
+and <i>ambition</i>.</p>
+
+
+<h3><!-- Page 141 --><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" title="117" class="pagenum"></a>SECTION XIII.<br />
+<br />
+SYMPATHY.</h3>
+
+<p>It is by the first of these passions that we enter
+into the concerns of others; that we are moved as
+they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent
+spectators of almost anything which men can
+do or suffer. For sympathy must be considered as a
+sort of substitution, by which we are put into the
+place of another man, and affected in many respects
+as he is affected: so that this passion may either partake
+of the nature of those which regard self-preservation,
+and turning upon pain may be a source of the
+sublime; or it may turn upon ideas of pleasure;
+and then whatever has been said of the social affections,
+whether they regard society in general, or only
+some particular modes of it, may be applicable here.
+It is by this principle chiefly that poetry, painting,
+and other affecting arts, transfuse their passions from
+one breast to another, and are often capable of grafting
+a delight on wretchedness, misery, and death itself.
+It is a common observation, that objects which in the
+reality would shock, are in tragical, and such like
+representations, the source of a very high species of
+pleasure. This, taken as a fact, has been the cause
+of much reasoning. The satisfaction has been commonly
+attributed, first, to the comfort we receive in
+considering that so melancholy a story is no more
+than a fiction; and, next, to the contemplation of our
+own freedom from the evils which we see represented.
+I am afraid it is a practice much too common in inquiries
+of this nature, to attribute the cause of feelings
+which merely arise from the mechanical struc<!-- Page 142 --><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" title="118" class="pagenum"></a>ture
+of our bodies, or from the natural frame and
+constitution of our minds, to certain conclusions of
+the reasoning faculty on the objects presented to us;
+for I should imagine, that the influence of reason in
+producing our passions is nothing near so extensive
+as it is commonly believed.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XIV.<br />
+<br />
+THE EFFECTS OF SYMPATHY IN THE DISTRESSES OF OTHERS.</h3>
+
+<p>To examine this point concerning the effect of
+tragedy in a proper manner, we must previously consider
+how we are affected by the feelings of our fellow creatures
+in circumstances of real distress. I am
+convinced we have a degree of delight, and that no
+small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of
+others; for let the affection be what it will in appearance,
+if it does not make us shun such objects,
+if on the contrary it induces us to approach them, if
+it makes us dwell upon them, in this case I conceive
+we must have a delight or pleasure of some species
+or other in contemplating objects of this kind. Do
+we not read the authentic histories of scenes of this
+nature with as much pleasure as romances or poems,
+where the incidents are fictitious? The prosperity
+of no empire, nor the grandeur of no king, can so
+agreeably affect in the reading, as the ruin of the
+state of Macedon, and the distress of its unhappy
+prince. Such a catastrophe touches us in history as
+much as the destruction of Troy does in fable. Our
+delight, in cases of this kind, is very greatly heightened,
+if the sufferer be some excellent person who
+<!-- Page 143 --><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" title="119" class="pagenum"></a>sinks under an unworthy fortune. Scipio and Cato
+are both virtuous characters; but we are more deeply
+affected by the violent death of the one, and the ruin
+of the great cause he adhered to, than with the deserved
+triumphs and uninterrupted prosperity of the
+other: for terror is a passion which always produces
+delight when it does not press too closely; and pity
+is a passion accompanied with pleasure, because it
+arises from love and social affection. Whenever we
+are formed by nature to any active purpose, the passion
+which animates us to it is attended with delight,
+or a pleasure of some kind, let the subject-matter be
+what it will; and as our Creator has designed that we
+should be united by the bond of sympathy, he has
+strengthened that bond by a proportionable delight;
+and there most where our sympathy is most wanted,&mdash;in
+the distresses of others. If this passion was
+simply painful, we would shun with the greatest care
+all persons and places that could excite such a passion;
+as some, who are so far gone in indolence as
+not to endure any strong impression, actually do.
+But the case is widely different with the greater part
+of mankind; there is no spectacle we so eagerly pursue,
+as that of some uncommon and grievous calamity;
+so that whether the misfortune is before our
+eyes, or whether they are turned back to it in history,
+it always touches with delight. This is not an unmixed
+delight, but blended with no small uneasiness.
+The delight we have in such things hinders us from
+shunning scenes of misery; and the pain we feel
+prompts us to relieve ourselves in relieving those
+who suffer; and all this antecedent to any reasoning,
+by an instinct that works us to its own purposes without
+our concurrence.<!-- Page 144 --><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" title="120" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XV.<br />
+<br />
+OF THE EFFECTS OF TRAGEDY.</h3>
+
+<p>It is thus in real calamities. In imitated distresses
+the only difference is the pleasure resulting
+from the effects of imitation; for it is never so perfect,
+but we can perceive it is imitation, and on that
+principle are somewhat pleased with it. And indeed
+in some cases we derive as much or more pleasure
+from that source than from the thing itself. But
+then I imagine we shall be much mistaken if we
+attribute any considerable part of our satisfaction in
+tragedy to the consideration that tragedy is a deceit,
+and its representations no realities. The nearer it
+approaches the reality, and the further it removes
+us from all idea of fiction, the more perfect is its
+power. But be its power of what kind it will, it never
+approaches to what it represents. Choose a day on
+which to represent the most sublime and affecting
+tragedy we have; appoint the most favorite actors;
+spare no cost upon the scenes and decorations; unite
+the greatest efforts of poetry, painting, and music;
+and when you have collected your audience, just at
+the moment when their minds are erect with expectation,
+let it be reported that a state criminal of high
+rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoining
+square; in a moment the emptiness of the theatre
+would demonstrate the comparative weakness of
+the imitative arts, and proclaim the triumph of the
+real sympathy. I believe that this notion of our
+having a simple pain in the reality, yet a delight in
+the representation, arises from hence, that we do not
+sufficiently distinguish what we would by no means
+<!-- Page 145 --><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" title="121" class="pagenum"></a>choose to do, from what we should be eager enough
+to see if it was once done. We delight in seeing
+things, which so far from doing, our heartiest wishes
+would be to see redressed. This noble capital, the
+pride of England and of Europe, I believe no man is
+so strangely wicked as to desire to see destroyed by a
+conflagration or an earthquake, though he should be
+removed himself to the greatest distance from the
+danger. But suppose such a fatal accident to have
+happened, what numbers from all parts would crowd
+to behold the ruins, and amongst them many who
+would have been content never to have seen London
+in its glory! Nor is it, either in real or fictitious
+distresses, our immunity from them which produces
+our delight; in my own mind I can discover nothing
+like it. I apprehend that this mistake is owing to a
+sort of sophism, by which we are frequently imposed
+upon; it arises from our not distinguishing between
+what is indeed a necessary condition to our doing or
+suffering anything in general, and what is the <i>cause</i>
+of some particular act. If a man kills me with a
+sword, it is a necessary condition to this that we
+should have been both of us alive before the fact;
+and yet it would be absurd to say that our being both
+living creatures was the cause of his crime and of my
+death. So it is certain that it is absolutely necessary
+my life should be out of any imminent hazard, before
+I can take a delight in the sufferings of others, real or
+imaginary, or indeed in anything else from any cause
+whatsoever. But then it is a sophism to argue from
+thence that this immunity is the cause of my delight
+either on these or on any occasions. No one can
+distinguish such a cause of satisfaction in his own
+mind, I believe; nay, when we do not suffer any very
+<!-- Page 146 --><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" title="122" class="pagenum"></a>acute pain, nor are exposed to any imminent danger
+of our lives, we can feel for others, whilst we suffer
+ourselves; and often then most when we are softened
+by affliction; we see with pity even distresses which
+we would accept in the place of our own.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVI.<br />
+<br />
+IMITATION.</h3>
+
+<p>The second passion belonging to society is imitation,
+or, if you will, a desire of imitating, and consequently
+a pleasure in it. This passion arises from
+much the same cause with sympathy. For as sympathy
+makes us take a concern in whatever men feel,
+so this affection prompts us to copy whatever they
+do; and consequently we have a pleasure in imitating,
+and in whatever belongs to imitation merely as
+it is such, without any intervention of the reasoning
+faculty, but solely from our natural constitution,
+which Providence has framed in such a manner as
+to find either pleasure or delight, according to the
+nature of the object, in whatever regards the purposes
+of our being. It is by imitation far more than
+by precept, that we learn everything; and what we
+learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually,
+but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our
+opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links
+of society; it is a species of mutual compliance,
+which all men yield to each other, without constraint
+to themselves, and which is extremely flattering
+to all. Herein it is that painting and many other
+agreeable arts have laid one of the principal foundations
+of their power. And since, by its influence on
+<!-- Page 147 --><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" title="123" class="pagenum"></a>our manners and our passions, it is of such great
+consequence, I shall here venture to lay down a rule,
+which may inform us with a good degree of certainty
+when we are to attribute the power of the arts to
+imitation, or to our pleasure in the skill of the imitator
+merely, and when to sympathy, or some other
+cause in conjunction, with it. When the object represented
+in poetry or painting is such as we could have
+no desire of seeing in the reality, then I may be sure
+that its power in poetry or painting is owing to the
+power of imitation, and to no cause operating in the
+thing itself. So it is with most of the pieces which
+the painters call still-life. In these a cottage, a
+dung-hill, the meanest and most ordinary utensils
+of the kitchen, are capable of giving us pleasure.
+But when the object of the painting or poem is such
+as we should run to see if real, let it affect us with
+what odd sort of sense it will, we may rely upon it
+that the power of the poem or picture is more owing
+to the nature of the thing itself than to the mere
+effect of imitation, or to a consideration of the skill
+of the imitator, however excellent. Aristotle has
+spoken so much and so solidly upon the force of
+imitation in his Poetics, that it makes any further
+discourse upon this subject the less necessary.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVII.<br />
+<br />
+AMBITION.</h3>
+
+<p>Although imitation is one of the great instruments
+used by Providence in bringing our nature towards
+its perfection, yet if men gave themselves up to imitation
+entirely, and each followed the other, and so on
+<!-- Page 148 --><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" title="124" class="pagenum"></a>in an eternal circle, it is easy to see that there never
+could be any improvement amongst them. Men
+must remain as brutes do, the same at the end that
+they are at this day, and that they were in the beginning
+of the world. To prevent this, God has planted
+in man a sense of ambition, and a satisfaction arising
+from the contemplation of his excelling his fellows in
+something deemed valuable amongst them. It is this
+passion that drives men to all the ways we see in use
+of signalizing themselves, and that tends to make
+whatever excites in a man the idea of this distinction
+so very pleasant. It has been so strong as to make
+very miserable men take comfort, that they were supreme
+in misery; and certain it is that, where we
+cannot distinguish ourselves by something excellent,
+we begin to take a complacency in some singular
+infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other.
+It is on this principle that flattery is so prevalent;
+for flattery is no more than what raises in a man's
+mind an idea of a preference which he has not.
+Now, whatever, either on good or upon bad grounds,
+tends to raise a man in his own opinion, produces a
+sort of swelling and triumph, that is extremely grateful
+to the human mind; and this swelling is never
+more perceived, nor operates with more force, than
+when without danger we are conversant with terrible
+objects; the mind always claiming to itself some part
+of the dignity and importance of the things which it
+contemplates. Hence proceeds what Longinus has
+observed of that glorying and sense of inward greatness,
+that always fills the reader of such passages in
+poets and orators as are sublime: it is what every
+man must have felt in himself upon such occasions.<!-- Page 149 --><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" title="125" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVIII.<br />
+<br />
+THE RECAPITULATION.</h3>
+
+<p>To draw the whole of what has been said into a
+few distinct points:&mdash;The passions which belong to
+self-preservation turn on pain and danger; they are
+simply painful when their causes immediately affect
+us; they are delightful when we have an idea of pain
+and danger, without being actually in such circumstances;
+this delight I have not called pleasure, because
+it turns on pain, and because it is different
+enough from any idea of positive pleasure. Whatever
+excites this delight, I call <i>sublime</i>. The passions
+belonging to self-preservation are the strongest
+of all the passions.</p>
+
+<p>The second head to which the passions are referred
+with relation to their final cause, is society. There
+are two sorts of societies. The first is, the society of
+sex. The passion belonging to this is called love,
+and it contains a mixture of lust; its object is the
+beauty of women. The other is the great society
+with man and all other animals. The passion subservient
+to this is called likewise love, but it has no
+mixture of lust, and its object is beauty; which is a
+name I shall apply to all such qualities in things as
+induce in us a sense of affection and tenderness, or
+some other passion the most nearly resembling these.
+The passion of love has its rise in positive pleasure;
+it is, like all things which grow out of pleasure, capable
+of being mixed with a mode of uneasiness, that is,
+when an idea of its object is excited in the mind with
+an idea at the same time of having irretrievably lost
+it. This mixed sense of pleasure I have not called
+<!-- Page 150 --><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" title="126" class="pagenum"></a><i>pain</i>, because it turns upon actual pleasure, and because
+it is, both in its cause and in most of its effects,
+of a nature altogether different.</p>
+
+<p>Next to the general passion we have for society, to
+a choice in which we are directed by the pleasure we
+have in the object, the particular passion under this
+head called sympathy has the greatest extent. The
+nature of this passion is, to put us in the place of another
+in whatever circumstance he is in, and to affect
+us in a like manner; so that this passion may, as the
+occasion requires, turn either on pain or pleasure;
+but with the modifications mentioned in some cases
+in Sect. 11. As to imitation and preference, nothing
+more need be said.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XIX.<br />
+<br />
+THE CONCLUSION.</h3>
+
+<p>I believed that an attempt to range and methodize
+some of our most leading passions would be a good
+preparative to such an inquiry as we are going to
+make in the ensuing discourse. The passions I have
+mentioned are almost the only ones which it can be
+necessary to consider in our present design; though
+the variety of the passions is great, and worthy, in
+every branch of that variety, of an attentive investigation.
+The more accurately we search into the human
+mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of
+His wisdom who made it. If a discourse on the use
+of the parts of the body may be considered as a hymn
+to the Creator; the use of the passions, which are the
+organs of the mind, cannot be barren of praise to him,
+nor unproductive to ourselves of that noble and un<!-- Page 151 --><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" title="127" class="pagenum"></a>common
+union of science and admiration, which a contemplation
+of the works of infinite wisdom alone can
+afford to a rational mind; whilst, referring to him
+whatever we find of right or good or fair in ourselves,
+discovering his strength and wisdom even in our own
+weakness and imperfection, honoring them where we
+discover them clearly, and adoring their profundity
+where we are lost in our search, we may be inquisitive
+without impertinence, and elevated without
+pride; we may be admitted, if I may dare to say so,
+into the counsels of the Almighty by a consideration
+of his works. The elevation of the mind ought to be
+the principal end of all our studies; which, if they do
+not in some measure effect, they are of very little service
+to us. But, besides this great purpose, a consideration
+of the rationale of our passions seems to me
+very necessary for all who would affect them upon
+solid and sure principles. It is not enough to know
+them in general; to affect them after a delicate manner,
+or to judge properly of any work designed to affect
+them, we should know the exact boundaries of
+their several jurisdictions; we should pursue them
+through all their variety of operations, and pierce
+into the inmost, and what might appear inaccessible
+parts of our nature,</p>
+
+<blockquote style="text-align: center">
+<p>Quod latet arcan&acirc; non enarrabile fibr&acirc;.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Without all this it is possible for a man, after a confused
+manner sometimes to satisfy his own mind of
+the truth of his work; but he can never have a certain
+determinate rule to go by, nor can he ever make
+his propositions sufficiently clear to others. Poets,
+and orators, and painters, and those who cultivate
+other branches of the liberal arts, have, without this
+<!-- Page 152 --><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" title="128" class="pagenum"></a>critical knowledge, succeeded well in their several
+provinces, and will succeed: as among artificers
+there are many machines made and even invented
+without any exact knowledge of the principles they
+are governed by. It is, I own, not uncommon to be
+wrong in theory, and right in practice: and we are
+happy that it is so. Men often act right from their
+feelings, who afterwards reason but ill on them from
+principle; but as it is impossible to avoid an attempt
+at such reasoning, and equally impossible to prevent
+its having some influence on our practice, surely it is
+worth taking some pains to have it just, and founded
+on the basis of sure experience. We might expect
+that the artists themselves would have been our
+surest guides; but the artists have been too much
+occupied in the practice: the philosophers have done
+little; and what they have done, was mostly with a
+view to their own schemes and systems; and as for
+those called critics, they have generally sought the
+rule of the arts in the wrong place; they sought it
+among poems, pictures, engravings, statues, and
+buildings. But art can never give the rules that
+make an art. This is, I believe, the reason why artists
+in general, and poets, principally, have been confined
+in so narrow a circle: they have been rather
+imitators of one another than of nature; and this
+with so faithful an uniformity, and to so remote an
+antiquity, that it is hard to say who gave the first
+model. Critics follow them, and therefore can do little
+as guides. I can judge but poorly of anything,
+whilst I measure it by no other standard than itself.
+The true standard of the arts is in every man's power;
+and an easy observation of the most common,
+sometimes of the meanest things in nature, will give
+<!-- Page 153 --><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" title="129" class="pagenum"></a>the truest lights, where the greatest sagacity and industry,
+that slights such observation, must leave us
+in the dark, or, what is worse, amuse and mislead us
+by false lights. In an inquiry it is almost everything
+to be once in a right road. I am satisfied I have done
+but little by these observations considered in themselves;
+and I never should have taken the pains to
+digest them, much less should I have ever ventured
+to publish them, if I was not convinced that nothing
+tends more to the corruption of science than to suffer
+it to stagnate. These waters must be troubled, before
+they can exert their virtues. A man who works
+beyond the surface of things, though he may be wrong
+himself, yet he clears the way for others, and may
+chance to make even his errors subservient to the
+cause of truth. In the following parts I shall inquire
+what things they are that cause in us the affections
+of the sublime and beautiful, as in this I have considered
+the affections themselves. I only desire one favor,&mdash;that
+no part of this discourse may be judged
+of by itself, and independently of the rest; for I am
+sensible I have not disposed my materials to abide
+the test of a captious controversy, but of a sober and
+even forgiving examination; that they are not armed
+at all points for battle, but dressed to visit those who
+are willing to give a peaceful entrance to truth.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Mr. Locke [Essay on Human Understanding, l. ii. c. 20, sect. 16,]
+thinks that the removal or lessening of a pain is considered and operates
+as a pleasure, and the loss or diminishing of pleasure as a pain.
+It is this opinion which we consider here.</p></div><!-- Page 154 --><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" title="130" class="pagenum"></a>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION I.<br />
+<br />
+OF THE PASSION CAUSED BY THE SUBLIME.</h3>
+
+<p>The passion caused by the great and sublime in
+<i>nature</i>, when those causes operate most powerfully, is
+astonishment: and astonishment is that state of the
+soul in which all its motions are suspended, with
+some degree of horror.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part I. sect. 3, 4, 7.">[11]</a> In this case the mind is so
+entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain
+any other, nor by consequence reason on that object
+which employs it. Hence arises the great power of
+the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it
+anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an
+irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is
+the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the
+inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION II.<br />
+<br />
+TERROR.</h3>
+
+<p>No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its
+powers of acting and reasoning as <i>fear</i>.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part IV. sect. 3, 4, 5, 6.">[12]</a> For fear
+being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates
+in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever
+therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime
+too, whether this cause of terror be endued with
+greatness of dimensions or not; for it is impossible
+to look on anything as trifling, or contemptible, that
+<!-- Page 155 --><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" title="131" class="pagenum"></a>may be dangerous. There are many animals, who,
+though far from being large, are yet capable of raising
+ideas of the sublime, because they are considered
+as objects of terror. As serpents and poisonous animals
+of almost all kinds. And to things of great
+dimensions, if we annex an adventitious idea of terror,
+they become without comparison greater. A
+level plain of a vast extent on land, is certainly no
+mean idea; the prospect of such a plain may be as
+extensive as a prospect of the ocean; but can it ever
+fill the mind with anything so great as the ocean
+itself? This is owing to several causes; but it is
+owing to none more than this, that the ocean is an
+object of no small terror. Indeed terror is in all
+cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the
+ruling principle of the sublime. Several languages
+bear a strong testimony to the affinity of these ideas.
+They frequently use the same word to signify indifferently
+the modes of astonishment or admiration and
+those of terror.
+<span lang="el" title="Thambos">Θάμβος</span>
+<!-- HTML Entities &#920;&#8049;&#956;&#946;&#959;&#962;   Betacode: Tha/mbos -->
+is in Greek either fear or
+wonder;
+<span lang="el" title="deinos">δεινός</span>
+<!-- HTML Entities &#948;&#949;&#953;&#957;&#8057;&#962;   Betacode: deino/s -->
+is terrible or respectable;
+<span lang="el" title="ahideo">αἰδέο</span>
+<!-- HTML Entities &#945;&#7984;&#948;&#8051;&#959;   Betacode: a)ide/o -->
+to reverence or to fear. <i>Vereor</i> in Latin is what
+<span lang="el" title="ahideo">αἰδέο</span>
+<!-- HTML Entities &#945;&#7984;&#948;&#8051;&#959;   Betacode: a)ide/o -->
+is in Greek. The Romans used the verb <i>stupeo</i>, a term which strongly
+marks the state of an astonished mind, to express the effect either of simple fear,
+or of astonishment; the word <i>attonitus</i> (thunderstruck)
+is equally expressive of the alliance of these
+ideas; and do not the French <i>&eacute;tonnement</i>, and the
+English <i>astonishment</i> and <i>amazement</i>, point out as
+clearly the kindred emotions which attend fear and
+wonder? They who have a more general knowledge
+of languages, could produce, I make no doubt, many
+other and equally striking examples.<!-- Page 156 --><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" title="132" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION III.<br />
+<br />
+OBSCURITY.</h3>
+
+<p>To make anything very terrible, obscurity<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part IV. sect. 14, 15, 16.">[13]</a> seems
+in general to be necessary. When we know the full
+extent of any danger, when we can accustom our
+eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes.
+Every one will be sensible of this, who considers how
+greatly night adds to our dread, in all cases of danger,
+and how much the notions of ghosts and goblins,
+of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds
+which give credit to the popular tales concerning
+such sorts of beings. Those despotic governments
+which are founded on the passions of men, and principally
+upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as
+much as may be from the public eye. The policy
+has been the same in many cases of religion. Almost
+all the heathen temples were dark. Even in
+the barbarous temples of the Americans at this day,
+they keep their idol in a dark part of the hut, which is
+consecrated to his worship. For this purpose too the
+Druids performed all their ceremonies in the bosom
+of the darkest woods, and in the shade of the oldest
+and most spreading oaks. No person seems better to
+have understood the secret of heightening, or of setting
+terrible things, if I may use the expression, in
+their strongest light, by the force of a judicious
+obscurity than Milton. His description of death in
+the second book is admirably studied; it is astonishing
+with what a gloomy pomp, with what a significant
+and expressive uncertainty of strokes and coloring,
+he has finished the portrait of the king of terrors:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><!-- Page 157 --><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" title="133" class="pagenum"></a>
+<div class="i9">&quot;The other shape,</div>
+<div>If shape it might be called that shape had none</div>
+<div>Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;</div>
+<div>Or substance might be called that shadow seemed;</div>
+<div>For each seemed either; black he stood as night;</div>
+<div>Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell;</div>
+<div>And shook a deadly dart. What seemed his head</div>
+<div>The likeness of a kingly crown had on.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused,
+terrible, and sublime to the last degree.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION IV.<br />
+<br />
+OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CLEARNESS AND OBSCURITY
+WITH REGARD TO THE PASSIONS.</h3>
+
+<p>It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another
+to make it <i>affecting</i> to the imagination. If I make a
+drawing of a palace, or a temple, or a landscape, I
+present a very clear idea of those objects; but then
+(allowing for the effect of imitation which is something)
+my picture can at most affect only as the
+palace, temple, or landscape, would have affected in
+the reality. On the other hand, the most lively and
+spirited verbal description I can give raises a very
+obscure and imperfect <i>idea</i> of such objects; but then
+it is in my power to raise a stronger <i>emotion</i> by
+the description than I could do by the best painting.
+This experience constantly evinces. The proper
+manner of conveying the <i>affections</i> of the mind from
+one to another is by words; there is a great insufficiency
+in all other methods of communication; and
+so far is a clearness of imagery from being absolutely
+necessary to an influence upon the passions, that
+they may be considerably operated upon, without
+<!-- Page 158 --><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" title="134" class="pagenum"></a>presenting any image at all, by certain sounds
+adapted to that purpose; of which we have a sufficient
+proof in the acknowledged and powerful effects
+of instrumental music. In reality, a great clearness
+helps but little towards affecting the passions, as it is
+in some sort an enemy to all enthusiasms whatsoever.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION [IV].<br />
+<br />
+THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.</h3>
+
+<p>There are two verses in Horace's Art of Poetry
+that seem to contradict this opinion; for which reason
+I shall take a little more pains in clearing it up.
+The verses are,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,</div>
+<div>Quam qu&aelig; sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>On this the Abb&eacute; du Bos founds a criticism,
+wherein he gives painting the preference to poetry
+in the article of moving the passions; principally on
+account of the greater <i>clearness</i> of the ideas it represents.
+I believe this excellent judge was led into this
+mistake (if it be a mistake) by his system; to which
+he found it more conformable than I imagine it will
+be found to experience. I know several who admire
+and love painting, and yet who regard the objects of
+their admiration in that art with coolness enough in
+comparison of that warmth with which they are
+animated by affecting pieces of poetry or rhetoric.
+Among the common sort of people, I never could
+perceive that painting had much influence on their
+passions. It is true that the best sorts of painting, as
+well as the best sorts of poetry, are not much understood
+in that sphere. But it is most certain that
+<!-- Page 159 --><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" title="135" class="pagenum"></a>their passions are very strongly roused by a fanatic
+preacher, or by the ballads of Chevy Chase, or the
+Children in the Wood, and by other little popular
+poems and tales that are current in that rank of life.
+I do not know of any paintings, bad or good, that
+produce the same effect. So that poetry, with all its
+obscurity, has a more general, as well as a more
+powerful dominion over the passions, than the other
+art. And I think there are reasons in nature, why
+the obscure idea, when properly conveyed, should be
+more affecting than the clear. It is our ignorance of
+things that causes all our admiration, and chiefly
+excites our passions. Knowledge and acquaintance
+make the most striking causes affect but little. It is
+thus with the vulgar; and all men are as the vulgar
+in what they do not understand. The ideas of eternity,
+and infinity, are among the most affecting we
+have: and yet perhaps there is nothing of which we
+really understand so little, as of infinity and eternity.
+We do not anywhere meet a more sublime description
+than this justly-celebrated one of Milton, wherein
+he gives the portrait of Satan with a dignity so suitable
+to the subject:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i6">&quot;He above the rest</div>
+<div>In shape and gesture proudly eminent</div>
+<div>Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost</div>
+<div>All her original brightness, nor appeared</div>
+<div>Less than archangel ruined, and th' excess</div>
+<div>Of glory obscured: as when the sun new risen</div>
+<div>Looks through the horizontal misty air</div>
+<div>Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon</div>
+<div>In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds</div>
+<div>On half the nations; and with fear of change</div>
+<div>Perplexes monarchs.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Here is a very noble picture; and in what does this
+<!-- Page 160 --><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" title="136" class="pagenum"></a>poetical picture consist? In images of a tower, an
+archangel, the sun rising through mists, or in an
+eclipse, the ruin of monarchs and the revolutions of
+kingdoms. The mind is hurried out of itself, by a
+crowd of great and confused images; which affect
+because they are crowded and confused. For separate
+them, and you lose much of the greatness; and
+join them, and you infallibly lose the clearness. The
+images raised by poetry are always of this obscure
+kind; though in general the effects of poetry are by
+no means to be attributed to the images it raises;
+which point we shall examine more at large hereafter.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part V.">[14]</a>
+But painting, when we have allowed for the
+pleasure of imitation, can only affect simply by the
+images it presents; and even in painting, a judicious
+obscurity in some things contributes to the effect of
+the picture; because the images in painting are
+exactly similar to those in nature; and in nature,
+dark, confused, uncertain images have a greater
+power on the fancy to form the grander passions,
+than those have which are more clear and determinate.
+But where and when this observation may
+be applied to practice, and how far it shall be extended,
+will be better deduced from the nature of
+the subject, and from the occasion, than from any
+rules that can be given.</p>
+
+<p>I am sensible that this idea has met with opposition,
+and is likely still to be rejected by several.
+But let it be considered that hardly anything can
+strike the mind with its greatness, which does not
+make some sort of approach towards infinity; which
+nothing can do whilst we are able to perceive its
+bounds; but to see an object distinctly, and to per<!-- Page 161 --><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" title="137" class="pagenum"></a>ceive
+its bounds, is one and the same thing. A clear
+idea is therefore another name for a little idea.
+There is a passage in the book of Job amazingly
+sublime, and this sublimity is principally due to
+the terrible uncertainty of the thing described: <i>In
+thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep
+falleth upon men, fear came upon me and trembling,
+which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed
+before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. It
+stood still</i>, but I could not discern the form thereof;
+<i>an image was before mine eyes; there was silence; and
+I heard a voice,&mdash;Shall mortal man be more just than
+God?</i> We are first prepared with the utmost solemnity
+for the vision; we are first terrified, before
+we are let even into the obscure cause of our
+emotion: but when this grand cause of terror makes
+its appearance, what is it? Is it not wrapt up in the
+shades of its own incomprehensible darkness, more
+awful, more striking, more terrible, than the liveliest
+description, than the clearest painting, could possibly
+represent it? When painters have attempted to give
+us clear representations of these very fanciful and
+terrible ideas, they have, I think, almost always
+failed; insomuch that I have been at a loss, in all
+the pictures I have seen of hell, to determine whether
+the painter did not intend something ludicrous. Several
+painters have handled a subject of this kind, with
+a view of assembling as many horrid phantoms as their
+imagination could suggest; but all the designs I have
+chanced to meet of the temptations of St. Anthony
+were rather a sort of odd, wild grotesques, than any
+thing capable of producing a serious passion. In all
+these subjects poetry is very happy. Its apparitions,
+its chimeras, its harpies, its allegorical figures, are
+<!-- Page 162 --><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" title="138" class="pagenum"></a>grand and affecting; and though Virgil's Fame and
+Homer's Discord are obscure, they are magnificent
+figures. These figures in painting would be clear
+enough, but I fear they might become ridiculous.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION V.<br />
+<br />
+POWER.</h3>
+
+<p>Besides those things which <i>directly</i> suggest the
+idea of danger, and those which produce a similar
+effect from a mechanical cause, I know of nothing
+sublime, which is not some modification of power.
+And this branch rises, as naturally as the other two
+branches, from terror, the common stock of everything
+that is sublime. The idea of power, at first
+view, seems of the class of those indifferent ones,
+which may equally belong to pain or to pleasure.
+But in reality, the affection arising from the idea of
+vast power is extremely remote from that neutral
+character. For first, we must remember<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part I. sect. 7.">[15]</a> that the
+idea of pain, in its highest degree, is much stronger
+than the highest degree of pleasure; and that it preserves
+the same superiority through all the subordinate
+gradations. From hence it is, that where the
+chances for equal degrees of suffering or enjoyment
+are in any sort equal, the idea of the suffering must
+always be prevalent. And indeed the ideas of pain,
+and, above all, of death, are so very affecting, that
+whilst we remain in the presence of whatever is supposed
+to have the power of inflicting either, it is impossible
+to be perfectly free from terror. Again, we
+know by experience, that, for the enjoyment of pleas<!-- Page 163 --><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" title="139" class="pagenum"></a>ure,
+no great efforts of power are at all necessary;
+nay, we know that such efforts would go a great way
+towards destroying our satisfaction: for pleasure must
+be stolen, and not forced upon us; pleasure follows the
+will; and therefore we are generally affected with it
+by many things of a force greatly inferior to our own.
+But pain is always inflicted by a power in some way
+superior, because we never submit to pain willingly.
+So that strength, violence, pain, and terror, are ideas
+that rush in upon the mind together. Look at a
+man, or any other animal of prodigious strength, and
+what is your idea before reflection? Is it that this
+strength will be subservient to you, to your ease, to
+your pleasure, to your interest in any sense? No;
+the emotion you feel is, lest this enormous strength
+should be employed to the purposes of<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor"
+title="Vide Part III. sect. 21.">[16]</a> rapine and destruction.
+That power derives all its sublimity from
+the terror with which it is generally accompanied,
+will appear evidently from its effect in the very few
+cases, in which it may be possible to strip a considerable
+degree of strength of its ability to hurt. When
+you do this, you spoil it of everything sublime, and it
+immediately becomes contemptible. An ox is a creature
+of vast strength; but he is an innocent creature,
+extremely serviceable, and not at all dangerous; for
+which reason the idea of an ox is by no means grand.
+A bull is strong too; but his strength is of another
+kind; often very destructive, seldom (at least amongst
+us) of any use in our business; the idea of a bull is
+therefore great, and it has frequently a place in sublime
+descriptions, and elevating comparisons. Let us
+look at another strong animal, in the two distinct
+lights in which we may consider him. The horse in
+<!-- Page 164 --><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" title="140" class="pagenum"></a>the light of an useful beast, fit for the plough, the
+road, the draft; in every social useful light, the horse
+has nothing sublime; but is it thus that we are affected
+with him, <i>whose neck is clothed with thunder,
+the glory of whose nostrils is terrible, who swalloweth
+the ground with fierceness and rage, neither believeth
+that it is the sound of the trumpet</i>? In this description,
+the useful character of the horse entirely disappears,
+and the terrible and sublime blaze out together. We
+have continually about us animals of a strength that
+is considerable, but not pernicious. Amongst these we
+never look for the sublime; it comes upon us in the
+gloomy forest, and in the howling wilderness, in the
+form of the lion, the tiger, the panther, or rhinoceros.
+Whenever strength is only useful, and employed for
+our benefit or our pleasure, then it is never sublime;
+for nothing can act agreeably to us, that does not act
+in conformity to our will; but to act agreeably to
+our will, it must be subject to us, and therefore can
+never be the cause of a grand and commanding conception.
+The description of the wild ass, in Job, is
+worked up into no small sublimity, merely by insisting
+on his freedom, and his setting mankind at defiance;
+otherwise the description of such an animal
+could have had nothing noble in it. <i>Who hath loosed
+</i> (says he) <i>the bands of the wild ass? whose house I
+have made the wilderness and the barren land his
+dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither
+regardeth he the voice of the driver. The range
+of the mountains is his pasture.</i> The magnificent description
+of the unicorn and of leviathan, in the same
+book, is full of the same heightening circumstances:
+<i>Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee? canst thou
+bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? wilt thou
+<!-- Page 165 --><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" title="141" class="pagenum"></a>trust him because his strength is great?&mdash;Canst thou
+draw out leviathan with an hook? will he make a covenant
+with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant forever?
+shall not one be cast down even at the sight of
+him?</i> In short, wheresoever we find strength, and in
+what light soever we look upon power, we shall all
+along observe the sublime the concomitant of terror,
+and contempt the attendant on a strength that is subservient
+and innoxious. The race of dogs, in many
+of their kinds, have generally a competent degree of
+strength and swiftness; and they exert these and
+other valuable qualities which they possess, greatly
+to our convenience and pleasure. Dogs are indeed
+the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of
+the whole brute creation; but love approaches much
+nearer to contempt than is commonly imagined; and
+accordingly, though we caress dogs, we borrow from
+them an appellation of the most despicable kind, when
+we employ terms of reproach; and this appellation is
+the common mark of the last vileness and contempt
+in every language. Wolves have not more strength
+than several species of dogs; but, on account of their
+unmanageable fierceness, the idea of a wolf is not
+despicable; it is not excluded from grand descriptions
+and similitudes. Thus we are affected by
+strength, which is <i>natural</i> power. The power which
+arises from institution in kings and commanders, has
+the same connection with terror. Sovereigns are frequently
+addressed with the title of <i>dread majesty</i>.
+And it may be observed, that young persons, little
+acquainted with the world, and who have not been
+used to approach men in power, are commonly struck
+with an awe which takes away the free use of their
+faculties. <i>When I prepared my seat in the street,</i>
+<!-- Page 166 --><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" title="142" class="pagenum"></a>(says Job,) <i>the young men saw me, and hid themselves.</i>
+Indeed so natural is this timidity with regard to
+power, and so strongly does it inhere in our constitution,
+that very few are able to conquer it, but by
+mixing much in the business of the great world, or
+by using no small violence to their natural dispositions.
+I know some people are of opinion, that no
+awe, no degree of terror, accompanies the idea of
+power; and have hazarded to affirm, that we can
+contemplate the idea of God himself without any
+such emotion. I purposely avoided, when I first considered
+this subject, to introduce the idea of that
+great and tremendous Being, as an example in an
+argument so light as this; though it frequently occurred
+to me, not as an objection to, but as a strong
+confirmation of, my notions in this matter. I hope,
+in what I am going to say, I shall avoid presumption,
+where it is almost impossible for any mortal to speak
+with strict propriety. I say then, that whilst we consider
+the Godhead merely as he is an object of the
+understanding, which forms a complex idea of power,
+wisdom, justice, goodness, all stretched to a degree
+far exceeding the bounds of our comprehension,
+whilst we consider the divinity in this refined and abstracted
+light, the imagination and passions are little
+or nothing affected. But because we are bound, by
+the condition of our nature, to ascend to these pure
+and intellectual ideas, through the medium of sensible
+images, and to judge of these divine qualities by
+their evident acts and exertions, it becomes extremely
+hard to disentangle our idea of the cause from the
+effect by which we are led to know it. Thus, when
+we contemplate the Deity, his attributes and their
+operation, coming united on the mind, form a sort of
+<!-- Page 167 --><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" title="143" class="pagenum"></a>sensible image, and as such are capable of affecting
+the imagination. Now, though in a just idea of the
+Deity, perhaps none of his attributes are predominant,
+yet, to our imagination, his power is by far the
+most striking. Some reflection, some comparing, is
+necessary to satisfy us of his wisdom, his justice, and
+his goodness. To be struck with his power, it is only
+necessary that we should open our eyes. But whilst
+we contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it
+were, of almighty power, and invested upon every
+side with omnipresence, we shrink into the minuteness
+of our own nature, and are, in a manner, annihilated
+before him. And though a consideration of
+his other attributes may relieve, in some measure,
+our apprehensions; yet no conviction of the justice
+with which it is exercised, nor the mercy with which
+it is tempered, can wholly remove the terror that naturally
+arises from a force which nothing can withstand.
+If we rejoice, we rejoice with trembling; and
+even whilst we are receiving benefits, we cannot but
+shudder at a power which can confer benefits of such
+mighty importance. When the prophet David contemplated
+the wonders of wisdom and power which
+are displayed in the economy of man, he seems to be
+struck with a sort of divine horror, and cries out,
+<i>fearfully and wonderfully am I made</i>! An heathen
+poet has a sentiment of a similar nature; Horace
+looks upon it as the last effort of philosophical fortitude,
+to behold without terror and amazement, this
+immense and glorious fabric of the universe:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Hunc solem, et stellas, et decedentia certis</div>
+<div>Tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nulla</div>
+<div>Imbuti spectent.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Lucretius is a poet not to be suspected of giving way
+<!-- Page 168 --><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" title="144" class="pagenum"></a>to superstitious terrors; yet, when he supposes the
+whole mechanism of nature laid open by the master
+of his philosophy, his transport on this magnificent
+view, which he has represented in the colors of such
+bold and lively poetry, is overcast with a shade of
+secret dread and horror:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>His ibi me rebus qu&aelig;dam divina voluptas</div>
+<div>Percipit, atque horror; quod sic natura, tua vi</div>
+<div>Tam manifesta patens, ex omni parte retecta est.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But the Scripture alone can supply ideas answerable
+to the majesty of this subject. In the Scripture,
+wherever God is represented as appearing or speaking,
+everything terrible in nature is called up to
+heighten the awe and solemnity of the Divine presence.
+The Psalms, and the prophetical books, are
+crowded with instances of this kind. <i>The earth shook,</i>
+(says the Psalmist,) <i>the heavens also dropped at the
+presence of the Lord.</i> And what is remarkable, the
+painting preserves the same character, not only when
+he is supposed descending to take vengeance upon
+the wicked, but even when he exerts the like plenitude
+of power in acts of beneficence to mankind.
+<i>Tremble, thou earth! at the presence of the Lord; at
+the presence of the God of Jacob; which turned the rock
+into standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters!</i>
+It were endless to enumerate all the passages, both
+in the sacred and profane writers, which establish the
+general sentiment of mankind, concerning the inseparable
+union of a sacred and reverential awe, with
+our ideas of the divinity. Hence the common maxim,
+<i>Primus in orbe deos fecit timor</i>. This maxim may
+be, as I believe it is, false with regard to the origin
+of religion. The maker of the maxim saw how
+inseparable these ideas were, without considering
+<!-- Page 169 --><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" title="145" class="pagenum"></a>that the notion of some great power must be always
+precedent to our dread of it. But this dread must
+necessarily follow the idea of such a power, when it
+is once excited in the mind. It is on this principle
+that true religion has, and must have, so large a mixture
+of salutary fear; and that false religions have
+generally nothing else but fear to support them. Before
+the Christian religion had, as it were, humanized
+the idea of the Divinity, and brought it somewhat
+nearer to us, there was very little said of the love of
+God. The followers of Plato have something of it,
+and only something; the other writers of pagan
+antiquity, whether poets or philosophers, nothing at
+all. And they who consider with what infinite attention,
+by what a disregard of every perishable object,
+through what long habits of piety and contemplation
+it is that any man is able to attain an entire love and
+devotion to the Deity, will easily perceive that it is
+not the first, the most natural, and the most striking
+effect which proceeds from that idea. Thus we have
+traced power through its several gradations unto the
+highest of all, where our imagination is finally lost;
+and we find terror, quite throughout the progress,
+its inseparable companion, and growing along with
+it, as far as we can possibly trace them. Now, as
+power is undoubtedly a capital source of the sublime,
+this will point out evidently from whence its energy
+is derived, and to what class of ideas we ought to
+unite it.<!-- Page 170 --><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" title="146" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VI.<br />
+<br />
+PRIVATION.</h3>
+
+<p>ALL <i>general</i> privations are great, because they are
+all terrible; <i>vacuity</i>, <i>darkness</i>, <i>solitude</i>, and <i>silence</i>.
+With what a fire of imagination, yet with what severity
+of judgment, has Virgil amassed all these circumstances,
+where he knows that all the images of
+a tremendous dignity ought to be united at the
+mouth of hell! Where, before he unlocks the secrets
+of the great deep, he seems to be seized with a
+religious horror, and to retire astonished at the boldness
+of his own design:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Dii, quibus imperium est animarum, umbr&aelig;que <i>silentes</i>!</div>
+<div>Et Chaos, et Phlegethon! loca <i>nocte silentia</i> late!</div>
+<div>Sit mihi fas audita loqui! sit numine vestro</div>
+<div>Pandere res alta terra et <i>caligine</i> mersas!</div>
+<div>Ibant <i>obscuri</i>, <i>sola</i> sub <i>nocte</i>, per <i>umbram</i>,</div>
+<div>Perque domos Ditis <i>vacuas</i>, et <i>inania</i> regus.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>&quot;Ye subterraneous gods! whose awful sway</div>
+<div>The gliding ghosts, and <i>silent</i> shades obey:</div>
+<div>O Chaos hoar! and Phlegethon profound!</div>
+<div>Whose solemn empire stretches wide around;</div>
+<div>Give me, ye great, tremendous powers, to tell</div>
+<div>Of scenes and wonders in the depth of hell;</div>
+<div>Give me your mighty secrets to display</div>
+<div>From those <i>black</i> realms of darkness to the day.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="citation">PITT.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>&quot;<i>Obscure</i> they went through dreary <i>shades</i> that led</div>
+<div>Along the <i>waste</i> dominions of the <i>dead</i>.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="citation">DRYDEN.
+<!-- Page 171 --><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" title="147" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VII.<br />
+<br />
+VASTNESS.</h3>
+
+<p>Greatness<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part IV. sect. 9.">[17]</a> of dimension is a powerful cause of
+the sublime. This is too evident, and the observation
+too common, to need any illustration; it is not
+so common to consider in what ways greatness of
+dimension, vastness of extent or quantity, has the
+most striking effect. For, certainly, there are ways
+and modes wherein the same quantity of extension
+shall produce greater effects than it is found to do
+in others. Extension is either in length, height, or
+depth. Of these the length strikes least; a hundred
+yards of even ground will never work such an effect
+as a tower a hundred yards high, or a rock or mountain
+of that altitude. I am apt to imagine, likewise,
+that height is less grand than depth; and that we
+are more struck at looking down from a precipice,
+than looking up at an object of equal height; but of
+that I am not very positive. A perpendicular has
+more force in forming the sublime, than an inclined
+plane, and the effects of a rugged and broken surface
+seem stronger than where it is smooth and polished.
+It would carry us out of our way to enter in this
+place into the cause of these appearances, but certain
+it is they afford a large and fruitful field of speculation.
+However, it may not be amiss to add to these
+remarks upon magnitude, that as the great extreme
+of dimension is sublime, so the last extreme of littleness
+is in some measure sublime likewise; when we
+attend to the infinite divisibility of matter, when we
+pursue animal life into these excessively small, and
+<!-- Page 172 --><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" title="148" class="pagenum"></a>yet organized beings, that escape the nicest inquisition
+of the sense; when we push our discoveries yet
+downward, and consider those creatures so many degrees
+yet smaller, and the still diminishing scale of
+existence, in tracing which the imagination is lost
+as well as the sense; we become amazed and confounded
+at the wonders of minuteness; nor can we
+distinguish in its effect this extreme of littleness from
+the vast itself. For division must be infinite as well
+as addition; because the idea of a perfect unity can
+no more be arrived at, than that of a complete whole,
+to which nothing may be added.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VIII.<br />
+<br />
+INFINITY.</h3>
+
+<p>Another source of the sublime is <i>infinity</i>; if it
+does not rather belong to the last. Infinity has a
+tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful
+horror, which is the most genuine effect, and truest
+test of the sublime. There are scarce any things
+which can become the objects of our senses, that are
+really and in their own nature infinite. But the eye
+not being able to perceive the bounds of many things,
+they seem to be infinite, and they produce the same
+effects as if they were really so. We are deceived in
+the like manner, if the parts of some large object are
+so continued to any indefinite number, that the imagination
+meets no check which may hinder its extending
+them at pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever we repeat any idea frequently, the mind,
+by a sort of mechanism, repeats it long after the first
+cause has ceased to operate.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part IV. sect. 11.">[18]</a> After whirling about,
+<!-- Page 173 --><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" title="149" class="pagenum"></a>when we sit down, the objects about us still seem to
+whirl. After a long succession of noises, as the fall
+of waters, or the beating of forge-hammers, the hammers
+beat and the waters roar in the imagination
+long after the first sounds have ceased to affect it;
+and they die away at last by gradations which are
+scarcely perceptible. If you hold up a straight pole,
+with your eye to one end, it will seem extended to a
+length almost incredible.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part IV. sect. 13.">[19]</a> Place a number of uniform
+and equi-distant marks on this pole, they will
+cause the same deception, and seem multiplied without
+end. The senses, strongly affected in some one
+manner, cannot quickly change their tenor, or adapt
+themselves to other things; but they continue in their
+old channel until the strength of the first mover decays.
+This is the reason of an appearance very frequent in
+madmen; that they remain whole days and nights,
+sometimes whole years, in the constant repetition of
+some remark, some complaint, or song; which having
+struck powerfully on their disordered imagination,
+in the beginning of their frenzy, every repetition
+reinforces it with new strength, and the hurry of their
+spirits, unrestrained by the curb of reason, continues
+it to the end of their lives.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION IX.<br />
+<br />
+SUCCESSION AND UNIFORMITY.</h3>
+
+<p>Succession and <i>uniformity</i> of parts are what constitute
+the artificial infinite. 1. <i>Succession</i>; which is
+requisite that the parts may be continued so long and
+in such a direction, as by their frequent impulses on
+<!-- Page 174 --><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" title="150" class="pagenum"></a>the sense to impress the imagination with an idea of
+their progress beyond their actual limits. 2. <i>Uniformity</i>;
+because, if the figures of the parts should
+be changed, the imagination at every change finds a
+check; you are presented at every alteration with the
+termination of one idea, and the beginning of another;
+by which means it becomes impossible to continue
+that uninterrupted progression, which alone can
+stamp on bounded objects the character of infinity.
+It is in this kind of artificial infinity, I believe, we
+ought to look for the cause why a rotund has such a
+noble effect.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor"
+title="Mr. Addison, in the Spectators concerning the pleasures of the
+imagination, thinks it is because in the rotund at one glance you see
+half the building. This I do not imagine to be the real cause.">[20]</a> For in a rotund, whether it be a building
+or a plantation, you can nowhere fix a boundary;
+turn which way you will, the same object still
+seems to continue, and the imagination has no rest.
+But the parts must be uniform, as well as circularly
+disposed, to give this figure its full force; because
+any difference, whether it be in the disposition, or in
+the figure, or even in the color of the parts, is highly
+prejudicial to the idea of infinity, which every change
+must check and interrupt, at every alteration commencing
+a new series. On the same principles of
+succession and uniformity, the grand appearance
+of the ancient heathen temples, which were generally
+oblong forms, with a range of uniform pillars on every
+side, will be easily accounted for. From the same
+cause also may be derived the grand effect of the
+aisles in many of our own old cathedrals. The form
+of a cross used in some churches seems to me not so
+eligible as the parallelogram of the ancients; at least,
+I imagine it is not so proper for the outside. For,
+<!-- Page 175 --><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" title="151" class="pagenum"></a>supposing the arms of the cross every way equal, if
+you stand in a direction parallel to any of the side
+walls, or colonnades, instead of a deception that
+makes the building more extended than it is, you
+are cut off from a considerable part (two thirds) of
+its <i>actual</i> length; and, to prevent all possibility of
+progression, the arms of the cross taking a new direction,
+make a right angle with the beam, and thereby
+wholly turn the imagination from the repetition of
+the former idea. Or suppose the spectator placed
+where he may take a direct view of such a building,
+what will be the consequence? the necessary consequence
+will be, that a good part of the basis of each
+angle formed by the intersection of the arms of the
+cross, must be inevitably lost; the whole must of
+course assume a broken, unconnected figure; the
+lights must be unequal, here strong, and there
+weak; without that noble gradation which the perspective
+always effects on parts disposed uninterruptedly
+in a right line. Some or all of these objections
+will lie against every figure of a cross, in whatever
+view you take it. I exemplified them in the Greek
+cross, in which these faults appear the most strongly;
+but they appear in some degree in all sorts of crosses.
+Indeed, there is nothing more prejudicial to the
+grandeur of buildings than to abound in angles; a
+fault obvious in many; and owing to an inordinate
+thirst for variety, which, whenever it prevails, is
+sure to leave very little true taste.<!-- Page 176 --><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" title="152" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION X.<br />
+<br />
+MAGNITUDE IN BUILDING.</h3>
+
+<p>To the sublime in building, greatness of dimension
+seems requisite; for on a few parts, and those small,
+the imagination cannot rise to any idea of infinity.
+No greatness in the manner can effectually compensate
+for the want of proper dimensions. There is no
+danger of drawing men into extravagant designs by
+this rule; it carries its own caution along with it.
+Because too great a length in buildings destroys the
+purpose of greatness, which it was intended to promote;
+the perspective will lessen it in height as it
+gains in length; and will bring it at last to a point;
+turning the whole figure into a sort of triangle, the
+poorest in its effect of almost any figure that can be
+presented to the eye. I have ever observed, that colonnades
+and avenues of trees of a moderate length
+were, without comparison, far grander than when
+they were suffered to run to immense distances. A
+true artist should put a generous deceit on the spectators,
+and effect the noblest designs by easy methods.
+Designs that are vast only by their dimensions
+are always the sign of a common and low imagination.
+No work of art can be great, but as it deceives;
+to be otherwise is the prerogative of nature only. A
+good eye will fix the medium betwixt an excessive
+length or height (for the same objection lies against
+both), and a short or broken quantity: and perhaps
+it might be ascertained to a tolerable degree of exactness,
+if it was my purpose to descend far into the
+particulars of any art.<!-- Page 177 --><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" title="153" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XI.<br />
+<br />
+INFINITY IN PLEASING OBJECTS.</h3>
+
+<p>Infinity, though of another kind, causes much of
+our pleasure in agreeable, as well as of our delight in
+sublime images. The spring is the pleasantest of the
+seasons; and the young of most animals, though far
+from being completely fashioned, afford a more agreeable
+sensation than the full-grown; because the imagination
+is entertained with the promise of something
+more, and does not acquiesce in the present object of
+the sense. In unfinished sketches of drawing, I have
+often seen something which pleased me beyond the
+best finishing; and this I believe proceeds from the
+cause I have just now assigned.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XII.<br />
+<br />
+DIFFICULTY.</h3>
+
+<p>Another source of greatness is <i>difficulty</i>.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part IV. sect. 4, 5, 6.">[21]</a> When
+any work seems to have required immense force and
+labor to effect it, the idea is grand. Stonehenge,
+neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything
+admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set
+on end, and piled each on other, turn the mind on
+the immense force necessary for such a work. Nay,
+the rudeness of the work increases this cause of
+grandeur, as it excludes the idea of art and contrivance;
+for dexterity produces another sort of effect,
+which is different enough from this.<!-- Page 178 --><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" title="154" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XIII.<br />
+<br />
+MAGNIFICENCE.</h3>
+
+<p>Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime.
+A great profusion of things, which are splendid or
+valuable in themselves, is <i>magnificent</i>. The starry
+heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our
+view never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This
+cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately
+considered. The number is certainly the cause. The
+apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance
+of care is highly contrary to our ideas of
+magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent
+confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions
+to reckon them. This gives them the advantage
+of a sort of infinity. In works of art, this kind
+of grandeur which consists in multitude, is to be very
+cautiously admitted; because a profusion of excellent
+things is not to be attained, or with too much
+difficulty; and because in many cases this splendid
+confusion would destroy all use, which should be attended
+to in most of the works of art with the greatest
+care; besides, it is to be considered, that unless you
+can produce an appearance of infinity by your disorder,
+you will have disorder only without magnificence.
+There are, however, a sort of fireworks, and some
+other things, that in this way succeed well, and are
+truly grand. There are also many descriptions in
+the poets and orators, which owe their sublimity to a
+richness and profusion of images, in which the mind
+is so dazzled as to make it impossible to attend to
+that exact coherence and agreement of the allusions,
+which we should require on every other occasion. I
+<!-- Page 179 --><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155" title="155" class="pagenum"></a>do not now remember a more striking example of
+this, than the description which is given of the king's
+army in the play of Henry IV.:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i6">&quot;All furnished, all in arms,</div>
+<div>All plumed like ostriches that with the wind</div>
+<div>Baited like eagles having lately bathed:</div>
+<div>As full of spirit us the month of May,</div>
+<div>And gorgeous as the sun in midsummer,</div>
+<div>Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.</div>
+<div>I saw young Harry with his beaver on</div>
+<div>Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury;</div>
+<div>And vaulted with such ease into his seat,</div>
+<div>As if an angel dropped down from the clouds</div>
+<div>To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>In that excellent book, so remarkable for the vivacity
+of its descriptions, as well as the solidity and
+penetration of its sentences, the Wisdom of the Son
+of Sirach, there is a noble panegyric on the high-priest
+Simon the son of Onias; and it is a very fine
+example of the point before us:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote style="text-align: justify;">
+<p><i>How was he honored in the midst of the people, in his
+coming out of the sanctuary! He was as the morning
+star in the midst of a cloud, and as the moon at the
+full; as the sun shining upon the temple of the Most
+High, and as the rainbow giving light in the bright
+clouds: and as the flower of roses in the spring of the
+year, as lilies by the rivers of waters, and as the frankincense-tree
+in summer; as fire and incense in the censer,
+and as a vessel of gold set with precious stones; as
+a fair olive-tree budding forth fruit, and as a cypress
+which groweth up to the clouds. When he put on the
+robe of honor, and was clothed with the perfection of
+glory, when he went up to the holy altar, he made the
+garment of holiness honorable. He himself stood by the
+hearth of the altar, compassed with his brethren round</i><!-- Page 180 --><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" title="156" class="pagenum"></a><i>
+about; as a young cedar in Libanus, and as palm-trees
+compassed they him about. So were all the sons of
+Aaron in their glory, and the oblations of the Lord in
+their hands, &amp;c.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XIV.<br />
+<br />
+LIGHT.</h3>
+
+<p>Having considered extension, so far as it is capable
+of raising ideas of greatness; <i>color</i> comes next under
+consideration. All colors depend on <i>light</i>. Light
+therefore ought previously to be examined; and with
+it its opposite, darkness. With regard to light, to
+make it a cause capable of producing the sublime, it
+must be attended with some circumstances, besides
+its bare faculty of showing other objects. Mere light
+is too common a thing to make a strong impression
+on the mind, and without a strong impression nothing
+can be sublime. But such a light as that of the
+sun, immediately exerted on the eye, as it overpowers
+the sense, is a very great idea. Light of an inferior
+strength to this, if it moves with great celerity, has
+the same power; for lightning is certainly productive
+of grandeur, which it owes chiefly to the extreme velocity
+of its motion. A quick transition from light to
+darkness, or from darkness to light, has yet a greater
+effect. But darkness is more productive of sublime
+ideas than light. Our great poet was convinced of
+this; and indeed so full was he of this idea, so entirely
+possessed with the power of a well-managed
+darkness, that in describing the appearance of the
+Deity, amidst that profusion of magnificent images,
+which the grandeur of his subject provokes him to
+<!-- Page 181 --><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" title="157" class="pagenum"></a>pour out upon every side, he is far from forgetting the
+obscurity which surrounds the most incomprehensible
+of all beings, but</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i2">&quot;With majesty of <i>darkness</i> round</div>
+<div>Circles his throne.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">And what is no less remarkable, our author had the
+secret of preserving this idea, even when he seemed
+to depart the farthest from it, when he describes the
+light and glory which flows from the Divine presence;
+a light which by its very excess is converted into a
+species of darkness:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>&quot;<i>Dark</i> with excessive <i>light</i> thy skirts appear.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Here is an idea not only poetical in a high degree,
+but strictly and philosophically just. Extreme light,
+by overcoming the organs of sight, obliterates all objects,
+so as in its effect exactly to resemble darkness.
+After looking for some time at the sun, two black
+spots, the impression which it leaves, seem to dance
+before our eyes. Thus are two ideas as opposite as
+can be imagined reconciled in the extremes of both;
+and both, in spite of their opposite nature, brought to
+concur in producing the sublime. And this is not
+the only instance wherein the opposite extremes operate
+equally in favor of the sublime, which in all
+things abhors mediocrity.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XV.<br />
+<br />
+LIGHT IN BUILDING.</h3>
+
+<p>As the management of light is a matter of importance
+in architecture, it is worth inquiring, how far
+this remark is applicable to building. I think, then,
+<!-- Page 182 --><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" title="158" class="pagenum"></a>that all edifices calculated to produce an idea of the
+sublime, ought rather to be dark and gloomy, and
+this for two reasons; the first is, that darkness itself
+on other occasions is known by experience to have a
+greater effect on the passions than light. The second
+is, that to make an object very striking, we should
+make it as different as possible from the objects with
+which we have been immediately conversant; when
+therefore you enter a building, you cannot pass into
+a greater light than you had in the open air; to go
+into one some few degrees less luminous, can make
+only a trifling change; but to make the transition
+thoroughly striking, you ought to pass from the greatest
+light, to as much darkness as is consistent with
+the uses of architecture. At night the contrary rule
+will hold, but for the very same reason; and the more
+highly a room is then illuminated, the grander will
+the passion be.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVI.<br />
+<br />
+COLOR CONSIDERED AS PRODUCTIVE OF THE SUBLIME.</h3>
+
+<p>Among colors, such as are soft or cheerful (except
+perhaps a strong red, which is cheerful) are unfit to
+produce grand images. An immense mountain covered
+with a shining green turf, is nothing, in this
+respect, to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is
+more grand than the blue; and night more sublime
+and solemn than day. Therefore in historical painting,
+a gay or gaudy drapery can never have a happy
+effect: and in buildings, when the highest degree of
+the sublime is intended, the materials and ornaments
+ought neither to be white, nor green, nor yellow, nor
+<!-- Page 183 --><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" title="159" class="pagenum"></a>blue, nor of a pale red, nor violet, nor spotted, but of
+sad and fuscous colors, as black, or brown, or deep
+purple, and the like. Much of gilding, mosaics, painting,
+or statues, contribute but little to the sublime.
+This rule need not be put in practice, except where
+an uniform degree of the most striking sublimity is
+to be produced, and that in every particular; for it
+ought to be observed, that this melancholy kind of
+greatness, though it be certainly the highest, ought
+not to be studied in all sorts of edifices, where yet
+grandeur must be studied; in such cases the sublimity
+must be drawn from the other sources; with a
+strict caution however against anything light and riant;
+as nothing so effectually deadens the whole taste
+of the sublime.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVII.<br />
+<br />
+SOUND AND LOUDNESS.</h3>
+
+<p>The eye is not the only organ of sensation by which
+a sublime passion may be produced. Sounds have a
+great power in these as in most other passions. I do
+not mean words, because words do not affect simply
+by their sounds, but by means altogether different.
+Excessive loudness alone is sufficient to overpower the
+soul, to suspend its action, and to fill it with terror.
+The noise of vast cataracts, raging storms, thunder,
+or artillery, awakes a great and awful sensation in the
+mind, though we can observe no nicety or artifice
+in those sorts of music. The shouting of multitudes
+has a similar effect; and by the sole strength of
+the sound, so amazes and confounds the imagination,
+that, in this staggering and hurry of the mind,
+<!-- Page 184 --><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" title="160" class="pagenum"></a>the best established tempers can scarcely forbear being
+borne down, and joining in the common cry, and
+common resolution of the crowd.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVIII.<br />
+<br />
+SUDDENNESS.</h3>
+
+<p>A sudden beginning, or sudden cessation of sound
+of any considerable force, has the same power. The
+attention is roused by this; and the faculties driven
+forward, as it were, on their guard. Whatever, either
+in sights or sounds, makes the transition from one
+extreme to the other easy, causes no terror, and
+consequently can be no cause of greatness. In everything
+sudden and unexpected, we are apt to start;
+that is, we have a perception of danger, and our nature
+rouses us to guard against it. It may be observed
+that a single sound of some strength, though
+but of short duration, if repeated after intervals, has
+a grand effect. Few things are more awful than the
+striking of a great clock, when the silence of the
+night prevents the attention from being too much
+dissipated. The same may be said of a single stroke
+on a drum, repeated with pauses; and of the successive
+firing of cannon at a distance. All the effects
+mentioned in this section have causes very nearly
+alike.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XIX.<br />
+<br />
+INTERMITTING.</h3>
+
+<p>A low, tremulous, intermitting sound, though it
+seems, in some respects, opposite to that just men<!-- Page 185 --><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" title="161" class="pagenum"></a>tioned,
+is productive of the sublime. It is worth
+while to examine this a little. The fact itself must
+be determined by every man's own experience and
+reflection. I have already observed, that night<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor"
+title="Sect. 3.">[22]</a>
+increases our terror, more perhaps than anything
+else; it is our nature, when we do not know what
+may happen to us, to fear the worst that can happen;
+and hence it is that uncertainty is so terrible,
+that we often seek to be rid of it, at the hazard of a
+certain mischief. Now some low, confused, uncertain
+sounds, leave us in the same fearful anxiety concerning
+their causes, that no light, or an uncertain
+light, does concerning the objects that surround us.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna</div>
+<div>Est iter in sylvis.</div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i2">&quot;A faint shadow of uncertain light,</div>
+<div>Like as a lamp, whose life doth fade away;</div>
+<div>Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night</div>
+<div>Doth show to him who walks in fear and great affright.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="citation">SPENSER.</p>
+
+<p>But light now appearing, and now leaving us, and so
+off and on, is even more terrible than total darkness;
+and a sort of uncertain sounds are, when the necessary
+dispositions concur, more alarming than a total
+silence.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XX.<br />
+<br />
+THE CRIES OF ANIMALS.</h3>
+
+<p>Such sounds as imitate the natural inarticulate
+voices of men, or any animals in pain or danger, are
+capable of conveying great ideas; unless it be the
+well-known voice of some creature, on which we are
+used to look with contempt. The angry tones of wild
+<!-- Page 186 --><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" title="162" class="pagenum"></a>beasts are equally capable of causing a great and
+awful sensation.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Hinc exaudiri gemitus, ir&aelig;que leonum</div>
+<div>Vincia recusantum, et sera sub nocte rudentum;</div>
+<div>Setigerique sues, atque in pr&aelig;sepibus ursi</div>
+<div>S&aelig;vire; et form&aelig; magnorum ululare luporam.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">It might seem that those modulations of sound carry
+some connection with the nature of the things they
+represent, and are not merely arbitrary; because the
+natural cries of all animals, even of those animals
+with whom we have not been acquainted, never fail
+to make themselves sufficiently understood; this cannot
+be said of language. The modifications of sound,
+which may be productive of the sublime, are almost
+infinite. Those I have mentioned are only a few
+instances to show on what principles they are all
+built.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXI.<br />
+<br />
+SMELL AND TASTE.&mdash;BITTERS AND STENCHES.</h3>
+
+<p><i>Smells</i> and <i>tastes</i> have some share too in ideas of
+greatness; but it is a small one, weak in its nature,
+and confined in its operations. I shall only observe
+that no smells or tastes can produce a grand
+sensation, except excessive bitters, and intolerable
+stenches. It is true that these affections of the
+smell and taste, when they are in their full force, and
+lean directly upon the sensory, are simply painful,
+and accompanied with no sort of delight; but when
+they are moderated, as in a description or narrative,
+they become sources of the sublime, as genuine as any
+other, and upon the very same principle of a moderated
+pain. &quot;A cup of bitterness&quot;; &quot;to drain the bit<!-- Page 187 --><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" title="163" class="pagenum"></a>ter
+cup of fortune&quot;; &quot;the bitter apples of Sodom&quot;;
+these are all ideas suitable to a sublime description.
+Nor is this passage of Virgil without sublimity, where
+the stench of the vapor in Albunea conspires so happily
+with the sacred horror and gloominess of that
+prophetic forest:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>At rex sollicitus monstris oracula Fauni</div>
+<div>Fatidici genitoris adit, lucosque sub alta</div>
+<div>Consulit Albunea, nemorum qu&aelig; maxima sacro</div>
+<div>Fonte sonat; <i>s&aelig;vamque exhalat opaca Mephitim</i>.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">In the sixth book, and in a very sublime description,
+the poisonous exhalation of Acheron is not forgotten,
+nor does it at all disagree with the other images
+amongst which it is introduced:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Spelunca <i>alta</i> fuit, <i>vastoque immanis</i> hiatu</div>
+<div>Scrupea, tuta <i>lacu nigro</i>, nemorumque <i>tenebris</i>;</div>
+<div>Quam super haud ull&aelig; poterant impune volantes</div>
+<div>Tendere iter pennis: <i>talis sese halitus atris</i></div>
+<div><i>Faucibus effundens supera ad convexa ferebat</i>.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">I have added these examples, because some friends,
+for whose judgment I have great deference, were of
+opinion that if the sentiment stood nakedly by itself,
+it would be subject, at first view, to burlesque and
+ridicule; but this I imagine would principally arise
+from considering the bitterness and stench in company
+with mean and contemptible ideas, with which it
+must be owned they are often united; such an union
+degrades the sublime in all other instances as well as
+in those. But it is one of the tests by which the sublimity
+of an image is to be tried, not whether it becomes
+mean when associated with mean ideas; but
+whether, when united with images of an allowed
+grandeur, the whole composition is supported with
+dignity. Things which are terrible are always great;
+<!-- Page 188 --><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" title="164" class="pagenum"></a>but when things possess disagreeable qualities, or
+such as have indeed some degree of danger, but of a
+danger easily overcome, they are merely <i>odious</i>; as
+toads and spiders.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXII.<br />
+<br />
+FEELING.&mdash;PAIN.</h3>
+
+<p>Of <i>feeling</i> little more can be said than that the idea
+of bodily pain, in all the modes and degrees of labor,
+pain, anguish, torment, is productive of the sublime;
+and nothing else in this sense can produce it. I need
+not give here any fresh instances, as those given in
+the former sections abundantly illustrate a remark
+that, in reality, wants only an attention to nature,
+to be made by everybody.</p>
+
+<p>Having thus run through the causes of the sublime
+with reference to all the senses, my first observation
+(Sect. 7) will be found very nearly true; that the
+sublime is an idea belonging to self-preservation;
+that it is, therefore, one of the most affecting we
+have; that its strongest emotion is an emotion of
+distress; and that no pleasure<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor"
+title="Vide Part I. sect. 6.">[23]</a> from a positive cause
+belongs to it. Numberless examples, besides those
+mentioned, might be brought in support of these
+truths, and many perhaps useful consequences drawn
+from them&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Sed fugit interea, fugit irrevocabile tempus,</div>
+<div>Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Part I. sect. 3, 4, 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Part IV. sect. 3, 4, 5, 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Part IV. sect. 14, 15, 16.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Part V.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Part I. sect. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Vide Part III. sect. 21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Part IV. sect. 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Part IV. sect. 11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Part IV. sect. 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Mr. Addison, in the Spectators concerning the pleasures of the
+imagination, thinks it is because in the rotund at one glance you see
+half the building. This I do not imagine to be the real cause.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Part IV. sect. 4, 5, 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Sect. 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Vide Part I. sect. 6.</p></div><!-- Page 189 --><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" title="165" class="pagenum"></a>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>PART III.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION I.<br />
+<br />
+OF BEAUTY.</h3>
+
+<p>It is my design to consider beauty as distinguished
+from the sublime; and, in the course of the inquiry,
+to examine how far it is consistent with it. But previous
+to this, we must take a short review of the opinions
+already entertained of this quality; which I
+think are hardly to be reduced to any fixed principles;
+because men are used to talk of beauty in a
+figurative manner, that is to say, in a manner extremely
+uncertain, and indeterminate. By beauty, I
+mean that quality, or those qualities in bodies, by
+which they cause love, or some passion similar to it.
+I confine this definition to the merely sensible qualities
+of things, for the sake of preserving the utmost
+simplicity in a subject, which must always distract us
+whenever we take in those various causes of sympathy
+which attach us to any persons or things from
+secondary considerations, and not from the direct
+force which they have merely on being viewed. I
+likewise distinguish love, (by which I mean that
+satisfaction which arises to the mind upon contemplating
+anything beautiful, of whatsoever nature it may be,)
+from desire or lust; which is an energy of the mind,
+that hurries us on to the possession of certain objects,
+that do not affect us as they are beautiful, but by
+means altogether different. We shall have a strong
+desire for a woman of no remarkable beauty; whilst
+the greatest beauty in men, or in other animals,
+<!-- Page 190 --><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" title="166" class="pagenum"></a>though it causes love, yet excites nothing at all of
+desire. Which shows that beauty, and the passion
+caused by beauty, which I call love, is different from
+desire, though desire may sometimes operate along
+with it; but it is to this latter that we must attribute
+those violent and tempestuous passions, and the consequent
+emotions of the body which attend what is
+called love in some of its ordinary acceptations, and
+not to the effects of beauty merely as it is such.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION II.<br />
+<br />
+PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN VEGETABLES.</h3>
+
+<p>Beauty hath usually been said to consist in certain
+proportions of parts. On considering the matter, I
+have great reason to doubt, whether beauty be at all
+an idea belonging to proportion. Proportion relates
+almost wholly to convenience, as every idea of order
+seems to do; and it must therefore be considered as
+a creature of the understanding, rather than a primary
+cause acting on the senses and imagination. It
+is not by the force of long attention and inquiry that
+we find any object to be beautiful; beauty demands
+no assistance from our reasoning; even the will is
+unconcerned; the appearance of beauty as effectually
+causes some degree of love in us, as the application
+of ice or fire produces the ideas of heat or cold. To
+gain something like a satisfactory conclusion in this
+point, it were well to examine what proportion is;
+since several who make use of that word do not
+always seem to understand very clearly the force of
+the term, nor to have very distinct ideas concerning
+the thing itself. Proportion is the measure of rela<!-- Page 191 --><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" title="167" class="pagenum"></a>tive
+quantity. Since all quantity is divisible, it is
+evident that every distinct part into which any quantity
+is divided must bear some relation to the other
+parts, or to the whole. These relations give an origin
+to the idea of proportion. They are discovered by
+mensuration, and they are the objects of mathematical
+inquiry. But whether any part of any determinate
+quantity be a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth, or a
+moiety of the whole; or whether it be of equal length
+with any other part, or double its length, or but one
+half, is a matter merely indifferent to the mind; it
+stands neuter in the question: and it is from this
+absolute indifference and tranquillity of the mind,
+that mathematical speculations derive some of their
+most considerable advantages; because there is nothing
+to interest the imagination; because the judgment
+sits free and unbiassed to examine the point.
+All proportions, every arrangement of quantity, is
+alike to the understanding, because the same truths
+result to it from all; from greater, from lesser, from
+equality and inequality. But surely beauty is no
+idea belonging to mensuration; nor has it anything
+to do with calculation and geometry. If it had, we
+might then point out some certain measures which
+we could demonstrate to be beautiful, either as simply
+considered, or as related to others; and we could
+call in those natural objects, for whose beauty we
+have no voucher but the sense, to this happy standard,
+and confirm the voice of our passions by the
+determination of our reason. But since we have not
+this help, let us see whether proportion can in any
+sense be considered as the cause of beauty, as hath
+been so generally, and, by some, so confidently affirmed.
+If proportion be one of the constituents of
+<!-- Page 192 --><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" title="168" class="pagenum"></a>beauty, it must derive that power either from some
+natural properties inherent in certain measures,
+which operate mechanically; from the operation of
+custom; or from the fitness which some measures
+have to answer some particular ends of conveniency.
+Our business therefore is to inquire, whether the
+parts of those objects, which are found beautiful in
+the vegetable or animal kingdoms, are constantly so
+formed according to such certain measures, as may
+serve to satisfy us that their beauty results from those
+measures, on the principle of a natural mechanical
+cause; or from custom; or, in fine, from their fitness
+for any determinate purposes. I intend to examine
+this point under each of these heads in their order.
+But before I proceed further, I hope it will not be
+thought amiss, if I lay down the rules which governed
+me in this inquiry, and which have misled me in it,
+if I have gone astray. 1. If two bodies produce the
+same or a similar effect on the mind, and on examination
+they are found to agree in some of their properties,
+and to differ in others; the common effect is
+to be attributed to the properties in which they agree,
+and not to those in which they differ. 2. Not to account
+for the effect of a natural object from the effect
+of an artificial object. 3. Not to account for the
+effect of any natural object from a conclusion of our
+reason concerning its uses, if a natural cause may be
+assigned. 4. Not to admit any determinate quantity,
+or any relation of quantity, as the cause of a certain
+effect, if the effect is produced by different or opposite
+measures and relations; or if these measures and
+relations may exist, and yet the effect may not be produced.
+These are the rules which I have chiefly followed,
+whilst I examined into the power of proportion
+<!-- Page 193 --><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" title="169" class="pagenum"></a>considered as a natural cause; and these, if he thinks
+them just, I request the reader to carry with him
+throughout the following discussion; whilst we inquire,
+in the first place, in what things we find this
+quality of beauty; next, to see whether in these we
+can find any assignable proportions in such a manner
+as ought to convince us that our idea of beauty results
+from them. We shall consider this pleasing
+power as it appears in vegetables, in the inferior animals,
+and in man. Turning our eyes to the vegetable
+creation, we find nothing there so beautiful as
+flowers; but flowers are almost of every sort of
+shape, and of every sort of disposition; they are
+turned and fashioned into an infinite variety of
+forms; and from these forms botanists have given
+them their names, which are almost as various.
+What proportion do we discover between the stalks
+and the leaves of flowers, or between the leaves and
+the pistils? How does the slender stalk of the rose
+agree with the bulky head under which it bends? but
+the rose is a beautiful flower; and can we undertake
+to say that it does not owe a great deal of its beauty
+even to that disproportion; the rose is a large flower,
+yet it grows upon a small shrub; the flower of the
+apple is very small, and grows upon a large tree; yet
+the rose and the apple blossom are both beautiful,
+and the plants that bear them are most engagingly
+attired, notwithstanding this disproportion. What
+by general consent is allowed to be a more beautiful
+object than an orange-tree, nourishing at once with
+its leaves, its blossoms, and its fruit? but it is in vain
+that we search here for any proportion between the
+height, the breadth, or anything else concerning the
+dimensions of the whole, or concerning the relation
+<!-- Page 194 --><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" title="170" class="pagenum"></a>of the particular parts to each other. I grant that
+we may observe in many flowers something of a regular
+figure, and of a methodical disposition of the
+leaves. The rose has such a figure and such a disposition
+of its petals; but in an oblique view, when this
+figure is in a good measure lost, and the order of the
+leaves confounded, it yet retains its beauty; the rose
+is even more beautiful before it is full blown; in the
+bud; before this exact figure is formed; and this is
+not the only instance wherein method and exactness,
+the soul of proportion, are found rather prejudicial
+than serviceable to the cause of beauty.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION III.<br />
+<br />
+PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN ANIMALS.</h3>
+
+<p>That proportion has but a small share in the formation
+of beauty is full as evident among animals.
+Here the greatest variety of shapes and dispositions
+of parts are well fitted to excite this idea. The
+swan, confessedly a beautiful bird, has a neck longer
+than the rest of his body, and but a very short tail:
+is this a beautiful proportion? We must allow that
+it is. But then what shall we say to the peacock,
+who has comparatively but a short neck, with a tail
+longer than the neck and the rest of the body taken
+together? How many birds are there that vary infinitely
+from each of these standards, and from every
+other which you can fix; with proportions different,
+and often directly opposite to each other! and yet
+many of these birds are extremely beautiful; when
+upon considering them we find nothing in any one
+part that might determine us, <i>&agrave; priori</i>, to say what
+<!-- Page 195 --><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" title="171" class="pagenum"></a>the others ought to be, nor indeed to guess anything
+about them, but what experience might show to be
+full of disappointment and mistake. And with regard
+to the colors either of birds or flowers, for there
+is something similar in the coloring of both, whether
+they are considered in their extension or gradation,
+there is nothing of proportion to be observed. Some
+are of but one single color; others have all the colors
+of the rainbow; some are of the primary colors, others
+are of the mixed; in short, an attentive observer may
+soon conclude that there is as little of proportion
+in the coloring as in the shapes of these objects.
+Turn next to beasts; examine the head of a beautiful
+horse; find what proportion that bears to his
+body, and to his limbs, and what relation these
+have to each other; and when you have settled
+these proportions as a standard of beauty, then take
+a dog or cat, or any other animal, and examine how
+far the same proportions between their heads and
+their necks, between those and the body, and so on,
+are found to hold; I think we may safely say, that
+they differ in every species, yet that there are individuals,
+found in a great many species so differing, that
+have a very striking beauty. Now, if it be allowed
+that very different, and even contrary forms and
+dispositions are consistent with beauty, it amounts I
+believe to a concession, that no certain measures,
+operating from a natural principle, are necessary to
+produce it; at least so far as the brute species is
+concerned.<!-- Page 196 --><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" title="172" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION IV.<br />
+<br />
+PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN THE
+HUMAN SPECIES.</h3>
+
+<p>There are some parts of the human body that are
+observed to hold certain proportions to each other;
+but before it can be proved that the efficient cause of
+beauty lies in these, it must be shown that, wherever
+these are found exact, the person to whom they belong
+is beautiful: I mean in the effect produced on the
+view, either of any member distinctly considered, or
+of the whole body together. It must be likewise
+shown, that these parts stand in such a relation to
+each other, that the comparison between them may
+be easily made, and that the affection of the mind
+may naturally result from it. For my part, I have
+at several times very carefully examined many of
+those proportions, and found them hold very nearly,
+or altogether alike in many subjects, which were not
+only very different from one another, but where one
+has been very beautiful, and the other very remote
+from beauty. With regard to the parts which are
+found so proportioned, they are often so remote from
+each other, in situation, nature, and office, that I
+cannot see how they admit of any comparison, nor
+consequently how any effect owing to proportion can
+result from them. The neck, say they, in beautiful
+bodies, should measure with the calf of the leg; it
+should likewise be twice the circumference of the
+wrist. And an infinity of observations of this kind
+are to be found in the writings and conversations of
+many. But what relation has the calf of the leg to
+the neck; or either of these parts to the wrist?
+<!-- Page 197 --><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" title="173" class="pagenum"></a>These proportions are certainly to be found in handsome
+bodies. They are as certainly in ugly ones; as
+any who will take the pains to try may find. Nay, I
+do not know but they may be least perfect in some of
+the most beautiful. You may assign any proportions
+you please to every part of the human body; and I
+undertake that a painter shall religiously observe
+them all, and notwithstanding produce, if he pleases,
+a very ugly figure. The same painter shall considerably
+deviate from these proportions, and produce a
+very beautiful one. And, indeed, it may be observed
+in the masterpieces of the ancient and modern statuary,
+that several of them differ very widely from the
+proportions of others, in parts very conspicuous and
+of great consideration; and that they differ no less
+from the proportions we find in living men, of forms
+extremely striking and agreeable. And after all,
+how are the partisans of proportional beauty agreed
+amongst themselves about the proportions of the
+human body? Some hold it to be seven heads;
+some make it eight; whilst others extend it even
+to ten: a vast difference in such a small number of
+divisions! Others take other methods of estimating
+the proportions, and all with equal success. But are
+these proportions exactly the same in all handsome
+men? or are they at all the proportions found in
+beautiful women? Nobody will say that they are;
+yet both sexes are undoubtedly capable of beauty, and
+the female of the greatest; which advantage I believe
+will hardly be attributed to the superior exactness
+of proportion in the fair sex. Let us rest a
+moment on this point; and consider how much difference
+there is between the measures that prevail in
+many similar parts of the body, in the two sexes of
+<!-- Page 198 --><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" title="174" class="pagenum"></a>this single species only. If you assign any determinate
+proportions to the limbs of a man, and if you
+limit human beauty to these proportions, when you
+find a woman who differs in the make and measures
+of almost every part, you must conclude her not to be
+beautiful, in spite of the suggestions of your
+imagination; or, in obedience to your imagination, you
+must renounce your rules; you must lay by the
+scale and compass, and look out for some other
+cause of beauty. For if beauty be attached to
+certain measures which operate from a <i>principle
+in nature</i>, why should similar parts with different
+measures of proportion be found to have beauty, and
+this too in the very same species? But to open our
+view a little, it is worth observing, that almost all
+animals have parts of very much the same nature,
+and destined nearly to the same purposes; a head,
+neck, body, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth; yet
+Providence, to provide in the best manner for their
+several wants, and to display the riches of his wisdom
+and goodness in his creation, has worked out of
+these few and similar organs, and members, a diversity
+hardly short of infinite in their disposition, measures
+and relation. But, as we have before observed,
+amidst this infinite diversity, one particular is common
+to many species: several of the individuals
+which compose them are capable of affecting us with
+a sense of loveliness: and whilst they agree in producing
+this effect, they differ extremely in the relative
+measures of those parts which have produced it.
+These considerations were sufficient to induce me to
+reject the notion of any particular proportions that
+operated by nature to produce a pleasing effect; but
+those who will agree with me with regard to a par<!-- Page 199 --><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" title="175" class="pagenum"></a>ticular
+proportion, are strongly prepossessed in favor
+of one more indefinite. They imagine, that although
+beauty in general is annexed to no certain measures
+common to the several kinds of pleasing plants and
+animals; yet that there is a certain proportion in
+each species absolutely essential to the beauty of that
+particular kind. If we consider the animal world in
+general, we find beauty confined to no certain measures;
+but as some peculiar measure and relation of
+parts is what distinguishes each peculiar class of animals,
+it must of necessity be, that the beautiful in
+each kind will be found in the measures and proportions
+of that kind; for otherwise it would deviate
+from its proper species, and become in some sort
+monstrous: however, no species is so strictly confined
+to any certain proportions, that there is not a considerable
+variation amongst the individuals; and as it has
+been shown of the human, so it may be shown of the
+brute kinds, that beauty is found indifferently in all the
+proportions which each kind can admit, without quitting
+its common form; and it is this idea of a common
+form that makes the proportion of parts at all
+regarded, and not the operation of any natural cause:
+indeed a little consideration will make it appear, that
+it is not measure, but manner, that creates all the
+beauty which belongs to shape. What light do we
+borrow from these boasted proportions, when we
+study ornamental design? It seems amazing to me,
+that artists, if they were as well convinced as they
+pretend to be, that proportion is a principal cause of
+beauty, have not by them at all times accurate measurements
+of all sorts of beautiful animals to help
+them to proper proportions, when they would contrive
+anything elegant; especially as they frequently
+<!-- Page 200 --><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" title="176" class="pagenum"></a>assert that it is from an observation of the beautiful in
+nature they direct their practice. I know that it has
+been said long since, and echoed backward and forward
+from one writer to another a thousand times,
+that the proportions of building have been taken from
+those of the human body. To make this forced analogy
+complete, they represent a man with his arms raised
+and extended at full length, and then describe a sort
+of square, as it is formed by passing lines along the
+extremities of this strange figure. But it appears very
+clearly to me that the human figure never supplied
+the architect with any of his ideas. For, in the first
+place, men are very rarely seen in this strained posture;
+it is not natural to them; neither is it at all
+becoming. Secondly, the view of the human figure
+so disposed, does not naturally suggest the idea of a
+square, but rather of a cross; as that large space be
+tween the arms and the ground must be filled with
+something before it can make anybody think of a
+square. Thirdly, several buildings are by no means
+of the form of that particular square, which are
+notwithstanding planned by the best architects, and produce
+an effect altogether as good, and perhaps a
+better. And certainly nothing could he more unaccountably
+whimsical, than for an architect to model
+his performance by the human figure, since no two
+things can have less resemblance or analogy, than a
+man, and a house or temple: do we need to observe
+that their purposes are entirely different? What I
+am apt to suspect is this: that these analogies were
+devised to give a credit to the works of art, by showing
+a conformity between them and the noblest works
+in nature; not that the latter served at all to supply
+hints for the perfection of the former. And I am
+<!-- Page 201 --><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" title="177" class="pagenum"></a>the more fully convinced, that the patrons of proportion
+have transferred their artificial ideas to nature,
+and not borrowed from thence the proportions they
+use in works of art; because in any discussion of this
+subject they always quit as soon as possible the open
+field of natural beauties, the animal and vegetable
+kingdoms, and fortify themselves within the artificial
+lines and angles of architecture. For there is in mankind
+an unfortunate propensity to make themselves,
+their views, and their works, the measure of excellence
+in everything whatsoever. Therefore having
+observed that their dwellings were most commodious
+and firm when they were thrown into regular figures,
+with parts answerable to each other; they transferred
+these ideas to their gardens; they turned their trees
+into pillars, pyramids, and obelisks; they formed
+their hedges into so many green walls, and fashioned
+their walks into squares, triangles, and other mathematical
+figures, with exactness and symmetry; and
+they thought, if they were not imitating, they were
+at least improving nature, and teaching her to know
+her business. But nature has at last escaped from
+their discipline and their fetters; and our gardens, if
+nothing else, declare, we begin to feel that mathematical
+ideas are not the true measures of beauty. And
+surely they are full as little so in the animal as the
+vegetable world. For is it not extraordinary, that in
+these fine descriptive pieces, these innumerable odes
+and elegies which are in the mouths of all the world,
+and many of which have been the entertainment of
+ages, that in these pieces which describe love with such
+a passionate energy, and represent its object in such
+an infinite variety of lights, not one word is said of
+proportion, if it be, what some insist it is, the princi<!-- Page 202 --><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" title="178" class="pagenum"></a>pal
+component of beauty; whilst, at the same time,
+several other qualities are very frequently and warmly
+mentioned? But if proportion has not this power,
+it may appear odd how men came originally to be so
+prepossessed in its favor. It arose, I imagine, from
+the fondness I have just mentioned, which men bear
+so remarkably to their own works and notions; it
+arose from false reasonings on the effects of the customary
+figure of animals; it arose from the Platonic
+theory of fitness and aptitude. For which reason, in
+the next section, I shall consider the effects of custom
+in the figure of animals; and afterwards the idea of
+fitness: since if proportion does not operate by a natural
+power attending some measures, it must be
+either by custom, or the idea of utility; there is no
+other way.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION V.<br />
+<br />
+PROPORTION FURTHER CONSIDERED.</h3>
+
+<p>If I am not mistaken, a great deal of the prejudice
+in favor of proportion has arisen, not so much from
+the observation of any certain measures found in beautiful
+bodies, as from a wrong idea of the relation which
+deformity bears to beauty, to which it has been considered
+as the opposite; on this principle it was concluded
+that where the causes of deformity were removed,
+beauty must naturally and necessarily be introduced.
+This I believe is a mistake. For <i>deformity</i> is opposed
+not to beauty, but to the <i>complete common form</i>. If
+one of the legs of a man be found shorter than the
+other, the man is deformed; because there is something
+wanting to complete the whole idea we form of
+<!-- Page 203 --><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" title="179" class="pagenum"></a>a man; and this has the same effect in natural faults,
+as maiming and mutilation produce from accidents.
+So if the back be humped, the man is deformed; because
+his back has an unusual figure, and what carries
+with it the idea of some disease or misfortune;
+So if a man's neck be considerably longer or shorter
+than usual, we say he is deformed in that part, because
+men are not commonly made in that manner.
+But surely every hour's experience may convince us
+that a man may have his legs of an equal length, and
+resembling each other in all respects, and his neck of
+a just size, and his back quite straight, without having
+at the same time the least perceivable beauty. Indeed
+beauty is so far from belonging to the idea of
+custom, that in reality what affects us in that manner
+is extremely rare and uncommon. The beautiful
+strikes us as much by its novelty as the deformed itself.
+It is thus in those species of animals with which
+we are acquainted; and if one of a new species were
+represented, we should by no means wait until custom
+had settled an idea of proportion, before we decided
+concerning its beauty or ugliness: which shows that
+the general idea of beauty can be no more owing to
+customary than to natural proportion. Deformity
+arises from the want of the common proportions; but
+the necessary result of their existence in any object is
+not beauty. If we suppose proportion in natural
+things to be relative to custom and use, the nature
+of use and custom will show that beauty, which is a
+<i>positive</i> and powerful quality, cannot result from it.
+We are so wonderfully formed, that, whilst we are
+creatures vehemently desirous of novelty, we are as
+strongly attached to habit and custom. But it is the
+nature of things which hold us by custom, to affect
+<!-- Page 204 --><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" title="180" class="pagenum"></a>us very little whilst we are in possession of them, but
+strongly when they are absent. I remember to have
+frequented a certain place, every day for a long time
+together; and I may truly say that, so far from finding
+pleasure in it, I was affected with a sort of weariness
+and disgust; I came, I went, I returned, without
+pleasure; yet if by any means I passed by the usual
+time of my going thither, I was remarkably uneasy,
+and was not quiet till I had got into my old track.
+They who use snuff, take it almost without being sensible
+that they take it, and the acute sense of smell is
+deadened, so as to feel hardly anything from so sharp
+a stimulus; yet deprive the snuff-taker of his box, and
+he is the most uneasy mortal in the world. Indeed
+so far are use and habit from being causes of pleasure
+merely as such, that the effect of constant use is to
+make all things of whatever kind entirely unaffecting.
+For as use at last takes off the painful effect of many
+things, it reduces the pleasurable effect in others in
+the same manner, and brings both to a sort of mediocrity
+and indifference. Very justly is use called a
+second nature; and our natural and common state is
+one of absolute indifference, equally prepared for pain
+or pleasure. But when we are thrown out of this state,
+or deprived of anything requisite to maintain us in it;
+when this chance does not happen by pleasure from
+some mechanical cause, we are always hurt. It is so
+with the second nature, custom, in all things which
+relate to it. Thus the want of the usual proportions in
+men and other animals is sure to disgust, though their
+presence is by no means any cause of real pleasure. It
+is true that the proportions laid down as causes of
+beauty in the human body, are frequently found in
+beautiful ones, because they are generally found in
+<!-- Page 205 --><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" title="181" class="pagenum"></a>all mankind; but if it can be shown too that they are
+found without beauty, and that beauty frequently exists
+without them, and that this beauty, where it exists,
+always can be assigned to other less equivocal
+causes, it will naturally lead us to conclude that
+proportion and beauty are not ideas of the same nature.
+The true opposite to beauty is not disproportion or
+deformity, but <i>ugliness</i>: and as it proceeds from
+causes opposite to those of positive beauty, we cannot
+consider it until we come to treat of that. Between
+beauty and ugliness there is a sort of mediocrity, in
+which the assigned proportions are most commonly
+found; but this has no effect upon the passions.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VI.<br />
+<br />
+FITNESS NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY.</h3>
+
+<p>It is said that the idea of utility, or of a part's being
+well adapted to answer its end, is the cause of beauty,
+or indeed beauty itself. If it were not for this opinion,
+it had been impossible for the doctrine of proportion
+to have held its ground very long; the world
+would be soon weary of hearing of measures which
+related to nothing, either of a natural principle, or of
+a fitness to answer some end; the idea which mankind
+most commonly conceive of proportion, is the
+suitableness of means to certain ends, and, where this
+is not the question, very seldom trouble themselves
+about the effect of different measures of things.
+Therefore it was necessary for this theory to insist
+that not only artificial, but natural objects took their
+beauty from the fitness of the parts for their several
+purposes. But in framing this theory, I am apprehen<!-- Page 206 --><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" title="182" class="pagenum"></a>sive
+that experience was not sufficiently consulted.
+For, on that principle, the wedge-like snout of a swine,
+with its tough cartilage at the end, the little sunk
+eyes, and the whole make of the head, so well adapted
+to its offices of digging and rooting, would be extremely
+beautiful. The great bag hanging to the bill of a
+pelican, a thing highly useful to this animal, would
+be likewise as beautiful in our eyes. The hedge-hog,
+so well secured against all assaults by his prickly
+hide, and the porcupine with his missile quills, would
+be then considered as creatures of no small elegance.
+There are few animals whose parts are better contrived
+than those of a monkey: he has the hands of
+a man, joined to the springy limbs of a beast; he
+is admirably calculated for running, leaping, grappling,
+and climbing; and yet there are few animals
+which seem to have less beauty in the eyes of all mankind.
+I need say little on the trunk of the elephant,
+of such various usefulness, and which is so far from
+contributing to his beauty. How well fitted is the
+wolf for running and leaping! how admirably is the
+lion armed for battle! but will any one therefore call
+the elephant, the wolf, and the lion, beautiful animals?
+I believe nobody will think the form of a
+man's leg so well adapted to running, as those of a
+horse, a dog, a deer, and several other creatures; at
+least they have not that appearance: yet, I believe,
+a well-fashioned human leg will be allowed to far exceed
+all these in beauty. If the fitness of parts was
+what constituted the loveliness of their form, the actual
+employment of them would undoubtedly much
+augment it; but this, though it is sometimes so upon
+another principle, is far from being always the case.
+A bird on the wing is not so beautiful as when it is
+<!-- Page 207 --><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" title="183" class="pagenum"></a>perched; nay, there are several of the domestic fowls
+which are seldom seen to fly, and which are nothing
+the less beautiful on that account; yet birds are so extremely
+different in their form from the beast and human
+kinds, that you cannot, on the principle of fitness,
+allow them anything agreeable, but in consideration
+of their parts being designed for quite other purposes.
+I never in my life chanced to see a peacock fly; and
+yet before, very long before I considered any aptitude
+in his form for the a&euml;rial life, I was struck with the
+extreme beauty which raises that bird above many of
+the best flying fowls in the world; though, for anything
+I saw, his way of living was much like that of
+the swine, which fed in the farm-yard along with him.
+The same may be said of cocks, hens, and the like;
+they are of the flying kind in figure; in their manner
+of moving not very different from men and beasts.
+To leave these foreign examples; if beauty in our own
+species was annexed to use, men would be much more
+lovely than women; and strength and agility would
+be considered as the only beauties. But to call
+strength by the name of beauty, to have but one
+denomination for the qualities of a Venus and Hercules,
+so totally different in almost all respects, is surely
+a strange confusion of ideas, or abuse of words. The
+cause of this confusion, I imagine, proceeds from our
+frequently perceiving the parts of the human and
+other animal bodies to be at once very beautiful, and
+very well adapted to their purposes; and we are deceived
+by a sophism, which makes us take that for
+a cause which is only a concomitant: this is the
+sophism of the fly; who imagined he raised a great
+dust, because he stood upon the chariot that really
+raised it. The stomach, the lungs, the liver, as well
+<!-- Page 208 --><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" title="184" class="pagenum"></a>as other parts, are incomparably well adapted to their
+purposes; yet they are far from having any beauty.
+Again, many things are very beautiful, in which it is
+impossible to discern any idea of use. And I appeal
+to the first and most natural feelings of mankind,
+whether on beholding a beautiful eye, or a well-fashioned
+mouth, or a well-turned leg, any ideas of
+their being well fitted for seeing, eating, or running,
+ever present themselves. What idea of use is it that
+flowers excite, the most beautiful part of the vegetable
+world? It is true that the infinitely wise and
+good Creator has, of his bounty, frequently joined
+beauty to those things which he has made useful to
+us; but this does not prove that an idea of use and
+beauty are the same thing, or that they are any way
+dependent on each other.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VII.<br />
+<br />
+THE REAL EFFECTS OF FITNESS.</h3>
+
+<p>When I excluded proportion and fitness from any
+share in beauty, I did not by any means intend to say
+that they were of no value, or that they ought to be
+disregarded in works of art. Works of art are the
+proper sphere of their power; and here it is that they
+have their full effect. Whenever the wisdom of our
+Creator intended that we should be affected with
+anything, he did not confide the execution of his design
+to the languid and precarious operation of our
+reason; but he endued it with powers and properties
+that prevent the understanding, and even the will;
+which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate
+the soul, before the understanding is ready
+<!-- Page 209 --><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" title="185" class="pagenum"></a>either to join with them, or to oppose them. It is by
+a long deduction, and much study, that we discover
+the adorable wisdom of God in his works: when we
+discover it the effect is very different, not only in the
+manner of acquiring it, but in its own nature, from
+that which strikes us without any preparation from
+the sublime or the beautiful. How different is the
+satisfaction of an anatomist, who discovers the use of
+the muscles and of the skin, the excellent contrivance
+of the one for the various movements of the body,
+and the wonderful texture of the other, at once a
+general covering, and at once a general outlet as well
+as inlet; how different is this from the affection
+which possesses an ordinary man at the sight of a
+delicate, smooth skin, and all the other parts of beauty,
+which require no investigation to be perceived!
+In the former case, whilst we look up to the Maker
+with admiration and praise, the object which causes
+it may be odious and distasteful; the latter very often
+so touches us by its power on the imagination,
+that we examine but little into the artifice of its
+contrivance; and we have need of a strong effort of our
+reason to disentangle our minds from the allurements
+of the object, to a consideration of that wisdom which
+invented so powerful a machine. The effect of proportion
+and fitness, at least so far as they proceed
+from a mere consideration of the work itself, produce
+approbation, the acquiescence of the understanding,
+but not love, nor any passion of that species. When
+we examine the structure of a watch, when we come
+to know thoroughly the use of every part of it, satisfied
+as we are with the fitness of the whole, we are
+far enough from perceiving anything like beauty in
+the watch-work itself; but let us look on the case,
+<!-- Page 210 --><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" title="186" class="pagenum"></a>the labor of some curious artist in engraving, with
+little or no idea of use, we shall have a much livelier
+idea of beauty than we ever could have had from the
+watch itself, though the masterpiece of Graham. In
+beauty, as I said, the effect is previous to any knowledge
+of the use; but to judge of proportion, we must
+know the end for which any work is designed. According
+to the end, the proportion varies. Thus
+there is one proportion of a tower, another of a
+house; one proportion of a gallery, another of a hall,
+another of a chamber. To judge of the proportions
+of these, you must be first acquainted with the purposes
+for which they were designed. Good sense and
+experience acting together, find out what is fit to be
+done in every work of art. We are rational creatures,
+and in all our works we ought to regard their
+end and purpose; the gratification of any passion,
+how innocent soever, ought only to be of secondary
+consideration. Herein is placed the real power of fitness
+and proportion; they operate on the understanding
+considering them, which <i>approves</i> the work and
+acquiesces in it. The passions, and the imagination
+which principally raises them, have here very little to
+do. When a room appears in its original nakedness,
+bare walls and a plain ceiling: let its proportion be
+ever so excellent, it pleases very little; a cold
+approbation is the utmost we can reach; a much worse
+proportioned room with elegant mouldings and fine
+festoons, glasses, and other merely ornamental furniture,
+will make the imagination revolt against the
+reason; it will please much more than the naked
+proportion of the first room, which the understanding
+has so much approved, as admirably fitted for its purposes.
+What I have here said and before concerning
+<!-- Page 211 --><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" title="187" class="pagenum"></a>proportion, is by no means to persuade people absurdly
+to neglect the idea of use in the works of art. It is
+only to show that these excellent things, beauty and
+proportion, are not the same; not that they should
+either of them be disregarded.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VIII.<br />
+<br />
+THE RECAPITULATION.</h3>
+
+<p>On the whole; if such parts in human bodies as are
+found proportioned, were likewise constantly found
+beautiful, as they certainly are not; or if they were
+so situated, as that a pleasure might flow from the
+comparison, which they seldom are; or if any assignable
+proportions were found, either in plants or animals,
+which were always attended with beauty, which
+never was the case; or if, where parts were well adapted
+to their purposes, they were constantly beautiful,
+and when no use appeared, there was no beauty,
+which is contrary to all experience; we might conclude
+that beauty consisted in proportion or utility.
+But since, in all respects, the case is quite otherwise;
+we may be satisfied that beauty does not depend on
+these, let it owe its origin to what else it will.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION IX.<br />
+<br />
+PERFECTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY.</h3>
+
+<p>There is another notion current, pretty closely
+allied to the former; that <i>perfection</i> is the
+constituent cause of beauty. This opinion has been made
+to extend much further than to sensible objects.
+<!-- Page 212 --><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" title="188" class="pagenum"></a>But in these, so far is perfection, considered as
+such, from being the cause of beauty; that this
+quality, where it is highest, in the female sex,
+almost always carries with it an idea of weakness
+and imperfection. Women are very sensible of this;
+for which reason they learn to lisp, to totter in their
+walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness.
+In all this they are guided by nature. Beauty in
+distress is much the most affecting beauty. Blushing
+has little less power; and modesty in general,
+which is a tacit allowance of imperfection, is itself
+considered as an amiable quality, and certainly heightens
+every other that is so. I know it is in every
+body's mouth, that we ought to love perfection. This
+is to me a sufficient proof, that it is not the proper
+object of love. Who ever said we <i>ought</i> to love a fine
+woman, or even any of these beautiful animals which
+please us? Here to be affected, there is no need of
+the concurrence of our will.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION X.<br />
+<br />
+HOW FAR THE IDEA OF BEAUTY MAY BE APPLIED TO
+THE QUALITIES OF THE MIND.</h3>
+
+<p>Nor is this remark in general less applicable to the
+qualities of the mind. Those virtues which cause
+admiration, and are of the sublimer kind, produce
+terror rather than love; such as fortitude, justice,
+wisdom, and the like. Never was any man amiable
+by force of these qualities. Those which engage our
+hearts, which impress us with a sense of loveliness,
+are the softer virtues; easiness of temper, compassion,
+kindness, and liberality; though certainly those
+<!-- Page 213 --><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" title="189" class="pagenum"></a>latter are of less immediate and momentous concern
+to society, and of less dignity. But it is for that
+reason that they are so amiable. The great virtues
+turn principally on dangers, punishments, and
+troubles, and are exercised, rather in preventing the
+worst mischiefs, than in dispensing favors; and are
+therefore not lovely, though highly venerable. The
+subordinate turn on reliefs, gratifications, and
+indulgences; and are therefore more lovely, though inferior
+in dignity. Those persons who creep into the
+hearts of most people, who are chosen as the companions
+of their softer hours, and their reliefs from care
+and anxiety, are never persons of shining qualities or
+strong virtues. It is rather the soft green of the
+soul on which we rest our eyes, that are fatigued with
+beholding more glaring objects. It is worth observing
+how we feel ourselves affected in reading the
+characters of C&aelig;sar and Cato, as they are so finely
+drawn and contrasted in Sallust. In one the <i>ignoscendo
+largiundo</i>; in the other, <i>nil largiundo</i>. In one,
+the <i>miseris perfugium</i>; in the other, <i>malis perniciem</i>.
+In the latter we have much to admire, much to reverence,
+and perhaps something to fear; we respect
+him, but we respect him at a distance. The former
+makes us familiar with him; we love him, and he
+leads us whither he pleases. To draw things closer
+to our first and most natural feelings, I will add a remark
+made upon reading this section by an ingenious
+friend. The authority of a father, so useful to
+our well-being, and so justly venerable upon all accounts,
+hinders us from having that entire love for
+him that we have for our mothers, where the parental
+authority is almost melted down into the mother's
+fondness and indulgence. But we generally have a
+<!-- Page 214 --><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" title="190" class="pagenum"></a>great love for our grandfathers, in whom this authority
+is removed a degree from us, and where the
+weakness of age mellows it into something of a feminine
+partiality.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XI.<br />
+<br />
+HOW FAR THE IDEA OF BEAUTY MAY BE APPLIED TO
+VIRTUE.</h3>
+
+<p>From what has been said in the foregoing section,
+we may easily see how far the application of beauty
+to virtue may be made with propriety. The general
+application of this quality to virtue has a strong tendency
+to confound our ideas of things, and it has
+given rise to an infinite deal of whimsical theory; as
+the affixing the name of beauty to proportion, congruity,
+and perfection, as well as to qualities of
+things yet more remote from our natural ideas of
+it, and from one another, has tended to confound our
+ideas of beauty, and left us no standard or rule to
+judge by, that was not even more uncertain and fallacious
+than our own fancies. This loose and inaccurate
+manner of speaking has therefore misled us
+both in the theory of taste and of morals; and induced
+us to remove the science of our duties from
+their proper basis (our reason, our relations, and
+our necessities), to rest it upon, foundations altogether
+visionary and unsubstantial.<!-- Page 215 --><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" title="191" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XII.<br />
+<br />
+THE REAL CAUSE OF BEAUTY.</h3>
+
+<p>Having endeavored to show what beauty is not, it
+remains that we should examine, at least with equal
+attention, in what it really consists. Beauty is a
+thing much too affecting not to depend upon some
+positive qualities. And since it is no creature of our
+reason, since it strikes us without any reference to
+use, and even where no use at all can be discerned,
+since the order and method of nature is generally very
+different from our measures and proportions, we must
+conclude that beauty is, for the greater part, some
+quality in bodies acting mechanically upon the human
+mind by the intervention of the senses. We
+ought, therefore, to consider attentively in what manner
+those sensible qualities are disposed, in such things
+as by experience we find beautiful, or which excite in
+us the passion of love, or some correspondent affection.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XIII.<br />
+<br />
+BEAUTIFUL OBJECTS SMALL.</h3>
+
+<p>The most obvious point that presents itself to us in
+examining any object is its extent or quantity. And
+what degree of extent prevails in bodies that are held
+beautiful, may be gathered from the usual manner of
+expression concerning it. I am told that, in most
+languages, the objects of love are spoken of under
+diminutive epithets. It is so in all the languages of
+which I have any knowledge. In Greek the
+<span lang="el" title="ion">ιον</span>
+<!-- HTML Entities &#953;&#959;&#957; -->
+and
+other diminutive terms are almost always the terms
+<!-- Page 216 --><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" title="192" class="pagenum"></a>of affection and tenderness. These diminutives were
+commonly added by the Greeks to the names of persons
+with whom they conversed on terms of friendship
+and familiarity. Though the Romans were a
+people of less quick and delicate feelings, yet they
+naturally slid into the lessening termination upon the
+same occasions. Anciently, in the English language,
+the diminishing <i>ling</i> was added to the names of persons
+and things that were the objects of love. Some
+we retain still, as <i>darling</i> (or little dear), and a few
+others. But to this day, in ordinary conversation, it
+is usual to add the endearing name of <i>little</i> to everything
+we love; the French and Italians make use of
+these affectionate diminutives even more than we.
+In the animal creation, out of our own species, it is
+the small we are inclined to be fond of; little birds,
+and some of the smaller kinds of beasts. A great
+beautiful thing is a manner of expression scarcely
+ever used; but that of a great ugly thing is very
+common. There is a wide difference between admiration
+and love. The sublime, which is the cause of
+the former, always dwells on great objects, and terrible;
+the latter on small ones, and pleasing; we submit
+to what we admire, but we love what submits to
+us; in one case we are forced, in the other we are
+flattered, into compliance. In short, the ideas of the
+sublime and the beautiful stand on foundations so
+different, that it is hard, I had almost said impossible,
+to think of reconciling them in the same subject,
+without considerably lessening the effect of the one
+or the other upon the passions. So that, attending
+to their quantity, beautiful objects are comparatively
+small.<!-- Page 217 --><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" title="193" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XIV.<br />
+<br />
+SMOOTHNESS.</h3>
+
+<p>The next property constantly observable in such
+objects is <i>smoothness</i>;<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part IV. sect. 20.">[24]</a> a qualify so essential to beauty,
+that I do not now recollect anything beautiful
+that is not smooth. In trees and flowers, smooth
+leaves are beautiful; smooth slopes of earth in gardens;
+smooth streams in the landscape; smooth
+coats of birds and beasts in animal beauties; in
+fine women, smooth skins; and in several sorts of
+ornamental furniture, smooth and polished surfaces.
+A very considerable part of the effect of beauty is
+owing to this quality; indeed the most considerable.
+For, take any beautiful object, and give it a broken,
+and rugged surface; and, however well formed it
+may be in other respects, it pleases no longer.
+Whereas, let it want ever so many of the other
+constituents, if it wants not this, it becomes more
+pleasing than almost all the others without it. This
+seems to me so evident, that I am a good deal surprised
+that none who have handled the subject have
+made any mention of the quality of smoothness in
+the enumeration of those that go to the forming of
+beauty. For, indeed, any ruggedness, any sudden,
+projection, any sharp angle, is in the highest degree
+contrary to that idea.<!-- Page 218 --><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" title="194" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XV.<br />
+<br />
+GRADUAL VARIATION.</h3>
+
+<p>But as perfectly beautiful bodies are not composed
+of angular parts, so their parts never continue long
+in the same right line.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part IV. sect. 23.">[25]</a> They vary their direction
+every moment, and they change under the eye by a
+deviation continually carrying on, but for whose beginning
+or end you will find it difficult to ascertain a
+point. The view of a beautiful bird will illustrate
+this observation. Here we see the head increasing
+insensibly to the middle, from whence it lessens gradually
+until it mixes with the neck; the neck loses
+itself in a larger swell, which continues to the middle
+of the body, when the whole decreases again to the
+tail; the tail takes a new direction, but it soon varies
+its new course, it blends again with the other parts,
+and the line is perpetually changing, above, below,
+upon every side. In this description I have before
+me the idea of a dove; it agrees very well with most
+of the conditions of beauty. It is smooth and downy;
+its parts are (to use that expression) melted into one
+another; you are presented with no sudden protuberance
+through the whole, and yet the whole is continually
+changing. Observe that part of a beautiful
+woman where she is perhaps the most beautiful,
+about the neck and breasts; the smoothness, the softness,
+the easy and insensible swell; the variety of the
+surface, which is never for the smallest space the
+same; the deceitful maze through which the unsteady
+eye slides giddily, without knowing where to
+fix, or whither it is carried. Is not this a demonstra<!-- Page 219 --><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" title="195" class="pagenum"></a>tion
+of that change of surface, continual, and yet
+hardly perceptible at any point, which forms one of
+the great constituents of beauty? It gives me no
+small pleasure to find that I can strengthen my theory
+in this point by the opinion of the very ingenious
+Mr. Hogarth, whose idea of the line of beauty I take
+in general to be extremely just. But the idea of
+variation, without attending so accurately to the <i>manner</i>
+of the variation, has led him to consider angular
+figures as beautiful; these figures, it is true, vary
+greatly, yet they vary in a sudden and broken manner,
+and I do not find any natural object which is
+angular, and at the same time beautiful. Indeed, few
+natural objects are entirely angular. But I think
+those which approach the most nearly to it are the
+ugliest. I must add, too, that so for as I could observe
+of nature, though the varied line is that alone
+in which complete beauty is found, yet there is no
+particular line which is always found in the most
+completely beautiful, and which is therefore beautiful
+in preference to all other lines. At least I never
+could observe it.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVI.<br />
+<br />
+DELICACY.</h3>
+
+<p>An air of robustness and strength is very prejudicial
+to beauty. An appearance of <i>delicacy</i>, and even
+of fragility, is almost essential to it. Whoever examines
+the vegetable or animal creation will find this
+observation to be founded in nature. It is not the
+oak, the ash, or the elm, or any of the robust trees
+of the forest which we consider as beautiful; they are
+<!-- Page 220 --><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" title="196" class="pagenum"></a>awful and majestic, they inspire a sort of reverence.
+It is the delicate myrtle, it is the orange, it is the
+almond, it is the jasmine, it is the vine which we
+look on as vegetable beauties. It is the flowery species,
+so remarkable for its weakness and momentary
+duration, that gives us the liveliest idea of beauty
+and elegance. Among animals, the greyhound is
+more beautiful than the mastiff, and the delicacy of a
+jennet, a barb, or an Arabian horse, is much more
+amiable than the strength and stability of some horses
+of war or carriage. I need here say little of the fair
+sex, where I believe the point will be easily allowed
+me. The beauty of women is considerably owing to
+their weakness or delicacy, and is even enhanced by
+their timidity, a quality of mind analogous to it. I
+would not here be understood to say, that weakness
+betraying very bad health has any share in beauty;
+but the ill effect of this is not because it is weakness,
+but because the ill state of health, which produces
+such weakness, alters the other conditions of beauty;
+the parts in such a case collapse, the bright color, the
+<i>lumen purpureum juvent&aelig;</i> is gone, and the fine variation
+is lost in wrinkles, sudden breaks, and right
+lines.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVII.<br />
+<br />
+BEAUTY IN COLOR.</h3>
+
+<p>As to the colors usually found in beautiful bodies,
+it may be somewhat difficult to ascertain them, because,
+in the several parts of nature, there is an infinite
+variety. However, even in this variety, we may
+mark out something on which to settle. First, the
+colors of beautiful bodies must not be dusky or
+<!-- Page 221 --><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" title="197" class="pagenum"></a>muddy, but clean and fair. Secondly, they must not
+be of the strongest kind. Those which seem most
+appropriated to beauty, are the milder of every sort;
+light greens; soft blues; weak whites; pink reds;
+and violets. Thirdly, if the colors be strong and
+vivid, they are always diversified, and the object is
+never of one strong color; there are almost always
+such a number of them (as in variegated flowers)
+that the strength and glare of each is considerably
+abated. In a fine complexion there is not only some
+variety in the coloring, but the colors: neither the
+red nor the white are strong and glaring. Besides,
+they are mixed in such a manner, and with such gradations,
+that it is impossible to fix the bounds. On
+the same principle it is that the dubious color in the
+necks and tails of peacocks, and about the heads of
+drakes, is so very agreeable. In reality, the beauty
+both of shape and coloring are as nearly related as
+we can well suppose it possible for things of such
+different natures to be.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVIII.<br />
+<br />
+RECAPITULATION.</h3>
+
+<p>On the whole, the qualities of beauty, as they are
+merely sensible qualities, are the following: First, to
+be comparatively small. Secondly, to be smooth.
+Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the
+parts; but, fourthly, to have those parts not angular,
+but melted, as it were, into each other. Fifthly, to
+be of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance
+of strength. Sixthly, to have its colors
+clear and bright, but not very strong and glaring.
+<!-- Page 222 --><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" title="198" class="pagenum"></a>Seventhly, or if it should have any glaring color, to
+have it diversified with others. These are, I believe,
+the properties on which beauty depends; properties
+that operate by nature, and are less liable to be altered
+by caprice, or confounded by a diversity of
+tastes, than any other.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XIX.<br />
+<br />
+THE PHYSIOGNOMY.</h3>
+
+<p>The <i>physiognomy</i> has a considerable share in beauty,
+especially in that of our own species. The manners
+give a certain determination to the countenance;
+which, being observed to correspond pretty regularly
+with them, is capable of joining the effect of certain
+agreeable qualities of the mind to those of the body.
+So that to form a finished human beauty, and to give
+it its full influence, the face must be expressive of
+such gentle and amiable qualities, as correspond with
+the softness, smoothness, and delicacy of the outward
+form.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XX.<br />
+<br />
+THE EYE.</h3>
+
+<p>I have hitherto purposely omitted to speak of the
+<i>eye</i>, which has so great a share in the beauty of the
+animal creation, as it did not fall so easily under the
+foregoing heads, though in fact it is reducible to the
+same principles. I think, then, that the beauty of
+the eye consists, first, in its <i>clearness</i>; what <i>colored</i>
+eye shall please most, depends a good deal on particular
+fancies; but none are pleased with an eye whose
+<!-- Page 223 --><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" title="199" class="pagenum"></a>water (to use that term) is dull and muddy.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part IV. sect. 25.">[26]</a> We
+are pleased with the eye in this view, on the principle
+upon which we like diamonds, clear water, glass, and
+such like transparent substances. Secondly, the motion
+of the eye contributes to its beauty, by continually
+shifting its direction; but a slow and languid
+motion is more beautiful than a brisk one; the latter
+is enlivening; the former lovely. Thirdly, with regard
+to the union of the eye with the neighboring
+parts, it is to hold the same rule that is given of other
+beautiful ones; it is not to make a strong deviation
+from the line of the neighboring parts; nor to verge
+into any exact geometrical figure. Besides all this,
+the eye affects, as it is expressive of some qualities of
+the mind, and its principal power generally arises
+from this; so that what we have just said of the
+physiognomy is applicable here.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXI.<br />
+<br />
+UGLINESS.</h3>
+
+<p>It may perhaps appear like a sort of repetition of
+what we have before said, to insist here upon the nature
+of <i>ugliness</i>; as I imagine it to be in all respects
+the opposite to those qualities which we have laid
+down for the constituents of beauty. But though
+ugliness be the opposite to beauty, it is not the opposite
+to proportion and fitness. For it is possible that
+a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and
+with a perfect fitness to any uses. Ugliness I imagine
+likewise to be consistent enough with an idea of
+the sublime. But I would by no means insinuate
+<!-- Page 224 --><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" title="200" class="pagenum"></a>that ugliness of itself is a sublime idea, unless united
+with such qualities as excite a strong terror.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXII.<br />
+<br />
+GRACE.</h3>
+
+<p>Gracefulness is an idea not very different from
+beauty; it consists in much the same things. Gracefulness
+is an idea belonging to <i>posture</i> and <i>motion</i>.
+In both these, to be graceful, it is requisite that there
+be no appearance of difficulty; there is required a
+small inflection of the body; and a composure of the
+parts in such a manner, as not to incumber each
+other, not to appear divided by sharp and sudden
+angles. In this case, this roundness, this delicacy of
+attitude and motion, it is that all the magic of grace
+consists, and what is called its <i>je ne s&ccedil;ai quoi</i>; as will
+be obvious to any observer, who considers attentively
+the Venus de Medicis, the Antinous or any statue
+generally allowed to be graceful in a high degree.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXIII.<br />
+<br />
+ELEGANCE AND SPECIOUSNESS.</h3>
+
+<p>When any body is composed of parts smooth and
+polished, without pressing upon each other, without
+showing any ruggedness or confusion, and at the
+same time affecting some <i>regular shape</i>, I call it <i>elegant</i>.
+It is closely allied to the beautiful, differing
+from it only in this <i>regularity</i>; which, however, as it
+makes a very material difference in the affection produced,
+may very well constitute another species. Un<!-- Page 225 --><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" title="201" class="pagenum"></a>der
+this head I rank those delicate and regular works
+of art, that imitate no determinate object in nature,
+as elegant buildings, and pieces of furniture. When
+any object partakes of the above-mentioned qualities,
+or of those of beautiful bodies, and is withal of great
+dimensions, it is full as remote from the idea of mere
+beauty; I call <i>fine</i> or <i>specious</i>.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXIV.<br />
+<br />
+THE BEAUTIFUL IN FEELING.</h3>
+
+<p>The foregoing description of beauty, so far as it is
+taken in by the eye, may he greatly illustrated by describing
+the nature of objects, which produce a similar
+effect through the touch. This I call the beautiful in
+<i>feeling</i>. It corresponds wonderfully with what causes
+the same species of pleasure to the sight. There is a
+chain in all our sensations; they are all but different
+sorts of feelings calculated to be affected by various
+sorts of objects, but all to be affected after the same
+manner. All bodies that are pleasant to the touch, are
+so by the slightness of the resistance they make.
+Resistance is either to motion along the surface, or to the
+pressure of the parts on one another: if the former be
+slight, we call the body smooth; if the latter, soft.
+The chief pleasure we receive by feeling, is in the one
+or the other of these qualities; and if there be a
+combination of both, our pleasure is greatly increased.
+This is so plain, that it is rather more fit to illustrate
+other things, than to be illustrated itself by an example.
+The next source of pleasure in this sense, as in every
+other, is the continually presenting somewhat new;
+and we find that bodies which continually vary their
+<!-- Page 226 --><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" title="202" class="pagenum"></a>surface, are much the most pleasant or beautiful to the
+feeling, as any one that pleases may experience. The
+third property in such objects is, that though the surface
+continually varies its direction, it never varies it
+suddenly. The application of anything sudden, even
+though the impression itself have little or nothing of
+violence, is disagreeable. The quick application of a
+finger a little warmer or colder than usual, without notice,
+makes us start; a slight tap on the shoulder, not
+expected, has the same effect. Hence it is that angular
+bodies, bodies that suddenly vary the direction of
+the outline, afford so little pleasure to the feeling.
+Every such change is a sort of climbing or falling in
+miniature; so that squares, triangles, and other angular
+figures are neither beautiful to the sight nor feeling.
+Whoever compares his state of mind, on feeling soft,
+smooth, variated, unangular bodies, with that in which
+he finds himself, on the view of a beautiful object, will
+perceive a very striking analogy in the effects of both;
+and which may go a good way towards discovering
+their common cause. Feeling and sight, in this respect,
+differ in but a few points. The touch takes in
+the pleasure of softness, which is not primarily an object
+of sight; the sight, on the other hand, comprehends
+color, which can hardly he made perceptible to
+the touch: the touch, again, has the advantage in a
+new idea of pleasure resulting from a moderate degree
+of warmth; but the eye triumphs in the infinite extent
+and multiplicity of its objects. But there is such a
+similitude in the pleasures of these senses, that I am
+apt to fancy, if it were possible that one might discern
+color by feeling (as it is said some blind men have
+done) that the same colors, and the same disposition
+of coloring, which are found beautiful to the sight,
+<!-- Page 227 --><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" title="203" class="pagenum"></a>would be found likewise most grateful to the touch.
+But, setting aside conjectures, let us pass to the other
+sense; of hearing.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXV.<br />
+<br />
+THE BEAUTIFUL IN SOUNDS.</h3>
+
+<p>In this sense we find an equal aptitude to be affected
+in a soft and delicate manner; and how far
+sweet or beautiful sounds agree with our descriptions
+of beauty in other senses, the experience of every one
+must decide. Milton has described this species of
+music in one of his juvenile poems.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor"
+title="L'Allegro.">[27]</a> I need not say
+that Milton was perfectly well versed in that art; and
+that no man had a finer ear, with a happier manner
+of expressing the affections of one sense by metaphors
+taken from another. The description is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i2">&quot;And ever against eating cares,</div>
+<div>Lap me in <i>soft</i> Lydian airs;</div>
+<div>In notes with many a <i>winding</i> bout</div>
+<div>Of <i>linked sweetness long drawn</i> out;</div>
+<div>With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,</div>
+<div>The <i>melting</i> voice through <i>mazes</i> running;</div>
+<div><i>Untwisting</i> all the chains that tie</div>
+<div>The hidden soul of harmony.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Let us parallel this with the softness, the winding
+surface, the unbroken continuance, the easy gradation
+of the beautiful in other things; and all the diversities
+of the several senses, with all their several
+affections, will rather help to throw lights from one
+another to finish one clear, consistent idea of the
+whole, than to obscure it by their intricacy and variety.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 228 --><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" title="204" class="pagenum"></a>To the above-mentioned description I shall add one
+or two remarks. The first is; that the beautiful in
+music will not hear that loudness and strength of
+sounds, which may be used to raise other passions;
+nor notes which are shrill, or harsh, or deep; it
+agrees best with such as are clear, even, smooth,
+and weak. The second is; that great variety, and
+quick transitions from one measure or tone to another,
+are contrary to the genius of the beautiful in
+music. Such<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor"
+title="&quot;I ne'er am merry, when I hear sweet music.&quot;--SHAKESPEARE.">[28]</a> transitions often excite mirth, or
+other sudden or tumultuous passions; but not that
+sinking, that melting, that languor, which is the
+characteristical effect of the beautiful as it regards
+every sense. The passion excited by beauty is in
+fact nearer to a species of melancholy, than to jollity
+and mirth. I do not here mean to confine music to
+any one species of notes, or tones, neither is it an art
+in which I can say I have any great skill. My sole
+design in this remark is to settle a consistent idea of
+beauty. The infinite variety of the affections of the
+soul will suggest to a good head, and skilful ear, a
+variety of such sounds as are fitted to raise them. It
+can be no prejudice to this, to clear and distinguish
+some few particulars that belong to the same class,
+and are consistent with each other, from the immense
+crowd of different and sometimes contradictory ideas,
+that rank vulgarly under the standard of beauty.
+And of these it is my intention to mark such only of
+the leading points as show the conformity of the
+sense of hearing with all the other senses, in the article
+of their pleasures.<!-- Page 229 --><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" title="205" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXVI.<br />
+<br />
+TASTE AND SMELL.</h3>
+
+<p>This general agreement of the senses is yet more
+evident on minutely considering those of taste and
+smell. We metaphorically apply the idea of sweetness
+to sights and sounds; but as the qualities of
+bodies by which they are fitted to excite either pleasure
+or pain in these senses are not so obvious as they
+are in the others, we shall refer an explanation of
+their analogy, which is a very close one, to that part
+wherein we come to consider the common efficient
+cause of beauty, as it regards all the senses. I do
+not think anything better fitted to establish a clear
+and settled idea of visual beauty than this way of
+examining the similar pleasures of other senses; for
+one part is sometimes clear in one of the senses that
+is more obscure in another; and where there is a
+clear concurrence of all, we may with more certainty
+speak of any one of them. By this means, they bear
+witness to each other; nature is, as it were, scrutinized;
+and we report nothing of her but what we
+receive from her own information.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXVII.<br />
+<br />
+THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL COMPARED.</h3>
+
+<p>On closing this general view of beauty, it naturally
+occurs that we should compare it with the sublime;
+and in this comparison there appears a remarkable
+contrast. For sublime objects are vast in their dimensions,
+beautiful ones comparatively small; beauty
+<!-- Page 230 --><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" title="206" class="pagenum"></a>should be smooth and polished; the great, rugged
+and negligent: beauty should shun the right line,
+yet deviate from it insensibly; the great in many
+cases loves the right line; and when it deviates, it
+often makes a strong deviation: beauty should not
+be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy:
+beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought
+to be solid, and even massive. They are indeed ideas
+of a very different nature, one being founded on pain,
+the other on pleasure; and, however they may vary
+afterwards from the direct nature of their causes, yet
+these causes keep up an eternal distinction between
+them, a distinction never to be forgotten by any
+whose business it is to affect the passions. In the
+infinite variety of natural combinations, we must
+expect to find the qualities of things the most remote
+imaginable from each other united in the
+same object. We must expect also to find combinations
+of the same kind in the works of art. But
+when we consider the power of an object upon our
+passions, we must know that when anything is intended
+to affect the mind by the force of some predominant
+property, the affection produced is like to
+be the more uniform and perfect, if all the other
+properties or qualities of the object be of the same
+nature, and tending to the same design as the principal.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>&quot;If black and white blend, soften, and unite</div>
+<div>A thousand ways, are there no black and white?&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">If the qualities of the sublime and beautiful are sometimes
+found united, does this prove that they are the
+same; does it prove that they are any way allied;
+does it prove even that they are not opposite and
+contradictory? Black and white may soften, may
+<!-- Page 231 --><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" title="207" class="pagenum"></a>blend; but they are not therefore the same. Nor,
+when they are so softened and blended with each
+other, or with different colors, is the power of black
+as black, or of white as white, so strong as when each
+stands uniform and distinguished.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Part IV. sect. 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Part IV. sect. 23.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Part IV. sect. 25.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> L'Allegro.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>&quot;I ne'er am merry, when I hear sweet music.&quot;</div>
+<p class="citation">SHAKESPEARE.</p>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+<div><!-- Page 232 --><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" title="208" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_IV" id="PART_IV"></a>PART IV.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION I.<br />
+<br />
+OF THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE SUBLIME AND
+BEAUTIFUL.</h3>
+
+<p>When I say, I intend to inquire into the efficient
+cause of sublimity and beauty, I would not be understood
+to say, that I can come to the ultimate cause.
+I do not pretend that I shall ever be able to explain
+why certain affections of the body produce such a distinct
+emotion of mind, and no other; or why the body
+is at all affected by the mind, or the mind by the body.
+A little thought will show this to be impossible. But
+I conceive, if we can discover what affections of the
+mind produce certain emotions of the body; and what
+distinct feelings and qualities of body shall produce
+certain determinate passions in the mind, and no
+others, I fancy a great deal will be done; something
+not unuseful towards a distinct knowledge of our passions,
+so far at least as we have them at present under
+our consideration. This is all, I believe, we can do.
+If we could advance a step farther, difficulties would
+still remain, as we should be still equally distant from
+the first cause. When Newton first discovered the
+property of attraction, and settled its laws, he found
+it served very well to explain several of the most
+remarkable phenomena in nature; but yet, with reference
+to the general system of things, he could consider
+attraction but as an effect, whose cause at that
+time he did not attempt to trace. But when he afterwards
+began to account for it by a subtle elastic
+<!-- Page 233 --><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" title="209" class="pagenum"></a>ether, this great man (if in so great a man it be not
+impious to discover anything like a blemish) seemed
+to have quitted his usual cautious manner of
+philosophizing; since, perhaps, allowing all that has been
+advanced on this subject to be sufficiently proved, I
+think it leaves us with as many difficulties as it found
+us. That great chain of causes, which, linking one
+to another, even to the throne of God himself, can
+never be unravelled by any industry of ours. When
+we go but one step beyond the immediate sensible
+qualities of things, we go out of our depth. All we
+do after is but a faint struggle, that shows we are in
+an element which does not belong to us. So that
+when I speak of cause, and efficient cause, I only
+mean certain affections of the mind, that cause certain
+changes in the body; or certain powers and
+properties in bodies, that work a change in the mind.
+As, if I were to explain the motion of a body falling
+to the ground, I would say it was caused by gravity;
+and I would endeavor to show after what manner
+this power operated, without attempting to show why
+it operated in this manner: or, if I were to explain
+the effects of bodies striking one another by the common
+laws of percussion, I should not endeavor to explain
+how motion itself is communicated.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION II.<br />
+<br />
+ASSOCIATION.</h3>
+
+<p>It is no small bar in the way of our inquiry into the
+cause of our passions, that the occasions of many of
+them are given, and that their governing motions are
+communicated at a time when we have not capacity
+<!-- Page 234 --><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" title="210" class="pagenum"></a>to reflect on them; at a time of which all sort of
+memory is worn out of our minds. For besides such
+things as affect us in various manners, according to
+their natural powers, there are associations made at
+that early season, which we find it very hard afterwards
+to distinguish from natural effects. Not to
+mention the unaccountable antipathies which we find
+in many persons, we all find it impossible to remember
+when a steep became more terrible than a plain;
+or fire or water more terrible than a clod of earth;
+though all these are very probably either conclusions
+from experience, or arising from the premonitions of
+others; and some of them impressed, in all likelihood,
+pretty late. But as it must be allowed that
+many things affect us after a certain manner, not by
+any natural powers they have for that purpose, but
+by association; so it would be absurd, on the other
+hand, to say that all things affect us by association
+only; since some things must have been originally
+and naturally agreeable or disagreeable, from which
+the others derive their associated powers; and it
+would be, I fancy, to little purpose to look for the
+cause of our passions in association, until we fail of
+it in the natural properties of things.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION III.<br />
+<br />
+CAUSE OF PAIN AND FEAR.</h3>
+
+<p>I have before observed,<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part I. sect. 7.">[29]</a> that whatever is qualified
+to cause terror is a foundation capable of the sublime;
+to which I add, that not only these, but many
+things from which we cannot probably apprehend
+<!-- Page 235 --><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" title="211" class="pagenum"></a>any danger, have a similar effect, because they operate
+in a similar manner. I observed, too,<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part I. sect. 10.">[30]</a> that whatever
+produces pleasure, positive and original pleasure,
+is fit to have beauty engrafted on it. Therefore,
+to clear up the nature of these qualities, it may be
+necessary to explain the nature of pain and pleasure
+on which they depend. A man who suffers under
+violent bodily pain, (I suppose the most violent, because
+the effect may be the more obvious,) I say a
+man in great pain has his teeth set, his eyebrows are
+violently contracted, his forehead is wrinkled, his
+eyes are dragged inwards, and rolled with great
+vehemence, his hair stands on end, the voice is
+forced out in short shrieks and groans, and the
+whole fabric totters. Fear or terror, which is an
+apprehension of pain or death, exhibits exactly the
+same effects, approaching in violence to those just
+mentioned, in proportion to the nearness of the
+cause, and the weakness of the subject. This is
+not only so in the human species: but I have more
+than once observed in dogs, under an apprehension
+of punishment, that they have writhed their bodies,
+and yelped, and howled, as if they had actually felt the
+blows. From hence I conclude, that pain and fear
+act upon the same parts of the body, and in the same
+manner, though somewhat differing in degree: that
+pain and fear consist in an unnatural tension of the
+nerves; that this is sometimes accompanied with
+an unnatural strength, which sometimes suddenly
+changes into an extraordinary weakness; that these
+effects often come on alternately, and are sometimes
+mixed with each other. This is the nature of all
+convulsive agitations, especially in weaker subjects,
+<!-- Page 236 --><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" title="212" class="pagenum"></a>which are the most liable to the severest impressions
+of pain and fear. The only difference between pain
+and terror is, that things which cause pain operate
+on the mind by the intervention of the body; whereas
+things that cause terror generally affect the bodily
+organs by the operation of the mind suggesting
+the danger; but both agreeing, either primarily or
+secondarily, in producing a tension, contraction, or
+violent emotion of the nerves,<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor"
+title="I do not here enter into the question debated among physiologists,
+whether pain be the effect of a contraction, or a tension of the
+nerves. Either will serve my purpose; for by tension, I mean no
+more than a violent pulling of the fibres which compose any muscle
+or membrane, in whatever way this is done.">[31]</a> they agree likewise
+in everything else. For it appears very clearly to
+me from this, as well as from many other examples,
+that when the body is disposed, by any means whatsoever,
+to such emotions as it would acquire by the
+means of a certain passion; it will of itself excite
+something very like that passion in the mind.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION IV.<br />
+<br />
+CONTINUED.</h3>
+
+<p>To this purpose Mr. Spon, in his &quot;R&eacute;cherches d'Antiquit&eacute;,&quot;
+gives us a curious story of the celebrated physiognomist
+Campanella. This man, it seems, had not
+only made very accurate observations on human faces,
+but was very expert in mimicking such as were any
+way remarkable. When he had a mind to penetrate
+into the inclinations of those he had to deal with, he
+composed his face, his gesture, and his whole body, as
+nearly as he could into the exact similitude of the per<!-- Page 237 --><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" title="213" class="pagenum"></a>son
+he intended to examine; and then carefully observed
+what turn of mind he seemed to acquire by this
+change. So that, says my author, he was able to enter
+into the dispositions and thoughts of people as effectually
+as if he had been changed into the very men.
+I have often observed, that on mimicking the looks and
+gestures of angry, or placid, or frighted, or daring men,
+I have involuntarily found my mind turned to that passion,
+whose appearance I endeavored to imitate; nay, I
+am convinced it is hard to avoid it, though one strove
+to separate the passion from its correspondent gestures.
+Our minds and bodies are so closely and intimately
+connected, that one is incapable of pain or pleasure
+without the other. Campanella, of whom we have
+been speaking, could so abstract his attention from
+any sufferings of his body, that he was able to endure
+the rack itself without much pain; and in lesser pains
+everybody must have observed that, when we can employ
+our attention on anything else, the pain has been
+for a time suspended: on the other hand, if by any
+means the body is indisposed to perform such gestures,
+or to be stimulated into such emotions as any passion
+usually produces in it, that passion itself never can
+arise, though its cause should be never so strongly in
+action; though it should be merely mental, and immediately
+affecting none of the senses. As an opiate,
+or spirituous liquors, shall suspend the operation of
+grief, or fear, or anger, in spite of all our efforts to
+the contrary; and this by inducing in the body a disposition
+contrary to that which it receives from these
+passions.<!-- Page 238 --><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" title="214" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION V.<br />
+<br />
+HOW THE SUBLIME IS PRODUCED.</h3>
+
+<p>Having considered terror as producing an unnatural
+tension and certain violent emotions of the nerves;
+it easily follows, from what we have just said, that
+whatever is fitted to produce such a tension must be
+productive of a passion similar to terror,<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part II. sect. 2.">[32]</a> and
+consequently must be a source of the sublime, though it
+should have no idea of danger connected with it. So
+that little remains towards showing the cause of the
+sublime, but to show that the instances we have given
+of it in the second part relate to such things, as are
+fitted by nature to produce this sort of tension, either
+by the primary operation of the mind or the body.
+With regard to such things as affect by the associated
+idea of danger, there can be no doubt but that they
+produce terror, and act by some modification of that
+passion; and that terror, when sufficiently violent,
+raises the emotions of the body just mentioned, can
+as little be doubted. But if the sublime is built on
+terror or some passion like it, which has pain for its
+object, it is previously proper to inquire how any species
+of delight can be derived from a cause so apparently
+contrary to it. I say <i>delight</i>, because, as I have
+often remarked, it is very evidently different in its
+cause, and in its own nature, from actual and positive
+pleasure.<!-- Page 239 --><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" title="215" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VI.<br />
+<br />
+HOW PAIN CAN BE A CAUSE OF DELIGHT.</h3>
+
+<p>Providence has so ordered it, that a state of rest
+and inaction, however it may flatter our indolence,
+should be productive of many inconveniences; that it
+should generate such disorders, as may force us to
+have recourse to some labor, as a thing absolutely
+requisite to make us pass our lives with tolerable
+satisfaction; for the nature of rest is to suffer all the
+parts of our bodies to fall into a relaxation, that not
+only disables the members from performing their functions,
+but takes away the vigorous tone of fibre which
+is requisite for carrying on the natural and necessary
+secretions. At the same time, that in this languid in
+active state, the nerves are more liable to the most
+horrid convulsions, than when they are sufficiently
+braced and strengthened. Melancholy, dejection, despair,
+and often self-murder, is the consequence of the
+gloomy view we take of things in this relaxed state
+of body. The best remedy for all these evils is exercise
+or <i>labor</i>; and labor is a surmounting of <i>difficulties</i>,
+an exertion of the contracting power of the muscles;
+and as such resembles pain, which consists in tension
+or contraction, in everything but degree. Labor is
+not only requisite to preserve the coarser organs, in a
+state fit for their functions; but it is equally necessary
+to these finer and more delicate organs, on which,
+and by which, the imagination and perhaps the other
+mental powers act. Since it is probable, that not
+only the inferior parts of the soul, as the passions are
+called, but the understanding itself makes use of
+some fine corporeal instruments in its operation;
+<!-- Page 240 --><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" title="216" class="pagenum"></a>though what they are, and where they are, may be
+somewhat hard to settle: but that it does make use
+of such, appears from hence; that a long exercise of
+the mental powers induces a remarkable lassitude of
+the whole body; and on the other hand, that great
+bodily labor, or pain, weakens and sometimes actually
+destroys the mental faculties. Now, as a due exercise
+is essential to the coarse muscular parts of the
+constitution, and that without this rousing they would
+become languid and diseased, the very same rule holds
+with regard to those finer parts we have mentioned;
+to have them in proper order, they must be shaken
+and worked to a proper degree.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VII.<br />
+<br />
+EXERCISE NECESSARY FOR THE FINER ORGANS.</h3>
+
+<p>As common labor, which is a mode of pain, is the
+exercise of the grosser, a mode of terror is the exercise
+of the finer parts of the system; and if a certain
+mode of pain be of such a nature as to act upon the
+eye or the ear, as they are the most delicate organs,
+the affection approaches more nearly to that which has
+a mental cause. In all these cases, if the pain and
+terror are so modified as not to be actually noxious;
+if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is
+not conversant about the present destruction of the
+person, as these emotions clear the parts, whether
+fine or gross, of a dangerous and troublesome incumbrance,
+they are capable of producing delight; not
+pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of
+tranquillity tinged with terror; which, as it belongs
+to self-preservation, is one of the strongest of all the
+<!-- Page 241 --><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" title="217" class="pagenum"></a>passions. Its object is the sublime.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part II. sect. 1.">[33]</a> Its highest degree
+I call <i>astonishment</i>; the subordinate degrees are
+awe, reverence, and respect, which, by the very etymology
+of the words, show from what source they are
+derived, and how they stand distinguished from positive
+pleasure.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VIII.<br />
+<br />
+WHY THINGS NOT DANGEROUS SOMETIMES PRODUCE A
+PASSION LIKE TERROR.</h3>
+
+<p>A mode of terror or pain is always the cause of the
+sublime.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part I. sect. 7. Part II. sect. 2.">[34]</a> For terror or associated danger, the foregoing
+explication is, I believe, sufficient. It will require
+something more trouble to show, that such examples
+as I have given of the sublime in the second
+part are capable of producing a mode of pain, and of
+being thus allied to terror, and to be accounted for
+on the same principles. And first of such objects as
+are great in their dimensions. I speak of visual objects.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION IX.<br />
+<br />
+WHY VISUAL OBJECTS OF GREAT DIMENSIONS ARE SUBLIME.</h3>
+
+<p>Vision is performed by having a picture, formed by
+the rays of light which are reflected from the object,
+painted in one piece, instantaneously, on the retina,
+or last nervous part of the eye. Or, according to
+others, there is but one point of any object painted on
+the eye in such a manner as to be perceived at once,
+but by moving the eye, we gather up, with great ce<!-- Page 242 --><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" title="218" class="pagenum"></a>lerity,
+the several parts of the object, so as to form
+one uniform piece. If the former opinion be allowed,
+it will be considered,<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part II. sect. 7.">[35]</a> that though all the light
+reflected from a large body should strike the eye in one
+instant; yet we must suppose that the body itself is
+formed of a vast number of distinct points, every one
+of which, or the ray from every one, makes an impression
+on the retina. So that, though the image
+of one point should cause but a small tension of this
+membrane, another, and another, and another stroke,
+must in their progress cause a very great one, until
+it arrives at last to the highest degree; and the whole
+capacity of the eye, vibrating in all its parts, must
+approach near to the nature of what causes pain, and
+consequently must produce an idea of the sublime.
+Again, if we take it, that one point only of an object
+is distinguishable at once; the matter will amount
+nearly to the same thing, or rather it will make the
+origin of the sublime from greatness of dimension yet
+clearer. For if but one point is observed at once, the
+eye must traverse the vast space of such bodies with
+great quickness, and consequently the fine nerves and
+muscles destined to the motion of that part must be
+very much strained; and their great sensibility must
+make them highly affected by this straining. Besides,
+it signifies just nothing to the effect produced,
+whether a body has its parts connected and makes its
+impression at once; or, making but one impression
+of a point at a time, it causes a succession of the
+same or others so quickly as to make them seem
+united; as is evident from the common effect of
+whirling about a lighted torch or piece of wood:
+which, if done with celerity, seems a circle of fire.<!-- Page 243 --><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" title="219" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION X.<br />
+<br />
+UNITY WHY REQUISITE TO VASTNESS.</h3>
+
+<p>It may be objected to this theory, that the eye generally
+receives an equal number of rays at all times,
+and that therefore a great object cannot affect it by
+the number of rays, more than that variety of objects
+which the eye must always discern whilst it remains
+open. But to this I answer, that admitting an equal
+number of rays, or an equal quantity of luminous
+particles to strike the eye at all times, yet if these
+rays frequently vary their nature, now to blue, now
+to red, and so on, or their manner of termination,
+as to a number of petty squares, triangles, or the
+like, at every change, whether of color or shape, the
+organ has a sort of relaxation or rest; but this relaxation
+and labor so often interrupted, is by no
+means productive of ease; neither has it the effect
+of vigorous and uniform labor. Whoever has remarked
+the different effects of some strong exercise,
+and some little piddling action, will understand why
+a teasing, fretful employment, which at once wearies
+and weakens the body, should have nothing great;
+these sorts of impulses, which are rather teasing than
+painful, by continually and suddenly altering their
+tenor and direction, prevent that full tension, that
+species of uniform labor, which is allied to strong
+pain, and causes the sublime. The sum total of
+things of various kinds, though it should equal the
+number of the uniform parts composing some <i>one</i>
+entire object, is not equal in its effect upon the organs
+of our bodies. Besides the one already assigned,
+there is another very strong reason for the difference.
+<!-- Page 244 --><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" title="220" class="pagenum"></a>The mind in reality hardly ever can attend diligently
+to more than one thing at a time; if this thing be
+little, the effect is little, and a number of other little
+objects cannot engage the attention; the mind is
+bounded by the bounds of the object; and what is
+not attended to, and what does not exist, are much
+the same in the effect; but the eye or the mind, (for
+in this case there is no difference,) in great, uniform
+objects, does not readily arrive at their bounds; it has
+no rest, whilst it contemplates them; the image is
+much the same everywhere. So that everything great
+by its quantity must necessarily be one, simple and
+entire.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XI.<br />
+<br />
+THE ARTIFICIAL INFINITE.</h3>
+
+<p>We have observed that a species of greatness arises
+from the artificial infinite; and that this infinite consists
+in an uniform succession of great parts: we observed
+too, that the same uniform succession had a
+like power in sounds. But because the effects of
+many things are clearer in one of the senses than in
+another, and that all the senses bear analogy to
+and illustrate one another, I shall begin with this
+power in sounds, as the cause of the sublimity from
+succession is rather more obvious in the sense of
+hearing. And I shall here, once for all, observe, that
+an investigation of the natural and mechanical causes
+of our passions, besides the curiosity of the subject,
+gives, if they are discovered, a double strength and
+lustre to any rules we deliver on such matters.
+When the ear receives any simple sound, it is struck
+by a single pulse of the air which makes the ear-<!-- Page 245 --><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" title="221" class="pagenum"></a>drum
+and the other membranous parts vibrate according
+to the nature and species of the stroke. If
+the stroke be strong, the organ of hearing suffers a
+considerable degree of tension. If the stroke be repeated
+pretty soon after, the repetition causes an
+expectation of another stroke. And it must be observed,
+that expectation itself causes a tension. This
+is apparent in many animals, who, when they prepare
+for hearing any sound, rouse themselves, and prick
+up their ears; so that here the effect of the sounds is
+considerably augmented by a new auxiliary, the expectation.
+But though after a number of strokes,
+we expect still more, not being able to ascertain the
+exact time of their arrival, when they arrive, they
+produce a sort of surprise, which increases this tension
+yet further. For I have observed, that when
+at any time I have waited very earnestly for some
+sound, that returned at intervals, (as the successive
+firing of cannon,) though I fully expected the return
+of the sound, when it came it always made me start
+a little; the ear-drum suffered a convulsion, and the
+whole body consented with it. The tension of the
+part thus increasing at every blow, by the united
+forces of the stroke itself, the expectation and the
+surprise, it is worked up to such a pitch as to be
+capable of the sublime; it is brought just to the verge
+of pain. Even when the cause has ceased, the organs
+of hearing being often successively struck in a
+similar manner, continue to vibrate in that manner
+for some time longer; this is an additional help to
+the greatness of the effect.<!-- Page 246 --><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" title="222" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XII.<br />
+<br />
+THE VIBRATIONS MUST BE SIMILAR.</h3>
+
+<p>But if the vibration be not similar at every impression,
+it can never be carried beyond the number of
+actual impressions; for, move any body as a pendulum,
+in one way, and it will continue to oscillate in
+an arch of the same circle, until the known causes
+make it rest; but if, after first putting it in motion in
+one direction, you push it into another, it can never
+reassume the first direction; because it can never
+move itself, and consequently it can have but the
+effect of that last motion; whereas, if in the same
+direction you act upon it several times, it will describe
+a greater arch, and move a longer time.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XIII.<br />
+<br />
+THE EFFECTS OF SUCCESSION IN VISUAL OBJECTS
+EXPLAINED.</h3>
+
+<p>If we can comprehend clearly how things operate
+upon one of our senses, there can be very little difficulty
+in conceiving in what manner they affect the
+rest. To say a great deal therefore upon the corresponding
+affections of every sense, would tend rather
+to fatigue us by an useless repetition, than to throw
+any new light upon the subject by that ample and
+diffuse manner of treating it; but as in this discourse
+we chiefly attach ourselves to the sublime, as it affects
+the eye, we shall consider particularly why a
+successive disposition of uniform parts in the same
+right line should be sublime,<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part II. sect. 10.">[36]</a> and upon what prin<!-- Page 247 --><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" title="223" class="pagenum"></a>ciple
+this disposition is enabled to make a comparatively
+small quantity of matter produce a grander
+effect, than a much larger quantity disposed in another
+manner. To avoid the perplexity of general
+notions; let us set before our eyes, a colonnade of
+uniform pillars planted in a right line; let us take
+our stand in such a manner, that the eye may shoot
+along this colonnade, for it has its best effect in this
+view. In our present situation it is plain, that the
+rays from the first round pillar will cause in the eye
+a vibration of that species; an image of the pillar
+itself. The pillar immediately succeeding increases
+it; that which follows renews and enforces the impression;
+each in its order as it succeeds, repeats
+impulse after impulse, and stroke after stroke, until
+the eye, long exercised in one particular way, cannot
+lose that object immediately, and, being violently
+roused by this continued agitation, it presents the
+mind with a grand or sublime conception. But instead
+of viewing a rank of uniform pillars, let us
+suppose that they succeed each other, a round and a
+square one alternately. In this case the vibration
+caused by the first round pillar perishes as soon as
+it is formed; and one of quite another sort (the
+square) directly occupies its place; which however
+it resigns as quickly to the round one; and thus the
+eye proceeds, alternately, taking up one image, and
+laying down another, as long as the building continues.
+From whence it is obvious that, at the last pillar,
+the impression is as far from continuing as it
+was at the very first; because, in fact, the sensory
+can receive no distinct impression but from the last;
+and it can never of itself resume a dissimilar impression:
+besides every variation of the object is a rest
+<!-- Page 248 --><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" title="224" class="pagenum"></a>and relaxation to the organs of sight; and these reliefs
+prevent that powerful emotion so necessary to
+produce the sublime. To produce therefore a perfect
+grandeur in such things as we have been mentioning,
+there should be a perfect simplicity, an
+absolute uniformity in disposition, shape, and coloring.
+Upon this principle of succession and uniformity
+it may be asked, why a long bare wall should
+not be a more sublime object than a colonnade; since
+the succession is no way interrupted; since the eye
+meets no check; since nothing more uniform can be
+conceived? A long bare wall is certainly not so
+grand an object as a colonnade of the same length
+and height. It is not altogether difficult to account
+for this difference. When we look at a naked wall,
+from the evenness of the object, the eye runs along
+its whole space, and arrives quickly at its termination;
+the eye meets nothing which may interrupt its
+progress; but then it meets nothing which may detain
+it a proper time to produce a very great and
+lasting effect. The view of a bare wall, if it be of a
+great height and length, is undoubtedly grand; but
+this is only <i>one</i> idea, and not a <i>repetition</i> of <i>similar</i>
+ideas: it is therefore great, not so much upon the
+principle of <i>infinity</i>, as upon that of <i>vastness</i>. But we
+are not so powerfully affected with any one impulse,
+unless it be one of a prodigious force indeed, as we
+are with a succession of similar impulses; because
+the nerves of the sensory do not (if I may use the
+expression) acquire a habit of repeating the same
+feeling in such a manner as to continue it longer than
+its cause is in action; besides, all the effects which I
+have attributed to expectation and surprise in Sect.
+11, can have no place in a bare wall.<!-- Page 249 --><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" title="225" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XIV.<br />
+<br />
+LOCKE'S OPINION CONCERNING DARKNESS CONSIDERED.</h3>
+
+<p>It is Mr. Locke's opinion, that darkness is not naturally
+an idea of terror; and that, though an excessive
+light is painful to the sense, the greatest excess
+of darkness is no ways troublesome. He observes indeed
+in another place, that a nurse or an old woman
+having once associated the ideas of ghosts and goblins
+with that of darkness, night, ever after, becomes
+painful and horrible to the imagination. The authority
+of this great man is doubtless as great as that
+of any man can be, and it seems to stand in the way
+of our general principle.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor"
+title="Part II. sect. 3.">[37]</a> We have considered darkness
+as a cause of the sublime; and we have all along
+considered the sublime as depending on some modification
+of pain or terror: so that if darkness be no
+way painful or terrible to any, who have not had
+their minds early tainted with superstitions, it can be
+no source of the sublime to them. But, with all deference
+to such an authority, it seems to me, that an
+association of a more general nature, an association
+which takes in all mankind, may make darkness terrible;
+for in utter darkness it is impossible to know
+in what degree of safety we stand; we are ignorant
+of the objects that surround us; we may every moment
+strike against some dangerous obstruction; we
+may fall down a precipice the first step we take; and
+if an enemy approach, we know not in what quarter
+to defend ourselves; in such a case strength is no
+sure protection; wisdom can only act by guess; the
+boldest are staggered, and he who would pray for
+<!-- Page 250 --><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" title="226" class="pagenum"></a>nothing else towards his defence is forced to pray for
+light.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="Zeu pater, alla su rusai up &ecirc;eros uias Achai&ocirc;n;">
+Ζεὖ πἀτε�, ἀλλὰ σὺ ῥῡσαι ὑπ' ἠέ�ος υἶας Ἀχαιὢν;
+</span></div>
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="Poi&ecirc;son d' aithr&ecirc;n, dos d' ophthalmoisin idesthai;">
+Ποίησον δ' αἴθ�ην, δὸς δ' ὀφθαλμοἲσιν ἰδέσθαι;
+</span></div>
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="En de phaei kai olesson....">
+Ἐν δὲ φάει καὶ ὄλεσσον....
+</span></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<!-- Transliteration
+Zeu pater, alla su rusai up &ecirc;eros uias Achai&ocirc;n;
+Poi&ecirc;son d' aithr&ecirc;n, dos d' ophthalmoisin idesthai;
+En de phaei kai olesson....
+-->
+<!-- Unicode
+Ζεὖ πἀτε�, ἀλλὰ σὺ ῥῡσαι ὑπ' ἠέ�ος υἶας Ἀχαιὢν;
+Ποίησον δ' αἴθ�ην, δὸς δ' ὀφθαλμοἲσιν ἰδέσθαι;
+Ἐν δὲ φάει καὶ ὄλεσσον....
+-->
+<!-- Betacode
+Zey~) pa)ter, a)lla\ sy\ r(y_sai y(p' ê)e/ros ui~)as A)ch-aiô)\n;</div>
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+
+<p>As to the association of ghosts and goblins; surely
+it is more natural to think that darkness, being originally
+an idea of terror, was chosen as a fit scene
+for such terrible representations, than that such
+representations have made darkness terrible. The mind
+of man very easily slides into an error of the former
+sort; but it is very hard to imagine, that the effect
+of an idea so universally terrible in all times, and in
+all countries, as darkness, could possibly have been
+owing to a set of idle stories, or to any cause of a nature
+so trivial, and of an operation so precarious.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XV.<br />
+<br />
+DARKNESS TERRIBLE IN ITS OWN NATURE.</h3>
+
+<p>Perhaps it may appear on inquiry, that blackness
+and darkness are in some degree painful by their natural
+operation, independent of any associations whatsoever.
+I must observe, that the ideas of darkness
+and blackness are much the same; and they differ
+only in this, that blackness is a more confined idea.
+Mr. Cheselden has given us a very curious story of a
+boy who had been born blind, and continued so until
+he was thirteen or fourteen years old; he was then
+couched for a cataract, by which operation he received
+his sight. Among many remarkable particulars that
+attended his first perceptions and judgments on visual
+objects, Cheselden tells us, that the first time the boy
+<!-- Page 251 --><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" title="227" class="pagenum"></a>saw a black object, it gave him great uneasiness; and
+that some time after, upon accidentally seeing a negro
+woman, he was struck with great horror at the sight.
+The horror, in this case, can scarcely be supposed to
+arise from any association. The boy appears by the
+account to have been particularly observing and sensible
+for one of his age; and therefore it is probable,
+if the great uneasiness he felt at the first sight of
+black had arisen from its connection with any other
+disagreeable ideas, he would have observed and mentioned
+it. For an idea, disagreeable only by association,
+has the cause of its ill effect on the passions
+evident enough at the first impression; in ordinary
+cases, it is indeed frequently lost; but this is because
+the original association was made very early, and the
+consequent impression repeated often. In our instance,
+there was no time for such a habit; and there
+is no reason to think that the ill effects of black on
+his imagination were more owing to its connection
+with any disagreeable ideas, than that the good effects
+of more cheerful colors were derived from their
+connection with pleasing ones. They had both probably
+their effects from their natural operation.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVI.<br />
+<br />
+WHY DARKNESS IS TERRIBLE.</h3>
+
+<p>It may be worth while to examine how darkness
+can operate in such a manner as to cause pain. It is
+observable, that still as we recede from the light, nature
+has so contrived it, that the pupil is enlarged by
+the retiring of the iris, in proportion to our recess.
+Now, instead of declining from it but a little, suppose
+<!-- Page 252 --><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" title="228" class="pagenum"></a>that we withdraw entirely from the light; it is reasonable
+to think that the contraction of the radial
+fibres of the iris is proportionally greater; and that
+this part may by great darkness come to be so contracted,
+as to strain the nerves that compose it beyond
+their natural tone; and by this means to produce a
+painful sensation. Such a tension it seems there
+certainly is, whilst we are involved in darkness; for
+in such a state, whilst the eye remains open, there is
+a continual nisus to receive light; this is manifest
+from the flashes and luminous appearances which
+often seem in these circumstances to play before it;
+and which can be nothing but the effect of spasms,
+produced by its own efforts in pursuit of its object:
+several other strong impulses will produce the idea
+of light in the eye, besides the substance of light
+itself, as we experience on many occasions. Some,
+who allow darkness to be a cause of the sublime,
+would infer, from the dilatation of the pupil, that a
+relaxation may be productive of the sublime as well
+as a convulsion: but they do not, I believe, consider,
+that although the circular ring of the iris be in some
+sense a sphincter, which may possibly be dilated by a
+simple relaxation, yet in one respect it differs from
+most of the other sphincters of the body, that it is
+furnished with antagonist muscles, which are the
+radial fibres of the iris: no sooner does the circular
+muscle begin to relax, than these fibres, wanting
+their counterpoise, are forcibly drawn back, and open
+the pupil to a considerable wideness. But though
+we were not apprised of this, I believe any one will
+find, if he opens his eyes and makes an effort to see
+in a dark place, that a very perceivable pain ensues.
+And I have heard some ladies remark, that after hav<!-- Page 253 --><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" title="229" class="pagenum"></a>ing
+worked a long time upon a ground of black, their
+eyes were so pained and weakened, they could hardly
+see. It may perhaps be objected to this theory of the
+mechanical effect of darkness, that the ill effects of
+darkness or blackness seem rather mental than corporeal:
+and I own it is true that they do so; and so do
+all those that depend on the affections of the finer
+parts of our system. The ill effects of bad weather
+appear often no otherwise than in a melancholy and
+dejection of spirits; though without doubt, in this
+case, the bodily organs suffer first, and the mind
+through these organs.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVII.<br />
+<br />
+THE EFFECTS OF BLACKNESS.</h3>
+
+<p>Blackness is but a <i>partial darkness</i>; and therefore
+it derives some of its powers from being mixed and
+surrounded with colored bodies. In its own nature,
+it cannot be considered as a color. Black bodies,
+reflecting none, or but a few rays, with regard to sight,
+are but as so many vacant spaces, dispersed among
+the objects we view. When the eye lights on one of
+these vacuities, after having been kept in some degree
+of tension by the play of the adjacent colors upon it, it
+suddenly falls into a relaxation; out of which it as
+suddenly recovers by a convulsive spring. To illustrate
+this: let us consider that when we intend to sit
+on a chair, and find it much lower than was expected,
+the shock is very violent; much more violent than
+could be thought from so slight a fall as the difference
+between one chair and another can possibly make. If,
+after descending a flight of stairs, we attempt inad<!-- Page 254 --><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" title="230" class="pagenum"></a>vertently
+to take another step in the manner of the
+former ones, the shock is extremely rude and disagreeable:
+and by no art can we cause such a shock by
+the same means when we expect and prepare for it.
+When I say that this is owing to having the change
+made contrary to expectation; I do not mean solely,
+when the <i>mind</i> expects. I mean likewise, that when
+any organ of sense is for some time affected in some
+one manner, if it be suddenly affected otherwise, there
+ensues a convulsive motion; such a convulsion as is
+caused when anything happens against the expectance
+of the mind. And though it may appear strange that
+such a change as produces a relaxation should immediately
+produce a sudden convulsion; it is yet most
+certainly so, and so in all the senses. Every one knows
+that sleep is a relaxation; and that silence, where nothing
+keeps the organs of hearing in action, is in general
+fittest to bring on this relaxation; yet when a
+sort of murmuring sounds dispose a man to sleep, let
+these sounds cease suddenly, and the person immediately
+awakes; that is, the parts are braced up suddenly,
+and he awakes. This I have often experienced
+myself, and I have heard the same from observing
+persons. In like manner, if a person in broad daylight
+were falling asleep, to introduce a sudden darkness
+would prevent his sleep for that time, though
+silence and darkness in themselves, and not suddenly
+introduced, are very favorable to it. This I knew
+only by conjecture on the analogy of the senses when
+I first digested these observations; but I have since
+experienced it. And I have often experienced, and
+so have a thousand others, that on the first inclining
+towards sleep, we have been suddenly awakened with
+a most violent start; and that this start was gener<!-- Page 255 --><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" title="231" class="pagenum"></a>ally
+preceded by a sort of dream of our falling down
+a precipice: whence does this strange motion arise,
+but from the too sudden relaxation of the body, which
+by some mechanism in nature restores itself by as
+quick and vigorous an exertion of the contracting
+power of the muscles? The dream itself is caused
+by this relaxation; and it is of too uniform a nature
+to be attributed to any other cause. The parts
+relax too suddenly, which is in the nature of falling;
+and this accident of the body induces this image
+in the mind. When we are in a confirmed
+state of health and vigor, as all changes are then less
+sudden, and less on the extreme, we can seldom complain
+of this disagreeable sensation.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XVIII.<br />
+<br />
+THE EFFECTS OF BLACKNESS MODERATED.</h3>
+
+<p>Though the effects of black be painful originally,
+we must not think they always continue so. Custom
+reconciles us to everything. After we have been
+used to the sight of black objects, the terror abates,
+and the smoothness and glossiness, or some agreeable
+accident of bodies so colored, softens in some measure
+the horror and sternness of their original nature;
+yet the nature of the original impression still continues.
+Black will always have something melancholy
+in it, because the sensory will always find the change
+to it from other colors too violent; or if it occupy the
+whole compass of the sight, it will then be darkness;
+and what was said of darkness will be applicable
+here. I do not purpose to go into all that might be
+said to illustrate this theory of the effects of light and
+<!-- Page 256 --><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" title="232" class="pagenum"></a>darkness; neither will I examine all the different
+effects produced by the various modifications and
+mixtures of these two causes. If the foregoing observations
+have any foundation in nature, I conceive
+them very sufficient to account for all the phenomena
+that can arise from all the combinations of black
+with other colors. To enter into every particular, or
+to answer every objection, would be an endless labor.
+We have only followed the most leading roads; and
+we shall observe the same conduct in our inquiry
+into the cause of beauty.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XIX.<br />
+<br />
+THE PHYSICAL CAUSE OF LOVE.</h3>
+
+<p>When we have before us such objects as excite love
+and complacency, the body is affected, so far as I
+could observe, much in the following manner: the
+head reclines something on one side; the eyelids are
+more closed than usual, and the eyes roll gently with
+an inclination to the object; the mouth is a little
+opened, and the breath drawn slowly, with now and
+then a low sigh; the whole body is composed, and
+the hands fall idly to the sides. All this is accompanied
+with an inward sense of melting and languor.
+These appearances are always proportioned to the
+degree of beauty in the object, and of sensibility in
+the observer. And this gradation from the highest
+pitch of beauty and sensibility, even to the lowest of
+mediocrity and indifference, and their correspondent
+effects, ought to be kept in view, else this description
+will seem exaggerated, which it certainly is not.
+But from this description it is almost impossible not
+<!-- Page 257 --><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" title="233" class="pagenum"></a>to conclude that beauty acts by relaxing the solids of
+the whole system. There are all the appearances of
+such a relaxation; and a relaxation somewhat below
+the natural tone seems to me to be the cause of all
+positive pleasure. Who is a stranger to that manner
+of expression so common in all times and in all countries,
+of being softened, relaxed, enervated, dissolved,
+melted away by pleasure? The universal voice of
+mankind, faithful to their feelings, concurs in affirming
+this uniform and general effect: and although
+some odd and particular instance may perhaps be
+found, wherein there appears a considerable degree
+of positive pleasure, without all the characters of
+relaxation, we must not therefore reject the conclusion
+we had drawn from a concurrence of many experiments;
+but we must still retain it, subjoining the
+exceptions which may occur according to the judicious
+rule laid down by Sir Isaac Newton in the third
+book of his Optics. Our position will, I conceive,
+appear confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt, if we
+can show that such things as we have already observed
+to be the genuine constituents of beauty have
+each of them, separately taken, a natural tendency
+to relax the fibres. And if it must be allowed us,
+that the appearance of the human body, when all
+these constituents are united together before the sensory,
+further favors this opinion, we may venture, I
+believe, to conclude that the passion called love is
+produced by this relaxation. By the same method
+of reasoning which we have used in the inquiry into
+the causes of the sublime, we may likewise conclude,
+that as a beautiful object presented to the sense, by
+causing a relaxation of the body, produces the passion
+of love in the mind; so if by any means the pas<!-- Page 258 --><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" title="234" class="pagenum"></a>sion
+should first have its origin in the mind, a relaxation
+of the outward organs will as certainly ensue in
+a degree proportioned to the cause.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XX.<br />
+<br />
+WHY SMOOTHNESS IS BEAUTIFUL.</h3>
+
+<p>It is to explain the true cause of visual beauty that
+I call in the assistance of the other senses. If it appears
+that <i>smoothness</i> is a principal cause of pleasure
+to the touch, taste, smell, and hearing, it will be
+easily admitted a constituent of visual beauty; especially
+as we have before shown, that this quality is
+found almost without exception in all bodies that are
+by general consent held beautiful. There can be no
+doubt that bodies which are rough and angular,
+rouse and vellicate the organs of feeling, causing a
+sense of pain, which consists in the violent tension or
+contraction of the muscular fibres. On the contrary,
+the application of smooth bodies relaxes; gentle
+stroking with a smooth hand allays violent pains and
+cramps, and relaxes the suffering parts from their
+unnatural tension; and it has therefore very often
+no mean effect in removing swellings and obstructions.
+The sense of feeling is highly gratified with
+smooth bodies. A bed smoothly laid, and soft, that
+is, where the resistance is every way inconsiderable,
+is a great luxury, disposing to an universal relaxation,
+and inducing beyond anything else that species
+of it called sleep.<!-- Page 259 --><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" title="235" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXI.<br />
+<br />
+SWEETNESS, ITS NATURE.</h3>
+
+<p>Nor is it only in the touch that smooth bodies cause
+positive pleasure by relaxation. In the smell and
+taste, we find all things agreeable to them, and which
+are commonly called sweet, to be of a smooth nature,
+and that they all evidently tend to relax their respective
+sensories. Let us first consider the taste. Since
+it is most easy to inquire into the property of liquids,
+and since all things seem to want a fluid vehicle to
+make them tasted at all, I intend rather to consider
+the liquid than the solid parts of our food. The vehicles
+of all tastes are <i>water</i> and <i>oil</i>. And what determines
+the taste is some salt, which affects variously
+according to its nature, or its manner of being combined
+with other things. Water and oil, simply considered,
+are capable of giving some pleasure to the
+taste. Water, when simple, is insipid, inodorous, colorless,
+and smooth; it is found, when <i>not cold</i>, to be a
+great resolver of spasms, and lubricator of the fibres;
+this power it probably owes to its smoothness. For
+as fluidity depends, according to the most general
+opinion, on the roundness, smoothness, and weak cohesion
+of the component parts of any body, and as
+water acts merely as a simple fluid, it follows that
+the cause of its fluidity is likewise the cause of its
+relaxing quality, namely, the smoothness and slippery
+texture of its parts. The other fluid vehicle of tastes
+is <i>oil</i>. This too, when simple, is insipid, inodorous,
+colorless, and smooth to the touch and taste. It is
+smoother than water, and in many cases yet more
+relaxing. Oil is in some degree pleasant to the eye,
+<!-- Page 260 --><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" title="236" class="pagenum"></a>the touch, and the taste, insipid as it is. Water is
+not so grateful; which I do not know on what principle
+to account for, other than that water is not so
+soft and smooth. Suppose that to this oil or water
+were added a certain quantity of a specific salt, which
+had a power of putting the nervous papill&aelig; of the
+tongue into a gentle vibratory motion; as suppose
+sugar dissolved in it. The smoothness of the oil and
+the vibratory power of the salt cause the sense we
+call sweetness. In all sweet bodies, sugar, or a substance
+very little different from sugar, is constantly
+found. Every species of salt, examined by the microscope,
+has its own distinct, regular, invariable
+form. That of nitre is a pointed oblong; that of sea-salt
+an exact cube; that of sugar a perfect globe.
+If you have tried how smooth globular bodies, as the
+marbles with which boys amuse themselves, have affected
+the touch when they are rolled backward and
+forward and over one another, you will easily conceive
+how sweetness, which consists in a salt of such
+nature, affects the taste; for a single globe (though
+somewhat pleasant to the feeling), yet by the regularity
+of its form, and the somewhat too sudden deviation
+of its parts from a right line, is nothing near so
+pleasant to the touch as several globes, where the
+hand gently rises to one and falls to another; and
+this pleasure is greatly increased if the globes are in
+motion, and sliding over one another; for this soft
+variety prevents that weariness, which the uniform
+disposition of the several globes would otherwise produce.
+Thus in sweet liquors, the parts of the fluid
+vehicle, though most probably round, are yet so minute,
+as to conceal the figure of their component
+parts from the nicest inquisition of the microscope;
+<!-- Page 261 --><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" title="237" class="pagenum"></a>and consequently, being so excessively minute, they
+have a sort of flat simplicity to the taste, resembling
+the effects of plain smooth bodies to the touch; for
+if a body be composed of round parts excessively
+small, and packed pretty closely together, the surface
+will be both to the sight and touch as if it were
+nearly plain and smooth. It is clear from their unveiling
+their figure to the microscope, that the particles
+of sugar are considerably larger than those of
+water or oil, and consequently that their effects from
+their roundness will be more distinct and palpable to
+the nervous papill&aelig; of that nice organ the tongue;
+they will induce that sense called sweetness, which in
+a weak manner we discover in oil, and in a yet weaker
+in water; for, insipid as they are, water and oil are
+in some degree sweet; and it may be observed, that
+insipid things of all kinds approach more nearly to
+the nature of sweetness than to that of any other
+taste.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXII.<br />
+<br />
+SWEETNESS RELAXING.</h3>
+
+<p>In the other senses we have remarked, that smooth
+things are relaxing. Now it ought to appear that
+sweet things, which are the smooth of taste, are relaxing
+too. It is remarkable, that in some languages
+soft and sweet have but one name. <i>Doux</i> in French
+signifies soft as well as sweet. The Latin <i>dulcis</i>, and
+the Italian <i>dolce</i>, have in many cases the same double
+signification. That sweet things are generally relaxing,
+is evident; because all such, especially those
+which are most oily, taken frequently, or in a large
+quantity, very much enfeeble the tone of the stom<!-- Page 262 --><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" title="238" class="pagenum"></a>ach.
+Sweet smells, which bear a great affinity to
+sweet tastes, relax very remarkably. The smell of
+flowers disposes people to drowsiness; and this relaxing
+effect is further apparent from the prejudice
+which people of weak nerves receive from their use.
+It were worth while to examine, whether tastes of this
+kind, sweet ones, tastes that are caused by smooth
+oils and a relaxing salt, are not the originally pleasant
+tastes. For many, which use has rendered such,
+were not at all agreeable at first. The way to examine
+this is, to try what nature has originally provided
+for us, which she has undoubtedly made originally
+pleasant; and to analyze this provision. <i>Milk</i> is
+the first support of our childhood. The component
+parts of this are water, oil, and a sort of a very sweet
+salt, called the sugar of milk. All these when blended
+have a great <i>smoothness</i> to the taste, and a relaxing
+quality to the skin. The next thing children
+covet is <i>fruit</i>, and of fruits those principally which
+are sweet; and every one knows that the sweetness
+of fruit is caused by a subtle oil, and such a salt as
+that mentioned in the last section. Afterwards custom,
+habit, the desire of novelty, and a thousand
+other causes, confound, adulterate, and change our
+palates, so that we can no longer reason with any
+satisfaction about them. Before we quit this article,
+we must observe, that as smooth things are, as such,
+agreeable to the taste, and are found of a relaxing
+quality; so on the other hand, things which are
+found by experience to be of a strengthening quality,
+and fit to brace the fibres, are almost universally
+rough and pungent to the taste, and in many
+cases rough even to the touch. We often apply the
+quality of sweetness, metaphorically, to visual objects.
+<!-- Page 263 --><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" title="239" class="pagenum"></a>For the better carrying on this remarkable analogy
+of the senses, we may here call sweetness the beautiful
+of the taste.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXIII.<br />
+<br />
+VARIATION, WHY BEAUTIFUL.</h3>
+
+<p>Another principal property of beautiful objects is,
+that the line of their parts is continually varying its
+direction; but it varies it by a very insensible
+deviation; it never varies it so quickly as to surprise, or
+by the sharpness of its angle to cause any twitching or
+convulsion of the optic nerve. Nothing long continued
+in the same manner, nothing very suddenly
+varied, can be beautiful; because both are opposite
+to that agreeable relaxation which is the characteristic
+effect of beauty. It is thus in all the senses. A
+motion in a right line is that manner of moving, next
+to a very gentle descent, in which we meet the least
+resistance; yet it is not that manner of moving,
+which next to a descent, wearies us the least. Rest
+certainly tends to relax: yet there is a species of
+motion which relaxes more than rest; a gentle oscillatory
+motion, a rising and falling. Rocking sets
+children to sleep better than absolute rest; there is
+indeed scarcely anything at that age, which gives
+more pleasure than to be gently lifted up and down;
+the manner of playing which their nurses use with
+children, and the weighing and swinging used afterwards
+by themselves as a favorite amusement, evince
+this very sufficiently. Most people must have observed
+the sort of sense they have had on being
+swiftly drawn in an easy coach on a smooth turf, with
+<!-- Page 264 --><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" title="240" class="pagenum"></a>gradual ascents and declivities. This will give a better
+idea of the beautiful, and point out its probable
+cause better, than almost anything else. On the contrary,
+when one is hurried over a rough, rocky,
+broken road, the pain felt by these sudden inequalities
+shows why similar sights, feelings, and sounds,
+are so contrary to beauty: and with regard to the
+feeling, it is exactly the same in its effect, or very
+nearly the same, whether, for instance, I move my
+hand along the surface of a body of a certain shape,
+or whether such a body is moved along my hand.
+But to bring this analogy of the senses home to the
+eye; if a body presented to that sense has such a
+waving surface, that the rays of light reflected from
+it are in a continual insensible deviation from the
+strongest to the weakest (which is always the case in
+a surface gradually unequal), it must be exactly similar
+in its effects on the eye and touch; upon the one
+of which it operates directly, on the other indirectly.
+And this body will be beautiful if the lines which
+compose its surface are not continued, even so varied,
+in a manner that may weary or dissipate the attention.
+The variation itself must be continually varied.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXIV.<br />
+<br />
+CONCERNING SMALLNESS.</h3>
+
+<p>To avoid a sameness which may arise from the too
+frequent repetition of the same reasonings, and of
+illustrations of the same nature, I will not enter very
+minutely into every particular that regards beauty,
+as it is founded on the disposition of its quantity, or
+its quantity itself. In speaking of the magnitude of
+<!-- Page 265 --><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" title="241" class="pagenum"></a>bodies there is great uncertainty, because the ideas
+of great and small are terms almost entirely relative
+to the species of the objects, which are infinite. It is
+true, that having once fixed the species of any object,
+and the dimensions common in the individuals of that
+species, we may observe some that exceed, and some
+that fall short of, the ordinary standard: those which
+greatly exceed are, by that excess, provided the species
+itself be not very small, rather great and terrible
+than beautiful; but as in the animal world, and in a
+good measure in the vegetable world likewise, the
+qualities that constitute beauty may possibly be united
+to things of greater dimensions; when they are so
+united, they constitute a species something different
+both from the sublime and beautiful, which I have
+before called <i>fine</i>; but this kind, I imagine, has not
+such a power on the passions, either as vast bodies
+have which are endued with the correspondent qualities
+of the sublime; or as the qualities of beauty have
+when united in a small object. The affection produced
+by large bodies adorned with the spoils of
+beauty, is a tension continually relieved; which approaches
+to the nature of mediocrity. But if I were
+to say how I find myself affected upon such occasions,
+I should say that the sublime suffers less by being
+united to some of the qualities of beauty, than beauty
+does by being joined to greatness of quantity, or
+any other properties of the sublime. There is something
+so overruling in whatever inspires us with awe,
+in all things which belong ever so remotely to terror,
+that nothing else can stand in their presence. There
+lie the qualities of beauty either dead or unoperative;
+or at most exerted to mollify the rigor and sternness
+of the terror, which is the natural concomitant of
+<!-- Page 266 --><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" title="242" class="pagenum"></a>greatness. Besides the extraordinary great in every
+species, the opposite to this, the dwarfish and diminutive,
+ought to be considered. Littleness, merely as
+such, has nothing contrary to the idea of beauty.
+The humming-bird, both in shape and coloring, yields
+to none of the winged species, of which it is the least;
+and perhaps his beauty is enhanced by his smallness.
+But there are animals, which, when they are extremely
+small, are rarely (if ever) beautiful. There is a
+dwarfish size of men and women, which is almost
+constantly so gross and massive in comparison of
+their height, that they present us with a very disagreeable
+image. But should a man be found not
+above two or three feet high, supposing such a person
+to have all the parts of his body of a delicacy suitable
+to such a size, and otherwise endued with the common
+qualities of other beautiful bodies, I am pretty
+well convinced that a person of such a stature might
+be considered as beautiful; might be the object of
+love; might give us very pleasing ideas on viewing
+him. The only thing which could possibly interpose
+to check our pleasure is, that such creatures, however
+formed, are unusual, and are often therefore considered
+as something monstrous. The large and gigantic,
+though very compatible with the sublime, is
+contrary to the beautiful. It is impossible to suppose
+a giant the object of love. When we let our
+imagination loose in romance, the ideas we naturally
+annex to that size are those of tyranny, cruelty, injustice,
+and everything horrid and abominable. We
+paint the giant ravaging the country, plundering the
+innocent traveller, and afterwards gorged with his
+half-living flesh: such are Polyphemus, Cacus, and
+others, who make so great a figure in romances and
+<!-- Page 267 --><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" title="243" class="pagenum"></a>heroic poems. The event we attend to with the
+greatest satisfaction is their defeat and death. I do
+not remember, in all that multitude of deaths with
+which the Iliad is filled, that the fall of any man,
+remarkable for his great stature and strength, touches
+us with pity; nor does it appear that the author, so
+well read in human nature, ever intended it should.
+It is Simoisius, in the soft bloom of youth, torn from
+his parents, who tremble for a courage so ill suited to
+his strength; it is another hurried by war from the
+new embraces of his bride, young and fair, and a
+novice to the field, who melts us by his untimely fate.
+Achilles, in spite of the many qualities of beauty
+which Homer has bestowed on his outward form, and
+the many great virtues with which he has adorned his
+mind, can never make us love him. It may be observed,
+that Homer has given the Trojans, whose fate
+he has designed to excite our compassion, infinitely
+more of the amiable, social virtues than he has distributed
+among his Greeks. With regard to the Trojans,
+the passion he chooses to raise is pity; pity is a
+passion founded on love; and these <i>lesser</i>, and if I
+may say domestic virtues, are certainly the most amiable.
+But he has made the Greeks far their superiors
+in the politic and military virtues. The councils
+of Priam are weak; the arms of Hector comparatively
+feeble; his courage far below that of Achilles. Yet
+we love Priam more than Agamemnon, and Hector
+more than his conqueror Achilles. Admiration is
+the passion which Homer would excite in favor of
+the Greeks, and he has done it by bestowing on them
+the virtues which have but little to do with love.
+This short digression is perhaps not wholly beside our
+purpose, where our business is to show that objects of
+<!-- Page 268 --><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" title="244" class="pagenum"></a>great dimensions are incompatible with beauty, the
+more incompatible as they are greater; whereas the
+small, if ever they fail of beauty, this failure is not to
+be attributed to their size.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION XXV.<br />
+<br />
+OF COLOR.</h3>
+
+<p>With regard to color, the disquisition is almost infinite;
+but I conceive the principles laid down in the
+beginning of this part are sufficient to account for the
+effects of them all, as well as for the agreeable effects
+of transparent bodies, whether fluid or solid. Suppose
+I look at a bottle of muddy liquor, of a blue or
+red color; the blue or red rays cannot pass clearly to
+the eye, but are suddenly and unequally stopped by
+the intervention of little opaque bodies, which without
+preparation change the idea, and change it too
+into one disagreeable in its own nature, conformably
+to the principles laid down in Sect. 24. But when
+the ray passes without such opposition through the
+glass or liquor, when the glass or liquor is quite transparent,
+the light is sometimes softened in the passage,
+which makes it more agreeable even as light; and
+the liquor reflecting all the rays of its proper color
+<i>evenly</i>, it has such an effect on the eye, as smooth
+opaque bodies have on the eye and touch. So that
+the pleasure here is compounded of the softness of
+the transmitted, and the evenness of the reflected
+light. This pleasure may be heightened by the common
+principles in other things, if the shape of the
+glass which holds the transparent liquor be so judiciously
+varied, as to present the color gradually and
+<!-- Page 269 --><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" title="245" class="pagenum"></a>interchangeably, weakened and strengthened with all
+the variety which judgment in affairs of this nature
+shall suggest. On a review of all that has been said
+of the effects, as well as the causes of both, it will appear
+that the sublime and beautiful are built on principles
+very different, and that their affections are as
+different: the great has terror for its basis, which,
+when it is modified, causes that emotion in the mind,
+which I have called astonishment; the beautiful is
+founded on mere positive pleasure, and excites in the
+soul that feeling which is called love. Their causes
+have made the subject of this fourth part.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Part I. sect. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Part I. sect. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> I do not here enter into the question debated among physiologists,
+whether pain be the effect of a contraction, or a tension of the
+nerves. Either will serve my purpose; for by tension, I mean no
+more than a violent pulling of the fibres which compose any muscle
+or membrane, in whatever way this is done.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Part II. sect. 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Part II. sect. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Part I. sect. 7. Part II. sect. 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Part II. sect. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Part II. sect. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Part II. sect. 3.</p></div><!-- Page 270 --><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" title="246" class="pagenum"></a>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_V" id="PART_V"></a>PART V.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION I.<br />
+<br />
+OF WORDS.</h3>
+
+<p>Natural objects affect us by the laws of that connection
+which Providence has established between certain
+motions and configurations of bodies, and certain
+consequent feelings in our mind. Painting affects in
+the same manner, but with the superadded pleasure
+of imitation. Architecture affects by the laws of nature
+and the law of reason; from which latter result
+the rules of proportion, which make a work to be
+praised or censured, in the whole or in some part,
+when the end for which it was designed is or is not
+properly answered. But as to words; they seem to
+me to affect us in a manner very different from that
+in which we are affected by natural objects, or by
+painting or architecture; yet words have as considerable
+a share in exciting ideas of beauty and of the
+sublime as many of those, and sometimes a much
+greater than any of them; therefore an inquiry into
+the manner by which they excite such emotions is far
+from being unnecessary in a discourse of this kind.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION II.<br />
+<br />
+THE COMMON EFFECTS OF POETRY, NOT BY RAISING
+IDEAS OF THINGS.</h3>
+
+<p>The common notion of the power of poetry and
+eloquence, as well as that of words in ordinary con<!-- Page 271 --><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" title="247" class="pagenum"></a>versation,
+is, that they affect the mind by raising in
+it ideas of those things for which custom has appointed
+them to stand. To examine the truth of this
+notion, it may be requisite to observe that words may
+be divided into three sorts. The first are such as
+represent many simple ideas <i>united by nature</i> to form
+some one determinate composition, as man, horse,
+tree, castle, &amp;c. These I call <i>aggregate words</i>. The
+second are they that stand for one simple idea of
+such compositions, and no more; as red, blue, round,
+square, and the like. These I call <i>simple abstract</i>
+words. The third are those which are formed by
+an union, an <i>arbitrary</i> union of both the others, and
+of the various relations between them in greater
+or lesser degrees of complexity; as virtue, honor,
+persuasion, magistrate, and the like. These I call
+<i>compound abstract</i> words. Words, I am sensible, are
+capable of being classed into more curious distinctions;
+but these seem to be natural, and enough for
+our purpose; and they are disposed in that order in
+which they are commonly taught, and in which the
+mind gets the ideas they are substituted for. I shall
+begin with the third sort of words; compound abstracts,
+such as virtue, honor, persuasion, docility.
+Of these I am convinced, that whatever power they
+may have on the passions, they do not derive it from
+any representation raised in the mind of the things
+for which they stand. As compositions, they are not
+real essences, and hardly cause, I think, any real
+ideas. Nobody, I believe, immediately on hearing
+the sounds, virtue, liberty, or honor, conceives any
+precise notions of the particular modes of action and
+thinking, together with the mixed and simple ideas,
+and the several relations of them for which these
+<!-- Page 272 --><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" title="248" class="pagenum"></a>words are substituted; neither has he any general
+idea compounded of them; for if he had, then some
+of those particular ones, though indistinct perhaps,
+and confused, might come soon to be perceived.
+But this, I take it, is hardly ever the case. For, put
+yourself upon analyzing one of these words, and you
+must reduce it from one set of general words to another,
+and then into the simple abstracts and aggregates,
+in a much longer series than may be at first
+imagined, before any real idea emerges to light, before
+you come to discover anything like the first principles
+of such compositions; and when you have
+made such a discovery of the original ideas, the effect
+of the composition is utterly lost. A train of thinking
+of this sort is much too long to be pursued in
+the ordinary ways of conversation; nor is it at all
+necessary that it should. Such words are in reality
+but mere sounds; but they are sounds which being
+used on particular occasions, wherein we receive
+some good, or suffer some evil; or see others affected
+with good or evil; or which we hear applied to other
+interesting things or events; and being applied in
+such a variety of cases, that we know readily by
+habit to what things they belong, they produce in
+the mind, whenever they are afterwards mentioned,
+effects similar to those of their occasions. The sounds
+being often used without reference to any particular
+occasion, and carrying still their first impressions, they
+at last utterly lose their connection with the particular
+occasions that gave rise to them; yet the sound,
+without any annexed notion, continues to operate as
+before.<!-- Page 273 --><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" title="249" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION III.<br />
+<br />
+GENERAL WORDS BEFORE IDEAS.</h3>
+
+<p>Mr. Locke has somewhere observed, with his usual
+sagacity, that most general words, those belonging to
+virtue and vice, good and evil especially, are taught
+before the particular modes of action to which they
+belong are presented to the mind; and with them,
+the love of the one, and the abhorrence of the other;
+for the minds of children are so ductile, that a nurse,
+or any person about a child, by seeming pleased or
+displeased with anything, or even any word, may give
+the disposition of the child a similar turn. When,
+afterwards, the several occurrences in life come to be
+applied to these words, and that which is pleasant often
+appears under the name of evil; and what is disagreeable
+to nature is called good and virtuous; a
+strange confusion of ideas and affections arises in the
+minds of many; and an appearance of no small contradiction
+between their notions and their actions.
+There are many who love virtue and who detest vice,
+and this not from hypocrisy or affectation, who notwithstanding
+very frequently act ill and wickedly in
+particulars without the least remorse; because these
+particular occasions never came into view, when the
+passions on the side of virtue were so warmly affected
+by certain words heated originally by the breath of
+others; and for this reason, it is hard to repeat certain
+sets of words, though owned by themselves unoperative,
+without being in some degree affected; especially
+if a warm and affecting tone of voice accompanies
+them, as suppose,</p>
+
+<blockquote style="text-align: center">
+<p>Wise, valiant, generous, good, and great.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent"><!-- Page 274 --><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" title="250" class="pagenum"></a>These words, by having no application, ought to be
+unoperative; but when words commonly sacred to
+great occasions are used, we are affected by them
+even without the occasions. When words which
+have been generally so applied are put together
+without any rational view, or in such a manner that
+they do not rightly agree with each other, the style is
+called bombast. And it requires in several cases
+much good sense and experience to be guarded
+against the force of such language; for when propriety
+is neglected, a greater number of these affecting
+words may be taken into the service, and a greater
+variety may be indulged in combining them.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION IV.<br />
+<br />
+THE EFFECT OF WORDS.</h3>
+
+<p>If words have all their possible extent of power,
+three effects arise in the mind of the hearer. The
+first is, the <i>sound</i>; the second, the <i>picture</i>, or representation
+of the thing signified by the sound; the
+third is, the <i>affection</i> of the soul produced by one or
+by both of the foregoing. <i>Compounded abstract</i>
+words, of which we have been speaking, (honor, justice,
+liberty, and the like,) produce the first and the
+last of these effects, but not the second. <i>Simple abstracts</i>
+are used to signify some one simple idea without
+much adverting to others which may chance to
+attend it, as blue, green, hot, cold, and the like;
+these are capable of affecting all three of the purposes
+of words; as the <i>aggregate</i> words, man, castle, horse,
+&amp;c. are in a yet higher degree. But I am of opinion,
+that the most general effect, even of these words,
+<!-- Page 275 --><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" title="251" class="pagenum"></a>does not arise from their forming pictures of the several
+things they would represent in the imagination;
+because, on a very diligent examination of my own
+mind, and getting others to consider theirs, I do not
+find that once in twenty times any such picture is
+formed, and when it is, there is most commonly a
+particular effort of the imagination for that purpose.
+But the aggregate words operate, as I said of the
+compound-abstracts, not by presenting any image to
+the mind, but by having from use the same effect on
+being mentioned, that their original has when it is
+seen. Suppose we were to read a passage to this
+effect: &quot;The river Danube rises in a moist and
+mountainous soil in the heart of Germany, where,
+winding to and fro, it waters several principalities,
+until, turning into Austria, and laving the walls of
+Vienna, it passes into Hungary; there with a vast
+flood, augmented by the Save and the Drave, it
+quits Christendom, and rolling through the barbarous
+countries which border on Tartary, it enters by
+many mouths in the Black Sea.&quot; In this description
+many things are mentioned, as mountains, rivers, cities,
+the sea, &amp;c. But let anybody examine himself,
+and see whether he has had impressed on his imagination
+any pictures of a river, mountain, watery soil,
+Germany, &amp;c. Indeed it is impossible, in the rapidity
+and quick succession of words in conversation, to have
+ideas both of the sound of the word, and of the thing
+represented; besides, some words, expressing real
+essences, are so mixed with others of a general and
+nominal import, that it is impracticable to jump from
+sense to thought, from particulars to generals, from
+things to words, in such a manner as to answer the
+purposes of life; nor is it necessary that we should.<!-- Page 276 --><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" title="252" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION V.<br />
+<br />
+EXAMPLES THAT WORDS MAY AFFECT WITHOUT RAISING
+IMAGES.</h3>
+
+<p>I find it very hard to persuade several that their
+passions are affected by words from whence they have
+no ideas; and yet harder to convince them that in
+the ordinary course of conversation we are sufficiently
+understood without raising any images of the things
+concerning which we speak. It seems to be an odd
+subject of dispute with any man, whether he has ideas
+in his mind or not. Of this, at first view, every man,
+in his own forum, ought to judge without appeal.
+But, strange as it may appear, we are often at a loss
+to know what ideas we have of things, or whether we
+have any ideas at all upon some subjects. It even
+requires a good deal of attention to be thoroughly
+satisfied on this head. Since I wrote these papers, I
+found two very striking instances of the possibility
+there is, that a man may hear words without having
+any idea of the things which they represent, and yet
+afterwards be capable of returning them to others,
+combined in a new way, and with great propriety, energy,
+and instruction. The first instance is that of
+Mr. Blacklock, a poet blind from his birth. Few men
+blessed with the most perfect sight can describe visual
+objects with more spirit and justness than this blind
+man; which cannot possibly be attributed to his having
+a clearer conception of the things he describes
+than is common to other persons. Mr. Spence, in an
+elegant preface which he has written to the works of
+this poet, reasons very ingeniously, and, I imagine,
+for the most part, very rightly, upon the cause of this
+<!-- Page 277 --><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" title="253" class="pagenum"></a>extraordinary phenomenon; but I cannot altogether
+agree with him, that some improprieties in language
+and thought, which occur in these poems, have arisen
+from the blind poet's imperfect conception of visual
+objects, since such improprieties, and much greater,
+may be found in writers even of a higher class than
+Mr. Blacklock, and who, notwithstanding, possessed
+the faculty of seeing in its full perfection. Here is a
+poet doubtless as much affected by his own descriptions
+as any that reads them can be; and yet he is affected
+with this strong enthusiasm by things of which
+he neither has, nor can possibly have, any idea further
+than that of a bare sound: and why may not
+those who read his works be affected in the same
+manner that he was; with as little of any real ideas
+of the things described? The second instance is of
+Mr. Saunderson, professor of mathematics in the
+University of Cambridge. This learned man had
+acquired great knowledge in natural philosophy, in
+astronomy, and whatever sciences depend upon mathematical
+skill. What was the most extraordinary
+and the most to my purpose, he gave excellent lectures
+upon light and colors; and this man taught
+others the theory of those ideas which they had, and
+which he himself undoubtedly had not. But it is
+probable that the words red, blue, green, answered to
+him as well as the ideas of the colors themselves; for
+the ideas of greater or lesser degrees of refrangibility
+being applied to these words, and the blind man being
+instructed in what other respects they were found
+to agree or to disagree, it was as easy for him to reason
+upon the words as if he had been fully master of
+the ideas. Indeed it must be owned he could make
+no new discoveries in the way of experiment. He
+<!-- Page 278 --><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" title="254" class="pagenum"></a>did nothing but what we do every day in common discourse.
+When I wrote this last sentence, and used
+the words <i>every day</i> and <i>common discourse</i>, I had no
+images in my mind of any succession of time; nor of
+men in conference with each other; nor do I imagine
+that the reader will have any such ideas on reading
+it. Neither when I spoke of red, or blue, and green,
+as well as refrangibility, had I these several colors,
+or the rays of light passing into a different medium,
+and there diverted from their course, painted before
+me in the way of images. I know very well that the
+mind possesses a faculty of raising such images at
+pleasure; but then an act of the will is necessary to
+this; and in ordinary conversation or reading it is
+very rarely that any image at all is excited in the
+mind. If I say, &quot;I shall go to Italy next summer,&quot;
+I am well understood. Yet I believe nobody has by
+this painted in his imagination the exact figure of the
+speaker passing by land or by water, or both; sometimes
+on horseback, sometimes in a carriage: with
+all the particulars of the journey. Still less has he
+any idea of Italy, the country to which I proposed to
+go; or of the greenness of the fields, the ripening of
+the fruits, and the warmth of the air, with the change
+to this from a different season, which are the ideas
+for which the word <i>summer</i> is substituted; but least
+of all has he any image from the word <i>next</i>; for this
+word stands for the idea of many summers, with the
+exclusion of all but one: and surely the man who
+says <i>next summer</i> has no images of such a succession,
+and such an exclusion. In short, it is not only of
+those ideas which are commonly called abstract, and
+of which no image at all can be formed, but even of
+particular, real beings, that we converse without hav<!-- Page 279 --><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" title="255" class="pagenum"></a>ing
+any idea of them excited in the imagination; as
+will certainly appear on a diligent examination of our
+own minds. Indeed, so little does poetry depend for
+its effect on the power of raising sensible images, that
+I am convinced it would lose a very considerable part
+of its energy, if this were the necessary result of all
+description. Because that union of affecting words,
+which is the most powerful of all poetical instruments,
+would frequently lose its force along with its
+propriety and consistency, if the sensible images were
+always excited. There is not, perhaps, in the whole
+&AElig;neid a more grand and labored passage than the
+description of Vulcan's cavern in Etna, and the
+works that are there carried on. Virgil dwells particularly
+on the formation of the thunder which he
+describes unfinished under the hammers of the Cyclops.
+But what are the principles of this extraordinary
+composition?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquos&aelig;</div>
+<div>Addiderant; rutili tres ignis, et alitis austri:</div>
+<div>Fulgores nunc terrificos, sonitumque, metumque</div>
+<div>Miscebant operi, flammisque sequacibus iras.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">This seems to me admirably sublime: yet if we attend
+coolly to the kind of sensible images which a
+combination of ideas of this sort must form, the chimeras
+of madmen cannot appear more wild and absurd
+than such a picture. &quot;<i>Three rays of twisted
+showers, three of watery clouds, three of fire, and three
+of the winged south wind; then mixed they in the work
+terrific lightnings, and sound, and fear, and anger, with
+pursuing flames.</i>&quot; This strange composition is formed
+into a gross body; it is hammered by the Cyclops, it
+is in part polished, and partly continues rough. The
+truth is, if poetry gives us a noble assemblage of
+<!-- Page 280 --><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" title="256" class="pagenum"></a>words corresponding to many noble ideas, which are
+connected by circumstances of time or place, or related
+to each other as cause and effect, or associated
+in any natural way, they may be moulded together
+in any form, and perfectly answer their end. The
+picturesque connection is not demanded; because no
+real picture is formed; nor is the effect of the description
+at all the less upon this account. What is
+said of Helen by Priam and the old men of his council,
+is generally thought to give us the highest possible
+idea of that fatal beauty.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i1"><span lang="el"
+title="Ou nemesis, Tr&ocirc;as kai eukn&ecirc;midas 'Achaious">
+Ο� νέμεσις, Τ�ὢας καὶ �ὔκνήμιδας 'Αχ-αιοὺς
+</span></div>
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="Toi&ecirc;d' amphi gunaiki polun chronon algea paschein">
+Τοιἣδ' ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χ�όνον ἄλγεα πάσχ-ειν.
+</span></div>
+<div><span lang="el"
+title="Ain&ocirc;s athanat&ecirc;si the&ecirc;s eis &ocirc;pa eoiken..">
+Αἰνὢς ἀθανάτησι θεἣς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν.
+</span></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<!-- Transliteration
+Ou nemesis, Tr&ocirc;as kai eukn&ecirc;midas 'Achaious
+Toi&ecirc;d' amphi gunaiki polun chronon algea paschein
+Ain&ocirc;s athanat&ecirc;si the&ecirc;s eis &ocirc;pa eoiken.
+-->
+<!-- Unicode
+Ο� νέμεσις, Τ�ὢας καὶ �ὔκνήμιδας 'Αχ-αιοὺς
+Τοιἣδ' ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χ�όνον ἄλγεα πάσχ-ειν.
+Αἰνὢς ἀθανάτησι θεἣς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν.
+-->
+<!-- Betacode
+Oy) ne/mesis, Trô)\as kai\ e)y)/knê/midas 'Ach-aioy\s
+Toiê(\d' a)mphi\ gynaiki\ poly\n chro/non a)/lgea pa/sch-ein.
+Ai)nô)\s a)thana/têsi theê(\s ei)s ô~)pa e)/oiken.
+-->
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+
+<div class="poem" style="margin-left: 4em; font-size: 95%"><div class="stanza">
+<div><span style="margin-left: -.5em;">&quot;They cried, No wonder such celestial charms</span></div>
+<div>For nine long years have set the world in arms;</div>
+<div>What winning graces! what majestic mien!</div>
+<div>She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.&quot;</div>
+<p class="citation">POPE.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Here is not one word said of the particulars of her
+beauty; nothing which can in the least help us to
+any precise idea of her person; but yet we are much
+more touched by this manner of mentioning her,
+than by those long and labored descriptions of Helen,
+whether handed down by tradition, or formed by
+fancy, which are to be met with in some authors.
+I am sure it affects me much more than the minute
+description which Spenser has given of Belphebe;
+though I own that there are parts, in that description,
+as there are in all the descriptions of that excellent
+writer, extremely fine and poetical. The terrible
+picture which Lucretius has drawn of religion in
+order to display the magnanimity of his philosophical
+hero in opposing her, is thought to be designed with
+great boldness and spirit:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div><!-- Page 281 --><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" title="257" class="pagenum"></a>
+Humana ante oculos foed&egrave; cum vita jaceret,</div>
+<div>In terris, oppressa gravi sub religione,</div>
+<div>Qu&aelig; caput e coeli regionibus ostendebat</div>
+<div>Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans;</div>
+<div>Primus Graius homo mortales tollere contra</div>
+<div>Est oculos ausus.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">What idea do you derive from so excellent a picture?
+none at all, most certainly: neither has the poet said
+a single word which might in the least serve to mark
+a single limb or feature of the phantom, which he
+intended to represent in all the horrors imagination
+can conceive. In reality, poetry and rhetoric do not
+succeed in exact description so well as painting does;
+their business is, to affect rather by sympathy than
+imitation; to display rather the effect of things on
+the mind of the speaker, or of others, than to present
+a clear idea of the things themselves. This is their
+most extensive province, and that in which they succeed
+the best.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VI.<br />
+<br />
+POETRY NOT STRICTLY AN IMITATIVE ART.</h3>
+
+<p>Hence we may observe that poetry, taken in its
+most general sense, cannot with strict propriety be
+called an art of imitation. It is indeed an imitation
+so far as it describes the manners and passions of men
+which their words can express; where <i>animi motus
+effert interprete lingua</i>. There it is strictly imitation;
+and all merely <i>dramatic</i> poetry is of this sort. But
+<i>descriptive</i> poetry operates chiefly by <i>substitution</i>; by
+the means of sounds, which by custom have the effect
+of realities. Nothing is an imitation further than as
+it resembles some other thing; and words undoubt<!-- Page 282 --><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" title="258" class="pagenum"></a>edly
+have no sort of resemblance to the ideas for
+which they stand.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SECTION VII.<br />
+<br />
+HOW WORDS INFLUENCE THE PASSIONS.</h3>
+
+<p>Now, as words affect, not by any original power,
+but by representation, it might be supposed, that their
+influence over the passions should be but light; yet
+it is quite otherwise; for we find by experience, that
+eloquence and poetry are as capable, nay indeed
+much more capable, of making deep and lively impressions
+than any other arts, and even than nature
+itself in very many cases. And this arises chiefly
+from these three causes. First, that we take an extraordinary
+part in the passions of others, and that
+we are easily affected and brought into sympathy by
+any tokens which are shown of them; and there are
+no tokens which can express all the circumstances of
+most passions so fully as words; so that if a person
+speaks upon any subject, he can not only convey the
+subject to you, but likewise the manner in which he
+is himself affected by it. Certain it is, that the influence
+of most things on our passions is not so much
+from the things themselves, as from our opinions concerning
+them; and these again depend very much on
+the opinions of other men, conveyable for the most
+part by words only. Secondly, there are many things
+of a very affecting nature, which can seldom occur in
+the reality, but the words that represent them often
+do; and thus they have an opportunity of making a
+deep impression and taking root in the mind, whilst
+the idea of the reality was transient; and to some
+<!-- Page 283 --><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" title="259" class="pagenum"></a>perhaps never really occurred in any shape, to whom
+it is notwithstanding very affecting, as war, death,
+famine, &amp;c. Besides many ideas have never been at
+all presented to the senses of any men but by words,
+as God, angels, devils, heaven, and hell, all of which
+have however a great influence over the passions.
+Thirdly, by words we have it in our power to make
+such <i>combinations</i> as we cannot possibly do otherwise.
+By this power of combining we are able, by the addition
+of well-chosen circumstances, to give a new life
+and force to the simple object. In painting we may
+represent any fine figure we please; but we never can
+give it those enlivening touches which it may receive
+from words. To represent an angel in a picture, you
+can only draw a beautiful young man winged: but
+what painting can furnish out anything so grand as
+the addition of one word, &quot;the angel of the <i>Lord</i>&quot;?
+It is true, I have here no clear idea; but these
+words affect the mind more than the sensible image
+did; which is all I contend for. A picture of Priam
+dragged to the altar's foot, and there murdered, if it
+were well executed, would undoubtedly be very moving;
+but there are very aggravating circumstances,
+which it could never represent:</p>
+
+<blockquote style="text-align: center">
+<p>Sanguine foedantem <i>quos ipse sacraverat</i> ignes.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">As a further instance, let us consider those lines of
+Milton, where he describes the travels of the fallen
+angels through their dismal habitation:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i2">&quot;O'er many a dark and dreary vale</div>
+<div>They passed, and many a region dolorous;</div>
+<div>O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp;</div>
+<div>Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,</div>
+<div>A universe of death.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Here is displayed the force of union in</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><!-- Page 284 --><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" title="260" class="pagenum"></a>
+<div>&quot;Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">which yet would lose the greatest part of their effect,
+if they were not the</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>&quot;Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades&mdash;of <i>Death</i>.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>This idea or this affection caused by a word, which
+nothing but a word could annex to the others, raises
+a very great degree of the sublime, and this sublime
+is raised yet higher by what follows, a &quot;<i>universe of
+death</i>.&quot; Here are again two ideas not presentable
+but by language, and an union of them great and
+amazing beyond conception; if they may properly be
+called ideas which present no distinct image to the
+mind; but still it will be difficult to conceive how
+words can move the passions which belong to real
+objects, without representing these objects clearly.
+This is difficult to us, because we do not sufficiently
+distinguish, in our observations upon language, between
+a clear expression and a strong expression.
+These are frequently confounded with each other,
+though they are in reality extremely different. The
+former regards the understanding, the latter belongs to
+the passions. The one describes a thing as it is, the
+latter describes it as it is felt. Now, as there is a moving
+tone of voice, an impassioned countenance, an agitated
+gesture, which affect independently of the things
+about which they are exerted, so there are words, and
+certain dispositions of words, which being peculiarly
+devoted to passionate subjects, and always used by
+those who are under the influence of any passion,
+touch and move us more than those which far more
+clearly and distinctly express the subject-matter. We
+yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The
+truth is, all verbal description, merely as naked de<!-- Page 285 --><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" title="261" class="pagenum"></a>scription,
+though never so exact, conveys so poor and
+insufficient an idea of the thing described, that it could
+scarcely have the smallest effect, if the speaker did
+not call in to his aid those modes of speech that mark
+a strong and lively feeling in himself. Then, by the
+contagion of our passions, we catch a fire already kindled
+in another, which probably might never have
+been struck out by the object described. Words, by
+strongly conveying the passions by those means which
+we have already mentioned, fully compensate for
+their weakness in other respects. It may be observed,
+that very polished languages, and such as are praised
+for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally
+deficient in strength. The French language
+has that perfection and that defect. Whereas the
+Oriental tongues, and in general the languages of
+most unpolished people, have a great force and energy
+of expression, and this is but natural. Uncultivated
+people are but ordinary observers of things,
+and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that
+reason they admire more, and are more affected with
+what they see, and therefore express themselves in a
+warmer and more passionate manner. If the affection
+be well conveyed, it will work its effect without
+any clear idea, often without any idea at all of the
+thing which has originally given rise to it.</p>
+
+<p>It might be expected, from the fertility of the subject,
+that I should consider poetry, as it regards the
+sublime and beautiful, more at large; but it must be
+observed, that in this light it has been often and well
+handled already. It was not my design to enter into
+the criticism of the sublime and beautiful in any art,
+but to attempt to lay down such principles as may
+tend to ascertain, to distinguish, and to form a sort
+<!-- Page 286 --><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" title="262" class="pagenum"></a>of standard for them; which purposes I thought
+might be best effected by an inquiry into the properties
+of such things in nature, as raise love and astonishment
+in us; and by showing in what manner they
+operated to produce these passions. Words were only
+so far to be considered as to show upon what principle
+they were capable of being the representatives of
+these natural things, and by what powers they were
+able to affect us often as strongly as the things they
+represent, and sometimes much more strongly.<!-- Page 287 --><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" title="263" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_SHORT_ACCOUNT_OF_A_LATE_SHORT_ADMINISTRATION" id="A_SHORT_ACCOUNT_OF_A_LATE_SHORT_ADMINISTRATION"></a>
+<span style="font-size: 60%">A</span><br />
+<br />
+SHORT ACCOUNT<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 60%">OF</span><br />
+<br />
+A LATE SHORT ADMINISTRATION.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 60%">1766.</span><br />
+</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+<div><!-- Page 288 --><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" title="264" class="pagenum"></a><!-- Page 289 --><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" title="265" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+
+
+<p>The late administration came into employment,
+under the mediation of the Duke of Cumberland,
+on the tenth day of July, 1765; and was removed,
+upon a plan settled by the Earl of Chatham,
+on the thirtieth day of July, 1766, having lasted just
+one year and twenty days.</p>
+
+<p>In that space of time</p>
+
+<p>The distractions of the British empire were composed,
+by <i>the repeal of the American stamp act</i>;</p>
+
+<p>But the constitutional superiority of Great Britain
+was preserved by <i>the act for securing the dependence
+of the colonies</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Private</i> houses were relieved from the jurisdiction
+of the excise, by <i>the repeal of the cider tax</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The personal liberty of the subject was confirmed,
+by <i>the resolution against general warrants</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The lawful secrets of business and friendship were
+rendered inviolable, by <i>the resolution for condemning
+the seizure of papers</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The trade of America was set free from injudicious
+and ruinous impositions,&mdash;its revenue was improved,
+and settled upon a rational foundation,&mdash;its com<!-- Page 290 --><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" title="266" class="pagenum"></a>merce
+extended with foreign countries; while all
+the advantages were secured to Great Britain, by <i>the
+act for repealing certain duties, and encouraging, regulating,
+and securing the trade of this kingdom, and the
+British dominions in America</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Materials were provided and insured to our manufactures,&mdash;the
+sale of these manufactures was increased,&mdash;the
+African trade preserved and extended,&mdash;the
+principles of the act of navigation pursued,
+and the plan improved,&mdash;and the trade for bullion
+rendered free, secure, and permanent, by <i>the act for
+opening certain ports in Dominica and Jamaica</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That administration was the first which proposed
+and encouraged public meetings and free consultations
+of merchants from all parts of the kingdom; by
+which means the truest lights have been received;
+great benefits have been already derived to manufactures
+and commerce; and the most extensive prospects
+are opened for further improvement.</p>
+
+<p>Under them, the interests of our northern and
+southern colonies, before that time jarring and dissonant,
+were understood, compared, adjusted, and
+perfectly reconciled. The passions and animosities
+of the colonies, by judicious and lenient measures,
+were allayed and composed, and the foundation laid
+for a lasting agreement amongst them.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst that administration provided for the liberty
+and commerce of their country, as the true basis of
+its power, they consulted its interests, they asserted
+its honor abroad, with temper and with firmness;
+by making an advantageous treaty of commerce with
+Russia; by obtaining a liquidation of the Canada
+bills, to the satisfaction of the proprietors; by reviving
+and raising from its ashes the negotiation for
+<!-- Page 291 --><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" title="267" class="pagenum"></a>the Manilla ransom, which had been extinguished
+and abandoned by their predecessors.</p>
+
+<p>They treated their sovereign with decency; with
+reverence. They discountenanced, and, it is hoped,
+forever abolished, the dangerous and unconstitutional
+practice of removing military officers for their votes
+in Parliament. They firmly adhered to those friends
+of liberty, who had run all hazards in its cause; and
+provided for them in preference to every other claim.</p>
+
+<p>With the Earl of Bute they had no personal connection;
+no correspondence of councils. They neither
+courted him nor persecuted him. They practised
+no corruption; nor were they even suspected of it.
+They sold no offices. They obtained no reversions
+or pensions, either coming in or going out, for them
+selves, their families, or their dependents.</p>
+
+<p>In the prosecution of their measures they were
+traversed by an opposition of a new and singular
+character; an opposition of placemen and pensioners.
+They were supported by the confidence of the nation.
+And having held their offices under many difficulties
+and discouragements, they left them at the express
+command, as they had accepted them at the earnest
+request, of their royal master.</p>
+
+<p>These are plain facts; of a clear and public nature;
+neither extended by elaborate reasoning, nor
+heightened by the coloring of eloquence. They are
+the services of a single year.</p>
+
+<p>The removal of that administration from power is
+not to them premature; since they were in office long
+enough to accomplish many plans of public utility;
+and, by their perseverance and resolution, rendered
+the way smooth and easy to their successors; having
+left their king and their country in a much better
+<!-- Page 292 --><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" title="268" class="pagenum"></a>condition than they found them. By the temper they
+manifest, they seem to have now no other wish than
+that their successors may do the public as real and as
+faithful service as they have done.<!-- Page 293 --><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" title="269" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="OBSERVATIONS_ON_A_LATE_PUBLICATION" id="OBSERVATIONS_ON_A_LATE_PUBLICATION"></a>
+OBSERVATIONS<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 71%">ON A LATE PUBLICATION,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 60%">INTITULED</span><br />
+<br />
+&quot;THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION.&quot;<br />
+</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>&quot;O Tite, si quid ego adjuvero curamve levasso,</div>
+<div>Qu&aelig; nunc te coquit, et versat sub pectore fixa,</div>
+<div>Ecquid erit pretii?&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="citation">ENN. ap. CIC.</p>
+
+<h2 style="font-size: 100%">1769.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+<!-- Page 294 --><div><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" title="270" class="pagenum"></a><!-- Page 295 --><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" title="271" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+
+
+<p>Party divisions, whether on the whole operating
+for good or evil, are things inseparable from free
+government. This is a truth which, I believe, admits
+little dispute, having been established by the uniform
+experience of all ages. The part a good citizen ought
+to take in these divisions has been a matter of much
+deeper controversy. But God forbid that any controversy
+relating to our essential morals should admit of
+no decision. It appears to me, that this question,
+like most of the others which regard our duties in
+life, is to be determined by our station in it. Private
+men may be wholly neutral, and entirely innocent:
+but they who are legally invested with public trust,
+or stand on the high ground of rank and dignity,
+which is trust implied, can hardly in any case remain
+indifferent, without the certainty of sinking into insignificance;
+and thereby in effect deserting that post
+in which, with the fullest authority, and for the wisest
+purposes, the laws and institutions of their country
+have fixed them. However, if it be the office of
+those who are thus circumstanced, to take a decided
+part, it is no less their duty that it should be a sober
+one. It ought to be circumscribed by the same laws
+<!-- Page 296 --><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" title="272" class="pagenum"></a>of decorum, and balanced by the same temper, which
+bound and regulate all the virtues. In a word, we
+ought to act in party with all the moderation which
+does not absolutely enervate that vigor, and quench
+that fervency of spirit, without which the best wishes
+for the public good must evaporate in empty speculation.</p>
+
+<p>It is probably from some such motives that the
+friends of a very respectable party in this kingdom
+have been hitherto silent. For these two years past,
+from one and the same quarter of politics, a continual
+fire has been kept upon them; sometimes from the
+unwieldy column of quartos and octavos; sometimes
+from the light squadrons of occasional pamphlets and
+flying sheets. Every month has brought on its periodical
+calumny. The abuse has taken every shape
+which the ability of the writers could give it; plain
+invective, clumsy raillery, misrepresented anecdote.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor"
+title="History of the Minority. History of the Repeal of the Stamp Act.
+Considerations on Trade and Finance. Political Register, &amp;c., &amp;c.">[38]</a>
+No method of vilifying the measures, the abilities, the
+intentions, or the persons which compose that body,
+has been omitted.</p>
+
+<p>On their part nothing was opposed but patience
+and character. It was a matter of the most serious
+and indignant affliction to persons who thought themselves
+in conscience bound to oppose a ministry dangerous
+from its very constitution, as well as its
+measures, to find themselves, whenever they faced
+their adversaries, continually attacked on the rear by
+a set of men who pretended to be actuated by motives
+similar to theirs. They saw that the plan long
+pursued, with but too fatal a success, was to break
+the strength of this kingdom, by frittering down the
+<!-- Page 297 --><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" title="273" class="pagenum"></a>bodies which compose it, by fomenting bitter and
+sanguinary animosities, and by dissolving every tie
+of social affection and public trust. These virtuous
+men, such I am warranted by public opinion to call
+them, were resolved rather to endure everything,
+than co-operate in that design. A diversity of opinion
+upon almost every principle of politics had indeed
+drawn a strong line of separation between them
+and some others. However, they were desirous not
+to extend the misfortune by unnecessary bitterness;
+they wished to prevent a difference of opinion on the
+commonwealth from festering into rancorous and
+incurable hostility. Accordingly they endeavored
+that all past controversies should be forgotten; and
+that enough for the day should be the evil thereof.
+There is however a limit at which forbearance ceases
+to be a virtue. Men may tolerate injuries whilst
+they are only personal to themselves. But it is not
+the first of virtues to bear with moderation the indignities
+that are offered to our country. A piece
+has at length appeared, from the quarter of all the
+former attacks, which upon every public consideration
+demands an answer. Whilst persons more equal
+to this business may be engaged in affairs of greater
+moment, I hope I shall be excused, if, in a few hours
+of a time not very important, and from such materials
+as I have by me (more than enough however for
+this purpose), I undertake to set the facts and arguments
+of this wonderful performance in a proper
+light. I will endeavor to state what this piece is;
+the purpose for which I take it to have been written;
+and the effects (supposing it should have any effect
+at all) it must necessarily produce.</p>
+
+<p>This piece is called &quot;The Present State of the
+<!-- Page 298 --><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" title="274" class="pagenum"></a>Nation.&quot; It may be considered as a sort of digest of
+the avowed maxims of a certain political school, the
+effects of whose doctrines and practices this country
+will fuel long and severely. It is made up of a farrago
+of almost every topic which has been agitated on
+national affairs in parliamentary debate, or private
+conversation, for these last seven years. The oldest
+controversies are hauled out of the dust with which
+time and neglect had covered them. Arguments ten
+times repeated, a thousand times answered before,
+are here repeated again. Public accounts formerly
+printed and reprinted revolve once more, and find
+their old station in this sober meridian. All the
+commonplace lamentations upon the decay of trade,
+the increase of taxes, and the high price of labor and
+provisions, are here retailed again and again in the
+same tone with which they have drawled through columns
+of Gazetteers and Advertisers for a century together.
+Paradoxes which affront common sense, and
+uninteresting barren truths which generate no conclusion,
+are thrown in to augment unwieldy bulk,
+without adding anything to weight. Because two
+accusations are better than one, contradictions are
+set staring one another in the face, without even an
+attempt to reconcile them. And, to give the whole a
+sort of portentous air of labor and information, the
+table of the House of Commons is swept into this
+grand reservoir of politics.</p>
+
+<p>As to the composition, it bears a striking and whimsical
+resemblance to a funeral sermon, not only in the
+pathetic prayer with which it concludes, but in the
+style and tenor of the whole performance. It is piteously
+doleful, nodding every now and then towards
+dulness; well stored with pious frauds, and, like most
+<!-- Page 299 --><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" title="275" class="pagenum"></a>discourses of the sort, much better calculated for the
+private advantage of the preacher than the edification
+of the hearers.</p>
+
+<p>The author has indeed so involved his subject, that
+it is frequently far from being easy to comprehend his
+meaning. It is happy for the public that it is never
+difficult to fathom his design. The apparent intention
+of this author is to draw the most aggravated,
+hideous and deformed picture of the state of this
+country, which his querulous eloquence, aided by the
+arbitrary dominion he assumes over fact, is capable of
+exhibiting. Had he attributed our misfortunes to
+their true cause, the injudicious tampering of bold,
+improvident, and visionary ministers at one period,
+or to their supine negligence and traitorous dissensions
+at another, the complaint had been just, and
+might have been useful. But far the greater and
+much the worst part of the state which he exhibits
+is owing, according to his representation, not to accidental
+and extrinsic mischiefs attendant on the
+nation, but to its radical weakness and constitutional
+distempers. All this however is not without purpose.
+The author is in hopes, that, when we are fallen into
+a fanatical terror for the national salvation, we shall
+then be ready to throw ourselves,&mdash;in a sort of precipitate
+trust, some strange disposition of the mind
+jumbled up of presumption and despair,&mdash;into the
+hands of the most pretending and forward undertaker.
+One such undertaker at least he has in readiness
+for our service. But let me assure this generous
+person, that however he may succeed in exciting
+our fears for the public danger, he will find it hard
+indeed to engage us to place any confidence in the
+system he proposes for our security.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 300 --><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" title="276" class="pagenum"></a>His undertaking is great. The purpose of this
+pamphlet, at which it aims directly or obliquely in
+every page, is to persuade the public of three or four
+of the most difficult points in the world,&mdash;that all the
+advantages of the late war were on the part of the
+Bourbon alliance; that the peace of Paris perfectly
+consulted the dignity and interest of this country;
+and that the American Stamp Act was a masterpiece
+of policy and finance; that the only good minister
+this nation has enjoyed since his Majesty's accession,
+is the Earl of Bute; and the only good managers of
+revenue we have seen are Lord Despenser and Mr.
+George Grenville; and, under the description of men
+of virtue and ability, he holds them out to us as the
+only persons fit to put our affairs in order. Let not
+the reader mistake me: he does not actually name
+these persons; but having highly applauded their
+conduct in all its parts, and heavily censured every
+other set of men in the kingdom, he then recommends
+us to his men of virtue and ability.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the author's scheme. Whether it will
+answer his purpose I know not. But surely that purpose
+ought to be a wonderfully good one, to warrant
+the methods he has taken to compass it. If the
+facts and reasonings in this piece are admitted, it is
+all over with us. The continuance of our tranquillity
+depends upon the compassion of our rivals. Unable
+to secure to ourselves the advantages of peace, we
+are at the same time utterly unfit for war. It is impossible,
+if this state of things be credited abroad,
+that we can have any alliance; all nations will fly
+from so dangerous a connection, lest, instead of being
+partakers of our strength, they should only become
+sharers in our ruin. If it is believed at home, all
+<!-- Page 301 --><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" title="277" class="pagenum"></a>that firmness of mind, and dignified national courage,
+which used to be the great support of this isle against
+the powers of the world, must melt away, and fail
+within us.</p>
+
+<p>In such a state of things can it be amiss if I aim at
+holding out some comfort to the nation; another sort
+of comfort, indeed, than that which this writer provides
+for it; a comfort not from its physician, but
+from its constitution: if I attempt to show that all
+the arguments upon which he founds the decay of
+that constitution, and the necessity of that physician,
+are vain and frivolous? I will follow the author
+closely in his own long career, through the war, the
+peace, the finances, our trade, and our foreign politics:
+not for the sake of the particular measures
+which he discusses; that can be of no use; they are
+all decided; their good is all enjoyed, or their evil
+incurred: but for the sake of the principles of war,
+peace, trade, and finances. These principles are of
+infinite moment. They must come again and again
+under consideration; and it imports the public, of all
+things, that those of its ministers be enlarged, and
+just, and well confirmed, upon all these subjects.
+What notions this author entertains we shall see
+presently; notions in my opinion very irrational, and
+extremely dangerous; and which, if they should crawl
+from pamphlets into counsels, and be realized from
+private speculation into national measures, cannot
+fail of hastening and completing our ruin.</p>
+
+<p>This author, after having paid his compliment to
+the showy appearances of the late war in our favor, is
+in the utmost haste to tell you that these appearances
+were <i>fallacious</i>, that they were no more than an <i>imposition</i>.&mdash;I
+fear I must trouble the reader with a
+<!-- Page 302 --><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" title="278" class="pagenum"></a>pretty long quotation, in order to set before him the
+more clearly this author's peculiar way of conceiving
+and reasoning:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Happily (the K.) was then advised by ministers,
+who did not suffer themselves to be dazzled by the
+glare of brilliant appearances; but, knowing them to
+be <i>fallacious</i>, they wisely resolved to profit of their
+splendor before our enemies should also <i>discover the
+imposition</i>.&mdash;The increase in the exports was found
+to have been occasioned chiefly by the demands of
+<i>our own fleets and armies</i>, and, instead of bringing
+wealth to the nation, was to be paid for by oppressive
+taxes upon the people of England. While the British
+seamen were consuming on board our men of war
+and privateers, foreign ships and foreign seamen were
+employed in the transportation of our merchandise;
+and the carrying trade, so great a source of wealth
+and marine, <i>was entirely engrossed by the neutral nations</i>.
+The number of British ships annually arriving
+in our ports was reduced 1756 sail, containing
+92,559 tons, on a medium of the six years' war,
+compared with the six years of peace preceding it.&mdash;The
+conquest of the Havannah had, indeed, stopped
+the remittance of specie from Mexico to Spain; but
+it had not enabled England to seize it: on the contrary,
+our merchants suffered by the detention of the
+galleons, as their <i>correspondents in Spain were disabled
+from paying them for their goods sent to America.
+The loss of the trade to Old Spain was a further bar to
+an influx of specie</i>; and the attempt upon Portugal
+had not only deprived us of an import of bullion
+from thence, but the payment of our troops employed
+in its defence was a fresh drain opened for the diminution
+of our circulating specie.&mdash;The high pre<!-- Page 303 --><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" title="279" class="pagenum"></a>miums
+given for new loans had sunk the price of the
+old stock near a third of its original value; so that
+the purchasers had an obligation from the state to
+repay them with an addition of 33 per cent to their
+capital. Every new loan required new taxes to be
+imposed; new taxes must add to the price of our
+manufactures, <i>and lessen their consumption among foreigners</i>.
+The decay of our trade must necessarily
+<i>occasion a decrease of the public revenue</i>; and a deficiency
+of our funds must either be made up by fresh
+taxes, which would only add to the calamity, or our
+national credit must be destroyed, by showing the
+public creditors the inability of the nation to repay
+them their principal money.&mdash;Bounties had already
+been given for recruits which exceeded the year's
+wages of the ploughman and reaper; and as these
+were exhausted, and <i>husbandry stood still for want of
+hands</i>, the manufacturers were next to be tempted to
+quit the anvil and the loom by higher offers.&mdash;<i>France,
+bankrupt France, had no such calamities impending
+over her; her distresses were great, but they were immediate
+and temporary; her want of credit preserved
+her from a great increase of debt, and the loss of her
+ultramarine dominions lessened her expenses. Her colonies
+had, indeed, put themselves into the hands of the
+English; but the property of her subjects had been preserved
+by capitulations, and a way opened for making
+her those remittances which the war had before suspended,
+with as much security as in time of peace</i>.&mdash;Her
+armies in Germany had been hitherto prevented
+from seizing upon Hanover; but they continued to
+encamp on the same ground on which the first battle
+was fought; and, as it must ever happen from the
+policy of that government, <i>the last troops she sent into
+<!-- Page 304 --><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" title="280" class="pagenum"></a>the field were always found to be the best, and her frequent
+losses only served to fill her regiments with better
+soldiers. The conquest of Hanover became therefore
+every campaign more probable</i>.&mdash;It is to be noted,
+that the French troops received subsistence only, for
+the last three years of the war; and that, although
+large arrears were due to them at its conclusion, the
+charge was the less during its continuance.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor"
+title="Pages 6-10.">[39]</a></p>
+
+<p>If any one be willing to see to how much greater
+lengths the author carries these ideas, he will recur to
+the book. This is sufficient for a specimen of his
+manner of thinking. I believe one reflection uniformly
+obtrudes itself upon every reader of these paragraphs.
+For what purpose, in any cause, shall we
+hereafter contend with France? Can we ever flatter
+ourselves that we shall wage a more successful war?
+If, on our part, in a war the most prosperous we
+ever carried on, by sea and by land, and in every
+part of the globe, attended with the unparalleled
+circumstance of an immense increase of trade and
+augmentation of revenue; if a continued series of
+disappointments, disgraces, and defeats, followed by
+public bankruptcy, on the part of France; if all
+these still leave her a gainer on the whole balance,
+will it not be downright frenzy in us ever
+to look her in the face again, or to contend with
+her any, even the most essential points, since victory
+and defeat, though by different ways, equally conduct
+us to our ruin? Subjection to France without
+a struggle will indeed be less for our honor, but on
+every principle of our author it must be more for
+our advantage. According to his representation of
+things, the question is only concerning the most easy
+<!-- Page 305 --><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281" title="281" class="pagenum"></a>fall. France had not discovered, our statesman tells
+us, at the end of that war, the triumphs of defeat, and
+the resources which are derived from bankruptcy.
+For my poor part, I do not wonder at their blindness.
+But the English ministers saw further. Our
+author has at length let foreigners also into the secret,
+and made them altogether as wise as ourselves.
+It is their own fault if (<i>vulgato imperii arcano</i>) they
+are imposed upon any longer. They now are apprised
+of the sentiments which the great candidate
+for the government of this great empire entertains;
+and they will act accordingly. They are taught our
+weakness and their own advantages.</p>
+
+<p>He tells the world,<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor"
+title="Pages 9, 10.">[40]</a> that if France carries on the
+war against us in Germany, every loss she sustains
+contributes to the achievement of her conquest. If
+her armies are three years unpaid, she is the less exhausted
+by expense. If her credit is destroyed, she
+is the less oppressed with debt. If her troops are cut
+to pieces, they will by her policy (and a wonderful
+policy it is) be improved, and will be supplied with
+much better men. If the war is carried on in the
+colonies, he tells them<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 9.">[41]</a> that the loss of her ultramarine
+dominions lessens her expenses, and insures
+her remittances:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Per damna, per c&aelig;des, ab ipso</div>
+<div>Ducit opes animumque ferro.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">If so, what is it we can do to hurt her?&mdash;it will
+be all an <i>imposition</i>, all <i>fallacious</i>. Why, the result
+must be,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i4">Occidit, occidit</div>
+<div>Spes omnis, et fortuna nostri</div>
+<div>Nominis.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p><!-- Page 306 --><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282" title="282" class="pagenum"></a>The only way which the author's principles leave
+for our escape, is to reverse our condition into that of
+France, and to take her losing cards into our hands.
+But though his principles drive him to it, his politics
+will not suffer him to walk on this ground. Talking
+at our ease and of other countries, we may bear to be
+diverted with such speculations; but in England we
+shall never be taught to look upon the annihilation
+of our trade, the ruin of our credit, the defeat of our
+armies, and the loss of our ultramarine dominions
+(whatever the author may think of them), to be the
+high road to prosperity and greatness.</p>
+
+<p>The reader does not, I hope, imagine that I mean
+seriously to set about the refutation of these uningenious
+paradoxes and reveries without imagination. I
+state them only that we may discern a little in the
+questions of war and peace, the most weighty of all
+questions, what is the wisdom of those men who are
+held out to us as the only hope of an expiring nation.
+The present ministry is indeed of a strange character:
+at once indolent and distracted. But if a ministerial
+system should be formed, actuated by such maxims
+as are avowed in this piece, the vices of the present
+ministry would become their virtues; their indolence
+would be the greatest of all public benefits, and a
+distraction that entirely defeated every one of their
+schemes would be our only security from destruction.</p>
+
+<p>To have stated these reasonings is enough, I presume,
+to do their business. But they are accompanied
+with facts and records, which may seem of a
+little more weight. I trust, however, that the facts
+of this author will be as far from bearing the touchstone,
+as his arguments. On a little inquiry, they
+will be found as great an imposition as the successes
+<!-- Page 307 --><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283" title="283" class="pagenum"></a>they are meant to depreciate; for they are all either
+false or fallaciously applied; or not in the least to the
+purpose for which they are produced.</p>
+
+<p>First the author, in order to support his favorite
+paradox, that our possession of the French colonies
+was of no detriment to France, has thought proper to
+inform us, that<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 9.">[42]</a> &quot;they put themselves into the
+hands of the English.&quot; He uses the same assertion,
+in nearly the same words, in another place;<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 6.">[43]</a> &quot;her
+colonies had put themselves into our hands.&quot; Now,
+in justice, not only to fact and common sense, but to
+the incomparable valor and perseverance of our military
+and naval forces thus unhandsomely traduced,
+I must tell this author, that the French colonies did
+not &quot;put themselves into the hands of the English.&quot;
+They were compelled to submit; they were subdued
+by dint of English valor. Will the five years' war
+carried on in Canada, in which fell one of the principal
+hopes of this nation, and all the battles lost and
+gained during that anxious period, convince this author
+of his mistake? Let him inquire of Sir Jeffery
+Amherst, under whose conduct that war was carried
+on; of Sir Charles Saunders, whose steadiness and
+presence of mind saved our fleet, and were so eminently
+serviceable in the whole course of the siege of
+Quebec; of General Monckton, who was shot through
+the body there, whether France &quot;put her colonies into
+the hands of the English.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Though he has made no exception, yet I would be
+liberal to him; perhaps he means to confine himself
+to her colonies in the West Indies. But surely it will
+fare as ill with him there as in North America, whilst
+we remember that in our first attempt at Martinico
+<!-- Page 308 --><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284" title="284" class="pagenum"></a>we were actually defeated; that it was three months
+before we reduced Guadaloupe; and that the conquest
+of the Havannah was achieved by the highest
+conduct, aided by circumstances of the greatest good
+fortune. He knows the expense both of men and
+treasure at which we bought that place. However,
+if it had so pleased the peacemakers, it was no dear
+purchase; for it was decisive of the fortune of the
+war and the terms of the treaty: the Duke of Nivernois
+thought so; France, England, Europe, considered
+it in that light; all the world, except the then
+friends of the then ministry, who wept for our victories,
+and were in haste to get rid of the burden of
+our conquests. This author knows that France did
+not put those colonies into the hands of England;
+but he well knows who did put the most valuable of
+them into the hands of France.</p>
+
+<p>In the next place, our author<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 9.">[44]</a> is pleased to consider
+the conquest of those colonies in no other light
+than as a convenience for the remittances to France,
+which he asserts that the war had before suspended,
+but for which a way was opened (by our conquest)
+as secure as in time of peace. I charitably hope he
+knows nothing of the subject. I referred him lately
+to our commanders, for the resistance of the French
+colonies; I now wish he would apply to our custom-house
+entries, and our merchants, for the advantages
+which we derived from them.</p>
+
+<p>In 1761, there was no entry of goods from any of
+the conquered places but Guadaloupe; in that year
+it stood thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Imports from Islands, 1761" style="width: 100%; max-width: 20em;">
+<tr><td>Imports from Guadaloupe,    </td><td align='right'>value, &pound;482,179</td></tr>
+<tr><td>                            </td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em; max-width: 15em;"><!-- Page 309 --><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285" title="285" class="pagenum"></a>In 1762, when we had not yet delivered up
+our conquests, the account was,</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Imports from Islands,1762" style="width: 100%; max-width: 20em;">
+<tr><td>Guadaloupe     </td><td align='right'>&pound;513,244</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Martinico                  </td><td align='right'>288,425</td></tr>
+<tr><td>                           </td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Total imports in 1762,     </td><td align='right'>value, &pound;801,669</td></tr>
+<tr><td>                           </td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em; max-width: 15em;">In 1763, after we had delivered up the
+sovereignty of these islands, but kept
+open a communication with them, the
+imports were,</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Imports from Islands,1763" style="width: 100%; max-width: 20em;">
+<tr><td>Guadaloupe              </td><td align='right'>&pound;412,303</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Martinico               </td><td align='right'>344,161</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Havannah                </td><td align='right'>249,386</td></tr>
+<tr><td>                        </td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Total imports in 1763,  </td><td align='right'>value, &pound;1,005,850</td></tr>
+<tr><td>                        </td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="noindent">Besides, I find, in the account of bullion imported
+and brought to the Bank, that, during that period in
+which the intercourse with the Havannah was open,
+we received at that one shop, in treasure, from that
+one place, 559,810<i>l.</i>; in the year 1763, 389,450<i>l.</i>;
+so that the import from these places in that year
+amounted to 1,395,300<i>l.</i></p>
+
+<p>On this state the reader will observe, that I take
+the imports from, and not the exports to, these conquests,
+as the measure of the advantages which we
+derived from them. I do so for reasons which will
+be somewhat worthy the attention of such readers as
+are fond of this species of inquiry. I say therefore I
+choose the import article, as the best, and indeed the
+only standard we can have, of the value of the West
+India trade. Our export entry does not comprehend
+the greatest trade we carry on with any of the West
+India islands, the sale of negroes: nor does it give
+<!-- Page 310 --><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286" title="286" class="pagenum"></a>any idea of two other advantages we draw from them;
+the remittances for money spent here, and the payment
+of part of the balance of the North American
+trade. It is therefore quite ridiculous, to strike a
+balance merely on the face of an excess of imports
+and exports, in that commerce; though, in most foreign
+branches, it is, on the whole, the best method.
+If we should take that standard, it would appear,
+that the balance with our own islands is, annually,
+several hundred thousand pounds against this country.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor"
+title="Table: Total imports from the West Indies in 1764">[45]</a>
+Such is its aspect on the custom-house entries;
+but we know the direct contrary to be the fact. We
+know that the West-Indians are always indebted to
+our merchants, and that the value of every shilling
+of West India produce is English property. So that
+our import from them, and not our export, ought
+always to be considered as their true value; and this
+corrective ought to be applied to all general balances
+of our trade, which are formed on the ordinary principles.</p>
+
+<p>If possible, this was more emphatically true of the
+French West India islands, whilst they continued in
+our hands. That none or only a very contemptible
+part, of the value of this produce could be remitted
+to France, the author will see, perhaps with unwillingness,
+but with the clearest conviction, if he considers,
+that in the year 1763, <i>after we had ceased to
+export</i> to the isles of Guadaloupe and Martinico,
+and to the Havannah, and after the colonies were
+<!-- Page 311 --><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287" title="287" class="pagenum"></a>free to send all their produce to Old France and
+Spain, if they had any remittance to make; he
+will see, that we imported from those places, in
+that year, to the amount of 1,395,300<i>l.</i> So far
+was the whole annual produce of these islands from
+being adequate to the payments of their annual call
+upon us, that this mighty additional importation
+was necessary, though not quite sufficient, to discharge
+the debts contracted in the few years we held
+them. The property, therefore, of their whole produce
+was ours; not only during the war, but even for
+more than a year after the peace. The author, I
+hope, will not again venture upon so rash and discouraging
+a proposition concerning the nature and
+effect of those conquests, as to call them a convenience
+to the remittances of France; he sees, by this
+account, that what he asserts is not only without
+foundation, but even impossible to be true.</p>
+
+<p>As to our trade at that time, he labors with all his
+might to represent it as absolutely ruined, or on the
+very edge of ruin. Indeed, as usual with him, he is
+often as equivocal in his expression as he is clear in
+his design. Sometimes he more than insinuates a
+decay of our commerce in that war; sometimes he
+admits an increase of exports; but it is in order to
+depreciate the advantages we might appear to derive
+from that increase, whenever it should come to be
+proved against him. He tells you,<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 6.">[46]</a> &quot;that it was
+chiefly occasioned by the demands of our own fleets
+and armies, and, instead or bringing wealth to the
+nation, was to be paid for by oppressive taxes upon
+the people of England.&quot; Never was anything more
+destitute of foundation. It might be proved, with
+<!-- Page 312 --><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288" title="288" class="pagenum"></a>the greatest ease, from the nature and quality of the
+goods exported, as well as from the situation of the
+places to which our merchandise was sent, and which
+the war could no wise affect, that the supply of our
+fleets and armies could not have been the cause of
+this wonderful increase of trade: its cause was evident
+to the whole world; the ruin of the trade of
+France, and our possession of her colonies. What
+wonderful effects this cause produced the reader will
+see below;<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor"
+title="Table: Total export of goods">[47]</a> and he will form on that account some
+judgment of the author's candor or information.<!-- Page 313 --><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289" title="289" class="pagenum"></a></p>
+
+<p>Admit however that a great part of our export,
+though nothing is more remote from fact, was owing
+to the supply of our fleets and armies; was it not
+something?&mdash;was it not peculiarly fortunate for a
+nation, that she was able from her own bosom to contribute
+largely to the supply of her armies militating
+in so many distant countries? The author allows
+that France did not enjoy the same advantages. But
+it is remarkable, throughout his whole book, that
+those circumstances which have ever been considered
+as great benefits, and decisive proofs of national superiority,
+are, when in our hands, taken either in diminution
+of some other apparent advantage, or even
+sometimes as positive misfortunes. The optics of
+that politician must be of a strange conformation,
+who beholds everything in this distorted shape.</p>
+
+<p>So far as to our trade. With regard to our navigation,
+he is still more uneasy at our situation, and
+still more fallacious in his state of it. In his text, he
+affirms it &quot;to have been <i>entirely</i> engrossed by the
+neutral nations.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 7. See also page 13.">[48]</a> This he asserts roundly and
+boldly, and without the least concern; although it
+cost no more than a single glance of the eye upon his
+own margin to see the full refutation of this assertion.
+His own account proves against him, that, in
+the year 1761, the British shipping amounted to
+527,557 tons,&mdash;the foreign to no more than 180,102.
+The medium of his six years British, 2,449,555 tons,&mdash;foreign
+only 906,690. This state (his own) demonstrates
+that the neutral nations did not <i>entirely
+engross our navigation</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I am willing from a strain of candor to admit that
+this author speaks at random; that he is only sloven<!-- Page 314 --><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290" title="290" class="pagenum"></a>ly
+and inaccurate, and not fallacious. In matters of
+account, however, this want of care is not excusable;
+and the difference between neutral nations entirely
+engrossing our navigation, and being only subsidiary
+to a vastly augmented trade, makes a most material
+difference to his argument. From that principle of
+fairness, though the author speaks otherwise, I am
+willing to suppose he means no more than that our
+navigation had so declined as to alarm us with the
+probable loss of this valuable object. I shall however
+show, that his whole proposition, whatever modifications
+he may please to give it, is without foundation;
+that our navigation had not decreased; that, on the
+contrary, it had greatly increased in the war; that it
+had increased by the war; and that it was probable
+the same cause would continue to augment it to a
+still greater height; to what an height it is hard to
+say, had our success continued.</p>
+
+<p>But first I must observe, I am much less solicitous
+whether his fact be true or no, than whether his principle
+is well established. Cases are dead things, principles
+are living and productive. I affirm then, that,
+if in time of war our trade had the good fortune to
+increase, and at the same time a large, nay the
+largest, proportion of carriage had been engrossed
+by neutral nations, it ought not in itself to have been
+considered as a circumstance of distress. War is a
+time of inconvenience to trade; in general it must
+be straitened, and must find its way as it can. It is
+often happy for nations that they are able to call in
+neutral navigation. They all aim at it. France endeavored
+at it, but could not compass it. Will this
+author say, that, in a war with Spain, such an assistance
+would not be of absolute necessity? that it
+would not be the most gross of all follies to refuse it?</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 315 --><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291" title="291" class="pagenum"></a>In the next place, his method of stating a medium
+of six years of war, and six years of peace, to decide
+this question, is altogether unfair. To say, in derogation
+of the advantages of a war, that navigation is
+not equal to what it was in time of peace, is what
+hitherto has never been heard of. No war ever bore
+that test but the war which he so bitterly laments.
+One may lay it down as a maxim, that an average estimate
+of an object in a steady course of rising or of
+falling, must in its nature be an unfair one; more
+particularly if the cause of the rise or fall be visible,
+and its continuance in any degree probable. Average
+estimates are never just but when the object fluctuates,
+and no reason can be assigned why it should
+not continue still to fluctuate. The author chooses
+to allow nothing at all for this: he has taken an average
+of six years of the war. He knew, for everybody
+knows, that the first three years were on the
+whole rather unsuccessful; and that, in consequence
+of this ill success, trade sunk, and navigation declined
+with it; but <i>that grand delusion</i> of the three last
+years turned the scale in our favor. At the beginning
+of that war (as in the commencement of every
+war), traders were struck with a sort of panic.
+Many went out of the freighting business. But by
+degrees, as the war continued, the terror wore off;
+the danger came to be better appreciated, and better
+provided against; our trade was carried on in
+large fleets, under regular convoys, and with great
+safety. The freighting business revived. The ships
+were fewer, but much larger; and though the number
+decreased, the tonnage was vastly augmented:
+insomuch that in 1761 the <i>British</i> shipping had risen
+by the author's own account to 527,557 tons.&mdash;In the
+<!-- Page 316 --><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292" title="292" class="pagenum"></a>last year he has given us of the peace, it amounted to
+no more than 494,772; that is, in the last year of
+the war it was 32,785 tons more than in the correspondent
+year of his peace average. No year of the
+peace exceeded it except one, and that but little.</p>
+
+<p>The fair account of the matter is this. Our trade
+had, as we have just seen, increased to so astonishing
+a degree in 1761, as to employ British and foreign
+ships to the amount of 707,659 tons, which is 149,500
+more than we employed in the last year of the peace.&mdash;Thus
+our trade increased more than a fifth; our
+British navigation had increased likewise with this
+astonishing increase of trade, but was not able to
+keep pace with it; and we added about 120,000 tons
+of foreign shipping to the 60,000, which had been
+employed in the last year of the peace. Whatever
+happened to our shipping in the former years of the
+war, this would be no true state of the case at the
+time of the treaty. If we had lost something in the
+beginning, we had then recovered, and more than recovered,
+all our losses. Such is the ground of the
+doleful complaints of the author, that <i>the carrying
+trade was wholly engrossed by the neutral nations</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I have done fairly, and even very moderately, in
+taking this year, and not his average, as the standard
+of what might be expected in future, had the war
+continued. The author will be compelled to allow
+it, unless he undertakes to show; first, that the possession
+of Canada, Martinico, Guadaloupe, Grenada,
+the Havannah, the Philippines, the whole African
+trade, the whole East India trade, and the whole
+Newfoundland fishery, had no certain inevitable tendency
+to increase the British shipping; unless, in the
+second place, he can prove that those trades were, or
+<!-- Page 317 --><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293" title="293" class="pagenum"></a>might be, by law or indulgence, carried on in foreign
+vessels; and unless, thirdly, he can demonstrate that
+the premium of insurance on British ships was rising
+as the war continued. He can prove not one of these
+points. I will show him a fact more that is mortal to
+his assertions. It is the state of our shipping in 1762.
+The author had his reasons for stopping short at the
+preceding year. It would have appeared, had he proceeded
+farther, that our tonnage was in a course of
+uniform augmentation, owing to the freight derived
+from our foreign conquests, and to the perfect security
+of our navigation from our clear and decided superiority
+at sea. This, I say, would have appeared
+from the state of the two years:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="ctr">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""  style="width: 100%; max-width: 20em;">
+<tr><td>1761. British           </td><td align='left'>527,557 tons.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1762. Ditto             </td><td align='left'>559,537 tons.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1761. Foreign           </td><td align='left'>180,102 tons.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1762. Ditto             </td><td align='left'>129,502 tons.</td></tr></table>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The two last years of the peace were in no degree
+equal to these. Much of the navigation of 1763 was
+also owing to the war; this is manifest from the large
+part of it employed in the carriage from the ceded
+islands, with which the communication still continued
+open. No such circumstances of glory and advantage
+ever attended upon a war. Too happy will be
+our lot, if we should again be forced into a war, to
+behold anything that shall resemble them; and if we
+were not then the better for them, it is net in the
+ordinary course of God's providence to mend our
+condition.</p>
+
+<p>In vain does the author declaim on the high premiums
+given for the loans during the war. His
+long note swelled with calculations on that subject
+<!-- Page 318 --><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294" title="294" class="pagenum"></a>(even supposing the most inaccurate of all calculations
+to be just) would be entirety thrown away, did
+it not serve to raise a wonderful opinion of his financial
+skill in those who are not less surprised than edified,
+when, with a solemn face and mysterious air,
+they are told that two and two make four. For what
+else do we learn from this note? That the more expense
+is incurred by a nation, the more money will
+be required to defray it; that in proportion to the
+continuance of that expense, will be the continuance
+of borrowing; that the increase of borrowing and the
+increase of debt will go hand in hand; and lastly, that
+the more money you want, the harder it will be to
+get it; and that the scarcity of the commodity will
+enhance the price. Who ever doubted the truth, or
+the insignificance, of these propositions? what do
+they prove? that war is expensive, and peace desirable.
+They contain nothing more than a commonplace
+against war; the easiest of all topics. To bring
+them home to his purpose, he ought to have shown
+that our enemies had money upon better terms;
+which he has not shown, neither can he. I shall
+speak more fully to this point in another place. He
+ought to have shown that the money they raised,
+upon whatever terms, had procured them a more
+lucrative return. He knows that our expenditure
+purchased commerce and conquest: theirs acquired
+nothing but defeat and bankruptcy.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the author has laid down his ideas on the
+subject of war. Next follow those he entertains on
+that of peace. The treaty of Paris upon the whole
+has his approbation. Indeed, if his account of the
+war be just, he might have spared himself all further
+trouble. The rest is drawn on as an inevitable con<!-- Page 319 --><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295" title="295" class="pagenum"></a>clusion.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor"
+title="Pages 12, 13.">[49]</a>
+If the House of Bourbon had the advantage,
+she must give the law; and the peace, though
+it were much worse than it is, had still been a good
+one. But as the world is yet <i>deluded</i> on the state of
+that war, other arguments are necessary; and the
+author has in my opinion very ill supplied them.
+He tells of many things we have got, and of which
+he has made out a kind of bill. This matter may be
+brought within a very narrow compass, if we come to
+consider the requisites of a good peace under some
+plain distinct heads. I apprehend they may be reduced
+to these: 1. Stability; 2. Indemnification;
+3. Alliance.</p>
+
+<p>As to the first, the author more than obscurely
+hints in several places, that he thinks the peace not
+likely to last. However, he does furnish a security;
+a security, in any light, I fear, but insufficient; on
+his hypothesis, surely a very odd one. &quot;By stipulating
+for the entire possession of the Continent (says
+he) the restored French islands are become in some
+measure dependent on the British empire; and the
+good faith of France in observing the treaty guaranteed
+by the value at which she estimates their possession.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 17.">[50]</a>
+This author soon grows weary of his
+principles. They seldom last him for two pages
+together. When the advantages of the war were to
+be depreciated, then the loss of the ultramarine colonies
+lightened the expenses of France, facilitated
+her remittances, and therefore <i>her colonists put them
+into our hands</i>. According to this author's system,
+the actual possession of those colonies ought to give
+us little or no advantage in the negotiation for peace;
+and yet the chance of possessing them on a future oc<!-- Page 320 --><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296" title="296" class="pagenum"></a>casion
+gives a perfect security for the preservation of
+that peace.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 6.">[51]</a> The conquest of the Havannah, if it did
+not serve Spain, rather distressed England, says our
+author.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor"
+title="&quot;Our merchants suffered by the detention of the galleons, as
+their correspondents in Spain were disabled from paying them for
+their goods sent to America.&quot;&mdash;State of the Nation, p. 7.">[52]</a> But the molestation which her galleons
+may suffer from our station in Pensacola gives us advantages,
+for which we were not allowed to credit the
+nation for the Havannah itself; a place surely full as
+well situated for every external purpose as Pensacola,
+and of more internal benefit than ten thousand
+Pensacolas.</p>
+
+<p>The author sets very little by conquests;<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor"
+title="Pages 12, 13.">[53]</a> I suppose
+it is because he makes them so very lightly.
+On this subject he speaks with the greatest certainty
+imaginable. We have, according to him, nothing to
+do, but to go and take possession, whenever we think
+proper, of the French and Spanish settlements. It
+were better that he had examined a little what advantage
+the peace gave us towards the invasion of these
+colonies, which we did not possess before the peace.
+It would not have been amiss if he had consulted the
+public experience, and our commanders, concerning
+the absolute certainty of those conquests on which he
+is pleased to found our security. And if, after all,
+he should have discovered them to be so very sure,
+and so very easy, he might at least, to preserve consistency,
+have looked a few pages back, and (no unpleasing
+thing to him) listened to himself, where he
+says, &quot;that the most successful enterprise could not
+compensate to the nation for the waste of its people,
+by carrying on war in unhealthy climates.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 6.">[54]</a> A po<!-- Page 321 --><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297" title="297" class="pagenum"></a>sition
+which he repeats again, p. 9. So that, according
+to himself, his security is not worth the suit;
+according to fact, he has only a chance, God knows
+what a chance, of getting at it; and therefore, according
+to reason, the giving up the most valuable
+of all possessions, in hopes to conquer them back, under
+any advantage of situation, is the most ridiculous
+security that ever was imagined for the peace of a nation.
+It is true his friends did not give up Canada;
+they could not give up everything; let us make the
+most of it. We have Canada, we know its value.
+We have not the French any longer to fight in North
+America; and from this circumstance we derive considerable
+advantages. But here let me rest a little.
+The author touches upon a string which sounds under
+his fingers but a tremulous and melancholy note.
+North America was once indeed a great strength to this
+nation, in opportunity of ports, in ships, in provisions,
+in men. We found her a sound, an active, a vigorous
+member of the empire. I hope, by wise management,
+she will again become so. But one of our capital
+present misfortunes is her discontent and disobedience.
+To which of the author's favorites this discontent
+is owing, we all know but too sufficiently. It
+would be a dismal event, if this foundation of his security,
+and indeed of all our public strength, should,
+in reality, become our weakness; and if all the powers
+of this empire, which ought to fall with a compacted
+weight upon the head of our enemies, should
+be dissipated and distracted by a jealous vigilance, or
+by hostile attempts upon one another. Ten Canadas
+cannot restore that security for the peace, and for
+everything valuable to this country, which we have
+lost along with the affection and the obedience of our
+<!-- Page 322 --><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298" title="298" class="pagenum"></a>colonies. He is the wise minister, he is the true
+friend to Britain, who shall be able to restore it.</p>
+
+<p>To return to the security for the peace. The author
+tells us, that the original great purposes of the
+war were more than accomplished by the treaty.
+Surely he has experience and reading enough to
+know, that, in the course of a war, events may happen,
+that render its original very far from being its
+principal purpose. This original may dwindle by
+circumstances, so as to become not a purpose of the
+second or even the third magnitude. I trust this is
+so obvious that it will not be necessary to put cases
+for its illustration. In that war, as soon as Spain entered
+into the quarrel, the security of North America
+was no longer the sole nor the foremost object. The
+<i>Family Compact</i> had been I know not how long before
+in agitation. But then it was that we saw produced
+into daylight and action the most odious and most
+formidable of all the conspiracies against the liberties
+of Europe that ever has been framed. The war with
+Spain was the first fruits of that league; and a security
+against that league ought to have been the fundamental
+point of a pacification with the powers who
+compose it. We had materials in our hands to have
+constructed that security in such a manner as never
+to be shaken. But how did the virtuous and able
+men of our author labor for this great end? They
+took no one step towards it. On the contrary they
+countenanced, and, indeed, as far as it depended on
+them, recognized it in all its parts; for our plenipotentiary
+treated with those who acted for the two
+crowns, as if they had been different ministers of the
+same monarch. The Spanish minister received his
+instructions, not from Madrid, but from Versailles.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 323 --><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299" title="299" class="pagenum"></a>This was not hid from our ministers at home; and
+the discovery ought to have alarmed them, if the good
+of their country had been the object of their anxiety.
+They could not but have seen that the whole Spanish
+monarchy was melted down into the cabinet of Versailles.
+But they thought this circumstance an advantage;
+as it enabled them to go through with their
+work the more expeditiously. Expedition was everything
+to them; because France might happen during
+a protracted negotiation to discover the great imposition
+of our victories.</p>
+
+<p>In the same spirit they negotiated the terms of the
+peace. If it were thought advisable not to take any
+positive security from Spain, the most obvious principles
+of policy dictated that the burden of the cessions
+ought to fall upon France; and that everything which
+was of grace and favor should be given to Spain.
+Spain could not, on her part, have executed a capital
+article in the family compact, which obliged her to
+compensate the losses of France. At least she could
+not do it in America; for she was expressly precluded
+by the treaty of Utrecht from ceding any territory
+or giving any advantage in trade to that power.
+What did our ministers? They took from Spain the
+territory of Florida, an object of no value except
+to show our dispositions to be quite equal at least
+towards both powers; and they enabled France to
+compensate Spain by the gift of Louisiana: loading
+us with all the harshness, leaving the act of kindness
+with France, and opening thereby a door to the fulfilling
+of this the most consolidating article of the
+family compact. Accordingly that dangerous league,
+thus abetted and authorized by the English ministry
+without an attempt to invalidate it in any way, or in
+<!-- Page 324 --><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300" title="300" class="pagenum"></a>any of its parts, exists to this hour; and has grown
+stronger and stronger every hour of its existence.</p>
+
+<p>As to the second component of a good peace, <i>compensation</i>,
+I have but little trouble; the author has
+said nothing upon that head. He has nothing to say.
+After a war of such expense, this ought to have been
+a capital consideration. But on what he has been so
+prudently silent, I think it is right to speak plainly.
+All our new acquisitions together, at this time, scarce
+afford matter of revenue, either at home or abroad,
+sufficient to defray the expense of their establishments;
+not one shilling towards the reduction of our debt.
+Guadaloupe or Martinico alone would have given us
+material aid; much in the way of duties, much in the
+way of trade and navigation. A good ministry would
+have considered how a renewal of the <i>Assiento</i> might
+have been obtained. We had as much right to ask it
+at the treaty of Paris as at the treaty of Utrecht. We
+had incomparably more in our hands to purchase it.
+Floods of treasure would have poured into this kingdom
+from such a source; and, under proper management,
+no small part of it would have taken a public
+direction, and have fructified an exhausted exchequer.</p>
+
+<p>If this gentleman's hero of finance, instead of flying
+from a treaty, which, though he now defends, he
+could not approve, and would not oppose; if he, instead
+of shifting into an office, which removed him
+from the manufacture of the treaty, had, by his credit
+with the then great director, acquired for us these,
+or any of these, objects, the possession of Guadaloupe
+or Martinico, or the renewal of the <i>Assiento</i>, he might
+have held his head high in his country; because he
+would have performed real service; ten thousand
+times more real service, than all the economy of
+<!-- Page 325 --><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301" title="301" class="pagenum"></a>which this writer is perpetually talking, or all the
+little tricks of finance which the expertest juggler of
+the treasury can practise, could amount to in a thousand
+years. But the occasion is lost; the time is
+gone, perhaps forever.</p>
+
+<p>As to the third requisite, <i>alliance</i>, there too the
+author is silent. What strength of that kind did
+they acquire? They got no one new ally; they
+stript the enemy of not a single old one. They disgusted
+(how justly, or unjustly, matters not) every
+ally we had; and from that time to this we stand
+friendless in Europe. But of this naked condition
+of their country I know some people are not ashamed.
+They have their system of politics; our ancestors
+grew great by another. In this manner these virtuous
+men concluded the peace; and their practice is
+only consonant to their theory.</p>
+
+<p>Many things more might be observed on this curious
+head of our author's speculations. But, taking
+leave of what the writer says in his serious part, if he
+be serious in any part, I shall only just point out a
+piece of his pleasantry. No man, I believe, ever denied
+that the time for making peace is that in which
+the best terms maybe obtained. But what that time
+is, together with the use that has been made of it,
+we are to judge by seeing whether terms adequate
+to our advantages, and to our necessities, have been
+actually obtained. Here is the pinch of the question,
+to which the author ought to have set his shoulders
+in earnest. Instead of doing this, he slips out of the
+harness by a jest; and sneeringly tells us, that, to
+determine this point, we must know the secrets of the
+French and Spanish cabinets<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor"
+title="Something however has transpired in the quarrels among those
+concerned in that transaction. It seems the _good Genius_ of Britain,
+so much vaunted by our author, did his duty nobly. Whilst we
+were gaining such advantages, the court of France was astonished at
+our concessions. &quot;J'ai apport&eacute; &agrave; Versailles, il est vrai, les Ratifications
+du Roi d'Angleterre, _&agrave; vostre grand &eacute;tonnement, et &agrave; celui de bien
+d'autres_. Je dois cela au bont&eacute;s du Roi d'Angleterre, &agrave; celles de Milord
+Bute, &agrave; Mons. le Comte de Viry, &agrave; Mons. le Duc de Nivernois,
+et en fin &agrave; mon scavoir faire.&quot;&mdash;Lettres, &amp;c., du Chev. D'Eon, p. 51.">[55]</a>, and that Parliament
+<!-- Page 326 --><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302" title="302" class="pagenum"></a>was pleased to approve the treaty of peace without
+calling for the correspondence concerning it. How
+just this sarcasm on that Parliament may be, I say
+not; but how becoming in the author, I leave it to
+his friends to determine.</p>
+
+<p>Having thus gone through the questions of war
+and peace, the author proceeds to state our debt, and
+the interest which it carried, at the time of the treaty,
+with the unfairness and inaccuracy, however, which
+distinguish all his assertions, and all his calculations.
+To detect every fallacy, and rectify every mistake,
+would be endless. It will be enough to point out a
+few of them, in order to show how unsafe it is to place
+anything like an implicit trust in such a writer.</p>
+
+<p>The interest of debt contracted during the war is
+stated by the author at 2,614,892<i>l.</i> The particulars
+appear in pp. 14 and 15. Among them is stated the
+unfunded debt, 9,975,017<i>l.</i>, supposed to carry interest
+on a medium at 3 per cent, which amounts to
+299,250<i>l.</i> We are referred to the &quot;Considerations on
+the Trade and Finances of the Kingdom,&quot; p. 22, for
+the particulars of that unfunded debt. Turn to the
+work, and to the place referred to by the author himself,
+if you have a mind to see a clear detection of a
+capital fallacy of this article in his account. You
+will there see that this unfunded debt consists of
+the nine following articles: the remaining subsidy to
+<!-- Page 327 --><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303" title="303" class="pagenum"></a>the Duke of Brunswick; the remaining <i>d&eacute;dommagement</i>
+to the Landgrave of Hesse; the German demands;
+the army and ordnance extraordinaries; the
+deficiencies of grants and funds; Mr. Touchet's
+claim; the debts due to Nova Scotia and Barbadoes;
+exchequer bills; and navy debt. The extreme fallacy
+of this state cannot escape any reader who will
+be at the pains to compare the interest money, with
+which he affirms us to have been loaded, in his
+&quot;State of the Nation,&quot; with the items of the principal
+debt to which he refers in his &quot;Considerations.&quot;
+The reader must observe, that of this long list of nine
+articles, only two, the exchequer bills, and part of
+the navy debt, carried any interest at all. The first
+amounted to 1,800,000<i>l.</i>; and this undoubtedly carried
+interest. The whole navy debt indeed amounted
+to 4,576,915<i>l.</i>; but of this only a <i>part</i> carried interest.
+The author of the &quot;Considerations,&quot; &amp;c. labors
+to prove this very point in p. 18; and Mr. G. has
+always defended himself upon the same ground, for
+the insufficient provision he made for the discharge of
+that debt. The reader may see their own authority
+for it.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor"
+title="&quot;The navy bills are not due till six months after they have been
+issued; six months also of the seamen's wages by act of Parliament
+must be, and in consequence of the rules prescribed by that act, twelve
+months' wages generally, and often much more are retained; and
+there has been besides at all times a large arrear of pay, which, though
+kept in the account, could never be claimed, the persons to whom it
+was due having left neither assignees nor representatives. The precise
+amount of such sums cannot be ascertained; but they can hardly be
+reckoned less than thirteen or fourteen hundred thousand pounds.
+On 31st Dec, 1754, when the navy debt was reduced nearly as low as
+it could be, it still amounted to 1,296,567_l._ 18_s._ 11&frac34;_d._ consisting chiefly
+of articles which could not then be discharged; such articles will be
+larger now, in proportion to the increase of the establishment; and an
+allowance must always be made for them in judging of the state of
+the navy debt, though they are not distinguishable in the account.
+In providing for that which is payable, the principal object of the
+legislature is always to discharge the bills, for they are the greatest
+article; they bear an interest of 4 per cent; and, when the quantity of
+them is large, they are a heavy incumbrance upon all money transactions&quot;">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 328 --><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304" title="304" class="pagenum"></a>Mr. G. did in fact provide no more than 2,150,000<i>l.</i>
+for the discharge of these bills in two years. It is much
+to be wished that these gentlemen would lay their
+heads together, that they would consider well this
+matter, and agree upon something. For when the
+scanty provision made for the unfunded debt is to be
+vindicated, then we are told it is a very <i>small part</i> of
+that debt which carries interest. But when the public
+is to be represented in a miserable condition, and the
+consequences of the late war to be laid before us in
+dreadful colors, then we are to be told that the unfunded
+debt is within a trifle of ten millions, and so
+large a portion of it carries interest that we must not
+compute less than 3 per cent upon the <i>whole</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1764, Parliament voted 650,000<i>l.</i> towards
+the discharge of the navy debt. This sum
+could not be applied solely to the discharge of bills
+carrying interest; because part of the debt due on
+seamen's wages must have been paid, and some bills
+carried no interest at all. Notwithstanding this, we
+find by an account in the journals of the House of
+Commons, in the following session, that the navy
+debt carrying interest was, on the 31st of December,
+1764, no more than 1,687,442<i>l.</i> I am sure therefore
+that I admit too much when I admit the navy debt
+carrying interest, after the creation of the navy annuities
+in the year 1763, to have been 2,200,000<i>l.</i>
+Add the exchequer bills; and the whole unfunded
+<!-- Page 329 --><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305" title="305" class="pagenum"></a>debt carrying interest will be four millions instead of
+ten; and the annual interest paid for it at 4 per cent
+will be 160,000<i>l.</i> instead of 299,250<i>l.</i> An error of
+no small magnitude, and which could not have been
+owing to inadvertency.</p>
+
+<p>The misrepresentation of the increase of the peace
+establishment is still more extraordinary than that of
+the interest of the unfunded debt. The increase is
+great, undoubtedly. However, the author finds no
+fault with it, and urges it only as a matter of argument
+to support the strange chimerical proposals he
+is to make us in the close of his work for the increase
+of revenue. The greater he made that establishment,
+the stronger he expected to stand in argument: but,
+whatever he expected or proposed, he should have
+stated the matter fairly. He tells us that this establishment
+is nearly 1,500,000<i>l.</i> more than it was
+in 1752, 1753, and other years of peace. This he
+has done in his usual manner, by assertion, without
+troubling himself either with proof or probability. For
+he has not given us any state of the peace establishment
+in the years 1753 and 1754, the time which
+he means to compare with the present. As I am
+obliged to force him to that precision, from which
+he always flies as from his most dangerous enemy, I
+have been at the trouble to search the journals in
+the period between the two last wars: and I find
+that the peace establishment, consisting of the navy,
+the ordnance, and the several incidental expenses,
+amounted to 2,346,594<i>l.</i> Now is this writer wild
+enough to imagine, that the peace establishment of
+1764 and the subsequent years, made up from the
+same articles, is 3,800,000<i>l.</i> and upwards? His assertion
+however goes to this. But I must take the
+<!-- Page 330 --><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306" title="306" class="pagenum"></a>liberty of correcting him in this gross mistake, and
+from an authority he cannot refuse, from his favorite
+work, and standing authority, the &quot;Considerations.&quot;
+We find there, p. 43<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor"
+title="Table: Costs of the Peace Establishment">[57]</a>, the peace establishment of
+1764 and 1765 stated at 3,609,700<i>l.</i> This is near
+two hundred thousand pounds less than that given
+in &quot;The State of the Nation.&quot; But even from this,
+in order to render the articles which compose the
+peace establishment in the two periods correspondent
+(for otherwise they cannot be compared), we must
+deduct first, his articles of the deficiency of land and
+malt, which amount to 300,000<i>l.</i> They certainly are
+no part of the establishment; nor are they included
+in that sum, which I have stated above for the establishment
+in the time of the former peace. If they
+were proper to be stated at all, they ought to be
+stated in both accounts. We must also deduct the
+deficiencies of funds, 202,400<i>l.</i> These deficiencies
+are the difference between the interest charged on the
+public for moneys borrowed, and the produce of the
+taxes laid for the discharge of that interest. Annual
+provision is indeed to be made for them by Parlia<!-- Page 331 --><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307" title="307" class="pagenum"></a>ment:
+but in the inquiry before us, which is only
+what charge is brought on the public by interest paid
+or to be paid for money borrowed, the utmost that
+the author should do, is to bring into the account the
+full interest for all that money. This he has done
+in p. 15; and he repeats it in p. 18, the very page
+I am now examining, 2,614,892<i>l.</i> To comprehend
+afterwards in the peace establishment the deficiency
+of the fund created for payment of that interest,
+would be laying twice to the account of the war part
+of the same sum. Suppose ten millions borrowed at
+4 per cent, and the fund for payment of the interest
+to produce no more than 200,000<i>l.</i> The whole annual
+charge on the public is 400,000<i>l.</i> It can be no
+more. But to charge the interest in one part of the
+account, and then the deficiency in the other, would
+be charging 600,000<i>l.</i> The deficiency of funds must
+therefore be also deducted from the peace establishment
+in the &quot;Considerations&quot;; and then the peace
+establishment in that author will be reduced to the
+same articles with those included in the sum I have
+already mentioned for the peace establishment before
+the last war, in the year 1753, and 1754.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 35em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="wrap">Peace establishment in the "Considerations" </td><td align="right">&pound;3,609,700</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Deduct deficiency of land and malt              </td><td align='right' style="padding-right: 1em">&pound;300,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Ditto of funds          </td><td align='right' style="padding-right: 1em">202,400</td></tr>
+<tr><td>                        </td><td align='right' style="padding-right: 1em">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>502,400</td></tr>
+<tr><td>                        </td><td>               </td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>                        </td><td>               </td><td align='right'>3,107,300</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Peace establishment before the late war, in
+which no deficiencies of land and malt, or
+funds are included  </td><td>               </td><td align='right' valign="bottom">2,346,594</td></tr>
+<tr><td>                        </td><td>               </td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap" align="right">Difference</td><td /><td align='right'>&pound;760,706</td></tr></table>
+
+<p><!-- Page 332 --><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308" title="308" class="pagenum"></a>Being about half the sum which our author has
+been pleased to suppose it.</p>
+
+<p>Let us put the whole together. The author states,&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width:  35em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr><td colspan="3" class="wrap">Difference of peace establishment before and
+since the war           </td><td align='right' valign="bottom">&pound;1,500,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="3" class="wrap">Interest of Debt contracted by the war      </td><td align='right'>2,614,892</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="3">            </td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="3">            </td><td align='right'>4,114,892</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="wrap">The <i>real</i> difference in the peace
+establishment is                    </td><td align='right' valign="bottom" style="padding-right: 1em">&pound;760,706</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">The actual interest of the
+funded debt, including
+that charged on the
+sinking fund</td><td align='right' valign="bottom" style="padding-right: 1em">&pound;2,315,642</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">The actual interest of
+unfunded debt at most</td><td align='right' valign="bottom" style="padding-right: 1em" >160,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap"></td><td align='right'  style="padding-right: 1em" >&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="wrap">Total interest of debt
+contracted by the war</td><td align='right' valign="bottom"  style="padding-right: 1em">2,475,642</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="wrap"></td><td align='right' style="padding-right: 1em">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="3" class="wrap">Increase of peace establishment, and interest of
+new debt</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">3,236,348</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="3" class="wrap">                                            </td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td colspan="2" class="wrap" align='center'>Error of the author </td><td align='right'>&pound;878,544</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>It is true, the extraordinaries of the army have
+been found considerably greater than the author of
+the &quot;Considerations&quot; was pleased to foretell they
+would be. The author of &quot;The Present State&quot;
+avails himself of that increase, and, finding it suit his
+purpose, sets the whole down in the peace establishment
+of the present times. If this is allowed him,
+his error perhaps may be reduced to 700,000<i>l.</i> But
+I doubt the author of the &quot;Considerations&quot; will not
+thank him for admitting 200,000<i>l.</i> and upwards, as
+the peace establishment for extraordinaries, when
+that author has so much labored to confine them
+within 35,000<i>l.</i></p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 333 --><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309" title="309" class="pagenum"></a>These are some of the capital fallacies of the author.
+To break the thread of my discourse as little
+as possible, I have thrown into the margin many instances,
+though God knows far from the whole of his
+inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and want of common
+care. I think myself obliged to take some notice of
+them, in order to take off from any authority this
+writer may have; and to put an end to the deference
+which careless men are apt to pay to one who boldly
+arrays his accounts, and marshals his figures, in perfect
+confidence that their correctness will never be
+examined.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor"
+title="Upon the money borrowed in 1760, the premium of one per
+cent was for twenty-one years, not for twenty; this annuity has been
+paid eight years instead of seven; the sum paid is therefore 640,000_l._
+instead of 560,000_l._; the remaining term is worth, ten years and a
+quarter instead of eleven years; its value is 820,000_l._ instead of
+880,000_l._; and the whole value of that premium is 1,460,000_l._ instead
+of 1,440,000_l._ The like errors are observable in his computation on
+the additional capital of three per cent on the loan of that year. In
+like manner, on the loan of 1762, the author computes on five years'
+payment instead of six; and says in express terms, that take 5 from
+19, and there remain 13. These are not errors of the pen or the
+press; the several computations pursued in this part of the work with
+great diligence and earnestness prove them errors upon much deliberation.
+Thus the premiums in 1759 are cast up 90,000_l._ too little, an
+error in the first rule of arithmetic. &quot;The annuities borrowed in
+1756 and 1758 are,&quot; says he, &quot;to continue till redeemed by Parliament.&quot;
+He does not take notice that the first are irredeemable till February,
+1771, the other till July, 1782. In this the amount of the premiums
+is computed on the time which they have run. Weakly and
+ignorantly; for he might have added to this, and strengthened his argument,
+such as it is, by charging also the value of the additional one
+per cent from the day on which he wrote, to at least that day on which
+these annuities become redeemable. To make ample amends, however,
+he has added to the premiums of 15 per cent in 1759, and three per cent
+in 1760, the annuity paid for them since their commencement;
+the fallacy of which is manifest; for the premiums in these cases can
+he neither more nor less than the additional capital for which the public
+stands engaged, and is just the same whether five or five hundred
+years' annuity has been paid for it. In private life, no man persuades
+himself that he has borrowed 200_l._ because he happens to have paid
+twenty years' interest on a loan of 100_l._">[58]</a></p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 334 --><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310" title="310" class="pagenum"></a>However, for argument, I am content to take his
+state of it. The debt was and is enormous. The
+war was expensive. The best economy had not perhaps
+been used. But I must observe, that war and
+economy are things not easily reconciled; and that
+the attempt of leaning towards parsimony in such a
+state may be the worst management, and in the end
+the worst economy in the world, hazarding the total
+loss of all the charge incurred, and of everything
+along with it.</p>
+
+<p>But <i>cui bono</i> all this detail of our debt? Has the
+author given a single light towards any material reduction
+of it? Not a glimmering. We shall see in
+its place what sort of thing he proposes. But before
+he commences his operations, in order to scare the
+public imagination, he raises by art magic a thick
+mist before our eyes, through which glare the most
+ghastly and horrible phantoms:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necesse est.</div>
+<div>Non radii solis, neque lucida tela diei</div>
+<div>Discutiant, sed natur&aelig; species ratioque.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Let us therefore calmly, if we can for the fright into
+which he has put us, appreciate those dreadful and
+deformed gorgons and hydras, which inhabit the joyless
+regions of an imagination fruitful in nothing but
+the production of monsters.</p>
+
+<p>His whole representation, is founded on the sup<!-- Page 335 --><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311" title="311" class="pagenum"></a>posed
+operation of our debt, upon our manufactures,
+and our trade. To this cause he attributes a certain
+supposed dearness of the necessaries of life, which
+must compel our manufacturers to emigrate to cheaper
+countries, particularly to France, and with them
+the manufacture. Thence consumption declining,
+and with it revenue. He will not permit the real
+balance of our trade to be estimated so high as
+2,500,000<i>l.</i>; and the interest of the debt to foreigners
+carries off 1,500,000<i>l.</i> of that balance. France is not
+in the same condition. Then follow his wailings and
+lamentings, which he renews over and over, according
+to his custom&mdash;a declining trade, and decreasing specie&mdash;on
+the point of becoming tributary to France&mdash;of
+losing Ireland&mdash;of having the colonies torn
+away from us.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing upon which I shall observe is,<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor"
+title="Pages 30-32.">[60]</a> what
+he takes for granted as the clearest of all propositions,
+the emigration of our manufacturers to France. I
+undertake to say that this assertion is totally groundless,
+and I challenge the author to bring any sort of
+proof of it. If living is cheaper in France, that is, to
+be had for less specie, wages are proportionably lower.
+No manufacturer, let the living be what it will, was
+ever known to fly for refuge to low wages. Money is
+the first thing which attracts him. Accordingly our
+wages attract artificers from all parts of the world.
+From two shillings to one shilling, is a fall in all
+men's imaginations, which no calculation upon a difference
+in the price of the necessaries of life can compensate.
+But it will be hard to prove that a French
+artificer is better fed, clothed, lodged, and warmed,
+than one in England; for that is the sense, and the
+<!-- Page 336 --><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312" title="312" class="pagenum"></a>only sense, of living cheaper. If, in truth and fact,
+our artificer fares as well in all these respects as one
+in the same state in France,&mdash;how stands the matter
+in point of opinion and prejudice, the springs by
+which people in that class of life are chiefly actuated?
+The idea of our common people concerning French
+living is dreadful; altogether as dreadful as our author's
+can possibly be of the state of his own country;
+a way of thinking that will hardly ever prevail on
+them to desert to France.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor"
+title="In a course of years a few manufacturers have been tempted
+abroad, not by cheap living, but by immense premiums, to set up as
+masters, and to introduce the manufacture. This must happen in
+every country eminent for the skill of its artificers, and has nothing
+to do with taxes and the price of provisions.">[61]</a></p>
+
+<p>But, leaving the author's speculations, the fact is,
+that they have not deserted; and of course the manufacture
+cannot be departed, or departing, with them.
+I am not indeed able to get at all the details of our
+manufactures; though, I think, I have taken full as
+much pains for that purpose as our author. Some I
+have by me; and they do not hitherto, thank God,
+support the author's complaint, unless a vast increase
+of the quantity of goods manufactured be a proof of
+losing the manufacture. On a view of the registers
+in the West Riding of Yorkshire, for three years before
+the war, and for the three last, it appears, that
+the quantities of cloths entered were as follows:</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 27em;">
+<tr style="font-size: smaller;">
+<td colspan="2"></td><td /><td align='right'>Pieces broad.</td><td align='right'>Pieces narrow.</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td>1752</td><td align='right'>60,724</td><td align='right'>72,442</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td>1753</td><td align='right'>55,358</td><td align='right'>71,618</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td>1754</td><td align='right'>56,070</td><td align='right'>72,394</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td /><td align='right'>172,152</td><td align='right'>216,454</td></tr>
+<tr style="font-size: smaller;">
+<td colspan="2"><!-- Page 337 --><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313" title="313" class="pagenum"></a></td><td /><td align='right'>Pieces broad.</td><td align='right'>Pieces narrow.</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td>1765</td><td align='right'>54,660</td><td align='right'>77,419</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td>1766</td><td align='right'>72,575</td><td align='right'>78,893</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td>1767</td><td align='right'>102,428</td><td align='right'>78,819</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align='right'>3 years, ending&nbsp;</td><td>1767</td><td align='right'>229,663</td><td align='right'>235,131</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align='right'>3 years, ending&nbsp;</td><td>1754</td><td align='right'>172,152</td><td align='right'>216,464</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"></td><td align='right'>Increase</td><td align='right'>57,511</td><td align='right'>18,677</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>In this manner this capital branch of manufacture
+has increased, under the increase of taxes; and this
+not from a declining, but from a greatly flourishing
+period of commerce. I may say the same on the best
+authority of the fabric of thin goods at Halifax; of
+the bays at Rochdale; and of that infinite variety of
+admirable manufactures that grow and extend every
+year among the spirited, inventive, and enterprising
+traders of Manchester.</p>
+
+<p>A trade sometimes seems to perish when it only assumes
+a different form. Thus the coarsest woollens
+were formerly exported in great quantities to Russia.
+The Russians now supply themselves with these goods.
+But the export thither of finer cloths has increased in
+proportion as the other has declined. Possibly some
+parts of the kingdom may have felt something like a
+languor in business. Objects like trade and manufacture,
+which the very attempt to confine would
+certainly destroy, frequently change their place;
+and thereby, far from being lost, are often highly
+improved. Thus some manufactures have decayed
+in the west and south, which have made new and
+more vigorous shoots when transplanted into the
+north. And here it is impossible to pass by, though
+the author has said nothing upon it, the vast addition
+to the mass of British trade, which has been
+<!-- Page 338 --><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314" title="314" class="pagenum"></a>made by the improvement of Scotland. What does
+he think of the commerce of the city of Glasgow, and
+of the manufactures of Paisley and all the adjacent
+country? Has this anything like the deadly aspect
+and <i>facies Hippocratica</i> which the false diagnostic of
+our state physician has given to our trade in general?
+Has he not heard of the iron-works of such magnitude
+even in their cradle which are set up on the
+Carron, and which at the same time have drawn
+nothing from Sheffield, Birmingham, or Wolverhampton?</p>
+
+<p>This might perhaps be enough to show the entire
+falsity of the complaint concerning the decline of our
+manufactures. But every step we advance, this matter
+clears up more; and the false terrors of the author
+are dissipated, and fade away as the light appears.
+&quot;The trade and manufactures of this country (says
+he) going to ruin, and a diminution of our <i>revenue
+from consumption</i> must attend the loss of so many
+seamen and artificers.&quot; Nothing more true than the
+general observation: nothing more false than its application
+to our circumstances. Let the revenue on
+consumption speak for itself:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 34em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr><td class="wrap">Average of net excise, since the new duties,
+three years ending 1767</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">&pound;4,590,734</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Ditto before the new duties, three years
+ending 1759</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">3,261,694</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap" align='center'>
+Average increase</td><td align='right'>&pound;1,329,040</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="noindent">Here is no diminution. Here is, on the contrary, an
+immense increase. This is owing, I shall be told, to
+the new duties, which may increase the total bulk,
+but at the same time may make some diminution of
+the produce of the old. Were this the fact, it would
+<!-- Page 339 --><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315" title="315" class="pagenum"></a>be far from supporting the author's complaint. It
+might have proved that the burden lay rather too
+heavy; but it would never prove that the <i>revenue
+from, consumption</i> was impaired, which it was his business
+to do. But what is the real fact? Let us take,
+as the best instance for the purpose, the produce of
+the old hereditary and temporary excise granted in
+the reign of Charles the Second, whose object is that
+of most of the new impositions, from two averages,
+each of eight years.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 34em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr><td class="wrap">Average, first period, eight years, ending 1754</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">&pound;525,317</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Ditto, second period, eight years, ending 1767</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">538,542</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap"></td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap" align='center'>Increase</td><td align='right'>&pound;613,225</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="noindent">I have taken these averages as including in each a
+war and a peace period; the first before the imposition
+of the new duties, the other since those impositions;
+and such is the state of the oldest branch of
+the revenue from consumption. Besides the acquisition
+of so much new, this article, to speak of no other,
+has rather increased under the pressure of all those
+additional taxes to which the author is pleased to attribute
+its destruction. But as the author has made
+his grand effort against those moderate, judicious, and
+necessary levies, which support all the dignity, the
+credit, and the power of his country, the reader will
+excuse a little further detail on this subject; that we
+may see how little oppressive those taxes are on the
+shoulders of the public, with which he labors so earnestly
+to load its imagination. For this purpose we
+take the state of that specific article upon which the
+two capital burdens of the war leaned the most im<!-- Page 340 --><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316" title="316" class="pagenum"></a>mediately,
+by the additional duties on malt, and upon
+beer.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 30em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr style="font-size: smaller;"><td /><td align='right'>Barrels.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Average of strong beer,
+brewed in eight years before the additional malt and beer duties</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">3,895,059</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Average of strong beer,
+eight years since the duties</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">4,060,726</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>Increase in the last period</td><td align='right'>165,667</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="noindent">Here is the effect of two such daring taxes as 3<i>d.</i> by
+the bushel additional on malt, and 3<i>s.</i> by the barrel
+additional on beer. Two impositions laid without
+remission one upon the neck of the other; and laid
+upon an object which before had been immensely
+loaded. They did not in the least impair the consumption: it
+has grown under them. It appears
+that, upon the whole, the people did not feel so much
+inconvenience from the new duties as to oblige them
+to take refuge in the private brewery. Quite the
+contrary happened in both these respects in the reign
+of King William; and it happened from much slighter
+impositions.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor"
+title="Although the public brewery has considerably increased in this
+latter period, the produce of the malt-tax has been something less than
+in the former; this cannot be attributed to the new malt-tax. Had
+this been the cause of the lessened consumption, the public brewery,
+so much more burdened, must have felt it more. The cause of this
+diminution of the malt-tax I take to have been principally owing to
+the greater dearness of corn in the second period than in the first,
+which, in all its consequences, affected the people in the country much
+more than those in the towns. But the revenue from consumption
+was not, on the whole, impaired; as we have seen in the foregoing
+page.">[62]</a> No people can long consume a commodity
+for which they are not well able to pay. An
+enlightened reader laughs at the inconsistent chimera
+<!-- Page 341 --><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317" title="317" class="pagenum"></a>of our author, of a people universally luxurious, and
+at the same time oppressed with taxes and declining
+in trade. For my part, I cannot look on these
+duties as the author does. He sees nothing but the
+burden. I can perceive the burden as well as he; but
+I cannot avoid contemplating also the strength that
+supports it. From thence I draw the most comfortable
+assurances of the future vigor, and the ample
+resources, of this great, misrepresented country; and
+can never prevail on myself to make complaints
+which have no cause, in order to raise hopes which
+have no foundation.</p>
+
+<p>When a representation is built on truth and nature,
+one member supports the other, and mutual lights
+are given and received from every part. Thus, as
+our manufacturers have not deserted, nor the manufacture
+left us, nor the consumption declined, nor the
+revenue sunk; so neither has trade, which is at once
+the result, measure, and cause of the whole, in the
+least decayed, as our author has thought proper
+sometimes to affirm, constantly to suppose, as if it
+were the most indisputable of all propositions. The
+reader will see below the comparative state of our
+trade<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor"
+title="Table: Imports vs. Exports">[63]</a> in three of the best years before our increase
+of debt and taxes, and with it the three last years
+since the author's date of our ruin.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 342 --><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318" title="318" class="pagenum"></a>In the last three years the whole of our exports
+was between 44 and 45 millions. In the three years
+preceding the war, it was no more than from 35 to
+36 millions. The average balance of the former period
+was 3,706,000<i>l.</i>; of the latter, something above
+four millions. It is true, that whilst the impressions
+of the author's destructive war continued, our trade
+was greater than it is at present. One of the necessary
+consequences of the peace was, that France must
+gradually recover a part of those markets of which
+she had been originally in possession. However, after
+all these deductions, still the gross trade in the
+worst year of the present is better than in the best
+year of any former period of peace. A very great
+part of our taxes, if not the greatest, has been imposed
+since the beginning of the century. On the author's
+principles, this continual increase of taxes must have
+ruined our trade, or at least entirely checked its
+growth. But I have a manuscript of Davenant,
+which contains an abstract of our trade for the years
+1703 and 1704; by which it appears that the whole
+export from England did not then exceed 6,552,019<i>l.</i>
+It is now considerably more than double that amount.
+Yet England was then a rich and flourishing nation.</p>
+
+<p>The author endeavors to derogate from the balance
+in our favor as it stands on the entries, and reduces
+<!-- Page 343 --><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319" title="319" class="pagenum"></a>it from four millions, as it there appears, to no more
+than 2,500,000<i>l.</i> His observation on the looseness
+and inaccuracy of the export entries is just; and that
+the error is always an error of excess, I readily admit.
+But because, as usual, he has wholly omitted some
+very material facts, his conclusion is as erroneous as
+the entries he complains of.</p>
+
+<p>On this point of the custom-house entries I shall
+make a few observations. 1st. The inaccuracy of
+these entries can extend only to FREE GOODS, that is,
+to such British products and manufactures, as are exported
+without drawback and without bounty; which
+do not in general amount to more than two thirds at
+the very utmost of the whole export even of <i>our home
+products</i>. The valuable articles of corn, malt, leather,
+hops, beer, and many others, do not come under this
+objection of inaccuracy. The article of CERTIFICATE
+GOODS re-exported, a vast branch of our commerce,
+admits of no error, (except some smaller frauds which
+cannot be estimated,) as they have all a drawback of
+duty, and the exporter must therefore correctly specify
+their quantity and kind. The author therefore is
+not warranted from the known error in some of the
+entries, to make a general defalcation from the whole
+balance in our favor. This error cannot affect more
+than half, if so much, of the export article. 2dly.
+In the account made up at the Inspector-General's
+office, they estimate only the original cost of British
+products as they are here purchased; and on foreign
+goods, only the prices in the country from whence they
+are sent. This was the method established by Mr.
+Davenant; and as far as it goes, it certainly is a good
+one. But the profits of the merchant at home, and
+of our factories abroad, are not taken into the ac<!-- Page 344 --><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320" title="320" class="pagenum"></a>count;
+which profit on such an immense quantity of
+goods exported and re-exported cannot fail of being
+very great: five per cent, upon the whole, I should
+think, a very moderate allowance. 3dly. It does
+not comprehend the advantage arising from the employment
+of 600,000 tons of shipping, which must be
+paid by the foreign consumer, and which, in many
+bulky articles of commerce, is equal to the value of
+the commodity. This can scarcely be rated at less
+than a million annually. 4thly. The whole import
+from Ireland and America, and from the West Indies,
+is set against us in the ordinary way of striking a balance
+of imports and exports; whereas the import and
+export are both our own. This is just as ridiculous,
+as to put against the general balance of the nation,
+how much more goods Cheshire receives from London
+than London from Cheshire. The whole revolves and
+circulates through this kingdom, and is, so far as regards
+our profit, in the nature of home trade, as much
+as if the several countries of America and Ireland
+were all pieced to Cornwall. The course of exchange
+with all these places is fully sufficient to demonstrate
+that this kingdom has the whole advantage of their
+commerce. When the final profit upon a whole system
+of trade rests and centres in a certain place, a
+balance struck in that place merely on the mutual
+sale of commodities is quite fallacious. 5thly. The
+custom-house entries furnish a most defective, and,
+indeed, ridiculous idea of the most valuable branch
+of trade we have in the world,&mdash;that with Newfoundland.
+Observe what you export thither; a little
+spirits, provision, fishing-lines, and fishing-hooks.
+Is this <i>export</i> the true idea of the Newfoundland trade
+in the light of a beneficial branch of commerce?
+<!-- Page 345 --><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321" title="321" class="pagenum"></a>Nothing less. Examine our imports from thence; it
+seems upon this vulgar idea of exports and imports,
+to turn the balance against you. But your exports
+to Newfoundland are your own goods. Your import
+is your own food; as much your own, as that you
+raise with your ploughs out of your own soil; and
+not your loss, but your gain; your riches, not your
+poverty. But so fallacious is this way of judging,
+that neither the export nor import, nor both together,
+supply any idea approaching to adequate of that
+branch of business. The vessels in that trade go
+straight from Newfoundland to the foreign market;
+and the sale there, not the import here, is the measure
+of its value. That trade, which is one of your
+greatest and best, is hardly so much as seen in the
+custom-house entries; and it is not of less annual
+value to this nation than 400,000<i>l.</i> 6thly. The quality
+of your imports must be considered as well as
+the quantity. To state the whole of the foreign import
+<i>as loss</i>, is exceedingly absurd. All the iron,
+hemp, flax, cotton, Spanish wool, raw silk, woollen
+and linen-yarn, which we import, are by no means to
+be considered as the matter of a merely luxurious
+consumption; which is the idea too generally and
+loosely annexed to our import article. These above
+mentioned are materials of industry, not of luxury,
+which are wrought up here, in many instances, to
+ten times, and more, of their original value. Even
+where they are not subservient to our exports, they
+still add to our internal wealth, which consists in the
+stock of useful commodities, as much as in gold and
+silver. In looking over the specific articles of our export
+and import, I have often been astonished to see
+for how small a part of the supply of our consump<!-- Page 346 --><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322" title="322" class="pagenum"></a>tion,
+either luxurious or convenient, we are indebted
+to nations properly foreign to us.</p>
+
+<p>These considerations are entirely passed over by
+the author; they have been but too much neglected
+by most who have speculated on this subject. But
+they ought never to be omitted by those who mean
+to come to anything like the true state of the British
+trade. They compensate, and they more than compensate,
+everything which the author can cut off with
+any appearance of reason for the over-entry of British
+goods; and they restore to us that balance of four
+millions, which the author has thought proper on such
+a very poor and limited comprehension of the object
+to reduce to 2,500,000<i>l.</i></p>
+
+<p>In general this author is so circumstanced, that to
+support his theory he is obliged to assume his facts:
+and then, if you allow his facts, they will not support
+his conclusions. What if all he says of the state of this
+balance were true? did not the same objections always
+lie to custom-house entries? do they defalcate more
+from the entries of 1766 than from those of 1754?
+If they prove us ruined, we were always ruined.
+Some ravens have always indeed croaked out this
+kind of song. They have a malignant delight in
+presaging mischief, when they are not employed in
+doing it: they are miserable and disappointed at
+every instance of the public prosperity. They overlook
+us like the malevolent being of the poet:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i5">Tritonida conspicit arcem</div>
+<div>Ingeniis, opibusque, et festa pace virentem;</div>
+<div>Vixque tenet lacrymas quia nil lacrymabile cernit.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>It is in this spirit that some have looked upon
+those accidents that cast an occasional damp upon
+trade. Their imaginations entail these accidents
+<!-- Page 347 --><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323" title="323" class="pagenum"></a>upon us in perpetuity. We have had some bad harvests.
+This must very disadvantageously affect the
+balance of trade, and the navigation of a people, so
+large a part of whose commerce is in grain. But, in
+knowing the cause, we are morally certain, that,
+according to the course of events, it cannot long subsist.
+In the three last years, we have exported scarcely
+any grain; in good years, that export hath been
+worth twelve hundred thousand pounds and more;
+in the two last years, far from exporting, we have
+been obliged to import to the amount perhaps of our
+former exportation. So that in this article the balance
+must be 2,000,000<i>l.</i> against us; that is, one
+million in the ceasing of gain, the other in the increase
+of expenditure. But none of the author's
+promises or projects could have prevented this misfortune;
+and, thank God, we do not want him or
+them to relieve us from it; although, if his friends
+should now come into power, I doubt not but they
+will be ready to take credit for any increase of trade
+or excise, that may arise from the happy circumstance
+of a good harvest.</p>
+
+<p>This connects with his loud laments and melancholy
+prognostications concerning the high price of
+the necessaries of life and the products of labor.
+With all his others, I deny this fact; and I again
+call upon him to prove it. Take average and not
+accident, the grand and first necessary of life is
+cheap in this country; and that too as weighed,
+not against labor, which is its true counterpoise, but
+against money. Does he call the price of wheat at
+this day, between 32 and 40 shillings per quarter in
+London dear?<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor"
+title="It is dearer in some places, and rather cheaper in others; but it
+must soon all come to a level.">[64]</a> He must know that fuel (an object
+<!-- Page 348 --><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324" title="324" class="pagenum"></a>of the highest order in the necessaries of life, and of
+the first necessity in almost every kind of manufacture)
+is in many of our provinces cheaper than in any
+part of the globe. Meat is on the whole not excessively
+dear, whatever its price may be at particular
+times and from particular accidents. If it has had
+anything like an uniform rise, this enhancement
+may easily be proved not to be owing to the increase
+of taxes, but to uniform increase of consumption and
+of money. Diminish the latter, and meat in your
+markets will be sufficiently cheap in account, but
+much dearer in effect: because fewer will be in a
+condition to buy. Thus your apparent plenty will
+be real indigence. At present, even under temporary
+disadvantages, the use of flesh is greater here
+than anywhere else; it is continued without any interruption
+of Lents or meagre days; it is sustained
+and growing even with the increase of our taxes.
+But some have the art of converting even the signs
+of national prosperity into symptoms of decay and
+ruin. And our author, who so loudly disclaims popularity,
+never fails to lay hold of the most vulgar
+popular prejudices and humors, in hopes to captivate
+the crowd. Even those peevish dispositions
+which grow out of some transitory suffering, those
+passing clouds which float in our changeable atmosphere,
+are by him industriously figured into frightful
+shapes, in order first to terrify, and then to govern
+the populace.</p>
+
+<p>It was not enough for the author's purpose to give
+this false and discouraging picture of the state of his own
+country. It did not fully answer his end, to exaggerate
+her burdens, to depreciate her successes, and
+to vilify her character. Nothing had been done, un<!-- Page 349 --><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325" title="325" class="pagenum"></a>less
+the situation of France were exalted in proportion
+as that of England had been abased. The reader
+will excuse the citation I make at length from his
+book; he outdoes himself upon this occasion. His
+confidence is indeed unparalleled, and altogether of
+the heroic cast:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If our rival nations were in the same circumstances
+with ourselves, the <i>augmentation of our taxes
+would produce no ill consequences</i>: if we were obliged
+to raise our prices, they must, from the same causes,
+do the like, and could take no advantage by underselling
+and under-working us. But the alarming
+consideration to Great Britain is, <i>that France is not
+in the same condition</i>. Her distresses, during the
+war, were great, but they were immediate; her want
+of credit, as has been said, compelled her to impoverish
+her people, by raising the greatest part of her supplies
+within the year; <i>but the burdens she imposed on
+them were, in a great measure, temporary, and must be
+greatly diminished by a few years of peace</i>. She could
+procure no considerable loans, therefore she has mortgaged
+no <i>such oppressive taxes as those Great Britain has
+imposed in perpetuity for payment of interest</i>. Peace
+must, therefore, soon re-establish her commerce and
+manufactures, especially as the comparative <i>lightness
+of taxes</i>, and the cheapness of living, in that country,
+must make France an asylum for British manufacturers
+and artificers.&quot; On this the author rests the
+merit of his whole system. And on this point I will
+join issue with him. If France is not at least in the
+<i>same condition</i>, even in that very condition which the
+author falsely represents to be ours,&mdash;if the very reverse
+of his proposition be not true, then I will admit
+his state of the nation to be just; and all his inferen<!-- Page 350 --><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326" title="326" class="pagenum"></a>ces
+from that state to be logical and conclusive. It
+is not surprising, that the author should hazard our
+opinion of his veracity. That is a virtue on which
+great statesmen do not perhaps pique themselves so
+much; but it is somewhat extraordinary, that he
+should stake on a very poor calculation of chances,
+all credit for care, for accuracy, and for knowledge
+of the subject of which he treats. He is rash and
+inaccurate, because he thinks he writes to a public
+ignorant and inattentive. But he may find himself
+in that respect, as in many others, greatly mistaken.
+In order to contrast the light and vigorous condition
+of France with that of England, weak, and sinking
+under her burdens, he states, in his tenth page,
+that France had raised 50,314,378<i>l.</i> sterling <i>by taxes
+within the several years</i> from the year 1756 to 1762
+both inclusive. All Englishman must stand aghast
+at such a representation: To find France able to <i>raise
+within the year</i> sums little inferior to all that we were
+able even to <i>borrow</i> on interest with all the resources
+of the greatest and most established credit in the
+world! Europe was filled with astonishment when
+they saw England <i>borrow</i> in one year twelve millions.
+It was thought, and very justly, no small proof of national
+strength and financial skill, to find a fund for
+the payment of the interest upon this sum. The interest
+of this, computed with the one per cent annuities,
+amounted only to 600,000<i>l.</i> a year. This, I say,
+was thought a surprising effort even of credit. But
+this author talks, as of a thing not worth proving,
+and but just worth observing, that France in one year
+raised sixteen times that sum without borrowing, and
+continued to raise sums not far from equal to it for
+several years together. Suppose some Jacob Hen<!-- Page 351 --><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327" title="327" class="pagenum"></a>riques
+had proposed, in the year 1762, to prevent a
+perpetual charge on the nation by raising ten millions
+within the year: he would have been considered,
+not as a harsh financier, who laid a heavy hand
+on the public; but as a poor visionary, who had run
+mad on supplies and taxes. They who know that the
+whole land-tax of England, at 4<i>s.</i> in the pound, raises
+but two millions, will not easily apprehend that any
+such sums as the author has conjured up can be
+raised even in the most opulent nations. France
+owed a large debt, and was encumbered with heavy
+establishments, before that war. The author does
+not formally deny that she borrowed something in
+every year of its continuance; let him produce the
+funds for this astonishing annual addition to all her
+vast preceding taxes; an addition, equal to the whole
+excise, customs, land and malt-taxes of England taken
+together.</p>
+
+<p>But what must be the reader's astonishment, perhaps
+his indignation, if he should find that this great
+financier has fallen into the most unaccountable of all
+errors, no less an error than that of mistaking the
+<i>identical sums borrowed by France upon interest, for
+supplies raised within the year</i>! Can it be conceived
+that any man, only entered into the first rudiments
+of finance, should make so egregious a blunder;
+should write it, should print it; should carry it to a
+second edition; should take it not collaterally and
+incidentally, but lay it down as the corner-stone of
+his whole system, in such an important point as the
+comparative states of France and England? But it
+will be said, that it was his misfortune to be ill-informed.
+Not at all. A man of any loose general
+knowledge, and of the most ordinary sagacity, never
+<!-- Page 352 --><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328" title="328" class="pagenum"></a>could have been misinformed in so gross a manner;
+because he would have immediately rejected so wild
+and extravagant an account.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is this: the credit of France, bad as it
+might have been, did enable her (not to raise within
+the year) but to <i>borrow</i> the very sums the author
+mentions; that is to say, 1,106,916,261 livres, making,
+in the author's computation, 50,314,378<i>l.</i> The
+credit of France was low; but it was not annihilated.
+She did not derive, as our author chooses to assert,
+any advantages from the debility of her credit. Its
+consequence was the natural one: she borrowed;
+but she borrowed upon bad terms, indeed on the
+most exorbitant usury.</p>
+
+<p>In speaking of a foreign revenue, the very pretence
+to accuracy would be the most inaccurate thing in
+the world. Neither the author nor I can with certainty
+authenticate the information we communicate
+to the public, nor in an affair of eternal fluctuation
+arrive at perfect exactness. All we can do, and this
+we may be expected to do, is to avoid gross errors
+and blunders of a capital nature. We cannot order
+the proper officer to lay the accounts before the House.
+But the reader must judge on the probability of the
+accounts we lay before him. The author speaks of
+France as raising her supplies for war by taxes within
+the year; and of her debt, as a thing scarcely
+worthy of notice. I affirm that she borrowed large
+sums in every year; and has thereby accumulated an
+immense debt. This debt continued after the war
+infinitely to embarrass her affairs; and to find some
+means for its reduction was then and has ever since
+been the first object of her policy. But she has
+so little succeeded in all her efforts, that the <i>per<!-- Page 353 --><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329" title="329" class="pagenum"></a>petual</i>
+debt of France is at this hour little short of
+100,000,000<i>l.</i> sterling; and she stands charged with
+at least 40,000,000 of English pounds on life-rents and
+tontines. The annuities paid at this day at the H&ocirc;tel
+de Ville of Paris, which are by no means her sole
+payments of that nature, amount to 139,000,000 of
+livres, that is to 6,318,000<i>l.</i>; besides <i>billets au porteur</i>,
+and various detached and unfunded debts, to a great
+amount, and which bear an interest.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the war, the interest payable on her
+debt amounted to upwards of seven millions sterling.
+M. de la Verdy, the last hope of the French finances,
+was called in, to aid in the reduction of an interest,
+so light to our author, so intolerably heavy upon
+those who are to pay it. After many unsuccessful
+efforts towards reconciling arbitrary reduction with
+public credit, he was obliged to go the plain high
+road of power, and to impose a tax of 10 per cent
+upon a very great part of the capital debt of that
+kingdom; and this measure of present ease, to the
+destruction of future credit, produced about 500,000<i>l.</i>
+a year, which was carried to their <i>Caisse d'amortissement</i>
+or sinking fund. But so unfaithfully and unsteadily
+has this and all the other articles which
+compose that fund been applied to their purposes,
+that they have given the state but very little even of
+present relief, since it is known to the whole world
+that she is behindhand
+<!-- [**Transcriber's note: was &quot;behind-hand&quot; in the original, inconsistent with p442] -->
+on every one of her establishments.
+Since the year 1763, there has been no operation
+of any consequence on the French finances;
+and in this enviable condition is France at present
+with regard to her debt.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody knows that the principal of the debt is
+but a name; the interest is the only thing which can
+distress a nation. Take this idea, which will not be
+<!-- Page 354 --><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330" title="330" class="pagenum"></a>disputed, and compare the interest paid by England
+with that paid by France:</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 28em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr><td class="wrap">Interest paid by France, funded and
+unfunded, for perpetuity or on lives,
+after the tax of 10 per cent</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">&pound;6,500,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Interest paid by England, as stated by
+the author, p. 27</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">4,600,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;--</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Interest paid by France exceeds that
+paid by England</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">&pound;1,900,000</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The author cannot complain, that I state the interest
+paid by England as too low. He takes it himself
+as the extremest term. Nobody who knows anything
+of the French finances will affirm that I state the interest
+paid by that kingdom too high. It might be
+easily proved to amount to a great deal more: even
+this is near two millions above what is paid by
+England.</p>
+
+<p>There are three standards to judge of the good condition
+of a nation with regard to its finances. 1st,
+The relief of the people. 2nd, The equality of supplies
+to establishments. 3rd, The state of public
+credit. Try France on all these standards.</p>
+
+<p>Although our author very liberally administers
+relief to the people of France, its government has not
+been altogether so gracious. Since the peace, she has
+taken off but a single <i>vingti&egrave;me</i>, or shilling in the
+pound, and some small matter in the capitation.
+But, if the government has relieved them in one
+point, it has only burdened them the more heavily in
+another. The <i>Taille</i>,<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor"
+title="A tax rated by the intendant in each generality, on the presumed
+fortune of every person below the degree of a gentleman.">[65]</a> that grievous and destructive
+imposition, which all their financiers lament, without
+being able to remove or to replace, has been aug<!-- Page 355 --><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331" title="331" class="pagenum"></a>mented
+no less than six millions of livres, or 270,000
+pounds English. A further augmentation of this or
+other duties is now talked of; and it is certainly necessary
+to their affairs: so exceedingly remote from
+either truth or verisimilitude is the author's amazing
+assertion, <i>that the burdens of France in the war were
+in a great measure temporary, and must be greatly
+diminished by a few years of peace</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the next place, if the people of France are not
+lightened of taxes, so neither is the state disburdened
+of charges. I speak from very good information,
+that the annual income of that state is at this day
+thirty millions of livres, or 1,350,000<i>l.</i> sterling, short
+of a provision for their ordinary peace establishment;
+so far are they from the attempt or even hope to discharge
+any part of the capital of their enormous debt.
+Indeed, under such extreme straitness and distraction
+labors the whole body of their finances, so far
+does their charge outrun their supply in every particular,
+that no man, I believe, who has considered
+their affairs with any degree of attention or information,
+but must hourly look for some extraordinary
+convulsion in that whole system: the effect of which
+on France, and even on all Europe, it is difficult to
+conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>In the third point of view, their credit. Let the
+reader cast his eye on a table of the price of French
+funds, as they stood a few weeks ago, compared with
+the state of some of our English stocks, even in their
+present low condition:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 22em;">
+<tr><td align='center' colspan="2">French.</td><td align='center' colspan="2">British.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>5 per cents             </td><td align='right' style="padding-right: 2em">63</td><td>Bank stock, 5&frac12;</td><td align='right'>159</td></tr>
+<tr><td>4 per cent (not taxed)  </td><td align='right' style="padding-right: 2em">57</td><td>4 per cent cons.</td><td align='right'>100</td></tr>
+<tr><td>3 per cent&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"
+                                </td><td align='right' style="padding-right: 2em">49</td><td>3 per cent cons.</td><td align='right'>88</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p><!-- Page 356 --><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332" title="332" class="pagenum"></a>This state of the funds of France and England is
+sufficient to convince even prejudice and obstinacy,
+that if France and England are not in the same condition
+(as the author affirms they are not) the difference
+is infinitely to the disadvantage of France.
+This depreciation of their funds has not much the air
+of a nation lightening burdens and discharging debts.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the true comparative state of the two kingdoms
+in those capital points of view. Now as to the
+nature of the taxes which provide for this debt, as
+well as for their ordinary establishments, the author
+has thought proper to affirm that &quot;they are comparatively
+light&quot;; that &quot;she has mortgaged no such oppressive
+taxes as ours&quot;; his effrontery on this head
+is intolerable. Does the author recollect a single tax
+in England to which something parallel in nature,
+and as heavy in burden, does not exist in France;
+does he not know that the lands of the noblesse are still
+under the load of the greater part of the old feudal
+charges, from which the gentry of England have been
+relieved for upwards of a hundred years, and which
+were in kind, as well as burden, much worse than
+our modern land-tax? Besides that all the gentry of
+France serve in the army on very slender pay, and to
+the utter ruin of their fortunes, all those who are not
+noble have their lands heavily taxed. Does he not
+know that wine, brandy, soap, candles, leather, saltpetre,
+gunpowder, are taxed in France? Has he not
+heard that government in France has made a monopoly
+of that great article of <i>salt?</i> that they compel
+the people to take a certain quantity of it, and at a
+certain rate, both rate and quantity fixed at the arbitrary
+pleasure of the imposer?<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor"
+title="Before the war it was sold to, or rather forced on, the consumer
+at 11 sous, or about 5_d._ the pound. What it is at present, I am not
+informed. Even this will appear no trivial imposition. In London,
+salt may be had at a penny farthing per pound from the last retailer.">[66]</a> that they pay in
+<!-- Page 357 --><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333" title="333" class="pagenum"></a>France the <i>Taille</i>, an arbitrary imposition on presumed
+property? that a tax is laid in fact and name,
+on the same arbitrary standard, upon the acquisitions
+of their <i>industry</i>? and that in France a heavy <i>capitation-tax</i>
+is also paid, from the highest to the very
+poorest sort of people? Have we taxes of such
+weight, or anything at all of the compulsion, in the
+article of <i>salt</i>? do we pay any <i>taillage</i>, any <i>faculty-tax</i>,
+any <i>industry-tax?</i> do we pay any <i>capitation-tax</i>
+whatsoever? I believe the people of London would
+fall into an agony to hear of such taxes proposed
+upon them as are paid at Paris. There is not a single
+article of provision for man or beast which enters
+that great city, and is not excised; corn, hay, meal,
+butcher's-meat, fish, fowls, everything. I do not here
+mean to censure the policy of taxes laid on the consumption
+of great luxurious cities. I only state the
+fact. We should be with difficulty brought to hear
+of a tax of 50<i>s.</i> upon every ox sold in Smithfield.
+Yet this tax is paid in Paris. Wine, the lower sort
+of wine, little better than English small beer, pays
+2<i>d.</i> a bottle.</p>
+
+<p>We, indeed, tax our beer; but the imposition on
+small beer is very far from heavy. In no part of
+England are eatables of any kind the object of taxation.
+In almost every other country in Europe they
+are excised, more or less. I have by me the state of
+the revenues of many of the principal nations on the
+Continent; and, on comparing them with ours, I
+think I am fairly warranted to assert, that England
+is the most lightly taxed of any of the great states
+<!-- Page 358 --><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334" title="334" class="pagenum"></a>of Europe. They, whose unnatural and sullen joy
+arises from a contemplation of the distresses of their
+country, will revolt at this position. But if I am
+called upon, I will prove it beyond all possibility of
+dispute; even though this proof should deprive these
+gentlemen of the singular satisfaction of considering
+their country as undone; and though the best civil
+government, the best constituted, and the best managed
+revenue that ever the world beheld, should be
+thoroughly vindicated from their perpetual clamors
+and complaints. As to our neighbor and rival France,
+in addition to what I have here suggested, I say, and
+when the author chooses formally to deny, I shall
+formally prove it, that her subjects pay more than
+England, on a computation of the wealth of both
+countries; that her taxes are more injudiciously and
+more oppressively imposed; more vexatiously collected;
+come in a smaller proportion to the royal coffers,
+and are less applied by far to the public service.
+I am not one of those who choose to take the author's
+word for this happy and flourishing condition of the
+French finances, rather than attend to the changes,
+the violent pushes and the despair of all her own financiers.
+Does he choose to be referred for the easy
+and happy condition of the subject in France to the
+remonstrances of their own parliaments, written with
+such an eloquence, feeling, and energy, as I have not
+seen exceeded in any other writings? The author
+may say, their complaints are exaggerated, and the
+effects of faction. I answer, that they are the representations
+of numerous, grave, and most respectable
+bodies of men, upon the affairs of their own country.
+But, allowing that discontent and faction may pervert
+the judgment of such venerable bodies in France,
+<!-- Page 359 --><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335" title="335" class="pagenum"></a>we have as good a right to suppose that the same
+causes may full as probably have produced from a
+private, however respectable person, that frightful,
+and, I trust I have shown, groundless representation
+of our own affairs in England.</p>
+
+<p>The author is so conscious of the dangerous effects
+of that representation, that he thinks it necessary,
+and very necessary it is, to guard against them. He
+assures us, &quot;that he has not made that display of the
+difficulties of his country, to expose her counsels to
+the ridicule of other states, or to provoke a vanquished
+enemy to insult her; nor to excite the people's rage
+against their governors, or sink them into a despondency
+of the public welfare.&quot; I readily admit this
+apology for his intentions. God forbid I should think
+any man capable of entertaining so execrable and
+senseless a design. The true cause of his drawing so
+shocking a picture is no more than this; and it ought
+rather to claim our pity than excite our indignation;
+he finds himself out of power; and this condition is
+intolerable to him. The same sun which gilds all
+nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not
+shine upon disappointed ambition. It is something
+that rays out of darkness, and inspires nothing but
+gloom and melancholy. Men in this deplorable state
+of mind find a comfort in spreading the contagion of
+their spleen. They find an advantage too; for it is a
+general, popular error, to imagine the loudest complainers
+for the public to be the most anxious for
+its welfare. If such persons can answer the ends of
+relief and profit to themselves, they are apt to be
+careless enough about either the means or the consequences.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever this complainant's motives may be, the
+<!-- Page 360 --><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336" title="336" class="pagenum"></a>effects can by no possibility be other than those which
+he so strongly, and I hope truly, disclaims all intention
+of producing. To verify this, the reader has
+only to consider how dreadful a picture he has drawn
+in his 32nd page, of the state of this kingdom; such
+a picture as, I believe, has hardly been applicable,
+without some exaggeration, to the most degenerate
+and undone commonwealth that ever existed. Let
+this view of things be compared with the prospect of
+a remedy which he proposes in the page directly opposite,
+and the subsequent. I believe no man living
+could have imagined it possible, except for the sake
+of burlesquing a subject, to propose remedies so ridiculously
+disproportionate to the evil, so full of uncertainty
+in their operation, and depending for their
+success in every step upon the happy event of so
+many new, dangerous, and visionary projects. It is
+not amiss, that he has thought proper to give the
+public some little notice of what they may expect
+from his friends, when our affairs shall be committed
+to their management. Let us see how the accounts
+of disease and remedy are balanced in his &quot;State of
+the Nation.&quot; In the first place, on the side of evils,
+he states, &quot;an impoverished and heavily-burdened
+public. A declining trade and decreasing specie.
+The power of the crown never so much extended
+over the great; but the great without influence over
+the lower sort. Parliament losing its reverence with
+the people. The voice of the multitude set up against
+the sense of the legislature; a people luxurious and
+licentious, impatient of rule, and despising all authority.
+Government relaxed in every sinew, and a corrupt
+selfish spirit pervading the whole. An opinion
+of many, that the form of government is not worth
+<!-- Page 361 --><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337" title="337" class="pagenum"></a>contending for. No attachment in the bulk of the
+people towards the constitution. No reverence for
+the customs of our ancestors. No attachment but to
+private interest, nor any zeal but for selfish
+gratifications. Trade and manufactures going to ruin.
+Great Britain in danger of becoming tributary to
+France, and the descent of the crown dependent on
+her pleasure. Ireland, in case of a war, to become
+a prey to France; and Great Britain, unable to recover
+Ireland, cede it by treaty,&quot; (the author never
+can think of a treaty without making cessions,) &quot;in
+order to purchase peace for herself. The colonies
+left exposed to the ravages of a domestic, or the conquest
+of a foreign enemy.&quot;&mdash;Gloomy enough, God
+knows. The author well observes,<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 31.">[67]</a> <i>that a mind not
+totally devoid of feeling cannot look upon such a prospect
+without horror; and an heart capable of humanity
+must be unable to hear its description</i>. He ought to
+have added, that no man of common discretion ought
+to have exhibited it to the public, if it were true; or
+of common honesty, if it were false.</p>
+
+<p>But now for the comfort; the day-star which is to
+arise in our hearts; the author's grand scheme for
+totally reversing this dismal state of things, and making
+us<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 33.">[68]</a> &quot;happy at home and respected abroad, formidable
+in war and flourishing in peace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In this great work he proceeds with a facility
+equally astonishing and pleasing. Never was financier
+less embarrassed by the burden of establishments,
+or with the difficulty of finding ways and means. If
+an establishment is troublesome to him, he lops off at
+a stroke just as much of it as he chooses. He mows
+down, without giving quarter, or assigning reason,
+<!-- Page 362 --><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338" title="338" class="pagenum"></a>army, navy, ordnance, ordinary, extraordinaries; nothing
+can stand before him. Then, when he comes to
+provide, Amalthea's horn is in his hands; and he
+pours out with an inexhaustible bounty, taxes, duties,
+loans, and revenues, without uneasiness to himself,
+or burden to the public. Insomuch that, when we
+consider the abundance of his resources, we cannot
+avoid being surprised at his extraordinary attention
+to savings. But it is all the exuberance of his goodness.</p>
+
+<p>This book has so much of a certain tone of power,
+that one would be almost tempted to think it written
+by some person who had been high in office. A man
+is generally rendered somewhat a worse reasoner for
+having been a minister. In private, the assent of listening
+and obsequious friends; in public, the venal
+cry and prepared vote of a passive senate, confirm
+him in habits of begging the question with impunity,
+and asserting without thinking himself obliged
+to prove. Had it not been for some such habits, the
+author could never have expected that we should take
+his estimate for a peace establishment solely on his
+word.</p>
+
+<p>This estimate which he gives,<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 33.">[69]</a> is the great groundwork
+of his plan for the national redemption; and it
+ought to be well and firmly laid, or what must become
+of the superstructure? One would have thought
+the natural method in a plan of reformation would
+be, to take the present existing estimates as they
+stand; and then to show what may be practicably
+and safely defalcated from them. This would, I say,
+be the natural course; and what would be expected
+from a man of business. But this author takes a
+<!-- Page 363 --><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339" title="339" class="pagenum"></a>very different method. For the ground of his speculation
+of a present peace establishment, he resorts to
+a former speculation of the same kind, which was in
+the mind of the minister of the year 1764. Indeed it
+never existed anywhere else. &quot;The plan,&quot;<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 33.">[70]</a> says he,
+with his usual ease, &quot;has been already formed, and
+the outline drawn, by the administration of 1764. I
+shall attempt to fill up the void and obliterated parts,
+and trace its operation. The standing expense of the
+present (his projected) peace establishment, <i>improved
+by the experience of the two last years, may be thus estimated</i>&quot;;
+and he estimates it at 3,468,161<i>l.</i></p>
+
+<p>Here too it would be natural to expect some reasons
+for condemning the subsequent actual establishments,
+which have so much transgressed the limits
+of his plan of 1764, as well as some arguments in favor
+of his new project; which has in some articles
+exceeded, in others fallen short, but on the whole is
+much below his old one. Hardly a word on any of
+these points, the only points however that are in the
+least essential; for unless you assign reasons for the
+increase or diminution of the several articles of public
+charge, the playing at establishments and estimates
+is an amusement of no higher order, and of
+much less ingenuity, than <i>Questions and commands</i>,
+or <i>What is my thought like</i>? To bring more distinctly
+under the reader's view this author's strange method of
+proceeding, I will lay before him the three schemes;
+viz. the idea of the ministers in 1764, the actual estimates
+of the two last years as given by the author himself,
+and lastly the new project of his political millennium:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div><!-- Page 364 --><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340" title="340" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 39em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr><td class="wrap">Plan of establishment for 1764, as by
+"Considerations," p. 43</td><td align='right' valign="bottom"><a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor"
+title="The figures in the &quot;Considerations&quot; are wrongly cast up; it
+should be 3,608,700_l._">[71]</a>&nbsp;&pound;3,609,700</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Medium of 1767 and 1768, as by "State
+of the Nation," p. 29 and 30</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">3,919,375</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Present peace establishment, as by the
+project in "State of the Nation," p. 33</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">3,468,161</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>It is not from anything our author has anywhere
+said, that you are enabled to find the ground, much
+less the justification, of the immense difference between
+these several systems; you must compare them
+yourself, article by article; no very pleasing employment,
+by the way, to compare the agreement or disagreement
+of two chimeras. I now only speak of the
+comparison of his own two projects. As to the latter
+of them, it differs from the former, by having some
+of the articles diminished, and others increased.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor"
+title="&quot;Considerations,&quot; p. 43. &quot;State of the Nation,&quot; p. 33.">[72]</a> I
+find the chief article of reduction arises from the
+smaller deficiency of land and malt, and of the annuity
+funds, which he brings down to 295,561<i>l.</i> in his
+new estimate, from 502,400<i>l.</i> which he had allowed
+for those articles in the &quot;Considerations.&quot; With
+this <i>reduction</i>, owing, as it must be, merely to a smaller
+deficiency of funds, he has nothing at all to do.
+It can be no work and no merit of his. But with regard
+to the <i>increase</i>, the matter is very different. It
+is all his own; the public is loaded (for anything we
+can see to the contrary) entirely <i>gratis</i>. The chief
+articles of the increase are on the navy,<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor"
+title="Ibid.">[73]</a> and on the
+army and ordnance extraordinaries; the navy being
+<!-- Page 365 --><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341" title="341" class="pagenum"></a>estimated in his &quot;State of the Nation&quot; 50,000<i>l.</i> a
+year more, and the army and ordnance extraordinaries
+40,000<i>l.</i> more, than he had thought proper to allow
+for them in that estimate in his &quot;Considerations,&quot;
+which he makes the foundation of his present project.
+He has given no sort of reason, stated no sort of necessity,
+for this additional allowance, either in the
+one article or the other. What is still stronger, he
+admits that his allowance for the army and ordnance
+extras is too great, and expressly refers you to the
+&quot;Considerations&quot;;<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 34.">[74]</a> where, far from giving 75,000<i>l.</i>
+a year to that service, as the &quot;State of the Nation&quot;
+has done, the author apprehends his own scanty provision
+of 35,000<i>l.</i> to be by far too considerable, and
+thinks it may well admit of further reductions.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor"
+title="The author of the &quot;State of the Nation,&quot; p. 34, informs us, that
+the sum of 75,000_l._ allowed by him for the extras of the army and
+ordnance, is far less than was allowed for the same service in the years
+1767 and 1768. It is so undoubtedly, and by at least 200,000_l._ He
+sees that he cannot abide by the plan of the &quot;Considerations&quot; in this
+point, nor is he willing wholly to give it up. Such an enormous
+difference as that between 35,000_l._ and 300,000_l._ puts him to a stand.
+Should he adopt the latter plan of increased expense, he must then
+confess that he had, on a former occasion, egregiously trifled with the
+public; at the same time all his future promises of reduction must
+fall to the ground. If he stuck to the 35,000_l._ he was sure that every
+one must expect from him some account how this monstrous charge
+came to continue ever since the war, when it was clearly unnecessary;
+how all those successions of ministers (his own included) came to pay
+it, and why his great friend in Parliament, and his partisans without
+doors, came not to pursue to ruin, at least to utter shame, the authors
+of so groundless and scandalous a profusion. In this strait he took
+a middle way; and, to come nearer the real state of the service, he
+outbid the &quot;Considerations,&quot; at one stroke, 40,000_l._; at the same
+time he hints to you, that you may _expect_ some benefit also from the
+original plan. But the author of the &quot;Considerations&quot; will not suffer
+him to escape it. He has pinned him down to his 35,000_l._; for
+that is the sum he has chosen, not as what he thinks will probably
+be required, but as making the most ample allowance for every possible
+contingency. See that author, p. 42 and 43.">[75]</a>
+<!-- Page 366 --><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342" title="342" class="pagenum"></a>Thus, according to his own principles, this great
+economist falls into a vicious prodigality; and is as
+far in his estimate from a consistency with his own
+principles as with the real nature of the services.</p>
+
+<p>Still, however, his present establishment differs
+from its archetype of 1764, by being, though raised
+in particular parts, upon the whole, about 141,000<i>l.</i>
+smaller. It is improved, he tells us, by the experience
+of the two last years. One would have concluded
+that the peace establishment of these two
+years had been less than that of 1764, in order to
+suggest to the author his improvements, which enabled
+him to reduce it. But how does that turn out?</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 28em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr><td class="wrap">Peace establishment<a name="FNanchor_71_71a" id="FNanchor_71_71a"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor"
+title="He has done great injustice to the establishment of 1768; but I
+have not here time for this discussion; nor is it necessary to this argument.">[76]</a> 1767 and 1768,
+medium</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">&pound;3,919,375</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Ditto, estimate in the "Considerations,"
+for 1764</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">3,609,700</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>Difference</td><td align='right'>&pound;309,675</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="noindent">A vast increase instead of diminution. The experience
+then of the two last years ought naturally to
+have given the idea of a heavier establishment; but
+this writer is able to diminish by increasing, and to
+draw the effects of subtraction from the operations of
+addition. By means of these new powers, he may
+certainly do whatever he pleases. He is indeed moderate
+enough in the use of them, and condescends to
+settle his establishments at 3,468,161<i>l.</i> a year.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 367 --><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343" title="343" class="pagenum"></a>However, he has not yet done with it; he has further
+ideas of saving, and new resources of revenue.
+These additional savings are principally two: 1st, <i>It
+is to be hoped</i>,<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 34.">[77]</a> says he, that the sum of 250,000<i>l.</i>
+(which in the estimate he allows for the deficiency
+of land and malt) will be less by 37,924<i>l.</i><a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor"
+title="In making up this account, he falls into a surprising error of
+arithmetic. &quot;The deficiency of the land-tax in the year 1754 and
+1755, when it was at 2_s._, amounted to no more, on a medium, than
+49,372_l._; to which, if we add _half the sum_, it will give us 79,058_l._ as
+the peace deficiency at 3_s._&quot; ... Table...
+Which he makes 79,058_l._ This is indeed in disfavor of his argument;
+but we shall see that he has ways, by other errors, of reimbursing
+himself.">[78]</a></p>
+
+<p>2nd, That the sum of 20,000<i>l.</i> allowed for the
+Foundling Hospital, and 1800<i>l.</i> for American Surveys,
+will soon cease to be necessary, as the services
+will be completed.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">What follows, with regard to the resources,<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 34.">[79]</a> is
+very well worthy the reader's attention. &quot;Of this
+estimate,&quot; says he, &quot;upwards of 300,000<i>l.</i> will be for
+the plantation service; and that sum, <i>I hope</i>, the people
+of Ireland and the colonies <i>might be induced</i> to
+take off Great Britain, and defray between them, in
+the proportion of 200,000<i>l.</i> by the colonies, and
+100,000<i>l.</i> by Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such is the whole of this mighty scheme. Take
+his reduced estimate, and his further reductions, and
+his resources all together, and the result will be,&mdash;he
+<!-- Page 368 --><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344" title="344" class="pagenum"></a>will <i>certainly</i> lower the provision made for the navy.
+He will cut off largely (God knows what or how)
+from the army and ordnance extraordinaries. He
+may be <i>expected</i> to cut off more. He <i>hopes</i> that the
+deficiencies on land and malt will be less than usual;
+and he <i>hopes</i> that America and Ireland might be <i>induced</i>
+to take off 300,000<i>l.</i> of our annual charges.</p>
+
+<p>If any of these Hopes, Mights, Insinuations, Expectations,
+and Inducements, should fail him, there will
+be a formidable gaping breach in his whole project.
+If all of them should fail, he has left the nation without
+a glimmering of hope in this thick night of terrors
+which he has thought fit to spread about us. If
+every one of them, which, attended with success,
+would signify anything to our revenue, can have no
+effect but to add to our distractions and dangers, we
+shall be if possible in a still worse condition from his
+projects of cure, than he represents us from our original
+disorders.</p>
+
+<p>Before we examine into the consequences of these
+schemes, and the probability of these savings, let us
+suppose them all real and all safe, and then see what
+it is they amount to, and how he reasons on them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 20em;">
+<tr><td>Deficiency on land and malt, less by</td><td align='right'>&pound;37,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Foundling Hospital</td><td align='right'>20,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td>American Surveys</td><td align='right'>1,800</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&pound;58,800</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>This is the amount of the only articles of saving he
+specifies: and yet he chooses to assert,<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 34.">[81]</a> &quot;that we
+may venture on the credit of them to reduce the
+standing expenses of the estimate (from 3,468,161<i>l.</i>)
+to 3,300,000<i>l.</i>&quot;; that is, for a saving of 58,000<i>l.</i> he
+<!-- Page 369 --><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345" title="345" class="pagenum"></a>is not ashamed to take credit for a defalcation from
+his own ideal establishment in a sum of no less than
+168,161<i>l.</i>! Suppose even that we were to take up
+the estimate of the &quot;Considerations&quot; (which is however
+abandoned in the &quot;State of the Nation&quot;), and
+reduce his 75,000<i>l.</i> extraordinaries to the original
+35,000<i>l.</i>, still all these savings joined together give
+us but 98,800<i>l.</i>; that is, near 70,000<i>l.</i> short of the
+credit he calls for, and for which he has neither given
+any reason, nor furnished any data whatsoever for
+others to reason upon.</p>
+
+<p>Such are his savings, as operating on his own project
+of a peace establishment. Let us now consider
+them as they affect the existing establishment and
+our actual services. He tells us, the sum allowed in
+his estimate for the navy is &quot;69,321<i>l.</i> less than the
+grant for that service in 1767; but in that grant
+30,000<i>l.</i> was included for the purchase of hemp, and
+a saving of about 25,000<i>l.</i> was made in that year.&quot;
+The author has got some secret in arithmetic. These
+two sums put together amount, in the ordinary way
+of computing, to 55,000<i>l.</i>, and not to 69,321<i>l.</i> On
+what principle has he chosen to take credit for
+14,321<i>l.</i> more? To what this strange inaccuracy
+is owing, I cannot possibly comprehend; nor is it
+very material, where the logic is so bad, and the
+policy so erroneous, whether the arithmetic be just or
+otherwise. But in a scheme for making this nation
+&quot;happy at home and respected abroad, formidable in
+war and flourishing in peace,&quot; it is surely a little unfortunate
+for us, that he has picked out the <i>Navy</i>, as
+the very first object of his economical experiments.
+Of all the public services, that of the navy is the one
+in which tampering may be of the greatest danger,
+<!-- Page 370 --><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346" title="346" class="pagenum"></a>which can worst be supplied upon an emergency, and
+of which any failure draws after it the longest and
+heaviest train of consequences. I am far from saying,
+that this or any service ought not to be conducted
+with economy. But I will never suffer the
+sacred name of economy to be bestowed upon arbitrary
+defalcation of charge. The author tells us himself,
+&quot;that to suffer the navy to rot in harbor for
+want of repairs and marines, would be to invite destruction.&quot;
+It would be so. When the author talks
+therefore of savings on the navy estimate, it is incumbent
+on him to let us know, not what sums he will
+cut off, but what branch of that service he deems superfluous.
+Instead of putting us off with unmeaning
+generalities, he ought to have stated what naval force,
+what naval works, and what naval stores, with the
+lowest estimated expense, are necessary to keep our
+marine in a condition commensurate to its great
+ends. And this too not for the contracted and deceitful
+space of a single year, but for some reasonable
+term. Everybody knows that many charges cannot
+be in their nature regular or annual. In the year
+1767 a stock of hemp, &amp;c., was to be laid in; that
+charge intermits, but it does not end. Other charges
+of other kinds take their place. Great works are now
+carrying on at Portsmouth, but not of greater magnitude
+than utility; and they must be provided for.
+A year's estimate is therefore no just idea at all of a
+permanent peace establishment. Had the author
+opened this matter upon these plain principles, a
+judgment might have been formed, how far he had
+contrived to reconcile national defence with public
+economy. Till he has done it, those who had rather
+depend on any man's reason than the greatest man's
+<!-- Page 371 --><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347" title="347" class="pagenum"></a>authority, will not give him credit on this head, for
+the saving of a single shilling. As to those savings
+which are already made, or in course of being made,
+whether right or wrong, he has nothing at all to do
+with them; they can be no part of his project, considered
+as a plan of reformation. I greatly fear that the
+error has not lately been on the side of profusion.</p>
+
+<p>Another head is the saving on the army and ordnance
+extraordinaries, particularly in the American
+branch. What or how much reduction may be made,
+none of us, I believe, can with any fairness pretend
+to say; very little, I am convinced. The state of
+America is extremely unsettled; more troops have
+been sent thither; new dispositions have been made;
+and this augmentation of number, and change of disposition,
+has rarely, I believe, the effect of lessening
+the bill for extraordinaries, which, if not this year,
+yet in the next we must certainly feel. Care has not
+been wanting to introduce economy into that part of
+the service. The author's great friend has made, I
+admit, some regulations: his immediate successors
+have made more and better. This part will be handled
+more ably and more minutely at another time:
+but no one can cut down this bill of extraordinaries
+at his pleasure. The author has given us nothing,
+but his word, for any certain or considerable reduction;
+and this we ought to be the more cautious in
+taking, as he has promised great savings in his &quot;Considerations,&quot;
+which he has not chosen to abide by in
+his &quot;State of the Nation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On this head also of the American extraordinaries,
+he can take credit for nothing. As to his next, the
+lessening of the deficiency of the land and malt-tax,
+particularly of the malt-tax, any person the least
+<!-- Page 372 --><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348" title="348" class="pagenum"></a>conversant in that subject cannot avoid a smile.
+This deficiency arises from charge of collection, from
+anticipation, and from defective produce. What has
+the author said on the reduction of any head of this
+deficiency upon the land-tax? On these points he is
+absolutely silent. As to the deficiency on the malt-tax,
+which is chiefly owing to a defective produce, he
+has and can have nothing to propose. If this deficiency
+should he lessened by the increase of malting
+in any years more than in others, (as it is a greatly
+fluctuating object,) how much of this obligation shall
+we owe to this author's ministry? will it not be the
+case under any administration? must it not go to
+the general service of the year, in some way or other,
+let the finances be in whose hands they will? But
+why take credit for so extremely reduced a deficiency
+at all? I can tell him he has no rational ground for
+it in the produce of the year 1767; and I suspect will
+have full as little reason from the produce of the year
+1768. That produce may indeed become greater,
+and the deficiency of course will be less. It may too
+be far otherwise. A fair and judicious financier will
+not, as this writer has done, for the sake of making
+out a specious account, select a favorable year or two,
+at remote periods, and ground his calculations on
+those. In 1768 he will not take the deficiencies of
+1753 and 1754 for his standard. Sober men have
+hitherto (and must continue this course, to preserve
+this character,) taken indifferently the mediums of
+the years immediately preceding. But a person who
+has a scheme from which he promises much to the
+public ought to be still more cautious; he should
+ground his speculation rather on the lowest mediums
+because all new schemes are known to be sub<!-- Page 373 --><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349" title="349" class="pagenum"></a>ject
+to some defect or failure not foreseen; and which
+therefore every prudent proposer will be ready to allow
+for, in order to lay his foundation as low and as
+solid as possible. Quite contrary is the practice of
+some politicians. They first propose savings, which
+they well know cannot be made, in order to get a
+reputation for economy. In due time they assume
+another, but a different method, by providing for the
+service they had before cut off or straitened, and
+which they can then very easily prove to be necessary.
+In the same spirit they raise magnificent ideas
+of revenue on funds which they know to be insufficient.
+Afterwards, who can blame them, if they do
+not satisfy the public desires? They are great artificers
+but they cannot work without materials.</p>
+
+<p>These are some of the little arts of great statesmen.
+To such we leave them, and follow where the author
+leads us, to his next resource, the Foundling Hospital.
+Whatever particular virtue there is in the mode
+of this saving, there seems to be nothing at all new,
+and indeed nothing wonderfully important in it. The
+sum annually voted for the support of the Foundling
+Hospital has been in a former Parliament limited
+to the establishment of the children then in
+the hospital. When they are apprenticed, this provision
+will cease. It will therefore fall in more
+or less at different times; and will at length cease
+entirely. But, until it does, we cannot reckon upon it
+as the saving on the establishment of any given year:
+nor can any one conceive how the author comes to
+mention this, any more than some other articles, as
+a part of a <i>new</i> plan of economy which is to retrieve
+our affairs. This charge will indeed cease in its
+own time. But will no other succeed to it? Has
+<!-- Page 374 --><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350" title="350" class="pagenum"></a>he ever known the public free from some contingent
+charge, either for the just support of royal
+dignity or for national magnificence, or for public
+charity, or for public service? does he choose to flatter
+his readers that no such will ever return? or
+does he in good earnest declare, that let the reason,
+or necessity, be what they will, he is resolved not to
+provide for such services?</p>
+
+<p>Another resource of economy yet remains, for he
+gleans the field very closely,&mdash;1800<i>l.</i> for the American
+surveys. Why, what signifies a dispute about
+trifles? he shall have it. But while he is carrying it
+off, I shall just whisper in his ear, that neither the
+saving that is allowed, nor that which is doubted of,
+can at all belong to that future proposed administration,
+whose touch is to cure all our evils. Both the
+one and the other belong equally (as indeed all the
+rest do) to the present administration, to any administration;
+because they are the gift of time, and not
+the bounty of the exchequer.</p>
+
+<p>I have now done with all the minor, preparatory
+parts of the author's scheme, the several articles of
+saving which he proposes. At length comes the capital
+operation, his new resources. Three hundred
+thousand pounds a year from America and Ireland.&mdash;Alas!
+alas! if that too should fail us, what will
+become of this poor undone nation? The author, in
+a tone of great humility, <i>hopes</i> they may be induced
+to pay it. Well, if that be all, we may hope so too:
+and for any light he is pleased to give us into the
+ground of this hope, and the ways and means of this
+inducement, here is a speedy end both of the question
+and the revenue.</p>
+
+<p>It is the constant custom of this author, in all his
+<!-- Page 375 --><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351" title="351" class="pagenum"></a>writings, to take it for granted, that he has given you
+a revenue, whenever he can point out to you where
+you may have money, if you can contrive how to get
+at it; and this seems to be the masterpiece of his
+financial ability. I think, however, in his way of proceeding,
+he has behaved rather like a harsh step-dame,
+than a kind nursing-mother to his country.
+Why stop at 300,000<i>l.</i> If his state of things be at
+all founded, America and Ireland are much better
+able to pay 600,000<i>l.</i> than we are to satisfy ourselves
+with half that sum. However, let us forgive him this
+one instance of tenderness towards Ireland and the
+colonies.</p>
+
+<p>He spends a vast deal of time<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 35.">[82]</a> in an endeavor to
+prove that Ireland is able to bear greater impositions.
+He is of opinion, that the poverty of the lower class
+of people there is, in a great measure, owing to <i>a
+want</i> of judicious taxes; that a land-tax will enrich
+her tenants; that taxes are paid in England which
+are not paid there; that the colony trade is increased
+above 100,000<i>l.</i> since the peace; that she <i>ought</i> to
+have further indulgence in that trade; and ought to
+have further privileges in the woollen manufacture.
+From these premises, of what she has, what she has
+not, and what she ought to have, he infers that Ireland
+will contribute 100,000<i>l.</i> towards the extraordinaries
+of the American establishment.</p>
+
+<p>I shall make no objections whatsoever, logical or
+financial, to this reasoning: many occur; but they
+would lead me from my purpose, from which I do
+not intend to be diverted, because it seems to me of
+no small importance. It will be just enough to hint,
+what I dare say many readers have before observed,
+<!-- Page 376 --><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352" title="352" class="pagenum"></a>that when any man proposes new taxes in a country
+with which he is not personally conversant by residence
+or office, he ought to lay open its situation
+much more minutely and critically than this author
+has done, or than perhaps he is able to do. He
+ought not to content himself with saying that a single
+article of her trade is increased 100,000<i>l.</i> a year;
+he ought, if he argues from the increase of trade
+to the increase of taxes, to state the whole trade,
+and not one branch of trade only; he ought to
+enter fully into the state of its remittances, and the
+course of its exchange; he ought likewise to examine
+whether all its establishments are increased or
+diminished; and whether it incurs or discharges debts
+annually. But I pass over all this; and am content
+to ask a few plain questions.</p>
+
+<p>Does the author then seriously mean to propose in
+Parliament a land-tax, or any tax for 100,000<i>l.</i> a year
+upon Ireland? If he does, and if fatally, by his temerity
+and our weakness, he should succeed; then I
+say he will throw the whole empire from one end of
+it to the other into mortal convulsions. What is it
+that can satisfy the furious and perturbed mind of
+this man? is it not enough for him that such projects
+have alienated our colonies from the mother-country,
+and not to propose violently to tear our sister kingdom
+also from our side, and to convince every dependent
+part of the empire, that, when a little money
+is to be raised, we have no sort of regard to their ancient
+customs, their opinions, their circumstances, or
+their affections? He has however a <i>douceur</i> for Ireland
+in his pocket; benefits in trade, by opening the
+woollen manufacture to that nation. A very right
+idea in my opinion; but not more strong in reason,
+<!-- Page 377 --><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353" title="353" class="pagenum"></a>than likely to be opposed by the most powerful and
+most violent of all local prejudices and popular passions.
+First, a fire is already kindled by his schemes
+of taxation in America; he then proposes one which
+will set all Ireland in a blaze; and his way of quenching
+both is by a plan which may kindle perhaps ten
+times a greater flame in Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Will the author pledge himself, previously to his
+proposal of such a tax, to carry this enlargement of
+the Irish trade? If he does not, then the tax will be
+certain; the benefit will be less than problematical.
+In this view, his compensation to Ireland vanishes
+into smoke; the tax, to their prejudices, will appear
+stark naked in the light of an act of arbitrary power
+and oppression. But, if he should propose the benefit
+and tax together, then the people of Ireland, a very
+high and spirited people, would think it the worst
+bargain in the world. They would look upon the
+one as wholly vitiated and poisoned by the other;
+and, if they could not be separated, would infallibly
+resist them both together. Here would be taxes, indeed,
+amounting to a handsome sum; 100,000<i>l.</i> very
+effectually voted, and passed through the best and
+most authentic forms; but how to be collected?&mdash;This
+is his perpetual manner. One of his projects
+depends for success upon another project, and this
+upon a third, all of them equally visionary. His finance
+is like the Indian philosophy; his earth is
+poised on the horns of a bull, his bull stands upon
+an elephant, his elephant is supported by a tortoise;
+and so on forever.</p>
+
+<p>As to his American 200,000<i>l.</i> a year, he is satisfied
+to repeat gravely, as he has done an hundred times
+before, that the Americans are able to pay it. Well,
+<!-- Page 378 --><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354" title="354" class="pagenum"></a>and what then? does he lay open any part of his plan
+how they may be compelled to pay it, without plunging
+ourselves into calamities that outweigh tenfold
+the proposed benefit? or does he show how they may
+be induced to submit to it quietly? or does he give
+any satisfaction concerning the mode of levying it;
+in commercial colonies, one of the most important
+and difficult of all considerations? Nothing like it.
+To the Stamp Act, whatever its excellences may be,
+I think he will not in reality recur, or even choose
+to assert that he means to do so, in case his minister
+should come again into power. If he does, I will predict
+that some of the fastest friends of that minister
+will desert him upon this point. As to port duties
+he has damned them all in the lump, by declaring
+them<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 37.">[83]</a> &quot;contrary to the first principles of colonization,
+and not less prejudicial to the interests of Great
+Britain than to those of the colonies.&quot; Surely this
+single observation of his ought to have taught him a
+little caution; he ought to have begun to doubt,
+whether there is not something in the nature of commercial
+colonies, which renders them an unfit object
+of taxation; when port duties, so large a fund of revenue
+in all countries, are by himself found, in this
+case, not only improper, but destructive. However,
+he has here pretty well narrowed the field of taxation.
+Stamp Act, hardly to be resumed. Port duties, mischievous.
+Excises, I believe, he will scarcely think
+worth the collection (if any revenue should be so) in
+America. Land-tax (notwithstanding his opinion of
+its immense use to agriculture) he will not directly
+propose, before he has thought again and again on the
+subject. Indeed he very readily recommends it for
+<!-- Page 379 --><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355" title="355" class="pagenum"></a>Ireland, and seems to think it not improper for America;
+because, he observes, they already raise most of
+their taxes internally, including this tax. A most
+curious reason, truly! because their lands are already
+heavily burdened, he thinks it right to burden them
+still further. But he will recollect, for surely he cannot
+be ignorant of it, that the lands of America are
+not, as in England, let at a rent certain in money, and
+therefore cannot, as here, be taxed at a certain pound
+rate. They value them in gross among themselves;
+and none but themselves in their several districts can
+value them. Without their hearty concurrence and
+co-operation, it is evident, we cannot advance a step
+in the assessing or collecting any land-tax. As to the
+taxes which in some places the Americans pay by the
+acre, they are merely duties of regulation; they are
+small; and to increase them, notwithstanding the
+secret virtues of a land-tax, would be the most effectual
+means of preventing that cultivation they are
+intended to promote. Besides, the whole country is
+heavily in arrear already for land-taxes and quit-rents.
+They have different methods of taxation in
+the different provinces, agreeable to their several
+local circumstances. In New England by far the
+greatest part of their revenue is raised by <i>faculty-taxes</i>
+and <i>capitations</i>. Such is the method in many
+others. It is obvious that Parliament, unassisted by
+the colonies themselves, cannot take so much as a
+single step in this mode of taxation. Then what tax
+is it he will impose? Why, after all the boasting
+speeches and writings of his faction for these four
+years, after all the vain expectations which they have
+held out to a deluded public, this their great advocate,
+after twisting the subject every way, after writh<!-- Page 380 --><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356" title="356" class="pagenum"></a>ing
+himself in every posture, after knocking at every
+door, is obliged fairly to abandon every mode of taxation
+whatsoever in America.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor"
+title="Pages 37, 38.">[84]</a> He thinks it the best
+method for Parliament to impose the sum, and reserve
+the account to itself, leaving the mode of taxation to
+the colonies. But how and in what proportion? what
+does the author say? O, not a single syllable on this
+the most material part of the whole question! Will
+he, in Parliament, undertake to settle the proportions
+of such payments from Nova Scotia to Nevis, in no
+fewer than six-and-twenty different countries, varying
+in almost every possible circumstance one from another?
+If he does, I tell him, he adjourns his revenue
+to a very long day. If he leaves it to themselves
+to settle these proportions, he adjourns it to doomsday.</p>
+
+<p>Then what does he get by this method on the side
+of acquiescence? will the people of America relish
+this course, of giving and granting and applying their
+money, the better because their assemblies are made
+commissioners of the taxes? This is far worse than
+all his former projects; for here, if the assemblies
+shall refuse, or delay, or be negligent, or fraudulent,
+in this new-imposed duty, we are wholly without remedy;
+and neither our custom-house officers, nor our
+troops, nor our armed ships can be of the least use
+in the collection. No idea can be more contemptible
+(I will not call it an oppressive one, the harshness is
+lost in the folly) than that of proposing to get any
+revenue from the Americans but by their freest and
+most cheerful consent. Most moneyed men know their
+own interest right well; and are as able as any financier,
+in the valuation of risks. Yet I think this financier
+will scarcely find that adventurer hardy enough,
+<!-- Page 381 --><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357" title="357" class="pagenum"></a>at any premium, to advance a shilling upon a vote of
+such taxes. Let him name the man, or set of men,
+that would do it. This is the only proof of the value
+of revenues; what would an interested man rate them
+at? His subscription would be at ninety-nine per
+cent discount the very first day of its opening. Here
+is our only national security from ruin; a security
+upon which no man in his senses would venture a
+shilling of his fortune. Yet he puts down those articles
+as gravely in his supply for the peace establishment,
+as if the money had been all fairly lodged in
+the exchequer.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 14em;">
+<tr><td>American revenue</td><td align='right'>&pound;200,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Ireland</td><td align='right'>100,000</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="noindent">Very handsome indeed! But if supply is to be got
+in such a manner, farewell the lucrative mystery of
+finance! If you are to be credited for savings, without
+showing how, why, or with what safety, they are
+to be made; and for revenues, without specifying on
+what articles, or by what means, or at what expense,
+they are to be collected; there is not a clerk in a public
+office who may not outbid this author, or his friend,
+for the department of chancellor of the exchequer;
+not an apprentice in the city, that will not strike out,
+with the same advantages, the same, or a much larger
+plan of supply.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the whole of what belongs to the author's
+scheme for saving us from impending destruction.
+Take it even in its most favorable point of view, as a
+thing within possibility; and imagine what must be
+the wisdom of this gentleman, or his opinion of ours,
+who could first think of representing this nation in
+such a state, as no friend can look upon but with hor<!-- Page 382 --><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358" title="358" class="pagenum"></a>ror,
+and scarcely an enemy without compassion, and
+afterwards of diverting himself with such inadequate,
+impracticable, puerile methods for our relief! If
+these had been the dreams of some unknown, unnamed,
+and nameless writer, they would excite no
+alarm; their weakness had been an antidote to their
+malignity. But as they are universally believed to be
+written by the hand, or, what amounts to the same
+thing, under the immediate direction, of a person
+who has been in the management of the highest affairs,
+and may soon be in the same situation, I think
+it is not to be reckoned amongst our greatest consolations,
+that the yet remaining power of this kingdom
+is to be employed in an attempt to realize notions
+that are at once so frivolous, and so full of danger.
+That consideration will justify me in dwelling a little
+longer on the difficulties of the nation, and the solutions
+of our author.</p>
+
+<p>I am then persuaded that he cannot be in the least
+alarmed about our situation, let his outcry be what
+he pleases. I will give him a reason for my opinion,
+which, I think, he cannot dispute. All that he bestows
+upon the nation, which it does not possess without
+him, and supposing it all sure money, amounts to
+no more than a sum of 300,000<i>l.</i> a year. This, he
+thinks, will do the business completely, and render us
+flourishing at home, and respectable abroad. If the
+option between glory and shame, if our salvation or
+destruction, depended on this sum, it is impossible
+that he should have been active, and made a merit of
+that activity, in taking off a shilling in the pound of
+the land-tax, which came up to his grand desideratum,
+and upwards of 100,000<i>l.</i> more. By this manoeuvre,
+he left our trade, navigation, and manufac<!-- Page 383 --><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359" title="359" class="pagenum"></a>tures,
+on the verge of destruction, our finances in
+ruin, our credit expiring, Ireland on the point of being
+ceded to France, the colonies of being torn to
+pieces, the succession of the crown at the mercy of
+our great rival, and the kingdom itself on the very
+point of becoming tributary to that haughty power.
+All this for want of 300,000<i>l.</i>; for I defy the reader to
+point out any other revenue, or any other precise and
+defined scheme of politics, which he assigns for our
+redemption.</p>
+
+<p>I know that two things may be said in his defence,
+as bad reasons are always at hand in an indifferent
+cause; that he was not sure the money would be applied
+as he thinks it ought to be, by the present ministers.
+I think as ill of them as he does to the full.
+They have done very near as much mischief as they
+can do, to a constitution so robust as this is. Nothing
+can make them more dangerous, but that, as they are
+already in general composed of his disciples and instruments,
+they may add to the public calamity of their
+own measures, the adoption of his projects. But be
+the ministers what they may, the author knows that
+they could not avoid applying this 450,000<i>l.</i> to the service
+of the establishment, as faithfully as he, or any
+other minister, could do. I say they could not avoid
+it, and have no merit at all for the application. But
+supposing that they should greatly mismanage this
+revenue. Here is a good deal of room for mistake
+and prodigality before you come to the edge of ruin.
+The difference between the amount of that real and
+his imaginary revenue is, 150,000<i>l.</i> a year at least; a
+tolerable sum for them to play with: this might compensate
+the difference between the author's economy
+and their profusion; and still, notwithstanding their
+<!-- Page 384 --><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360" title="360" class="pagenum"></a>vices and ignorance, the nation might he saved. The
+author ought also to recollect, that a good man would
+hardly deny, even to the worst of ministers, the
+means of doing their duty; especially in a crisis when
+our being depended on supplying them with some
+means or other. In such a case their penury of mind,
+in discovering resources, would make it rather the
+more necessary, not to strip such poor providers of
+the little stock they had in hand.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, here is another subject of distress, and a
+very serious one, which puts us again to a stand. The
+author may possibly not come into power (I only state
+the possibility): he may not always continue in it:
+and if the contrary to all this should fortunately for
+us happen, what insurance on his life can be made
+for a sum adequate to his loss? Then we are thus
+unluckily situated, that the <i>chance</i> of an American
+and Irish revenue of 300,000<i>l.</i> to be managed by him,
+is to save us from ruin two or three years hence at
+best, to make us happy at home and glorious abroad;
+and the actual possession of 400,000<i>l.</i> English taxes
+cannot so much as protract our ruin without him.
+So we are staked on four chances; his power, its permanence,
+the success of his projects, and the duration
+of his life. Any one of these failing, we are gone.
+<i>Propria h&aelig;c si dona fuissent!</i> This is no unfair representation;
+ultimately all hangs on his life, because,
+in his account of every set of men that have held or
+supported administration, he finds neither virtue nor
+ability in any but himself. Indeed he pays (through
+their measures) some compliments to Lord Bute and
+Lord Despenser. But to the latter, this is, I suppose,
+but a civility to old acquaintance: to the former, a
+little stroke of politics. We may therefore fairly say,
+<!-- Page 385 --><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361" title="361" class="pagenum"></a>that our only hope is his life; and he has, to make it
+the more so, taken care to cut off any resource which
+we possessed independently of him.</p>
+
+<p>In the next place it may be said, to excuse any appearance
+of inconsistency between the author's actions
+and his declarations, that he thought it right to
+relieve the landed interest, and lay the burden where
+it ought to lie, on the colonies. What! to take off
+a revenue so necessary to our being, before anything
+whatsoever was acquired in the place of it? In prudence,
+he ought to have waited at least for the first
+quarter's receipt of the new anonymous American
+revenue, and Irish land-tax. Is there something so
+specific for our disorders in American, and something
+so poisonous in English money, that one is to heal,
+the other to destroy us? To say that the landed interest
+<i>could</i> not continue to pay it for a year or two
+longer, is more than the author will attempt to prove.
+To say that they <i>would</i> pay it no longer, is to treat
+the landed interest, in my opinion, very scurvily.
+To suppose that the gentry, clergy, and freeholders
+of England do not rate the commerce, the credit, the
+religion, the liberty, the independency of their country,
+and the succession of their crown, at a shilling
+in the pound land-tax! They never gave him reason
+to think so meanly of them. And, if I am rightly informed,
+when that measure was debated in Parliament,
+a very different reason was assigned by the
+author's great friend, as well as by others, for that
+reduction: one very different from the critical and
+almost desperate state of our finances. Some people
+then endeavored to prove, that the reduction might
+be made without detriment to the national credit, or
+the due support of a proper peace establishment; oth<!-- Page 386 --><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362" title="362" class="pagenum"></a>erwise
+it is obvious that the reduction could not be
+defended in argument. So that this author cannot
+despair so much of the commonwealth, without this
+American and Irish revenue, as he pretends to do.
+If he does, the reader sees how handsomely he has
+provided for us, by voting away one revenue, and by
+giving us a pamphlet on the other.</p>
+
+<p>I do not mean to blame the relief which was then
+given by Parliament to the land. It was grounded
+on very weighty reasons. The administration contended
+only for its continuance for a year, in order
+to have the merit of taking off the shilling in the
+pound immediately before the elections; and thus
+to bribe the freeholders of England with their own
+money.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, the author, in his estimate of ways and
+means, takes credit for 400,000<i>l.</i> a year, <i>Indian Revenue</i>.
+But he will not very positively insist, that we
+should put this revenue to the account of his plans or
+his power; and for a very plain reason: we are already
+near two years in possession of it. By what
+means we came to that possession, is a pretty long
+story; however, I shall give nothing more than a
+short abstract of the proceeding, in order to see
+whether the author will take to himself any part in
+that measure.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is this; the East India Company had for
+a good while solicited the ministry for a negotiation,
+by which they proposed to pay largely for some advantages
+in their trade, and for the renewal of their
+charter. This had been the former method of transacting
+with that body. Government having only
+leased the monopoly for short terms, the Company
+has been obliged to resort to it frequently for renew<!-- Page 387 --><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363" title="363" class="pagenum"></a>als.
+These two parties had always negotiated (on the
+true principle of credit) not as government and subject,
+but as equal dealers, on the footing of mutual
+advantage. The public had derived great benefit
+from such dealing. But at that time new ideas prevailed.
+The ministry, instead of listening to the proposals
+of that Company, chose to set up a claim of the
+crown to their possessions. The original plan seems
+to have been, to get the House of Commons to compliment
+the crown with a sort of juridical declaration
+of a title to the Company's acquisitions in India;
+which the crown on its part, with the best air in the
+world, was to bestow upon the public. Then it
+would come to the turn of the House of Commons
+again to be liberal and grateful to the crown. The
+civil list debts were to be paid off; with perhaps a
+pretty augmentation of income. All this was to be
+done on the most public-spirited principles, and with
+a politeness and mutual interchange of good offices,
+that could not but have charmed. But what was
+best of all, these civilities were to be without a farthing
+of charge to either of the kind and obliging
+parties. The East India Company was to be covered
+with infamy and disgrace, and at the same time was
+to pay the whole bill.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of this scheme, the terrors of a
+parliamentary inquiry were hung over them. A judicature
+was asserted in Parliament to try this question.
+But lest this judicial character should chance
+to inspire certain stubborn ideas of law and right, it
+was argued, that the judicature was arbitrary, and
+ought not to determine by the rules of law, but by
+their opinion of policy and expediency. Nothing exceeded
+the violence of some of the managers, except
+<!-- Page 388 --><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364" title="364" class="pagenum"></a>their impotence. They were bewildered by their passions,
+and by their want of knowledge or want of consideration
+of the subject. The more they advanced,
+the further they found themselves from their object.&mdash;All
+things ran into confusion. The ministers
+quarrelled among themselves. They disclaimed one
+another. They suspended violence, and shrunk from
+treaty. The inquiry was almost at its last gasp;
+when some active persons of the Company were given
+to understand that this hostile proceeding was only
+set up <i>in terrorem</i>; that government was far from an
+intention of seizing upon the possessions of the Company.
+Administration, they said, was sensible, that
+the idea was in every light full of absurdity; and
+that such a seizure was not more out of their power,
+than remote from their wishes; and therefore, if the
+Company would come in a liberal manner to the
+House, they certainly could not fail of putting a
+speedy end to this disagreeable business, and of opening
+a way to an advantageous treaty.</p>
+
+<p>On this hint the Company acted: they came at
+once to a resolution of getting rid of the difficulties
+which arose from the complication of their trade with
+their revenue; a step which despoiled them of their
+best defensive armor, and put them at once into the
+power of administration. They threw their whole
+stock of every kind, the revenue, the trade, and even
+their debt from government, into one fund, which
+they computed on the surest grounds would amount
+to 800,000<i>l.</i>, with a large probable surplus for the
+payment of debt. Then they agreed to divide this
+sum in equal portions between themselves and the
+public, 400,000<i>l.</i> to each. This gave to the proprietors
+of that fund an annual augmentation of no more
+<!-- Page 389 --><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365" title="365" class="pagenum"></a>than 80,000<i>l.</i> dividend. They ought to receive from
+government 120,000<i>l.</i> for the loan of their capital.
+So that, in fact, the whole, which on this plan they reserved
+to themselves, from their vast revenues, from
+their extensive trade, and in consideration of the great
+risks and mighty expenses which purchased these advantages,
+amounted to no more than 280,000<i>l.</i>, whilst
+government was to receive, as I said, 400,000<i>l.</i></p>
+
+<p>This proposal was thought by themselves liberal
+indeed; and they expected the highest applauses
+for it. However, their reception was very different
+from their expectations. When they brought up
+their plan to the House of Commons, the offer, as it
+was natural, of 400,000<i>l.</i> was very well relished. But
+nothing could be more disgustful than the 80,000<i>l.</i>
+which the Company had divided amongst themselves.
+A violent tempest of public indignation and fury
+rose against them. The heads of people turned.
+The Company was held well able to pay 400,000<i>l.</i>
+a year to government; but bankrupts, if they attempted
+to divide the fifth part of it among themselves.
+An <i>ex post facto</i> law was brought in with
+great precipitation, for annulling this dividend. In
+the bill was inserted a clause, which suspended for
+about a year the right, which, under the public faith,
+the Company enjoyed, of making their own dividends.
+Such was the disposition and temper of the House,
+that although the plain face of facts, reason, arithmetic,
+all the authority, parts, and eloquence in the
+kingdom, were against this bill; though all the Chancellors
+of the Exchequer, who had held that office
+from the beginning of this reign, opposed it; yet a
+few placemen of the subordinate departments sprung
+out of their ranks, took the lead, and, by an opinion
+<!-- Page 390 --><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366" title="366" class="pagenum"></a><i>of some sort of secret support</i>, carried the bill with a
+high hand, leaving the then Secretary of State and
+the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a very moderate
+minority. In this distracted situation, the managers
+of the bill, notwithstanding their triumph, did not
+venture to propose the payment of the civil list debt.
+The Chancellor of the Exchequer was not in good
+humor enough, after his late defeat by his own troops,
+to co-operate in such a design; so they made an act,
+to lock up the money in the exchequer until they
+should have time to look about them, and settle
+among themselves what they were to do with it.</p>
+
+<p>Thus ended this unparalleled transaction. The
+author, I believe, will not claim any part of the glory
+of it: he will leave it whole and entire to the authors
+of the measure. The money was the voluntary, free
+gift of the Company; the rescinding bill was the act
+of legislature, to which they and we owe submission:
+the author has nothing to do with the one or with the
+other. However, he cannot avoid rubbing himself
+against this subject merely for the pleasure of stirring
+controversies, and gratifying a certain pruriency of
+taxation that seems to infect his blood. It is merely
+to indulge himself in speculations of taxing, that he
+chooses to harangue on this subject. For he takes
+credit for no greater sum than the public is already
+in possession of. He does not hint that the Company
+means, or has ever shown any disposition, if managed
+with common prudence, to pay less in future; and he
+cannot doubt that the present ministry are as well inclined
+to drive them by their mock inquiries, and real
+rescinding bills, as he can possibly be with his taxes.
+Besides, it is obvious, that as great a sum might have
+been drawn from that Company, without affecting
+<!-- Page 391 --><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367" title="367" class="pagenum"></a>property, or shaking the constitution, or endangering
+the principle of public credit, or running into his golden
+dreams of cockets on the Ganges, or visions of stamp-duties
+on <i>Perwannas</i>, <i>Dusticks</i>, <i>Kistbundees</i>, and <i>Husbulhookums</i>.
+For once, I will disappoint him in this
+part of the dispute; and only in a very few words
+recommend to his consideration, how he is to get off
+the dangerous idea of taxing a public fund, if he levies
+those duties in England; and if he is to levy them
+in India, what provision he has made for a revenue
+establishment there; supposing that he undertakes
+this new scheme of finance independently of the Company,
+and against its inclinations.</p>
+
+<p>So much for these revenues; which are nothing
+but his visions, or already the national possessions
+without any act of his. It is easy to parade with a
+high talk of Parliamentary rights, of the universality
+of legislative powers, and of uniform taxation. Men
+of sense, when new projects come before them, always
+think a discourse proving the mere right or mere
+power of acting in the manner proposed, to be no
+more than a very unpleasant way of misspending time.
+They must see the object to be of proper magnitude
+to engage them; they must see the means of compassing
+it to be next to certain; the mischiefs not to
+counterbalance the profit; they will examine how a
+proposed imposition or regulation agrees with the
+opinion of those who are likely to be affected by it;
+they will not despise the consideration even of their
+habitudes and prejudices. They wish to know how
+it accords or disagrees with the true spirit of prior
+establishments, whether of government or of finance;
+because they well know, that in the complicated
+economy of great kingdoms, and immense revenues,
+<!-- Page 392 --><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368" title="368" class="pagenum"></a>which in a length of time, and by a variety of accidents
+have coalesced into a sort of body, an attempt
+towards a compulsory equality in all circumstances,
+and an exact practical definition of the supreme
+rights in every case, is the most dangerous and chimerical
+of all enterprises. The old building stands
+well enough, though part Gothic, part Grecian, and
+part Chinese, until an attempt is made to square it
+into uniformity. Then it may come down upon our
+heads altogether, in much uniformity of ruin; and
+great will be the fall thereof. Some people, instead
+of inclining to debate the matter, only feel a sort of
+nausea, when they are told, that &quot;protection calls for
+supply,&quot; and that &quot;all the parts ought to contribute
+to the support of the whole.&quot; Strange argument for
+great and grave deliberation! As if the same end
+may not, and must not, be compassed, according to its
+circumstances, by a great diversity of ways. Thus,
+in Great Britain, some of our establishments are apt
+for the support of credit. They stand therefore upon
+a principle of their own, distinct from, and in some
+respects contrary to, the relation between prince and
+subject. It is a new species of contract superinduced
+upon the old contract of the state. The idea of power
+must as much as possible be banished from it; for
+power and credit are things adverse, incompatible;
+<i>Non bene conveniunt, nec in una sede morantur</i>. Such
+establishments are our great <i>moneyed</i> companies. To
+tax them would be critical and dangerous, and contradictory
+to the very purpose of their institution;
+which is credit, and cannot therefore be taxation.
+But the nation, when it gave up that power, did not
+give up the advantage; but supposed, and with reason,
+that government was overpaid in credit, for what
+<!-- Page 393 --><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369" title="369" class="pagenum"></a>it seemed to lose in authority. In such a case to talk
+of the rights of sovereignty is quite idle. Other establishments
+supply other modes of public contribution.
+Our <i>trading</i> companies, as well as individual
+importers, are a fit subject of revenue by customs.
+Some establishments pay us by a <i>monopoly</i> of their
+consumption and their produce. This, nominally no
+tax, in reality comprehends all taxes. Such establishments
+are our colonies. To tax them would be
+as erroneous in policy, as rigorous in equity. Ireland
+supplies us by furnishing troops in war; and by bearing
+part of our foreign establishment in peace. She
+aids us at all times by the money that her absentees
+spend amongst us; which is no small part of the
+rental of that kingdom. Thus Ireland contributes
+her part. Some objects bear port-duties. Some are
+fitter for an inland excise. The mode varies, the
+object is the same. To strain these from their old
+and inveterate leanings, might impair the old benefit,
+and not answer the end of the new project. Among
+all the great men of antiquity, <i>Procrustes</i> shall never
+be my hero of legislation; with his iron bed, the allegory
+of his government, and the type of some modern
+policy, by which the long limb was to be cut short,
+and the short tortured into length. Such was the
+state-bed of uniformity! He would, I conceive, be a
+very indifferent farmer, who complained that his sheep
+did not plough, or his horses yield him wool, though
+it would be an idea full of equality. They may think
+this right in rustic economy, who think it available in
+the politic:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carimna, M&aelig;vi!</div>
+<div>Atque idem jungat vulpes, et mulgeat hircos.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>As the author has stated this Indian taxation for
+<!-- Page 394 --><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370" title="370" class="pagenum"></a>no visible purpose relative to his plan of supply, so
+he has stated many other projects with as little, if any
+distinct end; unless perhaps to show you how full
+he is of projects for the public good; and what vast
+expectations may be formed of him or his friends, if
+they should be translated into administration. It is
+also from some opinion that these speculations may
+one day become our public measures, that I think it
+worth while to trouble the reader at all about them.</p>
+
+<p>Two of them stand out in high relievo beyond the
+rest. The first is a change in the internal representation
+of this country, by enlarging our number of
+constituents. The second is an addition to our representatives,
+by new American members of Parliament.
+I pass over here all considerations how far such a
+system will be an improvement of our constitution
+according to any sound theory. Not that I mean to
+condemn such speculative inquiries concerning this
+great object of the national attention. They may
+tend to clear doubtful points, and possibly may lead,
+as they have often done, to real improvements. What
+I object to, is their introduction into a discourse relating
+to the immediate state of our affairs, and recommending
+plans of practical government. In this
+view, I see nothing in them but what is usual with
+the author; an attempt to raise discontent in the
+people of England, to balance those discontents
+which the measures of his friends had already
+raised in America. What other reason can he
+have for suggesting, that we are not happy enough
+to enjoy a sufficient number of voters in England?
+I believe that most sober thinkers on this subject
+are rather of opinion, that our fault is on the other
+side; and that it would be more in the spirit of our
+<!-- Page 395 --><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371" title="371" class="pagenum"></a>constitution, and more agreeable to the pattern of
+our best laws, by lessening the number, to add to the
+weight and independency of our voters. And truly,
+considering the immense and dangerous charge of
+elections; the prostitute and daring venality, the corruption
+of manners, the idleness and profligacy of
+the lower sort of voters, no prudent man would propose
+to increase such an evil, if it be, as I fear it is,
+out of our power to administer to it any remedy.
+The author proposes nothing further. If he has any
+improvements that may balance or may lessen this
+inconvenience, he has thought proper to keep them
+as usual in his own breast. Since he has been so reserved,
+I should have wished he had been as cautious
+with regard to the project itself. First, because he
+observes justly, that his scheme, however it might
+improve the platform, can add nothing to the authority
+of the legislature; much I fear, it will have a contrary
+operation; for, authority depending on opinion
+at least as much as on duty, an idea circulated among
+the people that our constitution is not so perfect as it
+ought to be, before you are sure of mending it, is a
+certain method of lessening it in the public opinion.
+Of this irreverent opinion of Parliament, the author
+himself complains in one part of his book; and he
+endeavors to increase it in the other.</p>
+
+<p>Has he well considered what an immense operation
+any change in our constitution is? how many discussions,
+parties, and passions, it will necessarily excite;
+and when you open it to inquiry in one part,
+where the inquiry will stop? Experience shows us,
+that no time can be fit for such changes but a time
+of general confusion; when good men, finding everything
+already broken up, think it right to take advan<!-- Page 396 --><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372" title="372" class="pagenum"></a>tage
+of the opportunity of such derangement in favor
+of an useful alteration. Perhaps a time of the greatest
+security and tranquillity both at home and abroad
+may likewise be fit; but will the author affirm this to
+be just such a time? Transferring an idea of military
+to civil prudence, he ought to know how dangerous
+it is to make an alteration of your disposition in
+the face of an enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Now comes his American representation. Here
+too, as usual, he takes no notice of any difficulty, nor
+says anything to obviate those objections that must
+naturally arise in the minds of his readers. He throws
+you his politics as he does his revenue; do you make
+something of them if you can. Is not the reader a
+little astonished at the proposal of an American representation
+from that quarter? It is proposed merely
+as a project<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor"
+title="Pages 39, 40.">[85]</a> of speculative improvement; not from
+the necessity in the case, not to add anything to the
+authority of Parliament, but that we may afford a
+greater attention to the concerns of the Americans,
+and give them a better opportunity of stating their
+grievances, and of obtaining redress. I am glad to
+find the author has at length discovered that we have
+not given a sufficient attention to their concerns, or
+a proper redress to their grievances. His great friend
+would once have been exceedingly displeased with
+any person, who should tell him, that he did not attend
+sufficiently to those concerns. He thought he
+did so, when he regulated the colonies over and over
+again: he thought he did so when he formed two
+general systems of revenue; one of port-duties, and
+the other of internal taxation. These systems supposed,
+or ought to suppose, the greatest attention to
+<!-- Page 397 --><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373" title="373" class="pagenum"></a>and the most detailed information of, all their affairs.
+However, by contending for the American representation,
+he seems at last driven virtually to admit, that
+great caution ought to be used in the exercise of <i>all</i>
+our legislative rights over an object so remote from
+our eye, and so little connected with our immediate
+feelings; that in prudence we ought not to be quite
+so ready with our taxes, until we can secure the desired
+representation in Parliament. Perhaps it may
+be some time before this hopeful scheme can be
+brought to perfect maturity, although the author
+seems to be in no wise aware of any obstructions
+that lie in the way of it. He talks of his union, just
+as he does of his taxes and his savings, with as much
+<i>sang froid</i> and ease as if his wish and the enjoyment
+were exactly the same thing. He appears not to
+have troubled his head with the infinite difficulty of
+settling that representation on a fair balance of wealth
+and numbers throughout the several provinces of
+America and the West Indies, under such an infinite
+variety of circumstances. It costs him nothing to
+fight with nature, and to conquer the order of Providence,
+which manifestly opposes itself to the possibility
+of such a Parliamentary union.</p>
+
+<p>But let us, to indulge his passion for projects and
+power, suppose the happy time arrived, when the author
+comes into the ministry, and is to realize his
+speculations. The writs are issued for electing members
+for America and the West Indies. Some provinces
+receive them in six weeks, some in ten, some in
+twenty. A vessel may be lost, and then some provinces
+may not receive them at all. But let it be, that
+they all receive them at once, and in the shortest
+time. A proper space must be given for proclama<!-- Page 398 --><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374" title="374" class="pagenum"></a>tion
+and for the election; some weeks at least. But
+the members are chosen; and if ships are ready to
+sail, in about six more they arrive in London. In
+the mean time the Parliament has sat and business
+far advanced without American representatives. Nay,
+by this time, it may happen that the Parliament is
+dissolved; and then the members ship themselves
+again, to be again elected. The writs may arrive in
+America, before the poor members of a Parliament in
+which they never sat, can arrive at their several provinces.
+A new interest is formed, and they find other
+members are chosen whilst they are on the high seas.
+But, if the writs and members arrive together, here
+is at best a new trial of skill amongst the candidates,
+after one set of them have well aired themselves with
+their two voyages of 6000 miles.</p>
+
+<p>However, in order to facilitate everything to the
+author, we will suppose them all once more elected,
+and steering again to Old England, with a good heart,
+and a fair westerly wind in their stern. On their
+arrival, they find all in a hurry and bustle; in and
+out; condolence and congratulation; the crown is demised.
+Another Parliament is to be called. Away
+back to America again on a fourth voyage, and to a
+third election. Does the author mean to make our
+kings as immortal in their personal as in their politic
+character? or whilst he bountifully adds to their life,
+will he take from them their prerogative of dissolving
+Parliaments, in favor of the American union? or
+are the American representatives to be perpetual, and
+to feel neither demises of the crown, nor dissolutions
+of Parliament?</p>
+
+<p>But these things may be granted to him, without
+bringing him much nearer to his point. What does
+<!-- Page 399 --><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375" title="375" class="pagenum"></a>he think of re-election? is the American member the
+only one who is not to take a place, or the only one
+to be exempted from the ceremony of re-election?
+How will this great politician preserve the rights of
+electors, the fairness of returns, and the privilege of
+the House of Commons, as the sole judge of such contests?
+It would undoubtedly be a glorious sight to
+have eight or ten petitions, or double returns, from
+Boston and Barbadoes, from Philadelphia and Jamaica,
+the members returned, and the petitioners,
+with all their train of attorneys, solicitors, mayors,
+selectmen, provost-marshals, and above five hundred
+or a thousand witnesses, come to the bar of the House
+of Commons. Possibly we might be interrupted in
+the enjoyment of this pleasing spectacle, if a war
+should break out, and our constitutional fleet, loaded
+with members of Parliament, returning-officers, petitions,
+and witnesses, the electors and elected, should
+become a prize to the French or Spaniards, and be
+conveyed to Carthagena, or to La Vera Cruz, and
+from thence perhaps to Mexico or Lima, there to remain
+until a cartel for members of Parliament can be
+settled, or until the war is ended.</p>
+
+<p>In truth the author has little studied this business;
+or he might have known, that some of the most considerable
+provinces of America, such, for instance, as
+Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay, have not in each
+of them two men who can afford, at a distance from
+their estates, to spend a thousand pounds a year.
+How can these provinces be represented at Westminster?
+If their province pays them, they are American
+agents, with salaries, and not independent members
+of Parliament. It is true, that formerly in England
+members had salaries from their constituents; but
+<!-- Page 400 --><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376" title="376" class="pagenum"></a>they all had salaries, and were all, in this way, upon
+a par. If these American representatives have no
+salaries, then they must add to the list of our pensioners
+and dependents at court, or they must starve.
+There is no alternative.</p>
+
+<p>Enough of this visionary union; in which much
+extravagance appears without any fancy, and the
+judgment is shocked without anything to refresh the
+imagination. It looks as if the author had dropped
+down from the moon, without any knowledge of the
+general nature of this globe, of the general nature of
+its inhabitants, without the least acquaintance with
+the affairs of this country. Governor Pownall has
+handled the same subject. To do him justice, he
+treats it upon far more rational principles of speculation;
+and much more like a man of business. He
+thinks (erroneously, I conceive; but he does think)
+that our legislative rights are incomplete without such
+a representation. It is no wonder, therefore, that he
+endeavors by every means to obtain it. Not like our
+author, who is always on velvet, he is aware of some
+difficulties; and he proposes some solutions. But
+nature is too hard for both these authors; and America
+is, and ever will be, without actual representation
+in the House of Commons; nor will any minister be
+wild enough even to propose such a representation in
+Parliament; however he may choose to throw out
+that project, together with others equally far from his
+real opinions, and remote from his designs, merely to
+fall in with the different views, and captivate the affections,
+of different sorts of men.</p>
+
+<p>Whether these projects arise from the author's real
+political principles, or are only brought out in subservience
+to his political views, they compose the whole
+<!-- Page 401 --><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377" title="377" class="pagenum"></a>of anything that is like precise and definite, which the
+author has given us to expect from that administration
+which is so much the subject of his praises and
+prayers. As to his general propositions, that &quot;there
+is a deal of difference between impossibilities and
+great difficulties&quot;; that &quot;a great scheme cannot be
+carried unless made the business of successive administrations&quot;;
+that &quot;virtuous and able men are the fittest
+to serve their country&quot;; all this I look on as no
+more than so much rubble to fill up the spaces between
+the regular masonry. Pretty much in the
+same light I cannot forbear considering his detached
+observations on commerce; such as, that &quot;the system
+for colony regulations would be very simple, and
+mutually beneficial to Great Britain and her colonies,
+if the old navigation laws were adhered to.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 39.">[86]</a> That
+&quot;the transportation should be in all cases in ships belonging
+to British subjects.&quot; That &quot;even British
+ships should not be <i>generally</i> received into the colonies
+from any part of Europe, except the dominions
+of Great Britain.&quot; That &quot;it is unreasonable that
+corn and such like products should be restrained to
+come first to a British port.&quot; What do all these fine
+observations signify? Some of them condemn, as ill
+practices, things that were never practised at all.
+Some recommend to be done, things that always have
+been done. Others indeed convey, though obliquely
+and loosely, some insinuations highly dangerous to
+our commerce. If I could prevail on myself to think
+the author meant to ground any practice upon these
+general propositions, I should think it very necessary
+to ask a few questions about some of them. For instance,
+what does he mean by talking of an adherence
+<!-- Page 402 --><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378" title="378" class="pagenum"></a>to the old navigation laws? Does he mean, that the
+particular law, 12 Car. II. c. 19, commonly called
+&quot;The Act of Navigation,&quot; is to be adhered to, and
+that the several subsequent additions, amendments,
+and exceptions, ought to be all repealed? If so, he
+will make a strange havoc in the whole system of our
+trade laws, which have been universally acknowledged
+to be full as well founded in the alterations and exceptions,
+as the act of Charles the Second in the original
+provisions; and to pursue full as wisely the great
+end of that very politic law, the increase of the British
+navigation. I fancy the writer could hardly propose
+anything more alarming to those immediately
+interested in that navigation than such a repeal. If
+he does not mean this, he has got no farther than a
+nugatory proposition, which nobody can contradict,
+and for which no man is the wiser.</p>
+
+<p>That &quot;the regulations for the colony trade would
+be few and simple if the old navigation laws were adhered
+to,&quot; I utterly deny as a fact. That they ought
+to be so, sounds well enough; but this proposition is
+of the same nugatory nature with some of the former.
+The regulations for the colony trade ought not to be
+more nor fewer, nor more nor less complex, than the
+occasion requires. And, as that trade is in a great
+measure a system of art and restriction, they can neither
+be few nor simple. It is true, that the very
+principle may be destroyed, by multiplying to excess
+the means of securing it. Never did a minister depart
+more from the author's ideas of simplicity, or
+more embarrass the trade of America with the multiplicity
+and intricacy of regulations and ordinances,
+than his boasted minister of 1764. That minister
+seemed to be possessed with something, hardly short
+<!-- Page 403 --><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379" title="379" class="pagenum"></a>of a rage, for regulation and restriction. He had so
+multiplied bonds, certificates, affidavits, warrants, sufferances,
+and cockets; had supported them with such
+severe penalties, and extended them without the least
+consideration of circumstances to so many objects, that,
+had they all continued in their original force, commerce
+must speedily have expired under them. Some
+of them, the ministry which gave them birth was
+obliged to destroy: with their own hand they signed
+the condemnation of their own regulations; confessing
+in so many words, in the preamble of their act of
+the 5th Geo. III., that some of these regulations had
+laid <i>an unnecessary restraint on the trade and correspondence
+of his Majesty's American subjects</i>. This, in
+that ministry, was a candid confession of a mistake;
+but every alteration made in those regulations by
+their successors is to be the effect of envy, and American
+misrepresentation. So much for the author's
+simplicity in regulation.</p>
+
+<p>I have now gone through all which I think immediately
+essential in the author's idea of war, of peace,
+of the comparative states of England and France, of
+our actual situation; in his projects of economy, of
+finance, of commerce, and of constitutional improvement.
+There remains nothing now to be considered,
+except his heavy censures upon the administration
+which was formed in 1765; which is commonly known
+by the name of the Marquis of Rockingham's administration,
+as the administration which preceded it is by
+that of Mr. Grenville. These censures relate chiefly
+to three heads:&mdash;1. To the repeal of the American
+Stamp Act. 2. To the commercial regulations then
+made. 3. To the course of foreign negotiations during
+that short period.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 404 --><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380" title="380" class="pagenum"></a>A person who knew nothing of public affairs but
+from the writings of this author, would be led to conclude,
+that, at the time of the change in June, 1765,
+some well-digested system of administration, founded
+in national strength, and in the affections of the people,
+proceeding in all points with the most reverential
+and tender regard to the laws, and pursuing with
+equal wisdom and success everything which could
+tend to the internal prosperity, and to the external
+honor and dignity of this country, had been all at
+once subverted, by an irruption of a sort of wild, licentious,
+unprincipled invaders, who wantonly, and
+with a barbarous rage, had defaced a thousand fair
+monuments of the constitutional and political skill of
+their predecessors. It is natural indeed that this author
+should have some dislike to the administration
+which was formed in 1765. Its views, in most things,
+were different from those of his friends; in some, altogether
+opposite to them. It is impossible that both
+of these administrations should be the objects of public
+esteem. Their different principles compose some
+of the strongest political lines which discriminate the
+parties even now subsisting amongst us. The ministers
+of 1764 are not indeed followed by very many in
+their opposition; yet a large part of the people now
+in office entertain, or pretend to entertain, sentiments
+entirely conformable to theirs; whilst some of the former
+colleagues of the ministry which was formed in
+1765, however they may have abandoned the connection,
+and contradicted by their conduct the principles
+of their former friends, pretend, on their parts, still
+to adhere to the same maxims. All the lesser divisions,
+which are indeed rather names of personal attachment
+than of party distinction, fall in with the
+one or the other of these leading parties.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 405 --><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381" title="381" class="pagenum"></a>I intend to state, as shortly as I am able, the general
+condition of public affairs, and the disposition
+of the minds of men, at the time of the remarkable
+change of system in 1765. The reader will have
+thereby a more distinct view of the comparative merits
+of these several plans, and will receive more satisfaction
+concerning the ground and reason of the
+measures which were then pursued, than, I believe,
+can be derived from the perusal of those partial representations
+contained in the &quot;State of the Nation,&quot;
+and the other writings of those who have continued,
+for now nearly three years, in the undisturbed possession
+of the press. This will, I hope, be some apology
+for my dwelling a little on this part of the subject.</p>
+
+<p>On the resignation of the Earl of Bute, in 1763,
+our affairs had been delivered into the hands of three
+ministers of his recommendation: Mr. Grenville, the
+Earl of Egremont, and the Earl of Halifax. This
+arrangement, notwithstanding the retirement of Lord
+Bute, announced to the public a continuance of the
+same measures; nor was there more reason to expect
+a change from the death of the Earl of Egremont.
+The Earl of Sandwich supplied his place. The Duke
+of Bedford, and the gentlemen who act in that connection,
+and whose general character and politics
+were sufficiently understood, added to the strength
+of the ministry, without making any alteration in
+their plan of conduct. Such was the constitution of
+the ministry which was changed in 1765.</p>
+
+<p>As to their politics, the principles of the peace of
+Paris governed in foreign affairs. In domestic, the
+same scheme prevailed, of contradicting the opinions,
+and disgracing most of the persons, who had
+been countenanced and employed in the late reign.
+<!-- Page 406 --><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382" title="382" class="pagenum"></a>The inclinations of the people were little attended to;
+and a disposition to the use of forcible methods ran
+through the whole tenor of administration. The nation
+in general was uneasy and dissatisfied. Sober
+men saw causes for it, in the constitution of the ministry
+and the conduct of the ministers. The ministers,
+who have usually a short method on such occasions,
+attributed their unpopularity wholly to the
+efforts of faction. However this might be, the licentiousness
+and tumults of the common people, and the
+contempt of government, of which our author so
+often and so bitterly complains, as owing to the mismanagement
+of the subsequent administrations, had
+at no time risen to a greater or more dangerous
+height. The measures taken to suppress that spirit
+were as violent and licentious as the spirit itself; injudicious,
+precipitate, and some of them illegal. Instead
+of allaying, they tended infinitely to inflame the
+distemper; and whoever will be at the least pains to
+examine, will find those measures not only the causes
+of the tumults which then prevailed, but the real
+sources of almost all the disorders which have arisen
+since that time. More intent on making a victim to
+party than an example of justice, they blundered in
+the method of pursuing their vengeance. By this
+means a discovery was made of many practices, common
+indeed in the office of Secretary of State, but
+wholly repugnant to our laws, and to the genius of
+the English constitution. One of the worst of these
+was, the wanton and indiscriminate seizure of papers,
+even in cases where the safety of the state was not
+pretended in justification of so harsh a proceeding.
+The temper of the ministry had excited a jealousy,
+which made the people more than commonly vigilant
+<!-- Page 407 --><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383" title="383" class="pagenum"></a>concerning every power which was exercised by government.
+The abuse, however sanctioned by custom,
+was evident; but the ministry, instead of resting in a
+prudent inactivity, or (what would have been still
+more prudent) taking the lead, in quieting the minds
+of the people, and ascertaining the law upon those
+delicate points, made use of the whole influence of
+government to prevent a Parliamentary resolution
+against these practices of office. And lest the colorable
+reasons, offered in argument against this Parliamentary
+procedure, should be mistaken for the real
+motives of their conduct, all the advantage of privilege,
+all the arts and finesses of pleading, and great
+sums of public money were lavished, to prevent any
+decision upon those practices in the courts of justice.
+In the mean time, in order to weaken, since they
+could not immediately destroy, the liberty of the
+press, the privilege of Parliament was voted away in
+all accusations for a seditious libel. The freedom of
+debate in Parliament itself was no less menaced.
+Officers of the army, of long and meritorious service,
+and of small fortunes, were chosen as victims for a
+single vote, by an exertion of ministerial power,
+which had been very rarely used, and which is extremely
+unjust, as depriving men not only of a place,
+but a profession, and is indeed of the most pernicious
+example both in a civil and a military light.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst all things were managed at home with such
+a spirit of disorderly despotism, abroad there was a
+proportionable abatement of all spirit. Some of our
+most just and valuable claims were in a manner
+abandoned. This indeed seemed not very inconsistent
+conduct in the ministers who had made the treaty
+of Paris. With regard to our domestic affairs, there
+<!-- Page 408 --><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384" title="384" class="pagenum"></a>was no want of industry; but there was a great deficiency
+of temper and judgment, and manly comprehension
+of the public interest. The nation certainly
+wanted relief, and government attempted to administer
+it. Two ways were principally chosen for this
+great purpose. The first by regulations; the second
+by new funds of revenue. Agreeably to this plan, a
+new naval establishment was formed at a good deal
+of expense, and to little effect, to aid in the collection
+of the customs. Regulation was added to regulation;
+and the strictest and most unreserved orders
+were given, for a prevention of all contraband trade
+here, and in every part of America. A teasing custom-house,
+and a multiplicity of perplexing regulations,
+ever have, and ever will appear, the masterpiece
+of finance to people of narrow views; as a paper
+against smuggling, and the importation of French
+finery, never fails of furnishing a very popular column
+in a newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest part of these regulations were made for
+America; and they fell so indiscriminately on all sorts
+of contraband, or supposed contraband, that some of
+the most valuable branches of trade were driven
+violently from our ports; which caused an universal
+consternation throughout the colonies. Every
+part of the trade was infinitely distressed by them.
+Men-of-war now for the first time, armed with regular
+commissions of custom-house officers, invested the
+coasts, and gave to the collection of revenue the air
+of hostile contribution. About the same time that
+these regulations seemed to threaten the destruction
+of the only trade from whence the plantations derived
+any specie, an act was made, putting a stop to the
+future emission of paper currency, which used to sup<!-- Page 409 --><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385" title="385" class="pagenum"></a>ply
+its place among them. Hand in hand with this
+went another act, for obliging the colonies to provide
+quarters for soldiers. Instantly followed another
+law, for levying throughout all America new port
+duties, upon a vast variety of commodities of their
+consumption, and some of which lay heavy upon objects
+necessary for their trade and fishery. Immediately
+upon the heels of these, and amidst the uneasiness
+and confusion produced by a crowd of new impositions
+and regulations, some good, some evil, some
+doubtful, all crude and ill-considered, came another
+act, for imposing an universal stamp-duty on the colonies;
+and this was declared to be little more than
+an experiment, and a foundation of future revenue.
+To render these proceedings the more irritating to
+the colonies, the principal argument used in favor of
+their ability to pay such duties was the liberality of
+the grants of their assemblies during the late war.
+Never could any argument be more insulting and
+mortifying to a people habituated to the granting of
+their own money.</p>
+
+<p>Taxes for the purpose of raising revenue had hitherto
+been sparingly attempted in America. Without
+ever doubting the extent of its lawful power, Parliament
+always doubted the propriety of such impositions.
+And the Americans on their part never
+thought of contesting a right by which they were
+so little affected. Their assemblies in the main answered
+all the purposes necessary to the internal
+economy of a free people, and provided for all the
+exigencies of government which arose amongst themselves.
+In the midst of that happy enjoyment, they
+never thought of critically settling the exact limits
+of a power, which was necessary to their union, their
+<!-- Page 410 --><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386" title="386" class="pagenum"></a>safety, their equality, and even their liberty. Thus
+the two very difficult points, superiority in the presiding
+state, and freedom in the subordinate, were on
+the whole sufficiently, that is, practically, reconciled;
+without agitating those vexatious questions, which
+in truth rather belong to metaphysics than politics,
+and which can never be moved without shaking the
+foundations of the best governments that have ever
+been constituted by human wisdom. By this measure
+was let loose that dangerous spirit of disquisition,
+not in the coolness of philosophical inquiry, but inflamed
+with all the passions of a haughty, resentful
+people, who thought themselves deeply injured, and
+that they were contending for everything that was
+valuable in the world.</p>
+
+<p>In England, our ministers went on without the least
+attention to these alarming dispositions; just as if
+they were doing the most common things in the most
+usual way, and among a people not only passive, but
+pleased. They took no one step to divert the dangerous
+spirit which began even then to appear in the
+colonies, to compromise with it, to mollify it, or to
+subdue it. No new arrangements were made in civil
+government; no new powers or instructions were
+given to governors; no augmentation was made, or
+new disposition, of forces. Never was so critical a
+measure pursued with so little provision against its
+necessary consequences. As if all common prudence
+had abandoned the ministers, and as if they meant to
+plunge themselves and us headlong into that gulf
+which stood gaping before them; by giving a year's
+notice of the project of their Stamp Act, they allowed
+time for all the discontents of that country to fester
+and come to a head, and for all the arrangements
+<!-- Page 411 --><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387" title="387" class="pagenum"></a>which factious men could make towards an opposition
+to the law. At the same time they carefully concealed
+from the eye of Parliament those remonstrances
+which they had actually received; and
+which in the strongest manner indicated the discontent
+of some of the colonies, and the consequences
+which might be expected; they concealed them even
+in defiance of an order of council, that they should
+be laid before Parliament. Thus, by concealing the
+true state of the case, they rendered the wisdom of
+the nation as improvident as their own temerity,
+either in preventing or guarding against the mischief.
+It has indeed, from the beginning to this hour, been
+the uniform policy of this set of men, in order at any
+hazard to obtain a present credit, to propose whatever
+might be pleasing, as attended with no difficulty;
+and afterwards to throw all the disappointment of
+the wild expectations they had raised, upon those
+who have the hard task of freeing the public from the
+consequences of their pernicious projects.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst the commerce and tranquillity of the whole
+empire were shaken in this manner, our affairs grew
+still more distracted by the internal dissensions of our
+ministers. Treachery and ingratitude were charged
+from one side; despotism and tyranny from the other;
+the vertigo of the regency bill; the awkward reception
+of the silk bill in the House of Commons, and
+the inconsiderate and abrupt rejection of it in the
+House of Lords; the strange and violent tumults
+which arose in consequence, and which were rendered
+more serious by being charged by the ministers
+upon one another; the report of a gross and brutal
+treatment of the &mdash;&mdash;, by a minister at the same
+time odious to the people; all conspired to leave the
+<!-- Page 412 --><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388" title="388" class="pagenum"></a>public, at the close of the session of 1765, in as critical
+and perilous a situation, as ever the nation was,
+or could be, in a time when she was not immediately
+threatened by her neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this time, and in these circumstances,
+that a new administration was formed. Professing
+even industriously, in this public matter, to avoid
+anecdotes; I say nothing of those famous reconciliations
+and quarrels, which weakened the body that
+should have been the natural support of this administration.
+I run no risk in affirming, that, surrounded
+as they were with difficulties of every species, nothing
+but the strongest and most uncorrupt sense of their
+duty to the public could have prevailed upon some
+of the persons who composed it to undertake the
+king's business at such a time. Their preceding
+character, their measures while in power, and the subsequent
+conduct of many of them, I think, leave no
+room to charge this assertion to flattery. Having
+undertaken the commonwealth, what remained for
+them to do? to piece their conduct upon the broken
+chain of former measures? If they had been so inclined,
+the ruinous nature of those measures, which
+began instantly to appear, would not have permitted
+it. Scarcely had they entered into office, when letters
+arrived from all parts of America, making loud
+complaints, backed by strong reasons, against several
+of the principal regulations of the late ministry, as
+threatening destruction to many valuable branches
+of commerce. These were attended with representations
+from many merchants and capital manufacturers
+at home, who had all their interests involved
+in the support of lawful trade, and in the suppression
+of every sort of contraband. Whilst these
+<!-- Page 413 --><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389" title="389" class="pagenum"></a>things were under consideration, that conflagration
+blazed out at once in North America; an universal
+disobedience, and open resistance to the Stamp Act;
+and, in consequence, an universal stop to the course
+of justice, and to trade and navigation, throughout
+that great important country; an interval during
+which the trading interest of England lay under the
+most dreadful anxiety which it ever felt.</p>
+
+<p>The repeal of that act was proposed. It was much
+too serious a measure, and attended with too many
+difficulties upon every side, for the then ministry to
+have undertaken it, as some paltry writers have asserted,
+from envy and dislike to their predecessors in
+office. As little could it be owing to personal cowardice,
+and dread of consequences to themselves.
+Ministers, timorous from their attachment to place
+and power, will fear more from the consequences
+of one court intrigue, than from a thousand difficulties
+to the commerce and credit of their country by
+disturbances at three thousand miles distance. From
+which of these the ministers had most to apprehend
+at that time, is known, I presume, universally. Nor
+did they take that resolution from a want of the fullest
+sense of the inconveniences which must necessarily
+attend a measure of concession from the
+sovereign to the subject. That it must increase
+the insolence of the mutinous spirits in America,
+was but too obvious. No great measure indeed, at
+a very difficult crisis, can be pursued, which is not
+attended with some mischief; none but conceited
+pretenders in public business will hold any other
+language: and none but weak and unexperienced
+men will believe them, if they should. If we were
+found in such a crisis, let those, whose bold designs,
+<!-- Page 414 --><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390" title="390" class="pagenum"></a>and whose defective arrangements, brought us into
+it, answer for the consequences. The business of the
+then ministry evidently was, to take such steps, not
+as the wishes of our author, or as their own wishes
+dictated, but as the bad situation in which their predecessors
+had left them, absolutely required.</p>
+
+<p>The disobedience to this act was universal throughout
+America; nothing, it was evident, but the sending
+a very strong military, backed by a very strong
+naval force, would reduce the seditious to obedience.
+To send it to one town, would not be sufficient;
+every province of America must be traversed, and
+must be subdued. I do not entertain the least
+doubt but this could be done. We might, I think,
+without much difficulty, have destroyed our colonies.
+This destruction might be effected, probably in a
+year, or in two at the utmost. If the question was
+upon a foreign nation, where every successful stroke
+adds to your own power, and takes from that of a rival,
+a just war with such a certain superiority would
+be undoubtedly an advisable measure. But <i>four million</i>
+of debt due to our merchants, the total cessation
+of a trade annually worth <i>four million</i> more, a large
+foreign traffic, much home manufacture, a very capital
+immediate revenue arising from colony imports,
+indeed the produce of every one of our revenues
+greatly depending on this trade, all these were very
+weighty accumulated considerations, at least well to
+be weighed, before that sword was drawn, which
+even by its victories must produce all the evil effects
+of the greatest national defeat. How public credit
+must have suffered, I need not say. If the condition
+of the nation, at the close of our foreign war, was
+what this author represents it, such a civil war would
+<!-- Page 415 --><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391" title="391" class="pagenum"></a>have been a bad couch, on which to repose our wearied
+virtue. Far from being able to have entered
+into new plans of economy, we must have launched
+into a new sea, I fear a boundless sea, of expense.
+Such an addition of debt, with such a diminution of
+revenue and trade, would have left us in no want of
+a &quot;State of the Nation&quot; to aggravate the picture of
+our distresses.</p>
+
+<p>Our trade felt this to its vitals; and our then ministers
+were not ashamed to say, that they sympathized
+with the feelings of our merchants. The
+universal alarm of the whole trading body of England,
+will never be laughed at by them as an ill-grounded
+or a pretended panic. The universal desire
+of that body will always have great weight with them
+in every consideration connected with commerce:
+neither ought the opinion of that body to be slighted
+(notwithstanding the contemptuous and indecent language
+of this author and his associates) in any consideration
+whatsoever of revenue. Nothing amongst
+us is more quickly or deeply affected by taxes of any
+kind than trade; and if an American tax was a real
+relief to England, no part of the community would
+be sooner or more materially relieved by it than our
+merchants. But they well know that the trade of
+England must be more burdened by one penny raised
+in America, than by three in England; and if that
+penny be raised with the uneasiness, the discontent,
+and the confusion of America, more than by ten.</p>
+
+<p>If the opinion and wish of the landed interest is a
+motive, and it is a fair and just one, for taking away
+a real and large revenue, the desire of the trading interest
+of England ought to be a just ground for
+taking away a tax of little better than speculation,
+<!-- Page 416 --><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392" title="392" class="pagenum"></a>which was to be collected by a war, which was to be
+kept up with the perpetual discontent of those who
+were to be affected by it, and the value of whose
+produce even after the <i>ordinary</i> charges of collection,
+was very uncertain;<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor"
+title="It is observable, that the partisans of American taxation, when
+they have a mind to represent this tax as wonderfully beneficial to
+England, state it as worth 100,000_l._ a year; when they are to represent
+it as very light on the Americans, it dwindles to 60,000_l._ Indeed
+it is very difficult to compute what its produce might have been.">[87]</a> after the <i>extraordinary</i>,
+the dearest purchased revenue that ever was made
+by any nation.</p>
+
+<p>These were some of the motives drawn from principles
+of convenience for that repeal. When the object
+came to be more narrowly inspected, every motive
+concurred. These colonies were evidently founded
+in subservience to the commerce of Great Britain.
+From this principle, the whole system of our laws
+concerning them became a system of restriction. A
+double monopoly was established on the part of the
+parent country; 1. A monopoly of their whole import,
+which is to be altogether from Great Britain;
+2. A monopoly of all their export, which is to be nowhere
+but to Great Britain, as far as it can serve any
+purpose here. On the same idea it was contrived
+that they should send all their products to us raw,
+and in their first state; and that they should take
+everything from us in the last stage of manufacture.</p>
+
+<p>Were ever a people under such circumstances, that
+is, a people who were to export raw, and to receive
+manufactured, and this, not a few luxurious articles,
+but all articles, even to those of the grossest, most
+vulgar, and necessary consumption, a people who
+were in the hands of a general monopolist, were
+<!-- Page 417 --><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393" title="393" class="pagenum"></a>ever such a people suspected of a possibility of becoming
+a just object of revenue? All the ends of their
+foundation must be supposed utterly contradicted before
+they could become such an object. Every trade
+law we have made must have been eluded, and become
+useless, before they could be in such a condition.</p>
+
+<p>The partisans of the new system, who, on most
+occasions, take credit for full as much knowledge as
+they possess, think proper on this occasion to counterfeit
+an extraordinary degree of ignorance, and in
+consequence of it to assert, &quot;that the balance (between
+the colonies and Great Britain) is unknown,
+and that no important conclusion can be drawn from
+premises so very uncertain.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor"
+title="&quot;Considerations,&quot; p. 74.">[88]</a> Now to what can this
+ignorance be owing? were the navigation laws made,
+that this balance should be unknown? is it from the
+course of exchange that it is unknown, which all the
+world knows to be greatly and perpetually against
+the colonies? is it from the doubtful nature of the
+trade we carry on with the colonies? are not these
+schemists well apprised that the colonists, particularly
+those of the northern provinces, import more from
+Great Britain, ten times more, than they send in return
+to us? that a great part of their foreign balance
+is and must be remitted to London? I shall be ready
+to admit that the colonies ought to be taxed to the
+revenues of this country, when I know that they are
+out of debt to its commerce. This author will furnish
+some ground to his theories, and communicate a
+discovery to the public, if he can show this by any
+medium. But he tells us that &quot;their seas are covered
+with ships, and their rivers floating with com<!-- Page 418 --><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394" title="394" class="pagenum"></a>merce.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor"
+title="&quot;Considerations,&quot; p. 79.">[89]</a>
+This is true. But it is with <i>our</i> ships
+that these seas are covered; and their rivers float with
+British commerce. The American merchants are
+our factors; all in reality, most even in name. The
+Americans trade, navigate, cultivate, with English
+capitals; to their own advantage, to be sure; for
+without these capitals their ploughs would be stopped,
+and their ships wind-bound. But he who furnishes
+the capital must, on the whole, be the person principally
+benefited; the person who works upon it profits
+on his part too; but he profits in a subordinate way,
+as our colonies do; that is, as the servant of a wise
+and indulgent master, and no otherwise. We have
+all, except the <i>peculium</i>; without which even slaves
+will not labor.</p>
+
+<p>If the author's principles, which are the common
+notions, be right, that the price of our manufactures
+is so greatly enhanced by our taxes; then the Americans
+already pay in that way a share of our impositions.
+He is not ashamed to assert, that &quot;France
+and China may be said, on the same principle, to
+bear a part of our charges, for they consume our commodities.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor"
+title="Ibid., p. 74.">[90]</a>
+Was ever such a method of reasoning
+heard of? Do not the laws absolutely confine the
+colonies to buy from us, whether foreign nations sell
+cheaper or not? On what other idea are all our
+prohibitions, regulations, guards, penalties, and forfeitures,
+framed? To secure to us, not a commercial
+preference, which stands in need of no penalties
+to enforce it; it finds its own way; but to secure to
+us a trade, which is a creature of law and institution.
+What has this to do with the principles of a
+foreign trade, which is under no monopoly, and in
+<!-- Page 419 --><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395" title="395" class="pagenum"></a>which we cannot raise the price of our goods, without
+hazarding the demand for them? None but the
+authors of such measures could ever think of making
+use of such arguments.</p>
+
+<p>Whoever goes about to reason on any part of the
+policy of this country with regard to America, upon
+the mere abstract principles of government, or even
+upon those of our own ancient constitution, will be
+often misled. Those who resort for arguments to the
+most respectable authorities, ancient or modern, or
+rest upon the clearest maxims, drawn from the experience
+of other states and empires, will be liable to
+the greatest errors imaginable. The object is wholly
+new in the world. It is singular; it is grown up to
+this magnitude and importance within the memory
+of man; nothing in history is parallel to it. All the
+reasonings about it, that are likely to be at all solid,
+must be drawn from its actual circumstances. In
+this new system a principle of commerce, of artificial
+commerce, must predominate. This commerce must
+be secured by a multitude of restraints very alien
+from the spirit of liberty; and a powerful authority
+must reside in the principal state, in order to enforce
+them. But the people who are to be the subjects of
+these restraints are descendants of Englishmen; and
+of a high and free spirit. To hold over them a government
+made up of nothing but restraints and penalties,
+and taxes in the granting of which they can
+have no share, will neither be wise nor long practicable.
+People must be governed in a manner agreeable
+to their temper and disposition; and men of free
+character and spirit must be ruled with, at least,
+some condescension to this spirit and this character.
+The British, colonist must see something which will
+<!-- Page 420 --><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396" title="396" class="pagenum"></a>distinguish him from the colonists of other nations.</p>
+
+<p>Those seasonings, which infer from the many restraints
+under which we have already laid America,
+to our right to lay it under still more, and indeed under
+all manner of restraints, are conclusive; conclusive
+as to right; but the very reverse as to policy and
+practice. We ought rather to infer from our having
+laid the colonies under many restraints, that it is
+reasonable to compensate them by every indulgence
+that can by any means be reconciled to our interest.
+We have a great empire to rule, composed of a vast
+mass of heterogeneous governments, all more or less
+free and popular in their forms, all to be kept in
+peace, and kept out of conspiracy, with one another,
+all to be held in subordination to this country; while
+the spirit of an extensive and intricate and trading
+interest pervades the whole, always qualifying, and
+often controlling, every general idea of constitution
+and government. It is a great and difficult object;
+and I wish we may possess wisdom and temper enough
+to manage it as we ought. Its importance is infinite.
+I believe the reader will be struck, as I have been,
+with one singular fact. In the year 1704, but sixty-five
+years ago, the whole trade with our plantations
+was but a few thousand pounds more in the export
+article, and a third less in the import, than that
+which we now carry on with the single island of
+Jamaica:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 25em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr><td /><td align='right' valign="bottom" style="padding-right: 1em">Exports.</td><td align='right'>Imports.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Total English plantations
+in 1704</td>
+        <td align='right' valign="bottom" style="padding-right: 1em">&pound;488,265</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">&pound;&nbsp;814,491</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Jamaica, 1767</td>
+        <td align='right' valign="bottom" style="padding-right: 1em">467,681</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">1,243,742</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>From the same information I find that our dealing
+<!-- Page 421 --><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397" title="397" class="pagenum"></a>with most of the European nations is but little increased:
+these nations have been pretty much at a
+stand since that time, and we have rivals in their
+trade. This colony intercourse is a new world of
+commerce in a manner created; it stands upon principles
+of its own; principles hardly worth endangering
+for any little consideration of extorted revenue.</p>
+
+<p>The reader sees, that I do not enter so fully into
+this matter as obviously I might. I have already
+been led into greater lengths than I intended. It is
+enough to say, that before the ministers of 1765 had
+determined to propose the repeal of the Stamp Act in
+Parliament, they had the whole of the American constitution
+and commerce very fully before them. They
+considered maturely; they decided with wisdom: let
+me add, with firmness. For they resolved, as a preliminary
+to that repeal, to assert in the fullest and
+least equivocal terms the unlimited legislative right
+of this country over its colonies; and, having done
+this, to propose the repeal, on principles, not of constitutional
+right, but on those of expediency, of equity,
+of lenity, and of the true interests present and future
+of that great object for which alone the colonies were
+founded, navigation and commerce. This plan I say,
+required an uncommon degree of firmness, when we
+consider that some of those persons who might be of
+the greatest use in promoting the repeal, violently
+withstood the declaratory act; and they who agreed
+with administration in the principles of that law,
+equally made, as well the reasons on which the declaratory
+act itself stood, as those on which it was
+opposed, grounds for an opposition to the repeal.</p>
+
+<p>If the then ministry resolved first to declare the
+right, it was not from any opinion they entertained of
+<!-- Page 422 --><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398" title="398" class="pagenum"></a>its future use in regular taxation. Their opinions
+were full and declared against the ordinary use of
+such a power. But it was plain, that the general
+reasonings which were employed against that power
+went directly to our whole legislative right; and one
+part of it could not be yielded to such arguments,
+without a virtual surrender of all the rest. Besides,
+if that very specific power of levying money in the
+colonies were not retained as a sacred trust in the
+hands of Great Britain (to be used, not in the first
+instance for supply, but in the last exigence for control),
+it is obvious, that the presiding authority of
+Great Britain, as the head, the arbiter, and director
+of the whole empire, would vanish into an empty
+name, without operation or energy. With the habitual
+exercise of such a power in the ordinary course
+of supply, no trace of freedom could remain to America.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor"
+title="I do not here enter into the unsatisfactory disquisition concerning
+representation real or presumed. I only say, that a great people
+who have their property, without any reserve, in all cases, disposed
+of by another people, at an immense distance from them, will not
+think themselves in the enjoyment of freedom. It will be hard to
+show to those who are in such a state, which of the usual parts of the
+definition or description of a free people are applicable to them; and
+it is neither pleasant nor wise to attempt to prove that they have no
+right to be comprehended in such a description.">[91]</a>
+If Great Britain were stripped of this right,
+every principle of unity and subordination in the
+empire was gone forever. Whether all this can be
+reconciled in legal speculation, is a matter of no
+consequence. It is reconciled in policy: and politics
+ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but
+to human nature; of which the reason is but a part,
+and by no means the greatest part.</p>
+
+<p>Founding the repeal on this basis, it was judged
+<!-- Page 423 --><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399" title="399" class="pagenum"></a>proper to lay before Parliament the whole detail of
+the American affairs, as fully as it had been laid before
+the ministry themselves. Ignorance of those affairs
+had misled Parliament. Knowledge alone could
+bring it into the right road. Every paper of office
+was laid upon the table of the two Houses; every
+denomination of men, either of America, or connected
+with it by office, by residence, by commerce, by
+interest, even by injury; men of civil and military
+capacity, officers of the revenue, merchants, manufacturers
+of every species, and from every town in
+England, attended at the bar. Such evidence never
+was laid before Parliament. If an emulation arose
+among the ministers and members of Parliament, as
+the author rightly observes,<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 21.">[92]</a> for the repeal of this
+act, as well as for the other regulations, it was not on
+the confident assertions, the airy speculations, or the
+vain promises of ministers, that it arose. It was the
+sense of Parliament on the evidence before them.
+No one so much as suspects that ministerial allurements
+or terrors had any share in it.</p>
+
+<p>Our author is very much displeased, that so much
+credit was given to the testimony of merchants. He
+has a habit of railing at them: and he may, if he
+pleases, indulge himself in it. It will not do great
+mischief to that respectable set of men. The substance
+of their testimony was, that their debts in
+America were very great: that the Americans declined
+to pay them, or to renew their orders, whilst
+this act continued: that, under these circumstances,
+they despaired of the recovery of their debts, or the
+renewal of their trade in that country: that they
+apprehended a general failure of mercantile credit.
+<!-- Page 424 --><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400" title="400" class="pagenum"></a>The manufacturers deposed to the same general purpose,
+with this addition, that many of them had discharged
+several of their artificers; and, if the law
+and the resistance to it should continue, must dismiss
+them all.</p>
+
+<p>This testimony is treated with great contempt by
+our author. It must be, I suppose, because it was
+contradicted by the plain nature of things. Suppose
+then that the merchants had, to gratify this author,
+given a contrary evidence; and had deposed, that
+while America remained in a state of resistance,
+whilst four million of debt remained unpaid, whilst
+the course of justice was suspended for want of
+stamped paper, so that no debt could be recovered,
+whilst there was a total stop to trade, because every
+ship was subject to seizure for want of stamped clearances,
+and while the colonies were to be declared in
+rebellion, and subdued by armed force, that in these
+circumstances they would still continue to trade cheerfully
+and fearlessly as before: would not such witnesses
+provoke universal indignation for their folly or
+their wickedness, and be deservedly hooted from the
+bar:<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor"
+title="Here the author has a note altogether in his usual strain of reasoning;
+he finds out that somebody, in the course of this multifarious
+evidence, had said, &quot;that a very considerable part of the orders of
+1765 transmitted from America had been afterwards suspended; but
+that in case the Stamp Act was repealed, those orders were to be executed
+in the present year, 1766&quot;; and that, on the repeal of the Stamp
+Act, &quot;the exports to the colonies would be at least double the value of
+the exports of the past year.&quot; He then triumphs exceedingly on
+their having fallen short of it on the state of the custom-house entries.
+I do not well know what conclusion he draws applicable to his purpose
+from these facts. He does not deny that all the orders which
+came from America subsequent to the disturbances of the Stamp Act
+were on the condition of that act being repealed; and he does not
+assert that, notwithstanding that act should be enforced by a strong
+hand, still the orders would be executed. Neither does he quite venture
+to say that this decline of the trade in 1766 was owing to the
+repeal. What does he therefore infer from it, favorable to the enforcement
+of that law? It only comes to this, and no more; those
+merchants, who thought our trade would be doubled in the subsequent
+year, were mistaken in their speculations. So that the Stamp
+Act was not to be repealed unless this speculation of theirs was a
+probable event. But it was not repealed in order to double our trade
+in that year, as everybody knows (whatever some merchants might
+have said), but lest in that year we should have no trade at all. The
+fact is, that during the greatest part of the year 1755, that is, until
+about the month of October, when the accounts of the disturbances
+came thick upon us, the American trade went on as usual. Before
+this time, the Stamp Act could not affect it. Afterwards, the merchants
+fell into a great consternation; a general stagnation in trade
+ensued. But as soon as it was known that the ministry favored the
+repeal of the Stamp Act, several of the bolder merchants ventured to
+execute their orders; others more timid hung back; in this manner
+the trade continued in a state of dreadful fluctuation between the fears
+of those who had ventured, for the event of their boldness, and the
+anxiety of those whose trade was suspended, until the royal assent
+was finally given to the bill of repeal. That the trade of 1766 was
+not equal to that of 1765, could not be owing to the repeal; it arose
+from quite different causes, of which the author seems not to be
+aware: 1st, Our conquests during the war had laid open the trade
+of the French and Spanish West Indies to our colonies much more
+largely than they had ever enjoyed it; this continued for some time
+after the peace; but at length it was extremely contracted, and in
+some places reduced to nothing. Such in particular was the state of
+Jamaica. On the taking the Havannah all the stores of that island
+were emptied into that place, which produced unusual orders for
+goods, for supplying their own consumption, as well as for further
+speculations of trade. These ceasing, the trade stood on its own
+bottom. This is one cause of the diminished export to Jamaica,
+and not the childish idea of the author, of an impossible contraband
+from the opening of the ports.&mdash;2nd, The war had brought a great
+influx of cash into America, for the pay and provision of the troops;
+and this an unnatural increase of trade, which, as its cause failed,
+must in some degree return to its ancient and natural bounds.&mdash;3rd,
+When the merchants met from all parts, and compared their accounts,
+they were alarmed at the immensity of the debt due to them from
+America. They found that the Americans had over-traded their
+abilities. And, as they found too that several of them were capable
+of making the state of political events an excuse for their failure in
+commercial punctuality, many of our merchants in some degree contracted
+their trade from that moment. However, it is idle, in such
+an immense mass of trade, so liable to fluctuation, to infer anything
+from such a deficiency as one or even two hundred thousand pounds.
+In 1767, when the disturbances subsided, this deficiency was made
+up again.">[93]</a> would any human faith have given credit to
+<!-- Page 425 --><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401" title="401" class="pagenum"></a>such assertions? The testimony of the merchants
+was necessary for the detail, and to bring the matter
+home to the feeling of the House; as to the general
+reasons, they spoke abundantly for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Upon these principles was the act repealed, and it
+produced all the good effect which was expected from
+it: quiet was restored; trade generally returned to
+its ancient channels; time and means were furnished
+for the better strengthening of government there, as
+well as for recovering, by judicious measures, the
+affections of the people, had that ministry continued,
+or had a ministry succeeded with dispositions to improve
+that opportunity.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 426 --><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402" title="402" class="pagenum"></a>Such an administration did not succeed. Instead
+of profiting of that season of tranquillity, in the very
+next year they chose to return to measures of the
+very same nature with those which had been so solemnly
+condemned; though upon a smaller scale.
+The effects have been correspondent, America is
+again in disorder; not indeed in the same degree as
+formerly, nor anything like it. Such good effects
+have attended the repeal of the Stamp Act, that the
+colonies have actually paid the taxes; and they have
+sought their redress (upon however improper princi<!-- Page 427 --><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403" title="403" class="pagenum"></a>ples)
+not in their own violence, as formerly;<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor"
+title="The disturbances have been in Boston only; and were not in
+consequence of the late duties.">[94]</a> but
+in the experienced benignity of Parliament. They
+are not easy indeed, nor ever will be so, under this
+author's schemes of taxation; but we see no longer
+the same general fury and confusion, which attended
+their resistance to the Stamp Act. The author may
+rail at the repeal, and those who proposed it, as he
+pleases. Those honest men suffer all his obloquy
+with pleasure, in the midst of the quiet which they
+have been the means of giving to their country; and
+would think his praises for their perseverance in a
+<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: &quot;prenicious&quot; in the original text">pernicious</ins>
+scheme, a very bad compensation for the
+disturbance of our peace, and the ruin of our commerce.
+Whether the return to the system of 1764,
+for raising a revenue in America, the discontents
+which have ensued in consequence of it, the general
+suspension of the assemblies in consequence of these
+discontents, the use of the military power, and the
+new and dangerous commissions which now hang
+over them, will produce equally good effects, is greatly
+to be doubted. Never, I fear, will this nation and
+the colonies fall back upon their true centre of gravity,
+and natural point of repose, until the ideas of
+1766 are resumed, and steadily pursued.</p>
+
+<p>As to the regulations, a great subject of the author's
+accusation, they are of two sorts; one of a
+mixed nature, of revenue and trade; the other simply
+relative to trade. With regard to the former I
+shall observe, that, in all deliberations concerning
+America, the ideas of that administration were principally
+these; to take trade as the primary end, and
+revenue but as a very subordinate consideration.
+<!-- Page 428 --><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404" title="404" class="pagenum"></a>Where trade was likely to suffer, they did not hesitate
+for an instant to prefer it to taxes, whose produce
+at best was contemptible, in comparison of the
+object which they might endanger. The other of
+their principles was, to suit the revenue to the object.
+Where the difficulty of collection, from the
+nature of the country, and of the revenue establishment,
+is so very notorious, it was their policy to hold
+out as few temptations to smuggling as possible, by
+keeping the duties as nearly as they could on a balance
+with the risk. On these principles they made
+many alterations in the port-duties of 1764, both in
+the mode and in the quantity. The author has not
+attempted to prove them erroneous. He complains
+enough to show that he is in an ill-humor, not that
+his adversaries have done amiss.</p>
+
+<p>As to the regulations which were merely relative
+to commerce, many were then made; and they were
+all made upon this principle, that many of the colonies,
+and those some of the most abounding in people,
+were so situated as to have very few means of traffic
+with this country. It became therefore our interest to
+let them into as much foreign trade as could be given
+them without interfering with our own; and to secure
+by every method the returns to the mother
+country. Without some such scheme of enlargement,
+it was obvious that any benefit we could expect
+from these colonies must be extremely limited. Accordingly
+many facilities were given to their trade
+with the foreign plantations, and with the southern
+parts of Europe. As to the confining the returns to
+this country, administration saw the mischief and
+folly of a plan of indiscriminate restraint. They
+applied their remedy to that part where the disease
+<!-- Page 429 --><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405" title="405" class="pagenum"></a>existed, and to that only: on this idea they established
+regulations, far more likely to check the
+dangerous, clandestine trade with Hamburg and
+Holland, than this author's friends, or any of their
+predecessors had ever done.</p>
+
+<p>The friends of the author have a method surely a
+little whimsical in all this sort of discussions. They
+have made an innumerable multitude of commercial
+regulations, at which the trade of England exclaimed
+with one voice, and many of which have been altered
+on the unanimous opinion of that trade. Still they
+go on, just as before, in a sort of droning panegyric
+on themselves, talking of these regulations as prodigies
+of wisdom; and, instead of appealing to those
+who are most affected and the best judges, they turn
+round in a perpetual circle of their own reasonings
+and pretences; they hand you over from one of their
+own pamphlets to another: &quot;See,&quot; say they, &quot;this
+demonstrated in the 'Regulations of the Colonies.'&quot;
+&quot;See this satisfactorily proved in 'The Considerations.'&quot;
+By and by we shall have another: &quot;See
+for this 'The State of the Nation.'&quot; I wish to take
+another method in vindicating the opposite system.
+I refer to the petitions of merchants for these regulations;
+to their thanks when they were obtained;
+and to the strong and grateful sense they have ever
+since expressed of the benefits received under that
+administration.</p>
+
+<p>All administrations have in their commercial regulations
+been generally aided by the opinion of some
+merchants; too frequently by that of a few, and those
+a sort of favorites: they have been directed by the
+opinion of one or two merchants, who were to merit
+in flatteries, and to be paid in contracts; who fre<!-- Page 430 --><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406" title="406" class="pagenum"></a>quently
+advised, not for the general good of trade,
+but for their private advantage. During the administration
+of which this author complains, the meetings
+of merchants upon the business of trade were numerous
+and public; sometimes at the house of the Marquis
+of Rockingham; sometimes at Mr. Dowdeswell's;
+sometimes at Sir George Savile's, a house always open
+to every deliberation favorable to the liberty or the
+commerce of his country. Nor were these meetings
+confined to the merchants of London. Merchants
+and manufacturers were invited from all the considerable
+towns in England. They conferred with the
+ministers and active members of Parliament. No
+private views, no local interests prevailed. Never
+were points in trade settled upon a larger scale of information.
+They who attended these meetings well
+know what ministers they were who heard the most
+patiently, who comprehended the most clearly, and
+who provided the most wisely. Let then this author
+and his friends still continue in possession of the
+practice of exalting their own abilities, in their pamphlets
+and in the newspapers. They never will persuade
+the public, that the merchants of England
+were in a general confederacy to sacrifice their own
+interests to those of North America, and to destroy
+the vent of their own goods in favor of the manufactures
+of France and Holland.</p>
+
+<p>Had the friends of this author taken these means
+of information, his extreme terrors of contraband in
+the West India islands would have been greatly quieted,
+and his objections to the opening of the ports
+would have ceased. He would have learned, from
+the most satisfactory analysis of the West India trade,
+that we have the advantage in every essential arti<!-- Page 431 --><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407" title="407" class="pagenum"></a>cle
+of it; and that almost every restriction on our
+communication with our neighbors there, is a restriction
+unfavorable to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the principles that guided, and the authority
+that sanctioned, these regulations. No man
+ever said, that, in the multiplicity of regulations made
+in the administration of their predecessors, none
+were useful; some certainly were so; and I defy the
+author to show a commercial regulation of that period,
+which he can prove, from any authority except
+his own, to have a tendency beneficial to commerce,
+that has been repealed. So far were that ministry
+from being guided by a spirit of contradiction or of
+innovation.</p>
+
+<p>The author's attack on that administration, for
+their neglect of our claims on foreign powers, is by
+much the most astonishing instance he has given, or
+that, I believe, any man ever did give, of an intrepid
+effrontery. It relates to the Manilla ransom; to the
+Canada bills; and to the Russian treaty. Could one
+imagine, that these very things, which he thus chooses
+to object to others, have been the principal subject of
+charge against his favorite ministry? Instead of
+clearing them of these charges, he appears not so
+much as to have heard of them; but throws them
+directly upon the administration which succeeded to
+that of his friends.</p>
+
+<p>It is not always very pleasant to be obliged to produce
+the detail of this kind of transactions to the public
+view. I will content myself therefore with giving
+a short state of facts, which, when the author chooses
+to contradict, he shall see proved, more, perhaps, to
+his conviction, than to his liking. The first fact then
+is, that the demand for the Manilla ransom had been
+<!-- Page 432 --><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408" title="408" class="pagenum"></a>in the author's favorite administration so neglected
+as to appear to have been little less than tacitly abandoned.
+At home, no countenance was given to the
+claimants; and when it was mentioned in Parliament,
+the then leader did not seem, at least, <i>a very
+sanguine advocate in favor of the claim</i>. These things
+made it a matter of no small difficulty to resume and
+press that negotiation with Spain. However, so clear
+was our right, that the then ministers resolved to revive
+it; and so little time was lost, that though that
+administration was not completed until the 9th of
+July, 1765, on the 20th of the following August, General
+Conway transmitted a strong and full remonstrance
+on that subject to the Earl of Rochfort. The
+argument, on which the court of Madrid most relied,
+was the dereliction of that claim by the preceding
+ministers. However, it was still pushed with so much
+vigor, that the Spaniards, from a positive denial to
+pay, offered to refer the demand to arbitration. That
+proposition was rejected; and the demand being still
+pressed, there was all the reason in the world to expect
+its being brought to a favorable issue; when it
+was thought proper to change the administration.
+Whether under their circumstances, and in the time
+they continued in power, more could be done, the
+reader will judge; who will hear with astonishment
+a charge of remissness from those very men, whose
+inactivity, to call it by no worse a name, laid the
+chief difficulties in the way of the revived negotiation.</p>
+
+<p>As to the Canada bills, this author thinks proper
+to assert, &quot;that the proprietors found themselves under
+a necessity of compounding their demands upon
+the French court, and accepting terms which they
+had often rejected, and which the Earl of Halifax
+<!-- Page 433 --><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409" title="409" class="pagenum"></a>had declared he would sooner forfeit his hand than
+sign.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 24.">[95]</a> When I know that the Earl of Halifax says
+so, the Earl of Halifax shall have an answer; but I
+persuade myself that his Lordship has given no authority
+for this ridiculous rant. In the mean time,
+I shall only speak of it as a common concern of that
+ministry.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, then, I observe, that a convention,
+for the liquidation of the Canada bills, was concluded
+under the administration of 1766; when nothing
+was concluded under that of the favorites of this
+author.</p>
+
+<p>2. This transaction was, in every step of it, carried
+on in concert with the persons interested, and was
+terminated to their entire satisfaction. They would
+have acquiesced perhaps in terms somewhat lower
+than those which were obtained. The author is indeed
+too kind to them. He will, however, let them
+speak for themselves, and show what their own opinion
+was of the measures pursued in their favor.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor"
+title="&quot;They are happy in having found, in your zeal for the dignity
+of this nation, the means of liquidating their claims, and of concluding
+with the court of France a convention for the final satisfaction
+of their demands; and have given us commission, in their names,
+and on their behalf, most earnestly to entreat your acceptance of their
+grateful acknowledgments. Whether they consider themselves as
+Britons, or as men more particularly profiting by your generous and
+spirited interposition, they see great reasons to be thankful, for having
+been supported by a minister, in whose public affections, in whose
+wisdom and activity, both the national honor, and the interests of individuals,
+have been at once so well supported and secured.&quot;&mdash;Thanks
+of the Canada merchants to General Conway, London, April 28, 1766.">[96]</a> In
+what manner the execution of the convention has
+been since provided for, it is not my present business
+to examine.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 434 --><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410" title="410" class="pagenum"></a>3. The proprietors had absolutely despaired of being
+paid, at any time, any proportion, of their demand,
+until the change of that ministry. The merchants
+were checked and discountenanced; they had
+often been told, by some in authority, of the cheap
+rate at which these Canada bills had been procured;
+yet the author can talk of the composition of them as
+a necessity induced by the change in administration.
+They found themselves indeed, before that change,
+under a necessity of hinting somewhat of bringing
+the matter into Parliament; but they were soon silenced,
+and put in mind of the fate which the Newfoundland
+business had there met with. Nothing
+struck them more than the strong contrast between
+the spirit, and method of proceeding, of the two administrations.</p>
+
+<p>4. The Earl of Halifax never did, nor could, refuse
+to sign this convention; because this convention,
+as it stands, never was before him.<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor"
+title="See the Convention itself, printed by Owen and Harrison, Warwick-lane,
+1766; particularly the articles two and thirteen.">[97]</a></p>
+
+<p>The author's last charge on that ministry, with
+regard to foreign affairs, is the Russian treaty of commerce,
+which the author thinks fit to assert, was concluded
+&quot;on terms the Earl of Buckinghamshire had
+refused to accept of, and which had been deemed by
+former ministers disadvantageous to the nation, and
+by the merchants unsafe and unprofitable.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 23.">[98]</a></p>
+
+<p>Both the assertions in this paragraph are equally
+groundless. The treaty then concluded by Sir
+George Macartney was not on the terms which the
+Earl of Buckinghamshire had refused. The Earl
+of Buckinghamshire never did refuse terms, because
+<!-- Page 435 --><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411" title="411" class="pagenum"></a>the business never came to the point of refusal, or
+acceptance; all that he did was, to receive the Russian
+project for a treaty of commerce, and to transmit
+it to England. This was in November, 1764;
+and he left Petersburg the January following, before
+he could even receive an answer from his own
+court. The conclusion of the treaty fell to his successor.
+Whoever will be at the trouble to compare
+it with the treaty of 1734, will, I believe, confess,
+that, if the former ministers could have obtained
+such terms, they were criminal in not accepting
+them.</p>
+
+<p>But the merchants &quot;deemed them unsafe and unprofitable.&quot;
+What merchants? As no treaty ever
+was more maturely considered, so the opinion of the
+Russia merchants in London was all along taken;
+and all the instructions sent over were in exact conformity
+to that opinion. Our minister there made
+no step without having previously consulted our merchants
+resident in Petersburg, who, before the signing
+of the treaty, gave the most full and unanimous
+testimony in its favor. In their address to our minister
+at that court, among other things they say, &quot;It
+may afford some additional satisfaction to your Excellency,
+to receive a public acknowledgment of <i>the entire
+and unreserved approbation of every article</i> in this
+treaty, from us who are so immediately and so nearly
+concerned in its consequences.&quot; This was signed by
+the consul-general, and every British merchant in
+Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>The approbation of those immediately concerned in
+the consequences is nothing to this author. He and
+his friends have so much tenderness for people's interests,
+and understand them so much better than
+<!-- Page 436 --><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412" title="412" class="pagenum"></a>they do themselves, that, whilst these politicians are
+contending for the best of possible terms, the claimants
+are obliged to go without any terms at all.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first and justest complaints against the
+administration of the author's friends, was the want
+of rigor in their foreign negotiations. Their immediate
+successors endeavored to correct that error,
+along with others; and there was scarcely a foreign
+court, in which the new spirit that had arisen was
+not sensibly felt, acknowledged, and sometimes complained
+of. On their coming into administration,
+they found the demolition of Dunkirk entirely at
+a stand: instead of demolition, they found construction;
+for the French were then at work on the repair
+of the jettees. On the remonstrances of General
+Conway, some parts of these jettees were immediately
+destroyed. The Duke of Richmond personally surveyed
+the place, and obtained a fuller knowledge of
+its true state and condition than any of our ministers
+had done; and, in consequence, had larger offers
+from the Duke of Choiseul than had ever been
+received. But, as these were short of our just expectations
+under the treaty, he rejected them. Our
+then ministers, knowing that, in their administration,
+the people's minds were set at ease upon all the essential
+points of public and private liberty, and that
+no project of theirs could endanger the concord of
+the empire, were under no restraint from pursuing
+every just demand upon foreign nations.</p>
+
+<p>The author, towards the end of this work, falls into
+reflections upon the state of public morals in this
+country: he draws use from this doctrine, by recommending
+his friend to the king and the public, as another
+Duke of Sully; and he concludes the whole
+performance with a very devout prayer.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 437 --><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413" title="413" class="pagenum"></a>The prayers of politicians may sometimes be sincere;
+and as this prayer is in substance, that the author,
+or his friends, may be soon brought into power,
+I have great reason to believe it is very much from
+the heart. It must be owned too that after he has
+drawn such a picture, such a shocking picture, of the
+state of this country, he has great faith in thinking
+the means he prays for sufficient to relieve us: after
+the character he has given of its inhabitants of all
+ranks and classes, he has great charity in caring
+much about them; and indeed no less hope, in being
+of opinion, that such a detestable nation can ever become
+the care of Providence. He has not even found
+five good men in our devoted city.</p>
+
+<p>He talks indeed of men of virtue and ability. But
+where are his <i>men</i> of virtue and ability to be found?
+Are they in the present administration? Never were
+a set of people more blackened by this author. Are
+they among the party of those (no small body) who
+adhere to the system of 1766? These it is the great
+purpose of this book to calumniate. Are they the
+persons who acted with his great friend, since the
+change in 1762, to his removal in 1765? Scarcely
+any of these are now out of employment; and we are
+in possession of his desideratum. Yet I think he
+hardly means to select, even some of the highest of
+them, as examples fit for the reformation of a corrupt
+world.</p>
+
+<p>He observes, that the virtue of the most exemplary
+prince that ever swayed a sceptre &quot;can never warm
+or illuminate the body of his people, if foul mirrors
+are placed so near him as to refract and dissipate the
+rays at their first emanation.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 46.">[99]</a> Without observing
+<!-- Page 438 --><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414" title="414" class="pagenum"></a>upon the propriety of this metaphor, or asking how
+mirrors come to have lost their old quality of reflecting,
+and to have acquired that of refracting, and dissipating
+rays, and how far their foulness will account
+for this change; the remark itself is common and
+true: no less true, and equally surprising from him,
+is that which immediately precedes it: &quot;It is in vain
+to endeavor to check the progress of irreligion and
+licentiousness, by punishing such crimes in <i>one individual</i>,
+if others equally culpable are rewarded with
+the honors and emoluments of the state.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 46.">[100]</a> I am
+not in the secret of the author's manner of writing;
+but it appears to me, that he must intend these reflections
+as a satire upon the administration of his happy
+years. Were over the honors and emoluments of the
+state more lavishly squandered upon persons scandalous
+in their lives than during that period? In these
+scandalous lives, was there anything more scandalous
+than the mode of punishing <i>one culpable individual</i>?
+In that individual, is anything more culpable than
+his having been seduced by the example of some of
+those very persons by whom he was thus persecuted?</p>
+
+<p>The author is so eager to attack others, that he provides
+but indifferently for his own defence. I believe,
+without going beyond the page I have now before me,
+he is very sensible, that I have sufficient matter of
+further, and, if possible, of heavier charge against his
+friends, upon his own principle. But it is because
+the advantage is too great, that I decline making use
+of it. I wish the author had not thought that all
+methods are lawful in party. Above all he ought to
+have taken care not to wound his enemies through
+the sides of his country. This he has done, by mak<!-- Page 439 --><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415" title="415" class="pagenum"></a>ing
+that monstrous and overcharged picture of the
+distresses of our situation. No wonder that he, who
+finds this country in the same condition with that of
+France at the time of Henry the Fourth, could also
+find a resemblance between his political friend and
+the Duke of Sully. As to those personal resemblances,
+people will often judge of them from their
+affections: they may imagine in these clouds whatsoever
+figures they please; but what is the conformation
+of that eye which can discover a resemblance of
+this country and these times to those with which the
+author compares them? France, a country just recovered
+out of twenty-five years of the most cruel and
+desolating civil war that perhaps was ever known.
+The kingdom, under the veil of momentary quiet,
+full of the most atrocious political, operating upon
+the most furious fanatical factions. Some pretenders
+even to the crown; and those who did not pretend to
+the whole, aimed at the partition of the monarchy.
+There were almost as many competitors as provinces;
+and all abetted by the greatest, the most ambitious,
+and most enterprising power in Europe. No place
+safe from treason; no, not the bosoms on which the
+most amiable prince that ever lived reposed his head;
+not his mistresses; not even his queen. As to the
+finances, they had scarce an existence, but as a matter
+of plunder to the managers, and of grants to insatiable
+and ungrateful courtiers.</p>
+
+<p>How can our author have the heart to describe this
+as any sort of parallel to our situation? To be sure,
+an April shower has some resemblance to a waterspout;
+for they are both wet: and there is some likeness
+between a summer evening's breeze and a hurricane;
+they are both wind: but who can compare our
+<!-- Page 440 --><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416" title="416" class="pagenum"></a>disturbances, our situation, or our finances, to those
+of France in the time of Henry? Great Britain is
+indeed at this time wearied, but not broken, with the
+efforts of a victorious foreign war; not sufficiently
+relieved by an inadequate peace, but somewhat benefited
+by that peace, and infinitely by the consequences
+of that war. The powers of Europe awed
+by our victories, and lying in ruins upon every side
+of us. Burdened indeed we are with debt, but
+abounding with resources. We have a trade, not
+perhaps equal to our wishes, but more than ever we
+possessed. In effect, no pretender to the crown; nor
+nutriment for such desperate and destructive factions
+as have formerly shaken this kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>As to our finances, the author trifles with us.
+When Sully came to those of France, in what order
+was any part of the financial system? or what system
+was there at all? There is no man in office who
+must not be sensible that ours is, without the act of
+any parading minister, the most regular and orderly
+system perhaps that was ever known; the best secured
+against all frauds in the collection, and all misapplication
+in the expenditure of public money.</p>
+
+<p>I admit that, in this flourishing state of things,
+there are appearances enough to excite uneasiness
+and apprehension. I admit there is a cankerworm
+in the rose:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i3">Medio de fonte leporum</div>
+<div>Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noindent">This is nothing else than a spirit of disconnection,
+of distrust, and of treachery among public men. It
+is no accidental evil, nor has its effect been trusted to
+the usual frailty of nature; the distemper has been
+inoculated. The author is sensible of it, and we la<!-- Page 441 --><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417" title="417" class="pagenum"></a>ment
+it together. This distemper is alone sufficient
+to take away considerably from the benefits of our
+constitution and situation, and perhaps to render
+their continuance precarious. If these evil dispositions
+should spread much farther, they must end in
+our destruction; for nothing can save a people destitute
+of public and private faith. However, the
+author, for the present state of things, has extended
+the charge by much too widely; as men are but too
+apt to take the measure of all mankind from their
+own particular acquaintance. Barren as this age
+may be in the growth of honor and virtue, the country
+does not want, at this moment, as strong, and
+those not a few examples, as were ever known, of an
+unshaken adherence to principle, and attachment
+to connection, against every allurement of interest.
+Those examples are not furnished by the great alone;
+nor by those, whose activity in public affairs may
+render it suspected that they make such a character
+one of the rounds in their ladder of ambition; but by
+men more quiet, and more in the shade, on whom an
+unmixed sense of honor alone could operate. Such
+examples indeed are not furnished in great abundance
+amongst those who are the subjects of the author's
+panegyric. He must look for them in another
+camp. He who complains of the ill effects of a divided
+and heterogeneous administration, is not justifiable
+in laboring to render odious in the eyes of the
+public those men, whose principles, whose maxims
+of policy, and whose personal character, can alone
+administer a remedy to this capital evil of the age:
+neither is he consistent with himself, in constantly
+extolling those whom he knows to be the authors of
+the very mischief of which he complains, and which
+the whole nation feels so deeply.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 442 --><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418" title="418" class="pagenum"></a>The persons who are the objects of his dislike and
+complaint are many of them of the first families, and
+weightiest properties, in the kingdom; but infinitely
+more distinguished for their untainted honor, public
+and private, and their zealous, but sober attachment
+to the constitution of their country, than they can
+be by any birth, or any station. If they are the
+friends of any one great man rather than another,
+it is not that they make his aggrandizement the end
+of their union; or because they know him to be the
+most active in caballing for his connections the largest
+and speediest emoluments. It is because they know
+him, by personal experience, to have wise and enlarged
+ideas of the public good, and an invincible
+constancy in adhering to it; because they are convinced,
+by the whole tenor of his actions, that he will
+never negotiate away their honor or his own: and
+that, in or out of power, change of situation will
+make no alteration in his conduct. This will give
+to such a person in such a body, an authority and
+respect that no minister ever enjoyed among his venal
+dependents, in the highest plenitude of his power;
+such as servility never can give, such as ambition
+never can receive or relish.</p>
+
+<p>This body will often be reproached by their adversaries,
+for want of ability in their political transactions;
+they will be ridiculed for missing many favorable conjunctures,
+and not profiting of several brilliant opportunities
+of fortune; but they must be contented to
+endure that reproach; for they cannot acquire the
+reputation of <i>that kind</i> of ability without losing all
+the other reputation they possess.</p>
+
+<p>They will be charged too with a dangerous spirit
+of exclusion and proscription, for being unwilling to
+<!-- Page 443 --><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419" title="419" class="pagenum"></a>mix in schemes of administration, which have no
+bond of union, or principle of confidence. That
+charge too they must suffer with patience. If the
+reason of the thing had not spoken loudly enough,
+the miserable examples of the several administrations
+constructed upon the idea of systematic discord
+would be enough to frighten them from such, monstrous
+and ruinous conjunctions. It is however false,
+that the idea of an united administration carries with
+it that of a proscription of any other party. It does
+indeed imply the necessity of having the great strongholds
+of government in well-united hands, in order
+to secure the predominance of right and uniform principles;
+of having the capital offices of deliberation
+and execution of those who can deliberate with mutual
+confidence, and who will execute what is resolved
+with firmness and fidelity. If this system
+cannot be rigorously adhered to in practice, (and
+what system can be so?) it ought to be the constant
+aim of good men to approach as nearly to it as possible.
+No system of that kind can be formed, which
+will not leave room fully sufficient for healing coalitions:
+but no coalition, which, under the specious
+name of independency, carries in its bosom the unreconciled
+principles of the original discord of parties,
+ever was, or will be, an healing coalition. Nor will
+the mind of our sovereign ever know repose, his kingdom
+settlement, or his business order, efficiency, or
+grace with his people, until things are established
+upon the basis of some set of men, who are trusted
+by the public, and who can trust one another.</p>
+
+<p>This comes rather nearer to the mark than the
+author's description of a proper administration, under
+the name of <i>men of ability and virtue</i>, which
+<!-- Page 444 --><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420" title="420" class="pagenum"></a>conveys no definite idea at all; nor does it apply
+specifically to our grand national distemper. All
+parties pretend to these qualities. The present ministry,
+no favorites of the author, will be ready enough
+to declare themselves persons of virtue and ability;
+and if they choose a vote for that purpose, perhaps
+it would not be quite impossible for them to procure
+it. But, if the disease be this distrust and disconnection,
+it is easy to know who are sound and who
+are tainted; who are fit to restore us to health, who
+to continue, and to spread the contagion. The present
+ministry being made up of draughts from all
+parties in the kingdom, if they should profess any
+adherence to the connections they have left, they
+must convict themselves of the blackest treachery.
+They therefore choose rather to renounce the principle
+itself, and to brand it with the name of pride
+and faction. This test with certainty discriminates
+the opinions of men. The other is a description
+vague and unsatisfactory.</p>
+
+<p>As to the unfortunate gentlemen who may at any
+time compose that system, which, under the plausible
+title of an administration, subsists but for the
+establishment of weakness and confusion; they fall
+into different classes, with different merits. I think
+the situation of some people in that state may deserve
+a certain degree of compassion; at the same time that
+they furnish an example, which, it is to be hoped, by
+being a severe one, will have its effect, at least, on
+the growing generation; if an original seduction, on
+plausible but hollow pretences, into loss of honor,
+friendship, consistency, security, and repose, can furnish
+it. It is possible to draw, even from the very
+prosperity of ambition, examples of terror, and motives
+to compassion.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 445 --><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421" title="421" class="pagenum"></a>I believe the instances are exceedingly rare of men
+immediately passing over a clear, marked line of virtue
+into declared vice and corruption. There are a
+sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes;
+there is something uncertain on the confines
+of the two empires which they first pass through, and
+which renders the change easy and imperceptible.
+There are even a sort of splendid impositions so well
+contrived, that, at the very time the path of rectitude
+is quitted forever, men seem to be advancing into
+some higher and nobler road of public conduct. Not
+that such impositions are strong enough in themselves;
+but a powerful interest, often concealed from
+those whom it affects, works at the bottom, and secures
+the operation. Men are thus debauched away
+from those legitimate connections, which they had
+formed on a judgment, early perhaps, but sufficiently
+mature, and wholly unbiassed. They do not quit
+them upon any ground of complaint, for grounds of
+just complaint may exist, but upon the flattering
+and most dangerous of all principles, that of mending
+what is well. Gradually they are habituated to
+other company; and a change in their habitudes
+soon makes a way for a change in their opinions.
+Certain persons are no longer so very frightful, when
+they come to be known and to be serviceable. As to
+their old friends, the transition is easy; from friendship
+to civility; from civility to enmity: few are the
+steps from dereliction to persecution.</p>
+
+<p>People not very well grounded in the principles
+of public morality find a set of maxims in office ready
+made for them, which they assume as naturally and
+inevitably, as any of the insignia or instruments of
+the situation. A certain tone of the solid and prac<!-- Page 446 --><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422" title="422" class="pagenum"></a>tical
+is immediately acquired. Every former profession
+of public spirit is to be considered as a debauch
+of youth, or, at best, as a visionary scheme of unattainable
+perfection. The very idea of consistency is
+exploded. The convenience of the business of the
+day is to furnish the principle for doing it. Then
+the whole ministerial cant is quickly got by heart.
+The prevalence of faction is to be lamented. All
+opposition is to be regarded as the effect of envy and
+disappointed ambition. All administrations are declared
+to be alike. The same necessity justifies all
+their measures. It is no longer a matter of discussion,
+who or what administration is; but that administration
+is to be supported, is a general maxim. Flattering
+themselves that their power is become necessary
+to the support of all order and government; everything
+which tends to the support of that power is
+sanctified, and becomes a part of the public interest.</p>
+
+<p>Growing every day more formed to affairs, and better
+knit in their limbs, when the occasion (now the
+only rule) requires it, they become capable of sacrificing
+those very persons to whom they had before
+sacrificed their original friends. It is now only in
+the ordinary course of business to alter an opinion,
+or to betray a connection. Frequently relinquishing
+one set of men and adopting another, they grow into
+a total indifference to human feeling, as they had
+before to moral obligation; until at length, no one
+original impression remains upon their minds: every
+principle is obliterated; every sentiment effaced.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, that power, which all these
+changes aimed at securing, remains still as tottering
+and as uncertain as ever. They are delivered up
+into the hands of those who feel neither respect for
+<!-- Page 447 --><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423" title="423" class="pagenum"></a>their persons, nor gratitude for their favors; who
+are put about them in appearance to serve, in reality
+to govern them; and, when the signal is given, to
+abandon and destroy them in order to set up some
+new dupe of ambition, who in his turn is to be abandoned
+and destroyed. Thus living in a state of continual
+uneasiness and ferment, softened only by the
+miserable consolation of giving now and then preferments
+to those for whom they have no value; they
+are unhappy in their situation, yet find it impossible
+to resign. Until, at length, soured in temper, and
+disappointed by the very attainment of their ends, in
+some angry, in some haughty, or some negligent moment,
+they incur the displeasure of those upon whom
+they have rendered their very being dependent. Then
+<i>perierunt tempora longi servitii;</i> they are cast off
+with scorn; they are turned out, emptied of all natural
+character, of all intrinsic worth, of all essential
+dignity, and deprived of every consolation of friendship.
+Having rendered all retreat to old principles
+ridiculous, and to old regards impracticable, not being
+able to counterfeit pleasure, or to discharge discontent,
+nothing being sincere, or right, or balanced
+in their minds, it is more than a chance, that, in the
+delirium of the last stage of their distempered power,
+they make an insane political testament, by which
+they throw all their remaining weight and consequence
+into the scale of their declared enemies, and
+the avowed authors of their destruction. Thus they
+finish their course. Had it been possible that the
+whole, or even a great part of these effects on their
+minds, I say nothing of the effect upon their fortunes,
+could have appeared to them in their first departure
+from the right line, it is certain they would have re<!-- Page 448 --><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424" title="424" class="pagenum"></a>jected
+every temptation with horror. The principle
+of these remarks, like every good principle in morality,
+is trite; but its frequent application is not the
+less necessary.</p>
+
+<p>As to others, who are plain practical men, they
+have been guiltless at all times of all public pretence.
+Neither the author nor any one else has reason to be
+angry with them. They belonged to his friend for
+their interest; for their interest they quitted him;
+and when it is their interest, he may depend upon it,
+they will return to their former connection. Such
+people subsist at all times, and, though the nuisance
+of all, are at no time a worthy subject of discussion.
+It is false virtue and plausible error that do the mischief.</p>
+
+<p>If men come to government with right dispositions,
+they have not that unfavorable subject which this author
+represents to work upon. Our circumstances
+are indeed critical; but then they are the critical
+circumstances of a strong and mighty nation. If
+corruption and meanness are greatly spread, they are
+not spread universally. Many public men are hitherto
+examples of public spirit and integrity. Whole
+parties, as far as large bodies can be uniform, have
+preserved character. However they may be deceived
+in some particulars, I know of no set of men amongst
+us, which does not contain persons on whom the nation,
+in a difficult exigence, may well value itself.
+Private life, which is the nursery of the commonwealth,
+is yet in general pure, and on the whole disposed
+to virtue; and the people at large want neither
+generosity nor spirit. No small part of that very
+luxury, which is so much the subject of the author's
+declamation, but which, in most parts of life, by be<!-- Page 449 --><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425" title="425" class="pagenum"></a>ing
+well balanced and diffused, is only decency and
+convenience, has perhaps as many, or more good than
+evil consequences attending it. It certainly excites industry,
+nourishes emulation, and inspires some sense
+of personal value into all ranks of people. What we
+want is to establish more fully an opinion of uniformity,
+and consistency of character, in the leading men
+of the state; such as will restore some confidence to
+profession and appearance, such as will fix subordination
+upon esteem. Without this, all schemes are
+begun at the wrong end. All who join in them are
+liable to their consequences. All men who, under
+whatever pretext, take a part in the formation or the
+support of systems constructed in such a manner as
+must, in their nature, disable them from the execution
+of their duty, have made themselves guilty of all
+the present distraction, and of the future ruin, which
+they may bring upon their country.</p>
+
+<p>It is a serious affair, this studied disunion in government.
+In cases where union is most consulted in
+the constitution of a ministry, and where persons are
+best disposed to promote it, differences, from the various
+ideas of men, will arise; and from their passions
+will often ferment into violent heats, so as
+greatly to disorder all public business. What must
+be the consequence, when the very distemper is made
+the basis of the constitution; and the original weakness
+of human nature is still further enfeebled by art
+and contrivance? It must subvert government from
+the very foundation. It turns our public councils
+into the most mischievous cabals; where the consideration
+is, not how the nation's business shall be carried
+on, but how those who ought to carry it on shall
+circumvent each other. In such a state of things, no
+<!-- Page 450 --><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426" title="426" class="pagenum"></a>order, uniformity, dignity, or effect, can appear in our
+proceedings, either at home or abroad. Nor will it
+make much difference, whether some of the constituent
+parts of such an administration are men of virtue
+or ability, or not; supposing it possible that such
+men, with their eyes open, should choose to make a
+part in such a body.</p>
+
+<p>The effects of all human contrivances are in the
+hand of Providence. I do not like to answer, as our
+author so readily does, for the event of any speculation.
+But surely the nature of our disorders, if anything,
+must indicate the proper remedy. Men who
+act steadily on the principles I have stated may in all
+events be very serviceable to their country; in one
+case, by furnishing (if their sovereign should be so
+advised) an administration formed upon ideas very
+different from those which have for some time been
+unfortunately fashionable. But, if this should not be
+the case, they may be still serviceable; for the example
+of a large body of men, steadily sacrificing ambition
+to principle, can never be without use. It will
+certainly be prolific, and draw others to an imitation.
+<i>Vera gloria radices agit, atque etiam propagatur</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think myself of consequence enough to imitate
+my author, in troubling the world with the
+prayers or wishes I may form for the public: full as
+little am I disposed to imitate his professions; those
+professions are long since worn out in the political
+service. If the work will not speak for the author,
+his own declarations deserve but little credit.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> History of the Minority. History of the Repeal of the Stamp Act.
+Considerations on Trade and Finance. Political Register, &amp;c., &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Pages 6-10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Pages 9, 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Page 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Page 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Page 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Page 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 26em;">
+<tr><td>Total imports from the West Indies in 1764</td><td align='right'>&pound;2,909,411</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Exports to ditto in ditto</td><td align='right'>896,511</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">Excess of imports</td><td align='right'>&pound;2,012,900</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noindent">In this, which is the common way of stating the balance, it will
+appear upwards of two millions against us, which is ridiculous.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Page 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 27em;">
+<tr><td align='center'>1754.</td><td align='right'>&pound;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>s.</i></td><td align='right'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>d.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Total export of British goods</td><td align='right'>value, 8,317,506</td><td align='right'>15</td><td align='right'>3</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Ditto of foreign goods in time</td><td align='right'>2,910,836</td><td align='right'>14</td><td align='right'>9</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Ditto of ditto out of time</td><td align='right'>559,485</td><td align='right'>2</td><td align='right'>10</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Total exports of all kinds</td><td align='right'>11,787,828</td><td align='right'>12</td><td align='right'>10</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Total imports</td><td align='right'>8,093,479</td><td align='right'>15</td><td align='right'>0</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Balance in favor of England</td><td align='right'>&pound;3,094,355</td><td align='right'>17</td><td align='right'>10</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>1761.</td><td align='right'>&pound;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>s.</i></td><td align='right'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<i>d.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Total export of British goods</td><td align='right'>10,649,581</td><td align='right'>12</td><td align='right'>6</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Ditto of foreign goods in time</td><td align='right'>3,553,692</td><td align='right'>7</td><td align='right'>1</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Ditto of ditto out of time</td><td align='right'>355,015</td><td align='right'>0</td><td align='right'>2</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Total exports of all kinds</td><td align='right'>14,558,288</td><td align='right'>19</td><td align='right'>9</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Total imports</td><td align='right'>9,294,915</td><td align='right'>1</td><td align='right'>6</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Balance in favor of England</td><td align='right'>&pound;5,263,373</td><td align='right'>18</td><td align='right'>3</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Here is the state of our trade in 1761, compared with a very good
+year of profound peace: both are taken from the authentic entries at
+the custom-house. How the author can contrive to make this increase
+of the export of English produce agree with his account of the dreadful
+want of hands in England, page 9, unless he supposes manufactures
+to be made without hands, I really do not see. It is painful to be so
+frequently obliged to set this author right in matters of fact. This
+state will fully refute all that he has said or insinuated upon the
+difficulties and decay of our trade, pages 6, 7, and 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Page 7. See also page 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Pages 12, 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Page 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Page 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> &quot;Our merchants suffered by the detention of the galleons, as
+their correspondents in Spain were disabled from paying them for
+their goods sent to America.&quot;&mdash;State of the Nation, p. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Pages 12, 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Page 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Something however has transpired in the quarrels among those
+concerned in that transaction. It seems the <i>good Genius</i> of Britain,
+so much vaunted by our author, did his duty nobly. Whilst we
+were gaining such advantages, the court of France was astonished at
+our concessions. &quot;J'ai apport&eacute; &agrave; Versailles, il est vrai, les Ratifications
+du Roi d'Angleterre, <i>&agrave; vostre grand &eacute;tonnement, et &agrave; celui de bien
+d'autres</i>. Je dois cela au bont&eacute;s du Roi d'Angleterre, &agrave; celles de Milord
+Bute, &agrave; Mons. le Comte de Viry, &agrave; Mons. le Duc de Nivernois,
+et en fin &agrave; mon scavoir faire.&quot;&mdash;Lettres, &amp;c., du Chev. D'Eon, p. 51.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> &quot;The navy bills are not due till six months after they have been
+issued; six months also of the seamen's wages by act of Parliament
+must be, and in consequence of the rules prescribed by that act, twelve
+months' wages generally, and often much more are retained; and
+there has been besides at all times a large arrear of pay, which, though
+kept in the account, could never be claimed, the persons to whom it
+was due having left neither assignees nor representatives. The precise
+amount of such sums cannot be ascertained; but they can hardly be
+reckoned less than thirteen or fourteen hundred thousand pounds.
+On 31st Dec, 1754, when the navy debt was reduced nearly as low as
+it could be, it still amounted to 1,296,567<i>l.</i> 18<i>s.</i> 11&frac34;<i>d.</i> consisting chiefly
+of articles which could not then be discharged; such articles will be
+larger now, in proportion to the increase of the establishment; and an
+allowance must always be made for them in judging of the state of
+the navy debt, though they are not distinguishable in the account.
+In providing for that which is payable, the principal object of the
+legislature is always to discharge the bills, for they are the greatest
+article; they bear an interest of 4 per cent; and, when the quantity of
+them is large, they are a heavy incumbrance upon all money transactions&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 26em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr><td class="wrap">Navy</td><td align='right'>&pound;1,450,900</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Army</td><td align='right'>1,268,500</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Ordnance</td><td align='right'>174,600</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">The four American governments</td><td align='right'>19,200</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">General surveys in America</td><td align='right'>1,600</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Foundling Hospital</td><td align='right'>38,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">To the African committee</td><td align='right'>13,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">For the civil establishment on the coast of Africa</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">5,500</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Militia</td><td align='right'>100,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Deficiency of land and malt</td><td align='right'>300,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Deficiency of funds</td><td align='right'>202,400</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Extraordinaries of the army and navy</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">35,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap" align='center'>Total</td><td align='right'>&pound;3,609,700</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Upon the money borrowed in 1760, the premium of one per
+cent was for twenty-one years, not for twenty; this annuity has been
+paid eight years instead of seven; the sum paid is therefore 640,000<i>l.</i>
+instead of 560,000<i>l.</i>; the remaining term is worth, ten years and a
+quarter instead of eleven years;<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor"
+title="See Smart and Demoivre.">[59]</a> its value is 820,000<i>l.</i> instead of
+880,000<i>l.</i>; and the whole value of that premium is 1,460,000<i>l.</i> instead
+of 1,440,000<i>l.</i> The like errors are observable in his computation on
+the additional capital of three per cent on the loan of that year. In
+like manner, on the loan of 1762, the author computes on five years'
+payment instead of six; and says in express terms, that take 5 from
+19, and there remain 13. These are not errors of the pen or the
+press; the several computations pursued in this part of the work with
+great diligence and earnestness prove them errors upon much deliberation.
+Thus the premiums in 1759 are cast up 90,000<i>l.</i> too little, an
+error in the first rule of arithmetic. &quot;The annuities borrowed in
+1756 and 1758 are,&quot; says he, &quot;to continue till redeemed by Parliament.&quot;
+He does not take notice that the first are irredeemable till February,
+1771, the other till July, 1782. In this the amount of the premiums
+is computed on the time which they have run. Weakly and
+ignorantly; for he might have added to this, and strengthened his argument,
+such as it is, by charging also the value of the additional one
+per cent from the day on which he wrote, to at least that day on which
+these annuities become redeemable. To make ample amends, however,
+he has added to the premiums of 15 per cent in 1759, and three per cent
+in 1760, the annuity paid for them since their commencement;
+the fallacy of which is manifest; for the premiums in these cases can
+he neither more nor less than the additional capital for which the public
+stands engaged, and is just the same whether five or five hundred
+years' annuity has been paid for it. In private life, no man persuades
+himself that he has borrowed 200<i>l.</i> because he happens to have paid
+twenty years' interest on a loan of 100<i>l.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> See Smart and Demoivre.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Pages 30-32.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> In a course of years a few manufacturers have been tempted
+abroad, not by cheap living, but by immense premiums, to set up as
+masters, and to introduce the manufacture. This must happen in
+every country eminent for the skill of its artificers, and has nothing
+to do with taxes and the price of provisions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Although the public brewery has considerably increased in this
+latter period, the produce of the malt-tax has been something less than
+in the former; this cannot be attributed to the new malt-tax. Had
+this been the cause of the lessened consumption, the public brewery,
+so much more burdened, must have felt it more. The cause of this
+diminution of the malt-tax I take to have been principally owing to
+the greater dearness of corn in the second period than in the first,
+which, in all its consequences, affected the people in the country much
+more than those in the towns. But the revenue from consumption
+was not, on the whole, impaired; as we have seen in the foregoing
+page.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" style="width: 100%; max-width: 28em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr><td align='right' colspan="2">Total Imports, value,</td><td style='width: 4em'></td><!-- <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>-->
+    <td colspan="2" align='right'>Exports, ditto.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">1752</td><td align='right'>&pound;7,889,369</td><td /><td align='right'>&pound;11,694,912</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">1753</td><td align='right'>8,625,029</td><td /><td align='right'>12,243,604</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">1754</td><td align='right'>8,093,472</td><td /><td align='right'>11,787,828</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Total</td><td align='right'>&pound;24,607,870</td><td /><td align='right'>35,726,344</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td /><td align='right'>24,607,870</td><td /></tr>
+<tr><td /><td></td><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td /></tr>
+<tr><td /><td colspan="2" class="wrap">Exports exceed imports</td><td align='right' valign="bottom">11,118,474</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td></td><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td colspan="2" class="wrap">Medium balance</td><td align='right'>&pound;,706,158</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td></td><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" align='right'>Total Imports, value,</td><td /><td align='right'>Exports, ditto.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">1764</td><td align='right'>&pound;10,818,946</td><td /><td align='right'>&pound;16,104,532</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">1765</td><td align='right'>10,889,742</td><td /><td align='right'>14,550,507</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">1766</td><td align='right'>11,475,825</td><td /><td align='right'>14,024,964</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="wrap">Total</td><td align='right'>&pound;32,685,513</td><td /><td align='right'>44,740,003</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td><td /><td align='right'>32,683,613</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td></td><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td colspan="2" class="wrap">Exports exceed</td><td align='right'>12,054,490</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td></td><td /><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td /><td colspan="2" class="wrap">Medium balance for three last years</td><td align='right'>&pound;4,018,163</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> It is dearer in some places, and rather cheaper in others; but it
+must soon all come to a level.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> A tax rated by the intendant in each generality, on the presumed
+fortune of every person below the degree of a gentleman.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Before the war it was sold to, or rather forced on, the consumer
+at 11 sous, or about 5<i>d.</i> the pound. What it is at present, I am not
+informed. Even this will appear no trivial imposition. In London,
+salt may be had at a penny farthing per pound from the last retailer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Page 31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> Page 33.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Page 33.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Page 33.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a name="Footnote_71_71a" id="Footnote_71_71a"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> The figures in the &quot;Considerations&quot; are wrongly cast up; it
+should be 3,608,700<i>l.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> &quot;Considerations,&quot; p. 43. &quot;State of the Nation,&quot; p. 33.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> Ibid.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Page 34.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> The author of the &quot;State of the Nation,&quot; p. 34, informs us, that
+the sum of 75,000<i>l.</i> allowed by him for the extras of the army and
+ordnance, is far less than was allowed for the same service in the years
+1767 and 1768. It is so undoubtedly, and by at least 200,000<i>l.</i> He
+sees that he cannot abide by the plan of the &quot;Considerations&quot; in this
+point, nor is he willing wholly to give it up. Such an enormous
+difference as that between 35,000<i>l.</i> and 300,000<i>l.</i> puts him to a stand.
+Should he adopt the latter plan of increased expense, he must then
+confess that he had, on a former occasion, egregiously trifled with the
+public; at the same time all his future promises of reduction must
+fall to the ground. If he stuck to the 35,000<i>l.</i> he was sure that every
+one must expect from him some account how this monstrous charge
+came to continue ever since the war, when it was clearly unnecessary;
+how all those successions of ministers (his own included) came to pay
+it, and why his great friend in Parliament, and his partisans without
+doors, came not to pursue to ruin, at least to utter shame, the authors
+of so groundless and scandalous a profusion. In this strait he took
+a middle way; and, to come nearer the real state of the service, he
+outbid the &quot;Considerations,&quot; at one stroke, 40,000<i>l.</i>; at the same
+time he hints to you, that you may <i>expect</i> some benefit also from the
+original plan. But the author of the &quot;Considerations&quot; will not suffer
+him to escape it. He has pinned him down to his 35,000<i>l.</i>; for
+that is the sum he has chosen, not as what he thinks will probably
+be required, but as making the most ample allowance for every possible
+contingency. See that author, p. 42 and 43.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71a"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> He has done great injustice to the establishment of 1768; but I
+have not here time for this discussion; nor is it necessary to this argument.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Page 34.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> In making up this account, he falls into a surprising error of
+arithmetic. &quot;The deficiency of the land-tax in the year 1754 and
+1755,<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor"
+title="Page 33.">[80]</a> when it was at 2<i>s.</i>, amounted to no more, on a medium, than
+49,372<i>l.</i>; to which, if we add <i>half the sum</i>, it will give us 79,058<i>l.</i> as
+the peace deficiency at 3<i>s.</i>&quot;</p>
+<div class="ctr">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Savings" style="width: 100%; max-width: 10em;">
+<tr><td> Total          </td><td align="right">&pound;49,372</td></tr>
+<tr><td> Add the half   </td><td align="right">24,686</td></tr>
+<tr><td>                </td><td align="right">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>                </td><td align="right">&pound;74,058</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<p class="noindent">Which he makes 79,058<i>l.</i> This is indeed in disfavor of his argument;
+but we shall see that he has ways, by other errors, of reimbursing
+himself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> Page 34.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Page 33.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Page 43.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> Page 35.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> Page 37.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Pages 37, 38.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> Pages 39, 40.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Page 39.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> It is observable, that the partisans of American taxation, when
+they have a mind to represent this tax as wonderfully beneficial to
+England, state it as worth 100,000<i>l.</i> a year; when they are to represent
+it as very light on the Americans, it dwindles to 60,000<i>l.</i> Indeed
+it is very difficult to compute what its produce might have been.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> &quot;Considerations,&quot; p. 74.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> &quot;Considerations,&quot; p. 79.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Ibid., p. 74.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> I do not here enter into the unsatisfactory disquisition concerning
+representation real or presumed. I only say, that a great people
+who have their property, without any reserve, in all cases, disposed
+of by another people, at an immense distance from them, will not
+think themselves in the enjoyment of freedom. It will be hard to
+show to those who are in such a state, which of the usual parts of the
+definition or description of a free people are applicable to them; and
+it is neither pleasant nor wise to attempt to prove that they have no
+right to be comprehended in such a description.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> Page 21.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Here the author has a note altogether in his usual strain of reasoning;
+he finds out that somebody, in the course of this multifarious
+evidence, had said, &quot;that a very considerable part of the orders of
+1765 transmitted from America had been afterwards suspended; but
+that in case the Stamp Act was repealed, those orders were to be executed
+in the present year, 1766&quot;; and that, on the repeal of the Stamp
+Act, &quot;the exports to the colonies would be at least double the value of
+the exports of the past year.&quot; He then triumphs exceedingly on
+their having fallen short of it on the state of the custom-house entries.
+I do not well know what conclusion he draws applicable to his purpose
+from these facts. He does not deny that all the orders which
+came from America subsequent to the disturbances of the Stamp Act
+were on the condition of that act being repealed; and he does not
+assert that, notwithstanding that act should be enforced by a strong
+hand, still the orders would be executed. Neither does he quite venture
+to say that this decline of the trade in 1766 was owing to the
+repeal. What does he therefore infer from it, favorable to the enforcement
+of that law? It only comes to this, and no more; those
+merchants, who thought our trade would be doubled in the subsequent
+year, were mistaken in their speculations. So that the Stamp
+Act was not to be repealed unless this speculation of theirs was a
+probable event. But it was not repealed in order to double our trade
+in that year, as everybody knows (whatever some merchants might
+have said), but lest in that year we should have no trade at all. The
+fact is, that during the greatest part of the year 1755, that is, until
+about the month of October, when the accounts of the disturbances
+came thick upon us, the American trade went on as usual. Before
+this time, the Stamp Act could not affect it. Afterwards, the merchants
+fell into a great consternation; a general stagnation in trade
+ensued. But as soon as it was known that the ministry favored the
+repeal of the Stamp Act, several of the bolder merchants ventured to
+execute their orders; others more timid hung back; in this manner
+the trade continued in a state of dreadful fluctuation between the fears
+of those who had ventured, for the event of their boldness, and the
+anxiety of those whose trade was suspended, until the royal assent
+was finally given to the bill of repeal. That the trade of 1766 was
+not equal to that of 1765, could not be owing to the repeal; it arose
+from quite different causes, of which the author seems not to be
+aware: 1st, Our conquests during the war had laid open the trade
+of the French and Spanish West Indies to our colonies much more
+largely than they had ever enjoyed it; this continued for some time
+after the peace; but at length it was extremely contracted, and in
+some places reduced to nothing. Such in particular was the state of
+Jamaica. On the taking the Havannah all the stores of that island
+were emptied into that place, which produced unusual orders for
+goods, for supplying their own consumption, as well as for further
+speculations of trade. These ceasing, the trade stood on its own
+bottom. This is one cause of the diminished export to Jamaica,
+and not the childish idea of the author, of an impossible contraband
+from the opening of the ports.&mdash;2nd, The war had brought a great
+influx of cash into America, for the pay and provision of the troops;
+and this an unnatural increase of trade, which, as its cause failed,
+must in some degree return to its ancient and natural bounds.&mdash;3rd,
+When the merchants met from all parts, and compared their accounts,
+they were alarmed at the immensity of the debt due to them from
+America. They found that the Americans had over-traded their
+abilities. And, as they found too that several of them were capable
+of making the state of political events an excuse for their failure in
+commercial punctuality, many of our merchants in some degree contracted
+their trade from that moment. However, it is idle, in such
+an immense mass of trade, so liable to fluctuation, to infer anything
+from such a deficiency as one or even two hundred thousand pounds.
+In 1767, when the disturbances subsided, this deficiency was made
+up again.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> The disturbances have been in Boston only; and were not in
+consequence of the late duties.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> Page 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> &quot;They are happy in having found, in your zeal for the dignity
+of this nation, the means of liquidating their claims, and of concluding
+with the court of France a convention for the final satisfaction
+of their demands; and have given us commission, in their names,
+and on their behalf, most earnestly to entreat your acceptance of their
+grateful acknowledgments. Whether they consider themselves as
+Britons, or as men more particularly profiting by your generous and
+spirited interposition, they see great reasons to be thankful, for having
+been supported by a minister, in whose public affections, in whose
+wisdom and activity, both the national honor, and the interests of individuals,
+have been at once so well supported and secured.&quot;&mdash;Thanks
+of the Canada merchants to General Conway, London, April 28, 1766.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> See the Convention itself, printed by Owen and Harrison, Warwick-lane,
+1766; particularly the articles two and thirteen.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Page 23.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Page 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> Page 46.</p></div><!-- Page 451 --><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427" title="427" class="pagenum"></a>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>So much misplaced industry has been used by the
+author of &quot;The State of the Nation,&quot; as well as
+by other writers, to infuse discontent into the people,
+on account of the late war, and of the effects of our
+national debt; that nothing ought to be omitted which
+may tend to disabuse the public upon these subjects.
+When I had gone through the foregoing sheets, I recollected,
+that, in pages 58, 59, 60, I only gave the
+comparative states of the duties collected by the excise
+at large; together with the quantities of strong
+beer brewed in the two periods which are there compared.
+It might be still thought, that some other articles
+of popular consumption, of general convenience,
+and connected with our manufactures, might possibly
+have declined. I therefore now think it right to lay
+before the reader the state of the produce of three capital
+duties on such articles; duties which have frequently
+been made the subject of popular complaint.
+The duty on candles; that on soap, paper, &amp;c.; and
+that on hides.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Averages of produce on duty" style="width: 100%; max-width: 23em; padding-left: 1em;">
+<tr>
+  <td class="wrap">Average of net produce of duty on soap,
+  &amp;c., for eight years ending 1767 </td>
+  <td align="right" valign="bottom">&pound;264,902</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="wrap">Average of ditto for eight years ending
+  1754</td>
+  <td align="right" valign="bottom">228,114</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td />
+  <td align="right">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="center">Average increase</td>
+  <td align="right" valign="bottom">&pound;36,788</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="wrap">
+  <!-- Page 452 --><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428" title="428" class="pagenum"></a>
+  Average of net produce of duty on candles,
+  for eight years ending 1767 </td>
+  <td align="right" valign="bottom">&pound;155,789</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="wrap">Average of ditto for eight years ending
+  1754</td>
+  <td align="right" valign="bottom">136,716</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td />
+  <td align="right">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="center">Average increase</td>
+  <td align="right" valign="bottom">&pound;19,073</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr>
+  <td class="wrap">Average of net produce of duty on hides,
+  eight years ending 1767 </td>
+  <td align="right" valign="bottom">&pound;189,216</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="wrap">ditto eight years ending 1754</td>
+  <td align="right">168,200</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td />
+  <td align="right">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="center">Average increase</td>
+  <td align="right" valign="bottom">&pound;21,016</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noindent">This increase has not arisen from any additional duties.
+None have been imposed on these articles during
+the war. Notwithstanding the burdens of the
+war, and the late dearness of provisions, the consumption
+of all these articles has increased, and the
+revenue along with it.</p>
+
+<p>There is another point in &quot;The State of the Nation,&quot;
+to which, I fear, I have not been so full in my
+answer as I ought to have been, and as I am well
+warranted to be. The author has endeavored to
+throw a suspicion, or something more, on that salutary,
+and indeed necessary measure of opening the
+ports in Jamaica. &quot;Orders were given,&quot; says he,
+&quot;in <i>August</i>, 1765, for the free admission of Spanish
+vessels into all the colonies.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor"
+title="His note, p. 22.">[101]</a> He then observes,
+that the exports to Jamaica fell 40,904<i>l.</i> short of those
+of 1764; and that the exports of the succeeding year,
+1766, fell short of those of 1765, about eighty pounds;
+from whence he wisely infers, that this decline of exports
+being <i>since</i> the relaxation of the laws of trade,
+there is a just ground of suspicion, that the colonies
+have been supplied with foreign commodities instead
+of British.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 453 --><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429" title="429" class="pagenum"></a>Here, as usual with him, the author builds on a
+fact which is absolutely false; and which, being so,
+renders his whole hypothesis absurd and impossible.
+He asserts, that the order for admitting Spanish vessels
+was given in <i>August</i>, 1765. That order was not
+<i>signed at the treasury board until the 15th day of the
+November following</i>; and therefore so far from affecting
+the exports of the year 1765, that, supposing all
+possible diligence in the commissioners of the customs
+in expediting that order, and every advantage of
+vessels ready to sail, and the most favorable wind, it
+would hardly even arrive in Jamaica, within the limits
+of that year.</p>
+
+<p>This order could therefore by no possibility be a
+cause of the decrease of exports in 1765. If it had
+any mischievous operation, it could not be before
+1766. In that year, according to our author, the exports
+fell short of the preceding, just <i>eighty</i> pounds.
+He is welcome to that diminution; and to all the consequences
+he can draw from it.</p>
+
+<p>But, as an auxiliary to account for this dreadful
+loss, he brings in the Free-port Act, which he observes
+(for his convenience) to have been made in spring,
+1766; but (for his convenience likewise) he forgets,
+that, by the express provision of the act, the regulation
+was not to be in force in Jamaica until the November
+following. Miraculous must be the activity
+of that contraband whose operation in America could,
+before the end of that year, have reacted upon England,
+and checked the exportation from hence! Unless
+he chooses to suppose, that the merchants at
+whose solicitation this act had been obtained, were so
+frightened at the accomplishment of their own most
+earnest and anxious desire, that, before any good or
+<!-- Page 454 --><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430" title="430" class="pagenum"></a>evil effect from it could happen, they immediately
+put a stop to all further exportation.</p>
+
+<p>It is obvious that we must look for the true effect
+of that act at the time of its first possible operation,
+that is, in the year 1767. On this idea how stands
+the account?</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Exports to Jamaica" style="width: 100%; max-width: 20em;">
+<tr><td>1764, Exports to Jamaica                       </td><td align="right">&pound;456,528</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1765                                           </td><td align="right">415,624</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1766                                           </td><td align="right">415,544</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1767  (first year of the Free-port Act)        </td><td align="right">467,681</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noindent">This author, for the sake of a present momentary
+credit, will hazard any future and permanent disgrace.
+At the time he wrote, the account of 1767
+could not be made up. This was the very first year
+of the trial of the Free-port Act; and we find that
+the sale of British commodities is so far from being
+lessened by that act, that the export of 1767 amounts
+to 52,000<i>l.</i> more than that of either of the two preceding
+years, and is 11,000<i>l.</i> above that of his standard
+year 1764. If I could prevail on myself to argue
+in favor of a great commercial scheme from the
+appearance of things in a single year, I should from
+this increase of export infer the beneficial effects of
+that measure. In truth, it is not wanting. Nothing
+but the thickest ignorance of the Jamaica trade could
+have made any one entertain a fancy, that the least
+ill effect on our commerce could follow from this
+opening of the ports. But, if the author argues the
+effect of regulations in the American trade from the
+export of the year in which they are made, or even
+of the following; why did he not apply this rule to
+his own? He had the same paper before him which
+I have now before me. He must have seen that in
+<!-- Page 455 --><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431" title="431" class="pagenum"></a>his standard year (the year 1764), the principal year
+of his new regulations, the export fell no less than
+128,450<i>l.</i> short of that in 1763! Did the export
+trade revive by these regulations in 1765, during
+which year they continued in their full force? It
+fell about 40,000<i>l.</i> still lower. Here is a fall of
+168,000<i>l.</i>; to account for which, would have become
+the author much better than piddling for an 80<i>l.</i> fall
+in the year 1766 (the only year in which <i>the order</i> he
+objects to could operate), or in presuming a fall of
+exports from a regulation which took place only in
+November, 1766; whose effects could not appear until
+the following year; and which, when they do appear,
+utterly overthrow all his flimsy reasons and affected
+suspicions upon the effect of opening the ports.</p>
+
+<p>This author, in the same paragraph, says, that &quot;it
+was asserted by <i>the American factors and agents</i>, that
+the commanders of our ships of war and tenders, having
+custom-house commissions, and the strict orders
+given in 1764 for a due execution of the laws of trade
+in the colonies, had deterred the Spaniards from trading
+with us; that the sale of British manufactures in
+the West Indies had been greatly lessened, and the
+receipt of large sums of specie prevented.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If the <i>American factors and agents</i> asserted this,
+they had good ground for their assertion. They
+knew that the Spanish vessels had been driven from
+our ports. The author does not positively deny the
+fact. If he should, it will be proved. When the factors
+connected this measure, and its natural consequences,
+with an actual fall in the exports to Jamaica,
+to no less an amount than 128,460<i>l.</i> in one
+year, and with a further fall in the next, is their
+assertion very wonderful? The author himself is
+<!-- Page 456 --><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432" title="432" class="pagenum"></a>full as much alarmed by a fall of only 40,000<i>l.</i>; for
+giving him the facts which he chooses to coin, it is no
+more. The expulsion of the Spanish vessels must
+certainly have been one cause, if not of the first declension
+of the exports, yet of their continuance in
+their reduced state. Other causes had their operation,
+without doubt. In what degree each cause produced
+its effect, it is hard to determine. But the
+fact of a fall of exports upon the restraining plan,
+and of a rise upon the taking place of the enlarging
+plan, is established beyond all contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>This author says, that the facts relative to the
+Spanish trade were asserted by <i>American factors and
+agents</i>; insinuating, that the ministry of 1766 had no
+better authority for their plan of enlargement than
+such assertions. The moment he chooses it, he shall
+see the very same thing asserted by governors of
+provinces, by commanders of men-of-war, and by officers
+of the customs; persons the most bound in duty
+to prevent contraband, and the most interested in the
+seizures to be made in consequence of strict regulation.
+I suppress them for the present; wishing that
+the author may not drive me to a more full discussion
+of this matter than it may be altogether prudent to
+enter into. I wish he had not made any of these discussions
+necessary.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> His note, p. 22.</p></div><!-- Page 457 --><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433" title="433" class="pagenum"></a>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THOUGHTS_ON_THE_CAUSE_OF_THE_PRESENT_DISCONTENTS_" id="THOUGHTS_ON_THE_CAUSE_OF_THE_PRESENT_DISCONTENTS_"></a>
+THOUGHTS<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 60%">ON</span><br />
+<br />
+THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS.<br />
+</h2>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>Hoc vero occultum, intestinum, domesticum malum, non modo non
+existit, verum etiam opprimit, antequam perspicere atque explorare
+potueris.</p>
+<p class="citation">CIC.</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<h2 style="font-size: 100%">1770.</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+<!-- Page 458 --><div><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434" title="434" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+
+<div><!-- Page 459 --><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435" title="435" class="pagenum"></a></div>
+<p>It is an undertaking of some degree of delicacy to
+examine into the cause of public disorders. If
+a man happens not to succeed in such an inquiry, he
+will be thought weak and visionary; if he touches
+the true grievance, there is a danger that he may
+come near to persons of weight and consequence,
+who will rather be exasperated at the discovery of
+their errors, than thankful for the occasion of correcting
+them. If he should be obliged to blame the
+favorites of the people, he will be considered as the tool
+of power; if he censures those in power, he will be
+looked on as an instrument of faction. But in all
+exertions of duty something is to be hazarded. In
+cases of tumult and disorder, our law has invested
+every man, in some sort, with the authority of a magistrate.
+When the affairs of the nation are distracted,
+private people are, by the spirit of that law, justified
+in stepping a little out of their ordinary sphere.
+They enjoy a privilege, of somewhat more dignity
+and effect, than that of idle lamentation over the calamities
+of their country. They may look into them
+narrowly; they may reason upon them liberally;
+and if they should be so fortunate as to discover the
+true source of the mischief, and to suggest any prob<!-- Page 460 --><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436" title="436" class="pagenum"></a>able
+method of removing it, though they may displease
+the rulers for the day, they are certainly of
+service to the cause of government. Government is
+deeply interested in everything which, even through
+the medium of some temporary uneasiness, may tend
+finally to compose the minds of the subject, and to
+conciliate their affections. I have nothing to do here
+with the abstract value of the voice of the people.
+But as long as reputation, the most precious possession
+of every individual, and as long as opinion, the
+great support of the state, depend entirely upon that
+voice, it can never be considered as a thing of little
+consequence either to individuals or to governments.
+Nations are not primarily ruled by laws: less by violence.
+Whatever original energy may be supposed
+either in force or regulation, the operation of both is,
+in truth, merely instrumental. Nations are governed
+by the same methods, and on the same principles, by
+which an individual without authority is often able to
+govern those who are his equals or his superiors; by
+a knowledge of their temper, and by a judicious management
+of it; I mean,&mdash;when public affairs are
+steadily and quietly conducted; not when government
+is nothing but a continued scuffle between the
+magistrate and the multitude; in which sometimes
+the one and sometimes the other is uppermost; in
+which they alternately yield and prevail, in a series
+of contemptible victories, and scandalous submissions.
+The temper of the people amongst whom he
+presides ought therefore to be the first study of a
+statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is
+by no means impossible for him to attain, if he has
+not an interest in being ignorant of what it is his
+duty to learn.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 461 --><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437" title="437" class="pagenum"></a>To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at
+the present possessors of power, to lament the past,
+to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the
+common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind;
+indeed the necessary effects of the ignorance and levity
+of the vulgar. Such complaints and humors have
+existed in all times; yet as all times have <i>not</i> been
+alike, true political sagacity manifests itself in distinguishing
+that complaint which only characterizes the
+general infirmity of human nature, from those which
+are symptoms of the particular distemperature of our
+own air and season.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody, I believe, will consider it merely as the
+language of spleen or disappointment, if I say, that
+there is something particularly alarming in the present
+conjuncture. There is hardly a man, in or out of
+power, who holds any other language. That government
+is at once dreaded and contemned; that the laws
+are despoiled of all their respected and salutary terrors;
+that their inaction is a subject of ridicule, and
+their exertion of abhorrence; that rank, and office and
+title, and all the solemn plausibilities of the world,
+have lost their reverence and effect; that our foreign
+politics are as much deranged as our domestic economy;
+that our dependencies are slackened in their
+affection, and loosened from their obedience; that we
+know neither how to yield nor how to enforce; that
+hardly anything above or below, abroad or at home,
+is sound and entire; but that disconnection and confusion,
+in offices, in parties, in families, in Parliament,
+in the nation, prevail beyond the disorders of
+any former time: these are facts universally admitted
+and lamented.</p>
+
+<p>This state of things is the more extraordinary, be<!-- Page 462 --><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438" title="438" class="pagenum"></a>cause
+the great parties which formerly divided and
+agitated the kingdom are known to be in a manner
+entirely dissolved. No great external calamity has
+visited the nation; no pestilence or famine. We do
+not labor at present under any scheme of taxation
+new or oppressive in the quantity or in the mode.
+Nor are we engaged in unsuccessful war; in which,
+our misfortunes might easily pervert our judgment;
+and our minds, sore from the loss of national glory,
+might feel every blow of fortune as a crime in government.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible that the cause of this strange distemper
+should not sometimes become a subject of discourse.
+It is a compliment due, and which I willingly
+pay, to those who administer our affairs, to take notice
+in the first place of their speculation. Our ministers
+are of opinion, that the increase of our trade and
+manufactures, that our growth by colonization, and
+by conquest, have concurred to accumulate immense
+wealth in the hands of some individuals; and this
+again being dispersed among the people, has rendered
+them universally proud, ferocious, and ungovernable;
+that the insolence of some from their enormous
+wealth, and the boldness of others from a guilty poverty,
+have rendered them capable of the most atrocious
+attempts; so that they have trampled upon all subordination,
+and violently borne down the unarmed laws
+of a free government; barriers too feeble against the
+fury of a populace so fierce and licentious as ours.
+They contend, that no adequate provocation has been
+given for so spreading a discontent; our affairs having
+been conducted throughout with remarkable temper
+and consummate wisdom. The wicked industry of
+some libellers, joined to the intrigues of a few disap<!-- Page 463 --><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439" title="439" class="pagenum"></a>pointed
+politicians, have, in their opinion, been able
+to produce this unnatural ferment in the nation.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing indeed can be more unnatural than the
+present convulsions of this country, if the above account
+be a true one. I confess I shall assent to it
+with great reluctance, and only on the compulsion of
+the clearest and firmest proofs; because their account
+resolves itself into this short, but discouraging proposition,
+&quot;That we have a very good ministry, but that we
+are a very bad people&quot;; that we set ourselves to bite
+the hand that feeds us; that with a malignant insanity,
+we oppose the measures, and ungratefully vilify
+the persons, of those whose sole object is our own
+peace and prosperity. If a few puny libellers, acting
+under a knot of factious politicians, without virtue,
+parts, or character, (such they are constantly represented
+by these gentlemen,) are sufficient to excite
+this disturbance, very perverse must be the disposition
+of that people, amongst whom such a disturbance
+can be excited by such means. It is besides no
+small aggravation of the public misfortune, that the
+disease, on this hypothesis, appears to be without remedy.
+If the wealth of the nation be the cause of its
+turbulence, I imagine it is not proposed to introduce
+poverty, as a constable to keep the peace. If our dominions
+abroad are the roots which feed all this rank
+luxuriance of sedition, it is not intended to cut them
+off in order to famish the fruit. If our liberty has
+enfeebled the executive power, there is no design, I
+hope, to call in the aid of despotism, to fill up the
+deficiencies of law. Whatever may be intended,
+these things are not yet professed. We seem therefore
+to be driven to absolute despair; for we have no
+other materials to work upon, but those out of which
+<!-- Page 464 --><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440" title="440" class="pagenum"></a>God has been pleased to form the inhabitants of this
+island. If these be radically and essentially vicious,
+all that can be said is, that those men are very unhappy,
+to whose fortune or duty it falls to administer
+the affairs of this untoward people. I hear it indeed
+sometimes asserted, that a steady perseverance in the
+present measures, and a rigorous punishment of those
+who oppose them, will in course of time infallibly put
+an end to these disorders. But this, in my opinion,
+is said without much observation of our present disposition,
+and without any knowledge at all of the
+general nature of mankind. If the matter of which
+this nation is composed be so very fermentable as these
+gentlemen describe it, leaven never will be wanting
+to work it up, as long as discontent, revenge, and ambition,
+have existence in the world. Particular punishments
+are the cure for accidental distempers in
+the state; they inflame rather than allay those heats
+which arise from the settled mismanagement of the
+government, or from a natural indisposition in the
+people. It is of the utmost moment not to make
+mistakes in the use of strong measures; and firmness
+is then only a virtue when it accompanies the most
+perfect wisdom. In truth, inconstancy is a sort of
+natural corrective of folly and ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>I am not one of those who think that the people
+are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently
+and outrageously, both in other countries and
+in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between
+them and their rulers, the presumption is at least
+upon a par in favor of the people. Experience may
+perhaps justify me in going further. When popular
+discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be
+affirmed and supported, that there has been generally
+<!-- Page 465 --><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441" title="441" class="pagenum"></a>something found amiss in the constitution, or in the
+conduct of government. The people have no interest
+in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error,
+and not their crime. But with the governing part of
+the state, it is for otherwise. They certainly may
+act ill by design, as well as by mistake. &quot;<i>Les r&eacute;volutions
+qui arrivent dans les grands &eacute;tats ne sont
+point un effect du hazard, ni du caprice des peuples.
+Rien ne r&eacute;volte </i>les grands<i> d'un royaume comme </i>un
+gouvernement foible et d&eacute;rang&eacute;<i>. Pour la </i>populace<i>,
+ce n'est jamais par envie d'attaquer qu'elle se soul&egrave;ve,
+mais par impatience de souffrir.</i>&quot;<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor"
+title="M&eacute;m. de Sully, tom. i. p. 133.">[102]</a> These are the
+words of a great man; of a minister of state; and a
+zealous assertor of monarchy. They are applied to
+the <i>system of favoritism</i> which was adopted by Henry
+the Third of France, and to the dreadful consequences
+it produced. What he says of revolutions,
+is equally true of all great disturbances. If this presumption
+in favor of the subjects against the trustees
+of power be not the more probable, I am sure it is
+the more comfortable speculation; because it is more
+easy to change an administration, than to reform a
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Upon a supposition, therefore, that, in the opening
+of the cause, the presumptions stand equally balanced
+between the parties, there seems sufficient
+ground to entitle any person to a fair hearing, who
+attempts some other scheme beside that easy one
+which is fashionable in some fashionable companies,
+to account for the present discontents. It is not to
+be argued that we endure no grievance, because our
+grievances are not of the same sort with those under
+which we labored formerly; not precisely those which
+<!-- Page 466 --><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442" title="442" class="pagenum"></a>we bore from the Tudors, or vindicated on the Stuarts.
+A great change has taken place in the affairs
+of this country. For in the silent lapse of events as
+material alterations have been insensibly brought
+about in the policy and character of governments
+and nations, as those which have been marked by the
+tumult of public revolutions.</p>
+
+<p>It is very rare indeed for men to be wrong in their
+feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be
+right in their speculation upon the cause of it. I
+have constantly observed, that the generality of people
+are fifty years, at least, behindhand in their politics.
+There are but very few who are capable of comparing
+and digesting what passes before their eyes at
+different times and occasions, so as to form the whole
+into a distinct system. But in books everything is
+settled for them, without the exertion of any considerable
+diligence or sagacity. For which reason men
+are wise with but little reflection, and good with little
+self-denial, in the business of all times except their
+own. We are very uncorrupt and tolerably enlightened
+judges of the transactions of past ages; where
+no passions deceive, and where the whole train of
+circumstances, from the trifling cause to the tragical
+event, is set in an orderly series before us. Few are
+the partisans of departed tyranny; and to be a Whig
+on the business of an hundred years ago, is very consistent
+with every advantage of present servility.
+This retrospective wisdom, and historical patriotism,
+are things of wonderful convenience, and serve admirably
+to reconcile the old quarrel between speculation
+and practice. Many a stern republican, after
+gorging himself with a full feast of admiration of the
+Grecian commonwealths and of our true Saxon con<!-- Page 467 --><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443" title="443" class="pagenum"></a>stitution,
+and discharging all the splendid bile of his
+virtuous indignation on King John and King James,
+sits down perfectly satisfied to the coarsest work and
+homeliest job of the day he lives in. I believe there
+was no professed admirer of Henry the Eighth among
+the instruments of the last King James; nor in the
+court of Henry the Eighth was there, I dare say, to
+be found a single advocate for the favorites of Richard
+the Second.</p>
+
+<p>No complaisance to our court, or to our age, can
+make me believe nature to be so changed, but that
+public liberty will be among us as among our ancestors,
+obnoxious to some person or other; and that
+opportunities will be furnished for attempting, at
+least, some alteration to the prejudice of our constitution.
+These attempts will naturally vary in their
+mode according to times and circumstances. For
+ambition, though it has ever the same general views,
+has not at all times the same means, nor the same
+particular objects. A great deal of the furniture of
+ancient tyranny is worn to rags; the rest is entirely
+out of fashion. Besides, there are few statesmen so
+very clumsy and awkward in their business, as to fall
+into the identical snare which has proved fatal to their
+predecessors. When an arbitrary imposition is attempted
+upon the subject, undoubtedly it will not bear
+on its forehead the name of <i>Ship-money</i>. There is no
+danger that an extension of the <i>Forest laws</i> should be
+the chosen mode of oppression in this age. And when
+we hear any instance of ministerial rapacity, to the prejudice
+of the rights of private life, it will certainly not
+be the exaction of two hundred pullets, from a woman
+of fashion, for leave to lie with her own husband.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor"
+title="&quot;Uxor Hugonis de Nevill dat Domino Regi ducentas Gallinas,
+eo quod possit jacere una nocte cum Domino suo Hugone de Nevill.&quot;&mdash;Maddox,
+Hist. Exch. c. xiii. p. 326.">[103]</a></p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 468 --><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444" title="444" class="pagenum"></a>Every age has its own manners, and its politics dependent
+upon them; and the same attempts will not
+be made against a constitution fully formed and matured,
+that were used to destroy it in the cradle, or
+to resist its growth during its infancy.</p>
+
+<p>Against the being of Parliament, I am satisfied, no
+designs have ever been entertained since the revolution.
+Every one must perceive, that it is strongly
+the interest of the court, to have some second cause
+interposed between the ministers and the people.
+The gentlemen of the House of Commons have an interest
+equally strong in sustaining the part of that
+intermediate cause. However they may hire out the
+<i>usufruct</i> of their voices, they never will part with the
+<i>fee and inheritance</i>. Accordingly those who have been
+of the most known devotion to the will and pleasure
+of a court have, at the same time, been most forward
+in asserting a high authority in the House of Commons.
+When they knew who were to use that authority,
+and how it was to be employed, they thought
+it never could be carried too far. It must be always
+the wish of an unconstitutional statesman, that a
+House of Commons, who are entirely dependent upon
+him, should have every right of the people entirely
+dependent upon their pleasure. It was soon discovered,
+that the forms of a free, and the ends of an
+arbitrary government, were things not altogether incompatible.</p>
+
+<p>The power of the crown, almost dead and rotten
+as Prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more
+strength, and far less odium, under the name of
+Influence. An influence, which operated without
+<!-- Page 469 --><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445" title="445" class="pagenum"></a>noise and without violence; an influence, which converted
+the very antagonist into the instrument of
+power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle
+of growth and renovation; and which the distresses
+and the prosperity of the country equally
+tended to augment, was an admirable substitute for
+a prerogative, that, being only the offspring of antiquated
+prejudices, had moulded in its original stamina
+irresistible principles of decay and dissolution.
+The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a
+temporary system; the interest of active men in the
+state is a foundation perpetual and infallible. However,
+some circumstances, arising, it must be confessed,
+in a great degree from accident, prevented
+the effects of this influence for a long time from
+breaking out in a manner capable of exciting any
+serious apprehensions. Although government was
+strong and flourished exceedingly, the <i>court</i> had
+drawn far less advantage than one would imagine
+from this great source of power.</p>
+
+<p>At the revolution, the crown, deprived, for the
+ends of the revolution itself, of many prerogatives,
+was found too weak to struggle against all the difficulties
+which pressed so new and unsettled a government.
+The court was obliged therefore to delegate
+a part of its powers to men of such interest as could
+support, and of such fidelity as would adhere to, its
+establishment. Such men were able to draw in a
+greater number to a concurrence in the common
+defence. This connection, necessary at first, continued
+long after convenient; and properly conducted
+might indeed, in all situations, be an useful instrument
+of government. At the same time, through
+the intervention of men of popular weight and char<!-- Page 470 --><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446" title="446" class="pagenum"></a>acter,
+the people possessed a security for their just
+proportion of importance in the state. But as the
+title to the crown grew stronger by long possession,
+and by the constant increase of its influence, these
+helps have of late seemed to certain persons no better
+than incumbrances. The powerful managers for
+government were not sufficiently submissive to the
+pleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal
+favor, sometimes from a confidence in their own
+strength, natural and acquired; sometimes from a
+fear of offending their friends, and weakening that
+lead in the country which gave them a consideration
+independent of the court. Men acted as if the court
+could receive, as well as confer, an obligation. The
+influence of government, thus divided in appearance
+between the court and the leaders of parties, became
+in many cases an accession rather to the popular than
+to the royal scale; and some part of that influence,
+which would otherwise have been possessed as in a sort
+of mortmain and unalienable domain, returned again
+to the great ocean from whence it arose, and circulated
+among the people. This method, therefore, of governing
+by men of great natural interest or great acquired
+consideration was viewed in a very invidious
+light by the true lovers of absolute monarchy. It is
+the nature of despotism to abhor power held by any
+means but its own momentary pleasure; and to annihilate
+all intermediate situations between boundless
+strength on its own part, and total debility on the part
+of the people.</p>
+
+<p>To get rid of all this intermediate and independent
+importance, and <i>to secure to the court the unlimited
+and uncontrolled use of its own vast influence, under
+the sole direction of its own private favor</i>, has for some
+<!-- Page 471 --><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447" title="447" class="pagenum"></a>years past been the great object of policy. If this
+were compassed, the influence of the crown must of
+course produce all the effects which the most sanguine
+partisans of the court could possibly desire.
+Government might then be carried on without any
+concurrence on the part of the people; without any
+attention to the dignity of the greater, or to the affections
+of the lower sorts. A new project was therefore
+devised by a certain set of intriguing men, totally
+different from the system of administration which had
+prevailed since the accession of the House of Brunswick.
+This project, I have heard, was first conceived
+by some persons in the court of Frederick Prince of
+Wales.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest attempt in the execution of this design
+was to set up for minister, a person, in rank indeed
+respectable, and very ample in fortune; but who, to
+the moment of this vast and sudden elevation, was
+little known or considered in the kingdom. To him
+the whole nation was to yield an immediate and implicit
+submission. But whether it was from want of
+firmness to bear up against the first opposition; or
+that things were not yet fully ripened, or that this
+method was not found the most eligible; that idea
+was soon abandoned. The instrumental part of the
+project was a little altered, to accommodate it to the
+time and to bring things more gradually and more
+surely to the one great end proposed.</p>
+
+<p>The first part of the reformed plan was to draw <i>a
+line which should separate the court from the ministry</i>.
+Hitherto these names had been looked upon as synonymous;
+but for the future, court and administration
+were to be considered as things totally distinct.
+By this operation, two systems of administration were
+<!-- Page 472 --><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448" title="448" class="pagenum"></a>to be formed; one which should be in the real secret
+and confidence; the other merely ostensible to perform
+the official and executory duties of government.
+The latter were alone to be responsible; whilst the
+real advisers, who enjoyed all the power, were effectually
+removed from all the danger.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, <i>A party under these leaders was to be
+formed in favor of the court against the ministry</i>: this
+party was to have a large share in the emoluments of
+government, and to hold it totally separate from, and
+independent of, ostensible administration.</p>
+
+<p>The third point, and that on which the success of
+the whole scheme ultimately depended, was <i>to bring
+Parliament to an acquiescence in this project</i>. Parliament
+was therefore to be taught by degrees a total
+indifference to the persons, rank, influence, abilities,
+connections, and character of the ministers of the
+crown. By means of a discipline, on which I shall
+say more hereafter, that body was to be habituated
+to the most opposite interests, and the most discordant
+politics. All connections and dependencies
+among subjects were to be entirely dissolved. As,
+hitherto, business had gone through the hands of
+leaders of Whigs or Tories, men of talents to conciliate
+the people, and to engage their confidence; now
+the method was to be altered: and the lead was to
+be given to men of no sort of consideration or credit
+in the country. This want of natural importance was
+to be their very title to delegated power. Members
+of Parliament were to be hardened into an insensibility
+to pride as well as to duty. Those high and
+haughty sentiments, which are the great support of
+independence, were to be let down gradually. Points
+of honor and precedence were no more to be regarded
+<!-- Page 473 --><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449" title="449" class="pagenum"></a>in Parliamentary decorum than in a Turkish army.
+It was to be avowed, as a constitutional maxim, that
+the king might appoint one of his footmen, or one
+of your footmen for minister; and that he ought to
+be, and that he would be, as well followed as the
+first name for rank or wisdom in the nation. Thus
+Parliament was to look on as if perfectly unconcerned,
+while a cabal of the closet and back-stairs was substituted
+in the place of a national administration.</p>
+
+<p>With such a degree of acquiescence, any measure
+of any court might well be deemed thoroughly secure.
+The capital objects, and by much the most flattering
+characteristics of arbitrary power, would be obtained.
+Everything would be drawn from its holdings in the
+country to the personal favor and inclination of the
+prince. This favor would be the sole introduction to
+power, and the only tenure by which it was to be
+held; so that no person looking towards another, and
+all looking towards the court, it was impossible but
+that the motive which solely influenced every man's
+hopes must come in time to govern every man's conduct;
+till at last the servility became universal, in
+spite of the dead letter of any laws or institutions
+whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>How it should happen that any man could be
+tempted to venture upon such a project of government,
+may at first view appear surprising. But the
+fact is that opportunities very inviting to such an attempt
+have offered; and the scheme itself was not
+destitute of some arguments, not wholly unplausible,
+to recommend it. These opportunities and these arguments,
+the use that has been made of both, the
+plan for carrying this new scheme of government
+into execution, and the effects which it has pro<!-- Page 474 --><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450" title="450" class="pagenum"></a>duced,
+are, in my opinion, worthy of our serious consideration.</p>
+
+<p>His Majesty came to the throne of these kingdoms
+with more advantages than any of his predecessors
+since the revolution. Fourth in descent, and third in
+succession of his royal family, even the zealots of hereditary
+right, in him, saw something to flatter their
+favorite prejudices; and to justify a transfer of their
+attachments, without a change in their principles.
+The person and cause of the Pretender were become
+contemptible; his title disowned throughout Europe;
+his party disbanded in England. His Majesty came,
+indeed, to the inheritance of a mighty war; but, victorious
+in every part of the globe, peace was always in
+his power, not to negotiate, but to dictate. No foreign
+habitudes or attachments withdrew him from
+the cultivation of his power at home. His revenue
+for the civil establishment, fixed (as it was then
+thought) at a large, but definite sum, was ample
+without being invidious. His influence, by additions
+from conquest, by an augmentation of debt, by an
+increase of military and naval establishment, much
+strengthened and extended. And coming to the
+throne in the prime and full vigor of youth, as from
+affection there was a strong dislike, so from dread
+there seemed to be a general averseness, from giving
+anything like offence to a monarch, against whose
+resentment opposition could not look for a refuge in
+any sort of reversionary hope.</p>
+
+<p>These singular advantages inspired his Majesty only
+with a more ardent desire to preserve unimpaired the
+spirit of that national freedom, to which he owed a situation
+so full of glory. But to others it suggested sentiments
+of a very different nature. They thought they
+<!-- Page 475 --><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451" title="451" class="pagenum"></a>now beheld an opportunity (by a certain sort of statesmen
+never long undiscovered or unemployed) of drawing
+to themselves by the aggrandizement of a court
+faction, a degree of power which they could never hope
+to derive from natural influence or from honorable
+service; and which it was impossible they could hold
+with the least security, whilst the system of administration
+rested upon its former bottom. In order to
+facilitate the execution of their design, it was necessary
+to make many alterations in political arrangement,
+and a signal change in the opinions, habits,
+and connections of the greatest part of those who at
+that time acted in public.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, they proceeded gradually, but not
+slowly, to destroy everything of strength which did
+not derive its principal nourishment from the immediate
+pleasure of the court. The greatest weight of
+popular opinion and party connection were then with
+the Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pitt. Neither of these
+held their importance by the <i>new tenure</i> of the court;
+they were not therefore thought to be so proper as
+others for the services which were required by that
+tenure. It happened very favorably for the new system,
+that under a forced coalition there rankled an
+incurable alienation and disgust between the parties
+which composed the administration. Mr. Pitt was
+first attacked. Not satisfied with removing him from
+power, they endeavored by various artifices to ruin
+his character. The other party seemed rather pleased
+to get rid of so oppressive a support; not perceiving,
+that their own fall was prepared by his, and involved
+in it. Many other reasons prevented them from daring
+to look their true situation in the face. To the
+great Whig families it was extremely disagreeable,
+<!-- Page 476 --><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452" title="452" class="pagenum"></a>and seemed almost unnatural, to oppose the administration
+of a prince of the House of Brunswick. Day
+after day they hesitated, and doubted, and lingered,
+expecting that other counsels would take place; and
+were slow to be persuaded, that all which had been
+done by the cabal was the effect not of humor, but
+of system. It was more strongly and evidently the
+interest of the new court faction, to get rid of the
+great Whig connections, than to destroy Mr. Pitt.
+The power of that gentleman was vast indeed and
+merited; but it was in a great degree personal, and
+therefore transient. Theirs was rooted in the country.
+For, with a good deal less of popularity, they
+possessed a far more natural and fixed influence.
+Long possession of government; vast property; obligations
+of favors given and received; connection of
+office; ties of blood, of alliance, of friendship (things
+at that time supposed of some force); the name of
+Whig, dear to the majority of the people; the zeal
+early begun and steadily continued to the royal family:
+all these together formed a body of power in the
+nation, which was criminal and devoted. The great
+ruling principle of the cabal, and that which animated
+and harmonized all their proceedings, how various
+soever they may have been, was to signify to the
+world that the court would proceed upon its own
+proper forces only; and that the pretence of bringing
+any other into its service was an affront to it, and not
+a support. Therefore when the chiefs were removed,
+in order to go to the root, the whole party was put
+under a proscription, so general and severe, as to
+take their hard-earned bread from the lowest officers,
+in a manner which had never been known before,
+even in general revolutions. But it was thought
+<!-- Page 477 --><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453" title="453" class="pagenum"></a>necessary effectually to destroy all dependencies but
+one; and to show an example of the firmness and
+rigor with which the new system was to be supported.</p>
+
+<p>Thus for the time were pulled down, in the persons
+of the Whig leaders and of Mr. Pitt (in spite of the
+services of the one at the accession of the royal family,
+and the recent services of the other in the war),
+the <i>two only securities for the importance of the people;
+power arising from popularity; and power arising from
+connection</i>. Here and there indeed a few individuals
+were left standing, who gave security for their total
+estrangement from the odious principles of party connection
+and personal attachment; and it must be
+confessed that most of them have religiously kept
+their faith. Such a change could not however be
+made without a mighty shock to government.</p>
+
+<p>To reconcile the minds of the people to all these
+movements, principles correspondent to them had
+been preached up with great zeal. Every one must
+remember that the cabal set out with the most astonishing
+prudery, both moral and political. Those,
+who in a few months after soused over head and ears
+into the deepest and dirtiest pits of corruption, cried
+out violently against the indirect practices in the electing
+and managing of Parliaments, which had formerly
+prevailed. This marvellous abhorrence which
+the court had suddenly taken to all influence, was
+not only circulated in conversation through the kingdom,
+but pompously announced to the public, with
+many other extraordinary things, in a pamphlet<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor"
+title="Sentiments of an Honest Man.">[104]</a>
+which had all the appearance of a manifesto preparatory
+to some considerable enterprise. Throughout
+it was a satire, though in terms managed and
+<!-- Page 478 --><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454" title="454" class="pagenum"></a>decent enough, on the politics of the former reign.
+It was indeed written with no small art and address.</p>
+
+<p>In this piece appeared the first dawning of the new
+system: there first appeared the idea (then only in
+speculation) of <i>separating the court from the administration</i>;
+of carrying everything from national connection
+to personal regards; and of forming a regular
+party for that purpose, under the name of <i>king's men</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To recommend this system to the people, a perspective
+view of the court, gorgeously painted, and
+finely illuminated from within, was exhibited to the
+gaping multitude. Party was to be totally done
+away, with all its evil works. Corruption was to be
+cast down from court, as <i>At&egrave;</i> was from heaven.
+Power was thenceforward to be the chosen residence
+of public spirit; and no one was to be supposed under
+any sinister influence, except those who had the
+misfortune to be in disgrace at court, which was to
+stand in lieu of all vices and all corruptions. A
+scheme of perfection to be realized in a monarchy far
+beyond the visionary republic of Plato. The whole
+scenery was exactly disposed to captivate those good
+souls, whose credulous morality is so invaluable a
+treasure to crafty politicians. Indeed there was
+wherewithal to charm everybody, except those few
+who are not much pleased with professions of supernatural
+virtue, who know of what stuff such professions
+are made, for what purposes they are designed,
+and in what they are sure constantly to end. Many
+innocent gentlemen, who had been talking prose all
+their lives without knowing anything of the matter,
+began at last to open their eyes upon their own merits,
+and to attribute their not having been lords of
+the treasury and lords of trade many years before,
+<!-- Page 479 --><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455" title="455" class="pagenum"></a>merely to the prevalence of party, and to the ministerial
+power, which had frustrated the good intentions
+of the court in favor of their abilities. Now
+was the time to unlock the sealed fountain of royal
+bounty, which had been infamously monopolized and
+huckstered, and to let it flow at large upon the whole
+people. The time was come, to restore royalty to its
+original splendor. <i>Mettre le Roy hors de page</i>, became
+a sort of watchword. And it was constantly in
+the mouths of all the runners of the court, that nothing
+could preserve the balance of the constitution
+from being overturned by the rabble, or by a faction
+of the nobility, but to free the sovereign effectually
+from that ministerial tyranny under which the royal
+dignity had been oppressed in the person of his Majesty's
+grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>These were some of the many artifices used to reconcile
+the people to the great change which was made
+in the persons who composed the ministry, and the
+still greater which was made and avowed in its constitution.
+As to individuals, other methods were
+employed with them; in order so thoroughly to disunite
+every party, and even every family, that <i>no concert,
+order, or effect, might appear in any future opposition</i>.
+And in this manner an administration without
+connection with the people, or with one another, was
+first put in possession of government. What good
+consequences followed from it, we have all seen;
+whether with regard to virtue, public or private; to
+the ease and happiness of the sovereign; or to the
+real strength of government. But as so much stress
+was then laid on the necessity of this new project, it
+will not be amiss to take a view of the effects of this
+royal servitude and vile durance, which was so de<!-- Page 480 --><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456" title="456" class="pagenum"></a>plored
+in the reign of the late monarch, and was so
+carefully to be avoided in the reign of his successor.
+The effects were these.</p>
+
+<p>In times full of doubt and danger to his person and
+family, George II. maintained the dignity of his
+crown connected with the liberty of his people, not
+only unimpaired, but improved, for the space of thirty-three
+years. He overcame a dangerous rebellion,
+abetted by foreign force, and raging in the heart of
+his kingdoms; and thereby destroyed the seeds of all
+future rebellion that could arise upon the same principle.
+He carried the glory, the power, the commerce
+of England, to a height unknown even to this
+renowned nation in the times of its greatest prosperity:
+and he left his succession resting on the true and
+only true foundations of all national and all regal
+greatness; affection at home, reputation abroad,
+trust in allies, terror in rival nations. The most
+ardent lover of his country cannot wish for Great
+Britain a happier fate than to continue as she was
+then left. A people, emulous as we are in affection
+to our present sovereign, know not how to form a
+prayer to heaven for a greater blessing upon his virtues,
+or a higher state of felicity and glory, than that
+he should live, and should reign, and when Providence
+ordains it, should die, exactly like his illustrious
+predecessor.</p>
+
+<p>A great prince may be obliged (though such a
+thing cannot happen very often) to sacrifice his private
+inclination to his public interest. A wise prince
+will not think that such a restraint implies a condition
+of servility; and truly, if such was the condition
+of the last reign, and the effects were also such as we
+have described, we ought, no less for the sake of the
+<!-- Page 481 --><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457" title="457" class="pagenum"></a>sovereign whom we love, than for our own, to hear
+arguments convincing indeed, before we depart from
+the maxims of that reign, or fly in the face of this
+great body of strong and recent experience.</p>
+
+<p>One of the principal topics which was then, and
+has been since, much employed by that political<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor"
+title="See the political writings of the late Dr. Brown, and many
+others.">[105]</a>
+school, is an affected terror of the growth of an aristocratic
+power, prejudicial to the rights of the crown,
+and the balance of the constitution. Any new powers
+exercised in the House of Lords, or in the House
+of Commons, or by the crown, ought certainly to excite
+the vigilant and anxious jealousy of a free people.
+Even a new and unprecedented course of action in
+the whole legislature, without great and evident
+reason, may be a subject of just uneasiness. I will
+not affirm, that there may not have lately appeared
+in the House of Lords, a disposition to some attempts
+derogatory to the legal rights of the subject. If any
+such have really appeared, they have arisen, not from
+a power properly aristocratic, but from the same influence
+which is charged with having excited attempts
+of a similar nature in the House of Commons;
+which House, if it should have been betrayed into an
+unfortunate quarrel with its constituents, and involved
+in a charge of the very same nature, could
+have neither power nor inclination to repel such attempts
+in others. Those attempts in the House of
+Lords can no more be called aristocratic proceedings,
+than the proceedings with regard to the county of
+Middlesex in the House of Commons can with any
+sense be called democratical.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, that the peers have a great influence in
+<!-- Page 482 --><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458" title="458" class="pagenum"></a>the kingdom, and in every part of the public concerns.
+While they are men of property, it is impossible to
+prevent it, except by such means as must prevent
+all property from its natural operation: an event not
+easily to be compassed, while property is power; nor
+by any means to be wished, while the least notion exists
+of the method by which the spirit of liberty acts,
+and of the means by which it is preserved. If any
+particular peers, by their uniform, upright, constitutional
+conduct, by their public and their private virtues,
+have acquired an influence in the country; the
+people, on whose favor that influence depends, and
+from whom it arose, will never be duped into an opinion,
+that such greatness in a peer is the despotism of
+an aristocracy, when they know and feel it to be the
+effect and pledge of their own importance.</p>
+
+<p>I am no friend to aristocracy, in the sense at least
+in which that word is usually understood. If it were
+not a bad habit to moot cases on the supposed ruin of
+the constitution, I should be free to declare, that if
+it must perish, I would rather by far see it resolved
+into any other form, than lost in that austere and insolent
+domination. But, whatever my dislikes may
+be, my fears are not upon that quarter. The question,
+on the influence of a court, and of a peerage, is
+not, which of the two dangers is the more eligible,
+but which is the more imminent. He is but a poor
+observer, who has not seen, that the generality of
+peers, far from supporting themselves in a state of independent
+greatness, are but too apt to fall into an
+oblivion of their proper dignity, and to run headlong
+into an abject servitude. Would to God it were true,
+that the fault of our peers were too much spirit. It
+is worthy of some observation that these gentlemen,
+<!-- Page 483 --><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459" title="459" class="pagenum"></a>so jealous of aristocracy, make no complaints of the
+power of those peers (neither few nor inconsiderable)
+who are always in the train of a court, and whose
+whole weight must be considered as a portion of the
+settled influence of the crown. This is all safe and
+right; but if some peers (I am very sorry they are
+not as many as they ought to be) set themselves, in
+the great concern of peers and commons, against a
+back-stairs influence and clandestine government, then
+the alarm begins; then the constitution is in danger
+of being forced into an aristocracy.</p>
+
+<p>I rest a little the longer on this court topic, because
+it was much insisted upon at the time of the great
+change, and has been since frequently revived by
+many of the agents of that party; for, whilst they are
+terrifying the great and opulent with the horrors of
+mob-government, they are by other managers attempting
+(though hitherto with little success) to alarm the
+people with a phantom of tyranny in the nobles. All
+this is done upon their favorite principle of disunion,
+of sowing jealousies amongst the different orders of
+the state, and of disjointing the natural strength of
+the kingdom; that it may be rendered incapable of
+resisting the sinister designs of wicked men, who have
+engrossed the royal power.</p>
+
+<p>Thus much of the topics chosen by the courtiers to
+recommend their system; it will be necessary to open
+a little more at large the nature of that party which
+was formed for its support. Without this, the whole
+would have been no better than a visionary amusement,
+like the scheme of Harrington's political club,
+and not a business in which the nation had a real
+concern. As a powerful party, and a party constructed
+on a new principle, it is a very inviting object
+of curiosity.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 484 --><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460" title="460" class="pagenum"></a>It must be remembered, that since the revolution,
+until the period we are speaking of, the influence of
+the crown had been always employed in supporting
+the ministers of state, and in carrying on the public
+business according to their opinions. But the party
+now in question is formed upon a very different idea.
+It is to intercept the favor, protection, and confidence
+of the crown in the passage to its ministers; it is to
+come between them and their importance in Parliament;
+it is to separate them from all their natural
+and acquired dependencies; it is intended as the control,
+not the support, of administration. The machinery
+of this system is perplexed in its movements,
+and false in its principle. It is formed on a supposition
+that the king is something external to his government;
+and that he may be honored and aggrandized,
+even by its debility and disgrace. The plan
+proceeds expressly on the idea of enfeebling the regular
+executory power. It proceeds on the idea of
+weakening the state in order to strengthen the court.
+The scheme depending entirely on distrust, on disconnection,
+on mutability by principle, on systematic
+weakness in every particular member; it is impossible
+that the total result should be substantial strength
+of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>As a foundation of their scheme, the cabal have
+established a sort of <i>rota</i> in the court. All sorts of
+parties, by this means, have been brought into administration;
+from whence few have had the good fortune
+to escape without disgrace; none at all without
+considerable losses. In the beginning of each arrangement
+no professions of confidence and support
+are wanting, to induce the leading men to engage.
+But while the ministers of the day appear in all the
+<!-- Page 485 --><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461" title="461" class="pagenum"></a>pomp and pride of power, while they have all their
+canvas spread out to the wind, and every sail filled
+with the fair and prosperous gale of royal favor, in a
+short time they find, they know not how, a current,
+which sets directly against them: which prevents all
+progress; and even drives them backwards. They
+grow ashamed and mortified in a situation, which,
+by its vicinity to power, only serves to remind them
+the more strongly of their insignificance. They are
+obliged either to execute the orders of their inferiors,
+or to see themselves opposed by the natural instruments
+of their office. With the loss of their dignity
+they lose their temper. In their turn they grow
+troublesome to that cabal which, whether it supports
+or opposes, equally disgraces and equally betrays
+them. It is soon found necessary to get rid of the
+heads of administration; but it is of the heads only.
+As there always are many rotten members belonging
+to the best connections, it is not hard to persuade
+several to continue in office without their leaders.
+By this means the party goes out much thinner than
+it came in; and is only reduced in strength by its
+temporary possession of power. Besides, if by accident,
+or in course of changes, that power should be
+recovered, the junto have thrown up a retrenchment
+of these carcasses, which may serve to cover themselves
+in a day of danger. They conclude, not unwisely,
+that such rotten members will become the
+first objects of disgust and resentment to their ancient
+connections.</p>
+
+<p>They contrive to form in the outward administration
+two parties at the least; which, whilst they are
+tearing one another to pieces, are both competitors
+for the favor and protection of the cabal; and, by
+<!-- Page 486 --><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462" title="462" class="pagenum"></a>their emulation, contribute to throw everything more
+and more into the hands of the interior managers.</p>
+
+<p>A minister of state will sometimes keep himself
+totally estranged from all his colleagues; will differ
+from them in their councils, will privately traverse,
+and publicly oppose, their measures. He will, however,
+continue in his employment. Instead of suffering
+any mark of displeasure, he will be distinguished
+by an unbounded profusion of court rewards and caresses;
+because he does what is expected, and all
+that is expected, from men in office. He helps to
+keep some form of administration in being, and keeps
+it at the same time as weak and divided as possible.</p>
+
+<p>However, we must take care not to be mistaken,
+or to imagine that such persons have any weight in
+their opposition. When, by them, administration is
+convinced of its insignificancy, they are soon to be
+convinced of their own. They never are suffered to
+succeed in their opposition. They and the world are
+to be satisfied, that neither office, nor authority, nor
+property, nor ability, eloquence, counsel, skill, or
+union, are of the least importance; but that the mere
+influence of the court, naked of all support, and destitute
+of all management, is abundantly sufficient for
+all its own purposes.</p>
+
+<p>When any adverse connection is to be destroyed,
+the cabal seldom appear in the work themselves.
+They find out some person of whom the party entertains
+a high opinion. Such a person they endeavor
+to delude with various pretences. They teach him
+first to distrust, and then to quarrel with his friends;
+among whom, by the same arts, they excite a similar
+diffidence of him; so that in this mutual fear and distrust,
+he may suffer himself to be employed as the
+<!-- Page 487 --><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463" title="463" class="pagenum"></a>instrument in the change which is brought about.
+Afterwards they are sure to destroy him in his turn,
+by setting up in his place some person in whom he
+had himself reposed the greatest confidence, and who
+serves to carry off a considerable part of his adherents.</p>
+
+<p>When such a person has broke in this manner with
+his connections, he is soon compelled to commit some
+flagrant act of iniquitous, personal hostility against
+some of them (such as an attempt to strip a particular
+friend of his family estate), by which the cabal
+hope to render the parties utterly irreconcilable. In
+truth, they have so contrived matters, that people
+have a greater hatred to the subordinate instruments
+than to the principal movers.</p>
+
+<p>As in destroying their enemies they make use of
+instruments not immediately belonging to their corps,
+so in advancing their own friends they pursue exactly
+the same method. To promote any of them to considerable
+rank or emolument, they commonly take
+care that the recommendation shall pass through the
+hands of the ostensible ministry: such a recommendation
+might however appear to the world, as some
+proof of the credit of ministers, and some means of
+increasing their strength. To prevent this, the persons
+so advanced are directed, in all companies, industriously
+to declare, that they are under no obligations
+whatsoever to administration; that they have received
+their office from another quarter; that they are totally
+free and independent.</p>
+
+<p>When the faction has any job of lucre to obtain,
+or of vengeance to perpetrate, their way is, to select,
+for the execution, those very persons to whose habits,
+friendships, principles, and declarations, such pro<!-- Page 488 --><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464" title="464" class="pagenum"></a>ceedings
+are publicly known to be the most adverse;
+at once to render the instruments the more odious,
+and therefore the more dependent, and to prevent the
+people from ever reposing a confidence in any appearance
+of private friendship or public principle.</p>
+
+<p>If the administration seem now and then, from remissness,
+or from fear of making themselves disagreeable,
+to suffer any popular excesses to go unpunished,
+the cabal immediately sets up some creature of theirs
+to raise a clamor against the ministers, as having
+shamefully betrayed the dignity of government. Then
+they compel the ministry to become active in conferring
+rewards and honors on the persons who have been
+the instruments of their disgrace; and, after having
+first vilified them with the higher orders for suffering
+the laws to sleep over the licentiousness of the
+populace, they drive them (in order to make amends
+for their former inactivity) to some act of atrocious
+violence, which renders them completely abhorred by
+the people. They, who remember the riots which attended
+the Middlesex election, the opening of the
+present Parliament, and the transactions relative to
+Saint George's Fields, will not be at a loss for an application
+of these remarks.</p>
+
+<p>That this body may be enabled to compass all the
+ends of its institution, its members are scarcely ever
+to aim at the high and responsible offices of the state.
+They are distributed with art and judgment through
+all the secondary, but efficient, departments of office,
+and through the households of all the branches of the
+royal family: so as on one hand to occupy all the
+avenues to the throne; and on the other to forward
+or frustrate the execution of any measure, according
+to their own interests. For with the credit and sup<!-- Page 489 --><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465" title="465" class="pagenum"></a>port
+which they are known to have, though for the
+greater part in places which are only a genteel excuse
+for salary, they possess all the influence of the highest
+posts; and they dictate publicly in almost everything,
+even with a parade of superiority. Whenever
+they dissent (as it often happens) from their nominal
+leaders, the trained part of the senate, instinctively
+in the secret, is sure to follow them: provided the
+leaders, sensible of their situation, do not of themselves
+recede in time from their most declared opinions.
+This latter is generally the case. It will not
+be conceivable to any one who has not seen it, what
+pleasure is taken by the cabal in rendering these
+heads of office thoroughly contemptible and ridiculous.
+And when they are become so, they have then
+the best chance for being well supported.</p>
+
+<p>The members of the court faction are fully indemnified
+for not holding places on the slippery heights
+of the kingdom, not only by the lead in all affairs,
+but also by the perfect security in which they enjoy
+less conspicuous, but very advantageous situations.
+Their places are in express legal tenure, or, in effect,
+all of them for life. Whilst the first and most respectable
+persons in the kingdom are tossed about like
+tennis-balls, the sport of a blind and insolent caprice,
+no minister dares even to cast an oblique glance at
+the lowest of their body. If an attempt be made
+upon one of this corps, immediately he flies to sanctuary,
+and pretends to the most inviolable of all promises.
+No conveniency of public arrangement is available
+to remove any one of them from the specific
+situation he holds; and the slightest attempt upon
+one of them, by the most powerful minister, is a certain
+preliminary to his own destruction.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 490 --><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466" title="466" class="pagenum"></a>Conscious of their independence, they bear themselves
+with a lofty air to the exterior ministers. Like
+janissaries, they derive a kind of freedom from the
+very condition of their servitude. They may act just
+as they please; provided they are true to the great
+ruling principle of their institution. It is, therefore,
+not at all wonderful, that people should be so desirous
+of adding themselves to that body, in which they
+may possess and reconcile satisfactions the most alluring,
+and seemingly the most contradictory; enjoying
+at once all the spirited pleasure of independence, and
+all the gross lucre and fat emoluments of servitude.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a sketch, though a slight one, of the constitution,
+laws, and policy of this new court corporation.
+The name by which they choose to distinguish themselves,
+is that of <i>king's men</i> or the <i>king's friends</i>, by
+an invidious exclusion of the rest of his Majesty's
+most loyal and affectionate subjects. The whole system,
+comprehending the exterior and interior administrations,
+is commonly called, in the technical language
+of the court, <i>double cabinet</i>; in French or
+English, as you choose to pronounce it.</p>
+
+<p>Whether all this be a vision of a distracted brain,
+or the invention of a malicious heart, or a real faction
+in the country, must be judged by the appearances
+which things have worn for eight years past. Thus
+far I am certain, that there is not a single public
+man, in or out of office, who has not, at some time or
+other, borne testimony to the truth of what I have
+now related. In particular, no persons have been
+more strong in their assertions, and louder and more
+indecent in their complaints, than those who compose
+all the exterior part of the present administration;
+in whose time that faction has arrived at such an
+<!-- Page 491 --><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467" title="467" class="pagenum"></a>height of power, and of boldness in the use of it, as
+may, in the end, perhaps bring about its total destruction.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, that about four years ago, during the
+administration of the Marquis of Rockingham, an attempt
+was made to carry on government without
+their concurrence. However, this was only a transient
+cloud; they were hid but for a moment; and
+their constellation blazed out with greater brightness,
+and a far more vigorous influence, some time after it
+was blown over. An attempt was at that time made
+(but without any idea of proscription) to break their
+corps, to discountenance their doctrines, to revive
+connections of a different kind, to restore the principles
+and policy of the Whigs, to reanimate the cause
+of liberty by ministerial countenance; and then for
+the first time were men seen attached in office to
+every principle they had maintained in opposition.
+No one will doubt, that such men were abhorred and
+violently opposed by the court faction, and that such
+a system could have but a short duration.</p>
+
+<p>It may appear somewhat affected, that in so much
+discourse upon this extraordinary party, I should say
+so little of the Earl of Bute, who is the supposed head
+of it. But this was neither owing to affectation nor
+inadvertence. I have carefully avoided the introduction
+of personal reflections of any kind. Much the
+greater part of the topics which have been used to
+blacken this nobleman are either unjust or frivolous.
+At best, they have a tendency to give the resentment
+of this bitter calamity a wrong direction, and to turn
+a public grievance into a mean, personal, or a dangerous
+national quarrel. Where there is a regular
+scheme of operations carried on, it is the system, and
+<!-- Page 492 --><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468" title="468" class="pagenum"></a>not any individual person who acts in it, that is truly
+dangerous. This system has not arisen solely from
+the ambition of Lord Bute, but from the circumstances
+which favored it, and from an indifference to the
+constitution which had been for some time growing
+among our gentry. We should have been tried with
+it, if the Earl of Bute had never existed; and it will
+want neither a contriving head nor active members,
+when the Earl of Bute exists no longer. It is not,
+therefore, to rail at Lord Bute, but firmly to embody
+against this court party and its practices, which can
+afford us any prospect of relief in our present condition.</p>
+
+<p>Another motive induces me to put the personal
+consideration of Lord Bute wholly out of the question.
+He communicates very little in a direct manner
+with the greater part of our men of business.
+This has never been his custom. It is enough for
+him that he surrounds them with his creatures. Several
+imagine, therefore, that they have a very good
+excuse for doing all the work of this faction, when
+they have no personal connection with Lord Bute.
+But whoever becomes a party to an administration,
+composed of insulated individuals, without faith
+plighted, tie, or common principle; an administration
+constitutionally impotent, because supported by
+no party in the nation; he who contributes to destroy
+the connections of men and their trust in one
+another, or in any sort to throw the dependence of
+public counsels upon private will and favor, possibly
+may have nothing to do with the Earl of Bute. It
+matters little whether he be the friend or the enemy
+of that particular person. But let him be who or
+what he will, he abets a faction that is driving hard
+<!-- Page 493 --><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469" title="469" class="pagenum"></a>to the ruin of his country. He is sapping the foundation
+of its liberty, disturbing the sources of its domestic
+tranquillity, weakening its government over its
+dependencies, degrading it from all its importance in
+the system of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>It is this unnatural infusion of a <i>system of favoritism</i>
+into a government which in a great part of its
+constitution is popular, that has raised the present
+ferment in the nation. The people, without entering
+deeply into its principles, could plainly perceive its
+effects, in much violence, in a great spirit of innovation,
+and a general disorder in all the functions of
+government. I keep my eye solely on this system;
+if I speak of those measures which have arisen from
+it, it will be so far only as they illustrate the general
+scheme. This is the fountain of all those bitter waters
+of which, through an hundred different conduits,
+we have drunk until we are ready to burst. The
+discretionary power of the crown in the formation of
+ministry, abused by bad or weak men, has given rise
+to a system, which, without directly violating the letter
+of any law, operates against the spirit of the
+whole constitution.</p>
+
+<p>A plan of favoritism for our executory government is
+essentially at variance with the plan of our legislature.
+One great end undoubtedly of a mixed government
+like ours, composed of monarchy, and of controls,
+on the part of the higher people and the lower, is
+that the prince shall not be able to violate the laws.
+This is useful indeed and fundamental. But this,
+even at first view, is no more than a negative advantage;
+an armor merely defensive. It is therefore
+next in order, and equal in importance, <i>that the discretionary
+powers which are necessarily vested in the
+<!-- Page 494 --><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470" title="470" class="pagenum"></a>monarch, whether for the execution of the laws, or for
+the nomination to magistracy and office, or for conducting
+the affairs of peace and war, or for ordering the
+revenue, should all be exercised upon public principles
+and national grounds, and, not on the likings or prejudices,
+the intrigues or policies, of a court</i>. This, I said,
+is equal in importance to the securing a government
+according to law. The laws reach but a very little
+way. Constitute government how you please, infinitely
+the greater part of it must depend upon the
+exercise of the powers which are left at large to
+the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state.
+Even all the use and potency of the laws depends
+upon them. Without them, your commonwealth is
+no better than a scheme upon paper; and not a living,
+active, effective constitution. It is possible that
+through negligence, or ignorance, or design artfully
+conducted, ministers may suffer one part of government
+to languish, another to be perverted from its
+purposes, and every valuable interest of the country
+to fall into ruin and decay, without possibility of fixing
+any single act on which a criminal prosecution
+can be justly grounded. The due arrangement of
+men in the active part of the state, far from being
+foreign to the purposes of a wise government, ought
+to be among its very first and dearest objects. When,
+therefore, the abettors of the new system tell us, that
+between them and their opposers there is nothing but
+a struggle for power, and that therefore we are no
+ways concerned in it; we must tell those who have
+the impudence to insult us in this manner, that, of
+all things, we ought to be the most concerned who,
+and what sort of men they are that hold the trust of
+everything that is dear to us. Nothing can render
+<!-- Page 495 --><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471" title="471" class="pagenum"></a>this a point of indifference to the nation, but what
+must either render us totally desperate, or soothe us
+into the security of idiots. We must soften into a
+credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all
+men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity
+truly diabolical to believe all the world to be equally
+wicked and corrupt. Men are in public life as in private,
+some good, some evil. The elevation of the
+one, and the depression of the other, are the first objects
+of all true policy. But that form of government,
+which, neither in its direct institutions, nor in
+their immediate tendency, has contrived to throw its
+affairs into the most trustworthy hands, but has left
+its whole executory system to be disposed of agreeably
+to the uncontrolled pleasure of any one man,
+however excellent or virtuous, is a plan of polity defective
+not only in that member, but consequentially
+erroneous in every part of it.</p>
+
+<p>In arbitrary governments, the constitution of the
+ministry follows the constitution of the legislature.
+Both the law and the magistrate are the creatures of
+will. It must be so. Nothing, indeed, will appear
+more certain, on any tolerable consideration of this
+matter, than that <i>every sort of government ought to have
+its administration correspondent to its legislature</i>. If it
+should be otherwise, things must fall into an hideous
+disorder. The people of a free commonwealth, who
+have taken such care that their laws should be the result
+of general consent, cannot be so senseless as to
+suffer their executory system to be composed of persons
+on whom they have no dependence, and whom no
+proofs of the public love and confidence have recommended
+to those powers, upon the use of which the
+very being of the state depends.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 496 --><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472" title="472" class="pagenum"></a>The popular election of magistrates, and popular
+disposition of rewards and honors, is one of the first
+advantages of a free state. Without it, or something
+equivalent to it, perhaps the people cannot long enjoy
+the substance of freedom; certainly none of the vivifying
+energy of good government. The frame of our
+commonwealth did not admit of such an actual election:
+but it provided as well, and (while the spirit of
+the constitution is preserved) better for all the effects
+of it than by the method of suffrage in any democratic
+state whatsoever. It had always, until of late, been
+held the first duty of Parliament <i>to refuse to support
+government, until power was in the hands of persons
+who were acceptable to the people, or while factions predominated
+in the court in which the nation had no confidence</i>.
+Thus all the good effects of popular election
+were supposed to be secured to us, without the mischiefs
+attending on perpetual intrigue, and a distinct
+canvass for every particular office throughout the body
+of the people. This was the most noble and refined
+part of our constitution. The people, by their representatives
+and grandees, were intrusted with a deliberative
+power in making laws; the king with the
+control of his negative. The king was intrusted with
+the deliberative choice and the election to office; the
+people had the negative in a Parliamentary refusal to
+support. Formerly this power of control was what
+kept ministers in awe of Parliaments, and Parliaments
+in reverence with the people. If the use of this power
+of control on the system and persons of administration
+is gone, everything is lost, Parliament and
+all. We may assure ourselves, that if Parliament
+will tamely see evil men take possession of all the
+strongholds of their country, and allow them time
+<!-- Page 497 --><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473" title="473" class="pagenum"></a>and means to fortify themselves, under a pretence of
+giving them a fair trial, and upon a hope of discovering,
+whether they will not be reformed by power, and
+whether their measures will not be better than their
+morals; such a Parliament will give countenance to
+their measures also, whatever that Parliament may
+pretend, and whatever those measures may be.</p>
+
+<p>Every good political institution must have a preventive
+operation as well as a remedial. It ought
+to have a natural tendency to exclude bad men from
+government, and not to trust for the safety of the
+state to subsequent punishment alone; punishment,
+which has ever been tardy and uncertain; and which,
+when power is suffered in bad hands, may chance to
+fall rather on the injured than the criminal.</p>
+
+<p>Before men are put forward into the great trusts
+of the state, they ought by their conduct to have obtained
+such a degree of estimation in their country,
+as may be some sort of pledge and security to the
+public, that they will not abuse those trusts. It is no
+mean security for a proper use of power, that a man
+has shown by the general tenor of his actions, that
+the affection, the good opinion, the confidence of his
+fellow-citizens have been among the principal objects
+of his life; and that he has owed none of the gradations
+of his power or fortune to a settled contempt,
+or occasional forfeiture of their esteem.</p>
+
+<p>That man who before he comes into power has no
+friends, or who coming into power is obliged to desert
+his friends, or who losing it has no friends to
+sympathize with him; he who has no sway among
+any part of the landed or commercial interest, but
+whose whole importance has begun with his office,
+and is sure to end with it, is a person who ought
+<!-- Page 498 --><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474" title="474" class="pagenum"></a>never to be suffered by a controlling Parliament to
+continue in any of those situations which confer the
+lead and direction of all our public affairs; because
+such a man <i>has no connection with the interest of the
+people</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Those knots or cabals of men who have got together,
+avowedly without any public principle, in order
+to sell their conjunct iniquity at the higher rate,
+and are therefore universally odious, ought never to
+be suffered to domineer in the state; because they
+have <i>no connection with the sentiments and opinions of
+the people</i>.</p>
+
+<p>These are considerations which in my opinion enforce
+the necessity of having some better reason, in a
+free country, and a free Parliament, for supporting
+the ministers of the crown, than that short one, <i>That
+the king has thought proper to appoint them</i>. There
+is something very courtly in this. But it is a principle
+pregnant with all sorts of mischief, in a constitution
+like ours, to turn the views of active men from
+the country to the court. Whatever be the road
+to power, that is the road which will be trod. If the
+opinion of the country be of no use as a means of
+power or consideration, the qualities which usually
+procure that opinion will be no longer cultivated.
+And whether it will be right, in a state so popular in
+its constitution as ours, to leave ambition without
+popular motives, and to trust all to the operation of
+pure virtue in the minds of kings, and ministers, and
+public men, must be submitted to the judgment and
+good sense of the people of England.</p>
+
+<p>Cunning men are here apt to break in, and, without
+directly controverting the principle, to raise objections
+from the difficulty under which the sovereign
+<!-- Page 499 --><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475" title="475" class="pagenum"></a>labors, to distinguish the genuine voice and sentiments
+of his people, from the clamor of a faction, by
+which it is so easily counterfeited. The nation, they
+say, is generally divided into parties, with views and
+passions utterly irreconcilable. If the king should
+put his affairs into the hands of any one of them, he
+is sure to disgust the rest; if he select particular
+men from among them all, it is a hazard that he disgusts
+them all. Those who are left out, however divided
+before, will soon run into a body of opposition;
+which, being a collection of many discontents into
+one focus, will without doubt be hot and violent
+enough. Faction will make its cries resound through
+the nation, as if the whole were in an uproar, when
+by far the majority, and much the better part, will
+seem for a while as it were annihilated by the quiet
+in which their virtue and moderation incline them to
+enjoy the blessings of government. Besides that the
+opinion of the mere vulgar is a miserable rule even
+with regard to themselves, on account of their violence
+and instability. So that if you were to gratify
+them in their humor to-day, that very gratification
+would be a ground of their dissatisfaction on the
+next. Now as all these rules of public opinion are
+to be collected with great difficulty, and to be applied
+with equal uncertainty as to the effect, what better
+can a king of England do, than to employ such men
+as he finds to have views and inclinations most conformable
+to his own; who are least infected with
+pride and self-will; and who are least moved by such
+popular humors as are perpetually traversing his designs,
+and disturbing his service; trusting that, when
+he means no ill to his people, he will be supported in
+his appointments, whether he chooses to keep or to
+<!-- Page 500 --><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476" title="476" class="pagenum"></a>change, as his private judgment or his pleasure leads
+him? He will find a sure resource in the real weight
+and influence of the crown, when it is not suffered to
+become an instrument in the hands of a faction.</p>
+
+<p>I will not pretend to say, that there is nothing at
+all in this mode of reasoning; because I will not assert
+that there is no difficulty in the art of government.
+Undoubtedly the very best administration
+must encounter a great deal of opposition; and the
+very worst will find more support than it deserves.
+Sufficient appearances will never be wanting to those
+who have a mind to deceive themselves. It is a fallacy
+in constant use with those who would level all
+things, and confound right with wrong, to insist upon
+the inconveniences which are attached to every choice,
+without taking into consideration the different weight
+and consequence of those inconveniences. The question
+is not concerning <i>absolute</i> discontent or <i>perfect</i>
+satisfaction in government; neither of which can be
+pure and unmixed at any time, or upon any system.
+The controversy is about that degree of good humor
+in the people, which may possibly be attained, and
+ought certainly to be looked for. While some politicians
+may be waiting to know whether the sense
+of every individual be against them, accurately distinguishing
+the vulgar from the better sort, drawing lines
+between the enterprises of a faction and the efforts
+of a people, they may chance to see the government,
+which they are so nicely weighing, and dividing, and
+distinguishing, tumble to the ground in the midst of
+their wise deliberation. Prudent men, when so great
+an object as the security of government, or even its
+peace, is at stake, will not run the risk of a decision
+which may be fatal to it. They who can read the
+<!-- Page 501 --><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477" title="477" class="pagenum"></a>political sky will see a hurricane in a cloud no bigger
+than a hand at the very edge of the horizon, and
+will run into the first harbor. No lines can be laid
+down for civil or political wisdom. They are a matter
+incapable of exact definition. But, though no
+man can draw a stroke between the confines of day
+and night, yet light and darkness are upon the whole
+tolerably distinguishable. Nor will it be impossible
+for a prince to find out such a mode of government,
+and such persons to administer it, as will give a great
+degree of content to his people; without any curious
+and anxious research for that abstract, universal, perfect
+harmony, which while he is seeking, he abandons
+those means of ordinary tranquillity which are in his
+power without any research at all.</p>
+
+<p>It is not more the duty than it is the interest of a
+prince, to aim at giving tranquillity to his government.
+But those who advise him may have an interest
+in disorder and confusion. If the opinion of the people
+is against them, they will naturally wish that it
+should have no prevalence. Here it is that the people
+must on their part show themselves sensible of
+their own value. Their whole importance, in the
+first instance, and afterwards their whole freedom, is
+at stake. Their freedom cannot long survive their
+importance. Here it is that the natural strength of
+the kingdom, the great peers, the leading landed gentlemen,
+the opulent merchants and manufacturers,
+the substantial yeomanry, must interpose, to rescue
+their prince, themselves, and their posterity.</p>
+
+<p>We are at present at issue upon this point. We
+are in the great crisis of this contention; and the
+part which men take, one way or other, will serve to
+discriminate their characters and their principles.
+<!-- Page 502 --><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478" title="478" class="pagenum"></a>Until the matter is decided, the country will remain
+in its present confusion. For while a system
+of administration is attempted, entirely repugnant to
+the genius of the people, and not conformable to the
+plan of their government, everything must necessarily
+be disordered for a time, until this system destroys
+the constitution, or the constitution gets the
+better of this system.</p>
+
+<p>There is, in my opinion, a peculiar venom and malignity
+in this political distemper beyond any that I
+have heard or read of. In former times the projectors
+of arbitrary government attacked only the liberties
+of their country; a design surely mischievous
+enough to have satisfied a mind of the most unruly
+ambition. But a system unfavorable to freedom may
+be so formed, as considerably to exalt the grandeur
+of the state; and men may find, in the pride and
+splendor of that prosperity, some sort of consolation
+for the loss of their solid privileges. Indeed the increase
+of the power of the state has often been urged
+by artful men, as a pretext for some abridgment of
+the public liberty. But the scheme of the junto under
+consideration, not only strikes a palsy into every
+nerve of our free constitution, but in the same degree
+benumbs and stupefies the whole executive power:
+rendering government in all its grand operations languid,
+uncertain, ineffective; making ministers fearful
+of attempting, and incapable of executing any useful
+plan of domestic arrangement, or of foreign politics.
+It tends to produce neither the security of a free government,
+nor the energy of a monarchy that is absolute.
+Accordingly the crown has dwindled away, in
+proportion to the unnatural and turgid growth of this
+excrescence on the court.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 503 --><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479" title="479" class="pagenum"></a>The interior ministry are sensible, that war is a situation
+which sets in its full light the value of the
+hearts of a people; and they well know, that the beginning
+of the importance of the people must be the
+end of theirs. For this reason they discover upon all
+occasions the utmost fear of everything, which by possibility
+may lead to such an event. I do not mean
+that they manifest any of that pious fear which is
+backward to commit the safety of the country to the
+dubious experiment of war. Such a fear, being the
+tender sensation of virtue, excited, as it is regulated,
+by reason, frequently shows itself in a seasonable boldness,
+which keeps danger at a distance, by seeming to
+despise it. Their fear betrays to the first glance of
+the eye, its true cause, and its real object. Foreign
+powers, confident in the knowledge of their character,
+have not scrupled to violate the most solemn
+treaties; and, in defiance of them, to make conquests
+in the midst of a general peace, and in the heart of
+Europe. Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the
+professed enemies of the freedom of mankind, in defiance
+of those who were formerly its professed defenders.
+We have had just claims upon the same powers:
+rights which ought to have been sacred to them as
+well as to us, as they had their origin in our lenity
+and generosity towards France and Spain in the day
+of their great humiliation. Such I call the ransom
+of Manilla, and the demand on France for the East
+India prisoners. But these powers put a just confidence
+in their resource of the <i>double cabinet</i>. These
+demands (one of them at least) are hastening fast
+towards an acquittal by prescription. Oblivion begins
+to spread her cobwebs over all our spirited remonstrances.
+Some of the most valuable branches of our
+<!-- Page 504 --><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480" title="480" class="pagenum"></a>trade are also on the point of perishing from the same
+cause. I do not mean those branches which bear
+without the hand of the vine-dresser; I mean those
+which the policy of treaties had formerly secured to
+us; I mean to mark and distinguish the trade of Portugal,
+the loss of which, and the power of the cabal,
+have one and the same era.</p>
+
+<p>If by any chance, the ministers who stand before
+the curtain possess or affect any spirit, it makes little
+or no impression. Foreign courts and ministers, who
+were among the first to discover and to profit by this
+invention of the <i>double cabinet</i>, attend very little to
+their remonstrances. They know that those shadows
+of ministers have nothing to do in the ultimate
+disposal of things. Jealousies and animosities are
+sedulously nourished in the outward administration,
+and have been even considered as a <i>causa sine qua
+non</i> in its constitution: thence foreign courts have a
+certainty, that nothing can be done by common counsel
+in this nation. If one of those ministers officially
+takes up a business with spirit, it serves only the better
+to signalize the meanness of the rest, and the discord
+of them all. His colleagues in office are in
+haste to shake him off, and to disclaim the whole of
+his proceedings. Of this nature was that astonishing
+transaction, in which Lord Rochford, our ambassador
+at Paris, remonstrated against the attempt upon Corsica,
+in consequence of a direct authority from Lord
+Shelburne. This remonstrance the French minister
+treated with the contempt that was natural: as he
+was assured, from the ambassador of his court to
+ours, that these orders of Lord Shelburne were not
+supported by the rest of the (I had like to have said
+British) administration. Lord Rochford, a man of
+<!-- Page 505 --><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481" title="481" class="pagenum"></a>spirit, could not endure this situation. The consequences
+were, however, curious. He returns from
+Paris, and comes home full of anger. Lord Shelburne,
+who gave the orders, is obliged to give up the
+seals. Lord Rochford, who obeyed these orders, receives
+them. He goes, however, into another department
+of the same office, that he might not be obliged
+officially to acquiesce, in one situation, under what
+he had officially remonstrated against, in another.
+At Paris, the Duke of Choiseul considered this office
+arrangement as a compliment to him: here it was
+spoken of as an attention to the delicacy of Lord
+Rochford. But whether the compliment was to one
+or both, to this nation it was the same. By this
+transaction the condition of our court lay exposed in
+all its nakedness. Our office correspondence has lost
+all pretence to authenticity: British policy is brought
+into derision in those nations, that a while ago trembled
+at the power of our arms, whilst they looked up
+with confidence to the equity, firmness, and candor,
+which shone in all our negotiations. I represent this
+matter exactly in the light in which it has been universally
+received.</p>
+
+<p>Such has been the aspect of our foreign politics,
+under the influence of a <i>double cabinet</i>. With such
+an arrangement at court, it is impossible it should
+have been otherwise. Nor is it possible that this
+scheme should have a better effect upon the government
+of our dependencies, the first, the dearest, and
+most delicate objects, of the interior policy of this empire.
+The colonies know, that administration is separated
+from the court, divided within itself, and
+detested by the nation. The <i>double cabinet</i> has, in
+both the parts of it, shown the most malignant dis<!-- Page 506 --><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482" title="482" class="pagenum"></a>positions
+towards them, without being able to do
+them the smallest mischief.</p>
+
+<p>They are convinced, by sufficient experience, that
+no plan, either of lenity, or rigor, can be pursued
+with uniformity and perseverance. Therefore they
+turn their eyes entirely from Great Britain, where
+they have neither dependence on friendship, nor apprehension
+from enmity. They look to themselves,
+and their own arrangements. They grow every day
+into alienation from this country; and whilst they
+are becoming disconnected with our government, we
+have not the consolation to find, that they are even
+friendly in their new independence. Nothing can
+equal the futility, the weakness, the rashness, the
+timidity, the perpetual contradiction in the management
+of our affairs in that part of the world. A volume
+might be written on this melancholy subject;
+but it were better to leave it entirely to the reflections
+of the reader himself, than not to treat it in the
+extent it deserves.</p>
+
+<p>In what manner our domestic economy is affected
+by this system, it is needless to explain. It is the
+perpetual subject of their own complaints.</p>
+
+<p>The court party resolve the whole into faction
+Having said something before upon this subject, I
+shall only observe here, that, when they give this account
+of the prevalence of faction, they present no
+very favorable aspect of the confidence of the people
+in their own government. They may be assured, that
+however they amuse themselves with a variety of projects
+for substituting something else in the place of
+that great and only foundation of government, the
+confidence of the people, every attempt will but make
+their condition worse. When men imagine that their
+<!-- Page 507 --><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483" title="483" class="pagenum"></a>food is only a cover for poison, and when they neither
+love nor trust the hand that serves it, it is not the
+name of the roast beef of Old England, that will persuade
+them to sit down to the table that is spread for
+them. When the people conceive that laws, and tribunals,
+and even popular assemblies, are perverted
+from the ends of their institution, they find in those
+names of degenerated establishments only new motives
+to discontent. Those bodies, which, when full
+of life and beauty, lay in their arms, and were their
+joy and comfort, when dead and putrid, become but
+the more loathsome from remembrance of former endearments.
+A sullen gloom and furious disorder
+prevail by fits; the nation loses its relish for peace
+and prosperity; as it did in that season of fulness
+which opened our troubles in the time of Charles the
+First. A species of men to whom a state of order
+would become a sentence of obscurity are nourished
+into a dangerous magnitude by the heat of intestine
+disturbances; and it is no wonder that, by a sort of
+sinister piety, they cherish, in their turn, the disorders
+which are the parents of all their consequence.
+Superficial observers consider such persons as the
+cause of the public uneasiness, when, in truth, they
+are nothing more than the effect of it. Good men
+look upon this distracted scene with sorrow and indignation.
+Their hands are tied behind them. They
+are despoiled of all the power which might enable
+them to reconcile the strength of government with
+the rights of the people. They stand in a most distressing
+alternative. But in the election among evils
+they hope better things from temporary confusion,
+than from established servitude. In the mean time,
+the voice of law is not to be heard. Fierce licentious<!-- Page 508 --><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484" title="484" class="pagenum"></a>ness
+begets violent restraints. The military arm is
+the sole reliance; and then, call your constitution
+what you please, it is the sword that governs. The
+civil power, like every other that calls in the aid of
+an ally stronger than itself, perishes by the assistance
+it receives. But the contrivers of this scheme of government
+will not trust solely to the military power;
+because they are cunning men. Their restless and
+crooked spirit drives them to rake in the dirt of every
+kind of expedient. Unable to rule the multitude,
+they endeavor to raise divisions amongst them. One
+mob is hired to destroy another; a procedure which
+at once encourages the boldness of the populace, and
+justly increases their discontent. Men become pensioners
+of state on account of their abilities in the
+array of riot, and the discipline of confusion. Government
+is put under the disgraceful necessity of
+protecting from the severity of the laws that very
+licentiousness, which the laws had been before violated
+to repress. Everything partakes of the original
+disorder. Anarchy predominates without freedom,
+and servitude without submission or subordination.
+These are the consequences inevitable to our public
+peace, from the scheme of rendering the executory
+government at once odious and feeble; of freeing administration
+from the constitutional and salutary control
+of Parliament, and inventing for it a <i>new control</i>,
+unknown to the constitution, an <i>interior cabinet</i>;
+which brings the whole body of government into confusion
+and contempt.</p>
+
+<p>After having stated, as shortly as I am able, the
+effects of this system on our foreign affairs, on the
+policy of our government with regard to our dependencies,
+and on the interior economy of the common<!-- Page 509 --><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485" title="485" class="pagenum"></a>wealth;
+there remains only, in this part of my design,
+to say something of the grand principle which first
+recommended this system at court. The pretence
+was, to prevent the king from being enslaved by a
+faction, and made a prisoner in his closet. This
+scheme might have been expected to answer at least
+its own end, and to indemnify the king, in his personal
+capacity, for all the confusion into which it has
+thrown his government. But has it in reality answered
+this purpose? I am sure, if it had, every
+affectionate subject would have one motive for enduring
+with patience all the evils which attend it.</p>
+
+<p>In order to come at the truth in this matter, it may
+not be amiss to consider it somewhat in detail. I
+speak here of the king, and not of the crown; the
+interests of which we have already touched. Independent
+of that greatness which a king possesses
+merely by being a representative of the national dignity,
+the things in which he may have an individual
+interest seem to be these:&mdash;wealth accumulated;
+wealth spent in magnificence, pleasure, or beneficence;
+personal respect and attention; and, above
+all, private ease and repose of mind. These compose
+the inventory of prosperous circumstances,
+whether they regard a prince or a subject; their
+enjoyments differing only in the scale upon which
+they are formed.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose then we were to ask, whether the king
+has been richer than his predecessors in accumulated
+wealth, since the establishment of the plan of favoritism?
+I believe it will be found that the picture of
+royal indigence, which our court has presented until
+this year, has been truly humiliating. Nor has it
+been relieved from this unseemly distress, but by
+<!-- Page 510 --><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486" title="486" class="pagenum"></a>means which have hazarded the affection of the people,
+and shaken their confidence in Parliament. If
+the public treasures had been exhausted in magnificence
+and splendor, this distress would have been accounted
+for, and in some measure justified. Nothing
+would be more unworthy of this nation, than with a
+mean and mechanical rule, to mete out the splendor
+of the crown. Indeed I have found very few persons
+disposed to so ungenerous a procedure. But the
+generality of people, it must be confessed, do feel a
+good deal mortified, when they compare the wants
+of the court with its expenses. They do not behold
+the cause of this distress in any part of the apparatus
+of royal magnificence. In all this, they see nothing
+but the operations of parsimony, attended with all
+the consequences of profusion. Nothing expended,
+nothing saved. Their wonder is increased by their
+knowledge, that besides the revenue settled on his
+Majesty's civil list to the amount of 800,000<i>l.</i> a year,
+he has a farther aid from a large pension list, near
+90,000<i>l.</i> a year, in Ireland; from the produce of the
+duchy of Lancaster (which we are told has been
+greatly improved); from the revenue of the duchy
+of Cornwall; from the American quit-rents; from
+the four and a half per cent duty in the Leeward
+Islands; this last worth to be sure considerably more
+than 40,000<i>l.</i> a year. The whole is certainly not
+much short of a million annually.</p>
+
+<p>These are revenues within the knowledge and cognizance
+of our national councils. We have no direct
+right to examine into the receipts from his Majesty's
+German dominions, and the bishopric of Osnaburg.
+This is unquestionably true. But that which is not
+within the province of Parliament, is yet within the
+<!-- Page 511 --><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487" title="487" class="pagenum"></a>sphere of every man's own reflection. If a foreign
+prince resided amongst us, the state of his revenues
+could not fail of becoming the subject of our speculation.
+Filled with an anxious concern for whatever
+regards the welfare of our sovereign, it is impossible,
+in considering the miserable circumstances into which
+he has been brought, that this obvious topic should
+be entirely passed over. There is an opinion universal,
+that these revenues produce something not inconsiderable,
+clear of all charges and establishments.
+This produce the people do not believe to be hoarded,
+nor perceive to be spent. It is accounted for in the
+only manner it can, by supposing that it is drawn
+away, for the support of that court faction, which,
+whilst it distresses the nation, impoverishes the
+prince in every one of his resources. I once more
+caution the reader, that I do not urge this consideration
+concerning the foreign revenue, as if I supposed
+we had a direct right to examine into the expenditure
+of any part of it; but solely for the purpose of
+showing how little this system of favoritism has been
+advantageous to the monarch himself; which, without
+magnificence, has sunk him into a state of unnatural
+poverty; at the same time that he possessed
+every means of affluence, from ample revenues, both
+in this country, and in other parts of his dominions.</p>
+
+<p>Has this system provided better for the treatment
+becoming his high and sacred character, and secured
+the king from those disgusts attached to the necessity
+of employing men who are not personally agreeable?
+This is a topic upon which for many reasons I
+could wish to be silent; but the pretence of securing
+against such causes of uneasiness, is the corner-stone
+of the court-party. It has however so happened, that
+<!-- Page 512 --><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488" title="488" class="pagenum"></a>if I were to fix upon any one point, in which this system
+has been more particularly and shamefully blamable,
+the effects which it has produced would justify
+me in choosing for that point its tendency to degrade
+the personal dignity of the sovereign, and to expose
+him to a thousand contradictions and mortifications.
+It is but too evident in what manner these projectors
+of royal greatness have fulfilled all their magnificent
+promises. Without recapitulating all the circumstances
+of the reign, every one of which is, more or
+less, a melancholy proof of the truth of what I have
+advanced, let us consider the language of the court
+but a few years ago, concerning most of the persons
+now in the external administration: let me ask,
+whether any enemy to the personal feelings of the
+sovereign could possibly contrive a keener instrument
+of mortification, and degradation of all dignity, than
+almost every part and member of the present arrangement?
+Nor, in the whole course of our history, has
+any compliance with the will of the people ever been
+known to extort from any prince a greater contradiction
+to all his own declared affections and dislikes,
+than that which is now adopted, in direct opposition
+to everything the people approve and desire.</p>
+
+<p>An opinion prevails, that greatness has been more
+than once advised to submit to certain condescensions
+towards individuals, which have been denied to the
+entreaties of a nation. For the meanest and most
+dependent instrument of this system knows, that there
+are hours when its existence may depend upon his
+adherence to it; and he takes his advantage accordingly.
+Indeed it is a law of nature, that whoever is
+necessary to what we have made our object is sure, in
+some way, or in some time or other, to become our
+<!-- Page 513 --><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489" title="489" class="pagenum"></a>master. All this however is submitted to, in order
+to avoid that monstrous evil of governing in concurrence
+with the opinion of the people. For it seems
+to be laid down as a maxim, that a king has some
+sort of interest in giving uneasiness to his subjects:
+that all who are pleasing to them, are to be of course
+disagreeable to him: that as soon as the persons who
+are odious at court are known to be odious to the
+people, it is snatched at as a lucky occasion of showering
+down upon them all kinds of emoluments and
+honors. None are considered as well-wishers to the
+crown, but those who advise to some unpopular
+course of action; none capable of serving it, but
+those who are obliged to call at every instant upon
+all its power for the safety of their lives. None are
+supposed to be fit priests in the temple of government,
+but the persons who are compelled to fly into
+it for sanctuary. Such is the effect of this refined
+project; such is ever the result of all the contrivances,
+which are used to free men from the servitude
+of their reason, and from the necessity of ordering
+their affairs according to their evident interests.
+These contrivances oblige them to run into a real and
+ruinous servitude, in order to avoid a supposed restraint,
+that might be attended with advantage.</p>
+
+<p>If therefore this system has so ill answered its own
+grand pretence of saving the king from the necessity
+of employing persons disagreeable to him, has it given
+more peace and tranquillity to his Majesty's private
+hours? No, most certainly. The father of his people
+cannot possibly enjoy repose, while his family is in
+such a state of distraction. Then what has the crown
+or the king profited by all this fine-wrought scheme?
+Is he more rich, or more splendid, or more powerful,
+<!-- Page 514 --><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490" title="490" class="pagenum"></a>or more at his ease, by so many labors and contrivances?
+Have they not beggared his exchequer, tarnished
+the splendor of his court, sunk his dignity,
+galled his feelings, discomposed the whole order and
+happiness of his private life?</p>
+
+<p>It will be very hard, I believe, to state in what respect
+the king has profited by that faction which presumptuously
+choose to call themselves <i>his friends</i>.</p>
+
+<p>If particular men had grown into an attachment,
+by the distinguished honor of the society of their sovereign;
+and, by being the partakers of his amusements,
+came sometimes to prefer the gratification of
+his personal inclinations to the support of his high
+character, the thing would be very natural, and it
+would be excusable enough. But the pleasant part
+of the story is, that these <i>king's friends</i> have no more
+ground for usurping such a title, than a resident freeholder
+in Cumberland or in Cornwall. They are only
+known to their sovereign by kissing his hand, for the
+offices, pensions, and grants, into which they have
+deceived his benignity. May no storm ever come,
+which will put the firmness of their attachment to
+the proof; and which, in the midst of confusions, and
+terrors, and sufferings, may demonstrate the eternal
+difference between a true and severe friend to the
+monarchy, and a slippery sycophant of the court!
+<i>Quantum infido scurr&aelig; distabit amicus.</i></p>
+
+<p>So far I have considered the effect of the court
+system, chiefly as it operates upon the executive government,
+on the temper of the people, and on the
+happiness of the sovereign. It remains that we
+should consider, with a little attention, its operation
+upon Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>Parliament was indeed the great object of all these
+<!-- Page 515 --><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491" title="491" class="pagenum"></a>politics, the end at which they aimed, as well as the
+instrument by which they were to operate. But, before
+Parliament could be made subservient to a system,
+by which it was to be degraded from the dignity
+of a national council into a mere member of the
+court, it must be greatly changed from its original
+character.</p>
+
+<p>In speaking of this body, I have my eye chiefly on
+the House of Commons. I hope I shall be indulged
+in a few observations on the nature and character of
+that assembly; not with regard to its <i>legal form and
+power</i>, but to its <i>spirit</i>, and to the purposes it is
+meant to answer in the constitution.</p>
+
+<p>The House of Commons was supposed originally
+to be <i>no part of the standing government of this country</i>.
+It was considered as a <i>control</i> issuing <i>immediately</i> from
+the people, and speedily to be resolved into the mass
+from whence it arose. In this respect it was in the
+higher part of government what juries are in the lower.
+The capacity of a magistrate being transitory, and
+that of a citizen permanent, the latter capacity it was
+hoped would of course preponderate in all discussions,
+not only between the people and the standing
+authority of the crown, but between the people and
+the fleeting authority of the House of Commons itself.
+It was hoped that, being of a middle nature between
+subject and government, they would feel with a more
+tender and a nearer interest everything that concerned
+the people, than the other remoter and more
+permanent parts of legislature.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever alterations time and the necessary accommodation
+of business may have introduced, this
+character can never be sustained, unless the House
+of Commons shall be made to bear some stamp of the
+<!-- Page 516 --><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492" title="492" class="pagenum"></a>actual disposition of the people at large. It would
+(among public misfortunes) be an evil more natural
+and tolerable, that the House of Commons should be
+infected with every epidemical frenzy of the people,
+as this would indicate some consanguinity, some sympathy
+of nature with their constituents, than that they
+should in all cases be wholly untouched by the opinions
+and feelings of the people out of doors. By this
+want of sympathy they would cease to be a House of
+Commons. For it is not the derivation of the power
+of that House from the people, which makes it in a
+distinct sense their representative. The king is the
+representative of the people; so are the lords; so are
+the judges. They all are trustees for the people, as
+well as the commons; because no power is given for
+the sole sake of the holder; and although government
+certainly is an institution of divine authority,
+yet its forms, and the persons who administer it, all
+originate from the people.</p>
+
+<p>A popular origin cannot therefore be the characteristical
+distinction of a popular representative. This
+belongs equally to all parts of government and in all
+forms. The virtue, spirit, and essence of a House of
+Commons consists in its being the express image of
+the feelings of the nation. It was not instituted to
+be a control <i>upon</i> the people, as of late it has been
+taught, by a doctrine of the most pernicious tendency.
+It was designed as a control <i>for</i> the people. Other
+institutions have been formed for the purpose of
+checking popular excesses; and they are, I apprehend,
+fully adequate to their object. If not, they
+ought to be made so. The House of Commons, as
+it was never intended for the support of peace and
+subordination, is miserably appointed for that service;
+<!-- Page 517 --><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493" title="493" class="pagenum"></a>having no stronger weapon than its mace, and no better
+officer than its serjeant-at-arms, which it can command
+of its own proper authority. A vigilant and
+jealous eye over executory and judicial magistracy;
+an anxious care of public money; an openness, approaching
+towards facility, to public complaint: these
+seem to be the true characteristics of a House of Commons.
+But an addressing House of Commons, and a
+petitioning nation; a House of Commons full of confidence,
+when the nation is plunged in despair; in
+the utmost harmony with ministers, whom the people
+regard with the utmost abhorrence; who vote
+thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them for
+impeachments; who are eager to grant, when the general
+voice demands account; who, in all disputes between
+the people and administration, presume against
+the people; who punish their disorders, but refuse
+even to inquire into the provocations to them; this
+is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things in this
+constitution. Such an assembly may be a great, wise,
+awful senate; but it is not, to any popular purpose,
+a House of Commons. This change from an
+immediate state of procuration and delegation to a
+course of acting as from original power, is the way
+in which all the popular magistracies in the world
+have been perverted from their purposes. It is indeed
+their greatest and sometimes their incurable corruption.
+For there is a material distinction between
+that corruption by which particular points are carried
+against reason, (this is a thing which cannot be prevented
+by human wisdom, and is of loss consequence,)
+and the corruption of the principle itself
+For then the evil is not accidental, but settled. The
+distemper becomes the natural habit.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 518 --><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494" title="494" class="pagenum"></a>For my part, I shall be compelled to conclude the
+principle of Parliament to be totally corrupted, and
+therefore its ends entirely defeated, when I see two
+symptoms: first, a rule of indiscriminate support to
+all ministers; because this destroys the very end of
+Parliament as a control, and is a general, previous
+sanction to misgovernment: and secondly, the setting
+up any claims adverse to the right of free election;
+for this tends to subvert the legal authority by which
+the House of Commons sits.</p>
+
+<p>I know that, since the Revolution, along with
+many dangerous, many useful powers of government
+have been weakened. It is absolutely necessary to
+have frequent recourse to the legislature. Parliaments
+must therefore sit every year, and for great
+part of the year. The dreadful disorders of frequent
+elections have also necessitated a septennial instead
+of a triennial duration. These circumstances, I mean
+the constant habit of authority, and the unfrequency
+of elections, have tended very much to draw the
+House of Commons towards the character of a standing
+senate. It is a disorder which has arisen from
+the cure of greater disorders; it has arisen from the
+extreme difficulty of reconciling liberty under a monarchical
+government, with external strength and
+with internal tranquillity.</p>
+
+<p>It is very clear that we cannot free ourselves entirely
+from this great inconvenience; but I would
+not increase an evil, because I was not able to remove
+it; and because it was not in my power to keep the
+House of Commons religiously true to its first principles,
+I would not argue for carrying it to a total oblivion
+of them. This has been the great scheme of
+power in our time. They, who will not conform their
+<!-- Page 519 --><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495" title="495" class="pagenum"></a>conduct to the public good, and cannot support it by
+the prerogative of the crown, have adopted a new
+plan. They have totally abandoned the shattered
+and old-fashioned fortress of prerogative, and made a
+lodgment in the stronghold of Parliament itself. If
+they have any evil design to which there is no ordinary
+legal power commensurate, they bring it into Parliament.
+In Parliament the whole is executed from
+the beginning to the end. In Parliament the power
+of obtaining their object is absolute; and the safety
+in the proceeding perfect: no rules to confine, no after-reckonings
+to terrify. Parliament cannot, with
+any great propriety, punish others for things in which
+they themselves have been accomplices. Thus the
+control of Parliament upon the executory power is
+lost; because Parliament is made to partake in every
+considerable act of government. <i>Impeachment, that
+great guardian of the purity of the constitution, is in
+danger of being lost, even to the idea of it.</i></p>
+
+<p>By this plan several important ends are answered
+to the cabal. If the authority of Parliament supports
+itself, the credit of every act of government, which
+they contrive, is saved; but if the act be so very odious
+that the whole strength of Parliament is insufficient
+to recommend it, then Parliament is itself discredited;
+and this discredit increases more and more
+that indifference to the constitution, which it is the
+constant aim of its enemies, by their abuse of Parliamentary
+powers, to render general among the people.
+Whenever Parliament is persuaded to assume the offices
+of executive government, it will lose all the confidence,
+love, and veneration, which it has ever enjoyed
+whilst it was supposed the <i>corrective and control</i> of the
+acting powers of the state. This would be the event,
+<!-- Page 520 --><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496" title="496" class="pagenum"></a>though its conduct in such a perversion of its functions
+should be tolerably just and moderate; but if it
+should be iniquitous, violent, full of passion, and full
+of faction, it would be considered as the most intolerable
+of all the modes of tyranny.</p>
+
+<p>For a considerable time this separation of the representatives
+from their constituents went on with a
+silent progress; and had those, who conducted the
+plan for their total separation, been persons of temper
+and abilities any way equal to the magnitude of their
+design, the success would have been infallible: but
+by their precipitancy they have laid it open in all its
+nakedness; the nation is alarmed at it: and the
+event may not be pleasant to the contrivers of the
+scheme. In the last session, the corps called the
+<i>king's friends</i> made a hardy attempt, all at once, <i>to
+alter the right of election itself</i>; to put it into the power
+of the House of Commons to disable any person
+disagreeable to them from sitting in Parliament,
+without any other rule than their own pleasure; to
+make incapacities, either general for descriptions of
+men, or particular for individuals; and to take into
+their body, persons who avowedly had never been
+chosen by the majority of legal electors, nor agreeably
+to any known rule of law.</p>
+
+<p>The arguments upon which this claim was founded
+and combated, are not my business here. Never has
+a subject been more amply and more learnedly handled,
+nor upon one side, in my opinion, more satisfactorily;
+they who are not convinced by what is already
+written would not receive conviction <i>though, one arose
+from the dead</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I too have thought on this subject: but my purpose
+here, is only to consider it as a part of the favor<!-- Page 521 --><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497" title="497" class="pagenum"></a>ite
+project of government; to observe on the motives
+which led to it; and to trace its political consequences.</p>
+
+<p>A violent rage for the punishment of Mr. Wilkes
+was the pretence of the whole. This gentleman, by
+setting himself strongly in opposition to the court
+cabal, had become at once an object of their persecution,
+and of the popular favor. The hatred of the
+court party pursuing, and the countenance of the people
+protecting him, it very soon became not at all a
+question on the man, but a trial of strength between
+the two parties. The advantage of the victory in
+this particular contest was the present, but not the
+only, nor by any means the principal object. Its
+operation upon the character of the House of Commons
+was the great point in view. The point to be
+gained by the cabal was this; that a precedent should
+be established, tending to show, <i>That the favor of the
+people was not so sure a road as the favor of the court
+even to popular honors and popular trusts</i>. A strenuous
+resistance to every appearance of lawless power; a
+spirit of independence carried to some degree of enthusiasm;
+an inquisitive character to discover, and a bold
+one to display, every corruption and every error of
+government; these are the qualities which recommend
+a man to a seat in the House of Commons, in
+open and merely popular elections. An indolent and
+submissive disposition; a disposition to think charitably
+of all the actions of men in power, and to live in a
+mutual intercourse of favors with them; an inclination
+rather to countenance a strong use of authority,
+than to bear any sort of licentiousness on the part of
+the people; these are unfavorable qualities in an open
+election for members of Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>The instinct which carries the people towards the
+<!-- Page 522 --><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498" title="498" class="pagenum"></a>choice of the former, is justified by reason; because
+a man of such a character, even in its exorbitances,
+does not directly contradict the purposes of a trust,
+the end of which is a control on power. The latter
+character, even when it is not in its extreme, will execute
+this trust but very imperfectly; and, if deviating
+to the least excess, will certainly frustrate instead
+of forwarding the purposes of a control on government.
+But when the House of Commons was to be
+new modelled, this principle was not only to be
+changed but reversed. Whilst any errors committed
+in support of power were left to the law, with every
+advantage of favorable construction, of mitigation,
+and finally of pardon; all excesses on the side of liberty,
+or in pursuit of popular favor, or in defence of
+popular rights and privileges, were not only to be
+punished by the rigor of the known law, but by a
+<i>discretionary</i> proceeding, which brought on <i>the loss of
+the popular object itself</i>. Popularity was to be rendered,
+if not directly penal, at least highly dangerous.
+The favor of the people might lead even to a disqualification
+of representing them. Their odium might
+become, strained through the medium of two or three
+constructions, the means of sitting as the trustee of
+all that was dear to them. This is punishing the offence
+in the offending part. Until this time, the
+opinion of the people, through the power of an assembly,
+still in some sort popular, led to the greatest
+honors and emoluments in the gift of the crown.
+Now the principle is reversed; and the favor of the
+court is the only sure way of obtaining and holding
+those honors which ought to be in the disposal of the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>It signifies very little how this matter may be quib<!-- Page 523 --><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499" title="499" class="pagenum"></a>bled
+away. Example, the only argument of effect in
+civil life, demonstrates the truth of my proposition.
+Nothing can alter my opinion concerting the pernicious
+tendency of this example, until I see some man
+for his indiscretion in the support of power, for his
+violent and intemperate servility, rendered incapable
+of sitting in Parliament. For as it now stands, the
+fault of overstraining popular qualities, and, irregularly
+if you please, asserting popular privileges, has
+led to disqualification; the opposite fault never has
+produced the slightest punishment. Resistance to
+power has shut the door of the House of Commons
+to one man; obsequiousness and servility, to none.</p>
+
+<p>Not that I would encourage popular disorder, or
+any disorder. But I would leave such offences to the
+law, to be punished in measure and proportion. The
+laws of this country are for the most part constituted,
+and wisely so, for the general ends of government,
+rather than for the preservation of our particular liberties.
+Whatever therefore is done in support of
+liberty, by persons not in public trust, or not acting
+merely in that trust, is liable to be more or less out
+of the ordinary course of the law; and the law itself
+is sufficient to animadvert upon it with great severity.
+Nothing indeed can hinder that severe letter
+from crushing us, except the temperaments it may
+receive from a trial by jury. But if the habit prevails
+of <i>going beyond the law</i>, and superseding this
+judicature, of carrying offences, real or supposed,
+into the legislative bodies, who shall establish themselves
+into <i>courts of criminal equity</i> (so the <i>Star Chamber</i>
+has been called by Lord Bacon), all the evils of
+the <i>Star Chamber</i> are revived. A large and liberal
+construction in ascertaining offences, and a discre<!-- Page 524 --><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500" title="500" class="pagenum"></a>tionary
+power in punishing them, is the idea of <i>criminal
+equity</i>; which is in truth a monster in jurisprudence.
+It signifies nothing whether a court for this
+purpose be a committee of council, or a House of
+Commons, or a House of Lords; the liberty of the
+subject will be equally subverted by it. The true
+end and purpose of that House of Parliament, which
+entertains such a jurisdiction, will be destroyed by it.</p>
+
+<p>I will not believe, what no other man living
+believes, that Mr. Wilkes was punished for the indecency
+of his publications, or the impiety of his
+ransacked closet. If he had fallen in a common
+slaughter of libellers and blasphemers, I could well
+believe that nothing more was meant than was pretended.
+But when I see, that, for years together,
+full as impious, and perhaps more dangerous writings
+to religion, and virtue, and order, have not been punished,
+nor their authors discountenanced; that the
+most audacious libels on royal majesty have passed
+without notice; that the most treasonable invectives
+against the laws, liberties, and constitution of the
+country, have not met with the slightest animadversion;
+I must consider this as a shocking and shameless
+pretence. Never did an envenomed scurrility
+against everything sacred and civil, public and private,
+rage through the kingdom with such a furious
+and unbridled license. All this while the peace of
+the nation must be shaken, to ruin one libeller, and
+to tear from the populace a single favorite.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is it that vice merely skulks in an obscure and
+contemptible impunity. Does not the public behold
+with indignation, persons not only generally scandalous
+in their lives, but the identical persons who, by
+their society, their instruction, their example, their
+<!-- Page 525 --><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501" title="501" class="pagenum"></a>encouragement, have drawn this man into the very
+faults which have furnished the cabal with a pretence
+for his persecution, loaded with every kind of favor,
+honor, and distinction, which a court can bestow?
+Add but the crime of servility (the <i>foedum crimen servitutis</i>)
+to every other crime, and the whole mass is
+immediately transmuted into virtue, and becomes the
+just subject of reward and honor. When therefore
+I reflect upon this method pursued by the cabal in
+distributing rewards and punishments, I must conclude
+that Mr. Wilkes is the object of persecution,
+not on account of what he has done in common with
+others who are the objects of reward, but for that
+in which he differs from many of them: that he
+is pursued for the spirited dispositions which are
+blended with his vices; for his unconquerable firmness,
+for his resolute, indefatigable, strenuous resistance
+against oppression.</p>
+
+<p>In this case, therefore, it was not the man that was
+to be punished, nor his faults that were to be discountenanced.
+Opposition to acts of power was to
+be marked by a kind of civil proscription. The popularity
+which should arise from such an opposition
+was to be shown unable to protect it. The qualities
+by which court is made to the people, were to render
+every fault inexpiable, and every error irretrievable.
+The qualities by which court is made to power, were
+to cover and to sanctify everything. He that will have
+a sure and honorable seat in the House of Commons
+must take care how he adventures to cultivate popular
+qualities; otherwise he may remember the old
+maxim, <i>Breves et infaustos populi Romani amores</i>.
+If, therefore, a pursuit of popularity expose a man to
+greater dangers than a disposition to servility, the
+<!-- Page 526 --><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502" title="502" class="pagenum"></a>principle which is the life and soul of popular elections
+will perish out of the constitution.</p>
+
+<p>It behoves the people of England to consider how
+the House of Commons, under the operation of these
+examples, must of necessity be constituted. On the
+side of the court will be, all honors, offices, emoluments;
+every sort of personal gratification to avarice
+or vanity; and, what is of more moment to most gentlemen,
+the means of growing, by innumerable petty
+services to individuals, into a spreading interest in
+their country. On the other hand, let us suppose a
+person unconnected with the court, and in opposition
+to its system. For his own person, no office, or emolument,
+or title; no promotion, ecclesiastical, or civil,
+or military, or naval, for children, or brothers, or kindred.
+In vain an expiring interest in a borough calls
+for offices, or small livings, for the children of mayors,
+and aldermen, and capital burgesses. His court
+rival has them all. He can do an infinite number of
+acts of generosity and kindness, and even of public
+spirit. He can procure indemnity from quarters.
+He can procure advantages in trade. He can get
+pardons for offences. He can obtain a thousand favors,
+and avert a thousand evils. He may, while he
+betrays every valuable interest of the kingdom, be a
+benefactor, a patron, a father, a guardian angel to his
+borough. The unfortunate independent member has
+nothing to offer, but harsh refusal, or pitiful excuse,
+or despondent representation of a hopeless interest.
+Except from his private fortune, in which he may be
+equalled, perhaps exceeded, by his court competitor,
+he has no way of showing any one good quality, or of
+making a single friend. In the House, he votes forever
+in a dispirited minority. If he speaks, the doors
+<!-- Page 527 --><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503" title="503" class="pagenum"></a>are locked. A body of loquacious placemen go out
+to tell the world that all he aims at is to get into office.
+If he has not the talent of elocution, which is
+the case of many as wise and knowing men as any in
+the House, he is liable to all these inconveniences,
+without the <i>&eacute;clat</i> which attends upon any tolerably
+successful exertion of eloquence. Can we conceive a
+more discouraging post of duty than this? Strip it
+of the poor reward of popularity; suffer even the excesses
+committed in defence of the popular interest to
+become a ground for the majority of that House to
+form a disqualification out of the line of the law, and
+at their pleasure, attended not only with the loss of
+the franchise, but with every kind of personal disgrace.&mdash;If
+this shall happen, the people of this kingdom
+may be assured that they cannot be firmly or
+faithfully served by any man. It is out of the nature
+of men and things that they should; and their presumption
+will be equal to their folly if they expect it.
+The power of the people, within the laws, must show
+itself sufficient to protect every representative in the
+animated performance of his duty, or that duty cannot
+be performed. The House of Commons can
+never be a control on other parts of government,
+unless they are controlled themselves by their constituents;
+and unless those constituents possess some
+right in the choice of that House, which it is not in
+the power of that House to take away. If they suffer
+this power of arbitrary incapacitation to stand, they
+have utterly perverted every other power of the House
+of Commons. The late proceeding I will not say <i>is</i>
+contrary to law; it <i>must</i> be so; for the power which
+is claimed cannot, by any possibility, be a legal power
+in any limited member of government.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 528 --><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504" title="504" class="pagenum"></a>The power which they claim, of declaring incapacities,
+would not be above the just claims of a final judicature,
+if they had not laid it down as a leading
+principle, that they had no rule in the exercise of
+this claim, but their own <i>discretion</i>. Not one of their
+abettors has ever undertaken to assign the principle
+of unfitness, the species or degree of delinquency, on
+which the House of Commons will expel, nor the mode
+of proceeding upon it, nor the evidence upon which it
+is established. The direct consequence of which is,
+that the first franchise of an Englishman, and that
+on which all the rest vitally depend, is to be forfeited
+for some offence which no man knows, and which is
+to be proved by no known rule whatsoever of legal
+evidence. This is so anomalous to our whole constitution,
+that I will venture to say, the most trivial
+right, which the subject claims, never was, nor can
+be, forfeited in such a manner.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of their usurpation is established upon
+this method of arguing. We do not <i>make</i> laws. No;
+we do not contend for this power. We only <i>declare</i>
+law; and as we are a tribunal both competent and
+supreme, what we declare to be law becomes law, although
+it should not have been so before. Thus the
+circumstance of having no <i>appeal</i> from their jurisdiction
+is made to imply that they have no <i>rule</i> in the
+exercise of it: the judgment does not derive its validity
+from its conformity to the law; but preposterously
+the law is made to attend on the judgment;
+and the rule of the judgment is no other than the <i>occasional
+will of the House</i>. An arbitrary discretion
+leads, legality follows; which is just the very nature
+and description of a legislative act.</p>
+
+<p>This claim in their hands was no barren theory. It
+<!-- Page 529 --><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505" title="505" class="pagenum"></a>was pursued into its utmost consequences; and a
+dangerous principle has begot a correspondent practice.
+A systematic spirit has been shown upon both
+sides. The electors of Middlesex chose a person
+whom the House of Commons had voted incapable;
+and the House of Commons has taken in a member
+whom the electors of Middlesex had not chosen. By
+a construction on that legislative power which had
+been assumed, they declared that the true legal sense
+of the country was contained in the minority, on that
+occasion; and might, on a resistance to a vote of incapacity,
+be contained in any minority.</p>
+
+<p>When any construction of law goes against the
+spirit of the privilege it was meant to support, it is a
+vicious construction. It is material to us to be represented
+really and <i>bon&acirc; fide</i>, and not in forms, in
+types, and shadows, and fictions of law. The right
+of election was not established merely as a <i>matter of
+form</i>, to satisfy some method and rule of technical
+reasoning; it was not a principle which might substitute
+a <i>Titius</i> or a <i>M&aelig;vius</i>, a <i>John Doe</i> or <i>Richard
+Roe</i>, in the place of a man specially chosen; not a
+principle which was just as well satisfied with one
+man as with another. It is a right, the effect of which
+is to give to the people that man, and <i>that man only</i>,
+whom, by their voices actually, not constructively
+given, they declare that they know, esteem, love, and
+trust. This right is a matter within their own power
+of judging and feeling; not an <i>ens rationis</i> and creature
+of law: nor can those devices, by which anything
+else is substituted in the place of such an actual
+choice, answer in the least degree the end of representation.</p>
+
+<p>I know that the courts of law have made as strained
+<!-- Page 530 --><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506" title="506" class="pagenum"></a>constructions in other cases. Such is the construction
+in common recoveries. The method of construction
+which in that case gives to the persons in
+remainder, for their security and representative, the
+door-keeper, crier, or sweeper of the court, or some
+other shadowy being without substance or effect, is
+a fiction of a very coarse texture. This was however
+suffered by the acquiescence of the whole kingdom,
+for ages; because the evasion of the old statute
+of Westminster, which authorized perpetuities, had
+more sense and utility than the law which was
+evaded. But an attempt to turn the right of election
+into such a farce and mockery as a fictitious
+fine and recovery, will, I hope, have another fate;
+because the laws which give it are infinitely dear to
+us, and the evasion is infinitely contemptible.</p>
+
+<p>The people indeed have been told, that this power
+of discretionary disqualification is vested in hands
+that they may trust, and who will be sure not to
+abuse it to their prejudice. Until I find something
+in this argument differing from that on which every
+mode of despotism has been defended, I shall not be
+inclined to pay it any great compliment. The people
+are satisfied to trust themselves with the exercise
+of their own privileges, and do not desire this kind
+intervention of the House of Commons to free them
+from the burden. They are certainly in the right.
+They ought not to trust the House of Commons with
+a power over their franchises; because the constitution,
+which placed two other co-ordinate powers to
+control it, reposed no such confidence in that body.
+It were a folly well deserving servitude for its punishment,
+to be full of confidence where the laws are
+full of distrust; and to give to a House of Commons,
+<!-- Page 531 --><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507" title="507" class="pagenum"></a>arrogating to its sole resolution the most harsh and
+odious part of legislative authority, that degree of
+submission which is due only to the legislature itself.</p>
+
+<p>When the House of Commons, in an endeavor to
+obtain new advantages at the expense of the other
+orders of the state, for the benefit of the <i>commons at
+large</i>, have pursued strong measures; if it were not
+just, it was at least natural, that the constituents
+should connive at all their proceedings; because we
+were ourselves ultimately to profit. But when this
+submission is urged to us, in a contest between the
+representatives and ourselves, and where nothing can
+be put into their scale which is not taken from ours,
+they fancy us to be children when they tell us they
+are our representatives, our own flesh and blood, and
+that all the stripes they give us are for our good.
+The very desire of that body to have such a trust
+contrary to law reposed in them, shows that they are
+not worthy of it. They certainly will abuse it; because
+all men possessed of an uncontrolled discretionary
+power leading to the aggrandizement and profit
+of their own body have always abused it: and I see
+no particular sanctity in our times, that is at all
+likely, by a miraculous operation, to overrule the
+course of nature.</p>
+
+<p>But we must purposely shut our eyes, if we consider
+this matter merely as a contest between the
+House of Commons and the electors. The true contest
+is between the electors of the kingdom and the
+crown; the crown acting by an instrumental House
+of Commons. It is precisely the same, whether the
+ministers of the crown can disqualify by a dependent
+House of Commons, or by a dependent Court of <i>Star
+Chamber</i>, or by a dependent Court of King's Bench
+<!-- Page 532 --><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508" title="508" class="pagenum"></a>If once members of Parliament can be practically
+convinced that they do not depend on the affection
+or opinion of the people for their political being, they
+will give themselves over, without even an appearance
+of reserve, to the influence of the court.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed a Parliament unconnected with the people
+is essential to a ministry unconnected with the
+people; and therefore those who saw through what
+mighty difficulties the interior ministry waded, and
+the exterior were dragged, in this business, will conceive
+of what prodigious importance, the new corps
+of <i>king's men</i> held this principle of occasional and
+personal incapacitation, to the whole body of their
+design.</p>
+
+<p>When the House of Commons was thus made to
+consider itself as the master of its constituents, there
+wanted but one thing to secure that House against
+all possible future deviation towards popularity: an
+<i>unlimited</i> fund of money to be laid out according to
+the pleasure of the court.</p>
+
+<p>To complete the scheme of bringing our court to a
+resemblance to the neighboring monarchies, it was
+necessary, in effect, to destroy those appropriations
+of revenue, which seem to limit the property, as the
+other laws had done the powers, of the crown. An
+opportunity for this purpose was taken, upon an
+application to Parliament for payment of the debts
+of the civil list; which in 1769 had amounted to
+513,000<i>l.</i> Such application had been made upon
+former occasions; but to do it in the former manner
+would by no means answer the present purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever the crown had come to the commons to
+desire a supply for the discharging of debts due on
+the civil list, it was always asked and granted with
+<!-- Page 533 --><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509" title="509" class="pagenum"></a>one of the three following qualifications; sometimes
+with all of them. Either it was stated, that the revenue
+had been diverted from its purposes by Parliament;
+or that those duties had fallen short of the
+sum for which they were given by Parliament, and
+that the intention of the legislature had not been fulfilled;
+or that the money required to discharge the
+civil list debt was to be raised chargeable on the
+civil list duties. In the reign of Queen Anne, the
+crown was found in debt. The lessening and granting
+away some part of her revenue by Parliament
+was alleged as the cause of that debt, and pleaded as
+an equitable ground, such it certainly was, for discharging
+it. It does not appear that the duties which
+were then applied to the ordinary government produced
+clear above 580,000<i>l.</i> a year; because, when
+they were afterwards granted to George the First,
+120,000<i>l.</i> was added to complete the whole to 700,000<i>l.</i>
+a year. Indeed it was then asserted, and, I have no
+doubt, truly, that for many years the net produce did
+not amount to above 550,000<i>l.</i> The queen's extraordinary
+charges were besides very considerable; equal,
+at least, to any we have known in our time. The application
+to Parliament was not for an absolute grant
+of money; but to empower the queen to raise it by
+borrowing upon the civil list funds.</p>
+
+<p>The civil list debt was twice paid in the reign of
+George the First. The money was granted upon the
+same plan which had been followed in the reign of
+Queen Anne. The civil list revenues were then
+mortgaged for the sum to be raised, and stood
+charged with the ransom of their own deliverance.</p>
+
+<p>George the Second received an addition to his civil
+list. Duties were granted for the purpose of raising
+<!-- Page 534 --><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510" title="510" class="pagenum"></a>800,000<i>l.</i> a year. It was not until he had reigned
+nineteen years, and after the last rebellion, that he
+called upon Parliament for a discharge of the civil
+list debt. The extraordinary charges brought on by
+the rebellion, account fully for the necessities of the
+crown. However, the extraordinary charges of government
+were not thought a ground fit to be relied
+on.</p>
+
+<p>A deficiency of the civil list duties for several years
+before was stated as the principal, if not the sole
+ground on which an application to Parliament could
+be justified. About this time the produce of these
+duties had fallen pretty low; and even upon an average
+of the whole reign they never produced 800,000<i>l.</i>
+a year clear to the treasury.</p>
+
+<p>That prince reigned fourteen years afterwards:
+not only no new demands were made; but with so
+much good order were his revenues and expenses
+regulated, that, although many parts of the establishment
+of the court were upon a larger and more liberal
+scale than they have been since, there was a considerable
+sum in hand, on his decease, amounting to about
+170,000<i>l.</i> applicable to the service of the civil list of
+his present Majesty. So that, if this reign commenced
+with a greater charge than usual, there was
+enough and more than enough, abundantly to supply
+all the extraordinary expense. That the civil list
+should have been exceeded in the two former reigns,
+especially in the reign of George the First, was not at
+all surprising. His revenue was but 700,000<i>l.</i> annually;
+if it ever produced so much clear. The prodigious
+and dangerous disaffection to the very being of
+the establishment, and the cause of a pretender then
+powerfully abetted from abroad, produced many de<!-- Page 535 --><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511" title="511" class="pagenum"></a>mands
+of an extraordinary nature both abroad and
+at home. Much management and great expenses
+were necessary. But the throne of no prince has
+stood upon more unshaken foundations than that of
+his present Majesty.</p>
+
+<p>To have exceeded the sum given for the civil list,
+and to have incurred a debt without special authority
+of Parliament, was <i>prima facie</i>, a criminal act: as
+such, ministers ought naturally rather to have withdrawn
+it from the inspection, than to have exposed it
+to the scrutiny of Parliament. Certainly they ought,
+of themselves, officially to have come armed with
+every sort of argument, which, by explaining, could
+excuse, a matter in itself of presumptive guilt. But
+the terrors of the House of Commons are no longer
+for ministers.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the peculiar character of the
+House of Commons, as trustee of the public purse,
+would have led them to call with a punctilious solicitude
+for every public account, and to have examined
+into them with the most rigorous accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>The capital use of an account is, that the reality of
+the charge, the reason of incurring it, and the justice
+and necessity of discharging it, should all appear antecedent
+to the payment. No man ever pays first, and
+calls for his account afterwards; because he would
+thereby let out of his hands the principal, and indeed
+only effectual, means of compelling a full and fair
+one. But, in national business, there is an additional
+reason for a previous production of every account.
+It is a check, perhaps the only one, upon a corrupt
+and prodigal use of public money. An account
+after payment is to no rational purpose an account.
+However, the House of Commons thought all these to
+<!-- Page 536 --><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512" title="512" class="pagenum"></a>be antiquated principles: they were of opinion, that
+the most Parliamentary way of proceeding was, to
+pay first what the court thought proper to demand,
+and to take its chance for an examination into accounts
+at some time of greater leisure.</p>
+
+<p>The nation had settled 800,000<i>l.</i> a year on the
+crown, as sufficient for the support of its dignity,
+upon the estimate of its own ministers. When ministers
+came to Parliament, and said that this allowance
+had not been sufficient for the purpose, and that
+they had incurred a debt of 500,000<i>l.</i>, would it not
+have been natural for Parliament first to have asked
+how, and by what means, their appropriated allowance
+came to be insufficient? Would it not have
+savored of some attention to justice, to have seen in
+what periods of administration this debt had been
+originally incurred; that they might discover, and
+if need were, animadvert on the persons who were
+found the most culpable? To put their hands upon
+such articles of expenditure as they thought improper
+or excessive, and to secure, in future, against
+such misapplication or exceeding? Accounts for any
+other purposes are but a matter of curiosity, and
+no genuine Parliamentary object. All the accounts
+which could answer any Parliamentary end were refused,
+or postponed by previous questions. Every
+idea of prevention was rejected, as conveying an improper
+suspicion of the ministers of the crown.</p>
+
+<p>When every loading account had been refused,
+many others were granted with sufficient facility.</p>
+
+<p>But with great candor also, the House was informed,
+that hardly any of them could be ready
+until the next session; some of them perhaps not
+so soon. But, in order firmly to establish the prece<!-- Page 537 --><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513" title="513" class="pagenum"></a>dent
+of <i>payment previous to account</i>, and to form it
+into a settled rule of the House, the god in the machine
+was brought down, nothing less than the wonder-working
+<i>law of Parliament</i>. It was alleged, that
+it is the law of Parliament, when any demand comes
+from the crown, that the House must go immediately
+into the committee of supply; in which committee it
+was allowed, that the production and examination of
+accounts would be quite proper and regular. It was
+therefore carried, that they should go into the committee
+without delay, and without accounts, in order
+to examine with great order and regularity things
+that could not possibly come before them. After this
+stroke of orderly and Parliamentary wit and humor,
+they went into the committee; and very generously
+voted the payment.</p>
+
+<p>There was a circumstance in that debate too remarkable
+to be overlooked. This debt of the civil list
+was all along argued upon the same footing as a debt
+of the state, contracted upon national authority. Its
+payment was urged as equally pressing upon the public
+faith and honor; and when the whole year's account
+was stated, in what is called <i>the budget</i>, the ministry
+valued themselves on the payment of so much
+public debt, just as if they had discharged 500,000<i>l.</i>
+of navy or exchequer bills. Though, in truth, their
+payment, from the sinking fund, of debt which was
+never contracted by Parliamentary authority, was, to
+all intents and purposes, so much debt incurred.
+But such is the present notion of public credit, and
+payment of debt. No wonder that it produces such
+effects.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was the House at all more attentive to a provident
+security against future, than it had been to a vin<!-- Page 538 --><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514" title="514" class="pagenum"></a>dictive
+retrospect to past mismanagements. I should
+have thought indeed that a ministerial promise, during
+their own continuance in office, might have been
+given, though this would have been but a poor security
+for the public. Mr. Pelham gave such an assurance,
+and he kept his word. But nothing was capable
+of extorting from our ministers anything which had
+the least resemblance to a promise of confining the
+expenses of the civil list within the limits which had
+been settled by Parliament. This reserve of theirs I
+look upon to be equivalent to the clearest declaration,
+that they were resolved upon a contrary course.</p>
+
+<p>However, to put the matter beyond all doubt, in
+the speech from the throne, after thanking Parliament
+for the relief so liberally granted, the ministers
+inform the two Houses, that they will <i>endeavor</i> to confine
+the expenses of the civil government&mdash;within
+what limits, think you? those which the law had prescribed?
+Not in the least&mdash;&quot;such limits as the <i>honor
+of the crown</i> can possibly admit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus they established an <i>arbitrary</i> standard for that
+dignity which Parliament had defined and limited to
+a <i>legal</i> standard. They gave themselves, under the
+lax and indeterminate idea of the <i>honor of the crown</i>,
+a full loose for all manner of dissipation, and all manner
+of corruption. This arbitrary standard they were
+not afraid to hold out to both Houses; while an idle
+and unoperative act of Parliament, estimating the dignity
+of the crown at 800,000<i>l.</i> and confining it to that
+sum, adds to the number of obsolete statutes which
+load the shelves of libraries, without any sort of advantage
+to the people.</p>
+
+<p>After this proceeding, I suppose that no man can
+be so weak as to think that the crown is limited to
+<!-- Page 539 --><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515" title="515" class="pagenum"></a>any settled allowance whatsoever. For if the ministry
+has 800,000<i>l.</i> a year by the law of the land; and
+if by the law of Parliament all the debts which exceed
+it are to be paid previously to the production of any
+account; I presume that this is equivalent to an income
+with no other limits than the abilities of the
+subject and the moderation of the court; that is to
+say, it is such an income as is possessed by every absolute
+monarch in Europe. It amounts, as a person
+of great ability said in the debate, to an unlimited
+power of drawing upon the sinking fund. Its effect
+on the public credit of this kingdom must be obvious;
+for in vain is the sinking fund the great buttress of all
+the rest, if it be in the power of the ministry to resort
+to it for the payment of any debts which they may
+choose to incur, under the name of the civil list, and
+through the medium of a committee, which thinks itself
+obliged by law to vote supplies without any other
+account than that of the mere existence of the debt.</p>
+
+<p>Five hundred thousand pounds is a serious sum.
+But it is nothing to the prolific principle upon which
+the sum was voted: a principle that may be well
+called, <i>the fruitful mother of an hundred more</i>. Neither
+is the damage to public credit of very great consequence,
+when compared with that which results to
+public morals and to the safety of the constitution,
+from the exhaustless mine of corruption opened by
+the precedent, and to be wrought by the principle, of
+the late payment of the debts of the civil list. The
+power of discretionary disqualification by one law of
+Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of
+the civil list by another law of Parliament, if suffered
+to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards
+and terrors as will make Parliament the best
+<!-- Page 540 --><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516" title="516" class="pagenum"></a>appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever
+was invented by the wit of man. This is felt. The
+quarrel is begun between the representatives and the
+people. The court faction have at length committed
+them.</p>
+
+<p>In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed,
+and the boldest staggered. The circumstances are in
+a great measure new. We have hardly any landmarks
+from the wisdom of our ancestors, to guide us.
+At best we can only follow the spirit of their proceeding
+in other cases. I know the diligence with which
+my observations on our public disorders have been
+made; I am very sure of the integrity of the motives
+on which they are published; I cannot be equally
+confident in any plan for the absolute cure of those
+disorders, or for their certain future prevention. My
+aim is to bring this matter into more public discussion.
+Let the sagacity of others work upon it. It is
+not uncommon for medical writers to describe histories
+of diseases very accurately, on whose cure they
+can say but very little.</p>
+
+<p>The first ideas which generally suggest themselves,
+for the cure of Parliamentary disorders, are, to shorten
+the duration of Parliaments; and to disqualify
+all, or a great number of placemen, from a seat in
+the House of Commons. Whatever efficacy there
+may be in those remedies, I am sure in the present
+state of things it is impossible to apply them. A
+restoration of the right of free election is a preliminary
+indispensable to every other reformation. What
+alterations ought afterwards to be made in the constitution,
+is a matter of deep and difficult research.</p>
+
+<p>If I wrote merely to please the popular palate, it
+would indeed be as little troublesome to me as to an<!-- Page 541 --><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517" title="517" class="pagenum"></a>other,
+to extol these remedies, so famous in speculation,
+but to which their greatest admirers have never
+attempted seriously to resort in practice. I confess
+then, that I have no sort of reliance upon either a triennial
+Parliament, or a place-bill. With regard to
+the former, perhaps it might rather serve to counteract,
+than to promote the ends that are proposed by it.
+To say nothing of the horrible disorders among the
+people attending frequent elections, I should be fearful
+of committing, every three years, the independent
+gentlemen of the country into a contest with the
+treasury. It is easy to see which of the contending
+parties would be ruined first. Whoever has taken a
+careful view of public proceedings, so as to endeavor
+to ground his speculations on his experience, must
+have observed how prodigiously greater the power of
+ministry is in the first and last session of a Parliament,
+than it is in the intermediate period, when
+members sit a little firm on their seats. The persons
+of the greatest Parliamentary experience, with whom
+I have conversed, did constantly, in canvassing the
+fate of questions, allow something to the court side,
+upon account of the elections depending or imminent.
+The evil complained of, if it exists in the present
+state of things, would hardly be removed by a
+triennial Parliament: for, unless the influence of
+government in elections can be entirely taken away,
+the more frequently they return, the more they will
+harass private independence; the more generally
+men will be compelled to fly to the settled systematic
+interest of government, and to the resources of a
+boundless civil list. Certainly something may be
+done, and ought to be done, towards lessening that
+influence in elections; and this will be necessary up<!-- Page 542 --><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518" title="518" class="pagenum"></a>on
+a plan either of longer or shorter duration of Parliament.
+But nothing can so perfectly remove the
+evil, as not to render such contentions, too frequently
+repeated, utterly ruinous, first to independence of
+fortune, and then to independence of spirit. As I
+am only giving an opinion on this point, and not at
+all debating it in an adverse line, I hope I may be
+excused in another observation. With great truth I
+may aver, that I never remember to have talked on
+this subject with any man much conversant with
+public business, who considered short Parliaments as
+a real improvement of the constitution. Gentlemen,
+warm in a popular cause, are ready enough to attribute
+all the declarations of such persons to corrupt
+motives. But the habit of affairs, if, on one hand, it
+tends to corrupt the mind, furnishes it, on the other,
+with the means of better information. The authority
+of such persons will always have some weight. It
+may stand upon a par with the speculations of those
+who are less practised in business; and who, with
+perhaps purer intentions, have not so effectual means
+of judging. It is besides an effect of vulgar and puerile
+malignity to imagine, that every statesman is of
+course corrupt; and that his opinion, upon every
+constitutional point, is solely formed upon some sinister
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>The next favorite remedy is a place-bill. The same
+principle guides in both; I mean, the opinion which
+is entertained by many, of the infallibility of laws
+and regulations, in the cure of public distempers.
+Without being as unreasonably doubtful as many are
+unwisely confident, I will only say, that this also is
+a matter very well worthy of serious and mature reflection.
+It is not easy to foresee, what the effect
+<!-- Page 543 --><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519" title="519" class="pagenum"></a>would be, of disconnecting with Parliament the greatest
+part of those who hold civil employments, and of
+such mighty and important bodies as the military and
+naval establishments. It were better, perhaps, that
+they should have a corrupt interest in the forms of
+the constitution, than that they should have none at
+all. This is a question altogether different from the
+disqualification of a particular description of revenue-officers
+from seats in Parliament; or, perhaps, of all
+the lower sorts of them from votes in elections. In
+the former case, only the few are affected; in the latter,
+only the inconsiderable. But a great official, a
+great professional, a great military and naval interest,
+all necessarily comprehending many people of the
+first weight, ability, wealth, and spirit, has been gradually
+formed in the kingdom. These new interests
+must be let into a share of representation, else possibly
+they may be inclined to destroy those institutions
+of which they are not permitted to partake.
+This is not a thing to be trifled with; nor is it every
+well-meaning man that is fit to put his hands to it.
+Many other serious considerations occur. I do not
+open them here, because they are not directly to my
+purpose; proposing only to give the reader some taste
+of the difficulties that attend all capital changes in
+the constitution; just to hint the uncertainty, to say
+no worse, of being able to prevent the court, as long
+as it has the means of influence abundantly in its
+power, of applying that influence to Parliament; and
+perhaps, if the public method were precluded, of
+doing it in some worse and more dangerous method.
+Underhand and oblique ways would be studied.
+The science of evasion, already tolerably understood,
+would then be brought to the greatest perfection.
+<!-- Page 544 --><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520" title="520" class="pagenum"></a>It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know how
+much of an evil ought to be tolerated; lest, by attempting
+a degree of purity impracticable in degenerate
+times and manners, instead of cutting off the
+subsisting ill-practices, new corruptions might be produced
+for the concealment and security of the old.
+It were better, undoubtedly, that no influence at all
+could affect the mind of a member of Parliament.
+But of all modes of influence, in my opinion, a place
+under the government is the least disgraceful to the
+man who holds it, and by far the most safe to the
+country. I would not shut out that sort of influence
+which is open and visible, which is connected with
+the dignity and the service of the state, when it is
+not in my power to prevent the influence of contracts,
+of subscriptions, of direct bribery, and those innumerable
+methods of clandestine corruption, which are
+abundantly in the hands of the court, and which will
+be applied as long as these means of corruption,
+and the disposition to be corrupted, have existence
+amongst us. Our constitution stands on a nice equipoise,
+with steep precipices and deep waters upon all
+sides of it. In removing it from a dangerous leaning
+towards one side, there may be a risk of oversetting
+it on the other. Every project of a material change
+in a government so complicated as ours, combined at
+the same time with external circumstances still more
+complicated, is a matter full of difficulties: in which
+a considerate man will not be too ready to decide; a
+prudent man too ready to undertake; or an honest
+man too ready to promise. They do not respect the
+public nor themselves, who engage for more than
+they are sure that they ought to attempt, or that they
+are able to perform. These are my sentiments, weak
+<!-- Page 545 --><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521" title="521" class="pagenum"></a>perhaps, but honest and unbiassed; and submitted
+entirely to the opinion of grave men, well-affected to
+the constitution of their country, and of experience
+in what may best promote or hurt it.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, in the situation in which we stand, with an
+immense revenue, an enormous debt, mighty establishments,
+government itself a great banker and a
+great merchant, I see no other way for the preservation
+of a decent attention to public interest in the
+representatives, but <i>the interposition of the body of the
+people itself</i>, whenever it shall appear, by some flagrant
+and notorious act, by some capital innovation, that
+these representatives are going to overleap the fences
+of the law, and to introduce an arbitrary power.
+This interposition is a most unpleasant remedy. But,
+if it be a legal remedy, it is intended on some occasion
+to be used; to be used then only, when it is
+evident that nothing else can hold the constitution
+to its true principles.</p>
+
+<p>The distempers of monarchy were the great subjects
+of apprehension and redress, in the last century;
+in this the distempers of Parliament. It is
+not in Parliament alone that the remedy for Parliamentary
+disorders can be completed; hardly indeed
+can it begin there. Until a confidence in government
+is re-established, the people ought to be excited
+to a more strict and detailed attention to the conduct
+of their representatives. Standards for judging more
+systematically upon their conduct ought to be settled
+in the meetings of counties and corporations. Frequent
+and correct lists of the voters in all important
+questions ought to be procured.</p>
+
+<p>By such means something may be done. By such
+means it may appear who those are, that, by an indis<!-- Page 546 --><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522" title="522" class="pagenum"></a>criminate
+support of all administrations, have totally
+banished all integrity and confidence out of public
+proceedings; have confounded the best men with the
+worst; and weakened and dissolved, instead of
+strengthening and compacting, the general frame of
+government. If any person is more concerned for
+government and order, than for the liberties of his
+country; even he is equally concerned to put an end
+to this course of indiscriminate support. It is this
+blind and undistinguishing support, that feeds the
+spring of those very disorders, by which he is frightened
+into the arms of the faction which contains in
+itself the source of all disorders, by enfeebling all the
+visible and regular authority of the state. The distemper
+is increased by his injudicious and preposterous
+endeavors, or pretences, for the cure of it.</p>
+
+<p>An exterior administration, chosen for its impotency,
+or after it is chosen purposely rendered impotent,
+in order to be rendered subservient, will not be
+obeyed. The laws themselves will not be respected,
+when those who execute them are despised: and they
+will be despised, when their power is not immediate
+from the crown, or natural in the kingdom. Never
+were ministers better supported in Parliament. Parliamentary
+support comes and goes with office, totally
+regardless of the man, or the merit. Is government
+strengthened? It grows weaker and weaker. The
+popular torrent gains upon it every hour. Let us
+learn from our experience. It is not support that is
+wanting to government, but reformation. When
+ministry rests upon public opinion, it is not indeed
+built upon a rock of adamant; it has, however, some
+stability. But when it stands upon private humor,
+its structure is of stubble, and its foundation is on
+<!-- Page 547 --><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523" title="523" class="pagenum"></a>quicksand. I repeat it again,&mdash;He that supports every
+administration subverts all government. The
+reason is this: The whole business in which a court
+usually takes an interest goes on at present equally
+well, in whatever hands, whether high or low, wise
+or foolish, scandalous or reputable; there is nothing
+therefore to hold it firm to any one body of men, or
+to any one consistent scheme of politics. Nothing
+interposes, to prevent the full operation of all the caprices
+and all the passions of a court upon the servants
+of the public. The system of administration is
+open to continual shocks and changes, upon the principles
+of the meanest cabal, and the most contemptible
+intrigue. Nothing can be solid and permanent. All
+good men at length fly with horror from such a service.
+Men of rank and ability, with the spirit which
+ought to animate such men in a free state, while they
+decline the jurisdiction of dark cabal on their actions
+and their fortunes, will, for both, cheerfully put
+themselves upon their country. They will trust an
+inquisitive and distinguishing Parliament; because it
+does inquire, and does distinguish. If they act well,
+they know, that, in such a Parliament they will be
+supported against any intrigue; if they act ill, they
+know that no intrigue can protect them. This situation,
+however awful, is honorable. But in one hour,
+and in the self-same assembly, without any assigned
+or assignable cause, to be precipitated from the highest
+authority to the most marked neglect, possibly into
+the greatest peril of life and reputation, is a situation
+full of danger, and destitute of honor. It will
+be shunned equally by every man of prudence, and
+every man of spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the consequences of the division of court
+<!-- Page 548 --><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524" title="524" class="pagenum"></a>from the administration; and of the division of public
+men among themselves. By the former of these,
+lawful government is undone; by the latter, all opposition
+to lawless power is rendered impotent. Government
+may in a great measure be restored, if any
+considerable bodies of men have honesty and resolution
+enough never to accept administration, unless
+this garrison of <i>king's men</i>, which is stationed, as in a
+citadel, to control and enslave it, be entirely broken
+and disbanded, and every work they have thrown up
+be levelled with the ground. The disposition of public
+men to keep this corps together, and to act under
+it, or to co-operate with it, is a touchstone by which
+every administration ought in future to be tried.
+There has not been one which has not sufficiently experienced
+the utter incompatibility of that faction
+with the public peace, and with all the ends of good
+government: since, if they opposed it, they soon lost
+every power of serving the crown; if they submitted
+to it, they lost all the esteem of their country. Until
+ministers give to the public a full proof of their entire
+alienation from that system, however plausible their
+pretences, we may be sure they are more intent on
+the emoluments than the duties of office. If they refuse
+to give this proof, we know of what stuff they
+are made. In this particular, it ought to be the electors'
+business to look to their representatives. The
+electors ought to esteem it no less culpable in their
+member to give a single vote in Parliament to such
+an administration, than to take an office under it; to
+endure it, than to act in it. The notorious infidelity
+and versatility of members of Parliament, in their
+opinions of men and things, ought in a particular
+manner to be considered by the electors in the in<!-- Page 549 --><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525" title="525" class="pagenum"></a>quiry
+which is recommended to them. This is one
+of the principal holdings of that destructive system,
+which has endeavored to unhinge all the virtuous,
+honorable, and useful connections in the kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>This cabal has, with great success, propagated a
+doctrine which serves for a color to those acts of
+treachery; and whilst it receives any degree of countenance
+it will be utterly senseless to look for a vigorous
+opposition to the court party. The doctrine is
+this: That all political connections are in their nature
+factious, and as such ought to be dissipated and
+destroyed; and that the rule for forming administrations
+is more personal ability, rated by the judgment
+of this cabal upon it, and taken by draughts from
+every division and denomination of public men. This
+decree was solemnly promulgated by the head of
+the court corps, the Earl of Bute himself, in a speech
+which he made, in the year 1766, against the then
+administration, the only administration which he has
+ever been known directly and publicly to oppose.</p>
+
+<p>It is indeed in no way wonderful, that such persons
+should make such declarations. That connection and
+faction are equivalent terms, is an opinion which has
+been carefully inculcated at all times by unconstitutional
+statesmen. The reason is evident. Whilst men
+are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate
+the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled
+to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it
+with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed,
+without concert, order, or discipline, communication
+is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance
+impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with
+each other's principles, nor experienced in each other's
+talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habi<!-- Page 550 --><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526" title="526" class="pagenum"></a>tudes
+and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no
+personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest,
+subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible
+that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance,
+or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable
+man, by adding to the weight of the
+whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest
+talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. No
+man, who is not inflamed by vainglory into enthusiasm,
+can flatter himself that his single, unsupported,
+desultory, unsystematic endeavors are of power to defeat
+the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious
+citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate;
+else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied
+sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.</p>
+
+<p>It is not enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth,
+that a man means well to his country;
+it is not enough that in his single person he never
+did an evil act, but always voted according to his
+conscience, and even harangued against every design
+which he apprehended to be prejudicial to the interests
+of his country. This innoxious and ineffectual
+character, that seems formed upon a plan of apology
+and disculpation, falls miserably short of the mark of
+public duty. That duty demands and requires, that
+what is right should not only be made known, but
+made prevalent; that what is evil should not only be
+detected, but defeated. When the public man omits
+to put himself in a situation of doing his duty with
+effect, it is an omission that frustrates the purposes
+of his trust almost as much as if he had formally betrayed
+it. It is surely no very rational account of a
+man's life, that he has always acted right; but has
+taken special care, to act in such a manner that his
+<!-- Page 551 --><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527" title="527" class="pagenum"></a>endeavors could not possibly be productive of any
+consequence.</p>
+
+<p>I do not wonder that the behavior of many parties
+should have made persons of tender and scrupulous
+virtue somewhat out of humor with all sorts of
+connection in politics. I admit that people frequently
+acquire in such confederacies a narrow, bigoted, and
+prescriptive spirit; that they are apt to sink the idea
+of the general good in this circumscribed and partial
+interest. But, where duty renders a critical situation
+a necessary one, it is our business to keep free
+from the evils attendant upon it; and not to fly from
+the situation itself. If a fortress is seated in an unwholesome
+air, an officer of the garrison is obliged to
+be attentive to his health, but he must not desert his
+station. Every profession, not excepting the glorious
+one of a soldier, or the sacred one of a priest, is
+liable to its own particular vices; which, however,
+form no argument against those ways of life; nor are
+the vices themselves inevitable to every individual in
+those professions. Of such a nature are connections
+in politics; essentially necessary for the full performance
+of our public duty, accidentally liable to degenerate
+into faction. Commonwealths are made of
+families, free commonwealths of parties also; and we
+may as well affirm, that our natural regards and ties
+of blood tend inevitably to make men bad citizens, as
+that the bonds of our party weaken those by which
+we are held to our country.</p>
+
+<p>Some legislators went so far as to make neutrality
+in party a crime against the state. I do not know
+whether this might not have been rather to overstrain
+the principle. Certain it is, the best patriots in the
+greatest commonwealths have always commended
+<!-- Page 552 --><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528" title="528" class="pagenum"></a>and promoted such connections. <i>Idem sentire de
+republica</i>, was with them a principal ground of friendship
+and attachment; nor do I know any other capable
+of forming firmer, dearer, more pleasing, more
+honorable, and more virtuous habitudes. The Romans
+carried this principle a great way. Even the
+holding of offices together, the disposition of which
+arose from chance, not selection, gave rise to a relation
+which continued for life. It was called <i>necessitudo
+sortis</i>; and it was looked upon with a sacred
+reverence. Breaches of any of these kinds of civil
+relation were considered as acts of the most distinguished
+turpitude. The whole people was distributed
+into political societies, in which they acted in support
+of such interests in the state as they severally affected.
+For it was then thought no crime to endeavor
+by every honest means to advance to superiority and
+power those of your own sentiments and opinions.
+This wise people was far from imagining that those
+connections had no tie, and obliged to no duty;
+but that men might quit them without shame, upon
+every call of interest. They believed private honor
+to be the great foundation of public trust; that friendship
+was no mean step towards patriotism; that he
+who, in the common intercourse of life, showed he
+regarded somebody besides himself, when he came to
+act in a public situation, might probably consult some
+other interest than his own. Never may we become
+<i>plus sages que les sages</i>, as the French comedian has
+happily expressed it, wiser than all the wise and good
+men who have lived before us. It was their wish, to
+see public and private virtues, not dissonant and jarring,
+and mutually destructive, but harmoniously
+combined, growing out of one another in a noble
+<!-- Page 553 --><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529" title="529" class="pagenum"></a>and orderly gradation, reciprocally supporting and
+supported. In one of the most fortunate periods of
+our history this country was governed by a <i>connection</i>;
+I mean, the great connection of Whigs in the reign
+of Queen Anne. They were complimented upon the
+principle of this connection by a poet who was in high
+esteem with them. Addison, who knew their sentiments,
+could not praise them for what they considered
+as no proper subject of commendation. As a poet who
+knew his business, he could not applaud them for
+a thing which in general estimation was not highly
+reputable. Addressing himself to Britain,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>&quot;Thy favorites grow not up by fortune's sport,</div>
+<div>Or from the crimes or follies of a court.</div>
+<div>On the firm basis of desert they rise,</div>
+<div>From long-tried faith, and friendship's holy ties.&quot;</div>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>The Whigs of those days believed that the only
+proper method of rising into power was through hard
+essays of practised friendship and experimented fidelity.
+At that time it was not imagined, that patriotism
+was a bloody idol, which required the sacrifice of
+children and parents, or dearest connections in private
+life, and of all the virtues that rise from those
+relations. They were not of that ingenious paradoxical
+morality, to imagine that a spirit of moderation
+was properly shown in patiently bearing the sufferings
+of your friends; or that disinterestedness was
+clearly manifested at the expense of other people's
+fortune. They believed that no men could act with
+effect, who did not act in concert; that no men could
+act in concert, who did not act with confidence; that
+no men could act with confidence, who were not
+bound together by common opinions, common affections,
+and common interests.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 554 --><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530" title="530" class="pagenum"></a>These wise men, for such I must call Lord Sunderland,
+Lord Godolphin, Lord Somers, and Lord Marlborough,
+were too well principled in these maxims
+upon which the whole fabric of public strength is
+built, to be blown off their ground by the breath of
+every childish talker. They were not afraid that
+they should be called an ambitious junto; or that
+their resolution to stand or fall together should, by
+placemen, be interpreted into a scuffle for places.</p>
+
+<p>Party is a body of men united for promoting by
+their joint endeavors the national interest upon some
+particular principle in which they are all agreed.
+For my part, I find it impossible to conceive, that
+any one believes in his own politics, or thinks them
+to be of any weight, who refuses to adopt the means
+of having them reduced into practice. It is the business
+of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper
+ends of government. It is the business of the politician,
+who is the philosopher in action, to find out
+proper means towards those ends, and to employ
+them with effect. Therefore every honorable connection
+will avow it is their first purpose, to pursue
+every just method to put the men who hold their
+opinions into such a condition as may enable them to
+carry their common plans into execution, with all the
+power and authority of the state. As this power is
+attached to certain situations, it is their duty to contend
+for these situations. Without a proscription of
+others, they are bound to give to their own party the
+preference in all things; and by no means, for private
+considerations, to accept any offers of power in
+which the whole body is not included; nor to suffer
+themselves to be led, or to be controlled, or to be
+overbalanced, in office or in council, by those who
+<!-- Page 555 --><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531" title="531" class="pagenum"></a>contradict the very fundamental principles on which
+their party is formed, and even those upon which
+every fair connection must stand. Such a generous
+contention for power, on such manly and honorable
+maxims, will easily be distinguished from the mean
+and interested struggle for place and emolument.
+The very style of such persons will serve to discriminate
+them from those numberless impostors, who
+have deluded the ignorant with professions incompatible
+with human practice, and have afterwards incensed
+them by practices below the level of vulgar
+rectitude.</p>
+
+<p>It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow
+morals, that their maxims have a plausible air:
+and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles.
+They are light and portable. They are as current
+as copper coin; and about as valuable. They
+serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and
+they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the
+best. Of this stamp is the cant of <i>Not men, but measures</i>;
+a sort of charm by which many people get loose
+from every honorable engagement. When I see a
+man acting this desultory and disconnected part, with
+as much detriment to his own fortune as prejudice to
+the cause of any party, I am not persuaded that he is
+right; but I am ready to believe he is in earnest. I
+respect virtue in all its situations; even when it is
+found in the unsuitable company of weakness. I lament
+to see qualities, rare and valuable, squandered
+away without any public utility. But when a gentleman
+with great visible emoluments abandons the
+party in which he has long acted, and tells you, it is
+because he proceeds upon his own judgment; that he
+acts on the merits of the several measures as they
+<!-- Page 556 --><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532" title="532" class="pagenum"></a>arise; and that he is obliged to follow his own conscience,
+and not that of others; he gives reasons
+which it is impossible to controvert, and discovers a
+character which it is impossible to mistake. What
+shall we think of him who never differed from a certain
+set of men until the moment they lost their
+power, and who never agreed with them in a single
+instance afterwards? Would not such a coincidence
+of interest and opinion be rather fortunate? Would
+it not be an extraordinary cast upon the dice, that a
+man's connections should degenerate into faction,
+precisely at the critical moment when they lose their
+power, or he accepts a place? When people desert
+their connections, the desertion is a manifest <i>fact</i>,
+upon which a direct simple issue lies, triable by plain
+men. Whether a <i>measure</i> of government be right or
+wrong, is <i>no matter of fact</i>, but a mere affair of opinion,
+on which men may, as they do, dispute and wrangle
+without end. But whether the individual <i>thinks</i>
+the measure right or wrong, is a point at still a
+greater distance from the reach of all human decision.
+It is therefore very convenient to politicians,
+not to put the judgment of their conduct on overt
+acts, cognizable in any ordinary court, but upon such
+matter as can be triable only in that secret tribunal,
+where they are sure of being heard with favor, or
+where at worst the sentence will be only private whipping.</p>
+
+<p>I believe the reader would wish to find no substance
+in a doctrine which has a tendency to destroy
+all test of character as deduced from conduct. He
+will therefore excuse my adding something more,
+towards the further clearing up a point, which the
+great convenience of obscurity to dishonesty has been
+<!-- Page 557 --><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533" title="533" class="pagenum"></a>able to cover with some degree of darkness and
+doubt.</p>
+
+<p>In order to throw an odium on political connection,
+those politicians suppose it a necessary incident
+to it, that you are blindly to follow the opinions of
+your party, when in direct opposition to your own
+clear ideas; a degree of servitude that no worthy
+man could bear the thought of submitting to; and
+such as, I believe, no connections (except some court
+factions) ever could be so senselessly tyrannical as to
+impose. Men thinking freely, will, in particular instances,
+think differently. But still as the greater
+part of the measures which arise in the course of
+public business are related to, or dependent on,
+some great, <i>leading</i>, <i>general principles in government</i>, a
+man must be peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of
+his political company, if he does not agree with them
+at least nine times in ten. If he does not concur in
+these general principles upon which the party is
+founded, and which necessarily draw on a concurrence
+in their application, he ought from the beginning
+to have chosen some other, more conformable to
+his opinions. When the question is in its nature
+doubtful, or not very material, the modesty which
+becomes an individual, and, (in spite of our court
+moralists) that partiality which becomes a well-chosen
+friendship, will frequently bring on an acquiescence
+in the general sentiment. Thus the disagreement
+will naturally be rare; it will be only enough to indulge
+freedom, without violating concord, or disturbing
+arrangement. And this is all that ever was required
+for a character of the greatest uniformity and
+steadiness in connection. How men can proceed without
+any connection at all, is to me utterly incompre<!-- Page 558 --><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534" title="534" class="pagenum"></a>hensible.
+Of what sort of materials must that man
+be made, how must he be tempered and put together,
+who can sit whole years in Parliament, with five hundred
+and fifty of his fellow-citizens, amidst the storm
+of such tempestuous passions, in the sharp conflict of
+so many wits, and tempers, and characters, in the
+agitation of such mighty questions, in the discussion
+of such vast and ponderous interests, without seeing
+any one sort of men, whose character, conduct, or
+disposition, would lead him to associate himself with
+them, to aid and be aided, in any one system of public
+utility?</p>
+
+<p>I remember an old scholastic aphorism, which says,
+&quot;that the man who lives wholly detached from others,
+must be either an angel or a devil.&quot; When I see in
+any of these detached gentlemen of our times the angelic
+purity, power, and beneficence, I shall admit
+them to be angels. In the mean time we are born
+only to be men. We shall do enough if we form ourselves
+to be good ones. It is therefore our business
+carefully to cultivate in our minds, to rear to the
+most perfect vigor and maturity, every sort of generous
+and honest feeling, that belongs to our nature.
+To bring the dispositions that are lovely in private life
+into the service and conduct of the commonwealth;
+so to be patriots, as not to forget we are gentlemen.
+To cultivate friendships, and to incur enmities. To
+have both strong, but both selected: in the one, to be
+placable; in the other immovable. To model our
+principles to our duties and our situation. To be
+fully persuaded, that all virtue which is impracticable
+is spurious; and rather to run the risk of falling into
+faults in a course which leads us to act with effect
+and energy, than to loiter out our days without blame,
+<!-- Page 559 --><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535" title="535" class="pagenum"></a>and without use. Public life is a situation of power
+and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps
+upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the
+enemy.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, a time for all things. It is not
+every conjuncture which calls with equal force upon
+the activity of honest men; but critical exigencies
+now and then arise; and I am mistaken, if this be
+not one of them. Men will see the necessity of honest
+combination; but they may see it when it is too
+late. They may embody, when it will be ruinous to
+themselves, and of no advantage to the country;
+when, for want of such a timely union as may enable
+them to oppose in favor of the laws, with the laws on
+their side, they may at length find themselves under
+the necessity of conspiring, instead of consulting.
+The law, for which they stand, may become a weapon
+in the hands of its bitterest enemies; and they will
+be cast, at length, into that miserable alternative between
+slavery and civil confusion, which no good
+man can look upon without horror; an alternative in
+which it is impossible he should take either part,
+with a conscience perfectly at repose. To keep that
+situation of guilt and remorse at the utmost distance
+is, therefore, our first obligation. Early activity may
+prevent late and fruitless violence. As yet we work
+in the light. The scheme of the enemies of public
+tranquillity has disarranged, it has not destroyed us.</p>
+
+<p>If the reader believes that there really exists such
+a faction as I have described; a faction ruling by the
+private inclinations of a court, against the general
+sense of the people; and that this faction, whilst it
+pursues a scheme for undermining all the foundations
+of our freedom, weakens (for the present at
+<!-- Page 560 --><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536" title="536" class="pagenum"></a>least) all the powers of executory government, rendering
+us abroad contemptible, and at home distracted;
+he will believe also, that nothing but a firm combination
+of public men against this body, and that,
+too, supported by the hearty concurrence of the people
+at large, can possibly get the better of it. The
+people will see the necessity of restoring public men
+to an attention to the public opinion, and of restoring
+the constitution to its original principles. Above all,
+they will endeavor to keep the House of Commons
+from assuming a character which does not belong to
+it. They will endeavor to keep that House, for its
+existence, for its powers, and its privileges, as independent
+of every other, and as dependent upon themselves,
+as possible. This servitude is to a House of
+Commons (like obedience to the Divine law) &quot;perfect
+freedom.&quot; For if they once quit this natural,
+rational, and liberal obedience, having deserted the
+only proper foundation of their power, they must
+seek a support in an abject and unnatural dependence
+somewhere else. When, through the medium
+of this just connection with their constituents, the
+genuine dignity of the House of Commons is restored,
+it will begin to think of casting from it, with
+scorn, as badges of servility, all the false ornaments
+of illegal power, with which it has been, for some
+time, disgraced. It will begin to think of its old office
+of CONTROL. It will not suffer that last of evils
+to predominate in the country: men without popular
+confidence, public opinion, natural connection, or
+mutual trust, invested with all the powers of government.</p>
+
+<p>When they have learned this lesson themselves,
+they will be willing and able to teach the court, that
+<!-- Page 561 --><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537" title="537" class="pagenum"></a>it is the true interest of the prince to have but one
+administration; and that one composed of those who
+recommend themselves to their sovereign through
+the opinion of their country, and not by their obsequiousness
+to a favorite. Such men will serve their
+sovereign with affection and fidelity; because his
+choice of them, upon such principles, is a compliment
+to their virtue. They will be able to serve him effectually;
+because they will add the weight of the country
+to the force of the executory power. They will
+be able to serve their king with dignity; because
+they will never abuse his name to the gratification of
+their private spleen or avarice. This, with allowances
+for human frailty, may probably be the general
+character of a ministry, which thinks itself accountable
+to the House of Commons; when the House of
+Commons thinks itself accountable to its constituents.
+If other ideas should prevail, things must remain in
+their present confusion, until they are hurried into
+all the rage of civil violence, or until they sink into
+the dead repose of despotism.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> M&eacute;m. de Sully, tom. i. p. 133.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> &quot;Uxor Hugonis de Nevill dat Domino Regi ducentas Gallinas,
+eo quod possit jacere una nocte cum Domino suo Hugone de Nevill.&quot;&mdash;Maddox,
+Hist. Exch. c. xiii. p. 326.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> Sentiments of an Honest Man.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> See the political writings of the late Dr. Brown, and many
+others.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3>END OF VOL. I.</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable
+Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12), by Edmund Burke
+
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+</body>
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+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund
+Burke, Vol. I. (of 12), by Edmund Burke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12)
+
+Author: Edmund Burke
+
+Release Date: March 27, 2005 [EBook #15043]
+[Date last updated: May 5, 2006]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDMUND BURKE, VOL. I. (OF 12) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Michael Punch and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from
+images generously made available by the Bibliotheque
+nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BURKE'S WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME THE FIRST
+
+
+[Illustration: EDMUND BURKE.]
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS
+
+OF
+
+THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
+
+EDMUND BURKE
+
+
+IN TWELVE VOLUMES
+
+
+VOLUME THE FIRST
+
+
+[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms.]
+
+
+London
+JOHN C. NIMMO
+14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
+MDCCCLXXXVII
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER, PREFIXED TO THE FIRST OCTAVO EDITION      v
+
+ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND OCTAVO EDITION                          xvii
+
+A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY: OR, A VIEW OF THE MISERIES AND
+  EVILS ARISING TO MANKIND FROM EVERY SPECIES OF ARTIFICIAL SOCIETY    1
+
+A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF THE SUBLIME
+  AND BEAUTIFUL; WITH AN INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE CONCERNING TASTE      67
+
+A SHORT ACCOUNT OF A LATE SHORT ADMINISTRATION                       263
+
+OBSERVATIONS ON A LATE PUBLICATION, INTITULED,
+  "THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION"                                  269
+
+THOUGHTS ON THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS                     433
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+TO THE READER.[1]
+
+
+The late Mr. Burke, from a principle of unaffected humility, which they
+who were the most intimately acquainted with his character best know to
+have been in his estimation one of the most important moral duties,
+never himself made any collection of the various publications with
+which, during a period of forty years, he adorned and enriched the
+literature of this country. When, however, the rapid and unexampled
+demand for his "Reflections on the Revolution in France" had
+unequivocally testified his celebrity as a writer, some of his friends
+so far prevailed upon him, that he permitted them to put forth a regular
+edition of his works. Accordingly, three volumes in quarto appeared
+under that title in 1792, printed for the late Mr. Dodsley. That
+edition, therefore, has been made the foundation of the present, for
+which a form has been chosen better adapted to public convenience. Such
+errors of the press as have been discovered in it are here rectified: in
+other respects it is faithfully followed, except that in one instance
+an accident of little moment has occasioned a slight deviation from the
+strict chronological arrangement, and that, on the other hand, a speech
+of conspicuous excellence, on his declining the poll at Bristol, in
+1780, is here, for the first time, inserted in its proper place.
+
+As the activity of the author's mind, and the lively interest which he
+took in the welfare of his country, ceased only with his life, many
+subsequent productions issued from his pen, which were received in a
+manner corresponding with his distinguished reputation. He wrote also
+various tracts, of a less popular description, which he designed for
+private circulation in quarters where he supposed they might produce
+most benefit to the community, but which, with some other papers, have
+been printed since his death, from copies which he left behind him
+fairly transcribed, and most of them corrected as for the press. All
+these, now first collected together, form the contents of the last two
+volumes.[2] They are disposed in chronological order, with the exception
+of the "Preface to Brissot's Address," which having appeared in the
+author's lifetime, and from delicacy not being avowed by him, did not
+come within the plan of this edition, but has been placed at the end of
+the last volume, on its being found deficient in its just bulk.
+
+The several posthumous publications, as they from time to time made
+their appearance, were accompanied by appropriate prefaces. These,
+however, as they were principally intended for temporary purposes, have
+been omitted. Some few explanations only, which they contained, seem
+here to be necessary.
+
+The "Observations on the Conduct of the Minority" in the Session of 1793
+had been written and sent by Mr. Burke as a paper entirely and strictly
+confidential; but it crept surreptitiously into the world, through the
+fraud and treachery of the man whom he had employed to transcribe it,
+and, as usually happens in such cases, came forth in a very mangled
+state, under a false title, and without the introductory letter. The
+friends of the author, without waiting to consult him, instantly
+obtained an injunction from the Court of Chancery to stop the sale. What
+he himself felt, on receiving intelligence of the injury done him by one
+from whom his kindness deserved a very different return, will be best
+conveyed in his own words. The following is an extract of a letter to a
+friend, which he dictated on this subject from a sick-bed.
+
+BATH, 15th Feb., 1797.
+
+"My Dear Laurence,--
+
+"On the appearance of the advertisement, all newspapers and all letters
+have been kept back from me till this time. Mrs. Burke opened yours,
+and finding that all the measures in the power of Dr. King, yourself,
+and Mr. Woodford, had been taken to suppress the publication, she
+ventured to deliver me the letters to-day, which were read to me in my
+bed, about two o'clock.
+
+"This affair does vex me; but I am not in a state of health at present
+to be deeply vexed at anything. Whenever this matter comes into
+discussion, I authorize you to contradict the infamous reports which (I
+am informed) have been given out, that this paper had been circulated
+through the ministry, and was intended gradually to slide into the
+press. To the best of my recollection I never had a clean copy of it but
+one, which is now in my possession; I never communicated that, but to
+the Duke of Portland, from whom I had it back again. But the Duke will
+set this matter to rights, if in reality there were two copies, and he
+has one. I never showed it, as they know, to any one of the ministry. If
+the Duke has really a copy, I believe his and mine are the only ones
+that exist, except what was taken by fraud from loose and incorrect
+papers by S----, to whom I gave the letter to copy. As soon as I began
+to suspect him capable of any such scandalous breach of trust, you know
+with what anxiety I got the loose papers out of his hands, not having
+reason to think that he kept any other. Neither do I believe in fact
+(unless he meditated this villany long ago) that he did or does now
+possess any clean copy. I never communicated that paper to any one out
+of the very small circle of those private friends from whom I concealed
+nothing.
+
+"But I beg you and my friends to be cautious how you let it be
+understood that I disclaim anything but the mere act and intention of
+publication. I do not retract any one of the sentiments contained in
+that memorial, which was and is my justification, addressed to the
+friends for whose use alone I intended it. Had I designed it for the
+public, I should have been more exact and full. It was written in a tone
+of indignation, in consequence of the resolutions of the Whig Club,
+which were directly pointed against myself and others, and occasioned
+our secession from that club; which is the last act of my life that I
+shall under any circumstances repent. Many temperaments and explanations
+there would have been, if I had ever had a notion that it should meet
+the public eye."
+
+
+In the mean time a large impression, amounting, it is believed, to three
+thousand copies, had been dispersed over the country. To recall these
+was impossible; to have expected that any acknowledged production of Mr.
+Burke, full of matter likely to interest the future historian, could
+remain forever in obscurity, would have been folly; and to have passed
+it over in silent neglect, on the one hand, or, on the other, to have
+then made any considerable changes in it, might have seemed an
+abandonment of the principles which it contained. The author, therefore,
+discovering, that, with the exception of the introductory letter, he had
+not in fact kept any clean copy, as he had supposed, corrected one of
+the pamphlets with his own hand. From this, which was found preserved
+with his other papers, his friends afterwards thought it their duty to
+give an authentic edition.
+
+The "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity" were originally presented in the
+form of a memorial to Mr. Pitt. The author proposed afterwards to recast
+the same matter in a new shape. He even advertised the intended work
+under the title of "Letters on Rural Economics, addressed to Mr. Arthur
+Young"; but he seems to have finished only two or three detached
+fragments of the first letter. These being too imperfect to be printed
+alone, his friends inserted them in the memorial, where they seemed best
+to cohere. The memorial had been fairly copied, but did not appear to
+have been examined or corrected, as some trifling errors of the
+transcriber were perceptible in it. The manuscript of the fragments was
+a rough draft from the author's own hand, much blotted and very
+confused.
+
+The Third Letter on the Proposals for Peace was in its progress through
+the press when the author died. About one half of it was actually
+revised in print by himself, though not in the exact order of the pages
+as they now stand. He enlarged his first draft, and separated one great
+member of his subject, for the purpose of introducing some other matter
+between. The different parcels of manuscript designed to intervene were
+discovered. One of them he seemed to have gone over himself, and to have
+improved and augmented. The other (fortunately the smaller) was much
+more imperfect, just as it was taken from his mouth by dictation. The
+former reaches from the two hundred and forty-sixth to near the end of
+the two hundred and sixty-second page; the latter nearly occupies the
+twelve pages which follow.[3] No important change, none at all affecting
+the meaning of any passage, has been made in either, though in the more
+imperfect parcel some latitude of discretion in subordinate points was
+necessarily used.
+
+There is, however, a considerable member for the greater part of which
+Mr. Burke's reputation is not responsible: this is the inquiry into the
+condition of the higher classes, which commences in the two hundred and
+ninety-fifth page.[4] The summary of the whole topic, indeed, nearly as
+it stands in the three hundred and seventy-third and fourth pages,[5]
+was found, together with a marginal reference to the Bankrupt List, in
+his own handwriting; and the actual conclusion of the Letter was
+dictated by him, but never received his subsequent correction. He had
+also preserved, as materials for this branch of his subject, some
+scattered hints, documents, and parts of a correspondence on the state
+of the country. He was, however, prevented from working on them by the
+want of some authentic and official information, for which he had been
+long anxiously waiting, in order to ascertain, to the satisfaction of
+the public, what, with his usual sagacity, he had fully anticipated from
+his own personal observation, to his own private conviction. At length
+the reports of the different committees which had been appointed by the
+two Houses of Parliament amply furnished him with evidence for this
+purpose. Accordingly he read and considered them with attention: but for
+anything beyond this the season was now past. The Supreme Disposer of
+All, against whose inscrutable counsels it is vain as well as impious to
+murmur, did not permit him to enter on the execution of the task which
+he meditated. It was resolved, therefore, by one of his friends, after
+much hesitation, and under a very painful responsibility, to make such
+an attempt as he could at supplying the void; especially because the
+insufficiency of our resources for the continuance of the war was
+understood to have been the principal objection urged against the two
+former Letters on the Proposals for Peace. In performing with
+reverential diffidence this duty of friendship, care has been taken not
+to attribute to Mr. Burke any sentiment which is not most explicitly
+known, from repeated conversations, and from much correspondence, to
+have been decidedly entertained by that illustrious man. One passage of
+nearly three pages, containing a censure of our defensive system, is
+borrowed from a private letter, which he began to dictate with an
+intention of comprising in it the short result of his opinions, but
+which he afterwards abandoned, when, a little time before his death, his
+health appeared in some degree to amend, and he hoped that Providence
+might have spared him at least to complete the larger public letter,
+which he then proposed to resume.
+
+In the preface to the former edition of this Letter a fourth was
+mentioned as being in possession of Mr. Burke's friends. It was in fact
+announced by the author himself, in the conclusion of the second, which
+it was then designed to follow. He intended, he said, to proceed next on
+the question of the facilities possessed by the French Republic, _from
+the internal state of other nations, and particularly of this_, for
+obtaining her ends,--and as his notions were controverted, to take
+notice of what, in that way, had been recommended to him. The vehicle
+which he had chosen for this part of his plan was an answer to a
+pamphlet which was supposed to come from high authority, and was
+circulated by ministers with great industry, at the time of its
+appearance, in October, 1795, immediately previous to that session of
+Parliament when his Majesty for the first time declared that the
+appearance of any disposition in the enemy to negotiate for general
+peace should not fail to be met with an earnest desire to give it the
+fullest and speediest effect. In truth, the answer, which is full of
+spirit and vivacity, was written the latter end of the same year, but
+was laid aside when the question assumed a more serious aspect, from the
+commencement of an actual negotiation, which gave rise to the series of
+printed letters. Afterwards, he began to rewrite it, with a view of
+accommodating it to his new purpose. The greater part, however, still
+remained in its original state; and several heroes of the Revolution,
+who are there celebrated, having in the interval passed off the public
+stage, a greater liberty of insertion and alteration than his friends on
+consideration have thought allowable would be necessary to adapt it to
+that place in the series for which it was ultimately designed by the
+author. This piece, therefore, addressed, as the title originally stood,
+to his noble friend, Earl Fitzwilliam, will be given the first in the
+supplemental volumes which will be hereafter added to complete this
+edition of the author's works.
+
+The tracts, most of them in manuscript, which have been already selected
+as fit for this purpose, will probably furnish four or five volumes
+more, to be printed uniformly with this edition. The principal piece is
+an Essay on the History of England, from the earliest period to the
+conclusion of the reign of King John. It is written with much depth of
+antiquarian research, directed by the mind of an intelligent statesman.
+This alone, as far as can be conjectured, will form more than one
+volume. Another entire volume also, at least, will be filled with his
+letters to public men on public affairs, especially those of France.
+This supplement will be sent to the press without delay.
+
+Mr. Burke's more familiar correspondence will be reserved as authorities
+to accompany a narrative of his life, which will conclude the whole. The
+period during which he flourished was one of the most memorable of our
+annals. It comprehended the acquisition of one empire in the East, the
+loss of another in the West, and the total subversion of the ancient
+system of Europe by the French Revolution, with all which events the
+history of his life is necessarily and intimately connected,--as indeed
+it also is, much more than is generally known, with the state of
+literature and the elegant arts. Such a subject of biography cannot be
+dismissed with a slight and rapid touch; nor can it be treated in a
+manner worthy of it, from the information, however authentic and
+extensive, which the industry of any one man may have accumulated. Many
+important communications have been received; but some materials, which
+relate to the pursuits of his early years, and which are known to be in
+existence, have been hitherto kept back, notwithstanding repeated
+inquiries and applications. It is, therefore, once more earnestly
+requested, that all persons who call themselves the friends or admirers
+of the late Edmund Burke will have the goodness to transmit, without
+delay, any notices of that or of any other kind which may happen to be
+in their possession or within their reach, to Messrs. Rivingtons,--a
+respect and kindness to his memory which will be thankfully acknowledged
+by those friends to whom, in dying, he committed the sacred trust of his
+reputation.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Prefixed to the first octavo edition: London, F. and C. Rivington,
+1801: comprising Vols. I.-VIII. of the edition in sixteen volumes issued
+by these publishers at intervals between the years 1801 and 1827.
+
+[2] Comprising the last four papers of the fourth volume, and the whole
+of the fifth volume, of the present edition.
+
+[3] The former comprising the matter included between the paragraph
+commencing, "I hear it has been said," &c., and that ending with the
+words, "there were little or no materials"; and the latter extending
+through the paragraph concluding with the words, "disgraced and plagued
+mankind."
+
+[4] At the paragraph commencing with the words, "In turning our view
+from the lower to the higher classes," &c.
+
+[5] In the first half of the paragraph commencing, "If, then, the real
+state of this nation," &c.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+TO THE SECOND OCTAVO EDITION.[6]
+
+
+A new edition of the works of Mr. Burke having been called for by the
+public, the opportunity has been taken to make some slight changes, it
+is hoped for the better.
+
+A different distribution of the contents, while it has made the volumes,
+with the exception of the first and sixth, more nearly equal in their
+respective bulk, has, at the same time, been fortunately found to
+produce a more methodical arrangement of the whole. The first and second
+volumes, as before, severally contain those literary and philosophical
+works by which Mr. Burke was known previous to the commencement of his
+public life as a statesman, and the political pieces which were written
+by him between the time of his first becoming connected with the Marquis
+of Rockingham and his being chosen member for Bristol. In the third are
+comprehended all his speeches and pamphlets from his first arrival at
+Bristol, as a candidate, in the year 1774, to his farewell address from
+the hustings of that city, in the year 1780. What he himself published
+relative to the affairs of India occupies the fourth volume. The
+remaining four comprise his works since the French Revolution, with the
+exception of the Letter to Lord Kenmare on the Penal Laws against Irish
+Catholics, which was probably inserted where it stands from its relation
+to the subject of the Letter addressed by him, at a later period, to Sir
+Hercules Langrishe. With the same exception, too, strict regard has been
+paid to chronological order, which, in the last edition, was in some
+instances broken, to insert pieces that wore not discovered till it was
+too late to introduce them in their proper places.
+
+In the Appendix to the Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts the
+references were found to be confused, and, in many places, erroneous.
+This probably had arisen from the circumstance that a larger and
+differently constructed appendix seems to have been originally designed
+by Mr. Burke, which, however, he afterwards abridged and altered, while
+the speech and the notes upon it remained as they were. The text and the
+documents that support it have throughout been accommodated to each
+other.
+
+The orthography has been in many cases altered, and an attempt made to
+reduce it to some certain standard. The rule laid down for the discharge
+of this task was, that, whenever Mr. Burke could be perceived to have
+been uniform in his mode of spelling, that was considered as decisive;
+but where he varied, (and as he was in the habit of writing by
+dictation, and leaving to others the superintendence of the press, he
+was peculiarly liable to variations of this sort) the best received
+authorities were directed to be followed. The reader, it is trusted,
+will find this object, too much disregarded in modern books, has here
+been kept in view throughout. The quotations which are interspersed
+through the works of Mr Burke, and which were frequently made by him
+from memory, have been generally compared with the original authors.
+Several mistakes in printing, of one word for another, by which the
+sense was either perverted or obscured, are now rectified. Two or three
+small insertions have also been made from a quarto copy corrected by Mr.
+Burke himself. From the same source something more has been drawn in the
+shape of notes, to which are subscribed his initials. Of this number is
+the explanation of that celebrated phrase, "the swinish multitude": an
+explanation which was uniformly given by him to his friends, in
+conversation on the subject. But another note will probably interest the
+reader still more, as being strongly expressive of that parental
+affection which formed so amiable a feature in the character of Mr.
+Burke. It is in page 203 of Vol. V., where he points out a considerable
+passage as having been supplied by his "lost son".[7] Several other
+parts, possibly amounting altogether to a page or thereabout, were
+indicated in the same manner; but, as they in general consist of single
+sentences, and as the meaning of the mark by which they were
+distinguished was not actually expressed, it has not been thought
+necessary to notice them particularly.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] London, F. and C. Rivington, 1803. 8 vols.
+
+[7] In "Reflections on the Revolution in France,"--indicated by
+foot-note _in loco_.
+
+
+
+
+A
+
+VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY:
+
+OR,
+
+A VIEW OF THE MISERIES AND EVILS ARISING TO MANKIND
+FROM EVERY SPECIES OF ARTIFICIAL SOCIETY.
+
+IN A LETTER TO LORD ****,
+
+BY A LATE NOBLE WRITER.
+
+1756.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+Before the philosophical works of Lord Bolingbroke had appeared, great
+things were expected from the leisure of a man, who, from the splendid
+scene of action in which his talents had enabled him to make so
+conspicuous a figure, had retired to employ those talents in the
+investigation of truth. Philosophy began to congratulate herself upon
+such a proselyte from the world of business, and hoped to have extended
+her power under the auspices of such a leader. In the midst of these
+pleasing expectations, the works themselves at last appeared in _full
+body_, and with great pomp. Those who searched in them for new
+discoveries in the mysteries of nature; those who expected something
+which might explain or direct the operations of the mind; those who
+hoped to see morality illustrated and enforced; those who looked for new
+helps to society and government; those who desired to see the characters
+and passions of mankind delineated; in short, all who consider such
+things as philosophy, and require some of them at least in every
+philosophical work, all these were certainly disappointed; they found
+the landmarks of science precisely in their former places: and they
+thought they received but a poor recompense for this disappointment, in
+seeing every mode of religion attacked in a lively manner, and the
+foundation of every virtue, and of all government, sapped with great art
+and much ingenuity. What advantage do we derive from such writings? What
+delight can a man find in employing a capacity which might be usefully
+exerted for the noblest purposes, in a sort of sullen labor, in which,
+if the author could succeed, he is obliged to own, that nothing could be
+more fatal to mankind than his success?
+
+I cannot conceive how this sort of writers propose to compass the
+designs they pretend to have in view, by the instruments which they
+employ. Do they pretend to exalt the mind of man, by proving him no
+better than a beast? Do they think to enforce the practice of virtue, by
+denying that vice and virtue are distinguished by good or ill fortune
+here, or by happiness or misery hereafter? Do they imagine they shall
+increase our piety, and our reliance on God, by exploding his
+providence, and insisting that he is neither just nor good? Such are the
+doctrines which, sometimes concealed, sometimes openly and fully avowed,
+are found to prevail throughout the writings of Lord Bolingbroke; and
+such are the reasonings which this noble writer and several others have
+been pleased to dignify with the name of philosophy. If these are
+delivered in a specious manner, and in a style above the common, they
+cannot want a number of admirers of as much docility as can be wished
+for in disciples. To these the editor of the following little piece has
+addressed it: there is no reason to conceal the design of it any longer.
+
+The design was to show that, without the exertion of any considerable
+forces, the same engines which were employed for the destruction of
+religion, might be employed with equal success for the subversion of
+government; and that specious arguments might be used against those
+things which they, who doubt of everything else, will never permit to be
+questioned. It is an observation which I think Isocrates makes in one of
+his orations against the sophists, that it is far more easy to maintain
+a wrong cause, and to support paradoxical opinions to the satisfaction
+of a common auditory, than to establish a doubtful truth by solid and
+conclusive arguments. When men find that something can be said in favor
+of what, on the very proposal, they have thought utterly indefensible,
+they grow doubtful of their own reason; they are thrown into a sort of
+pleasing surprise; they run along with the speaker, charmed and
+captivated to find such a plentiful harvest of reasoning, where all
+seemed barren and unpromising. This is the fairy land of philosophy. And
+it very frequently happens, that those pleasing impressions on the
+imagination subsist and produce their effect, even after the
+understanding has been satisfied of their unsubstantial nature. There is
+a sort of gloss upon ingenious falsehoods that dazzles the imagination,
+but which neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober aspect of truth. I
+have met with a quotation in Lord Coke's Reports that pleased me very
+much, though I do not know from whence he has taken it: "_Interdum
+fucata falsitas_ (says he), _in multis est probabilior, at saepe
+rationibus vincit nudam veritatem_." In such cases the writer has a
+certain fire and alacrity inspired into him by a consciousness, that,
+let it fare how it will with the subject, his ingenuity will be sure of
+applause; and this alacrity becomes much greater if he acts upon the
+offensive, by the impetuosity that always accompanies an attack, and
+the unfortunate propensity which mankind have to the finding and
+exaggerating faults. The editor is satisfied that a mind which has no
+restraint from a sense of its own weakness, of its subordinate rank in
+the creation, and of the extreme danger of letting the imagination loose
+upon some subjects, may very plausibly attack everything the most
+excellent and venerable; that it would not be difficult to criticise the
+creation itself; and that if we were to examine the divine fabrics by
+our ideas of reason and fitness, and to use the same method of attack by
+which some men have assaulted revealed religion, we might with as good
+color, and with the same success, make the wisdom and power of God in
+his creation appear to many no better than foolishness. There is an air
+of plausibility which accompanies vulgar reasonings and notions, taken
+from the beaten circle of ordinary experience, that is admirably suited
+to the narrow capacities of some, and to the laziness of others. But
+this advantage is in a great measure lost, when a painful, comprehensive
+survey of a very complicated matter, and which requires a great variety
+of considerations, is to be made; when we must seek in a profound
+subject, not only for arguments, but for new materials of argument,
+their measures and their method of arrangement; when we must go out of
+the sphere of our ordinary ideas, and when we can never walk surely, but
+by being sensible of our blindness. And this we must do, or we do
+nothing, whenever we examine the result of a reason which is not our
+own. Even in matters which are, as it were, just within our reach, what
+would become of the world, if the practice of all moral duties, and the
+foundations of society, rested upon having their reasons made clear and
+demonstrative to every individual?
+
+The editor knows that the subject of this letter is not so fully handled
+as obviously it might; it was not his design to say all that could
+possibly be said. It had been inexcusable to fill a large volume with
+the abuse of reason; nor would such an abuse have been tolerable, even
+for a few pages, if some under-plot, of more consequence than the
+apparent design, had not been carried on.
+
+Some persons have thought that the advantages of the state of nature
+ought to have been more fully displayed. This had undoubtedly been a
+very ample subject for declamation; but they do not consider the
+character of the piece. The writers against religion, whilst they oppose
+every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own. If
+some inaccuracies in calculation, in reasoning, or in method, be found,
+perhaps these will not be looked upon as faults by the admirers of Lord
+Bolingbroke; who will, the editor is afraid, observe much more of his
+lordship's character in such particulars of the following letter, than
+they are likely to find of that rapid torrent of an impetuous and
+overbearing eloquence, and the variety of rich imagery for which that
+writer is justly admired.
+
+
+
+
+A LETTER TO LORD ****.
+
+
+Shall I venture to say, my lord, that in our late conversation, you were
+inclined to the party which you adopted rather by the feelings of your
+good nature, than by the conviction of your judgment? We laid open the
+foundations of society; and you feared that the curiosity of this search
+might endanger the ruin of the whole fabric. You would readily have
+allowed my principle, but you dreaded the consequences; you thought,
+that having once entered upon these reasonings, we might be carried
+insensibly and irresistibly farther than at first we could either have
+imagined or wished. But for my part, my lord, I then thought, and am
+still of the same opinion, that error, and not truth of any kind, is
+dangerous; that ill conclusions can only flow from false propositions;
+and that, to know whether any proposition be true or false, it is a
+preposterous method to examine it by its apparent consequences.
+
+These were the reasons which induced me to go so far into that inquiry;
+and they are the reasons which direct me in all my inquiries. I had
+indeed often reflected on that subject before I could prevail on myself
+to communicate my reflections to anybody. They were generally melancholy
+enough; as those usually are which carry us beyond the mere surface of
+things; and which would undoubtedly make the lives of all thinking men
+extremely miserable, if the same philosophy which caused the grief, did
+not at the same time administer the comfort.
+
+On considering political societies, their origin, their constitution,
+and their effects, I have sometimes been in a good deal more than doubt,
+whether the Creator did ever really intend man for a state of happiness.
+He has mixed in his cup a number of natural evils, (in spite of the
+boasts of stoicism they are evils,) and every endeavor which the art and
+policy of mankind has used from the beginning of the world to this day,
+in order to alleviate or cure them, has only served to introduce new
+mischiefs, or to aggravate and inflame the old. Besides this, the mind
+of man itself is too active and restless a principle ever to settle on
+the true point of quiet. It discovers every day some craving want in a
+body, which really wants but little. It every day invents some new
+artificial rule to guide that nature which, if left to itself, were the
+best and surest guide. It finds out imaginary beings prescribing
+imaginary laws; and then, it raises imaginary terrors to support a
+belief in the beings, and an obedience to the laws.--Many things have
+been said, and very well undoubtedly, on the subjection in which we
+should preserve our bodies to the government of our understanding; but
+enough has not been said upon the restraint which our bodily necessities
+ought to lay on the extravagant sublimities and eccentric rovings of our
+minds. The body, or as some love to call it, our inferior nature, is
+wiser in its own plain way, and attends its own business more directly
+than the mind with all its boasted subtlety.
+
+In the state of nature, without question, mankind was subjected to many
+and great inconveniences. Want of union, want of mutual assistance, want
+of a common arbitrator to resort to in their differences. These were
+evils which they could not but have felt pretty severely on many
+occasions. The original children of the earth lived with their brethren
+of the other kinds in much equality. Their diet must have been confined
+almost wholly to the vegetable kind; and the same tree, which in its
+flourishing state produced them berries, in its decay gave them an
+habitation. The mutual desires of the sexes uniting their bodies and
+affections, and the children which are the results of these
+intercourses, introduced first the notion of society, and taught its
+conveniences. This society, founded in natural appetites and instincts,
+and not in any positive institution, I shall call _natural society_.
+Thus far nature went and succeeded: but man would go farther. The great
+error of our nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied
+with any reasonable acquirement; not to compound with our condition; but
+to lose all we have gained by an insatiable pursuit after more. Man
+found a considerable advantage by this union of many persons to form one
+family; he therefore judged that he would find his account
+proportionably in an union of many families into one body politic. And
+as nature has formed no bond of union to hold them together, he supplied
+this defect by _laws_.
+
+This is _political society_. And hence the sources of what are usually
+called states, civil societies, or governments; into some form of which,
+more extended or restrained, all mankind have gradually fallen. And
+since it has so happened, and that we owe an implicit reverence to all
+the institutions of our ancestors, we shall consider these institutions
+with all that modesty with which we ought to conduct ourselves in
+examining a received opinion; but with all that freedom and candor which
+we owe to truth wherever we find it, or however it may contradict our
+own notions, or oppose our own interests. There is a most absurd and
+audacious method of reasoning avowed by some bigots and enthusiasts, and
+through fear assented to by some wiser and better men; it is this: they
+argue against a fair discussion of popular prejudices, because, say
+they, though they would be found without any reasonable support, yet the
+discovery might be productive of the most dangerous consequences. Absurd
+and blasphemous notion! as if all happiness was not connected with the
+practice of virtue, which necessarily depends upon the knowledge of
+truth; that is, upon the knowledge of those unalterable relations which
+Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other.
+These relations, which are truth itself, the foundation of virtue, and
+consequently the only measures of happiness, should be likewise the only
+measures by which we should direct our reasoning. To these we should
+conform in good earnest; and not think to force nature, and the whole
+order of her system, by a compliance with our pride and folly, to
+conform to our artificial regulations. It is by a conformity to this
+method we owe the discovery of the few truths we know, and the little
+liberty and rational happiness we enjoy. We have something fairer play
+than a reasoner could have expected formerly; and we derive advantages
+from it which are very visible.
+
+The fabric of superstition has in this our age and nation received much
+ruder shocks than it had ever felt before; and through the chinks and
+breaches of our prison, we see such glimmerings of light, and feel such
+refreshing airs of liberty, as daily raise our ardor for more. The
+miseries derived to mankind from superstition under the name of
+religion, and of ecclesiastical tyranny under the name of church
+government, have been clearly and usefully exposed. We begin to think
+and to act from reason and from nature alone. This is true of several,
+but by far the majority is still in the same old state of blindness and
+slavery; and much is it to be feared that we shall perpetually relapse,
+whilst the real productive cause of all this superstitious folly,
+enthusiastical nonsense, and holy tyranny, holds a reverend place in the
+estimation even of those who are otherwise enlightened.
+
+Civil government borrows a strength from ecclesiastical; and artificial
+laws receive a sanction from artificial revelations. The ideas of
+religion and government are closely connected; and whilst we receive
+government as a thing necessary, or even useful to our well-being, we
+shall in spite of us draw in, as a necessary, though undesirable
+consequence, an artificial religion of some kind or other. To this the
+vulgar will always be voluntary slaves; and even those of a rank of
+understanding superior, will now and then involuntarily feel its
+influence. It is therefore of the deepest concernment to us to be set
+right in this point; and to be well satisfied whether civil government
+be such a protector from natural evils, and such a nurse and increaser
+of blessings, as those of warm imaginations promise. In such a
+discussion, far am I from proposing in the least to reflect on our most
+wise form of government; no more than I would, in the freer parts of my
+philosophical writings, mean to object to the piety, truth, and
+perfection of our most excellent Church. Both, I am sensible, have their
+foundations on a rock. No discovery of truth can prejudice them. On the
+contrary, the more closely the origin of religion and government is
+examined, the more clearly their excellences must appear. They come
+purified from the fire. My business is not with them. Having entered a
+protest against all objections from these quarters, I may the more
+freely inquire, from history and experience, how far policy has
+contributed in all times to alleviate those evils which Providence, that
+perhaps has designed us for a state of imperfection, has imposed; how
+far our physical skill has cured our constitutional disorders; and
+whether it may not have introduced new ones, curable perhaps by no
+skill.
+
+In looking over any state to form a judgment on it, it presents itself
+in two lights; the external, and the internal. The first, that relation
+which it bears in point of friendship or enmity to other states. The
+second, that relation which its component parts, the governing and the
+governed, bear to each other. The first part of the external view of all
+states, their relation as friends, makes so trifling a figure in
+history, that I am very sorry to say, it affords me but little matter on
+which to expatiate. The good offices done by one nation to its
+neighbor;[8] the support given in public distress; the relief afforded
+in general calamity; the protection granted in emergent danger; the
+mutual return of kindness and civility, would afford a very ample and
+very pleasing subject for history. But, alas! all the history of all
+times, concerning all nations, does not afford matter enough to fill ten
+pages, though it should be spun out by the wire-drawing amplification of
+a Guicciardini himself. The glaring side is that of enmity. War is the
+matter which fills all history, and consequently the only or almost the
+only view in which we can see the external of political society is in a
+hostile shape; and the only actions to which we have always seen, and
+still see all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one
+another. "War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a
+prince"; and by a prince, he means every sort of state, however
+constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider
+peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and
+furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the
+conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine, that war was the
+state of nature; and truly, if a man judged of the individuals of our
+race by their conduct when united and packed into nations and kingdoms,
+he might imagine that every sort of virtue was unnatural and foreign to
+the mind of man.
+
+The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their
+butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early
+periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into
+parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and
+indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated,
+was their mutual destruction. All ancient history is dark and
+uncertain. One thing, however, is clear,--there were conquerors, and
+conquests in those days; and, consequently, all that devastation by
+which they are formed, and all that oppression by which they are
+maintained. We know little of Sesostris, but that he led out of Egypt an
+army of above 700,000 men; that he overran the Mediterranean coast as
+far as Colchis; that in some places he met but little resistance, and of
+course shed not a great deal of blood; but that he found in others a
+people who knew the value of their liberties, and sold them dear.
+Whoever considers the army this conqueror headed, the space he
+traversed, and the opposition he frequently met, with the natural
+accidents of sickness, and the dearth and badness of provision to which
+he must have been subject in the variety of climates and countries his
+march lay through, if he knows anything, he must know that even the
+conqueror's army must have suffered greatly; and that of this immense
+number but a very small part could have returned to enjoy the plunder
+accumulated by the loss of so many of their companions, and the
+devastation of so considerable a part of the world. Considering, I say,
+the vast army headed by this conqueror, whose unwieldy weight was almost
+alone sufficient to wear down its strength, it will be far from excess
+to suppose that one half was lost in the expedition. If this was the
+state of the victorious, and from the circumstances it must have been
+this at the least; the vanquished must have had a much heavier loss, as
+the greatest slaughter is always in the flight, and great carnage did in
+those times and countries ever attend the first rage of conquest. It
+will, therefore, be very reasonable to allow on their account as much
+as, added to the losses of the conqueror, may amount to a million of
+deaths, and then we shall see this conqueror, the oldest we have on the
+records of history, (though, as we have observed before, the chronology
+of these remote times is extremely uncertain), opening the scene by a
+destruction of at least one million of his species, unprovoked but by
+his ambition, without any motives but pride, cruelty, and madness, and
+without any benefit to himself (for Justin expressly tells us he did not
+maintain his conquests), but solely to make so many people, in so
+distant countries, feel experimentally how severe a scourge Providence
+intends for the human race, when he gives one man the power over many,
+and arms his naturally impotent and feeble rage with the hands of
+millions, who know no common principle of action, but a blind obedience
+to the passions of their ruler.
+
+The next personage who figures in the tragedies of this ancient theatre
+is Semiramis; for we have no particulars of Ninus, but that he made
+immense and rapid conquests, which doubtless were not compassed without
+the usual carnage. We see an army of about three millions employed by
+this martial queen in a war against the Indians. We see the Indians
+arming a yet greater; and we behold a war continued with much fury, and
+with various success. This ends in the retreat of the queen, with scarce
+a third of the troops employed in the expedition; an expedition which,
+at this rate, must have cost two millions of souls on her part; and it
+is not unreasonable to judge that the country which was the seat of war
+must have been an equal sufferer. But I am content to detract from this,
+and to suppose that the Indians lost only half so much, and then the
+account stands thus: in this war alone (for Semiramis had other wars) in
+this single reign, and in this one spot of the globe, did three millions
+of souls expire, with all the horrid and shocking circumstances which
+attend all wars, and in a quarrel, in which none of the sufferers could
+have the least rational concern.
+
+The Babylonian, Assyrian, Median, and Persian monarchies must have
+poured out seas of blood in their formation, and in their destruction.
+The armies and fleets of Xerxes, their numbers, the glorious stand made
+against them, and the unfortunate event of all his mighty preparations,
+are known to everybody. In this expedition, draining half Asia of its
+inhabitants, he led an army of about two millions to be slaughtered, and
+wasted by a thousand fatal accidents, in the same place where his
+predecessors had before by a similar madness consumed the flower of so
+many kingdoms, and wasted the force of so extensive an empire. It is a
+cheap calculation to say, that the Persian empire, in its wars against
+the Greeks and Scythians, threw away at least four millions of its
+subjects; to say nothing of its other wars, and the losses sustained in
+them. These were their losses abroad; but the war was brought home to
+them, first by Agesilaus, and afterwards by Alexander. I have not, in
+this retreat, the books necessary to make very exact calculations; nor
+is it necessary to give more than hints to one of your lordship's
+erudition. You will recollect his uninterrupted series of success. You
+will run over his battles. You will call to mind the carnage which was
+made. You will give a glance at the whole, and you will agree with me,
+that to form this hero no less than twelve hundred thousand lives must
+have been sacrificed; but no sooner had he fallen himself a sacrifice to
+his vices, than a thousand breaches were made for ruin to enter, and
+give the last hand to this scene of misery and destruction. His kingdom
+was rent and divided; which served to employ the more distinct parts to
+tear each other to pieces, and bury the whole in blood and slaughter.
+The kings of Syria and of Egypt, the kings of Pergamus and Macedon,
+without intermission worried each other for above two hundred years;
+until at last a strong power, arising in the west, rushed in upon them
+and silenced their tumults, by involving all the contending parties in
+the same destruction. It is little to say, that the contentions between
+the successors of Alexander depopulated that part of the world of at
+least two millions.
+
+The struggle between the Macedonians and Greeks, and, before that, the
+disputes of the Greek commonwealths among themselves, for an
+unprofitable superiority, form one of the bloodiest scenes in history.
+One is astonished how such a small spot could furnish men sufficient to
+sacrifice to the pitiful ambition of possessing five or six thousand
+more acres, or two or three more villages; yet to see the acrimony and
+bitterness with which this was disputed between the Athenians and
+Lacedemonians; what armies cut off; what fleets sunk and burnt; what a
+number of cities sacked, and their inhabitants slaughtered and captived;
+one would be induced to believe the decision of the fate of mankind, at
+least, depended upon it! But those disputes ended as all such ever have
+done, and ever will do; in a real weakness of all parties; a momentary
+shadow, and dream of power in some one; and the subjection of all to the
+yoke of a stranger, who knows how to profit of their divisions. This,
+at least, was the case of the Greeks; and surely, from the earliest
+accounts of them, to their absorption into the Roman empire, we cannot
+judge that their intestine divisions, and their foreign wars, consumed
+less than three millions of their inhabitants.
+
+What an Aceldama, what a field of blood Sicily has been in ancient
+times, whilst the mode of its government was controverted between the
+republican and tyrannical parties, and the possession struggled for by
+the natives, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, and the Romans, your
+lordship will easily recollect. You will remember the total destruction
+of such bodies as an army of 300,000 men. You will find every page of
+its history dyed in blood, and blotted and confounded by tumults,
+rebellions, massacres, assassinations, proscriptions, and a series of
+horror beyond the histories perhaps of any other nation in the world;
+though the histories of all nations are made up of similar matter. I
+once more excuse myself in point of exactness for want of books. But I
+shall estimate the slaughters in this island but at two millions; which
+your lordship will find much short of the reality.
+
+Let us pass by the wars, and the consequences of them, which wasted
+Grecia-Magna, before the Roman power prevailed in that part of Italy.
+They are perhaps exaggerated; therefore I shall only rate them at one
+million. Let us hasten to open that great scene which establishes the
+Roman empire, and forms the grand catastrophe of the ancient drama. This
+empire, whilst in its infancy, began by an effusion of human blood
+scarcely credible. The neighboring little states teemed for new
+destruction: the Sabines, the Samnites, the AEqui, the Volsci, the
+Hetrurians, were broken by a series of slaughters which had no
+interruption, for some hundreds of years; slaughters which upon all
+sides consumed more than two millions of the wretched people. The Gauls,
+rushing into Italy about this time, added the total destruction of their
+own armies to those of the ancient inhabitants. In short, it were hardly
+possible to conceive a more horrid and bloody picture, if that the Punic
+wars that ensued soon after did not present one that far exceeds it.
+Here we find that climax of devastation, and ruin, which seemed to shake
+the whole earth. The extent of this war, which vexed so many nations,
+and both elements, and the havoc of the human species caused in both,
+really astonishes beyond expression, when it is nakedly considered, and
+those matters which are apt to divert our attention from it, the
+characters, actions, and designs of the persons concerned, are not taken
+into the account. These wars, I mean those called the Punic wars, could
+not have stood the human race in less than three millions of the
+species. And yet this forms but a part only, and a very small part, of
+the havoc caused by the Roman ambition. The war with Mithridates was
+very little less bloody; that prince cut off at one stroke 150,000
+Romans by a massacre. In that war Sylla destroyed 300,000 men at
+Cheronea. He defeated Mithridates' army under Dorilaus, and slew
+300,000. This great and unfortunate prince lost another 300,000 before
+Cyzicum. In the course of the war he had innumerable other losses; and
+having many intervals of success, he revenged them severely. He was at
+last totally overthrown; and he crushed to pieces the king of Armenia,
+his ally, by the greatness of his ruin. All who had connections with him
+shared the same fate. The merciless genius of Sylla had its full scope;
+and the streets of Athens were not the only ones which ran with blood.
+At this period, the sword, glutted with foreign slaughter, turned its
+edge upon the bowels of the Roman republic itself; and presented a scene
+of cruelties and treasons enough almost to obliterate the memory of all
+the external devastations. I intended, my lord, to have proceeded in a
+sort of method in estimating the numbers of mankind cut off in these
+wars which we have on record. But I am obliged to alter my design. Such
+a tragical uniformity of havoc and murder would disgust your lordship as
+much as it would me; and I confess I already feel my eyes ache by
+keeping them so long intent on so bloody a prospect. I shall observe
+little on the Servile, the Social, the Gallic, and Spanish wars; nor
+upon those with Jugurtha, nor Antiochus, nor many others equally
+important, and carried on with equal fury. The butcheries of Julius
+Caesar alone are calculated by somebody else; the numbers he has been the
+means of destroying have been reckoned at 1,200,000. But to give your
+lordship an idea that may serve as a standard, by which to measure, in
+some degree, the others; you will turn your eyes on Judea; a very
+inconsiderable spot of the earth in itself, though ennobled by the
+singular events which had their rise in that country.
+
+This spot happened, it matters not here by what means, to become at
+several times extremely populous, and to supply men for slaughters
+scarcely credible, if other well-known and well-attested ones had not
+given them a color. The first settling of the Jews here was attended by
+an almost entire extirpation of all the former inhabitants. Their own
+civil wars, and those with their petty neighbors, consumed vast
+multitudes almost every year for several centuries; and the irruptions
+of the kings of Babylon and Assyria made immense ravages. Yet we have
+their history but partially, in an indistinct, confused manner; so that
+I shall only throw the strong point of light upon that part which
+coincides with Roman history, and of that part only on the point of time
+when they received the great and final stroke which made them, no more a
+nation; a stroke which is allowed to have cut off little less than two
+millions of that people. I say nothing of the loppings made from that
+stock whilst it stood; nor from the suckers that grew out of the old
+root ever since. But if, in this inconsiderable part of the globe, such
+a carnage has been made in two or three short reigns, and that this
+great carnage, great as it is, makes but a minute part of what the
+histories of that people inform us they suffered; what shall we judge of
+countries more extended, and which have waged wars by far more
+considerable?
+
+Instances of this sort compose the uniform of history. But there have
+been periods when no less than universal destruction to the race of
+mankind seems to have been threatened. Such was that when the Goths, the
+Vandals, and the Huns, poured into Gaul, Italy, Spain, Greece, and
+Africa, carrying destruction before them as they advanced, and leaving
+horrid deserts every way behind them. _Vastum ubique silentium, secreti
+colles; fumantia procul tecta; nemo exploratoribus obvius_, is what
+Tacitus calls _facies victoriae_. It is always so; but was here
+emphatically so. From the north proceeded the swarms of Goths, Vandals,
+Huns, Ostrogoths, who ran towards the south, into Africa itself, which
+suffered as all to the north had done. About this time, another torrent
+of barbarians, animated by the same fury, and encouraged by the same
+success, poured out of the south, and ravaged all to the northeast and
+west, to the remotest parts of Persia on one hand, and to the banks of
+the Loire or farther on the other; destroying all the proud and curious
+monuments of human art, that not even the memory might seem to survive
+of the former inhabitants. What has been done since, and what will
+continue to be done while the same inducements to war continue, I shall
+not dwell upon. I shall only in one word mention the horrid effects of
+bigotry and avarice, in the conquest of Spanish America; a conquest, on
+a low estimation, effected by the murder of ten millions of the species.
+I shall draw to a conclusion of this part, by making a general
+calculation of the whole. I think I have actually mentioned above
+thirty-six millions. I have not particularized any more. I don't pretend
+to exactness; therefore, for the sake of a general view, I shall lay
+together all those actually slain in battles, or who have perished in a
+no less miserable manner by the other destructive consequences of war
+from the beginning of the world to this day, in the four parts of it, at
+a thousand times as much; no exaggerated calculation, allowing for time
+and extent. We have not perhaps spoke of the five-hundredth part; I am
+sure I have not of what is actually ascertained in history; but how much
+of these butcheries are only expressed in generals, what part of time
+history has never reached, and what vast spaces of the habitable globe
+it has not embraced, I need not mention to your lordship. I need not
+enlarge on those torrents of silent and inglorious blood which have
+glutted the thirsty sands of Afric, or discolored the polar snow, or
+fed the savage forests of America for so many ages of continual war.
+Shall I, to justify my calculations from the charge of extravagance, add
+to the account those skirmishes which happen in all wars, without being
+singly of sufficient dignity in mischief, to merit a place in history,
+but which by their frequency compensate for this comparative innocence?
+shall I inflame the account by those general massacres which have
+devoured whole cities and nations; those wasting pestilences, those
+consuming famines, and all those furies that follow in the train of war?
+I have no need to exaggerate; and I have purposely avoided a parade of
+eloquence on this occasion. I should despise it upon any occasion; else
+in mentioning these slaughters, it is obvious how much the whole might
+be heightened, by an affecting description of the horrors that attend
+the wasting of kingdoms, and sacking of cities. But I do not write to
+the vulgar, nor to that which only governs the vulgar, their passions. I
+go upon a naked and moderate calculation, just enough, without a
+pedantical exactness, to give your lordship some feeling of the effects
+of political society. I charge the whole of these effects on political
+society. I avow the charge, and I shall presently make it good to your
+lordship's satisfaction. The numbers I particularized are about
+thirty-six millions. Besides those killed in battles I have said
+something, not half what the matter would have justified, but something
+I have said concerning the consequences of war even more dreadful than
+that monstrous carnage itself which shocks our humanity, and almost
+staggers our belief. So that, allowing me in my exuberance one way for
+my deficiencies in the other, you will find me not unreasonable. I
+think the numbers of men now upon earth are computed at five hundred
+millions at the most. Here the slaughter of mankind, on what you will
+call a small calculation, amounts to upwards of seventy times the number
+of souls this day on the globe: a point which may furnish matter of
+reflection to one less inclined to draw consequences than your lordship.
+
+I now come to show that political society is justly chargeable with much
+the greatest part of this destruction of the species. To give the
+fairest play to every side of the question, I will own that there is a
+haughtiness and fierceness in human nature, which will cause innumerable
+broils, place men in what situation you please; but owning this, I still
+insist in charging it to political regulations, that these broils are so
+frequent, so cruel, and attended with consequences so deplorable. In a
+state of nature, it had been impossible to find a number of men,
+sufficient for such slaughters, agreed in the same bloody purpose; or
+allowing that they might have come to such an agreement (an impossible
+supposition), yet the means that simple nature has supplied them with,
+are by no means adequate to such an end; many scratches, many bruises
+undoubtedly would be received upon all hands; but only a few, a very few
+deaths. Society and politics, which have given us these destructive
+views, have given us also the means of satisfying them. From the
+earliest dawnings of policy to this day, the invention of men has been
+sharpening and improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude
+essays of clubs and stones, to the present perfection of gunnery,
+cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and all those species of artificial,
+learned, and refined cruelty, in which we are now so expert, and which
+make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is
+our principal glory.
+
+How far mere nature would have carried us, we may judge by the example
+of those animals who still follow her laws, and even of those to whom
+she has given dispositions more fierce, and arms more terrible than ever
+she intended we should use. It is an incontestable truth that there is
+more havoc made in one year by men of men, than has been made by all the
+lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, leopards, hyenas, rhinoceroses,
+elephants, bears and wolves, upon their several species, since the
+beginning of the world; though these agree ill enough with each other,
+and have a much greater proportion of rage and fury in their composition
+than we have. But with respect to you, ye legislators, ye civilizers of
+mankind! ye Orpheuses, Moseses, Minoses, Solons, Theseuses, Lycurguses,
+Numas! with respect to you be it spoken, your regulations have done more
+mischief in cold blood, than all the rage of the fiercest animals in
+their greatest terrors, or furies, has ever done, or ever could do!
+
+These evils are not accidental. Whoever will take the pains to consider
+the nature of society will find that they result directly from its
+constitution. For as _subordination_, or, in other words, the
+reciprocation of tyranny and slavery, is requisite to support these
+societies; the interest, the ambition, the malice, or the revenge, nay,
+even the whim and caprice of one ruling man among them, is enough to arm
+all the rest, without any private views of their own, to the worst and
+blackest purposes: and what is at once lamentable, and ridiculous, these
+wretches engage under those banners with a fury greater than if they
+were animated by revenge for their own proper wrongs.
+
+It is no less worth observing, that this artificial division of mankind
+into separate societies is a perpetual source in itself of hatred and
+dissension among them. The names which distinguish them are enough to
+blow up hatred and rage. Examine history; consult present experience;
+and you will find that far the greater part of the quarrels between
+several nations had scarce any other occasion than that these nations
+were different combinations of people, and called by different names: to
+an Englishman, the name of a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian, much
+more a Turk, or a Tartar, raises of course ideas of hatred and contempt.
+If you would inspire this compatriot of ours with pity or regard for one
+of these, would you not hide that distinction? You would not pray him to
+compassionate the poor Frenchman, or the unhappy German. Far from it;
+you would speak of him as a _foreigner_; an accident to which all are
+liable. You would represent him as a _man_; one partaking with us of the
+same common nature, and subject to the same law. There is something so
+averse from our nature in these artificial political distinctions, that
+we need no other trumpet to kindle us to war and destruction. But there
+is something so benign and healing in the general voice of humanity
+that, maugre all our regulations to prevent it, the simple name of man
+applied properly, never fails to work a salutary effect.
+
+This natural unpremeditated effect of policy on the unpossessed passions
+of mankind appears on other occasions. The very name of a politician, a
+statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected
+with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny; and those
+writers who have faithfully unveiled the mysteries of state-freemasonry,
+have ever been held in general detestation, for even knowing so
+perfectly a theory so detestable. The case of Machiavel seems at first
+sight something hard in that respect. He is obliged to bear the
+iniquities of those whose maxims and rules of government he published.
+His speculation is more abhorred than their practice.
+
+But if there were no other arguments against artificial society than
+this I am going to mention, methinks it ought to fall by this one only.
+All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with
+experience, that, all governments must frequently infringe the rules of
+justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to
+dissimulation; honesty to convenience; and humanity itself to the
+reigning interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the
+reason of state. It is a reason which I own I cannot penetrate. What
+sort of a protection is this of the general right, that is maintained by
+infringing the rights of particulars? What sort of justice is this,
+which is enforced by breaches of its own laws? These paradoxes I leave
+to be solved by the able heads of legislators and politicians. For my
+part, I say what a plain man would say on such an occasion. I can never
+believe that any institution, agreeable to nature, and proper for
+mankind, could find it necessary, or even expedient, in any case
+whatsoever, to do what the best and worthiest instincts of mankind warn
+us to avoid. But no wonder, that what is set up in opposition to the
+state of nature should preserve itself by trampling upon the law of
+nature.
+
+To prove that these sorts of policed societies are a violation offered
+to nature, and a constraint upon the human mind, it needs only to look
+upon the sanguinary measures, and instruments of violence, which are
+everywhere used to support them. Let us take a review of the dungeons,
+whips, chains, racks, gibbets, with which every society is abundantly
+stored; by which hundreds of victims are annually offered up to support
+a dozen or two in pride and madness, and millions in an abject servitude
+and dependence. There was a time when I looked with a reverential awe on
+these mysteries of policy; but age, experience, and philosophy, have
+rent the veil; and I view this _sanctum sanctorum_, at least, without
+any enthusiastic admiration. I acknowledge, indeed, the necessity of
+such a proceeding in such institutions; but I must have a very mean
+opinion of institutions where such proceedings are necessary.
+
+It is a misfortune that in no part of the globe natural liberty and
+natural religion are to be found pure, and free from the mixture of
+political adulterations. Yet we have implanted in us by Providence,
+ideas, axioms, rules, of what is pious, just, fair, honest, which no
+political craft, nor learned sophistry can entirely expel from our
+breasts. By these we judge, and we cannot otherwise judge, of the
+several artificial modes of religion and society, and determine of them
+as they approach to or recede from this standard.
+
+The simplest form of government is _despotism_, where all the inferior
+orbs of power are moved merely by the will of the Supreme, and all that
+are subjected to them directed in the same manner, merely by the
+occasional will of the magistrate. This form, as it is the most simple,
+so it is infinitely the most general. Scarcely any part of the world is
+exempted from its power. And in those few places where men enjoy what
+they call liberty, it is continually in a tottering situation, and makes
+greater and greater strides to that gulf of despotism which at last
+swallows up every species of government. The manner of ruling being
+directed merely by the will of the weakest, and generally the worst man
+in the society, becomes the most foolish and capricious thing, at the
+same time that it is the most terrible and destructive that well can be
+conceived. In a despotism, the principal person finds that, let the
+want, misery, and indigence of his subjects be what they will, he can
+yet possess abundantly of everything to gratify his most insatiable
+wishes. He does more. He finds that these gratifications increase in
+proportion to the wretchedness and slavery of his subjects. Thus
+encouraged both by passion and interest to trample on the public
+welfare, and by his station placed above both shame and fear, he
+proceeds to the most horrid and shocking outrages upon mankind. Their
+persons become victims of his suspicions. The slightest displeasure is
+death; and a disagreeable aspect is often as great a crime as high
+treason. In the court of Nero, a person of learning, of unquestioned
+merit, and of unsuspected loyalty, was put to death for no other reason,
+than that he had a pedantic countenance which displeased the emperor.
+This very monster of mankind appeared in the beginning of his reign to
+be a person of virtue. Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of
+history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth
+is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.
+And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by
+a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him
+from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice
+are utterly erased from his mind. When Alexander had in his fury
+inhumanly butchered one of his best friends and bravest captains; on the
+return of reason he began to conceive an horror suitable to the guilt of
+such a murder. In this juncture his council came to his assistance. But
+what did his council? They found him out a philosopher who gave him
+comfort. And in what manner did this philosopher comfort him for the
+loss of such a man, and heal his conscience, flagrant with the smart of
+such a crime? You have the matter at length in Plutarch. He told him,
+"_that let a sovereign do what he wilt, all his actions are just and
+lawful, because they are his_." The palaces of all princes abound with
+such courtly philosophers. The consequence was such as might be
+expected. He grew every day a monster more abandoned to unnatural lust,
+to debauchery, to drunkenness, and to murder. And yet this was
+originally a great man, of uncommon capacity, and a strong propensity to
+virtue. But unbounded power proceeds step by step, until it has
+eradicated every laudable principle. It has been remarked, that there is
+no prince so bad, whose favorites and ministers are not worse. There is
+hardly any prince without a favorite, by whom he is governed in as
+arbitrary a manner as he governs the wretches subjected to him. Here the
+tyranny is doubled. There are two courts, and two interests; both very
+different from the interests of the people. The favorite knows that the
+regard of a tyrant is as unconstant and capricious as that of a woman;
+and concluding his time to be short, he makes haste to fill up the
+measure of his iniquity, in rapine, in luxury, and in revenge. Every
+avenue to the throne is shut up. He oppresses and ruins the people,
+whilst he persuades the prince that those murmurs raised by his own
+oppression are the effects of disaffection to the prince's government.
+Then is the natural violence of despotism inflamed and aggravated by
+hatred and revenge. To deserve well of the state is a crime against the
+prince. To be popular, and to be a traitor, are considered as synonymous
+terms. Even virtue is dangerous, as an aspiring quality, that claims an
+esteem by itself, and independent of the countenance of the court. What
+has been said of the chief, is true of the inferior officers of this
+species of government; each in his province exercising the same tyranny,
+and grinding the people by an oppression, the more severely felt, as it
+is near them, and exercised by base and subordinate persons. For the
+gross of the people, they are considered as a mere herd of cattle; and
+really in a little time become no better; all principle of honest pride,
+all sense of the dignity of their nature, is lost in their slavery. The
+day, says Homer, which makes a man a slave, takes away half his worth;
+and, in fact, he loses every impulse to action, but that low and base
+one of fear. In this kind of government human nature is not only abused
+and insulted, but it is actually degraded and sunk into a species of
+brutality. The consideration of this made Mr. Locke say, with great
+justice, that a government of this kind was worse than anarchy: indeed
+it is so abhorred and detested by all who live under forms that have a
+milder appearance, that there is scarcely a rational man in Europe that
+would not prefer death to Asiatic despotism. Here then we have the
+acknowledgment of a great philosopher, that an irregular state of nature
+is preferable to such a government; we have the consent of all sensible
+and generous men, who carry it yet further, and avow that death itself
+is preferable; and yet this species of government, so justly condemned,
+and so generally detested, is what infinitely the greater part of
+mankind groan under, and have groaned under from the beginning. So that,
+by sure and uncontested principles, the greatest part of the governments
+on earth must be concluded tyrannies, impostures, violations of the
+natural rights of mankind, and worse than the most disorderly anarchies.
+How much other forms exceed this we shall consider immediately.
+
+In all parts of the world, mankind, however debased, retains still the
+sense of _feeling_; the weight of tyranny at last becomes insupportable;
+but the remedy is not so easy: in general, the only remedy by which they
+attempt to cure the tyranny is to change the tyrant. This is, and always
+was, the case for the greater part. In some countries, however, were
+found men of more penetration, who discovered "_that to live by one
+man's will was the cause of all men's misery_." They therefore changed
+their former method, and assembling the men in their several societies
+the most respectable for their understanding and fortunes, they confided
+to them the charge of the public welfare. This originally formed what is
+called an _aristocracy_. They hoped it would be impossible that such a
+number could ever join in any design against the general good; and they
+promised themselves a great deal of security and happiness from the
+united counsels of so many able and experienced persons. But it is now
+found by abundant experience, that an _aristocracy_, and a _despotism_,
+differ but in name; and that a people who are in general excluded from
+any share of the legislative, are, to all intents and purposes, as much
+slaves, when twenty, independent of them, govern, as when but one
+domineers. The tyranny is even more felt, as every individual of the
+nobles has the haughtiness of a sultan; the people are more miserable,
+as they seem on the verge of liberty, from which they are forever
+debarred; this fallacious idea of liberty, whilst it presents a vain
+shadow of happiness to the subject, binds faster the chains of his
+subjection. What is left undone by the natural avarice and pride of
+those who are raised above the others, is completed by their suspicions,
+and their dread of losing an authority, which has no support in the
+common utility of the nation. A Genoese or a Venetian republic is a
+concealed _despotism_; where you find the same pride of the rulers, the
+same base subjection of the people, the same bloody maxims of a
+suspicious policy. In one respect the _aristocracy_ is worse than the
+_despotism_. A body politic, whilst it retains its authority, never
+changes its maxims; a _despotism_, which is this day horrible to a
+supreme degree, by the caprice natural to the heart of man, may, by the
+same caprice otherwise exerted, be as lovely the next; in a succession,
+it is possible to meet with some good princes. If there have been
+Tiberiuses, Caligulas, Neros, there have been likewise the serener days
+of Vespasians, Tituses, Trajans, and Antonines; but a body politic is
+not influenced by caprice or whim, it proceeds in a regular manner, its
+succession is insensible; and every man as he enters it, either has, or
+soon attains, the spirit of the whole body. Never was it known that an
+_aristocracy_, which was haughty and tyrannical in one century, became
+easy and mild in the next. In effect, the yoke of this species of
+government is so galling, that whenever the people have got the least
+power, they have shaken it off with the utmost indignation, and
+established a popular form. And when they have not had strength enough
+to support themselves, they have thrown themselves into the arms of
+_despotism_, as the more eligible of the two evils. This latter was the
+case of Denmark, who sought a refuge from the oppression of its
+nobility, in the strong hold of arbitrary power. Poland has at present
+the name of republic, and it is one of the _aristocratic_ form; but it
+is well known that the little finger of this government is heavier than
+the loins of arbitrary power in most nations. The people are not only
+politically, but personally slaves, and treated with the utmost
+indignity. The republic of Venice is somewhat more moderate; yet even
+here, so heavy is the _aristocratic_ yoke, that the nobles have been
+obliged to enervate the spirit of their subjects by every sort of
+debauchery; they have denied them the liberty of reason, and they have
+made them amends by what a base soul will think a more valuable liberty,
+by not only allowing, but encouraging them to corrupt themselves in the
+most scandalous manner. They consider their subjects as the farmer does
+the hog he keeps to feast upon. He holds him fast in his sty, but allows
+him to wallow as much as he pleases in his beloved filth and gluttony.
+So scandalously debauched a people as that of Venice is to be met with
+nowhere else. High, low, men, women, clergy, and laity, are all alike.
+The ruling nobility are no less afraid of one another than they are of
+the people; and, for that reason, politically enervate their own body by
+the same effeminate luxury by which they corrupt their subjects. They
+are impoverished by every means which can be invented; and they are kept
+in a perpetual terror by the horrors of a state inquisition. Here you
+see a people deprived of all rational freedom, and tyrannized over by
+about two thousand men; and yet this body of two thousand are so far
+from enjoying any liberty by the subjection of the rest, that they are
+in an infinitely severer state of slavery; they make themselves the most
+degenerate and unhappy of mankind, for no other purpose than that they
+may the more effectually contribute to the misery of a whole nation. In
+short, the regular and methodical proceedings of an _aristocracy_ are
+more intolerable than the very excesses of a _despotism_, and, in
+general, much further from any remedy.
+
+Thus, my lord, we have pursued _aristocracy_ through its whole progress;
+we have seen the seeds, the growth, and the fruit. It could boast none
+of the advantages of a _despotism_, miserable as those advantages were,
+and it was overloaded with an exuberance of mischiefs, unknown even to
+_despotism_ itself. In effect, it is no more than a disorderly tyranny.
+This form, therefore, could be little approved, even in speculation, by
+those who were capable of thinking, and could be less borne in practice
+by any who were capable of feeling. However, the fruitful policy of man
+was not yet exhausted. He had yet another farthing candle to supply the
+deficiencies of the sun. This was the third form, known by political
+writers under the name of _democracy_. Here the people transacted all
+public business, or the greater part of it, in their own persons; their
+laws were made by themselves, and, upon any failure of duty, their
+officers were accountable to themselves, and to them only. In all
+appearance, they had secured by this method the advantages of order and
+good government, without paying their liberty for the purchase. Now, my
+lord, we are come to the masterpiece of Grecian refinement, and Roman
+solidity,--a popular government. The earliest and most celebrated
+republic of this model was that of Athens. It was constructed by no less
+an artist than the celebrated poet and philosopher, Solon. But no sooner
+was this political vessel launched from the stocks, than it overset,
+even in the lifetime of the builder. A tyranny immediately supervened;
+not by a foreign conquest, not by accident, but by the very nature and
+constitution of a _democracy_. An artful man became popular, the people
+had power in their hands, and they devolved a considerable share of
+their power upon their favorite; and the only use he made of this power
+was, to plunge those who gave it into slavery. Accident restored their
+liberty, and the same good fortune produced men of uncommon abilities
+and uncommon virtues amongst them. But these abilities were suffered to
+be of little service either to their possessors or to the state. Some of
+these men, for whose sakes alone we read their history, they banished;
+others they imprisoned, and all they treated with various circumstances
+of the most shameful ingratitude. Republics have many things in the
+spirit of absolute monarchy, but none more than this. A shining merit
+is ever hated or suspected in a popular assembly, as well as in a court;
+and all services done the state are looked upon as dangerous to the
+rulers, whether sultans or senators. The _ostracism_ at Athens was built
+upon this principle. The giddy people whom we have now under
+consideration, being elated with some flashes of success, which they
+owed to nothing less than any merit of their own, began to tyrannize
+over their equals, who had associated with them for their common
+defence. With their prudence they renounced all appearance of justice.
+They entered into wars rashly and wantonly. If they were unsuccessful,
+instead of growing wiser by their misfortune, they threw the whole blame
+of their own misconduct on the ministers who had advised, and the
+generals who had conducted, those wars; until by degrees they had cut
+off all who could serve them in their councils or their battles. If at
+any time these wars had a happier issue, it was no less difficult to
+deal with them on account of their pride and insolence. Furious in their
+adversity, tyrannical in their successes, a commander had more trouble
+to concert his defence before the people, than to plan the operations of
+the campaign. It was not uncommon for a general, under the horrid
+_despotism_ of the Roman emperors, to be ill received in proportion to
+the greatness of his services. Agricola is a strong instance of this. No
+man had done greater things, nor with more honest ambition. Yet, on his
+return to court, he was obliged to enter Rome with all the secrecy of a
+criminal. He went to the palace, not like a victorious commander who had
+merited and might demand the greatest rewards, but like an offender who
+had come to supplicate a pardon for his crimes. His reception was
+answerable; "_Exceptusque brevi osculo et nullo sermone, turbae
+servientium immixtus est_." Yet in that worst season of this worst of
+monarchical[9] tyrannies, modesty, discretion, and a coolness of temper,
+formed some kind of security, even for the highest merit. But at Athens,
+the nicest and best studied behavior was not a sufficient guard for a
+man of great capacity. Some of their bravest commanders were obliged to
+fly their country, some to enter into the service of its enemies, rather
+than abide a popular determination on their conduct, lest, as one of
+them said, their giddiness might make the people condemn where they
+meant to acquit; to throw in a black bean even when they intended a
+white one.
+
+The Athenians made a very rapid progress to the most enormous excesses.
+The people, under no restraint, soon grew dissolute, luxurious, and
+idle. They renounced all labor, and began to subsist themselves from the
+public revenues. They lost all concern for their common honor or safety,
+and could bear no advice that tended to reform them. At this time truth
+became offensive to those lords the people, and most highly dangerous to
+the speaker. The orators no longer ascended the _rostrum_, but to
+corrupt them further with the most fulsome adulation. These orators were
+all bribed by foreign princes on the one side or the other. And besides
+its own parties, in this city there were parties, and avowed ones too,
+for the Persians, Spartans, and Macedonians, supported each of them by
+one or more demagogues pensioned and bribed to this iniquitous service.
+The people, forgetful of all virtue and public spirit, and intoxicated
+with the flatteries of their orators (these courtiers of republics, and
+endowed with the distinguishing characteristics of all other courtiers),
+this people, I say, at last arrived at that pitch of madness, that they
+coolly and deliberately, by an express law, made it capital for any man
+to propose an application of the immense sums squandered in public
+shows, even to the most necessary purposes of the state. When you see
+the people of this republic banishing and murdering their best and
+ablest citizens, dissipating the public treasure with the most senseless
+extravagance, and spending their whole time, as spectators or actors, in
+playing, fiddling, dancing, and singing, does it not, my lord, strike
+your imagination with the image of a sort of complex Nero? And does it
+not strike you with the greater horror, when you observe, not one man
+only, but a whole city, grown drunk with pride and power, running with a
+rage of folly into the same mean and senseless debauchery and
+extravagance? But if this people resembled Nero in their extravagance,
+much more did they resemble and even exceed him in cruelty and
+injustice. In the time of Pericles, one of the most celebrated times in
+the history of that commonwealth, a king of Egypt sent them a donation
+of corn. This they were mean enough to accept. And had the Egyptian
+prince intended the ruin of this city of wicked Bedlamites, he could not
+have taken a more effectual method to do it than by such an ensnaring
+largess. The distribution of this bounty caused a quarrel; the majority
+set on foot an inquiry into the title of the citizens; and upon a vain
+pretence of illegitimacy, newly and occasionally set up, they deprived
+of their share of the royal donation no less than five thousand of
+their own body. They went further; they disfranchised them; and, having
+once begun with an act of injustice, they could set no bounds to it. Not
+content with cutting them off from the rights of citizens, they
+plundered these unfortunate wretches of all their substance; and, to
+crown this masterpiece of violence and tyranny, they actually sold every
+man of the five thousand as slaves in the public market. Observe, my
+lord, that the five thousand we here speak of were cut off from a body
+of no more than nineteen thousand; for the entire number of citizens was
+no greater at that time. Could the tyrant who wished the Roman people
+but one neck; could the tyrant Caligula himself have done, nay, he could
+scarcely wish for, a greater mischief than to have cut off, at one
+stroke, a fourth of his people? Or has the cruelty of that series of
+sanguine tyrants, the Caesars, ever presented such a piece of flagrant
+and extensive wickedness? The whole history of this celebrated republic
+is but one tissue of rashness, folly, ingratitude, injustice, tumult,
+violence, and tyranny, and, indeed, of every species of wickedness that
+can well be imagined. This was a city of wise men, in which a minister
+could not exercise his functions; a warlike people, amongst whom a
+general did not dare either to gain or lose a battle; a learned nation,
+in which a philosopher could not venture on a free inquiry. This was the
+city which banished Themistocles, starved Aristides, forced into exile
+Miltiades, drove out Anaxagoras, and poisoned Socrates. This was a city
+which changed the form of its government with the moon; eternal
+conspiracies, revolutions daily, nothing fixed and established. A
+republic, as an ancient philosopher has observed, is no one species of
+government, but a magazine of every species; here you find every sort of
+it, and that in the worst form. As there is a perpetual change, one
+rising and the other falling, you have all the violence and wicked
+policy by which a beginning power must always acquire its strength, and
+all the weakness by which falling states are brought to a complete
+destruction.
+
+Rome has a more venerable aspect than Athens; and she conducted her
+affairs, so far as related to the ruin and oppression of the greatest
+part of the world, with greater wisdom and more uniformity. But the
+domestic economy of these two states was nearly or altogether the same.
+An internal dissension constantly tore to pieces the bowels of the Roman
+commonwealth. You find the same confusion, the same factions, which
+subsisted at Athens, the same tumults, the same revolutions, and, in
+fine, the same slavery; if, perhaps, their former condition did not
+deserve that name altogether as well. All other republics were of the
+same character. Florence was a transcript of Athens. And the modern
+republics, as they approach more or less to the democratic form, partake
+more or less of the nature of those which I have described.
+
+We are now at the close of our review of the three simple forms of
+artificial society; and we have shown them, however they may differ in
+name, or in some slight circumstances, to be all alike in effect: in
+effect, to be all tyrannies. But suppose we were inclined to make the
+most ample concessions; let us concede Athens, Rome, Carthage, and two
+or three more of the ancient, and as many of the modern, commonwealths,
+to have been, or to be, free and happy, and to owe their freedom and
+happiness to their political constitution. Yet, allowing all this, what
+defence does this make for artificial society in general, that these
+inconsiderable spots of the globe have for some short space of time
+stood as exceptions to a charge so general? But when we call these
+governments free, or concede that their citizens were happier than those
+which lived under different forms, it is merely _ex abundanti_. For we
+should be greatly mistaken, if we really thought that the majority of
+the people which filled these cities enjoyed even that nominal political
+freedom of which I have spoken so much already. In reality, they had no
+part of it. In Athens there were usually from ten to thirty thousand
+freemen; this was the utmost. But the slaves usually amounted to four
+hundred thousand, and sometimes to a great many more. The freemen of
+Sparta and Rome were not more numerous in proportion to those whom they
+held in a slavery even more terrible than the Athenian. Therefore state
+the matter fairly: the free states never formed, though they were taken
+altogether, the thousandth part of the habitable globe; the freemen in
+these states were never the twentieth part of the people, and the time
+they subsisted is scarce anything in that immense ocean of duration in
+which time and slavery are so nearly commensurate. Therefore call these
+free states, or popular governments, or what you please; when we
+consider the majority of their inhabitants, and regard the natural
+rights of mankind, they must appear, in reality and truth, no better
+than pitiful and oppressive oligarchies.
+
+After so fair an examen, wherein nothing has been exaggerated; no fact
+produced which cannot be proved, and none which has been produced in
+any wise forced or strained, while thousands have, for brevity, been
+omitted; after so candid a discussion in all respects; what slave so
+passive, what bigot so blind, what enthusiast so headlong, what
+politician so hardened, as to stand up in defence of a system calculated
+for a curse to mankind? a curse under which they smart and groan to this
+hour, without thoroughly knowing the nature of the disease, and wanting
+understanding or courage to supply the remedy.
+
+I need not excuse myself to your lordship, nor, I think, to any honest
+man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause; for it is an honest zeal,
+and in a good cause. I have defended natural religion against a
+confederacy of atheists and divines. I now plead for natural society
+against politicians, and for natural reason against all three. When the
+world is in a fitter temper than it is at present to hear truth, or when
+I shall be more indifferent about its temper, my thoughts may become
+more public. In the mean time, let them repose in my own bosom, and in
+the bosoms of such men as are fit to be initiated in the sober mysteries
+of truth and reason. My antagonists have already done as much as I could
+desire. Parties in religion and politics make sufficient discoveries
+concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them
+all. The monarchic, and aristocratical, and popular partisans, have been
+jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have, in
+their turns, proved each other absurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell
+me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the
+abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse! Observe, my lord, I
+pray you, that grand error upon which all artificial legislative power
+is founded. It was observed, that men had ungovernable passions, which
+made it necessary to guard against the violence they might offer to each
+other. They appointed governors over them for this reason. But a worse
+and more perplexing difficulty arises, how to be defended against the
+governors? _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ In vain they change from a
+single person to a few. These few have the passions of the one; and they
+unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their
+lawless passions at the expense of the general good. In vain do we fly
+to the many. The case is worse; their passions are less under the
+government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended
+against all attacks by their multitude.
+
+I have purposely avoided the mention of the mixed form of government,
+for reasons that will be very obvious to your lordship. But my caution
+can avail me but little. You will not fail to urge it against me in
+favor of political society. You will not fail to show how the errors of
+the several simple modes are corrected by a mixture of all of them, and
+a proper balance of the several powers in such a state. I confess, my
+lord, that this has been long a darling mistake of my own; and that of
+all the sacrifices I have made to truth, this has been by far the
+greatest. When I confess that I think this notion a mistake, I know to
+whom I am speaking, for I am satisfied that reasons are like liquors,
+and there are some of such a nature as none but strong heads can bear.
+There are few with whom I can communicate so freely as with Pope. But
+Pope cannot bear every truth. He has a timidity which hinders the full
+exertion of his faculties, almost as effectually as bigotry cramps those
+of the general herd of mankind. But whoever is a genuine follower of
+truth keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is
+led, provided that she is the leader. And, my lord, if it be properly
+considered, it were infinitely better to remain possessed by the whole
+legion of vulgar mistakes, than to reject some, and at the same time to
+retain a fondness for others altogether as absurd and irrational. The
+first has at least a consistency, that makes a man, however erroneously,
+uniform at least; but the latter way of proceeding is such an
+inconsistent chimera and jumble of philosophy and vulgar prejudice, that
+hardly anything more ridiculous can be conceived. Let us therefore
+freely, and without fear or prejudice, examine this last contrivance of
+policy. And, without considering how near the quick our instruments may
+come, let us search it to the bottom.
+
+First, then, all men are agreed that this junction of regal,
+aristocratic, and popular power, must form a very complex, nice, and
+intricate machine, which being composed of such a variety of parts, with
+such opposite tendencies and movements, it must be liable on every
+accident to be disordered. To speak without metaphor, such a government
+must be liable to frequent cabals, tumults, and revolutions, from its
+very constitution. These are undoubtedly as ill effects as can happen in
+a society; for in such a case, the closeness acquired by community,
+instead of serving for mutual defence, serves only to increase the
+danger. Such a system is like a city, where trades that require constant
+fires are much exercised, where the houses are built of combustible
+materials, and where they stand extremely close.
+
+In the second place, the several constituent parts having their distinct
+rights, and these many of them so necessary to be determined with
+exactness, are yet so indeterminate in their nature, that it becomes a
+new and constant source of debate and confusion. Hence it is, that
+whilst the business of government should be carrying on, the question
+is, Who has a right to exercise this or that function of it, or what men
+have power to keep their offices in any function? Whilst this contest
+continues, and whilst the balance in any sort continues, it has never
+any remission; all manner of abuses and villanies in officers remain
+unpunished; the greatest frauds and robberies in the public revenues are
+committed in defiance of justice; and abuses grow, by time and impunity,
+into customs; until they prescribe against the laws, and grow too
+inveterate often to admit a cure, unless such as may be as bad as the
+disease.
+
+Thirdly, the several parts of this species of government, though united,
+preserve the spirit which each form has separately. Kings are ambitious;
+the nobility haughty; and the populace tumultuous and ungovernable. Each
+party, however in appearance peaceable, carries on a design upon the
+others; and it is owing to this, that in all questions, whether
+concerning foreign or domestic affairs, the whole generally turns more
+upon some party-matter than upon the nature of the thing itself; whether
+such a step will diminish or augment the power of the crown, or how far
+the privileges of the subject are likely to be extended or restricted by
+it. And these questions are constantly resolved, without any
+consideration of the merits of the cause, merely as the parties who
+uphold these jarring interests may chance to prevail; and as they
+prevail, the balance is overset, now upon one side, now upon the other.
+The government is, one day, arbitrary power in a single person; another,
+a juggling confederacy of a few to cheat the prince and enslave the
+people; and the third, a frantic and unmanageable democracy. The great
+instrument of all these changes, and what infuses a peculiar venom into
+all of them, is party. It is of no consequence what the principles of
+any party, or what their pretensions are; the spirit which actuates all
+parties is the same; the spirit of ambition, of self-interest, of
+oppression and treachery. This spirit entirely reverses all the
+principles which a benevolent nature has erected within us; all honesty,
+all equal justice, and even the ties of natural society, the natural
+affections. In a word, my lord, we have all _seen_, and, if any outward
+considerations were worthy the lasting concern of a wise man, we have
+some of us _felt_, such oppression from party government as no other
+tyranny can parallel. We behold daily the most important rights, rights
+upon which all the others depend, we behold these rights determined in
+the last resort, without the least attention even to the appearance or
+color of justice; we behold this without emotion, because we have grown
+up in the constant view of such practices; and we are not surprised to
+hear a man requested to be a knave and a traitor, with as much
+indifference as if the most ordinary favor were asked; and we hear this
+request refused, not because it is a most unjust and unreasonable
+desire, but because this worthy has already engaged his injustice to
+another. These and many more points I am for from spreading to their
+full extent. You are sensible that I do not put forth half my strength;
+and you cannot be at a loss for the reason. A man is allowed sufficient
+freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject
+properly. You may criticise freely upon the Chinese constitution, and
+observe with as much severity as you please upon the absurd tricks, or
+destructive bigotry of the bonzees. But the scene is changed as you come
+homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain, to
+what would be reason and truth if asserted of China. I submit to the
+condition, and though I have a notorious advantage before me, I waive
+the pursuit. For else, my lord, it is very obvious what a picture might
+be drawn of the excesses of party even in our own nation. I could show,
+that the same faction has, in one reign, promoted popular seditions,
+and, in the next, been a patron of tyranny: I could show that they have
+all of them betrayed the public safety at all times, and have very
+frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause and their
+own associates. I could show how vehemently they have contended for
+names, and how silently they have passed over things of the last
+importance. And I could demonstrate that they have had the opportunity
+of doing all this mischief, nay, that they themselves had their origin
+and growth from that complex form of government, which we are wisely
+taught to look upon as so great a blessing. Revolve, my lord, our
+history from the Conquest. We scarcely ever had a prince, who, by fraud
+or violence, had not made some infringement on the constitution. We
+scarcely ever had a Parliament which knew, when it attempted to set
+limits to the royal authority, how to set limits to its own. Evils we
+have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more
+grievous than any evils. Our boasted liberty sometimes trodden down,
+sometimes giddily set up, and ever precariously fluctuating and
+unsettled; it has only been kept alive by the blasts of continual feuds,
+wars, and conspiracies. In no country in Europe has the scaffold so
+often blushed with the blood of its nobility. Confiscations,
+banishments, attainders, executions, make a large part of the history of
+such of our families as are not utterly extinguished by them. Formerly,
+indeed, things had a more ferocious appearance than they have at this
+day. In these early and unrefined ages, the jarring part of a certain
+chaotic constitution supported their several pretensions by the sword.
+Experience and policy have since taught other methods.
+
+     At nunc res agitur tenui pulmone rubetae.
+
+But how far corruption, venality, the contempt of honor, the oblivion of
+all duty to our country, and the most abandoned public prostitution, are
+preferable to the more glaring and violent effects of faction, I will
+not presume to determine. Sure I am that they are very great evils.
+
+I have done with the forms of government. During the course of my
+inquiry you may have observed a very material difference between my
+manner of reasoning and that which is in use amongst the abettors of
+artificial society. They form their plans upon what seems most eligible
+to their imaginations, for the ordering of mankind. I discover the
+mistakes in those plans, from the real known consequences which have
+resulted from them. They have enlisted reason to fight against itself,
+and employ its whole force to prove that it is an insufficient guide to
+them in the conduct of their lives. But unhappily for us, in proportion
+as we have deviated from the plain rule of our nature, and turned our
+reason against itself, in that proportion have we increased the follies
+and miseries of mankind. The more deeply we penetrate into the labyrinth
+of art, the further we find ourselves from those ends for which we
+entered it. This has happened in almost every species of artificial
+society, and in all times. We found, or we thought we found, an
+inconvenience in having every man the judge of his own cause. Therefore
+judges were set up, at first, with discretionary powers. But it was soon
+found a miserable slavery to have our lives and properties precarious,
+and hanging upon the arbitrary determination of any one man, or set of
+men. We fled to laws as a remedy for this evil. By these we persuaded
+ourselves we might know with some certainty upon what ground we stood.
+But lo! differences arose upon the sense and interpretation of those
+laws. Thus we were brought back to our old incertitude. New laws were
+made to expound the old; and new difficulties arose upon the new laws;
+as words multiplied, opportunities of cavilling upon them multiplied
+also. Then recourse was had to notes, comments, glosses, reports,
+_responsa prudentum_, learned readings: eagle stood against eagle:
+authority was set up against authority. Some were allured by the modern,
+others reverenced the ancient. The new were more enlightened, the old
+were more venerable. Some adopted the comment, others stuck to the text.
+The confusion increased, the mist thickened, until it could be
+discovered no longer what was allowed or forbidden, what things were in
+property, and what common. In this uncertainty, (uncertain even to the
+professors, an Egyptian darkness to the rest of mankind), the contending
+parties felt themselves more effectually ruined by the delay, than they
+could have been by the injustice of any decision. Our inheritances are
+become a prize for disputation; and disputes and litigations are become
+an inheritance.
+
+The professors of artificial law have always walked hand in hand with
+the professors of artificial theology. As their end, in confounding the
+reason of man, and abridging his natural freedom, is exactly the same,
+they have adjusted the means to that end in a way entirely similar. The
+divine thunders out his _anathemas_ with more noise and terror against
+the breach of one of his positive institutions, or the neglect of some
+of his trivial forms, than against the neglect or breach of those duties
+and commandments of natural religion, which by these forms and
+institutions he pretends to enforce. The lawyer has his forms, and his
+positive institutions too, and he adheres to them with a veneration
+altogether as religious. The worst cause cannot be so prejudicial to the
+litigant, as his advocate's or attorney's ignorance or neglect of these
+forms. A lawsuit is like an ill-managed dispute, in which the first
+object is soon out of sight, and the parties end upon a matter wholly
+foreign to that on which they began. In a lawsuit the question is, who
+has a right to a certain house or farm? And this question is daily
+determined, not upon the evidence of the right, but upon the observance
+or neglect of some forms of words in use with the gentlemen of the robe,
+about which there is even amongst themselves such a disagreement, that
+the most experienced veterans in the profession can never be positively
+assured that they are not mistaken.
+
+Let us expostulate with these learned sages, these priests of the sacred
+temple of justice. Are we judges of our own property? By no means. You
+then, who are initiated into the mysteries of the blindfold goddess,
+inform me whether I have a right to eat the bread I have earned by the
+hazard of my life or the sweat of my brow? The grave doctor answers me
+in the affirmative; the reverend serjeant replies in the negative; the
+learned barrister reasons upon one side and upon the other, and
+concludes nothing. What shall I do? An antagonist starts up and presses
+me hard. I enter the field, and retain these three persons to defend my
+cause. My cause, which two farmers from the plough could have decided in
+half an hour, takes the court twenty years. I am however at the end of
+my labor, and have in reward for all my toil and vexation a judgment in
+my favor. But hold--a sagacious commander, in the adversary's army, has
+found a flaw in the proceeding. My triumph is turned into mourning. I
+have used _or_, instead of _and_, or some mistake, small in appearance,
+but dreadful in its consequences; and have the whole of my success
+quashed in a writ of error. I remove my suit; I shift from court to
+court; I fly from equity to law, and from law to equity; equal
+uncertainty attends me everywhere; and a mistake in which I had no
+share, decides at once upon my liberty and property, sending me from the
+court to a prison, and adjudging my family to beggary and famine. I am
+innocent, gentlemen, of the darkness and uncertainty of your science. I
+never darkened it with absurd and contradictory notions, nor confounded
+it with chicane and sophistry. You have excluded me from any share in
+the conduct of my own cause; the science was too deep for me; I
+acknowledged it; but it was too deep even for yourselves: you have made
+the way so intricate, that you are yourselves lost in it; you err, and
+you punish me for your errors.
+
+The delay of the law is, your lordship will tell me, a trite topic, and
+which of its abuses have not been too severely felt not to be complained
+of? A man's property is to serve for the purposes of his support; and
+therefore, to delay a determination concerning that, is the worst
+injustice, because it cuts off the very end and purpose for which I
+applied to the judicature for relief. Quite contrary in the case of a
+man's life; there the determination can hardly be too much protracted.
+Mistakes in this case are as often fallen into as many other; and if the
+judgment is sudden, the mistakes are the most irretrievable of all
+others. Of this the gentlemen of the robe are themselves sensible, and
+they have brought it into a maxim. _De morte hominis nulla est cunctatio
+longa._ But what could have induced them to reverse the rules, and to
+contradict that reason which dictated them, I am utterly unable to
+guess. A point concerning property, which ought, for the reasons I have
+just mentioned, to be most speedily decided, frequently exercises the
+wit of successions of lawyers, for many generations. _Multa virum
+volvens durando saecula vincit._ But the question concerning a man's
+life, that great question in which no delay ought to be counted tedious,
+is commonly determined in twenty-four hours at the utmost. It is not to
+be wondered at, that injustice and absurdity should be inseparable
+companions.
+
+Ask of politicians the end for which laws were originally designed; and
+they will answer, that the laws were designed as a protection for the
+poor and weak, against the oppression of the rich and powerful. But
+surely no pretence can be so ridiculous; a man might as well tell me he
+has taken off my load, because he has changed the burden. If the poor
+man is not able to support his suit, according to the vexatious and
+expensive manner established in civilized countries, has not the rich as
+great an advantage over him as the strong has over the weak in a state
+of nature? But we will not place the state of nature, which is the reign
+of God, in competition with political society, which is the absurd
+usurpation of man. In a state of nature, it is true that a man of
+superior force may beat or rob me; but then it is true, that I am at
+full liberty to defend myself, or make reprisal by surprise or by
+cunning, or by any other way in which I may be superior to him. But in
+political society, a rich man may rob me in another way. I cannot defend
+myself; for money is the only weapon with which we are allowed to fight.
+And if I attempt to avenge myself the whole force of that society is
+ready to complete my ruin.
+
+A good parson once said, that where mystery begins, religion ends.
+Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery
+begins, justice ends? It is hard to say, whether the doctors of law or
+divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of
+mystery. The lawyers, as well as the theologians, have erected another
+reason besides natural reason; and the result has been, another justice
+besides natural justice. They have so bewildered the world and
+themselves in unmeaning forms and ceremonies, and so perplexed the
+plainest matters with metaphysical jargon, that it carries the highest
+danger to a man out of that profession, to make the least step without
+their advice and assistance. Thus, by confining to themselves the
+knowledge of the foundation of all men's lives and properties, they have
+reduced all mankind into the most abject and servile dependence. We are
+tenants at the will of these gentlemen for everything; and a
+metaphysical quibble is to decide whether the greatest villain breathing
+shall meet his deserts, or escape with impunity, or whether the best man
+in the society shall not be reduced to the lowest and most despicable
+condition it affords. In a word, my lord, the injustice, delay,
+puerility, false refinement, and affected mystery of the law are such,
+that many who live under it come to admire and envy the expedition,
+simplicity, and equality of arbitrary judgments. I need insist the less
+on this article to your lordship, as you have frequently lamented the
+miseries derived to us from artificial law, and your candor is the more
+to be admired and applauded in this, as your lordship's noble house has
+derived its wealth and its honors from that profession.
+
+Before we finish our examination of artificial society, I shall lead
+your lordship into a closer consideration of the relations which it
+gives birth to, and the benefits, if such they are, which result from
+these relations. The most obvious division of society is into rich and
+poor; and it is no less obvious, that the number of the former bear a
+great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the
+poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich;
+and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of
+confirming the slavery and increasing the burdens of the poor. In a
+state of nature, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are
+in proportion to his labors. In a state of artificial society, it is a
+law as constant and as invariable, that those who labor most enjoy the
+fewest things; and that those who labor not at all have the greatest
+number of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and
+ridiculous beyond expression! We scarce believe a thing when we are told
+it, which we actually see before our eyes every day without being in the
+least surprised. I suppose that there are in Great Britain upwards of a
+hundred thousand people employed in lead, tin, iron, copper, and coal
+mines; these unhappy wretches scarce ever see the light of the sun; they
+are buried in the bowels of the earth; there they work at a severe and
+dismal task, without the least prospect of being delivered from it; they
+subsist upon the coarsest and worst sort of fare; they have their health
+miserably impaired, and their lives cut short, by being perpetually
+confined in the close vapor of these malignant minerals. A hundred
+thousand more at least are tortured without remission by the suffocating
+smoke, intense fires, and constant drudgery necessary in refining and
+managing the products of those mines. If any man informed us that two
+hundred thousand innocent persons were condemned to so intolerable
+slavery, how should we pity the unhappy sufferers, and how great would
+be our just indignation against those who inflicted so cruel and
+ignominious a punishment! This is an instance--I could not wish a
+stronger--of the numberless things which we pass by in their common
+dress, yet which shock us when they are nakedly represented. But this
+number, considerable as it is, and the slavery, with all its baseness
+and horror, which we have at home, is nothing to what the rest of the
+world affords of the same nature. Millions daily bathed in the
+poisonous damps and destructive effluvia of lead, silver, copper, and
+arsenic. To say nothing of those other employments, those stations of
+wretchedness and contempt, in which civil society has placed the
+numerous _enfans perdus_ of her army. Would any rational man submit to
+one of the most tolerable of these drudgeries, for all the artificial
+enjoyments which policy has made to result from them? By no means. And
+yet need I suggest to your lordship, that those who find the means, and
+those who arrive at the end, are not at all the same persons? On
+considering the strange and unaccountable fancies and contrivances of
+artificial reason, I have somewhere called this earth the Bedlam of our
+system. Looking now upon the effects of some of those fancies, may we
+not with equal reason call it likewise the Newgate and the Bridewell of
+the universe? Indeed the blindness of one part of mankind co-operating
+with the frenzy and villany of the other, has been the real builder of
+this respectable fabric of political society: and as the blindness of
+mankind has caused their slavery, in return their state of slavery is
+made a pretence for continuing them in a state of blindness; for the
+politician will tell you gravely, that their life of servitude
+disqualifies the greater part of the race of man for a search of truth,
+and supplies them with no other than mean and insufficient ideas. This
+is but too true; and this is one of the reasons for which I blame such
+institutions.
+
+In a misery of this sort, admitting some few lenitives, and those too
+but a few, nine parts in ten of the whole race of mankind drudge through
+life. It may be urged perhaps, in palliation of this, that at least the
+rich few find a considerable and real benefit from the wretchedness of
+the many. But is this so in fact? Let us examine the point with a little
+more attention. For this purpose the rich in all societies may he thrown
+into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as
+rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The
+other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of
+pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their
+toilsome days, and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These
+circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of
+the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place
+them, in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labor
+continually, which is the severest labor, but their hearts are torn by
+the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice,
+by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power
+gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity,
+benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.
+_Verae amicitiae rarissime inveniuntur in iis qui in honoribus reque
+publica versantur_, says Cicero. And indeed courts are the schools where
+cruelty, pride, dissimulation, and treachery are studied and taught in
+the most vicious perfection. This is a point so clear and acknowledged,
+that if it did not make a necessary part of my subject, I should pass it
+by entirely. And this has hindered me from drawing at full length, and
+in the most striking colors, this shocking picture of the degeneracy and
+wretchedness of human nature, in that part which is vulgarly thought its
+happiest and most amiable state. You know from what originals I could
+copy such pictures. Happy are they who know enough of them to know the
+little value of the possessors of such things, and of all that they
+possess; and happy they who have been snatched from that post of danger
+which they occupy, with the remains of their virtue; loss of honors,
+wealth, titles, and even the loss of one's country, is nothing in
+balance with so great an advantage.
+
+Let us now view the other species of the rich, those who devote their
+time and fortunes to idleness and pleasure. How much happier are they?
+The pleasures which are agreeable to nature are within the reach of all,
+and therefore can form no distinction in favor of the rich. The
+pleasures which art forces up are seldom sincere, and never satisfying.
+What is worse, this constant application to pleasure takes away from the
+enjoyment, or rather turns it into the nature of a very burdensome and
+laborious business. It has consequences much more fatal. It produces a
+weak valetudinary state of body, attended by all those horrid disorders,
+and yet more horrid methods of cure, which are the result of luxury on
+the one hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human art on the
+other. The pleasures of such men are scarcely felt as pleasures; at the
+same time that they bring on pains and diseases, which are felt but too
+severely. The mind has its share of the misfortune; it grows lazy and
+enervate, unwilling and unable to search for truth, and utterly
+uncapable of knowing, much less of relishing, real happiness. The poor
+by their excessive labor, and the rich by their enormous luxury, are set
+upon a level, and rendered equally ignorant of any knowledge which might
+conduce to their happiness. A dismal view of the interior of all civil
+society! The lower part broken and ground down by the most cruel
+oppression; and the rich by their artificial method of life bringing
+worse evils on themselves than their tyranny could possibly inflict on
+those below them. Very different is the prospect of the natural state.
+Here there are no wants which nature gives, and in this state men can be
+sensible of no other wants, which are not to be supplied by a very
+moderate degree of labor; therefore there is no slavery. Neither is
+there any luxury, because no single man can supply the materials of it.
+Life is simple, and therefore it is happy.
+
+I am conscious, my lord, that your politician will urge in his defence,
+that this unequal state is highly useful. That without dooming some part
+of mankind to extraordinary toil, the arts which cultivate life could
+not be exercised. But I demand of this politician, how such arts came to
+be necessary? He answers, that civil society could not well exist
+without them. So that these arts are necessary to civil society, and
+civil society necessary again to these arts. Thus are we running in a
+circle, without modesty, and without end, and making one error and
+extravagance an excuse for the other. My sentiments about these arts and
+their cause, I have often discoursed with my friends at large. Pope has
+expressed them in good verse, where he talks with so much force of
+reason and elegance of language, in praise of the state of nature:
+
+   "Then was not pride, nor arts that pride to aid,
+    Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade."
+
+
+On the whole, my lord, if political society, in whatever form, has still
+made the many the property of the few; if it has introduced labors
+unnecessary, vices and diseases unknown, and pleasures incompatible
+with nature; if in all countries it abridges the lives of millions, and
+renders those of millions more utterly abject and miserable, shall we
+still worship so destructive an idol, and daily sacrifice to it our
+health, our liberty, and our peace? Or shall we pass by this monstrous
+heap of absurd notions, and abominable practices, thinking we have
+sufficiently discharged our duty in exposing the trifling, cheats, and
+ridiculous juggles of a few mad, designing, or ambitious priests? Alas!
+my lord, we labor under a mortal consumption, whilst we are so anxious
+about the cure of a sore finger. For has not this leviathan of civil
+power overflowed the earth with a deluge of blood, as if he were made to
+disport and play therein? We have shown that political society, on a
+moderate calculation, has been the means of murdering several times the
+number of inhabitants now upon the earth, during its short existence,
+not upwards of four thousand years in any accounts to be depended on.
+But we have said nothing of the other, and perhaps as bad, consequence
+of these wars, which have spilled such seas of blood, and reduced so
+many millions to a merciless slavery. But these are only the ceremonies
+performed in the porch of the political temple. Much more horrid ones
+are seen as you enter it. The several species of government vie with
+each other in the absurdity of their constitutions, and the oppression
+which they make their subjects endure. Take them under what form you
+please, they are in effect but a despotism, and they fall, both in
+effect and appearance too, after a very short period, into that cruel
+and detestable species of tyranny: which I rather call it, because we
+have been educated under another form, than that this is of worse
+consequences to mankind. For the free governments, for the point of
+their space, and the moment of their duration, have felt more confusion,
+and committed more flagrant acts of tyranny, than the most perfect
+despotic governments which we have ever known. Turn your eye next to the
+labyrinth of the law, and the iniquity conceived in its intricate
+recesses. Consider the ravages committed in the bowels of all
+commonwealths by ambition, by avarice, envy, fraud, open injustice, and
+pretended friendship; vices which could draw little support from a state
+of nature, but which blossom and flourish in the rankness of political
+society. Revolve our whole discourse; add to it all those reflections
+which your own good understanding shall suggest, and make a strenuous
+effort beyond the reach of vulgar philosophy, to confess that the cause
+of artificial society is more defenceless even than that of artificial
+religion; that it is as derogatory from the honor of the Creator, as
+subversive of human reason, and productive of infinitely more mischief
+to the human race.
+
+If pretended revelations have caused wars where they were opposed, and
+slavery where they were received, the pretended wise inventions of
+politicians have done the same. But the slavery has been much heavier,
+the wars far more bloody, and both more universal by many degrees. Show
+me any mischief produced by the madness or wickedness of theologians,
+and I will show you a hundred resulting from the ambition and villany of
+conquerors and statesmen. Show me an absurdity in religion, and I will
+undertake to show you a hundred for one in political laws and
+institutions. If you say that natural religion is a sufficient guide
+without the foreign aid of revelation, on what principle should
+political laws become necessary? Is not the same reason available in
+theology and in politics? If the laws of nature are the laws of God, is
+it consistent with the Divine wisdom to prescribe rules to us, and leave
+the enforcement of them to the folly of human institutions? Will you
+follow truth but to a certain point?
+
+We are indebted for all our miseries to our distrust of that guide which
+Providence thought sufficient for our condition, our own natural reason,
+which rejecting both in human and divine things, we have given our necks
+to the yoke of political and theological slavery. We have renounced the
+prerogative of man, and it is no wonder that we should be treated like
+beasts. But our misery is much greater than theirs, as the crime we
+commit in rejecting the lawful dominion of our reason is greater than
+any which they can commit. If, after all, you should confess all these
+things, yet plead the necessity of political institutions, weak and
+wicked as they are, I can argue with equal, perhaps superior, force,
+concerning the necessity of artificial religion; and every step you
+advance in your argument, you add a strength to mine. So that if we are
+resolved to submit our reason, and our liberty to civil usurpation, we
+have nothing to do but to conform as quietly as we can to the vulgar
+notions which are connected with this, and take up the theology of the
+vulgar as well as their politics. But if we think this necessity rather
+imaginary than real, we should renounce their dreams of society,
+together with their visions of religion, and vindicate ourselves into
+perfect liberty.
+
+You are, my lord, but just entering into the world; I am going out of
+it. I have played long enough to be heartily tired of the drama. Whether
+I have acted my part in it well or ill, posterity will judge with more
+candor than I, or than the present age, with our present passions, can
+possibly pretend to. For my part, I quit it without a sigh, and submit
+to the sovereign order without murmuring. The nearer we approach to the
+goal of life, the better we begin to understand the true value of our
+existence, and the real weight of our opinions. We set out much in love
+with both; but we leave much behind us as we advance. We first throw
+away the tales along with the rattles of our nurses: those of the priest
+keep their hold a little longer; those of our governors the longest of
+all. But the passions which prop these opinions are withdrawn one after
+another; and the cool light of reason, at the setting of our life, shows
+us what a false splendor played upon these objects during our more
+sanguine seasons. Happy, my lord, if instructed by my experience, and
+even by my errors, you come early to make such an estimate of things, as
+may give freedom and ease to your life. I am happy that such an estimate
+promises me comfort at my death.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] Had his lordship lived to our days, to have seen the noble relief
+given by this nation to the distressed Portuguese, he had perhaps owned
+this part of his argument a little weakened; but we do not think
+ourselves entitled to alter his lordship's words, but that we are bound
+to follow him exactly.
+
+[9] Sciant quibus moris illicita mirari, posse etiam sub malis
+principibus magnos viros, &c. See 42, to the end of it.
+
+
+
+
+A
+
+PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY
+
+INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF
+
+THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL
+
+WITH
+
+AN INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE
+
+CONCERNING
+
+TASTE,
+
+AND SEVERAL OTHER ADDITIONS
+
+*** _The first edition of this work was published in 1756;
+     the second with large additions, in the year 1757._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+I have endeavored to make this edition something more full and
+satisfactory than the first. I have sought with the utmost care, and
+read with equal attention, everything which has appeared in public
+against my opinions; I have taken advantage of the candid liberty of my
+friends; and if by these means I have been better enabled to discover
+the imperfections of the work, the indulgence it has received, imperfect
+as it was, furnished me with a new motive to spare no reasonable pains
+for its improvement. Though I have not found sufficient reason, or what
+appeared to me sufficient, for making any material change in my theory,
+I have found it necessary in many places to explain, illustrate, and
+enforce it. I have prefixed an introductory discourse concerning Taste;
+it is a matter curious in itself; and it leads naturally enough to the
+principal inquiry. This, with the other explanations, has made the work
+considerably larger; and by increasing its bulk has, I am afraid, added
+to its faults; so that notwithstanding all my attention, it may stand in
+need of a yet greater share of indulgence than it required at its first
+appearance.
+
+They who are accustomed to studies of this nature will expect, and they
+will allow too for many faults. They know that many of the objects of
+our inquiry are in themselves obscure and intricate; and that many
+others have been rendered so by affected refinements, or false learning;
+they know that there are many impediments in the subject, in the
+prejudices of others, and even in our own, that render it a matter of no
+small difficulty to show in a clear light the genuine face of nature.
+They know that whilst the mind is intent on the general scheme of
+things, some particular parts must be neglected; that we must often
+submit the style to the matter, and frequently give up the praise of
+elegance, satisfied with being clear.
+
+The characters of nature are legible, it is true; but they are not plain
+enough to enable those who run, to read them. We must make use of a
+cautious, I had almost said, a timorous method of proceeding. We must
+not attempt to fly, when we can scarcely pretend to creep. In
+considering any complex matter, we ought to examine every distinct
+ingredient in the composition, one by one; and reduce everything to the
+utmost simplicity; since the condition of our nature binds us to a
+strict law and very narrow limits. We ought afterwards to re-examine the
+principles by the effect of the composition, as well as the composition
+by that of the principles. We ought to compare our subject with things
+of a similar nature, and even with things of a contrary nature; for
+discoveries may be, and often are made by the contrast, which would
+escape us on the single view. The greater number of the comparisons we
+make, the more general and the more certain our knowledge is likely to
+prove, as built upon a more extensive and perfect induction.
+
+If an inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of
+discovering the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in
+discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not
+make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from
+error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us
+cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much
+labor may end in so much uncertainty.
+
+I could wish that, in examining this theory, the same method were
+pursued which I endeavored to observe in forming it. The objections, in
+my opinion, ought to be proposed, either to the several principles as
+they are distinctly considered, or to the justness of the conclusion
+which is drawn from them. But it is common to pass over both the
+premises and conclusion in silence, and to produce, as an objection,
+some poetical passage which does not seem easily accounted for upon the
+principles I endeavor to establish. This manner of proceeding I should
+think very improper. The task would be infinite, if we could establish
+no principle until we had previously unravelled the complex texture of
+every image or description to be found in poets and orators. And though
+we should never be able to reconcile the effect of such images to our
+principles, this can never overturn the theory itself, whilst it is
+founded on certain and indisputable facts. A theory founded on
+experiment, and not assumed, is always good for so much as it explains.
+Our inability to push it indefinitely is no argument at all against it.
+This inability may be owing to our ignorance of some necessary
+_mediums_; to a want of proper application; to many other causes besides
+a defect in the principles we employ. In reality, the subject requires a
+much closer attention than we dare claim from our manner of treating
+it.
+
+If it should not appear on the face of the work, I must caution the
+reader against imagining that I intended a full dissertation on the
+Sublime and Beautiful. My inquiry went no farther than to the origin of
+these ideas. If the qualities which I have ranged under the head of the
+Sublime be all found consistent with each other, and all different from
+those which I place under the head of Beauty; and if those which compose
+the class of the Beautiful have the same consistency with themselves,
+and the same opposition to those which are classed under the
+denomination of Sublime, I am in little pain whether anybody chooses to
+follow the name I give them or not, provided he allows that what I
+dispose under different heads are in reality different things in nature.
+The use I make of the words may be blamed, as too confined or too
+extended; my meaning cannot well be misunderstood.
+
+To conclude: whatever progress may be made towards the discovery of
+truth in this matter, I do not repent the pains I have taken in it. The
+use of such inquiries may be very considerable. Whatever turns the soul
+inward on itself, tends to concentre its forces, and to fit it for
+greater and stronger flights of science. By looking into physical causes
+our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take
+or whether we lose our game, the chase is certainly of service. Cicero,
+true as he was to the academic philosophy, and consequently led to
+reject the certainty of physical, as of every other kind of knowledge,
+yet freely confesses its great importance to the human understanding:
+"_Est animorum ingeniorumque nostrorum naturale quoddam quasi pabulum
+consideratio contemplatioque naturae_." If we can direct the lights we
+derive from such exalted speculations upon the humbler field of the
+imagination, whilst we investigate the springs, and trace the courses of
+our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of
+philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on the severer sciences
+some of the graces and elegances of taste, without which the greatest
+proficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of
+something illiberal.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+INTRODUCTION: On Taste                                                79
+
+
+PART I
+
+I.     Novelty                                                       101
+
+II.    Pain and Pleasure                                             102
+
+III.   The Difference between the Removal of Pain and Positive
+       Pleasure                                                      104
+
+IV.    Of Delight and Pleasure, as opposed to each other             106
+
+V.     Joy and Grief                                                 108
+
+VI.    Of the Passions which belong to Self-Preservation             110
+
+VII.   Of the Sublime                                                110
+
+VIII.  Of the Passions which belong to Society                       111
+
+IX.    The Final Cause of the Difference between the Passions
+       belonging to Self-Preservation, and those which regard
+       the Society of the Sexes                                      113
+
+X.     Of Beauty                                                     114
+
+XI.    Society and Solitude                                          115
+
+XII.   Sympathy, Imitation, and Ambition                             116
+
+XIII.  Sympathy                                                      117
+
+XIV.   The Effects of Sympathy in the Distresses of Others           119
+
+XV.    Of the Effects of Tragedy                                     120
+
+XVI.   Imitation                                                     122
+
+XVII.  Ambition                                                      123
+
+XVIII. The Recapitulation                                            125
+
+XIX.   The Conclusion                                                126
+
+
+PART II.
+
+I.     Of the Passion caused by the Sublime                          130
+
+II.    Terror                                                        130
+
+III.   Obscurity                                                     132
+
+IV.    Of the Difference between Clearness and Obscurity
+       with regard to the Passions                                   133
+
+[IV.]  The Same Subject continued                                    134
+
+V.     Power                                                         138
+
+VI.    Privation                                                     146
+
+VII.   Vastness                                                      147
+
+VIII.  Infinity                                                      148
+
+IX.    Succession and Uniformity                                     149
+
+X.     Magnitude in Building                                         152
+
+XI.    Infinity in Pleasing Objects                                  153
+
+XII.   Difficulty                                                    153
+
+XIII.  Magnificence                                                  154
+
+XIV.   Light                                                         156
+
+XV.    Light in Building                                             157
+
+XVI.   Color considered as productive of the Sublime                 158
+
+XVII.  Sound and Loudness                                            159
+
+XVIII. Suddenness                                                    160
+
+XIX.   Intermitting                                                  160
+
+XX.    The Cries of Animals                                          161
+
+XXI.   Smell and Taste--Bitters and Stenches                         162
+
+XXII.  Feeling.--Pain                                                164
+
+
+PART III.
+
+I.     Of Beauty                                                     165
+
+II.    Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in Vegetables              166
+
+III.   Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in Animals                 170
+
+IV.    Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in the Human Species       172
+
+V.     Proportion further considered                                 178
+
+VI.    Fitness not the Cause of Beauty                               181
+
+VII.   The Real Effects of Fitness                                   184
+
+VIII.  The Recapitulation                                            187
+
+IX.    Perfection not the Cause of Beauty                            187
+
+X.     How far the Idea of Beauty may be applied to the
+       Qualities of the Mind                                         188
+
+XI.    How far the Idea of Beauty may be applied to Virtue           190
+
+XII.   The Real Cause of Beauty                                      191
+
+XIII.  Beautiful Objects Small                                       191
+
+XIV.   Smoothness                                                    193
+
+XV.    Gradual Variation                                             194
+
+XVI.   Delicacy                                                      195
+
+XVII.  Beauty in Color                                               196
+
+XVIII. Recapitulation                                                197
+
+XIX.   The Physiognomy                                               198
+
+XX.    The Eye                                                       198
+
+XXI.   Ugliness                                                      199
+
+XXII.  Grace                                                         200
+
+XXIII. Elegance and Speciousness                                     200
+
+XXIV.  The Beautiful in Feeling                                      201
+
+XXV.   The Beautiful in Sounds                                       203
+
+XXVI.  Taste and Smell                                               205
+
+XXVII. The Sublime and Beautiful compared                            205
+
+
+PART IV.
+
+I.     Of the Efficient Cause of the Sublime and Beautiful           208
+
+II.    Association                                                   209
+
+III.   Cause of Pain and Fear                                        210
+
+IV.    Continued                                                     212
+
+V.     How the Sublime is produced                                   215
+
+VI.    How Pain can be a Cause of Delight                            215
+
+VII.   Exercise necessary for the Finer Organs                       216
+
+VIII.  Why Things not Dangerous sometimes produce a
+       Passion like Terror                                           217
+
+IX.    Why Visual Objects of Great Dimensions are Sublime            217
+
+X.     Unity, why requisite to Vastness                              219
+
+XI.    The Artificial Infinite                                       220
+
+XII.   The Vibrations must be Similar                                222
+
+XIII.  The Effects of Succession in Visual Objects explained         222
+
+XIV.   Locke's Opinion concerning Darkness considered                225
+
+XV.    Darkness Terrible in its own Nature                           226
+
+XVI.   Why Darkness is Terrible                                      227
+
+XVII.  The Effects of Blackness                                      229
+
+XVIII. The Effects of Blackness moderated                            231
+
+XIX.   The Physical Cause of Love                                    232
+
+XX.    Why Smoothness is Beautiful                                   234
+
+XXI.   Sweetness, its Nature                                         235
+
+XXII.  Sweetness relaxing                                            237
+
+XXIII. Variation, why Beautiful                                      239
+
+XXIV.  Concerning Smallness                                          240
+
+XXV.   Of Color                                                      244
+
+
+PART V.
+
+I.     Of Words                                                      246
+
+II.    The Common Effect of Poetry, not by raising Ideas of Things   246
+
+III.   General Words before Ideas                                    249
+
+IV.    The Effect of Words                                           250
+
+V.     Examples that Words may affect without raising Images         252
+
+VI.    Poetry not strictly an Imitative Art                          257
+
+VII.   How Words influence the Passions                              258
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+ON TASTE.
+
+
+On a superficial view we may seem to differ very widely from each other
+in our reasonings, and no less in our pleasures: but, notwithstanding
+this difference, which I think to be rather apparent than real, it is
+probable that the standard both of reason and taste is the same in all
+human creatures. For if there were not some principles of judgment as
+well as of sentiment common to all mankind, no hold could possibly be
+taken either on their reason or their passions, sufficient to maintain
+the ordinary correspondence of life. It appears, indeed, to be generally
+acknowledged, that with regard to truth and falsehood there is something
+fixed. We find people in their disputes continually appealing to certain
+tests and standards, which are allowed on all sides, and are supposed to
+be established in our common nature. But there is not the same obvious
+concurrence in any uniform or settled principles which relate to taste.
+It is even commonly supposed that this delicate and aerial faculty,
+which seems too volatile to endure even the chains of a definition,
+cannot be properly tried by any test, nor regulated by any standard.
+There is so continual a call for the exercise of the reasoning facility;
+and it is so much strengthened by perpetual contention, that certain
+maxims of right reason seem to be tacitly settled amongst the most
+ignorant. The learned have improved on this rude science, and reduced
+those maxims into a system. If taste has not been so happily cultivated,
+it was not that the subject was barren, but that the laborers were few
+or negligent; for, to say the truth, there are not the same interesting
+motives to impel us to fix the one, which urge us to ascertain the
+other. And, after all, if men differ in their opinion concerning such
+matters, their difference is not attended with the same important
+consequences; else I make no doubt but that the logic of taste, if I may
+be allowed the expression, might very possibly be as well digested, and
+we might come to discuss matters of this nature with as much certainty,
+as those which seem more immediately within the province of mere reason.
+And, indeed, it is very necessary, at the entrance into such an inquiry
+as our present, to make this point as clear as possible; for if taste
+has no fixed principles, if the imagination is not affected according to
+some invariable and certain laws, our labor is likely to be employed to
+very little purpose; as it must be judged an useless, if not an absurd
+undertaking, to lay down rules for caprice, and to set up for a
+legislator of whims and fancies.
+
+The term taste, like all other figurative terms, is not extremely
+accurate; the thing which we understand by it is far from a simple and
+determinate idea in the minds of most men, and it is therefore liable to
+uncertainty and confusion. I have no great opinion of a definition, the
+celebrated remedy for the cure of this disorder. For, when we define, we
+seem in danger of circumscribing nature within the bounds of our own
+notions, which we often take up by hazard or embrace on trust, or form
+out of a limited and partial consideration of the object before us;
+instead of extending our ideas to take in all that nature comprehends,
+according to her manner of combining. We are limited in our inquiry by
+the strict laws to which we have submitted at our setting out.
+
+        Circa vilem patulumque morabimur orbem,
+    Unde pudor proferre pedem vetat aut operis lex.
+
+
+A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards
+informing us of the nature of the thing defined; but let the virtue of a
+definition be what it will, in the order of things, it seems rather to
+follow than to precede our inquiry, of which it ought to be considered
+as the result. It must be acknowledged that the methods of disquisition
+and teaching may be sometimes different, and on very good reason
+undoubtedly; but, for my part, I am convinced that the method of
+teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is
+incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren
+and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew; it tends
+to set the reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him
+into those paths in which the author has made his own discoveries, if he
+should be so happy as to have made any that are valuable.
+
+But to cut off all pretence for cavilling, I mean by the word taste, no
+more than that faculty or those faculties of the mind, which are
+affected with, or which form a judgment of, the works of imagination and
+the elegant arts. This is, I think, the most general idea of that word,
+and what is the least connected with any particular theory. And my point
+in this inquiry is, to find whether there are any principles, on which
+the imagination is affected, so common to all, so grounded and certain,
+as to supply the means of reasoning satisfactorily about them. And such
+principles of taste I fancy there are; however paradoxical it may seem
+to those, who on a superficial view imagine that there is so great a
+diversity of tastes, both in kind and degree, that nothing can be more
+indeterminate.
+
+All the natural powers in man, which I know, that are conversant about
+external objects, are the senses; the imagination; and the judgment. And
+first with regard to the senses. We do and we must suppose, that as the
+conformation of their organs are nearly or altogether the same in all
+men, so the manner of perceiving external objects is in all men the
+same, or with little difference. We are satisfied that what appears to
+be light to one eye, appears light to another; that what seems sweet to
+one palate, is sweet to another; that what is dark and bitter to this
+man, is likewise dark and bitter to that; and we conclude in the same
+manner of great and little, hard and soft, hot and cold, rough and
+smooth; and indeed of all the natural qualities and affections of
+bodies. If we suffer ourselves to imagine, that their senses present to
+different men different images of things, this sceptical proceeding will
+make every sort of reasoning on every subject vain and frivolous, even
+that sceptical reasoning itself which had persuaded us to entertain a
+doubt concerning the agreement of our perceptions. But as there will be
+little doubt that bodies present similar images to the whole species, it
+must necessarily be allowed, that the pleasures and the pains which
+every object excites in one man, it must raise in all mankind, whilst
+it operates naturally, simply, and by its proper powers only: for if we
+deny this, we must imagine that the same cause, operating in the same
+manner, and on subjects of the same kind, will produce different
+effects; which would be highly absurd. Let us first consider this point
+in the sense of taste, and the rather as the faculty in question has
+taken its name from that sense. All men are agreed to call vinegar sour,
+honey sweet, and aloes bitter; and as they are all agreed in finding
+those qualities in those objects, they do not in the least differ
+concerning their effects with regard to pleasure and pain. They all
+concur in calling sweetness pleasant, and sourness and bitterness
+unpleasant. Here there is no diversity in their sentiments; and that
+there is not, appears fully from the consent of all men in the metaphors
+which are taken, from the souse of taste. A sour temper, bitter
+expressions, bitter curses, a bitter fate, are terms well and strongly
+understood by all. And we are altogether as well understood when we say,
+a sweet disposition, a sweet person, a sweet condition and the like. It
+is confessed, that custom and some other causes have made many
+deviations from the natural pleasures or pains which belong to these
+several tastes; but then the power of distinguishing between the natural
+and the acquired relish remains to the very last. A man frequently comes
+to prefer the taste of tobacco to that of sugar, and the flavor of
+vinegar to that of milk; but this makes no confusion in tastes, whilst
+he is sensible that the tobacco and vinegar are not sweet, and whilst he
+knows that habit alone has reconciled his palate to these alien
+pleasures. Even with such a person we may speak, and with sufficient
+precision, concerning tastes. But should any man be found who declares,
+that to him tobacco has a taste like sugar, and that he cannot
+distinguish between milk and vinegar; or that tobacco and vinegar are
+sweet, milk bitter, and sugar sour; we immediately conclude that the
+organs of this man are out of order, and that his palate is utterly
+vitiated. We are as far from conferring with such a person upon tastes,
+as from reasoning concerning the relations of quantity with one who
+should deny that all the parts together were equal to the whole. We do
+not call a man of this kind wrong in his notions, but absolutely mad.
+Exceptions of this sort, in either way, do not at all impeach our
+general rule, nor make us conclude that men have various principles
+concerning the relations of quantity or the taste of things. So that
+when it is said, taste cannot be disputed, it can only mean, that no one
+can strictly answer what pleasure or pain some particular man may find
+from the taste of some particular thing. This indeed cannot be disputed;
+but we may dispute, and with sufficient clearness too, concerning the
+things which are naturally pleasing or disagreeable to the sense. But
+when we talk of any peculiar or acquired relish, then we must know the
+habits, the prejudices, or the distempers of this particular man, and we
+must draw our conclusion from those.
+
+This agreement of mankind is not confined to the taste solely. The
+principle of pleasure derived from sight is the same in all. Light is
+more pleasing than darkness. Summer, when the earth is clad in green,
+when the heavens are serene and bright, is more agreeable than winter,
+when everything makes a different appearance. I never remember that
+anything beautiful, whether a man, a beast, a bird, or a plant, was
+ever shown, though it were to a hundred people, that they did not all
+immediately agree that it was beautiful, though some might have thought
+that it fell short of their expectation, or that other things were still
+finer. I believe no man thinks a goose to be more beautiful than a swan,
+or imagines that what they call a Friesland hen excels a peacock. It
+must be observed too, that the pleasures of the sight are not near so
+complicated, and confused, and altered by unnatural habits and
+associations, as the pleasures of the taste are; because the pleasures
+of the sight more commonly acquiesce in themselves; and are not so often
+altered by considerations which are independent of the sight itself. But
+things do not spontaneously present themselves to the palate as they do
+to the sight; they are generally applied to it, either as food or as
+medicine; and from the qualities which they possess for nutritive or
+medicinal purposes they often form the palate by degrees, and by force
+of these associations. Thus opium is pleasing to Turks, on account of
+the agreeable delirium it produces. Tobacco is the delight of Dutchmen,
+as it diffuses a torpor and pleasing stupefaction. Fermented spirits
+please our common people, because they banish care, and all
+consideration of future or present evils. All of these would lie
+absolutely neglected if their properties had originally gone no further
+than the taste; but all these, together with tea and coffee, and some
+other things, have passed from the apothecary's shop to our tables, and
+were taken for health long before they were thought of for pleasure. The
+effect of the drug has made us use it frequently; and frequent use,
+combined with the agreeable effect, has made the taste itself at last
+agreeable. But this does not in the least perplex our reasoning;
+because we distinguish to the last the acquired from the natural relish.
+In describing the taste of an unknown fruit, you would scarcely say that
+it had a sweet and pleasant flavor like tobacco, opium, or garlic,
+although you spoke to those who were in the constant use of those drugs,
+and had great pleasure in them. There is in all men a sufficient
+remembrance of the original natural causes of pleasure, to enable them
+to bring all things offered to their senses to that standard, and to
+regulate their feelings and opinions by it. Suppose one who had so
+vitiated his palate as to take more pleasure in the taste of opium than
+in that of butter or honey, to be presented with a bolus of squills;
+there is hardly any doubt but that he would prefer the butter or honey
+to this nauseous morsel, or to any other bitter drug to which he had not
+been accustomed; which proves that his palate was naturally like that of
+other men in all things, that it is still like the palate of other men
+in many things, and only vitiated in some particular points. For in
+judging of any new thing, even of a taste similar to that which he has
+been formed by habit to like, he finds his palate affected in the
+natural manner, and on the common principles. Thus the pleasure of all
+the senses, of the sight, and even of the taste, that most ambiguous of
+the senses, is the same in all, high and low, learned and unlearned.
+
+Besides the ideas, with their annexed pains and pleasures, which are
+presented by the sense; the mind of man possesses a sort of creative
+power of its own; either in representing at pleasure the images of
+things in the order and manner in which they were received by the
+senses, or in combining those images in a new manner, and according to
+a different order. This power is called imagination; and to this belongs
+whatever is called wit, fancy, invention, and the like. But it must be
+observed, that this power of the imagination is incapable of producing
+anything absolutely new; it can only vary the disposition of those ideas
+which it has received from the senses. Now the imagination is the most
+extensive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our
+fears and our hopes, and of all our passions that are connected with
+them; and whatever is calculated to affect the imagination with these
+commanding ideas, by force of any original natural impression, must have
+the same power pretty equally over all men. For since the imagination is
+only the representation of the senses, it can only be pleased or
+displeased with the images, from the same principle on which the sense
+is pleased or displeased with the realities; and consequently there must
+be just as close an agreement in the imaginations as in the senses of
+men. A little attention will convince us that this must of necessity be
+the case.
+
+But in the imagination, besides the pain or pleasure arising from the
+properties of the natural object, a pleasure is perceived from the
+resemblance which the imitation has to the original: the imagination, I
+conceive, can have no pleasure but what results from one or other of
+these causes. And these causes operate pretty uniformly upon all men,
+because they operate by principles in nature, and which are not derived
+from any particular habits or advantages. Mr. Locke very justly and
+finely observes of wit, that it is chiefly conversant in tracing
+resemblances; he remarks, at the same time, that the business of
+judgment is rather in finding differences. It may perhaps appear, on
+this supposition, that there is no material distinction between the wit
+and the judgment, as they both seem to result from different operations
+of the same faculty of _comparing_. But in reality, whether they are or
+are not dependent on the same power of the mind, they differ so very
+materially in many respects, that a perfect union of wit and judgment is
+one of the rarest things in the world. When two distinct objects are
+unlike to each other, it is only what we expect; things are in their
+common way; and therefore they make no impression on the imagination:
+but when two distinct objects have a resemblance, we are struck, we
+attend to them, and we are pleased. The mind of man has naturally a far
+greater alacrity and satisfaction in tracing resemblances than in
+searching for differences; because by making resemblances we produce
+_new images_; we unite, we create, we enlarge our stock; but in making
+distinctions we offer no food at all to the imagination; the task itself
+is more severe and irksome, and what pleasure we derive from it is
+something of a negative and indirect nature. A piece of news is told me
+in the morning; this, merely as a piece of news, as a fact added to my
+stock, gives me some pleasure. In the evening I find there was nothing
+in it. What do I gain by this, but the dissatisfaction to find that I
+had been imposed upon? Hence it is that men are much more naturally
+inclined to belief than to incredulity. And it is upon this principle,
+that the most ignorant and barbarous nations have frequently excelled in
+similitudes, comparisons, metaphors, and allegories, who have been weak
+and backward in distinguishing and sorting their ideas. And it is for a
+reason of this kind, that Homer and the oriental writers, though very
+fond of similitudes, and though they often strike out such as are truly
+admirable, seldom take care to have them exact; that is, they are taken
+with the general resemblance, they paint it strongly, and they take no
+notice of the difference which may be found between the things compared.
+
+Now as the pleasure of resemblance is that which principally flatters
+the imagination, all men are nearly equal in this point, as far as their
+knowledge of the things represented or compared extends. The principle
+of this knowledge is very much accidental, as it depends upon experience
+and observation, and not on the strength or weakness of any natural
+faculty; and it is from this difference in knowledge, that what we
+commonly, though with no great exactness, call a difference in taste
+proceeds. A man to whom sculpture is new, sees a barber's block, or some
+ordinary piece of statuary; he is immediately struck and pleased,
+because he sees something like a human figure; and, entirely taken up
+with this likeness, he does not at all attend to its defects. No person,
+I believe, at the first time of seeing a piece of imitation ever did.
+Some time after, we suppose that this novice lights upon a more
+artificial work of the same nature; he now begins to look with contempt
+on what he admired at first; not that he admired it even then for its
+unlikeness to a man, but for that general though inaccurate resemblance
+which it bore to the human figure. What he admired at different times in
+these so different figures, is strictly the same; and though his
+knowledge is improved, his taste is not altered. Hitherto his mistake
+was from a want of knowledge in art, and this arose from his
+inexperience; but he may be still deficient from a want of knowledge in
+nature. For it is possible that the man in question may stop here, and
+that the masterpiece of a great hand may please him no more than the
+middling performance of a vulgar artist; and this not for want of better
+or higher relish, but because all men do not observe with sufficient
+accuracy on the human figure to enable them to judge properly of an
+imitation of it. And that the critical taste does not depend upon a
+superior principle in men, but upon superior knowledge, may appear from
+several instances. The story of the ancient painter and the shoemaker is
+very well known. The shoemaker set the painter right with regard to some
+mistakes he had made in the shoe of one of his figures, which the
+painter, who had not made such accurate observations on shoes, and was
+content with a general resemblance, had never observed. But this was no
+impeachment to the taste of the painter; it only showed some want of
+knowledge in the art of making shoes. Let us imagine, that an anatomist
+had come into the painter's working-room. His piece is in general well
+done, the figure in question in a good attitude, and the parts well
+adjusted to their various movements; yet the anatomist, critical in his
+art, may observe the swell of some muscle not quite just in the peculiar
+action of the figure. Here the anatomist observes what the painter had
+not observed; and he passes by what the shoemaker had remarked. But a
+want of the last critical knowledge in anatomy no more reflected on the
+natural good taste of the painter, or of any common observer of his
+piece, than the want of an exact knowledge in the formation of a shoe. A
+fine piece of a decollated head of St. John the Baptist was shown to a
+Turkish emperor: he praised many things, but he observed one defect: he
+observed that the skin did not shrink from the wounded part of the neck.
+The sultan on this occasion, though his observation was very just,
+discovered no more natural taste than the painter who executed this
+piece, or than a thousand European connoisseurs, who probably never
+would have made the same observation. His Turkish majesty had indeed
+been well acquainted with that terrible spectacle, which the others
+could only have represented in their imagination. On the subject of
+their dislike there is a difference between all these people, arising
+from the different kinds and degrees of their knowledge; but there is
+something in common to the painter, the shoemaker, the anatomist, and
+the Turkish emperor, the pleasure arising from a natural object, so far
+as each perceives it justly imitated; the satisfaction in seeing an
+agreeable figure; the sympathy proceeding from a striking and affecting
+incident. So far as taste is natural, it is nearly common to all.
+
+In poetry, and other pieces of imagination, the same parity may be
+observed. It is true, that one man is charmed with Don Bellianis, and
+reads Virgil coldly; whilst another is transported with the AEneid, and
+leaves Don Bellianis to children. These two men seem to have a taste
+very different from each other; but in fact they differ very little. In
+both these pieces, which inspire such opposite sentiments, a tale
+exciting admiration is told; both are full of action, both are
+passionate; in both are voyages, battles, triumphs, and continual
+changes of fortune. The admirer of Don Bellianis perhaps does not
+understand the refined language of the AEneid, who, if it was degraded
+into the style of the "Pilgrim's Progress," might feel it in all its
+energy, on the same principle which made him an admirer of Don
+Bellianis.
+
+In his favorite author he is not shocked with the continual breaches of
+probability, the confusion of times, the offences against manners, the
+trampling upon geography; for he knows nothing of geography and
+chronology, and he has never examined the grounds of probability. He
+perhaps reads of a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia: wholly taken up
+with so interesting an event, and only solicitous for the fate of his
+hero, he is not in the least troubled at this extravagant blunder. For
+why should he be shocked at a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia, who
+does not know but that Bohemia may be an island in the Atlantic ocean?
+and after all, what reflection is this on the natural good taste of the
+person here supposed?
+
+So far then as taste belongs to the imagination, its principle is the
+same in all men; there is no difference in the manner of their being
+affected, nor in the causes of the affection; but in the _degree_ there
+is a difference, which arises from two causes principally; either from a
+greater degree of natural sensibility, or from a closer and longer
+attention to the object. To illustrate this by the procedure of the
+senses, in which the same difference is found, let us suppose a very
+smooth marble table to be set before two men; they both perceive it to
+be smooth, and they are both pleased with it because of this quality. So
+far they agree. But suppose another, and after that another table, the
+latter still smoother than the former, to be set before them. It is now
+very probable that these men, who are so agreed upon what is smooth, and
+in the pleasure from thence, will disagree when they come to settle
+which table has the advantage in point of polish. Here is indeed the
+great difference between tastes, when men come to compare the excess or
+diminution of things which are judged by degree and not by measure. Nor
+is it easy, when such a difference arises, to settle the point, if the
+excess or diminution be not glaring. If we differ in opinion about two
+quantities, we can have recourse to a common measure, which may decide
+the question with the utmost exactness; and this, I take it, is what
+gives mathematical knowledge a greater certainty than any other. But in
+things whose excess is not judged by greater or smaller, as smoothness
+and roughness, hardness and softness, darkness and light, the shades of
+colors, all these are very easily distinguished when the difference is
+any way considerable, but not when it is minute, for want of some common
+measures, which perhaps may never come to be discovered. In these nice
+cases, supposing the acuteness of the sense equal, the greater attention
+and habit in such things will have the advantage. In the question about
+the tables, the marble-polisher will unquestionably determine the most
+accurately. But notwithstanding this want of a common measure for
+settling many disputes relative to the senses, and their representative
+the imagination, we find that the principles are the same in all, and
+that there is no disagreement until we come to examine into the
+pre-eminence or difference of things, which brings us within the
+province of the judgment.
+
+So long as we are conversant with the sensible qualities of things,
+hardly any more than the imagination seems concerned; little more also
+than the imagination seems concerned when the passions are represented,
+because by the force of natural sympathy they are felt in all men
+without any recourse to reasoning, and their justness recognized in
+every breast. Love, grief, fear, anger, joy, all these passions have, in
+their turns, affected every mind; and they do not affect it in an
+arbitrary or casual manner, but upon certain, natural, and uniform
+principles. But as many of the works of imagination are not confined to
+the representation of sensible objects, nor to efforts upon the
+passions, but extend themselves to the manners, the characters, the
+actions, and designs of men, their relations, their virtues and vices,
+they come within the province of the judgment, which is improved by
+attention, and by the habit of reasoning. All these make a very
+considerable part of what are considered as the objects of taste; and
+Horace sends us to the schools of philosophy and the world for our
+instruction in them. Whatever certainty is to be acquired in morality
+and the science of life; just the same degree of certainty have we in
+what relates to them in works of imitation. Indeed it is for the most
+part in our skill in manners, and in the observances of time and place,
+and of decency in general, which is only to be learned in those schools
+to which Horace recommends us, that what is called taste, by way of
+distinction, consists: and which is in reality no other than a more
+refined judgment. On the whole, it appears to me, that what is called
+taste, in its most general acceptation, is not a simple idea, but is
+partly made up of a perception of the primary pleasures of sense, of the
+secondary pleasures of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the
+reasoning faculty, concerning the various relations of these, and
+concerning the human passions, manners, and actions. All this is
+requisite to form taste, and the groundwork of all these is the same in
+the human mind; for as the senses are the great originals of all our
+ideas, and consequently of all our pleasures, if they are not uncertain
+and arbitrary, the whole groundwork of taste is common to all, and
+therefore there is a sufficient foundation for a conclusive reasoning on
+these matters.
+
+Whilst we consider taste merely according to its nature and species, we
+shall find its principles entirely uniform; but the degree in which
+these principles prevail, in the several individuals of mankind, is
+altogether as different as the principles themselves are similar. For
+sensibility and judgment, which are the qualities that compose what we
+commonly call a _taste_, vary exceedingly in various people. From a
+defect in the former of these qualities arises a want of taste; a
+weakness in the latter constitutes a wrong or a bad one. There are some
+men formed with feelings so blunt, with tempers so cold and phlegmatic,
+that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of
+their lives. Upon such persons the most striking objects make but a
+faint and obscure impression. There are others so continually in the
+agitation of gross and merely sensual pleasures, or so occupied in the
+low drudgery of avarice, or so heated in the chase of honors and
+distinction, that their minds, which had been used continually to the
+storms of these violent and tempestuous passions, can hardly be put in
+motion by the delicate and refined play of the imagination. These men,
+though from a different cause, become as stupid and insensible as the
+former; but whenever either of these happen to be struck with any
+natural elegance or greatness, or with these qualities in any work of
+art, they are moved upon the same principle.
+
+The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment. And this may arise
+from a natural weakness of understanding (in whatever the strength of
+that faculty may consist), or, which is much more commonly the case, it
+may arise from a want of a proper and well-directed exercise, which
+alone can make it strong and ready. Besides, that ignorance,
+inattention, prejudice, rashness, levity, obstinacy, in short, all those
+passions, and all those vices, which pervert the judgment in other
+matters, prejudice it no less in this its more refined and elegant
+province. These causes produce different opinions upon everything which
+is an object of the understanding, without inducing us to suppose that
+there are no settled principles of reason. And indeed, on the whole, one
+may observe, that there is rather less difference upon matters of taste
+among mankind, than upon most of those which depend upon the naked
+reason; and that men are far better agreed on the excellence of a
+description in Virgil, than on the truth or falsehood of a theory of
+Aristotle.
+
+A rectitude of judgment in the arts, which may be called a good taste,
+does in a great measure depend upon sensibility; because if the mind has
+no bent to the pleasures of the imagination, it will never apply itself
+sufficiently to works of that species to acquire a competent knowledge
+in them. But though a degree of sensibility is requisite to form a good
+judgment, yet a good judgment does not necessarily arise from a quick
+sensibility of pleasure; it frequently happens that a very poor judge,
+merely by force of a greater complexional sensibility, is more affected
+by a very poor piece, than the best judge by the most perfect; for as
+everything now, extraordinary, grand, or passionate, is well calculated
+to affect such a person, and that the faults do not affect him, his
+pleasure is more pure and unmixed; and as it is merely a pleasure of the
+imagination, it is much higher than any which is derived from a
+rectitude of the judgment; the judgment is for the greater part employed
+in throwing stumbling-blocks in the way of the imagination, in
+dissipating the scenes of its enchantment, and in tying us down to the
+disagreeable yoke of our reason: for almost the only pleasure that men
+have in judging better than others, consists in a sort of conscious
+pride and superiority, which arises from thinking rightly; but then this
+is an indirect pleasure, a pleasure which does not immediately result
+from the object which is under contemplation. In the morning of our
+days, when the senses are unworn and tender, when the whole man is awake
+in every part, and the gloss of novelty fresh upon all the objects that
+surround us, how lively at that time are our sensations, but how false
+and inaccurate the judgments we form of things! I despair of ever
+receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most excellent
+performances of genius, which I felt at that age from pieces which my
+present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible. Every trivial
+cause of pleasure is apt to affect the man of too sanguine a complexion:
+his appetite is too keen to suffer his taste to be delicate; and he is
+in all respects what Ovid says of himself in love,
+
+    Molle meum levibus cor est violabile telis,
+    Et semper causa est, cur ego semper amem.
+
+One of this character can never be a refined judge; never what the
+comic poet calls _elegans formarum spectator_. The excellence and force
+of a composition must always he imperfectly estimated from its effect on
+the minds of any, except we know the temper and character of those
+minds. The most powerful effects of poetry and music have been
+displayed, and perhaps are still displayed, where these arts are but in
+a very low and imperfect state. The rude hearer is affected by the
+principles which operate in these arts even in their rudest condition;
+and he is not skilful enough to perceive the defects. But as the arts
+advance towards their perfection, the science of criticism advances with
+equal pace, and the pleasure of judges is frequently interrupted by the
+faults which we discovered in the most finished compositions.
+
+Before I leave this subject, I cannot help taking notice of an opinion
+which many persons entertain, as if the taste were a separate faculty of
+the mind, and distinct from the judgment and imagination; a species of
+instinct, by which we are struck naturally, and at the first glance,
+without any previous reasoning, with the excellences or the defects of a
+composition. So far as the imagination, and the passions are concerned,
+I believe it true, that the reason is little consulted; but where
+disposition, where decorum, where congruity are concerned, in short,
+wherever the best taste differs from the worst, I am convinced that the
+understanding operates, and nothing else; and its operation is in
+reality far from being always sudden, or, when it is sudden, it is often
+far from being right. Men of the best taste by consideration come
+frequently to change these early and precipitate judgments, which the
+mind, from its aversion to neutrality and doubt, loves to form on the
+spot. It is known that the taste (whatever it is) is improved exactly
+as we improve our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady
+attention to our object, and by frequent exercise. They who have not
+taken these methods, if their taste decides quickly, it is always
+uncertainly; and their quickness is owing to their presumption and
+rashness, and not to any sudden irradiation, that in a moment dispels
+all darkness from their minds. But they who have cultivated that species
+of knowledge which makes the object of taste, by degrees and habitually
+attain not only a soundness but a readiness of judgment, as men do by
+the same methods on all other occasions. At first they are obliged to
+spell, but at last they read with ease and with celerity; but this
+celerity of its operation is no proof that the taste is a distinct
+faculty. Nobody, I believe, has attended the course of a discussion
+which turned upon matters within the sphere of mere naked reason, but
+must have observed the extreme readiness with which the whole process of
+the argument is carried on, the grounds discovered, the objections
+raised and answered, and the conclusions drawn from premises, with a
+quickness altogether as great as the taste can be supposed to work with;
+and yet where nothing but plain reason either is or can be suspected to
+operate. To multiply principles for every different appearance is
+useless, and unphilosophical too in a high degree.
+
+This matter might be pursued much farther; but it is not the extent of
+the subject which must prescribe our bounds, for what subject does not
+branch out to infinity? It is the nature of our particular scheme, and
+the single point of view in which we consider it, which ought to put a
+stop to our researches.
+
+
+
+
+A
+
+PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY
+
+INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF
+
+THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+NOVELTY.
+
+The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind
+is curiosity. By curiosity I mean whatever desire we have for, or
+whatever pleasure we take in, novelty. We see children perpetually
+running from place to place, to hunt out something new: they catch with
+great eagerness, and with very little choice, at whatever comes before
+them; their attention is engaged by everything, because everything has,
+in that stage of life, the charm of novelty to recommend it. But as
+those things, which engage us merely by their novelty, cannot attach us
+for any length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all the
+affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which
+is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an
+appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and anxiety. Curiosity, from its
+nature, is a very active principle; it quickly runs over the greatest
+part of its objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to
+be met with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and they
+return with less and less of any agreeable effect. In short, the
+occurrences of life, by the time we come to know it a little, would be
+incapable of affecting the mind with any other sensations than those of
+loathing and weariness, if many things were not adapted to affect the
+mind by means of other powers besides novelty in them, and of other
+passions besides curiosity in ourselves. These powers and passions shall
+be considered in their place. But, whatever these powers are, or upon
+what principle soever they affect the mind, it is absolutely necessary
+that they should not be exerted in those things which a daily and vulgar
+use have brought into a stale unaffecting familiarity. Some degree of
+novelty must be one of the materials in every instrument which works
+upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself more or less with all our
+passions.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+PAIN AND PLEASURE.
+
+It seems, then, necessary towards moving the passions of people advanced
+in life to any considerable degree, that the objects designed for that
+purpose, besides their being in some measure new, should be capable of
+exciting pain or pleasure from other causes. Pain and pleasure are
+simple ideas, incapable of definition. People are not liable to be
+mistaken in their feelings, but they are very frequently wrong in the
+names they give them, and in their reasonings about them. Many are of
+opinion, that pain arises necessarily from the removal of some pleasure;
+as they think pleasure does from the ceasing or diminution of some pain.
+For my part, I am rather inclined to imagine, that pain and pleasure,
+in their most simple and natural manner of affecting, are each of a
+positive nature, and by no means necessarily dependent on each other for
+their existence. The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most
+part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of
+indifference. When I am carried from this state into a state of actual
+pleasure, it does not appear necessary that I should pass through the
+medium of any sort of pain. If in such a state of indifference, or ease,
+or tranquillity, or call it what you please, you were to be suddenly
+entertained with a concert of music; or suppose some object of a fine
+shape, and bright, lively colors, to be presented before you; or imagine
+your smell is gratified with the fragrance of a rose; or if, without any
+previous thirst, you were to drink of some pleasant kind of wine, or to
+taste of some sweetmeat without being hungry; in all the several senses,
+of hearing, smelling, and tasting, you undoubtedly find a pleasure; yet,
+if I inquire into the state of your mind previous to these
+gratifications, you will hardly tell me that they found you in any kind
+of pain; or, having satisfied these several senses with their several
+pleasures, will you say that any pain has succeeded, though the pleasure
+is absolutely over? Suppose, on the other hand, a man in the same state
+of indifference to receive a violent blow, or to drink of some bitter
+potion, or to have his ears wounded with some harsh and grating sound;
+here is no removal of pleasure; and yet here is felt, his every sense
+which is affected, a pain very distinguishable. It may be said, perhaps,
+that the pain in these cases had its rise from the removal of the
+pleasure which the man enjoyed before, though that pleasure was of so
+low a degree as to be perceived only by the removal. But this seems to
+me a subtilty that is not discoverable in nature. For if, previous to
+the pain, I do not feel any actual pleasure, I have no reason to judge
+that any such thing exists; since pleasure is only pleasure as it is
+felt. The same may be said of pain, and with equal reason. I can never
+persuade myself that pleasure and pain are mere relations, which can
+only exist as they are contrasted; but I think I can discern clearly
+that there are positive pains and pleasures, which do not at all depend
+upon each other. Nothing is more certain to my own feelings than this.
+There is nothing which I can distinguish in my mind with more clearness
+than the three states, of indifference, of pleasure, and of pain. Every
+one of these I can perceive without any sort of idea of its relation to
+anything else. Caius is afflicted with a fit of the colic; this man is
+actually in pain; stretch Caius upon the rack, he will feel a much
+greater pain: but does this pain of the rack arise from the removal of
+any pleasure? or is the fit of the colic a pleasure or a pain just as we
+are pleased to consider it?
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE REMOVAL OF PAIN AND POSITIVE PLEASURE.
+
+We shall carry this proposition yet a step further. We shall venture to
+propose, that pain and pleasure are not only not necessarily dependent
+for their existence on their mutual diminution or removal, but that, in
+reality, the diminution or ceasing of pleasure does not operate like
+positive pain; and that the removal or diminution of pain, in its
+effect, has very little resemblance to positive pleasure.[10] The former
+of these propositions will, I believe, be much more readily allowed than
+the latter; because it is very evident that pleasure, when it has run
+its career, sets us down very nearly where it found us. Pleasure of
+every kind quickly satisfies; and, when it is over, we relapse into
+indifference, or, rather, we fall into a soft tranquillity which is
+tinged with the agreeable color of the former sensation. I own it is not
+at first view so apparent that the removal of a great pain does not
+resemble positive pleasure: but let us recollect in what state we have
+found our minds upon escaping some imminent danger, or on being released
+from the severity of some cruel pain. We have on such occasions found,
+if I am not much mistaken, the temper of our minds in a tenor very
+remote from that which attends the presence of positive pleasure; we
+have found them in a state of much sobriety, impressed with a sense of
+awe, in a sort of tranquillity shadowed with horror. The fashion of the
+countenance and the gesture of the body on such occasions is so
+correspondent to this state of mind, that any person, a stranger to the
+cause of the appearance, would rather judge us under some consternation,
+than in the enjoyment of anything like positive pleasure.
+
+    [Greek:
+    Hos d' hotan andr' ate pykine labe, host' eni patre,
+    Phota katakteinas, allon exiketo demon,
+    Andros es aphneiou, thambos d' echei eisoroontas.]
+
+                                        Iliad, [Greek: O]. 480.
+
+   "As when a wretch, who, conscious of his crime,
+    Pursued for murder from his native clime,
+    Just gains some frontier, breathless, pale, amazed;
+    All gaze, all wonder!"
+
+This striking appearance of the man whom Homer supposes to have just
+escaped an imminent danger, the sort of mixed passion of terror and
+surprise, with which he affects the spectators, paints very strongly the
+manner in which we find ourselves affected upon occasions any way
+similar. For when we have suffered from any violent emotion, the mind
+naturally continues in something like the same condition, after the
+cause which first produced it has ceased to operate. The tossing of the
+sea remains after the storm; and when this remain of horror has entirely
+subsided, all the passion which the accident raised subsides along with
+it; and the mind returns to its usual state of indifference. In short,
+pleasure (I mean anything either in the inward sensation, or in the
+outward appearance, like pleasure from a positive cause) has never, I
+imagine, its origin from the removal of pain or danger.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+OF DELIGHT AND PLEASURE, AS OPPOSED TO EACH OTHER.
+
+But shall we therefore say, that the removal of pain or its diminution
+is always simply painful? or affirm that the cessation or the lessening
+of pleasure is always attended itself with a pleasure? By no means. What
+I advance is no more than this; first, that there are pleasures and
+pains of a positive and independent nature; and, secondly, that the
+feeling which results from the ceasing or diminution of pain does not
+bear a sufficient resemblance to positive pleasure, to have it
+considered as of the same nature, or to entitle it to be known by the
+same name; and thirdly, that upon the same principle the removal or
+qualification of pleasure has no resemblance to positive pain. It is
+certain that the former feeling (the removal or moderation of pain) has
+something in it far from distressing, or disagreeable in its nature.
+This feeling, in many cases so agreeable, but in all so different from
+positive pleasure, has no name which I know; but that hinders not its
+being a very real one, and very different from all others. It is most
+certain, that every species of satisfaction or pleasure, how different
+soever in its manner of affecting, is of a positive nature in the mind
+of him who feels it. The affection is undoubtedly positive; but the
+cause may be, as in this case it certainly is, a sort of _privation_.
+And it is very reasonable that we should distinguish by some term two
+things so distinct in nature, as a pleasure that is such simply, and
+without any relation, from that pleasure which cannot exist without a
+relation, and that, too, a relation to pain. Very extraordinary it would
+be, if these affections, so distinguishable in their causes, so
+different in their effects, should be confounded with each other,
+because vulgar use has ranged them under the same general title.
+Whenever I have occasion to speak of this species of relative pleasure,
+I call it _delight_; and I shall take the best care I can to use that
+word in no other sense. I am satisfied the word is not commonly used in
+this appropriated signification; but I thought it better to take up a
+word already known, and to limit its signification, than to introduce a
+new one, which would not perhaps incorporate so well with the language.
+I should never have presumed the least alteration in our words, if the
+nature of the language, framed for the purposes of business rather than
+those of philosophy, and the nature of my subject, that leads me out of
+the common track of discourse, did not in a manner necessitate me to it.
+I shall make use of this liberty with all possible caution. As I make
+use of the word _delight_ to express the sensation which accompanies the
+removal of pain or danger, so, when I speak of positive pleasure, I
+shall for the most part call it simply _pleasure_.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+JOY AND GRIEF.
+
+It must be observed, that the cessation of pleasure affects the mind
+three ways. If it simply ceases after having continued a proper time,
+the effect is _indifference_; if it be abruptly broken off, there ensues
+an uneasy sense called _disappointment_; if the object be so totally
+lost that there is no chance of enjoying it again, a passion arises in
+the mind which is called _grief_. Now there is none of these, not even
+grief, which is the most violent, that I think has any resemblance to
+positive pain. The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon
+him; he indulges it, he loves it: but this never happens in the case of
+actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable
+time. That grief should be willingly endured, though far from a simply
+pleasing sensation, is not so difficult to be understood. It is the
+nature of grief to keep its object perpetually in its eye, to present it
+in its most pleasurable views, to repeat all the circumstances that
+attend it, even to the last minuteness; to go back to every particular
+enjoyment, to dwell upon each, and to find a thousand new perfections in
+all, that were not sufficiently understood before; in grief, the
+_pleasure_ is still uppermost; and the affliction we suffer has no
+resemblance to absolute pain, which is always odious, and which we
+endeavor to shake off as soon as possible. The Odyssey of Homer, which
+abounds with so many natural and affecting images, has none more
+striking than those which Menelaus raises of the calamitous fate of his
+friends, and his own manner of feeling it. He owns, indeed, that he
+often gives himself some intermission from such melancholy reflections;
+but he observes, too, that, melancholy as they are, they give him
+pleasure.
+
+    [Greek:
+    All empes pantas men odyromenos kai acheuon,
+    Pollakis en megaroisi kathemenos hemeteroisin,
+    Allote men te goo phrena terpomai, allote d' aute
+    Pauomai; aipseros de koros kryeroio gooio]
+
+                                        Hom. Od. [Greek: D]. 100
+
+   "Still in short intervals of _pleasing woe_,
+    Regardful of the friendly dues I owe,
+    I to the glorious dead, forever dear,
+    _Indulge_ the tribute of a _grateful_ tear."
+
+On the other hand, when we recover our health, when we escape an
+imminent danger, is it with joy that we are affected? The sense on these
+occasions is far from that smooth and voluptuous satisfaction which the
+assured prospect of pleasure bestows. The delight which arises from the
+modifications of pain confesses the stock from whence it sprung, in its
+solid, strong, and severe nature.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SELF-PRESERVATION.
+
+Most of the ideas which are capable of making a powerful impression on
+the mind, whether simply of pain or pleasure, or of the modifications of
+those, may be reduced very nearly to these two heads,
+_self-preservation_, and _society_; to the ends of one or the other of
+which all our passions are calculated to answer. The passions which
+concern self-preservation, turn mostly on _pain_ or _danger_. The ideas
+of _pain_, _sickness_, and _death_, fill the mind with strong emotions
+of horror; but _life_ and _health_, though they put us in a capacity of
+being affected with pleasure, make no such impression by the simple
+enjoyment. The passions therefore which are conversant about the
+preservation of the individual turn chiefly on _pain_ and _danger_, and
+they are the most powerful of all the passions.
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+OF THE SUBLIME.
+
+Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger,
+that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about
+terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a
+source of the _sublime_; that is, it is productive of the strongest
+emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I say the strongest
+emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful
+than those which enter on the part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the
+torments which we may be made to suffer are much greater in their
+effect on the body and mind, than any pleasures which the most learned
+voluptuary could suggest, or than the liveliest imagination, and the
+most sound and exquisitely sensible body, could enjoy. Nay, I am in
+great doubt whether any man could be found, who would earn a life of the
+most perfect satisfaction at the price of ending it in the torments,
+which justice inflicted in a few hours on the late unfortunate regicide
+in France. But as pain is stronger in its operation than pleasure, so
+death is in general a much more affecting idea than pain; because there
+are very few pains, however exquisite, which are not preferred to death:
+nay, what generally makes pain itself, if I may say so, more painful,
+is, that it is considered as an emissary of this king of terrors. When
+danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any
+delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with
+certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we
+every day experience. The cause of this I shall endeavor to investigate
+hereafter.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SOCIETY.
+
+The other head under which I class our passions, is that of _society_,
+which may be divided into two sorts. 1. The society of the _sexes_,
+which answers the purpose of propagation; and next, that more _general
+society_, which we have with men and with other animals, and which we
+may in some sort be said to have even with the inanimate world. The
+passions belonging to the preservation of the individual turn wholly on
+pain and danger: those which belong to _generation_ have their origin in
+gratifications and _pleasures_; the pleasure most directly belonging to
+this purpose is of a lively character, rapturous and violent, and
+confessedly the highest pleasure of sense; yet the absence of this so
+great an enjoyment scarce amounts to an uneasiness; and, except at
+particular times, I do not think it affects at all. When men describe in
+what manner they are affected by pain and danger, they do not dwell on
+the pleasure of health and the comfort of security, and then lament the
+_loss_ of these satisfactions: the whole turns upon the actual pains and
+horrors which they endure. But if you listen to the complaints of a
+forsaken lover, you observe that he insists largely on the pleasures
+which he enjoyed, or hoped to enjoy, and on the perfection of the object
+of his desires; it is the _loss_ which is always uppermost in his mind.
+The violent effects produced by love, which has sometimes been even
+wrought up to madness, is no objection to the rule which we seek to
+establish. When men have suffered their imaginations to be long affected
+with any idea, it so wholly engrosses them as to shut out by degrees
+almost every other, and to break down every partition of the mind which
+would confine it. Any idea is sufficient for the purpose, as is evident
+from the infinite variety of causes, which give rise to madness: but
+this at most can only prove, that the passion of love is capable of
+producing very extraordinary effects, not that its extraordinary
+emotions have any connection with positive pain.
+
+
+SECTION IX.
+
+THE FINAL CAUSE OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PASSIONS BELONGING TO
+SELF-PRESERVATION AND THOSE WHICH REGARD THE SOCIETY OF THE SEXES.
+
+The final cause of the difference in character between the passions
+which regard self-preservation, and those which are directed to the
+multiplication of the species, will illustrate the foregoing remarks yet
+further; and it is, I imagine, worthy of observation even upon its own
+account. As the performance of our duties of every kind depends upon
+life, and the performing them with vigor and efficacy depends upon
+health, we are very strongly affected with whatever threatens the
+destruction of either: but as we were not made to acquiesce in life and
+health, the simple enjoyment of them is not attended with any real
+pleasure, lest, satisfied with that, we should give ourselves over to
+indolence and inaction. On the other hand, the generation of mankind is
+a great purpose, and it is requisite that men should be animated to the
+pursuit of it by some great incentive. It is therefore attended with a
+very high pleasure; but as it is by no means designed to be our constant
+business, it is not fit that the absence of this pleasure should be
+attended with any considerable pain. The difference between men and
+brutes, in this point, seems to be remarkable. Men are at all times
+pretty equally disposed to the pleasures of love, because they are to be
+guided by reason in the time and manner of indulging them. Had any great
+pain arisen from the want of this satisfaction, reason, I am afraid,
+would find great difficulties in the performance of its office. But
+brutes that obey laws, in the execution of which their own reason has
+but little share, have their stated seasons; at such times it is not
+improbable that the sensation from the want is very troublesome, because
+the end must be then answered, or be missed in many, perhaps forever; as
+the inclination returns only with its season.
+
+
+SECTION X.
+
+OF BEAUTY.
+
+The passion which belongs to generation, merely as such, is lust only.
+This is evident in brutes, whose passions are more unmixed, and which
+pursue their purposes more directly than ours. The only distinction they
+observe with regard to their mates, is that of sex. It is true, that
+they stick severally to their own species in preference to all others.
+But this preference, I imagine, does not arise from any sense of beauty
+which they find in their species, as Mr. Addison supposes, but from a
+law of some other kind, to which they are subject; and this we may
+fairly conclude, from their apparent want of choice amongst those
+objects to which the barriers of their species have confined them. But
+man, who is a creature adapted to a greater variety and intricacy of
+relation, connects with the general passion the idea of some _social_
+qualities, which direct and heighten the appetite which he has in common
+with all other animals; and as he is not designed like them to live at
+large, it is fit that he should have some thing to create a preference,
+and fix his choice; and this in general should be some sensible quality;
+as no other can so quickly, so powerfully, or so surely produce its
+effect. The object therefore of this mixed passion, which we call love,
+is the _beauty_ of the _sex_. Men are carried to the sex in general, as
+it is the sex, and by the common law of nature; but they are attached to
+particulars by personal _beauty_. I call beauty a social quality; for
+where women and men, and not only they, but when other animals give us a
+sense of joy and pleasure in beholding them (and there are many that do
+so), they inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and affection towards
+their persons; we like to have them near us, and we enter willingly into
+a kind of relation with them, unless we should have strong reasons to
+the contrary. But to what end, in many cases, this was designed, I am
+unable to discover; for I see no greater reason for a connection between
+man and several animals who are attired in so engaging a manner, than
+between him and some others who entirely want this attraction, or
+possess it in a far weaker degree. But it is probable that Providence
+did not make even this distinction, but with a view to some great end;
+though we cannot perceive distinctly what it is, as his wisdom is not
+our wisdom, nor our ways his ways.
+
+
+SECTION XI.
+
+SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE.
+
+The second branch of the social passions is that which administers to
+_society in general_. With regard to this, I observe, that society,
+merely as society, without any particular heightenings, gives us no
+positive pleasure in the enjoyment; but absolute and entire _solitude_,
+that is, the total and perpetual exclusion from all society, is as
+great a positive pain as can almost be conceived. Therefore in the
+balance between the pleasure of general _society_, and the pain of
+absolute solitude, _pain_ is the predominant idea. But the pleasure of
+any particular social enjoyment outweighs very considerably the
+uneasiness caused by the want of that particular enjoyment; so that the
+strongest sensations relative to the habitudes of _particular society_
+are sensations of pleasure. Good company, lively conversations, and the
+endearments of friendship, fill the mind with great pleasure; a
+temporary solitude, on the other hand, is itself agreeable. This may
+perhaps prove that we are creatures designed for contemplation as well
+as action; since solitude as well as society has its pleasures; as from
+the former observation we may discern, that an entire life of solitude
+contradicts the purposes of our being, since death itself is scarcely an
+idea of more terror.
+
+
+SECTION XII.
+
+SYMPATHY, IMITATION, AND AMBITION.
+
+Under this denomination of society, the passions are of a complicated
+kind, and branch out into a variety of forms, agreeably to that variety
+of ends they are to serve in the great chain of society. The three
+principal links in this chain are _sympathy_, _imitation,_ and
+_ambition_.
+
+
+SECTION XIII.
+
+SYMPATHY.
+
+It is by the first of these passions that we enter into the concerns of
+others; that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to
+be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men can do or suffer.
+For sympathy must be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we
+are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as
+he is affected: so that this passion may either partake of the nature of
+those which regard self-preservation, and turning upon pain may be a
+source of the sublime; or it may turn upon ideas of pleasure; and then
+whatever has been said of the social affections, whether they regard
+society in general, or only some particular modes of it, may be
+applicable here. It is by this principle chiefly that poetry, painting,
+and other affecting arts, transfuse their passions from one breast to
+another, and are often capable of grafting a delight on wretchedness,
+misery, and death itself. It is a common observation, that objects which
+in the reality would shock, are in tragical, and such like
+representations, the source of a very high species of pleasure. This,
+taken as a fact, has been the cause of much reasoning. The satisfaction
+has been commonly attributed, first, to the comfort we receive in
+considering that so melancholy a story is no more than a fiction; and,
+next, to the contemplation of our own freedom from the evils which we
+see represented. I am afraid it is a practice much too common in
+inquiries of this nature, to attribute the cause of feelings which
+merely arise from the mechanical structure of our bodies, or from the
+natural frame and constitution of our minds, to certain conclusions of
+the reasoning faculty on the objects presented to us; for I should
+imagine, that the influence of reason in producing our passions is
+nothing near so extensive as it is commonly believed.
+
+
+SECTION XIV.
+
+THE EFFECTS OF SYMPATHY IN THE DISTRESSES OF OTHERS.
+
+To examine this point concerning the effect of tragedy in a proper
+manner, we must previously consider how we are affected by the feelings
+of our fellow creatures in circumstances of real distress. I am
+convinced we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the
+real misfortunes and pains of others; for let the affection be what it
+will in appearance, if it does not make us shun such objects, if on the
+contrary it induces us to approach them, if it makes us dwell upon them,
+in this case I conceive we must have a delight or pleasure of some
+species or other in contemplating objects of this kind. Do we not read
+the authentic histories of scenes of this nature with as much pleasure
+as romances or poems, where the incidents are fictitious? The prosperity
+of no empire, nor the grandeur of no king, can so agreeably affect in
+the reading, as the ruin of the state of Macedon, and the distress of
+its unhappy prince. Such a catastrophe touches us in history as much as
+the destruction of Troy does in fable. Our delight, in cases of this
+kind, is very greatly heightened, if the sufferer be some excellent
+person who sinks under an unworthy fortune. Scipio and Cato are both
+virtuous characters; but we are more deeply affected by the violent
+death of the one, and the ruin of the great cause he adhered to, than
+with the deserved triumphs and uninterrupted prosperity of the other:
+for terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does not
+press too closely; and pity is a passion accompanied with pleasure,
+because it arises from love and social affection. Whenever we are formed
+by nature to any active purpose, the passion which animates us to it is
+attended with delight, or a pleasure of some kind, let the
+subject-matter be what it will; and as our Creator has designed that we
+should be united by the bond of sympathy, he has strengthened that bond
+by a proportionable delight; and there most where our sympathy is most
+wanted,--in the distresses of others. If this passion was simply
+painful, we would shun with the greatest care all persons and places
+that could excite such a passion; as some, who are so far gone in
+indolence as not to endure any strong impression, actually do. But the
+case is widely different with the greater part of mankind; there is no
+spectacle we so eagerly pursue, as that of some uncommon and grievous
+calamity; so that whether the misfortune is before our eyes, or whether
+they are turned back to it in history, it always touches with delight.
+This is not an unmixed delight, but blended with no small uneasiness.
+The delight we have in such things hinders us from shunning scenes of
+misery; and the pain we feel prompts us to relieve ourselves in
+relieving those who suffer; and all this antecedent to any reasoning, by
+an instinct that works us to its own purposes without our concurrence.
+
+
+SECTION XV.
+
+OF THE EFFECTS OF TRAGEDY.
+
+It is thus in real calamities. In imitated distresses the only
+difference is the pleasure resulting from the effects of imitation; for
+it is never so perfect, but we can perceive it is imitation, and on that
+principle are somewhat pleased with it. And indeed in some cases we
+derive as much or more pleasure from that source than from the thing
+itself. But then I imagine we shall be much mistaken if we attribute any
+considerable part of our satisfaction in tragedy to the consideration
+that tragedy is a deceit, and its representations no realities. The
+nearer it approaches the reality, and the further it removes us from all
+idea of fiction, the more perfect is its power. But be its power of what
+kind it will, it never approaches to what it represents. Choose a day on
+which to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have;
+appoint the most favorite actors; spare no cost upon the scenes and
+decorations; unite the greatest efforts of poetry, painting, and music;
+and when you have collected your audience, just at the moment when their
+minds are erect with expectation, let it be reported that a state
+criminal of high rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoining
+square; in a moment the emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the
+comparative weakness of the imitative arts, and proclaim the triumph of
+the real sympathy. I believe that this notion of our having a simple
+pain in the reality, yet a delight in the representation, arises from
+hence, that we do not sufficiently distinguish what we would by no means
+choose to do, from what we should be eager enough to see if it was once
+done. We delight in seeing things, which so far from doing, our
+heartiest wishes would be to see redressed. This noble capital, the
+pride of England and of Europe, I believe no man is so strangely wicked
+as to desire to see destroyed by a conflagration or an earthquake,
+though he should be removed himself to the greatest distance from the
+danger. But suppose such a fatal accident to have happened, what numbers
+from all parts would crowd to behold the ruins, and amongst them many
+who would have been content never to have seen London in its glory! Nor
+is it, either in real or fictitious distresses, our immunity from them
+which produces our delight; in my own mind I can discover nothing like
+it. I apprehend that this mistake is owing to a sort of sophism, by
+which we are frequently imposed upon; it arises from our not
+distinguishing between what is indeed a necessary condition to our doing
+or suffering anything in general, and what is the _cause_ of some
+particular act. If a man kills me with a sword, it is a necessary
+condition to this that we should have been both of us alive before the
+fact; and yet it would be absurd to say that our being both living
+creatures was the cause of his crime and of my death. So it is certain
+that it is absolutely necessary my life should be out of any imminent
+hazard, before I can take a delight in the sufferings of others, real or
+imaginary, or indeed in anything else from any cause whatsoever. But
+then it is a sophism to argue from thence that this immunity is the
+cause of my delight either on these or on any occasions. No one can
+distinguish such a cause of satisfaction in his own mind, I believe;
+nay, when we do not suffer any very acute pain, nor are exposed to any
+imminent danger of our lives, we can feel for others, whilst we suffer
+ourselves; and often then most when we are softened by affliction; we
+see with pity even distresses which we would accept in the place of our
+own.
+
+
+SECTION XVI.
+
+IMITATION.
+
+The second passion belonging to society is imitation, or, if you will, a
+desire of imitating, and consequently a pleasure in it. This passion
+arises from much the same cause with sympathy. For as sympathy makes us
+take a concern in whatever men feel, so this affection prompts us to
+copy whatever they do; and consequently we have a pleasure in imitating,
+and in whatever belongs to imitation merely as it is such, without any
+intervention of the reasoning faculty, but solely from our natural
+constitution, which Providence has framed in such a manner as to find
+either pleasure or delight, according to the nature of the object, in
+whatever regards the purposes of our being. It is by imitation far more
+than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we
+acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our
+manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links of
+society; it is a species of mutual compliance, which all men yield to
+each other, without constraint to themselves, and which is extremely
+flattering to all. Herein it is that painting and many other agreeable
+arts have laid one of the principal foundations of their power. And
+since, by its influence on our manners and our passions, it is of such
+great consequence, I shall here venture to lay down a rule, which may
+inform us with a good degree of certainty when we are to attribute the
+power of the arts to imitation, or to our pleasure in the skill of the
+imitator merely, and when to sympathy, or some other cause in
+conjunction, with it. When the object represented in poetry or painting
+is such as we could have no desire of seeing in the reality, then I may
+be sure that its power in poetry or painting is owing to the power of
+imitation, and to no cause operating in the thing itself. So it is with
+most of the pieces which the painters call still-life. In these a
+cottage, a dung-hill, the meanest and most ordinary utensils of the
+kitchen, are capable of giving us pleasure. But when the object of the
+painting or poem is such as we should run to see if real, let it affect
+us with what odd sort of sense it will, we may rely upon it that the
+power of the poem or picture is more owing to the nature of the thing
+itself than to the mere effect of imitation, or to a consideration of
+the skill of the imitator, however excellent. Aristotle has spoken so
+much and so solidly upon the force of imitation in his Poetics, that it
+makes any further discourse upon this subject the less necessary.
+
+
+SECTION XVII.
+
+AMBITION.
+
+Although imitation is one of the great instruments used by Providence in
+bringing our nature towards its perfection, yet if men gave themselves
+up to imitation entirely, and each followed the other, and so on in an
+eternal circle, it is easy to see that there never could be any
+improvement amongst them. Men must remain as brutes do, the same at the
+end that they are at this day, and that they were in the beginning of
+the world. To prevent this, God has planted in man a sense of ambition,
+and a satisfaction arising from the contemplation of his excelling his
+fellows in something deemed valuable amongst them. It is this passion
+that drives men to all the ways we see in use of signalizing themselves,
+and that tends to make whatever excites in a man the idea of this
+distinction so very pleasant. It has been so strong as to make very
+miserable men take comfort, that they were supreme in misery; and
+certain it is that, where we cannot distinguish ourselves by something
+excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some singular infirmities,
+follies, or defects of one kind or other. It is on this principle that
+flattery is so prevalent; for flattery is no more than what raises in a
+man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not. Now, whatever,
+either on good or upon bad grounds, tends to raise a man in his own
+opinion, produces a sort of swelling and triumph, that is extremely
+grateful to the human mind; and this swelling is never more perceived,
+nor operates with more force, than when without danger we are conversant
+with terrible objects; the mind always claiming to itself some part of
+the dignity and importance of the things which it contemplates. Hence
+proceeds what Longinus has observed of that glorying and sense of inward
+greatness, that always fills the reader of such passages in poets and
+orators as are sublime: it is what every man must have felt in himself
+upon such occasions.
+
+
+SECTION XVIII.
+
+THE RECAPITULATION.
+
+To draw the whole of what has been said into a few distinct points:--The
+passions which belong to self-preservation turn on pain and danger; they
+are simply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are
+delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being
+actually in such circumstances; this delight I have not called pleasure,
+because it turns on pain, and because it is different enough from any
+idea of positive pleasure. Whatever excites this delight, I call
+_sublime_. The passions belonging to self-preservation are the strongest
+of all the passions.
+
+The second head to which the passions are referred with relation to
+their final cause, is society. There are two sorts of societies. The
+first is, the society of sex. The passion belonging to this is called
+love, and it contains a mixture of lust; its object is the beauty of
+women. The other is the great society with man and all other animals.
+The passion subservient to this is called likewise love, but it has no
+mixture of lust, and its object is beauty; which is a name I shall apply
+to all such qualities in things as induce in us a sense of affection and
+tenderness, or some other passion the most nearly resembling these. The
+passion of love has its rise in positive pleasure; it is, like all
+things which grow out of pleasure, capable of being mixed with a mode of
+uneasiness, that is, when an idea of its object is excited in the mind
+with an idea at the same time of having irretrievably lost it. This
+mixed sense of pleasure I have not called _pain_, because it turns upon
+actual pleasure, and because it is, both in its cause and in most of its
+effects, of a nature altogether different.
+
+Next to the general passion we have for society, to a choice in which we
+are directed by the pleasure we have in the object, the particular
+passion under this head called sympathy has the greatest extent. The
+nature of this passion is, to put us in the place of another in whatever
+circumstance he is in, and to affect us in a like manner; so that this
+passion may, as the occasion requires, turn either on pain or pleasure;
+but with the modifications mentioned in some cases in Sect. 11. As to
+imitation and preference, nothing more need be said.
+
+
+SECTION XIX.
+
+THE CONCLUSION.
+
+I believed that an attempt to range and methodize some of our most
+leading passions would be a good preparative to such an inquiry as we
+are going to make in the ensuing discourse. The passions I have
+mentioned are almost the only ones which it can be necessary to consider
+in our present design; though the variety of the passions is great, and
+worthy, in every branch of that variety, of an attentive investigation.
+The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces
+we everywhere find of His wisdom who made it. If a discourse on the use
+of the parts of the body may be considered as a hymn to the Creator; the
+use of the passions, which are the organs of the mind, cannot be barren
+of praise to him, nor unproductive to ourselves of that noble and
+uncommon union of science and admiration, which a contemplation of the
+works of infinite wisdom alone can afford to a rational mind; whilst,
+referring to him whatever we find of right or good or fair in ourselves,
+discovering his strength and wisdom even in our own weakness and
+imperfection, honoring them where we discover them clearly, and adoring
+their profundity where we are lost in our search, we may be inquisitive
+without impertinence, and elevated without pride; we may be admitted, if
+I may dare to say so, into the counsels of the Almighty by a
+consideration of his works. The elevation of the mind ought to be the
+principal end of all our studies; which, if they do not in some measure
+effect, they are of very little service to us. But, besides this great
+purpose, a consideration of the rationale of our passions seems to me
+very necessary for all who would affect them upon solid and sure
+principles. It is not enough to know them in general; to affect them
+after a delicate manner, or to judge properly of any work designed to
+affect them, we should know the exact boundaries of their several
+jurisdictions; we should pursue them through all their variety of
+operations, and pierce into the inmost, and what might appear
+inaccessible parts of our nature,
+
+     Quod latet arcana non enarrabile fibra.
+
+Without all this it is possible for a man, after a confused manner
+sometimes to satisfy his own mind of the truth of his work; but he can
+never have a certain determinate rule to go by, nor can he ever make his
+propositions sufficiently clear to others. Poets, and orators, and
+painters, and those who cultivate other branches of the liberal arts,
+have, without this critical knowledge, succeeded well in their several
+provinces, and will succeed: as among artificers there are many machines
+made and even invented without any exact knowledge of the principles
+they are governed by. It is, I own, not uncommon to be wrong in theory,
+and right in practice: and we are happy that it is so. Men often act
+right from their feelings, who afterwards reason but ill on them from
+principle; but as it is impossible to avoid an attempt at such
+reasoning, and equally impossible to prevent its having some influence
+on our practice, surely it is worth taking some pains to have it just,
+and founded on the basis of sure experience. We might expect that the
+artists themselves would have been our surest guides; but the artists
+have been too much occupied in the practice: the philosophers have done
+little; and what they have done, was mostly with a view to their own
+schemes and systems; and as for those called critics, they have
+generally sought the rule of the arts in the wrong place; they sought it
+among poems, pictures, engravings, statues, and buildings. But art can
+never give the rules that make an art. This is, I believe, the reason
+why artists in general, and poets, principally, have been confined in so
+narrow a circle: they have been rather imitators of one another than of
+nature; and this with so faithful an uniformity, and to so remote an
+antiquity, that it is hard to say who gave the first model. Critics
+follow them, and therefore can do little as guides. I can judge but
+poorly of anything, whilst I measure it by no other standard than
+itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's power; and an
+easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the meanest things in
+nature, will give the truest lights, where the greatest sagacity and
+industry, that slights such observation, must leave us in the dark, or,
+what is worse, amuse and mislead us by false lights. In an inquiry it is
+almost everything to be once in a right road. I am satisfied I have done
+but little by these observations considered in themselves; and I never
+should have taken the pains to digest them, much less should I have ever
+ventured to publish them, if I was not convinced that nothing tends more
+to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stagnate. These waters
+must be troubled, before they can exert their virtues. A man who works
+beyond the surface of things, though he may be wrong himself, yet he
+clears the way for others, and may chance to make even his errors
+subservient to the cause of truth. In the following parts I shall
+inquire what things they are that cause in us the affections of the
+sublime and beautiful, as in this I have considered the affections
+themselves. I only desire one favor,--that no part of this discourse may
+be judged of by itself, and independently of the rest; for I am sensible
+I have not disposed my materials to abide the test of a captious
+controversy, but of a sober and even forgiving examination; that they
+are not armed at all points for battle, but dressed to visit those who
+are willing to give a peaceful entrance to truth.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] Mr. Locke [Essay on Human Understanding, l. ii. c. 20, sect. 16,]
+thinks that the removal or lessening of a pain is considered and
+operates as a pleasure, and the loss or diminishing of pleasure as a
+pain. It is this opinion which we consider here.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+OF THE PASSION CAUSED BY THE SUBLIME.
+
+The passion caused by the great and sublime in _nature_, when those
+causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment: and astonishment is
+that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some
+degree of horror.[11] In this case the mind is so entirely filled with
+its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence
+reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of
+the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our
+reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as
+I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the
+inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+TERROR.
+
+No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and
+reasoning as _fear_.[12] For fear being an apprehension of pain or
+death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever
+therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too, whether
+this cause of terror be endued with greatness of dimensions or not; for
+it is impossible to look on anything as trifling, or contemptible, that
+may be dangerous. There are many animals, who, though far from being
+large, are yet capable of raising ideas of the sublime, because they are
+considered as objects of terror. As serpents and poisonous animals of
+almost all kinds. And to things of great dimensions, if we annex an
+adventitious idea of terror, they become without comparison greater. A
+level plain of a vast extent on land, is certainly no mean idea; the
+prospect of such a plain may be as extensive as a prospect of the ocean;
+but can it ever fill the mind with anything so great as the ocean
+itself? This is owing to several causes; but it is owing to none more
+than this, that the ocean is an object of no small terror. Indeed terror
+is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling
+principle of the sublime. Several languages bear a strong testimony to
+the affinity of these ideas. They frequently use the same word to
+signify indifferently the modes of astonishment or admiration and those
+of terror. [Greek: Thambos] is in Greek either fear or wonder; [Greek:
+deinos] is terrible or respectable; [Greek: ahideo], to reverence or to
+fear. _Vereor_ in Latin is what [Greek: ahideo] is in Greek. The Romans
+used the verb _stupeo_, a term which strongly marks the state of an
+astonished mind, to express the effect either of simple fear, or of
+astonishment; the word _attonitus_ (thunderstruck) is equally expressive
+of the alliance of these ideas; and do not the French _etonnement_, and
+the English _astonishment_ and _amazement_, point out as clearly the
+kindred emotions which attend fear and wonder? They who have a more
+general knowledge of languages, could produce, I make no doubt, many
+other and equally striking examples.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+OBSCURITY.
+
+To make anything very terrible, obscurity[13] seems in general to be
+necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can
+accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes.
+Every one will be sensible of this, who considers how greatly night adds
+to our dread, in all cases of danger, and how much the notions of ghosts
+and goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give
+credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts of beings. Those
+despotic governments which are founded on the passions of men, and
+principally upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as much as may be
+from the public eye. The policy has been the same in many cases of
+religion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark. Even in the
+barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in
+a dark part of the hut, which is consecrated to his worship. For this
+purpose too the Druids performed all their ceremonies in the bosom of
+the darkest woods, and in the shade of the oldest and most spreading
+oaks. No person seems better to have understood the secret of
+heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression,
+in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity than
+Milton. His description of death in the second book is admirably
+studied; it is astonishing with what a gloomy pomp, with what a
+significant and expressive uncertainty of strokes and coloring, he has
+finished the portrait of the king of terrors:
+
+                        "The other shape,
+    If shape it might be called that shape had none
+    Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;
+    Or substance might be called that shadow seemed;
+    For each seemed either; black he stood as night;
+    Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell;
+    And shook a deadly dart. What seemed his head
+    The likeness of a kingly crown had on."
+
+In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and
+sublime to the last degree.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CLEARNESS AND OBSCURITY WITH REGARD TO THE
+PASSIONS.
+
+It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it
+_affecting_ to the imagination. If I make a drawing of a palace, or a
+temple, or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of those objects;
+but then (allowing for the effect of imitation which is something) my
+picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or landscape,
+would have affected in the reality. On the other hand, the most lively
+and spirited verbal description I can give raises a very obscure and
+imperfect _idea_ of such objects; but then it is in my power to raise a
+stronger _emotion_ by the description than I could do by the best
+painting. This experience constantly evinces. The proper manner of
+conveying the _affections_ of the mind from one to another is by words;
+there is a great insufficiency in all other methods of communication;
+and so far is a clearness of imagery from being absolutely necessary to
+an influence upon the passions, that they may be considerably operated
+upon, without presenting any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to
+that purpose; of which we have a sufficient proof in the acknowledged
+and powerful effects of instrumental music. In reality, a great
+clearness helps but little towards affecting the passions, as it is in
+some sort an enemy to all enthusiasms whatsoever.
+
+
+SECTION [IV].
+
+THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.
+
+There are two verses in Horace's Art of Poetry that seem to contradict
+this opinion; for which reason I shall take a little more pains in
+clearing it up. The verses are,
+
+    Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,
+    Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus.
+
+
+On this the Abbe du Bos founds a criticism, wherein he gives painting
+the preference to poetry in the article of moving the passions;
+principally on account of the greater _clearness_ of the ideas it
+represents. I believe this excellent judge was led into this mistake (if
+it be a mistake) by his system; to which he found it more conformable
+than I imagine it will be found to experience. I know several who admire
+and love painting, and yet who regard the objects of their admiration in
+that art with coolness enough in comparison of that warmth with which
+they are animated by affecting pieces of poetry or rhetoric. Among the
+common sort of people, I never could perceive that painting had much
+influence on their passions. It is true that the best sorts of painting,
+as well as the best sorts of poetry, are not much understood in that
+sphere. But it is most certain that their passions are very strongly
+roused by a fanatic preacher, or by the ballads of Chevy Chase, or the
+Children in the Wood, and by other little popular poems and tales that
+are current in that rank of life. I do not know of any paintings, bad or
+good, that produce the same effect. So that poetry, with all its
+obscurity, has a more general, as well as a more powerful dominion over
+the passions, than the other art. And I think there are reasons in
+nature, why the obscure idea, when properly conveyed, should be more
+affecting than the clear. It is our ignorance of things that causes all
+our admiration, and chiefly excites our passions. Knowledge and
+acquaintance make the most striking causes affect but little. It is thus
+with the vulgar; and all men are as the vulgar in what they do not
+understand. The ideas of eternity, and infinity, are among the most
+affecting we have: and yet perhaps there is nothing of which we really
+understand so little, as of infinity and eternity. We do not anywhere
+meet a more sublime description than this justly-celebrated one of
+Milton, wherein he gives the portrait of Satan with a dignity so
+suitable to the subject:
+
+              "He above the rest
+    In shape and gesture proudly eminent
+    Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost
+    All her original brightness, nor appeared
+    Less than archangel ruined, and th' excess
+    Of glory obscured: as when the sun new risen
+    Looks through the horizontal misty air
+    Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon
+    In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
+    On half the nations; and with fear of change
+    Perplexes monarchs."
+
+Here is a very noble picture; and in what does this poetical picture
+consist? In images of a tower, an archangel, the sun rising through
+mists, or in an eclipse, the ruin of monarchs and the revolutions of
+kingdoms. The mind is hurried out of itself, by a crowd of great and
+confused images; which affect because they are crowded and confused. For
+separate them, and you lose much of the greatness; and join them, and
+you infallibly lose the clearness. The images raised by poetry are
+always of this obscure kind; though in general the effects of poetry are
+by no means to be attributed to the images it raises; which point we
+shall examine more at large hereafter.[14] But painting, when we have
+allowed for the pleasure of imitation, can only affect simply by the
+images it presents; and even in painting, a judicious obscurity in some
+things contributes to the effect of the picture; because the images in
+painting are exactly similar to those in nature; and in nature, dark,
+confused, uncertain images have a greater power on the fancy to form the
+grander passions, than those have which are more clear and determinate.
+But where and when this observation may be applied to practice, and how
+far it shall be extended, will be better deduced from the nature of the
+subject, and from the occasion, than from any rules that can be given.
+
+I am sensible that this idea has met with opposition, and is likely
+still to be rejected by several. But let it be considered that hardly
+anything can strike the mind with its greatness, which does not make
+some sort of approach towards infinity; which nothing can do whilst we
+are able to perceive its bounds; but to see an object distinctly, and to
+perceive its bounds, is one and the same thing. A clear idea is
+therefore another name for a little idea. There is a passage in the book
+of Job amazingly sublime, and this sublimity is principally due to the
+terrible uncertainty of the thing described: _In thoughts from the
+visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, fear came upon
+me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit
+passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still_,
+but I could not discern the form thereof; _an image was before mine
+eyes; there was silence; and I heard a voice,--Shall mortal man be more
+just than God?_ We are first prepared with the utmost solemnity for the
+vision; we are first terrified, before we are let even into the obscure
+cause of our emotion: but when this grand cause of terror makes its
+appearance, what is it? Is it not wrapt up in the shades of its own
+incomprehensible darkness, more awful, more striking, more terrible,
+than the liveliest description, than the clearest painting, could
+possibly represent it? When painters have attempted to give us clear
+representations of these very fanciful and terrible ideas, they have, I
+think, almost always failed; insomuch that I have been at a loss, in all
+the pictures I have seen of hell, to determine whether the painter did
+not intend something ludicrous. Several painters have handled a subject
+of this kind, with a view of assembling as many horrid phantoms as their
+imagination could suggest; but all the designs I have chanced to meet of
+the temptations of St. Anthony were rather a sort of odd, wild
+grotesques, than any thing capable of producing a serious passion. In
+all these subjects poetry is very happy. Its apparitions, its chimeras,
+its harpies, its allegorical figures, are grand and affecting; and
+though Virgil's Fame and Homer's Discord are obscure, they are
+magnificent figures. These figures in painting would be clear enough,
+but I fear they might become ridiculous.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+POWER.
+
+Besides those things which _directly_ suggest the idea of danger, and
+those which produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause, I know of
+nothing sublime, which is not some modification of power. And this
+branch rises, as naturally as the other two branches, from terror, the
+common stock of everything that is sublime. The idea of power, at first
+view, seems of the class of those indifferent ones, which may equally
+belong to pain or to pleasure. But in reality, the affection arising
+from the idea of vast power is extremely remote from that neutral
+character. For first, we must remember[15] that the idea of pain, in its
+highest degree, is much stronger than the highest degree of pleasure;
+and that it preserves the same superiority through all the subordinate
+gradations. From hence it is, that where the chances for equal degrees
+of suffering or enjoyment are in any sort equal, the idea of the
+suffering must always be prevalent. And indeed the ideas of pain, and,
+above all, of death, are so very affecting, that whilst we remain in the
+presence of whatever is supposed to have the power of inflicting either,
+it is impossible to be perfectly free from terror. Again, we know by
+experience, that, for the enjoyment of pleasure, no great efforts of
+power are at all necessary; nay, we know that such efforts would go a
+great way towards destroying our satisfaction: for pleasure must be
+stolen, and not forced upon us; pleasure follows the will; and therefore
+we are generally affected with it by many things of a force greatly
+inferior to our own. But pain is always inflicted by a power in some way
+superior, because we never submit to pain willingly. So that strength,
+violence, pain, and terror, are ideas that rush in upon the mind
+together. Look at a man, or any other animal of prodigious strength, and
+what is your idea before reflection? Is it that this strength will be
+subservient to you, to your ease, to your pleasure, to your interest in
+any sense? No; the emotion you feel is, lest this enormous strength
+should be employed to the purposes of[16] rapine and destruction. That
+power derives all its sublimity from the terror with which it is
+generally accompanied, will appear evidently from its effect in the very
+few cases, in which it may be possible to strip a considerable degree of
+strength of its ability to hurt. When you do this, you spoil it of
+everything sublime, and it immediately becomes contemptible. An ox is a
+creature of vast strength; but he is an innocent creature, extremely
+serviceable, and not at all dangerous; for which reason the idea of an
+ox is by no means grand. A bull is strong too; but his strength is of
+another kind; often very destructive, seldom (at least amongst us) of
+any use in our business; the idea of a bull is therefore great, and it
+has frequently a place in sublime descriptions, and elevating
+comparisons. Let us look at another strong animal, in the two distinct
+lights in which we may consider him. The horse in the light of an
+useful beast, fit for the plough, the road, the draft; in every social
+useful light, the horse has nothing sublime; but is it thus that we are
+affected with him, _whose neck is clothed with thunder, the glory of
+whose nostrils is terrible, who swalloweth the ground with fierceness
+and rage, neither believeth that it is the sound of the trumpet_? In
+this description, the useful character of the horse entirely disappears,
+and the terrible and sublime blaze out together. We have continually
+about us animals of a strength that is considerable, but not pernicious.
+Amongst these we never look for the sublime; it comes upon us in the
+gloomy forest, and in the howling wilderness, in the form of the lion,
+the tiger, the panther, or rhinoceros. Whenever strength is only useful,
+and employed for our benefit or our pleasure, then it is never sublime;
+for nothing can act agreeably to us, that does not act in conformity to
+our will; but to act agreeably to our will, it must be subject to us,
+and therefore can never be the cause of a grand and commanding
+conception. The description of the wild ass, in Job, is worked up into
+no small sublimity, merely by insisting on his freedom, and his setting
+mankind at defiance; otherwise the description of such an animal could
+have had nothing noble in it. _Who hath loosed_ (says he) _the bands of
+the wild ass? whose house I have made the wilderness and the barren land
+his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth
+he the voice of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture._
+The magnificent description of the unicorn and of leviathan, in the same
+book, is full of the same heightening circumstances: _Will the unicorn
+be willing to serve thee? canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in
+the furrow? wilt thou trust him because his strength is great?--Canst
+thou draw out leviathan with an hook? will he make a covenant with thee?
+wilt thou take him for a servant forever? shall not one be cast down
+even at the sight of him?_ In short, wheresoever we find strength, and
+in what light soever we look upon power, we shall all along observe the
+sublime the concomitant of terror, and contempt the attendant on a
+strength that is subservient and innoxious. The race of dogs, in many of
+their kinds, have generally a competent degree of strength and
+swiftness; and they exert these and other valuable qualities which they
+possess, greatly to our convenience and pleasure. Dogs are indeed the
+most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute
+creation; but love approaches much nearer to contempt than is commonly
+imagined; and accordingly, though we caress dogs, we borrow from them an
+appellation of the most despicable kind, when we employ terms of
+reproach; and this appellation is the common mark of the last vileness
+and contempt in every language. Wolves have not more strength than
+several species of dogs; but, on account of their unmanageable
+fierceness, the idea of a wolf is not despicable; it is not excluded
+from grand descriptions and similitudes. Thus we are affected by
+strength, which is _natural_ power. The power which arises from
+institution in kings and commanders, has the same connection with
+terror. Sovereigns are frequently addressed with the title of _dread
+majesty_. And it may be observed, that young persons, little acquainted
+with the world, and who have not been used to approach men in power, are
+commonly struck with an awe which takes away the free use of their
+faculties. _When I prepared my seat in the street,_ (says Job,) _the
+young men saw me, and hid themselves._ Indeed so natural is this
+timidity with regard to power, and so strongly does it inhere in our
+constitution, that very few are able to conquer it, but by mixing much
+in the business of the great world, or by using no small violence to
+their natural dispositions. I know some people are of opinion, that no
+awe, no degree of terror, accompanies the idea of power; and have
+hazarded to affirm, that we can contemplate the idea of God himself
+without any such emotion. I purposely avoided, when I first considered
+this subject, to introduce the idea of that great and tremendous Being,
+as an example in an argument so light as this; though it frequently
+occurred to me, not as an objection to, but as a strong confirmation of,
+my notions in this matter. I hope, in what I am going to say, I shall
+avoid presumption, where it is almost impossible for any mortal to speak
+with strict propriety. I say then, that whilst we consider the Godhead
+merely as he is an object of the understanding, which forms a complex
+idea of power, wisdom, justice, goodness, all stretched to a degree far
+exceeding the bounds of our comprehension, whilst we consider the
+divinity in this refined and abstracted light, the imagination and
+passions are little or nothing affected. But because we are bound, by
+the condition of our nature, to ascend to these pure and intellectual
+ideas, through the medium of sensible images, and to judge of these
+divine qualities by their evident acts and exertions, it becomes
+extremely hard to disentangle our idea of the cause from the effect by
+which we are led to know it. Thus, when we contemplate the Deity, his
+attributes and their operation, coming united on the mind, form a sort
+of sensible image, and as such are capable of affecting the
+imagination. Now, though in a just idea of the Deity, perhaps none of
+his attributes are predominant, yet, to our imagination, his power is by
+far the most striking. Some reflection, some comparing, is necessary to
+satisfy us of his wisdom, his justice, and his goodness. To be struck
+with his power, it is only necessary that we should open our eyes. But
+whilst we contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were, of
+almighty power, and invested upon every side with omnipresence, we
+shrink into the minuteness of our own nature, and are, in a manner,
+annihilated before him. And though a consideration of his other
+attributes may relieve, in some measure, our apprehensions; yet no
+conviction of the justice with which it is exercised, nor the mercy with
+which it is tempered, can wholly remove the terror that naturally arises
+from a force which nothing can withstand. If we rejoice, we rejoice with
+trembling; and even whilst we are receiving benefits, we cannot but
+shudder at a power which can confer benefits of such mighty importance.
+When the prophet David contemplated the wonders of wisdom and power
+which are displayed in the economy of man, he seems to be struck with a
+sort of divine horror, and cries out, _fearfully and wonderfully am I
+made_! An heathen poet has a sentiment of a similar nature; Horace looks
+upon it as the last effort of philosophical fortitude, to behold without
+terror and amazement, this immense and glorious fabric of the universe:
+
+    Hunc solem, et stellas, et decedentia certis
+    Tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nulla
+    Imbuti spectent.
+
+Lucretius is a poet not to be suspected of giving way to superstitious
+terrors; yet, when he supposes the whole mechanism of nature laid open
+by the master of his philosophy, his transport on this magnificent view,
+which he has represented in the colors of such bold and lively poetry,
+is overcast with a shade of secret dread and horror:
+
+    His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
+    Percipit, atque horror; quod sic natura, tua vi
+    Tam manifesta patens, ex omni parte retecta est.
+
+But the Scripture alone can supply ideas answerable to the majesty of
+this subject. In the Scripture, wherever God is represented as appearing
+or speaking, everything terrible in nature is called up to heighten the
+awe and solemnity of the Divine presence. The Psalms, and the
+prophetical books, are crowded with instances of this kind. _The earth
+shook,_ (says the Psalmist,) _the heavens also dropped at the presence
+of the Lord._ And what is remarkable, the painting preserves the same
+character, not only when he is supposed descending to take vengeance
+upon the wicked, but even when he exerts the like plenitude of power in
+acts of beneficence to mankind. _Tremble, thou earth! at the presence of
+the Lord; at the presence of the God of Jacob; which turned the rock
+into standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters!_ It were
+endless to enumerate all the passages, both in the sacred and profane
+writers, which establish the general sentiment of mankind, concerning
+the inseparable union of a sacred and reverential awe, with our ideas of
+the divinity. Hence the common maxim, _Primus in orbe deos fecit timor_.
+This maxim may be, as I believe it is, false with regard to the origin
+of religion. The maker of the maxim saw how inseparable these ideas
+were, without considering that the notion of some great power must be
+always precedent to our dread of it. But this dread must necessarily
+follow the idea of such a power, when it is once excited in the mind. It
+is on this principle that true religion has, and must have, so large a
+mixture of salutary fear; and that false religions have generally
+nothing else but fear to support them. Before the Christian religion
+had, as it were, humanized the idea of the Divinity, and brought it
+somewhat nearer to us, there was very little said of the love of God.
+The followers of Plato have something of it, and only something; the
+other writers of pagan antiquity, whether poets or philosophers, nothing
+at all. And they who consider with what infinite attention, by what a
+disregard of every perishable object, through what long habits of piety
+and contemplation it is that any man is able to attain an entire love
+and devotion to the Deity, will easily perceive that it is not the
+first, the most natural, and the most striking effect which proceeds
+from that idea. Thus we have traced power through its several gradations
+unto the highest of all, where our imagination is finally lost; and we
+find terror, quite throughout the progress, its inseparable companion,
+and growing along with it, as far as we can possibly trace them. Now, as
+power is undoubtedly a capital source of the sublime, this will point
+out evidently from whence its energy is derived, and to what class of
+ideas we ought to unite it.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+PRIVATION.
+
+ALL _general_ privations are great, because they are all terrible;
+_vacuity_, _darkness_, _solitude_, and _silence_. With what a fire of
+imagination, yet with what severity of judgment, has Virgil amassed all
+these circumstances, where he knows that all the images of a tremendous
+dignity ought to be united at the mouth of hell! Where, before he
+unlocks the secrets of the great deep, he seems to be seized with a
+religious horror, and to retire astonished at the boldness of his own
+design:
+
+    Dii, quibus imperium est animarum, umbraeque _silentes_!
+    Et Chaos, et Phlegethon! loca _nocte silentia_ late!
+    Sit mihi fas audita loqui! sit numine vestro
+    Pandere res alta terra et _caligine_ mersas!
+    Ibant _obscuri_, _sola_ sub _nocte_, per _umbram_,
+    Perque domos Ditis _vacuas_, et _inania_ regus.
+
+   "Ye subterraneous gods! whose awful sway
+    The gliding ghosts, and _silent_ shades obey:
+    O Chaos hoar! and Phlegethon profound!
+    Whose solemn empire stretches wide around;
+    Give me, ye great, tremendous powers, to tell
+    Of scenes and wonders in the depth of hell;
+    Give me your mighty secrets to display
+    From those _black_ realms of darkness to the day."
+
+                                        PITT.
+
+   "_Obscure_ they went through dreary _shades_ that led
+    Along the _waste_ dominions of the _dead_."
+
+                                        DRYDEN.
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+VASTNESS.
+
+Greatness[17] of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime. This is
+too evident, and the observation too common, to need any illustration;
+it is not so common to consider in what ways greatness of dimension,
+vastness of extent or quantity, has the most striking effect. For,
+certainly, there are ways and modes wherein the same quantity of
+extension shall produce greater effects than it is found to do in
+others. Extension is either in length, height, or depth. Of these the
+length strikes least; a hundred yards of even ground will never work
+such an effect as a tower a hundred yards high, or a rock or mountain of
+that altitude. I am apt to imagine, likewise, that height is less grand
+than depth; and that we are more struck at looking down from a
+precipice, than looking up at an object of equal height; but of that I
+am not very positive. A perpendicular has more force in forming the
+sublime, than an inclined plane, and the effects of a rugged and broken
+surface seem stronger than where it is smooth and polished. It would
+carry us out of our way to enter in this place into the cause of these
+appearances, but certain it is they afford a large and fruitful field of
+speculation. However, it may not be amiss to add to these remarks upon
+magnitude, that as the great extreme of dimension is sublime, so the
+last extreme of littleness is in some measure sublime likewise; when we
+attend to the infinite divisibility of matter, when we pursue animal
+life into these excessively small, and yet organized beings, that
+escape the nicest inquisition of the sense; when we push our discoveries
+yet downward, and consider those creatures so many degrees yet smaller,
+and the still diminishing scale of existence, in tracing which the
+imagination is lost as well as the sense; we become amazed and
+confounded at the wonders of minuteness; nor can we distinguish in its
+effect this extreme of littleness from the vast itself. For division
+must be infinite as well as addition; because the idea of a perfect
+unity can no more be arrived at, than that of a complete whole, to which
+nothing may be added.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+INFINITY.
+
+Another source of the sublime is _infinity_; if it does not rather
+belong to the last. Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that
+sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect, and truest
+test of the sublime. There are scarce any things which can become the
+objects of our senses, that are really and in their own nature infinite.
+But the eye not being able to perceive the bounds of many things, they
+seem to be infinite, and they produce the same effects as if they were
+really so. We are deceived in the like manner, if the parts of some
+large object are so continued to any indefinite number, that the
+imagination meets no check which may hinder its extending them at
+pleasure.
+
+Whenever we repeat any idea frequently, the mind, by a sort of
+mechanism, repeats it long after the first cause has ceased to
+operate.[18] After whirling about, when we sit down, the objects about
+us still seem to whirl. After a long succession of noises, as the fall
+of waters, or the beating of forge-hammers, the hammers beat and the
+waters roar in the imagination long after the first sounds have ceased
+to affect it; and they die away at last by gradations which are scarcely
+perceptible. If you hold up a straight pole, with your eye to one end,
+it will seem extended to a length almost incredible.[19] Place a number
+of uniform and equi-distant marks on this pole, they will cause the same
+deception, and seem multiplied without end. The senses, strongly
+affected in some one manner, cannot quickly change their tenor, or adapt
+themselves to other things; but they continue in their old channel until
+the strength of the first mover decays. This is the reason of an
+appearance very frequent in madmen; that they remain whole days and
+nights, sometimes whole years, in the constant repetition of some
+remark, some complaint, or song; which having struck powerfully on their
+disordered imagination, in the beginning of their frenzy, every
+repetition reinforces it with new strength, and the hurry of their
+spirits, unrestrained by the curb of reason, continues it to the end of
+their lives.
+
+
+SECTION IX.
+
+SUCCESSION AND UNIFORMITY.
+
+Succession and _uniformity_ of parts are what constitute the artificial
+infinite. 1. _Succession_; which is requisite that the parts may be
+continued so long and in such a direction, as by their frequent impulses
+on the sense to impress the imagination with an idea of their progress
+beyond their actual limits. 2. _Uniformity_; because, if the figures of
+the parts should be changed, the imagination at every change finds a
+check; you are presented at every alteration with the termination of one
+idea, and the beginning of another; by which means it becomes impossible
+to continue that uninterrupted progression, which alone can stamp on
+bounded objects the character of infinity. It is in this kind of
+artificial infinity, I believe, we ought to look for the cause why a
+rotund has such a noble effect.[20] For in a rotund, whether it be a
+building or a plantation, you can nowhere fix a boundary; turn which way
+you will, the same object still seems to continue, and the imagination
+has no rest. But the parts must be uniform, as well as circularly
+disposed, to give this figure its full force; because any difference,
+whether it be in the disposition, or in the figure, or even in the color
+of the parts, is highly prejudicial to the idea of infinity, which every
+change must check and interrupt, at every alteration commencing a new
+series. On the same principles of succession and uniformity, the grand
+appearance of the ancient heathen temples, which were generally oblong
+forms, with a range of uniform pillars on every side, will be easily
+accounted for. From the same cause also may be derived the grand effect
+of the aisles in many of our own old cathedrals. The form of a cross
+used in some churches seems to me not so eligible as the parallelogram
+of the ancients; at least, I imagine it is not so proper for the
+outside. For, supposing the arms of the cross every way equal, if you
+stand in a direction parallel to any of the side walls, or colonnades,
+instead of a deception that makes the building more extended than it is,
+you are cut off from a considerable part (two thirds) of its _actual_
+length; and, to prevent all possibility of progression, the arms of the
+cross taking a new direction, make a right angle with the beam, and
+thereby wholly turn the imagination from the repetition of the former
+idea. Or suppose the spectator placed where he may take a direct view of
+such a building, what will be the consequence? the necessary consequence
+will be, that a good part of the basis of each angle formed by the
+intersection of the arms of the cross, must be inevitably lost; the
+whole must of course assume a broken, unconnected figure; the lights
+must be unequal, here strong, and there weak; without that noble
+gradation which the perspective always effects on parts disposed
+uninterruptedly in a right line. Some or all of these objections will
+lie against every figure of a cross, in whatever view you take it. I
+exemplified them in the Greek cross, in which these faults appear the
+most strongly; but they appear in some degree in all sorts of crosses.
+Indeed, there is nothing more prejudicial to the grandeur of buildings
+than to abound in angles; a fault obvious in many; and owing to an
+inordinate thirst for variety, which, whenever it prevails, is sure to
+leave very little true taste.
+
+
+SECTION X.
+
+MAGNITUDE IN BUILDING.
+
+To the sublime in building, greatness of dimension seems requisite; for
+on a few parts, and those small, the imagination cannot rise to any idea
+of infinity. No greatness in the manner can effectually compensate for
+the want of proper dimensions. There is no danger of drawing men into
+extravagant designs by this rule; it carries its own caution along with
+it. Because too great a length in buildings destroys the purpose of
+greatness, which it was intended to promote; the perspective will lessen
+it in height as it gains in length; and will bring it at last to a
+point; turning the whole figure into a sort of triangle, the poorest in
+its effect of almost any figure that can be presented to the eye. I have
+ever observed, that colonnades and avenues of trees of a moderate length
+were, without comparison, far grander than when they were suffered to
+run to immense distances. A true artist should put a generous deceit on
+the spectators, and effect the noblest designs by easy methods. Designs
+that are vast only by their dimensions are always the sign of a common
+and low imagination. No work of art can be great, but as it deceives; to
+be otherwise is the prerogative of nature only. A good eye will fix the
+medium betwixt an excessive length or height (for the same objection
+lies against both), and a short or broken quantity: and perhaps it might
+be ascertained to a tolerable degree of exactness, if it was my purpose
+to descend far into the particulars of any art.
+
+
+SECTION XI.
+
+INFINITY IN PLEASING OBJECTS.
+
+Infinity, though of another kind, causes much of our pleasure in
+agreeable, as well as of our delight in sublime images. The spring is
+the pleasantest of the seasons; and the young of most animals, though
+far from being completely fashioned, afford a more agreeable sensation
+than the full-grown; because the imagination is entertained with the
+promise of something more, and does not acquiesce in the present object
+of the sense. In unfinished sketches of drawing, I have often seen
+something which pleased me beyond the best finishing; and this I believe
+proceeds from the cause I have just now assigned.
+
+
+SECTION XII.
+
+DIFFICULTY.
+
+Another source of greatness is _difficulty_.[21] When any work seems to
+have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand.
+Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything
+admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set on end, and piled
+each on other, turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a
+work. Nay, the rudeness of the work increases this cause of grandeur, as
+it excludes the idea of art and contrivance; for dexterity produces
+another sort of effect, which is different enough from this.
+
+
+SECTION XIII.
+
+MAGNIFICENCE.
+
+Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime. A great profusion of
+things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is _magnificent_.
+The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view never
+fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars
+themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause.
+The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care
+is highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie
+in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions
+to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity. In
+works of art, this kind of grandeur which consists in multitude, is to
+be very cautiously admitted; because a profusion of excellent things is
+not to be attained, or with too much difficulty; and because in many
+cases this splendid confusion would destroy all use, which should be
+attended to in most of the works of art with the greatest care; besides,
+it is to be considered, that unless you can produce an appearance of
+infinity by your disorder, you will have disorder only without
+magnificence. There are, however, a sort of fireworks, and some other
+things, that in this way succeed well, and are truly grand. There are
+also many descriptions in the poets and orators, which owe their
+sublimity to a richness and profusion of images, in which the mind is so
+dazzled as to make it impossible to attend to that exact coherence and
+agreement of the allusions, which we should require on every other
+occasion. I do not now remember a more striking example of this, than
+the description which is given of the king's army in the play of Henry
+IV.:--
+
+              "All furnished, all in arms,
+    All plumed like ostriches that with the wind
+    Baited like eagles having lately bathed:
+    As full of spirit us the month of May,
+    And gorgeous as the sun in midsummer,
+    Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
+    I saw young Harry with his beaver on
+    Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury;
+    And vaulted with such ease into his seat,
+    As if an angel dropped down from the clouds
+    To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus."
+
+
+In that excellent book, so remarkable for the vivacity of its
+descriptions, as well as the solidity and penetration of its sentences,
+the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, there is a noble panegyric on the
+high-priest Simon the son of Onias; and it is a very fine example of the
+point before us:--
+
+    _How was he honored in the midst of the people, in his coming out of
+    the sanctuary! He was as the morning star in the midst of a cloud,
+    and as the moon at the full; as the sun shining upon the temple of
+    the Most High, and as the rainbow giving light in the bright clouds:
+    and as the flower of roses in the spring of the year, as lilies by
+    the rivers of waters, and as the frankincense-tree in summer; as
+    fire and incense in the censer, and as a vessel of gold set with
+    precious stones; as a fair olive-tree budding forth fruit, and as a
+    cypress which groweth up to the clouds. When he put on the robe of
+    honor, and was clothed with the perfection of glory, when he went up
+    to the holy altar, he made the garment of holiness honorable. He
+    himself stood by the hearth of the altar, compassed with his
+    brethren round about; as a young cedar in Libanus, and as
+    palm-trees compassed they him about. So were all the sons of Aaron
+    in their glory, and the oblations of the Lord in their hands, &c._
+
+
+SECTION XIV.
+
+LIGHT.
+
+Having considered extension, so far as it is capable of raising ideas of
+greatness; _color_ comes next under consideration. All colors depend on
+_light_. Light therefore ought previously to be examined; and with it
+its opposite, darkness. With regard to light, to make it a cause capable
+of producing the sublime, it must be attended with some circumstances,
+besides its bare faculty of showing other objects. Mere light is too
+common a thing to make a strong impression on the mind, and without a
+strong impression nothing can be sublime. But such a light as that of
+the sun, immediately exerted on the eye, as it overpowers the sense, is
+a very great idea. Light of an inferior strength to this, if it moves
+with great celerity, has the same power; for lightning is certainly
+productive of grandeur, which it owes chiefly to the extreme velocity of
+its motion. A quick transition from light to darkness, or from darkness
+to light, has yet a greater effect. But darkness is more productive of
+sublime ideas than light. Our great poet was convinced of this; and
+indeed so full was he of this idea, so entirely possessed with the power
+of a well-managed darkness, that in describing the appearance of the
+Deity, amidst that profusion of magnificent images, which the grandeur
+of his subject provokes him to pour out upon every side, he is far from
+forgetting the obscurity which surrounds the most incomprehensible of
+all beings, but
+
+          "With majesty of _darkness_ round
+    Circles his throne."
+
+And what is no less remarkable, our author had the secret of preserving
+this idea, even when he seemed to depart the farthest from it, when he
+describes the light and glory which flows from the Divine presence; a
+light which by its very excess is converted into a species of
+darkness:--
+
+   "_Dark_ with excessive _light_ thy skirts appear."
+
+Here is an idea not only poetical in a high degree, but strictly and
+philosophically just. Extreme light, by overcoming the organs of sight,
+obliterates all objects, so as in its effect exactly to resemble
+darkness. After looking for some time at the sun, two black spots, the
+impression which it leaves, seem to dance before our eyes. Thus are two
+ideas as opposite as can be imagined reconciled in the extremes of both;
+and both, in spite of their opposite nature, brought to concur in
+producing the sublime. And this is not the only instance wherein the
+opposite extremes operate equally in favor of the sublime, which in all
+things abhors mediocrity.
+
+
+SECTION XV.
+
+LIGHT IN BUILDING.
+
+As the management of light is a matter of importance in architecture, it
+is worth inquiring, how far this remark is applicable to building. I
+think, then, that all edifices calculated to produce an idea of the
+sublime, ought rather to be dark and gloomy, and this for two reasons;
+the first is, that darkness itself on other occasions is known by
+experience to have a greater effect on the passions than light. The
+second is, that to make an object very striking, we should make it as
+different as possible from the objects with which we have been
+immediately conversant; when therefore you enter a building, you cannot
+pass into a greater light than you had in the open air; to go into one
+some few degrees less luminous, can make only a trifling change; but to
+make the transition thoroughly striking, you ought to pass from the
+greatest light, to as much darkness as is consistent with the uses of
+architecture. At night the contrary rule will hold, but for the very
+same reason; and the more highly a room is then illuminated, the grander
+will the passion be.
+
+
+SECTION XVI.
+
+COLOR CONSIDERED AS PRODUCTIVE OF THE SUBLIME.
+
+Among colors, such as are soft or cheerful (except perhaps a strong red,
+which is cheerful) are unfit to produce grand images. An immense
+mountain covered with a shining green turf, is nothing, in this respect,
+to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is more grand than the blue; and
+night more sublime and solemn than day. Therefore in historical
+painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never have a happy effect: and in
+buildings, when the highest degree of the sublime is intended, the
+materials and ornaments ought neither to be white, nor green, nor
+yellow, nor blue, nor of a pale red, nor violet, nor spotted, but of
+sad and fuscous colors, as black, or brown, or deep purple, and the
+like. Much of gilding, mosaics, painting, or statues, contribute but
+little to the sublime. This rule need not be put in practice, except
+where an uniform degree of the most striking sublimity is to be
+produced, and that in every particular; for it ought to be observed,
+that this melancholy kind of greatness, though it be certainly the
+highest, ought not to be studied in all sorts of edifices, where yet
+grandeur must be studied; in such cases the sublimity must be drawn from
+the other sources; with a strict caution however against anything light
+and riant; as nothing so effectually deadens the whole taste of the
+sublime.
+
+
+SECTION XVII.
+
+SOUND AND LOUDNESS.
+
+The eye is not the only organ of sensation by which a sublime passion
+may be produced. Sounds have a great power in these as in most other
+passions. I do not mean words, because words do not affect simply by
+their sounds, but by means altogether different. Excessive loudness
+alone is sufficient to overpower the soul, to suspend its action, and to
+fill it with terror. The noise of vast cataracts, raging storms,
+thunder, or artillery, awakes a great and awful sensation in the mind,
+though we can observe no nicety or artifice in those sorts of music. The
+shouting of multitudes has a similar effect; and by the sole strength of
+the sound, so amazes and confounds the imagination, that, in this
+staggering and hurry of the mind, the best established tempers can
+scarcely forbear being borne down, and joining in the common cry, and
+common resolution of the crowd.
+
+
+SECTION XVIII.
+
+SUDDENNESS.
+
+A sudden beginning, or sudden cessation of sound of any considerable
+force, has the same power. The attention is roused by this; and the
+faculties driven forward, as it were, on their guard. Whatever, either
+in sights or sounds, makes the transition from one extreme to the other
+easy, causes no terror, and consequently can be no cause of greatness.
+In everything sudden and unexpected, we are apt to start; that is, we
+have a perception of danger, and our nature rouses us to guard against
+it. It may be observed that a single sound of some strength, though but
+of short duration, if repeated after intervals, has a grand effect. Few
+things are more awful than the striking of a great clock, when the
+silence of the night prevents the attention from being too much
+dissipated. The same may be said of a single stroke on a drum, repeated
+with pauses; and of the successive firing of cannon at a distance. All
+the effects mentioned in this section have causes very nearly alike.
+
+
+SECTION XIX.
+
+INTERMITTING.
+
+A low, tremulous, intermitting sound, though it seems, in some respects,
+opposite to that just mentioned, is productive of the sublime. It is
+worth while to examine this a little. The fact itself must be determined
+by every man's own experience and reflection. I have already observed,
+that night[22] increases our terror, more perhaps than anything else; it
+is our nature, when we do not know what may happen to us, to fear the
+worst that can happen; and hence it is that uncertainty is so terrible,
+that we often seek to be rid of it, at the hazard of a certain mischief.
+Now some low, confused, uncertain sounds, leave us in the same fearful
+anxiety concerning their causes, that no light, or an uncertain light,
+does concerning the objects that surround us.
+
+      Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna
+      Est iter in sylvis.
+
+          "A faint shadow of uncertain light,
+      Like as a lamp, whose life doth fade away;
+      Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night
+    Doth show to him who walks in fear and great affright."
+
+                                          SPENSER.
+
+But light now appearing, and now leaving us, and so off and on, is even
+more terrible than total darkness; and a sort of uncertain sounds are,
+when the necessary dispositions concur, more alarming than a total
+silence.
+
+
+SECTION XX.
+
+THE CRIES OF ANIMALS.
+
+Such sounds as imitate the natural inarticulate voices of men, or any
+animals in pain or danger, are capable of conveying great ideas; unless
+it be the well-known voice of some creature, on which we are used to
+look with contempt. The angry tones of wild beasts are equally capable
+of causing a great and awful sensation.
+
+    Hinc exaudiri gemitus, iraeque leonum
+    Vincia recusantum, et sera sub nocte rudentum;
+    Setigerique sues, atque in praesepibus ursi
+    Saevire; et formae magnorum ululare luporam.
+
+It might seem that those modulations of sound carry some connection with
+the nature of the things they represent, and are not merely arbitrary;
+because the natural cries of all animals, even of those animals with
+whom we have not been acquainted, never fail to make themselves
+sufficiently understood; this cannot be said of language. The
+modifications of sound, which may be productive of the sublime, are
+almost infinite. Those I have mentioned are only a few instances to show
+on what principles they are all built.
+
+
+SECTION XXI.
+
+SMELL AND TASTE.--BITTERS AND STENCHES.
+
+_Smells_ and _tastes_ have some share too in ideas of greatness; but it
+is a small one, weak in its nature, and confined in its operations. I
+shall only observe that no smells or tastes can produce a grand
+sensation, except excessive bitters, and intolerable stenches. It is
+true that these affections of the smell and taste, when they are in
+their full force, and lean directly upon the sensory, are simply
+painful, and accompanied with no sort of delight; but when they are
+moderated, as in a description or narrative, they become sources of the
+sublime, as genuine as any other, and upon the very same principle of a
+moderated pain. "A cup of bitterness"; "to drain the bitter cup of
+fortune"; "the bitter apples of Sodom"; these are all ideas suitable to
+a sublime description. Nor is this passage of Virgil without sublimity,
+where the stench of the vapor in Albunea conspires so happily with the
+sacred horror and gloominess of that prophetic forest:
+
+    At rex sollicitus monstris oracula Fauni
+    Fatidici genitoris adit, lucosque sub alta
+    Consulit Albunea, nemorum quae maxima sacro
+    Fonte sonat; _saevamque exhalat opaca Mephitim_.
+
+In the sixth book, and in a very sublime description, the poisonous
+exhalation of Acheron is not forgotten, nor does it at all disagree with
+the other images amongst which it is introduced:
+
+    Spelunca _alta_ fuit, _vastoque immanis_ hiatu
+    Scrupea, tuta _lacu nigro_, nemorumque _tenebris_;
+    Quam super haud ullae poterant impune volantes
+    Tendere iter pennis: _talis sese halitus atris_
+    _Faucibus effundens supera ad convexa ferebat_.
+
+I have added these examples, because some friends, for whose judgment I
+have great deference, were of opinion that if the sentiment stood
+nakedly by itself, it would be subject, at first view, to burlesque and
+ridicule; but this I imagine would principally arise from considering
+the bitterness and stench in company with mean and contemptible ideas,
+with which it must be owned they are often united; such an union
+degrades the sublime in all other instances as well as in those. But it
+is one of the tests by which the sublimity of an image is to be tried,
+not whether it becomes mean when associated with mean ideas; but
+whether, when united with images of an allowed grandeur, the whole
+composition is supported with dignity. Things which are terrible are
+always great; but when things possess disagreeable qualities, or such
+as have indeed some degree of danger, but of a danger easily overcome,
+they are merely _odious_; as toads and spiders.
+
+
+SECTION XXII.
+
+FEELING.--PAIN.
+
+Of _feeling_ little more can be said than that the idea of bodily pain,
+in all the modes and degrees of labor, pain, anguish, torment, is
+productive of the sublime; and nothing else in this sense can produce
+it. I need not give here any fresh instances, as those given in the
+former sections abundantly illustrate a remark that, in reality, wants
+only an attention to nature, to be made by everybody.
+
+Having thus run through the causes of the sublime with reference to all
+the senses, my first observation (Sect. 7) will be found very nearly
+true; that the sublime is an idea belonging to self-preservation; that
+it is, therefore, one of the most affecting we have; that its strongest
+emotion is an emotion of distress; and that no pleasure[23] from a
+positive cause belongs to it. Numberless examples, besides those
+mentioned, might be brought in support of these truths, and many perhaps
+useful consequences drawn from them--
+
+    Sed fugit interea, fugit irrevocabile tempus,
+    Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] Part I. sect. 3, 4, 7.
+
+[12] Part IV. sect. 3, 4, 5, 6.
+
+[13] Part IV. sect. 14, 15, 16.
+
+[14] Part V.
+
+[15] Part I. sect. 7.
+
+[16] Vide Part III. sect. 21.
+
+[17] Part IV. sect. 9.
+
+[18] Part IV. sect. 11.
+
+[19] Part IV. sect. 13.
+
+[20] Mr. Addison, in the Spectators concerning the pleasures of the
+imagination, thinks it is because in the rotund at one glance you see
+half the building. This I do not imagine to be the real cause.
+
+[21] Part IV. sect. 4, 5, 6.
+
+[22] Sect. 3.
+
+[23] Vide Part I. sect. 6.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+OF BEAUTY.
+
+It is my design to consider beauty as distinguished from the sublime;
+and, in the course of the inquiry, to examine how far it is consistent
+with it. But previous to this, we must take a short review of the
+opinions already entertained of this quality; which I think are hardly
+to be reduced to any fixed principles; because men are used to talk of
+beauty in a figurative manner, that is to say, in a manner extremely
+uncertain, and indeterminate. By beauty, I mean that quality, or those
+qualities in bodies, by which they cause love, or some passion similar
+to it. I confine this definition to the merely sensible qualities of
+things, for the sake of preserving the utmost simplicity in a subject,
+which must always distract us whenever we take in those various causes
+of sympathy which attach us to any persons or things from secondary
+considerations, and not from the direct force which they have merely on
+being viewed. I likewise distinguish love, (by which I mean that
+satisfaction which arises to the mind upon contemplating anything
+beautiful, of whatsoever nature it may be,) from desire or lust; which
+is an energy of the mind, that hurries us on to the possession of
+certain objects, that do not affect us as they are beautiful, but by
+means altogether different. We shall have a strong desire for a woman of
+no remarkable beauty; whilst the greatest beauty in men, or in other
+animals, though it causes love, yet excites nothing at all of desire.
+Which shows that beauty, and the passion caused by beauty, which I call
+love, is different from desire, though desire may sometimes operate
+along with it; but it is to this latter that we must attribute those
+violent and tempestuous passions, and the consequent emotions of the
+body which attend what is called love in some of its ordinary
+acceptations, and not to the effects of beauty merely as it is such.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN VEGETABLES.
+
+Beauty hath usually been said to consist in certain proportions of
+parts. On considering the matter, I have great reason to doubt, whether
+beauty be at all an idea belonging to proportion. Proportion relates
+almost wholly to convenience, as every idea of order seems to do; and it
+must therefore be considered as a creature of the understanding, rather
+than a primary cause acting on the senses and imagination. It is not by
+the force of long attention and inquiry that we find any object to be
+beautiful; beauty demands no assistance from our reasoning; even the
+will is unconcerned; the appearance of beauty as effectually causes some
+degree of love in us, as the application of ice or fire produces the
+ideas of heat or cold. To gain something like a satisfactory conclusion
+in this point, it were well to examine what proportion is; since several
+who make use of that word do not always seem to understand very clearly
+the force of the term, nor to have very distinct ideas concerning the
+thing itself. Proportion is the measure of relative quantity. Since all
+quantity is divisible, it is evident that every distinct part into which
+any quantity is divided must bear some relation to the other parts, or
+to the whole. These relations give an origin to the idea of proportion.
+They are discovered by mensuration, and they are the objects of
+mathematical inquiry. But whether any part of any determinate quantity
+be a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth, or a moiety of the whole; or
+whether it be of equal length with any other part, or double its length,
+or but one half, is a matter merely indifferent to the mind; it stands
+neuter in the question: and it is from this absolute indifference and
+tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations derive some of
+their most considerable advantages; because there is nothing to interest
+the imagination; because the judgment sits free and unbiassed to examine
+the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity, is alike to
+the understanding, because the same truths result to it from all; from
+greater, from lesser, from equality and inequality. But surely beauty is
+no idea belonging to mensuration; nor has it anything to do with
+calculation and geometry. If it had, we might then point out some
+certain measures which we could demonstrate to be beautiful, either as
+simply considered, or as related to others; and we could call in those
+natural objects, for whose beauty we have no voucher but the sense, to
+this happy standard, and confirm the voice of our passions by the
+determination of our reason. But since we have not this help, let us see
+whether proportion can in any sense be considered as the cause of
+beauty, as hath been so generally, and, by some, so confidently
+affirmed. If proportion be one of the constituents of beauty, it must
+derive that power either from some natural properties inherent in
+certain measures, which operate mechanically; from the operation of
+custom; or from the fitness which some measures have to answer some
+particular ends of conveniency. Our business therefore is to inquire,
+whether the parts of those objects, which are found beautiful in the
+vegetable or animal kingdoms, are constantly so formed according to such
+certain measures, as may serve to satisfy us that their beauty results
+from those measures, on the principle of a natural mechanical cause; or
+from custom; or, in fine, from their fitness for any determinate
+purposes. I intend to examine this point under each of these heads in
+their order. But before I proceed further, I hope it will not be thought
+amiss, if I lay down the rules which governed me in this inquiry, and
+which have misled me in it, if I have gone astray. 1. If two bodies
+produce the same or a similar effect on the mind, and on examination
+they are found to agree in some of their properties, and to differ in
+others; the common effect is to be attributed to the properties in which
+they agree, and not to those in which they differ. 2. Not to account for
+the effect of a natural object from the effect of an artificial object.
+3. Not to account for the effect of any natural object from a conclusion
+of our reason concerning its uses, if a natural cause may be assigned.
+4. Not to admit any determinate quantity, or any relation of quantity,
+as the cause of a certain effect, if the effect is produced by different
+or opposite measures and relations; or if these measures and relations
+may exist, and yet the effect may not be produced. These are the rules
+which I have chiefly followed, whilst I examined into the power of
+proportion considered as a natural cause; and these, if he thinks them
+just, I request the reader to carry with him throughout the following
+discussion; whilst we inquire, in the first place, in what things we
+find this quality of beauty; next, to see whether in these we can find
+any assignable proportions in such a manner as ought to convince us that
+our idea of beauty results from them. We shall consider this pleasing
+power as it appears in vegetables, in the inferior animals, and in man.
+Turning our eyes to the vegetable creation, we find nothing there so
+beautiful as flowers; but flowers are almost of every sort of shape, and
+of every sort of disposition; they are turned and fashioned into an
+infinite variety of forms; and from these forms botanists have given
+them their names, which are almost as various. What proportion do we
+discover between the stalks and the leaves of flowers, or between the
+leaves and the pistils? How does the slender stalk of the rose agree
+with the bulky head under which it bends? but the rose is a beautiful
+flower; and can we undertake to say that it does not owe a great deal of
+its beauty even to that disproportion; the rose is a large flower, yet
+it grows upon a small shrub; the flower of the apple is very small, and
+grows upon a large tree; yet the rose and the apple blossom are both
+beautiful, and the plants that bear them are most engagingly attired,
+notwithstanding this disproportion. What by general consent is allowed
+to be a more beautiful object than an orange-tree, nourishing at once
+with its leaves, its blossoms, and its fruit? but it is in vain that we
+search here for any proportion between the height, the breadth, or
+anything else concerning the dimensions of the whole, or concerning the
+relation of the particular parts to each other. I grant that we may
+observe in many flowers something of a regular figure, and of a
+methodical disposition of the leaves. The rose has such a figure and
+such a disposition of its petals; but in an oblique view, when this
+figure is in a good measure lost, and the order of the leaves
+confounded, it yet retains its beauty; the rose is even more beautiful
+before it is full blown; in the bud; before this exact figure is formed;
+and this is not the only instance wherein method and exactness, the soul
+of proportion, are found rather prejudicial than serviceable to the
+cause of beauty.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN ANIMALS.
+
+That proportion has but a small share in the formation of beauty is full
+as evident among animals. Here the greatest variety of shapes and
+dispositions of parts are well fitted to excite this idea. The swan,
+confessedly a beautiful bird, has a neck longer than the rest of his
+body, and but a very short tail: is this a beautiful proportion? We must
+allow that it is. But then what shall we say to the peacock, who has
+comparatively but a short neck, with a tail longer than the neck and the
+rest of the body taken together? How many birds are there that vary
+infinitely from each of these standards, and from every other which you
+can fix; with proportions different, and often directly opposite to each
+other! and yet many of these birds are extremely beautiful; when upon
+considering them we find nothing in any one part that might determine
+us, _a priori_, to say what the others ought to be, nor indeed to guess
+anything about them, but what experience might show to be full of
+disappointment and mistake. And with regard to the colors either of
+birds or flowers, for there is something similar in the coloring of
+both, whether they are considered in their extension or gradation, there
+is nothing of proportion to be observed. Some are of but one single
+color; others have all the colors of the rainbow; some are of the
+primary colors, others are of the mixed; in short, an attentive observer
+may soon conclude that there is as little of proportion in the coloring
+as in the shapes of these objects. Turn next to beasts; examine the head
+of a beautiful horse; find what proportion that bears to his body, and
+to his limbs, and what relation these have to each other; and when you
+have settled these proportions as a standard of beauty, then take a dog
+or cat, or any other animal, and examine how far the same proportions
+between their heads and their necks, between those and the body, and so
+on, are found to hold; I think we may safely say, that they differ in
+every species, yet that there are individuals, found in a great many
+species so differing, that have a very striking beauty. Now, if it be
+allowed that very different, and even contrary forms and dispositions
+are consistent with beauty, it amounts I believe to a concession, that
+no certain measures, operating from a natural principle, are necessary
+to produce it; at least so far as the brute species is concerned.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN THE HUMAN SPECIES.
+
+There are some parts of the human body that are observed to hold certain
+proportions to each other; but before it can be proved that the
+efficient cause of beauty lies in these, it must be shown that, wherever
+these are found exact, the person to whom they belong is beautiful: I
+mean in the effect produced on the view, either of any member distinctly
+considered, or of the whole body together. It must be likewise shown,
+that these parts stand in such a relation to each other, that the
+comparison between them may be easily made, and that the affection of
+the mind may naturally result from it. For my part, I have at several
+times very carefully examined many of those proportions, and found them
+hold very nearly, or altogether alike in many subjects, which were not
+only very different from one another, but where one has been very
+beautiful, and the other very remote from beauty. With regard to the
+parts which are found so proportioned, they are often so remote from
+each other, in situation, nature, and office, that I cannot see how they
+admit of any comparison, nor consequently how any effect owing to
+proportion can result from them. The neck, say they, in beautiful
+bodies, should measure with the calf of the leg; it should likewise be
+twice the circumference of the wrist. And an infinity of observations of
+this kind are to be found in the writings and conversations of many. But
+what relation has the calf of the leg to the neck; or either of these
+parts to the wrist? These proportions are certainly to be found in
+handsome bodies. They are as certainly in ugly ones; as any who will
+take the pains to try may find. Nay, I do not know but they may be least
+perfect in some of the most beautiful. You may assign any proportions
+you please to every part of the human body; and I undertake that a
+painter shall religiously observe them all, and notwithstanding produce,
+if he pleases, a very ugly figure. The same painter shall considerably
+deviate from these proportions, and produce a very beautiful one. And,
+indeed, it may be observed in the masterpieces of the ancient and modern
+statuary, that several of them differ very widely from the proportions
+of others, in parts very conspicuous and of great consideration; and
+that they differ no less from the proportions we find in living men, of
+forms extremely striking and agreeable. And after all, how are the
+partisans of proportional beauty agreed amongst themselves about the
+proportions of the human body? Some hold it to be seven heads; some make
+it eight; whilst others extend it even to ten: a vast difference in such
+a small number of divisions! Others take other methods of estimating the
+proportions, and all with equal success. But are these proportions
+exactly the same in all handsome men? or are they at all the proportions
+found in beautiful women? Nobody will say that they are; yet both sexes
+are undoubtedly capable of beauty, and the female of the greatest; which
+advantage I believe will hardly be attributed to the superior exactness
+of proportion in the fair sex. Let us rest a moment on this point; and
+consider how much difference there is between the measures that prevail
+in many similar parts of the body, in the two sexes of this single
+species only. If you assign any determinate proportions to the limbs of
+a man, and if you limit human beauty to these proportions, when you find
+a woman who differs in the make and measures of almost every part, you
+must conclude her not to be beautiful, in spite of the suggestions of
+your imagination; or, in obedience to your imagination, you must
+renounce your rules; you must lay by the scale and compass, and look out
+for some other cause of beauty. For if beauty be attached to certain
+measures which operate from a _principle in nature_, why should similar
+parts with different measures of proportion be found to have beauty, and
+this too in the very same species? But to open our view a little, it is
+worth observing, that almost all animals have parts of very much the
+same nature, and destined nearly to the same purposes; a head, neck,
+body, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth; yet Providence, to provide in
+the best manner for their several wants, and to display the riches of
+his wisdom and goodness in his creation, has worked out of these few and
+similar organs, and members, a diversity hardly short of infinite in
+their disposition, measures and relation. But, as we have before
+observed, amidst this infinite diversity, one particular is common to
+many species: several of the individuals which compose them are capable
+of affecting us with a sense of loveliness: and whilst they agree in
+producing this effect, they differ extremely in the relative measures of
+those parts which have produced it. These considerations were sufficient
+to induce me to reject the notion of any particular proportions that
+operated by nature to produce a pleasing effect; but those who will
+agree with me with regard to a particular proportion, are strongly
+prepossessed in favor of one more indefinite. They imagine, that
+although beauty in general is annexed to no certain measures common to
+the several kinds of pleasing plants and animals; yet that there is a
+certain proportion in each species absolutely essential to the beauty of
+that particular kind. If we consider the animal world in general, we
+find beauty confined to no certain measures; but as some peculiar
+measure and relation of parts is what distinguishes each peculiar class
+of animals, it must of necessity be, that the beautiful in each kind
+will be found in the measures and proportions of that kind; for
+otherwise it would deviate from its proper species, and become in some
+sort monstrous: however, no species is so strictly confined to any
+certain proportions, that there is not a considerable variation amongst
+the individuals; and as it has been shown of the human, so it may be
+shown of the brute kinds, that beauty is found indifferently in all the
+proportions which each kind can admit, without quitting its common form;
+and it is this idea of a common form that makes the proportion of parts
+at all regarded, and not the operation of any natural cause: indeed a
+little consideration will make it appear, that it is not measure, but
+manner, that creates all the beauty which belongs to shape. What light
+do we borrow from these boasted proportions, when we study ornamental
+design? It seems amazing to me, that artists, if they were as well
+convinced as they pretend to be, that proportion is a principal cause of
+beauty, have not by them at all times accurate measurements of all sorts
+of beautiful animals to help them to proper proportions, when they would
+contrive anything elegant; especially as they frequently assert that it
+is from an observation of the beautiful in nature they direct their
+practice. I know that it has been said long since, and echoed backward
+and forward from one writer to another a thousand times, that the
+proportions of building have been taken from those of the human body. To
+make this forced analogy complete, they represent a man with his arms
+raised and extended at full length, and then describe a sort of square,
+as it is formed by passing lines along the extremities of this strange
+figure. But it appears very clearly to me that the human figure never
+supplied the architect with any of his ideas. For, in the first place,
+men are very rarely seen in this strained posture; it is not natural to
+them; neither is it at all becoming. Secondly, the view of the human
+figure so disposed, does not naturally suggest the idea of a square, but
+rather of a cross; as that large space be tween the arms and the ground
+must be filled with something before it can make anybody think of a
+square. Thirdly, several buildings are by no means of the form of that
+particular square, which are notwithstanding planned by the best
+architects, and produce an effect altogether as good, and perhaps a
+better. And certainly nothing could he more unaccountably whimsical,
+than for an architect to model his performance by the human figure,
+since no two things can have less resemblance or analogy, than a man,
+and a house or temple: do we need to observe that their purposes are
+entirely different? What I am apt to suspect is this: that these
+analogies were devised to give a credit to the works of art, by showing
+a conformity between them and the noblest works in nature; not that the
+latter served at all to supply hints for the perfection of the former.
+And I am the more fully convinced, that the patrons of proportion have
+transferred their artificial ideas to nature, and not borrowed from
+thence the proportions they use in works of art; because in any
+discussion of this subject they always quit as soon as possible the open
+field of natural beauties, the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and
+fortify themselves within the artificial lines and angles of
+architecture. For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make
+themselves, their views, and their works, the measure of excellence in
+everything whatsoever. Therefore having observed that their dwellings
+were most commodious and firm when they were thrown into regular
+figures, with parts answerable to each other; they transferred these
+ideas to their gardens; they turned their trees into pillars, pyramids,
+and obelisks; they formed their hedges into so many green walls, and
+fashioned their walks into squares, triangles, and other mathematical
+figures, with exactness and symmetry; and they thought, if they were not
+imitating, they were at least improving nature, and teaching her to know
+her business. But nature has at last escaped from their discipline and
+their fetters; and our gardens, if nothing else, declare, we begin to
+feel that mathematical ideas are not the true measures of beauty. And
+surely they are full as little so in the animal as the vegetable world.
+For is it not extraordinary, that in these fine descriptive pieces,
+these innumerable odes and elegies which are in the mouths of all the
+world, and many of which have been the entertainment of ages, that in
+these pieces which describe love with such a passionate energy, and
+represent its object in such an infinite variety of lights, not one word
+is said of proportion, if it be, what some insist it is, the principal
+component of beauty; whilst, at the same time, several other qualities
+are very frequently and warmly mentioned? But if proportion has not this
+power, it may appear odd how men came originally to be so prepossessed
+in its favor. It arose, I imagine, from the fondness I have just
+mentioned, which men bear so remarkably to their own works and notions;
+it arose from false reasonings on the effects of the customary figure of
+animals; it arose from the Platonic theory of fitness and aptitude. For
+which reason, in the next section, I shall consider the effects of
+custom in the figure of animals; and afterwards the idea of fitness:
+since if proportion does not operate by a natural power attending some
+measures, it must be either by custom, or the idea of utility; there is
+no other way.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+PROPORTION FURTHER CONSIDERED.
+
+If I am not mistaken, a great deal of the prejudice in favor of
+proportion has arisen, not so much from the observation of any certain
+measures found in beautiful bodies, as from a wrong idea of the relation
+which deformity bears to beauty, to which it has been considered as the
+opposite; on this principle it was concluded that where the causes of
+deformity were removed, beauty must naturally and necessarily be
+introduced. This I believe is a mistake. For _deformity_ is opposed not
+to beauty, but to the _complete common form_. If one of the legs of a
+man be found shorter than the other, the man is deformed; because there
+is something wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man; and
+this has the same effect in natural faults, as maiming and mutilation
+produce from accidents. So if the back be humped, the man is deformed;
+because his back has an unusual figure, and what carries with it the
+idea of some disease or misfortune; So if a man's neck be considerably
+longer or shorter than usual, we say he is deformed in that part,
+because men are not commonly made in that manner. But surely every
+hour's experience may convince us that a man may have his legs of an
+equal length, and resembling each other in all respects, and his neck of
+a just size, and his back quite straight, without having at the same
+time the least perceivable beauty. Indeed beauty is so far from
+belonging to the idea of custom, that in reality what affects us in that
+manner is extremely rare and uncommon. The beautiful strikes us as much
+by its novelty as the deformed itself. It is thus in those species of
+animals with which we are acquainted; and if one of a new species were
+represented, we should by no means wait until custom had settled an idea
+of proportion, before we decided concerning its beauty or ugliness:
+which shows that the general idea of beauty can be no more owing to
+customary than to natural proportion. Deformity arises from the want of
+the common proportions; but the necessary result of their existence in
+any object is not beauty. If we suppose proportion in natural things to
+be relative to custom and use, the nature of use and custom will show
+that beauty, which is a _positive_ and powerful quality, cannot result
+from it. We are so wonderfully formed, that, whilst we are creatures
+vehemently desirous of novelty, we are as strongly attached to habit and
+custom. But it is the nature of things which hold us by custom, to
+affect us very little whilst we are in possession of them, but strongly
+when they are absent. I remember to have frequented a certain place,
+every day for a long time together; and I may truly say that, so far
+from finding pleasure in it, I was affected with a sort of weariness and
+disgust; I came, I went, I returned, without pleasure; yet if by any
+means I passed by the usual time of my going thither, I was remarkably
+uneasy, and was not quiet till I had got into my old track. They who use
+snuff, take it almost without being sensible that they take it, and the
+acute sense of smell is deadened, so as to feel hardly anything from so
+sharp a stimulus; yet deprive the snuff-taker of his box, and he is the
+most uneasy mortal in the world. Indeed so far are use and habit from
+being causes of pleasure merely as such, that the effect of constant use
+is to make all things of whatever kind entirely unaffecting. For as use
+at last takes off the painful effect of many things, it reduces the
+pleasurable effect in others in the same manner, and brings both to a
+sort of mediocrity and indifference. Very justly is use called a second
+nature; and our natural and common state is one of absolute
+indifference, equally prepared for pain or pleasure. But when we are
+thrown out of this state, or deprived of anything requisite to maintain
+us in it; when this chance does not happen by pleasure from some
+mechanical cause, we are always hurt. It is so with the second nature,
+custom, in all things which relate to it. Thus the want of the usual
+proportions in men and other animals is sure to disgust, though their
+presence is by no means any cause of real pleasure. It is true that the
+proportions laid down as causes of beauty in the human body, are
+frequently found in beautiful ones, because they are generally found in
+all mankind; but if it can be shown too that they are found without
+beauty, and that beauty frequently exists without them, and that this
+beauty, where it exists, always can be assigned to other less equivocal
+causes, it will naturally lead us to conclude that proportion and beauty
+are not ideas of the same nature. The true opposite to beauty is not
+disproportion or deformity, but _ugliness_: and as it proceeds from
+causes opposite to those of positive beauty, we cannot consider it until
+we come to treat of that. Between beauty and ugliness there is a sort of
+mediocrity, in which the assigned proportions are most commonly found;
+but this has no effect upon the passions.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+FITNESS NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY.
+
+It is said that the idea of utility, or of a part's being well adapted
+to answer its end, is the cause of beauty, or indeed beauty itself. If
+it were not for this opinion, it had been impossible for the doctrine of
+proportion to have held its ground very long; the world would be soon
+weary of hearing of measures which related to nothing, either of a
+natural principle, or of a fitness to answer some end; the idea which
+mankind most commonly conceive of proportion, is the suitableness of
+means to certain ends, and, where this is not the question, very seldom
+trouble themselves about the effect of different measures of things.
+Therefore it was necessary for this theory to insist that not only
+artificial, but natural objects took their beauty from the fitness of
+the parts for their several purposes. But in framing this theory, I am
+apprehensive that experience was not sufficiently consulted. For, on
+that principle, the wedge-like snout of a swine, with its tough
+cartilage at the end, the little sunk eyes, and the whole make of the
+head, so well adapted to its offices of digging and rooting, would be
+extremely beautiful. The great bag hanging to the bill of a pelican, a
+thing highly useful to this animal, would be likewise as beautiful in
+our eyes. The hedge-hog, so well secured against all assaults by his
+prickly hide, and the porcupine with his missile quills, would be then
+considered as creatures of no small elegance. There are few animals
+whose parts are better contrived than those of a monkey: he has the
+hands of a man, joined to the springy limbs of a beast; he is admirably
+calculated for running, leaping, grappling, and climbing; and yet there
+are few animals which seem to have less beauty in the eyes of all
+mankind. I need say little on the trunk of the elephant, of such various
+usefulness, and which is so far from contributing to his beauty. How
+well fitted is the wolf for running and leaping! how admirably is the
+lion armed for battle! but will any one therefore call the elephant, the
+wolf, and the lion, beautiful animals? I believe nobody will think the
+form of a man's leg so well adapted to running, as those of a horse, a
+dog, a deer, and several other creatures; at least they have not that
+appearance: yet, I believe, a well-fashioned human leg will be allowed
+to far exceed all these in beauty. If the fitness of parts was what
+constituted the loveliness of their form, the actual employment of them
+would undoubtedly much augment it; but this, though it is sometimes so
+upon another principle, is far from being always the case. A bird on the
+wing is not so beautiful as when it is perched; nay, there are several
+of the domestic fowls which are seldom seen to fly, and which are
+nothing the less beautiful on that account; yet birds are so extremely
+different in their form from the beast and human kinds, that you cannot,
+on the principle of fitness, allow them anything agreeable, but in
+consideration of their parts being designed for quite other purposes. I
+never in my life chanced to see a peacock fly; and yet before, very long
+before I considered any aptitude in his form for the aerial life, I was
+struck with the extreme beauty which raises that bird above many of the
+best flying fowls in the world; though, for anything I saw, his way of
+living was much like that of the swine, which fed in the farm-yard along
+with him. The same may be said of cocks, hens, and the like; they are of
+the flying kind in figure; in their manner of moving not very different
+from men and beasts. To leave these foreign examples; if beauty in our
+own species was annexed to use, men would be much more lovely than
+women; and strength and agility would be considered as the only
+beauties. But to call strength by the name of beauty, to have but one
+denomination for the qualities of a Venus and Hercules, so totally
+different in almost all respects, is surely a strange confusion of
+ideas, or abuse of words. The cause of this confusion, I imagine,
+proceeds from our frequently perceiving the parts of the human and other
+animal bodies to be at once very beautiful, and very well adapted to
+their purposes; and we are deceived by a sophism, which makes us take
+that for a cause which is only a concomitant: this is the sophism of the
+fly; who imagined he raised a great dust, because he stood upon the
+chariot that really raised it. The stomach, the lungs, the liver, as
+well as other parts, are incomparably well adapted to their purposes;
+yet they are far from having any beauty. Again, many things are very
+beautiful, in which it is impossible to discern any idea of use. And I
+appeal to the first and most natural feelings of mankind, whether on
+beholding a beautiful eye, or a well-fashioned mouth, or a well-turned
+leg, any ideas of their being well fitted for seeing, eating, or
+running, ever present themselves. What idea of use is it that flowers
+excite, the most beautiful part of the vegetable world? It is true that
+the infinitely wise and good Creator has, of his bounty, frequently
+joined beauty to those things which he has made useful to us; but this
+does not prove that an idea of use and beauty are the same thing, or
+that they are any way dependent on each other.
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+THE REAL EFFECTS OF FITNESS.
+
+When I excluded proportion and fitness from any share in beauty, I did
+not by any means intend to say that they were of no value, or that they
+ought to be disregarded in works of art. Works of art are the proper
+sphere of their power; and here it is that they have their full effect.
+Whenever the wisdom of our Creator intended that we should be affected
+with anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the
+languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with
+powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will;
+which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul,
+before the understanding is ready either to join with them, or to
+oppose them. It is by a long deduction, and much study, that we discover
+the adorable wisdom of God in his works: when we discover it the effect
+is very different, not only in the manner of acquiring it, but in its
+own nature, from that which strikes us without any preparation from the
+sublime or the beautiful. How different is the satisfaction of an
+anatomist, who discovers the use of the muscles and of the skin, the
+excellent contrivance of the one for the various movements of the body,
+and the wonderful texture of the other, at once a general covering, and
+at once a general outlet as well as inlet; how different is this from
+the affection which possesses an ordinary man at the sight of a
+delicate, smooth skin, and all the other parts of beauty, which require
+no investigation to be perceived! In the former case, whilst we look up
+to the Maker with admiration and praise, the object which causes it may
+be odious and distasteful; the latter very often so touches us by its
+power on the imagination, that we examine but little into the artifice
+of its contrivance; and we have need of a strong effort of our reason to
+disentangle our minds from the allurements of the object, to a
+consideration of that wisdom which invented so powerful a machine. The
+effect of proportion and fitness, at least so far as they proceed from a
+mere consideration of the work itself, produce approbation, the
+acquiescence of the understanding, but not love, nor any passion of that
+species. When we examine the structure of a watch, when we come to know
+thoroughly the use of every part of it, satisfied as we are with the
+fitness of the whole, we are far enough from perceiving anything like
+beauty in the watch-work itself; but let us look on the case, the labor
+of some curious artist in engraving, with little or no idea of use, we
+shall have a much livelier idea of beauty than we ever could have had
+from the watch itself, though the masterpiece of Graham. In beauty, as I
+said, the effect is previous to any knowledge of the use; but to judge
+of proportion, we must know the end for which any work is designed.
+According to the end, the proportion varies. Thus there is one
+proportion of a tower, another of a house; one proportion of a gallery,
+another of a hall, another of a chamber. To judge of the proportions of
+these, you must be first acquainted with the purposes for which they
+were designed. Good sense and experience acting together, find out what
+is fit to be done in every work of art. We are rational creatures, and
+in all our works we ought to regard their end and purpose; the
+gratification of any passion, how innocent soever, ought only to be of
+secondary consideration. Herein is placed the real power of fitness and
+proportion; they operate on the understanding considering them, which
+_approves_ the work and acquiesces in it. The passions, and the
+imagination which principally raises them, have here very little to do.
+When a room appears in its original nakedness, bare walls and a plain
+ceiling: let its proportion be ever so excellent, it pleases very
+little; a cold approbation is the utmost we can reach; a much worse
+proportioned room with elegant mouldings and fine festoons, glasses, and
+other merely ornamental furniture, will make the imagination revolt
+against the reason; it will please much more than the naked proportion
+of the first room, which the understanding has so much approved, as
+admirably fitted for its purposes. What I have here said and before
+concerning proportion, is by no means to persuade people absurdly to
+neglect the idea of use in the works of art. It is only to show that
+these excellent things, beauty and proportion, are not the same; not
+that they should either of them be disregarded.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+THE RECAPITULATION.
+
+On the whole; if such parts in human bodies as are found proportioned,
+were likewise constantly found beautiful, as they certainly are not; or
+if they were so situated, as that a pleasure might flow from the
+comparison, which they seldom are; or if any assignable proportions were
+found, either in plants or animals, which were always attended with
+beauty, which never was the case; or if, where parts were well adapted
+to their purposes, they were constantly beautiful, and when no use
+appeared, there was no beauty, which is contrary to all experience; we
+might conclude that beauty consisted in proportion or utility. But
+since, in all respects, the case is quite otherwise; we may be satisfied
+that beauty does not depend on these, let it owe its origin to what else
+it will.
+
+
+SECTION IX.
+
+PERFECTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY.
+
+There is another notion current, pretty closely allied to the former;
+that _perfection_ is the constituent cause of beauty. This opinion has
+been made to extend much further than to sensible objects. But in
+these, so far is perfection, considered as such, from being the cause of
+beauty; that this quality, where it is highest, in the female sex,
+almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection.
+Women are very sensible of this; for which reason they learn to lisp, to
+totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness. In all
+this they are guided by nature. Beauty in distress is much the most
+affecting beauty. Blushing has little less power; and modesty in
+general, which is a tacit allowance of imperfection, is itself
+considered as an amiable quality, and certainly heightens every other
+that is so. I know it is in every body's mouth, that we ought to love
+perfection. This is to me a sufficient proof, that it is not the proper
+object of love. Who ever said we _ought_ to love a fine woman, or even
+any of these beautiful animals which please us? Here to be affected,
+there is no need of the concurrence of our will.
+
+
+SECTION X.
+
+HOW FAR THE IDEA OF BEAUTY MAY BE APPLIED TO THE QUALITIES OF THE MIND.
+
+Nor is this remark in general less applicable to the qualities of the
+mind. Those virtues which cause admiration, and are of the sublimer
+kind, produce terror rather than love; such as fortitude, justice,
+wisdom, and the like. Never was any man amiable by force of these
+qualities. Those which engage our hearts, which impress us with a sense
+of loveliness, are the softer virtues; easiness of temper, compassion,
+kindness, and liberality; though certainly those latter are of less
+immediate and momentous concern to society, and of less dignity. But it
+is for that reason that they are so amiable. The great virtues turn
+principally on dangers, punishments, and troubles, and are exercised,
+rather in preventing the worst mischiefs, than in dispensing favors; and
+are therefore not lovely, though highly venerable. The subordinate turn
+on reliefs, gratifications, and indulgences; and are therefore more
+lovely, though inferior in dignity. Those persons who creep into the
+hearts of most people, who are chosen as the companions of their softer
+hours, and their reliefs from care and anxiety, are never persons of
+shining qualities or strong virtues. It is rather the soft green of the
+soul on which we rest our eyes, that are fatigued with beholding more
+glaring objects. It is worth observing how we feel ourselves affected in
+reading the characters of Caesar and Cato, as they are so finely drawn
+and contrasted in Sallust. In one the _ignoscendo largiundo_; in the
+other, _nil largiundo_. In one, the _miseris perfugium_; in the other,
+_malis perniciem_. In the latter we have much to admire, much to
+reverence, and perhaps something to fear; we respect him, but we respect
+him at a distance. The former makes us familiar with him; we love him,
+and he leads us whither he pleases. To draw things closer to our first
+and most natural feelings, I will add a remark made upon reading this
+section by an ingenious friend. The authority of a father, so useful to
+our well-being, and so justly venerable upon all accounts, hinders us
+from having that entire love for him that we have for our mothers, where
+the parental authority is almost melted down into the mother's fondness
+and indulgence. But we generally have a great love for our
+grandfathers, in whom this authority is removed a degree from us, and
+where the weakness of age mellows it into something of a feminine
+partiality.
+
+
+SECTION XI.
+
+HOW FAR THE IDEA OF BEAUTY MAY BE APPLIED TO VIRTUE.
+
+From what has been said in the foregoing section, we may easily see how
+far the application of beauty to virtue may be made with propriety. The
+general application of this quality to virtue has a strong tendency to
+confound our ideas of things, and it has given rise to an infinite deal
+of whimsical theory; as the affixing the name of beauty to proportion,
+congruity, and perfection, as well as to qualities of things yet more
+remote from our natural ideas of it, and from one another, has tended to
+confound our ideas of beauty, and left us no standard or rule to judge
+by, that was not even more uncertain and fallacious than our own
+fancies. This loose and inaccurate manner of speaking has therefore
+misled us both in the theory of taste and of morals; and induced us to
+remove the science of our duties from their proper basis (our reason,
+our relations, and our necessities), to rest it upon, foundations
+altogether visionary and unsubstantial.
+
+
+SECTION XII.
+
+THE REAL CAUSE OF BEAUTY.
+
+Having endeavored to show what beauty is not, it remains that we should
+examine, at least with equal attention, in what it really consists.
+Beauty is a thing much too affecting not to depend upon some positive
+qualities. And since it is no creature of our reason, since it strikes
+us without any reference to use, and even where no use at all can be
+discerned, since the order and method of nature is generally very
+different from our measures and proportions, we must conclude that
+beauty is, for the greater part, some quality in bodies acting
+mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention of the senses. We
+ought, therefore, to consider attentively in what manner those sensible
+qualities are disposed, in such things as by experience we find
+beautiful, or which excite in us the passion of love, or some
+correspondent affection.
+
+
+SECTION XIII.
+
+BEAUTIFUL OBJECTS SMALL.
+
+The most obvious point that presents itself to us in examining any
+object is its extent or quantity. And what degree of extent prevails in
+bodies that are held beautiful, may be gathered from the usual manner of
+expression concerning it. I am told that, in most languages, the objects
+of love are spoken of under diminutive epithets. It is so in all the
+languages of which I have any knowledge. In Greek the [Greek: ion] and
+other diminutive terms are almost always the terms of affection and
+tenderness. These diminutives were commonly added by the Greeks to the
+names of persons with whom they conversed on terms of friendship and
+familiarity. Though the Romans were a people of less quick and delicate
+feelings, yet they naturally slid into the lessening termination upon
+the same occasions. Anciently, in the English language, the diminishing
+_ling_ was added to the names of persons and things that were the
+objects of love. Some we retain still, as _darling_ (or little dear),
+and a few others. But to this day, in ordinary conversation, it is usual
+to add the endearing name of _little_ to everything we love; the French
+and Italians make use of these affectionate diminutives even more than
+we. In the animal creation, out of our own species, it is the small we
+are inclined to be fond of; little birds, and some of the smaller kinds
+of beasts. A great beautiful thing is a manner of expression scarcely
+ever used; but that of a great ugly thing is very common. There is a
+wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the
+cause of the former, always dwells on great objects, and terrible; the
+latter on small ones, and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we
+love what submits to us; in one case we are forced, in the other we are
+flattered, into compliance. In short, the ideas of the sublime and the
+beautiful stand on foundations so different, that it is hard, I had
+almost said impossible, to think of reconciling them in the same
+subject, without considerably lessening the effect of the one or the
+other upon the passions. So that, attending to their quantity, beautiful
+objects are comparatively small.
+
+
+SECTION XIV.
+
+SMOOTHNESS.
+
+The next property constantly observable in such objects is
+_smoothness_;[24] a quality so essential to beauty, that I do not now
+recollect anything beautiful that is not smooth. In trees and flowers,
+smooth leaves are beautiful; smooth slopes of earth in gardens; smooth
+streams in the landscape; smooth coats of birds and beasts in animal
+beauties; in fine women, smooth skins; and in several sorts of
+ornamental furniture, smooth and polished surfaces. A very considerable
+part of the effect of beauty is owing to this quality; indeed the most
+considerable. For, take any beautiful object, and give it a broken, and
+rugged surface; and, however well formed it may be in other respects, it
+pleases no longer. Whereas, let it want ever so many of the other
+constituents, if it wants not this, it becomes more pleasing than almost
+all the others without it. This seems to me so evident, that I am a good
+deal surprised that none who have handled the subject have made any
+mention of the quality of smoothness in the enumeration of those that go
+to the forming of beauty. For, indeed, any ruggedness, any sudden,
+projection, any sharp angle, is in the highest degree contrary to that
+idea.
+
+
+SECTION XV.
+
+GRADUAL VARIATION.
+
+But as perfectly beautiful bodies are not composed of angular parts, so
+their parts never continue long in the same right line.[25] They vary
+their direction every moment, and they change under the eye by a
+deviation continually carrying on, but for whose beginning or end you
+will find it difficult to ascertain a point. The view of a beautiful
+bird will illustrate this observation. Here we see the head increasing
+insensibly to the middle, from whence it lessens gradually until it
+mixes with the neck; the neck loses itself in a larger swell, which
+continues to the middle of the body, when the whole decreases again to
+the tail; the tail takes a new direction, but it soon varies its new
+course, it blends again with the other parts, and the line is
+perpetually changing, above, below, upon every side. In this description
+I have before me the idea of a dove; it agrees very well with most of
+the conditions of beauty. It is smooth and downy; its parts are (to use
+that expression) melted into one another; you are presented with no
+sudden protuberance through the whole, and yet the whole is continually
+changing. Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps
+the most beautiful, about the neck and breasts; the smoothness, the
+softness, the easy and insensible swell; the variety of the surface,
+which is never for the smallest space the same; the deceitful maze
+through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to
+fix, or whither it is carried. Is not this a demonstration of that
+change of surface, continual, and yet hardly perceptible at any point,
+which forms one of the great constituents of beauty? It gives me no
+small pleasure to find that I can strengthen my theory in this point by
+the opinion of the very ingenious Mr. Hogarth, whose idea of the line of
+beauty I take in general to be extremely just. But the idea of
+variation, without attending so accurately to the _manner_ of the
+variation, has led him to consider angular figures as beautiful; these
+figures, it is true, vary greatly, yet they vary in a sudden and broken
+manner, and I do not find any natural object which is angular, and at
+the same time beautiful. Indeed, few natural objects are entirely
+angular. But I think those which approach the most nearly to it are the
+ugliest. I must add, too, that so for as I could observe of nature,
+though the varied line is that alone in which complete beauty is found,
+yet there is no particular line which is always found in the most
+completely beautiful, and which is therefore beautiful in preference to
+all other lines. At least I never could observe it.
+
+
+SECTION XVI.
+
+DELICACY.
+
+An air of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to beauty. An
+appearance of _delicacy_, and even of fragility, is almost essential to
+it. Whoever examines the vegetable or animal creation will find this
+observation to be founded in nature. It is not the oak, the ash, or the
+elm, or any of the robust trees of the forest which we consider as
+beautiful; they are awful and majestic, they inspire a sort of
+reverence. It is the delicate myrtle, it is the orange, it is the
+almond, it is the jasmine, it is the vine which we look on as vegetable
+beauties. It is the flowery species, so remarkable for its weakness and
+momentary duration, that gives us the liveliest idea of beauty and
+elegance. Among animals, the greyhound is more beautiful than the
+mastiff, and the delicacy of a jennet, a barb, or an Arabian horse, is
+much more amiable than the strength and stability of some horses of war
+or carriage. I need here say little of the fair sex, where I believe the
+point will be easily allowed me. The beauty of women is considerably
+owing to their weakness or delicacy, and is even enhanced by their
+timidity, a quality of mind analogous to it. I would not here be
+understood to say, that weakness betraying very bad health has any share
+in beauty; but the ill effect of this is not because it is weakness, but
+because the ill state of health, which produces such weakness, alters
+the other conditions of beauty; the parts in such a case collapse, the
+bright color, the _lumen purpureum juventae_ is gone, and the fine
+variation is lost in wrinkles, sudden breaks, and right lines.
+
+
+SECTION XVII.
+
+BEAUTY IN COLOR.
+
+As to the colors usually found in beautiful bodies, it may be somewhat
+difficult to ascertain them, because, in the several parts of nature,
+there is an infinite variety. However, even in this variety, we may mark
+out something on which to settle. First, the colors of beautiful bodies
+must not be dusky or muddy, but clean and fair. Secondly, they must not
+be of the strongest kind. Those which seem most appropriated to beauty,
+are the milder of every sort; light greens; soft blues; weak whites;
+pink reds; and violets. Thirdly, if the colors be strong and vivid, they
+are always diversified, and the object is never of one strong color;
+there are almost always such a number of them (as in variegated flowers)
+that the strength and glare of each is considerably abated. In a fine
+complexion there is not only some variety in the coloring, but the
+colors: neither the red nor the white are strong and glaring. Besides,
+they are mixed in such a manner, and with such gradations, that it is
+impossible to fix the bounds. On the same principle it is that the
+dubious color in the necks and tails of peacocks, and about the heads of
+drakes, is so very agreeable. In reality, the beauty both of shape and
+coloring are as nearly related as we can well suppose it possible for
+things of such different natures to be.
+
+
+SECTION XVIII.
+
+RECAPITULATION.
+
+On the whole, the qualities of beauty, as they are merely sensible
+qualities, are the following: First, to be comparatively small.
+Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of
+the parts; but, fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted,
+as it were, into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without
+any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colors clear
+and bright, but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if it should
+have any glaring color, to have it diversified with others. These are, I
+believe, the properties on which beauty depends; properties that operate
+by nature, and are less liable to be altered by caprice, or confounded
+by a diversity of tastes, than any other.
+
+
+SECTION XIX.
+
+THE PHYSIOGNOMY.
+
+The _physiognomy_ has a considerable share in beauty, especially in that
+of our own species. The manners give a certain determination to the
+countenance; which, being observed to correspond pretty regularly with
+them, is capable of joining the effect of certain agreeable qualities of
+the mind to those of the body. So that to form a finished human beauty,
+and to give it its full influence, the face must be expressive of such
+gentle and amiable qualities, as correspond with the softness,
+smoothness, and delicacy of the outward form.
+
+
+SECTION XX.
+
+THE EYE.
+
+I have hitherto purposely omitted to speak of the _eye_, which has so
+great a share in the beauty of the animal creation, as it did not fall
+so easily under the foregoing heads, though in fact it is reducible to
+the same principles. I think, then, that the beauty of the eye consists,
+first, in its _clearness_; what _colored_ eye shall please most, depends
+a good deal on particular fancies; but none are pleased with an eye
+whose water (to use that term) is dull and muddy.[26] We are pleased
+with the eye in this view, on the principle upon which we like diamonds,
+clear water, glass, and such like transparent substances. Secondly, the
+motion of the eye contributes to its beauty, by continually shifting its
+direction; but a slow and languid motion is more beautiful than a brisk
+one; the latter is enlivening; the former lovely. Thirdly, with regard
+to the union of the eye with the neighboring parts, it is to hold the
+same rule that is given of other beautiful ones; it is not to make a
+strong deviation from the line of the neighboring parts; nor to verge
+into any exact geometrical figure. Besides all this, the eye affects, as
+it is expressive of some qualities of the mind, and its principal power
+generally arises from this; so that what we have just said of the
+physiognomy is applicable here.
+
+
+SECTION XXI.
+
+UGLINESS.
+
+It may perhaps appear like a sort of repetition of what we have before
+said, to insist here upon the nature of _ugliness_; as I imagine it to
+be in all respects the opposite to those qualities which we have laid
+down for the constituents of beauty. But though ugliness be the opposite
+to beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness. For it is
+possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a
+perfect fitness to any uses. Ugliness I imagine likewise to be
+consistent enough with an idea of the sublime. But I would by no means
+insinuate that ugliness of itself is a sublime idea, unless united with
+such qualities as excite a strong terror.
+
+
+SECTION XXII.
+
+GRACE.
+
+Gracefulness is an idea not very different from beauty; it consists in
+much the same things. Gracefulness is an idea belonging to _posture_ and
+_motion_. In both these, to be graceful, it is requisite that there be
+no appearance of difficulty; there is required a small inflection of the
+body; and a composure of the parts in such a manner, as not to incumber
+each other, not to appear divided by sharp and sudden angles. In this
+case, this roundness, this delicacy of attitude and motion, it is that
+all the magic of grace consists, and what is called its _je ne scai
+quoi_; as will be obvious to any observer, who considers attentively the
+Venus de Medicis, the Antinous or any statue generally allowed to be
+graceful in a high degree.
+
+
+SECTION XXIII.
+
+ELEGANCE AND SPECIOUSNESS.
+
+When any body is composed of parts smooth and polished, without pressing
+upon each other, without showing any ruggedness or confusion, and at the
+same time affecting some _regular shape_, I call it _elegant_. It is
+closely allied to the beautiful, differing from it only in this
+_regularity_; which, however, as it makes a very material difference in
+the affection produced, may very well constitute another species. Under
+this head I rank those delicate and regular works of art, that imitate
+no determinate object in nature, as elegant buildings, and pieces of
+furniture. When any object partakes of the above-mentioned qualities, or
+of those of beautiful bodies, and is withal of great dimensions, it is
+full as remote from the idea of mere beauty; I call _fine_ or
+_specious_.
+
+
+SECTION XXIV.
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL IN FEELING.
+
+The foregoing description of beauty, so far as it is taken in by the
+eye, may he greatly illustrated by describing the nature of objects,
+which produce a similar effect through the touch. This I call the
+beautiful in _feeling_. It corresponds wonderfully with what causes the
+same species of pleasure to the sight. There is a chain in all our
+sensations; they are all but different sorts of feelings calculated to
+be affected by various sorts of objects, but all to be affected after
+the same manner. All bodies that are pleasant to the touch, are so by
+the slightness of the resistance they make. Resistance is either to
+motion along the surface, or to the pressure of the parts on one
+another: if the former be slight, we call the body smooth; if the
+latter, soft. The chief pleasure we receive by feeling, is in the one or
+the other of these qualities; and if there be a combination of both, our
+pleasure is greatly increased. This is so plain, that it is rather more
+fit to illustrate other things, than to be illustrated itself by an
+example. The next source of pleasure in this sense, as in every other,
+is the continually presenting somewhat new; and we find that bodies
+which continually vary their surface, are much the most pleasant or
+beautiful to the feeling, as any one that pleases may experience. The
+third property in such objects is, that though the surface continually
+varies its direction, it never varies it suddenly. The application of
+anything sudden, even though the impression itself have little or
+nothing of violence, is disagreeable. The quick application of a finger
+a little warmer or colder than usual, without notice, makes us start; a
+slight tap on the shoulder, not expected, has the same effect. Hence it
+is that angular bodies, bodies that suddenly vary the direction of the
+outline, afford so little pleasure to the feeling. Every such change is
+a sort of climbing or falling in miniature; so that squares, triangles,
+and other angular figures are neither beautiful to the sight nor
+feeling. Whoever compares his state of mind, on feeling soft, smooth,
+variated, unangular bodies, with that in which he finds himself, on the
+view of a beautiful object, will perceive a very striking analogy in the
+effects of both; and which may go a good way towards discovering their
+common cause. Feeling and sight, in this respect, differ in but a few
+points. The touch takes in the pleasure of softness, which is not
+primarily an object of sight; the sight, on the other hand, comprehends
+color, which can hardly he made perceptible to the touch: the touch,
+again, has the advantage in a new idea of pleasure resulting from a
+moderate degree of warmth; but the eye triumphs in the infinite extent
+and multiplicity of its objects. But there is such a similitude in the
+pleasures of these senses, that I am apt to fancy, if it were possible
+that one might discern color by feeling (as it is said some blind men
+have done) that the same colors, and the same disposition of coloring,
+which are found beautiful to the sight, would be found likewise most
+grateful to the touch. But, setting aside conjectures, let us pass to
+the other sense; of hearing.
+
+
+SECTION XXV.
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL IN SOUNDS.
+
+In this sense we find an equal aptitude to be affected in a soft and
+delicate manner; and how far sweet or beautiful sounds agree with our
+descriptions of beauty in other senses, the experience of every one must
+decide. Milton has described this species of music in one of his
+juvenile poems.[27] I need not say that Milton was perfectly well versed
+in that art; and that no man had a finer ear, with a happier manner of
+expressing the affections of one sense by metaphors taken from another.
+The description is as follows:--
+
+          "And ever against eating cares,
+    Lap me in _soft_ Lydian airs;
+    In notes with many a _winding_ bout
+    Of _linked sweetness long drawn_ out;
+    With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
+    The _melting_ voice through _mazes_ running;
+    _Untwisting_ all the chains that tie
+    The hidden soul of harmony."
+
+Let us parallel this with the softness, the winding surface, the
+unbroken continuance, the easy gradation of the beautiful in other
+things; and all the diversities of the several senses, with all their
+several affections, will rather help to throw lights from one another to
+finish one clear, consistent idea of the whole, than to obscure it by
+their intricacy and variety.
+
+To the above-mentioned description I shall add one or two remarks. The
+first is; that the beautiful in music will not hear that loudness and
+strength of sounds, which may be used to raise other passions; nor notes
+which are shrill, or harsh, or deep; it agrees best with such as are
+clear, even, smooth, and weak. The second is; that great variety, and
+quick transitions from one measure or tone to another, are contrary to
+the genius of the beautiful in music. Such[28] transitions often excite
+mirth, or other sudden or tumultuous passions; but not that sinking,
+that melting, that languor, which is the characteristical effect of the
+beautiful as it regards every sense. The passion excited by beauty is in
+fact nearer to a species of melancholy, than to jollity and mirth. I do
+not here mean to confine music to any one species of notes, or tones,
+neither is it an art in which I can say I have any great skill. My sole
+design in this remark is to settle a consistent idea of beauty. The
+infinite variety of the affections of the soul will suggest to a good
+head, and skilful ear, a variety of such sounds as are fitted to raise
+them. It can be no prejudice to this, to clear and distinguish some few
+particulars that belong to the same class, and are consistent with each
+other, from the immense crowd of different and sometimes contradictory
+ideas, that rank vulgarly under the standard of beauty. And of these it
+is my intention to mark such only of the leading points as show the
+conformity of the sense of hearing with all the other senses, in the
+article of their pleasures.
+
+
+SECTION XXVI.
+
+TASTE AND SMELL.
+
+This general agreement of the senses is yet more evident on minutely
+considering those of taste and smell. We metaphorically apply the idea
+of sweetness to sights and sounds; but as the qualities of bodies by
+which they are fitted to excite either pleasure or pain in these senses
+are not so obvious as they are in the others, we shall refer an
+explanation of their analogy, which is a very close one, to that part
+wherein we come to consider the common efficient cause of beauty, as it
+regards all the senses. I do not think anything better fitted to
+establish a clear and settled idea of visual beauty than this way of
+examining the similar pleasures of other senses; for one part is
+sometimes clear in one of the senses that is more obscure in another;
+and where there is a clear concurrence of all, we may with more
+certainty speak of any one of them. By this means, they bear witness to
+each other; nature is, as it were, scrutinized; and we report nothing of
+her but what we receive from her own information.
+
+
+SECTION XXVII.
+
+THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL COMPARED.
+
+On closing this general view of beauty, it naturally occurs that we
+should compare it with the sublime; and in this comparison there appears
+a remarkable contrast. For sublime objects are vast in their dimensions,
+beautiful ones comparatively small; beauty should be smooth and
+polished; the great, rugged and negligent: beauty should shun the right
+line, yet deviate from it insensibly; the great in many cases loves the
+right line; and when it deviates, it often makes a strong deviation:
+beauty should not be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy:
+beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought to be solid, and
+even massive. They are indeed ideas of a very different nature, one
+being founded on pain, the other on pleasure; and, however they may vary
+afterwards from the direct nature of their causes, yet these causes keep
+up an eternal distinction between them, a distinction never to be
+forgotten by any whose business it is to affect the passions. In the
+infinite variety of natural combinations, we must expect to find the
+qualities of things the most remote imaginable from each other united in
+the same object. We must expect also to find combinations of the same
+kind in the works of art. But when we consider the power of an object
+upon our passions, we must know that when anything is intended to affect
+the mind by the force of some predominant property, the affection
+produced is like to be the more uniform and perfect, if all the other
+properties or qualities of the object be of the same nature, and tending
+to the same design as the principal.
+
+   "If black and white blend, soften, and unite
+    A thousand ways, are there no black and white?"
+
+If the qualities of the sublime and beautiful are sometimes found
+united, does this prove that they are the same; does it prove that they
+are any way allied; does it prove even that they are not opposite and
+contradictory? Black and white may soften, may blend; but they are not
+therefore the same. Nor, when they are so softened and blended with each
+other, or with different colors, is the power of black as black, or of
+white as white, so strong as when each stands uniform and distinguished.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[24] Part IV. sect. 20.
+
+[25] Part IV. sect. 23.
+
+[26] Part IV. sect. 25.
+
+[27] L'Allegro.
+
+[28]
+
+   "I ne'er am merry, when I hear sweet music."
+
+                                        SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+OF THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL.
+
+When I say, I intend to inquire into the efficient cause of sublimity
+and beauty, I would not be understood to say, that I can come to the
+ultimate cause. I do not pretend that I shall ever be able to explain
+why certain affections of the body produce such a distinct emotion of
+mind, and no other; or why the body is at all affected by the mind, or
+the mind by the body. A little thought will show this to be impossible.
+But I conceive, if we can discover what affections of the mind produce
+certain emotions of the body; and what distinct feelings and qualities
+of body shall produce certain determinate passions in the mind, and no
+others, I fancy a great deal will be done; something not unuseful
+towards a distinct knowledge of our passions, so far at least as we have
+them at present under our consideration. This is all, I believe, we can
+do. If we could advance a step farther, difficulties would still remain,
+as we should be still equally distant from the first cause. When Newton
+first discovered the property of attraction, and settled its laws, he
+found it served very well to explain several of the most remarkable
+phenomena in nature; but yet, with reference to the general system of
+things, he could consider attraction but as an effect, whose cause at
+that time he did not attempt to trace. But when he afterwards began to
+account for it by a subtle elastic ether, this great man (if in so
+great a man it be not impious to discover anything like a blemish)
+seemed to have quitted his usual cautious manner of philosophizing;
+since, perhaps, allowing all that has been advanced on this subject to
+be sufficiently proved, I think it leaves us with as many difficulties
+as it found us. That great chain of causes, which, linking one to
+another, even to the throne of God himself, can never be unravelled by
+any industry of ours. When we go but one step beyond the immediate
+sensible qualities of things, we go out of our depth. All we do after is
+but a faint struggle, that shows we are in an element which does not
+belong to us. So that when I speak of cause, and efficient cause, I only
+mean certain affections of the mind, that cause certain changes in the
+body; or certain powers and properties in bodies, that work a change in
+the mind. As, if I were to explain the motion of a body falling to the
+ground, I would say it was caused by gravity; and I would endeavor to
+show after what manner this power operated, without attempting to show
+why it operated in this manner: or, if I were to explain the effects of
+bodies striking one another by the common laws of percussion, I should
+not endeavor to explain how motion itself is communicated.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+ASSOCIATION.
+
+It is no small bar in the way of our inquiry into the cause of our
+passions, that the occasions of many of them are given, and that their
+governing motions are communicated at a time when we have not capacity
+to reflect on them; at a time of which all sort of memory is worn out
+of our minds. For besides such things as affect us in various manners,
+according to their natural powers, there are associations made at that
+early season, which we find it very hard afterwards to distinguish from
+natural effects. Not to mention the unaccountable antipathies which we
+find in many persons, we all find it impossible to remember when a steep
+became more terrible than a plain; or fire or water more terrible than a
+clod of earth; though all these are very probably either conclusions
+from experience, or arising from the premonitions of others; and some of
+them impressed, in all likelihood, pretty late. But as it must be
+allowed that many things affect us after a certain manner, not by any
+natural powers they have for that purpose, but by association; so it
+would be absurd, on the other hand, to say that all things affect us by
+association only; since some things must have been originally and
+naturally agreeable or disagreeable, from which the others derive their
+associated powers; and it would be, I fancy, to little purpose to look
+for the cause of our passions in association, until we fail of it in the
+natural properties of things.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+CAUSE OF PAIN AND FEAR.
+
+I have before observed,[29] that whatever is qualified to cause terror
+is a foundation capable of the sublime; to which I add, that not only
+these, but many things from which we cannot probably apprehend any
+danger, have a similar effect, because they operate in a similar manner.
+I observed, too,[30] that whatever produces pleasure, positive and
+original pleasure, is fit to have beauty engrafted on it. Therefore, to
+clear up the nature of these qualities, it may be necessary to explain
+the nature of pain and pleasure on which they depend. A man who suffers
+under violent bodily pain, (I suppose the most violent, because the
+effect may be the more obvious,) I say a man in great pain has his teeth
+set, his eyebrows are violently contracted, his forehead is wrinkled,
+his eyes are dragged inwards, and rolled with great vehemence, his hair
+stands on end, the voice is forced out in short shrieks and groans, and
+the whole fabric totters. Fear or terror, which is an apprehension of
+pain or death, exhibits exactly the same effects, approaching in
+violence to those just mentioned, in proportion to the nearness of the
+cause, and the weakness of the subject. This is not only so in the human
+species: but I have more than once observed in dogs, under an
+apprehension of punishment, that they have writhed their bodies, and
+yelped, and howled, as if they had actually felt the blows. From hence I
+conclude, that pain and fear act upon the same parts of the body, and in
+the same manner, though somewhat differing in degree: that pain and fear
+consist in an unnatural tension of the nerves; that this is sometimes
+accompanied with an unnatural strength, which sometimes suddenly changes
+into an extraordinary weakness; that these effects often come on
+alternately, and are sometimes mixed with each other. This is the nature
+of all convulsive agitations, especially in weaker subjects, which are
+the most liable to the severest impressions of pain and fear. The only
+difference between pain and terror is, that things which cause pain
+operate on the mind by the intervention of the body; whereas things that
+cause terror generally affect the bodily organs by the operation of the
+mind suggesting the danger; but both agreeing, either primarily or
+secondarily, in producing a tension, contraction, or violent emotion of
+the nerves,[31] they agree likewise in everything else. For it appears
+very clearly to me from this, as well as from many other examples, that
+when the body is disposed, by any means whatsoever, to such emotions as
+it would acquire by the means of a certain passion; it will of itself
+excite something very like that passion in the mind.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+CONTINUED.
+
+To this purpose Mr. Spon, in his "Recherches d'Antiquite," gives us a
+curious story of the celebrated physiognomist Campanella. This man, it
+seems, had not only made very accurate observations on human faces, but
+was very expert in mimicking such as were any way remarkable. When he
+had a mind to penetrate into the inclinations of those he had to deal
+with, he composed his face, his gesture, and his whole body, as nearly
+as he could into the exact similitude of the person he intended to
+examine; and then carefully observed what turn of mind he seemed to
+acquire by this change. So that, says my author, he was able to enter
+into the dispositions and thoughts of people as effectually as if he had
+been changed into the very men. I have often observed, that on mimicking
+the looks and gestures of angry, or placid, or frighted, or daring men,
+I have involuntarily found my mind turned to that passion, whose
+appearance I endeavored to imitate; nay, I am convinced it is hard to
+avoid it, though one strove to separate the passion from its
+correspondent gestures. Our minds and bodies are so closely and
+intimately connected, that one is incapable of pain or pleasure without
+the other. Campanella, of whom we have been speaking, could so abstract
+his attention from any sufferings of his body, that he was able to
+endure the rack itself without much pain; and in lesser pains everybody
+must have observed that, when we can employ our attention on anything
+else, the pain has been for a time suspended: on the other hand, if by
+any means the body is indisposed to perform such gestures, or to be
+stimulated into such emotions as any passion usually produces in it,
+that passion itself never can arise, though its cause should be never so
+strongly in action; though it should be merely mental, and immediately
+affecting none of the senses. As an opiate, or spirituous liquors, shall
+suspend the operation of grief, or fear, or anger, in spite of all our
+efforts to the contrary; and this by inducing in the body a disposition
+contrary to that which it receives from these passions.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+HOW THE SUBLIME IS PRODUCED.
+
+Having considered terror as producing an unnatural tension and certain
+violent emotions of the nerves; it easily follows, from what we have
+just said, that whatever is fitted to produce such a tension must be
+productive of a passion similar to terror,[32] and consequently must be
+a source of the sublime, though it should have no idea of danger
+connected with it. So that little remains towards showing the cause of
+the sublime, but to show that the instances we have given of it in the
+second part relate to such things, as are fitted by nature to produce
+this sort of tension, either by the primary operation of the mind or the
+body. With regard to such things as affect by the associated idea of
+danger, there can be no doubt but that they produce terror, and act by
+some modification of that passion; and that terror, when sufficiently
+violent, raises the emotions of the body just mentioned, can as little
+be doubted. But if the sublime is built on terror or some passion like
+it, which has pain for its object, it is previously proper to inquire
+how any species of delight can be derived from a cause so apparently
+contrary to it. I say _delight_, because, as I have often remarked, it
+is very evidently different in its cause, and in its own nature, from
+actual and positive pleasure.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+HOW PAIN CAN BE A CAUSE OF DELIGHT.
+
+Providence has so ordered it, that a state of rest and inaction, however
+it may flatter our indolence, should be productive of many
+inconveniences; that it should generate such disorders, as may force us
+to have recourse to some labor, as a thing absolutely requisite to make
+us pass our lives with tolerable satisfaction; for the nature of rest is
+to suffer all the parts of our bodies to fall into a relaxation, that
+not only disables the members from performing their functions, but takes
+away the vigorous tone of fibre which is requisite for carrying on the
+natural and necessary secretions. At the same time, that in this languid
+in active state, the nerves are more liable to the most horrid
+convulsions, than when they are sufficiently braced and strengthened.
+Melancholy, dejection, despair, and often self-murder, is the
+consequence of the gloomy view we take of things in this relaxed state
+of body. The best remedy for all these evils is exercise or _labor_; and
+labor is a surmounting of _difficulties_, an exertion of the contracting
+power of the muscles; and as such resembles pain, which consists in
+tension or contraction, in everything but degree. Labor is not only
+requisite to preserve the coarser organs, in a state fit for their
+functions; but it is equally necessary to these finer and more delicate
+organs, on which, and by which, the imagination and perhaps the other
+mental powers act. Since it is probable, that not only the inferior
+parts of the soul, as the passions are called, but the understanding
+itself makes use of some fine corporeal instruments in its operation;
+though what they are, and where they are, may be somewhat hard to
+settle: but that it does make use of such, appears from hence; that a
+long exercise of the mental powers induces a remarkable lassitude of the
+whole body; and on the other hand, that great bodily labor, or pain,
+weakens and sometimes actually destroys the mental faculties. Now, as a
+due exercise is essential to the coarse muscular parts of the
+constitution, and that without this rousing they would become languid
+and diseased, the very same rule holds with regard to those finer parts
+we have mentioned; to have them in proper order, they must be shaken and
+worked to a proper degree.
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+EXERCISE NECESSARY FOR THE FINER ORGANS.
+
+As common labor, which is a mode of pain, is the exercise of the
+grosser, a mode of terror is the exercise of the finer parts of the
+system; and if a certain mode of pain be of such a nature as to act upon
+the eye or the ear, as they are the most delicate organs, the affection
+approaches more nearly to that which has a mental cause. In all these
+cases, if the pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually
+noxious; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is not
+conversant about the present destruction of the person, as these
+emotions clear the parts, whether fine or gross, of a dangerous and
+troublesome incumbrance, they are capable of producing delight; not
+pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged
+with terror; which, as it belongs to self-preservation, is one of the
+strongest of all the passions. Its object is the sublime.[33] Its
+highest degree I call _astonishment_; the subordinate degrees are awe,
+reverence, and respect, which, by the very etymology of the words, show
+from what source they are derived, and how they stand distinguished from
+positive pleasure.
+
+
+SECTION VIII.
+
+WHY THINGS NOT DANGEROUS SOMETIMES PRODUCE A PASSION LIKE TERROR.
+
+A mode of terror or pain is always the cause of the sublime.[34] For
+terror or associated danger, the foregoing explication is, I believe,
+sufficient. It will require something more trouble to show, that such
+examples as I have given of the sublime in the second part are capable
+of producing a mode of pain, and of being thus allied to terror, and to
+be accounted for on the same principles. And first of such objects as
+are great in their dimensions. I speak of visual objects.
+
+
+SECTION IX.
+
+WHY VISUAL OBJECTS OF GREAT DIMENSIONS ARE SUBLIME.
+
+Vision is performed by having a picture, formed by the rays of light
+which are reflected from the object, painted in one piece,
+instantaneously, on the retina, or last nervous part of the eye. Or,
+according to others, there is but one point of any object painted on the
+eye in such a manner as to be perceived at once, but by moving the eye,
+we gather up, with great celerity, the several parts of the object, so
+as to form one uniform piece. If the former opinion be allowed, it will
+be considered,[35] that though all the light reflected from a large body
+should strike the eye in one instant; yet we must suppose that the body
+itself is formed of a vast number of distinct points, every one of
+which, or the ray from every one, makes an impression on the retina. So
+that, though the image of one point should cause but a small tension of
+this membrane, another, and another, and another stroke, must in their
+progress cause a very great one, until it arrives at last to the highest
+degree; and the whole capacity of the eye, vibrating in all its parts,
+must approach near to the nature of what causes pain, and consequently
+must produce an idea of the sublime. Again, if we take it, that one
+point only of an object is distinguishable at once; the matter will
+amount nearly to the same thing, or rather it will make the origin of
+the sublime from greatness of dimension yet clearer. For if but one
+point is observed at once, the eye must traverse the vast space of such
+bodies with great quickness, and consequently the fine nerves and
+muscles destined to the motion of that part must be very much strained;
+and their great sensibility must make them highly affected by this
+straining. Besides, it signifies just nothing to the effect produced,
+whether a body has its parts connected and makes its impression at once;
+or, making but one impression of a point at a time, it causes a
+succession of the same or others so quickly as to make them seem united;
+as is evident from the common effect of whirling about a lighted torch
+or piece of wood: which, if done with celerity, seems a circle of fire.
+
+
+SECTION X.
+
+UNITY WHY REQUISITE TO VASTNESS.
+
+It may be objected to this theory, that the eye generally receives an
+equal number of rays at all times, and that therefore a great object
+cannot affect it by the number of rays, more than that variety of
+objects which the eye must always discern whilst it remains open. But to
+this I answer, that admitting an equal number of rays, or an equal
+quantity of luminous particles to strike the eye at all times, yet if
+these rays frequently vary their nature, now to blue, now to red, and so
+on, or their manner of termination, as to a number of petty squares,
+triangles, or the like, at every change, whether of color or shape, the
+organ has a sort of relaxation or rest; but this relaxation and labor so
+often interrupted, is by no means productive of ease; neither has it the
+effect of vigorous and uniform labor. Whoever has remarked the different
+effects of some strong exercise, and some little piddling action, will
+understand why a teasing, fretful employment, which at once wearies and
+weakens the body, should have nothing great; these sorts of impulses,
+which are rather teasing than painful, by continually and suddenly
+altering their tenor and direction, prevent that full tension, that
+species of uniform labor, which is allied to strong pain, and causes the
+sublime. The sum total of things of various kinds, though it should
+equal the number of the uniform parts composing some _one_ entire
+object, is not equal in its effect upon the organs of our bodies.
+Besides the one already assigned, there is another very strong reason
+for the difference. The mind in reality hardly ever can attend
+diligently to more than one thing at a time; if this thing be little,
+the effect is little, and a number of other little objects cannot engage
+the attention; the mind is bounded by the bounds of the object; and what
+is not attended to, and what does not exist, are much the same in the
+effect; but the eye or the mind, (for in this case there is no
+difference,) in great, uniform objects, does not readily arrive at their
+bounds; it has no rest, whilst it contemplates them; the image is much
+the same everywhere. So that everything great by its quantity must
+necessarily be one, simple and entire.
+
+
+SECTION XI.
+
+THE ARTIFICIAL INFINITE.
+
+We have observed that a species of greatness arises from the artificial
+infinite; and that this infinite consists in an uniform succession of
+great parts: we observed too, that the same uniform succession had a
+like power in sounds. But because the effects of many things are clearer
+in one of the senses than in another, and that all the senses bear
+analogy to and illustrate one another, I shall begin with this power in
+sounds, as the cause of the sublimity from succession is rather more
+obvious in the sense of hearing. And I shall here, once for all,
+observe, that an investigation of the natural and mechanical causes of
+our passions, besides the curiosity of the subject, gives, if they are
+discovered, a double strength and lustre to any rules we deliver on such
+matters. When the ear receives any simple sound, it is struck by a
+single pulse of the air which makes the ear-drum and the other
+membranous parts vibrate according to the nature and species of the
+stroke. If the stroke be strong, the organ of hearing suffers a
+considerable degree of tension. If the stroke be repeated pretty soon
+after, the repetition causes an expectation of another stroke. And it
+must be observed, that expectation itself causes a tension. This is
+apparent in many animals, who, when they prepare for hearing any sound,
+rouse themselves, and prick up their ears; so that here the effect of
+the sounds is considerably augmented by a new auxiliary, the
+expectation. But though after a number of strokes, we expect still more,
+not being able to ascertain the exact time of their arrival, when they
+arrive, they produce a sort of surprise, which increases this tension
+yet further. For I have observed, that when at any time I have waited
+very earnestly for some sound, that returned at intervals, (as the
+successive firing of cannon,) though I fully expected the return of the
+sound, when it came it always made me start a little; the ear-drum
+suffered a convulsion, and the whole body consented with it. The tension
+of the part thus increasing at every blow, by the united forces of the
+stroke itself, the expectation and the surprise, it is worked up to such
+a pitch as to be capable of the sublime; it is brought just to the verge
+of pain. Even when the cause has ceased, the organs of hearing being
+often successively struck in a similar manner, continue to vibrate in
+that manner for some time longer; this is an additional help to the
+greatness of the effect.
+
+
+SECTION XII.
+
+THE VIBRATIONS MUST BE SIMILAR.
+
+But if the vibration be not similar at every impression, it can never be
+carried beyond the number of actual impressions; for, move any body as a
+pendulum, in one way, and it will continue to oscillate in an arch of
+the same circle, until the known causes make it rest; but if, after
+first putting it in motion in one direction, you push it into another,
+it can never reassume the first direction; because it can never move
+itself, and consequently it can have but the effect of that last motion;
+whereas, if in the same direction you act upon it several times, it will
+describe a greater arch, and move a longer time.
+
+
+SECTION XIII.
+
+THE EFFECTS OF SUCCESSION IN VISUAL OBJECTS EXPLAINED.
+
+If we can comprehend clearly how things operate upon one of our senses,
+there can be very little difficulty in conceiving in what manner they
+affect the rest. To say a great deal therefore upon the corresponding
+affections of every sense, would tend rather to fatigue us by an useless
+repetition, than to throw any new light upon the subject by that ample
+and diffuse manner of treating it; but as in this discourse we chiefly
+attach ourselves to the sublime, as it affects the eye, we shall
+consider particularly why a successive disposition of uniform parts in
+the same right line should be sublime,[36] and upon what principle this
+disposition is enabled to make a comparatively small quantity of matter
+produce a grander effect, than a much larger quantity disposed in
+another manner. To avoid the perplexity of general notions; let us set
+before our eyes, a colonnade of uniform pillars planted in a right line;
+let us take our stand in such a manner, that the eye may shoot along
+this colonnade, for it has its best effect in this view. In our present
+situation it is plain, that the rays from the first round pillar will
+cause in the eye a vibration of that species; an image of the pillar
+itself. The pillar immediately succeeding increases it; that which
+follows renews and enforces the impression; each in its order as it
+succeeds, repeats impulse after impulse, and stroke after stroke, until
+the eye, long exercised in one particular way, cannot lose that object
+immediately, and, being violently roused by this continued agitation, it
+presents the mind with a grand or sublime conception. But instead of
+viewing a rank of uniform pillars, let us suppose that they succeed each
+other, a round and a square one alternately. In this case the vibration
+caused by the first round pillar perishes as soon as it is formed; and
+one of quite another sort (the square) directly occupies its place;
+which however it resigns as quickly to the round one; and thus the eye
+proceeds, alternately, taking up one image, and laying down another, as
+long as the building continues. From whence it is obvious that, at the
+last pillar, the impression is as far from continuing as it was at the
+very first; because, in fact, the sensory can receive no distinct
+impression but from the last; and it can never of itself resume a
+dissimilar impression: besides every variation of the object is a rest
+and relaxation to the organs of sight; and these reliefs prevent that
+powerful emotion so necessary to produce the sublime. To produce
+therefore a perfect grandeur in such things as we have been mentioning,
+there should be a perfect simplicity, an absolute uniformity in
+disposition, shape, and coloring. Upon this principle of succession and
+uniformity it may be asked, why a long bare wall should not be a more
+sublime object than a colonnade; since the succession is no way
+interrupted; since the eye meets no check; since nothing more uniform
+can be conceived? A long bare wall is certainly not so grand an object
+as a colonnade of the same length and height. It is not altogether
+difficult to account for this difference. When we look at a naked wall,
+from the evenness of the object, the eye runs along its whole space, and
+arrives quickly at its termination; the eye meets nothing which may
+interrupt its progress; but then it meets nothing which may detain it a
+proper time to produce a very great and lasting effect. The view of a
+bare wall, if it be of a great height and length, is undoubtedly grand;
+but this is only _one_ idea, and not a _repetition_ of _similar_ ideas:
+it is therefore great, not so much upon the principle of _infinity_, as
+upon that of _vastness_. But we are not so powerfully affected with any
+one impulse, unless it be one of a prodigious force indeed, as we are
+with a succession of similar impulses; because the nerves of the sensory
+do not (if I may use the expression) acquire a habit of repeating the
+same feeling in such a manner as to continue it longer than its cause is
+in action; besides, all the effects which I have attributed to
+expectation and surprise in Sect. 11, can have no place in a bare wall.
+
+
+SECTION XIV.
+
+LOCKE'S OPINION CONCERNING DARKNESS CONSIDERED.
+
+It is Mr. Locke's opinion, that darkness is not naturally an idea of
+terror; and that, though an excessive light is painful to the sense, the
+greatest excess of darkness is no ways troublesome. He observes indeed
+in another place, that a nurse or an old woman having once associated
+the ideas of ghosts and goblins with that of darkness, night, ever
+after, becomes painful and horrible to the imagination. The authority of
+this great man is doubtless as great as that of any man can be, and it
+seems to stand in the way of our general principle.[37] We have
+considered darkness as a cause of the sublime; and we have all along
+considered the sublime as depending on some modification of pain or
+terror: so that if darkness be no way painful or terrible to any, who
+have not had their minds early tainted with superstitions, it can be no
+source of the sublime to them. But, with all deference to such an
+authority, it seems to me, that an association of a more general nature,
+an association which takes in all mankind, may make darkness terrible;
+for in utter darkness it is impossible to know in what degree of safety
+we stand; we are ignorant of the objects that surround us; we may every
+moment strike against some dangerous obstruction; we may fall down a
+precipice the first step we take; and if an enemy approach, we know not
+in what quarter to defend ourselves; in such a case strength is no sure
+protection; wisdom can only act by guess; the boldest are staggered, and
+he who would pray for nothing else towards his defence is forced to
+pray for light.
+
+    [Greek:
+    Zeu pater, alla su rusai up eeros uias Achaion
+    Poieson d' aithren, dos d' ophthalmoisin idesthai
+    En de phaei kai olesson....]
+
+
+As to the association of ghosts and goblins; surely it is more natural
+to think that darkness, being originally an idea of terror, was chosen
+as a fit scene for such terrible representations, than that such
+representations have made darkness terrible. The mind of man very easily
+slides into an error of the former sort; but it is very hard to imagine,
+that the effect of an idea so universally terrible in all times, and in
+all countries, as darkness, could possibly have been owing to a set of
+idle stories, or to any cause of a nature so trivial, and of an
+operation so precarious.
+
+
+SECTION XV.
+
+DARKNESS TERRIBLE IN ITS OWN NATURE.
+
+Perhaps it may appear on inquiry, that blackness and darkness are in
+some degree painful by their natural operation, independent of any
+associations whatsoever. I must observe, that the ideas of darkness and
+blackness are much the same; and they differ only in this, that
+blackness is a more confined idea. Mr. Cheselden has given us a very
+curious story of a boy who had been born blind, and continued so until
+he was thirteen or fourteen years old; he was then couched for a
+cataract, by which operation he received his sight. Among many
+remarkable particulars that attended his first perceptions and judgments
+on visual objects, Cheselden tells us, that the first time the boy saw
+a black object, it gave him great uneasiness; and that some time after,
+upon accidentally seeing a negro woman, he was struck with great horror
+at the sight. The horror, in this case, can scarcely be supposed to
+arise from any association. The boy appears by the account to have been
+particularly observing and sensible for one of his age; and therefore it
+is probable, if the great uneasiness he felt at the first sight of black
+had arisen from its connection with any other disagreeable ideas, he
+would have observed and mentioned it. For an idea, disagreeable only by
+association, has the cause of its ill effect on the passions evident
+enough at the first impression; in ordinary cases, it is indeed
+frequently lost; but this is because the original association was made
+very early, and the consequent impression repeated often. In our
+instance, there was no time for such a habit; and there is no reason to
+think that the ill effects of black on his imagination were more owing
+to its connection with any disagreeable ideas, than that the good
+effects of more cheerful colors were derived from their connection with
+pleasing ones. They had both probably their effects from their natural
+operation.
+
+
+SECTION XVI.
+
+WHY DARKNESS IS TERRIBLE.
+
+It may be worth while to examine how darkness can operate in such a
+manner as to cause pain. It is observable, that still as we recede from
+the light, nature has so contrived it, that the pupil is enlarged by the
+retiring of the iris, in proportion to our recess. Now, instead of
+declining from it but a little, suppose that we withdraw entirely from
+the light; it is reasonable to think that the contraction of the radial
+fibres of the iris is proportionally greater; and that this part may by
+great darkness come to be so contracted, as to strain the nerves that
+compose it beyond their natural tone; and by this means to produce a
+painful sensation. Such a tension it seems there certainly is, whilst we
+are involved in darkness; for in such a state, whilst the eye remains
+open, there is a continual nisus to receive light; this is manifest from
+the flashes and luminous appearances which often seem in these
+circumstances to play before it; and which can be nothing but the effect
+of spasms, produced by its own efforts in pursuit of its object: several
+other strong impulses will produce the idea of light in the eye, besides
+the substance of light itself, as we experience on many occasions. Some,
+who allow darkness to be a cause of the sublime, would infer, from the
+dilatation of the pupil, that a relaxation may be productive of the
+sublime as well as a convulsion: but they do not, I believe, consider,
+that although the circular ring of the iris be in some sense a
+sphincter, which may possibly be dilated by a simple relaxation, yet in
+one respect it differs from most of the other sphincters of the body,
+that it is furnished with antagonist muscles, which are the radial
+fibres of the iris: no sooner does the circular muscle begin to relax,
+than these fibres, wanting their counterpoise, are forcibly drawn back,
+and open the pupil to a considerable wideness. But though we were not
+apprised of this, I believe any one will find, if he opens his eyes and
+makes an effort to see in a dark place, that a very perceivable pain
+ensues. And I have heard some ladies remark, that after having worked a
+long time upon a ground of black, their eyes were so pained and
+weakened, they could hardly see. It may perhaps be objected to this
+theory of the mechanical effect of darkness, that the ill effects of
+darkness or blackness seem rather mental than corporeal: and I own it is
+true that they do so; and so do all those that depend on the affections
+of the finer parts of our system. The ill effects of bad weather appear
+often no otherwise than in a melancholy and dejection of spirits; though
+without doubt, in this case, the bodily organs suffer first, and the
+mind through these organs.
+
+
+SECTION XVII.
+
+THE EFFECTS OF BLACKNESS.
+
+Blackness is but a _partial darkness_; and therefore it derives some of
+its powers from being mixed and surrounded with colored bodies. In its
+own nature, it cannot be considered as a color. Black bodies, reflecting
+none, or but a few rays, with regard to sight, are but as so many vacant
+spaces, dispersed among the objects we view. When the eye lights on one
+of these vacuities, after having been kept in some degree of tension by
+the play of the adjacent colors upon it, it suddenly falls into a
+relaxation; out of which it as suddenly recovers by a convulsive spring.
+To illustrate this: let us consider that when we intend to sit on a
+chair, and find it much lower than was expected, the shock is very
+violent; much more violent than could be thought from so slight a fall
+as the difference between one chair and another can possibly make. If,
+after descending a flight of stairs, we attempt inadvertently to take
+another step in the manner of the former ones, the shock is extremely
+rude and disagreeable: and by no art can we cause such a shock by the
+same means when we expect and prepare for it. When I say that this is
+owing to having the change made contrary to expectation; I do not mean
+solely, when the _mind_ expects. I mean likewise, that when any organ of
+sense is for some time affected in some one manner, if it be suddenly
+affected otherwise, there ensues a convulsive motion; such a convulsion
+as is caused when anything happens against the expectance of the mind.
+And though it may appear strange that such a change as produces a
+relaxation should immediately produce a sudden convulsion; it is yet
+most certainly so, and so in all the senses. Every one knows that sleep
+is a relaxation; and that silence, where nothing keeps the organs of
+hearing in action, is in general fittest to bring on this relaxation;
+yet when a sort of murmuring sounds dispose a man to sleep, let these
+sounds cease suddenly, and the person immediately awakes; that is, the
+parts are braced up suddenly, and he awakes. This I have often
+experienced myself, and I have heard the same from observing persons. In
+like manner, if a person in broad daylight were falling asleep, to
+introduce a sudden darkness would prevent his sleep for that time,
+though silence and darkness in themselves, and not suddenly introduced,
+are very favorable to it. This I knew only by conjecture on the analogy
+of the senses when I first digested these observations; but I have since
+experienced it. And I have often experienced, and so have a thousand
+others, that on the first inclining towards sleep, we have been suddenly
+awakened with a most violent start; and that this start was generally
+preceded by a sort of dream of our falling down a precipice: whence does
+this strange motion arise, but from the too sudden relaxation of the
+body, which by some mechanism in nature restores itself by as quick and
+vigorous an exertion of the contracting power of the muscles? The dream
+itself is caused by this relaxation; and it is of too uniform a nature
+to be attributed to any other cause. The parts relax too suddenly, which
+is in the nature of falling; and this accident of the body induces this
+image in the mind. When we are in a confirmed state of health and vigor,
+as all changes are then less sudden, and less on the extreme, we can
+seldom complain of this disagreeable sensation.
+
+
+SECTION XVIII.
+
+THE EFFECTS OF BLACKNESS MODERATED.
+
+Though the effects of black be painful originally, we must not think
+they always continue so. Custom reconciles us to everything. After we
+have been used to the sight of black objects, the terror abates, and the
+smoothness and glossiness, or some agreeable accident of bodies so
+colored, softens in some measure the horror and sternness of their
+original nature; yet the nature of the original impression still
+continues. Black will always have something melancholy in it, because
+the sensory will always find the change to it from other colors too
+violent; or if it occupy the whole compass of the sight, it will then be
+darkness; and what was said of darkness will be applicable here. I do
+not purpose to go into all that might be said to illustrate this theory
+of the effects of light and darkness; neither will I examine all the
+different effects produced by the various modifications and mixtures of
+these two causes. If the foregoing observations have any foundation in
+nature, I conceive them very sufficient to account for all the phenomena
+that can arise from all the combinations of black with other colors. To
+enter into every particular, or to answer every objection, would be an
+endless labor. We have only followed the most leading roads; and we
+shall observe the same conduct in our inquiry into the cause of beauty.
+
+
+SECTION XIX.
+
+THE PHYSICAL CAUSE OF LOVE.
+
+When we have before us such objects as excite love and complacency, the
+body is affected, so far as I could observe, much in the following
+manner: the head reclines something on one side; the eyelids are more
+closed than usual, and the eyes roll gently with an inclination to the
+object; the mouth is a little opened, and the breath drawn slowly, with
+now and then a low sigh; the whole body is composed, and the hands fall
+idly to the sides. All this is accompanied with an inward sense of
+melting and languor. These appearances are always proportioned to the
+degree of beauty in the object, and of sensibility in the observer. And
+this gradation from the highest pitch of beauty and sensibility, even to
+the lowest of mediocrity and indifference, and their correspondent
+effects, ought to be kept in view, else this description will seem
+exaggerated, which it certainly is not. But from this description it is
+almost impossible not to conclude that beauty acts by relaxing the
+solids of the whole system. There are all the appearances of such a
+relaxation; and a relaxation somewhat below the natural tone seems to me
+to be the cause of all positive pleasure. Who is a stranger to that
+manner of expression so common in all times and in all countries, of
+being softened, relaxed, enervated, dissolved, melted away by pleasure?
+The universal voice of mankind, faithful to their feelings, concurs in
+affirming this uniform and general effect: and although some odd and
+particular instance may perhaps be found, wherein there appears a
+considerable degree of positive pleasure, without all the characters of
+relaxation, we must not therefore reject the conclusion we had drawn
+from a concurrence of many experiments; but we must still retain it,
+subjoining the exceptions which may occur according to the judicious
+rule laid down by Sir Isaac Newton in the third book of his Optics. Our
+position will, I conceive, appear confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt,
+if we can show that such things as we have already observed to be the
+genuine constituents of beauty have each of them, separately taken, a
+natural tendency to relax the fibres. And if it must be allowed us, that
+the appearance of the human body, when all these constituents are united
+together before the sensory, further favors this opinion, we may
+venture, I believe, to conclude that the passion called love is produced
+by this relaxation. By the same method of reasoning which we have used
+in the inquiry into the causes of the sublime, we may likewise conclude,
+that as a beautiful object presented to the sense, by causing a
+relaxation of the body, produces the passion of love in the mind; so if
+by any means the passion should first have its origin in the mind, a
+relaxation of the outward organs will as certainly ensue in a degree
+proportioned to the cause.
+
+
+SECTION XX.
+
+WHY SMOOTHNESS IS BEAUTIFUL.
+
+It is to explain the true cause of visual beauty that I call in the
+assistance of the other senses. If it appears that _smoothness_ is a
+principal cause of pleasure to the touch, taste, smell, and hearing, it
+will be easily admitted a constituent of visual beauty; especially as we
+have before shown, that this quality is found almost without exception
+in all bodies that are by general consent held beautiful. There can be
+no doubt that bodies which are rough and angular, rouse and vellicate
+the organs of feeling, causing a sense of pain, which consists in the
+violent tension or contraction of the muscular fibres. On the contrary,
+the application of smooth bodies relaxes; gentle stroking with a smooth
+hand allays violent pains and cramps, and relaxes the suffering parts
+from their unnatural tension; and it has therefore very often no mean
+effect in removing swellings and obstructions. The sense of feeling is
+highly gratified with smooth bodies. A bed smoothly laid, and soft, that
+is, where the resistance is every way inconsiderable, is a great luxury,
+disposing to an universal relaxation, and inducing beyond anything else
+that species of it called sleep.
+
+
+SECTION XXI.
+
+SWEETNESS, ITS NATURE.
+
+Nor is it only in the touch that smooth bodies cause positive pleasure
+by relaxation. In the smell and taste, we find all things agreeable to
+them, and which are commonly called sweet, to be of a smooth nature, and
+that they all evidently tend to relax their respective sensories. Let us
+first consider the taste. Since it is most easy to inquire into the
+property of liquids, and since all things seem to want a fluid vehicle
+to make them tasted at all, I intend rather to consider the liquid than
+the solid parts of our food. The vehicles of all tastes are _water_ and
+_oil_. And what determines the taste is some salt, which affects
+variously according to its nature, or its manner of being combined with
+other things. Water and oil, simply considered, are capable of giving
+some pleasure to the taste. Water, when simple, is insipid, inodorous,
+colorless, and smooth; it is found, when _not cold_, to be a great
+resolver of spasms, and lubricator of the fibres; this power it probably
+owes to its smoothness. For as fluidity depends, according to the most
+general opinion, on the roundness, smoothness, and weak cohesion of the
+component parts of any body, and as water acts merely as a simple fluid,
+it follows that the cause of its fluidity is likewise the cause of its
+relaxing quality, namely, the smoothness and slippery texture of its
+parts. The other fluid vehicle of tastes is _oil_. This too, when
+simple, is insipid, inodorous, colorless, and smooth to the touch and
+taste. It is smoother than water, and in many cases yet more relaxing.
+Oil is in some degree pleasant to the eye, the touch, and the taste,
+insipid as it is. Water is not so grateful; which I do not know on what
+principle to account for, other than that water is not so soft and
+smooth. Suppose that to this oil or water were added a certain quantity
+of a specific salt, which had a power of putting the nervous papillae of
+the tongue into a gentle vibratory motion; as suppose sugar dissolved in
+it. The smoothness of the oil and the vibratory power of the salt cause
+the sense we call sweetness. In all sweet bodies, sugar, or a substance
+very little different from sugar, is constantly found. Every species of
+salt, examined by the microscope, has its own distinct, regular,
+invariable form. That of nitre is a pointed oblong; that of sea-salt an
+exact cube; that of sugar a perfect globe. If you have tried how smooth
+globular bodies, as the marbles with which boys amuse themselves, have
+affected the touch when they are rolled backward and forward and over
+one another, you will easily conceive how sweetness, which consists in a
+salt of such nature, affects the taste; for a single globe (though
+somewhat pleasant to the feeling), yet by the regularity of its form,
+and the somewhat too sudden deviation of its parts from a right line, is
+nothing near so pleasant to the touch as several globes, where the hand
+gently rises to one and falls to another; and this pleasure is greatly
+increased if the globes are in motion, and sliding over one another; for
+this soft variety prevents that weariness, which the uniform disposition
+of the several globes would otherwise produce. Thus in sweet liquors,
+the parts of the fluid vehicle, though most probably round, are yet so
+minute, as to conceal the figure of their component parts from the
+nicest inquisition of the microscope; and consequently, being so
+excessively minute, they have a sort of flat simplicity to the taste,
+resembling the effects of plain smooth bodies to the touch; for if a
+body be composed of round parts excessively small, and packed pretty
+closely together, the surface will be both to the sight and touch as if
+it were nearly plain and smooth. It is clear from their unveiling their
+figure to the microscope, that the particles of sugar are considerably
+larger than those of water or oil, and consequently that their effects
+from their roundness will be more distinct and palpable to the nervous
+papillae of that nice organ the tongue; they will induce that sense
+called sweetness, which in a weak manner we discover in oil, and in a
+yet weaker in water; for, insipid as they are, water and oil are in some
+degree sweet; and it may be observed, that insipid things of all kinds
+approach more nearly to the nature of sweetness than to that of any
+other taste.
+
+
+SECTION XXII.
+
+SWEETNESS RELAXING.
+
+In the other senses we have remarked, that smooth things are relaxing.
+Now it ought to appear that sweet things, which are the smooth of taste,
+are relaxing too. It is remarkable, that in some languages soft and
+sweet have but one name. _Doux_ in French signifies soft as well as
+sweet. The Latin _dulcis_, and the Italian _dolce_, have in many cases
+the same double signification. That sweet things are generally relaxing,
+is evident; because all such, especially those which are most oily,
+taken frequently, or in a large quantity, very much enfeeble the tone of
+the stomach. Sweet smells, which bear a great affinity to sweet tastes,
+relax very remarkably. The smell of flowers disposes people to
+drowsiness; and this relaxing effect is further apparent from the
+prejudice which people of weak nerves receive from their use. It were
+worth while to examine, whether tastes of this kind, sweet ones, tastes
+that are caused by smooth oils and a relaxing salt, are not the
+originally pleasant tastes. For many, which use has rendered such, were
+not at all agreeable at first. The way to examine this is, to try what
+nature has originally provided for us, which she has undoubtedly made
+originally pleasant; and to analyze this provision. _Milk_ is the first
+support of our childhood. The component parts of this are water, oil,
+and a sort of a very sweet salt, called the sugar of milk. All these
+when blended have a great _smoothness_ to the taste, and a relaxing
+quality to the skin. The next thing children covet is _fruit_, and of
+fruits those principally which are sweet; and every one knows that the
+sweetness of fruit is caused by a subtle oil, and such a salt as that
+mentioned in the last section. Afterwards custom, habit, the desire of
+novelty, and a thousand other causes, confound, adulterate, and change
+our palates, so that we can no longer reason with any satisfaction about
+them. Before we quit this article, we must observe, that as smooth
+things are, as such, agreeable to the taste, and are found of a relaxing
+quality; so on the other hand, things which are found by experience to
+be of a strengthening quality, and fit to brace the fibres, are almost
+universally rough and pungent to the taste, and in many cases rough even
+to the touch. We often apply the quality of sweetness, metaphorically,
+to visual objects. For the better carrying on this remarkable analogy
+of the senses, we may here call sweetness the beautiful of the taste.
+
+
+SECTION XXIII.
+
+VARIATION, WHY BEAUTIFUL.
+
+Another principal property of beautiful objects is, that the line of
+their parts is continually varying its direction; but it varies it by a
+very insensible deviation; it never varies it so quickly as to surprise,
+or by the sharpness of its angle to cause any twitching or convulsion of
+the optic nerve. Nothing long continued in the same manner, nothing very
+suddenly varied, can be beautiful; because both are opposite to that
+agreeable relaxation which is the characteristic effect of beauty. It is
+thus in all the senses. A motion in a right line is that manner of
+moving, next to a very gentle descent, in which we meet the least
+resistance; yet it is not that manner of moving, which next to a
+descent, wearies us the least. Rest certainly tends to relax: yet there
+is a species of motion which relaxes more than rest; a gentle
+oscillatory motion, a rising and falling. Rocking sets children to sleep
+better than absolute rest; there is indeed scarcely anything at that
+age, which gives more pleasure than to be gently lifted up and down; the
+manner of playing which their nurses use with children, and the weighing
+and swinging used afterwards by themselves as a favorite amusement,
+evince this very sufficiently. Most people must have observed the sort
+of sense they have had on being swiftly drawn in an easy coach on a
+smooth turf, with gradual ascents and declivities. This will give a
+better idea of the beautiful, and point out its probable cause better,
+than almost anything else. On the contrary, when one is hurried over a
+rough, rocky, broken road, the pain felt by these sudden inequalities
+shows why similar sights, feelings, and sounds, are so contrary to
+beauty: and with regard to the feeling, it is exactly the same in its
+effect, or very nearly the same, whether, for instance, I move my hand
+along the surface of a body of a certain shape, or whether such a body
+is moved along my hand. But to bring this analogy of the senses home to
+the eye; if a body presented to that sense has such a waving surface,
+that the rays of light reflected from it are in a continual insensible
+deviation from the strongest to the weakest (which is always the case in
+a surface gradually unequal), it must be exactly similar in its effects
+on the eye and touch; upon the one of which it operates directly, on the
+other indirectly. And this body will be beautiful if the lines which
+compose its surface are not continued, even so varied, in a manner that
+may weary or dissipate the attention. The variation itself must be
+continually varied.
+
+
+SECTION XXIV.
+
+CONCERNING SMALLNESS.
+
+To avoid a sameness which may arise from the too frequent repetition of
+the same reasonings, and of illustrations of the same nature, I will not
+enter very minutely into every particular that regards beauty, as it is
+founded on the disposition of its quantity, or its quantity itself. In
+speaking of the magnitude of bodies there is great uncertainty, because
+the ideas of great and small are terms almost entirely relative to the
+species of the objects, which are infinite. It is true, that having once
+fixed the species of any object, and the dimensions common in the
+individuals of that species, we may observe some that exceed, and some
+that fall short of, the ordinary standard: those which greatly exceed
+are, by that excess, provided the species itself be not very small,
+rather great and terrible than beautiful; but as in the animal world,
+and in a good measure in the vegetable world likewise, the qualities
+that constitute beauty may possibly be united to things of greater
+dimensions; when they are so united, they constitute a species something
+different both from the sublime and beautiful, which I have before
+called _fine_; but this kind, I imagine, has not such a power on the
+passions, either as vast bodies have which are endued with the
+correspondent qualities of the sublime; or as the qualities of beauty
+have when united in a small object. The affection produced by large
+bodies adorned with the spoils of beauty, is a tension continually
+relieved; which approaches to the nature of mediocrity. But if I were to
+say how I find myself affected upon such occasions, I should say that
+the sublime suffers less by being united to some of the qualities of
+beauty, than beauty does by being joined to greatness of quantity, or
+any other properties of the sublime. There is something so overruling in
+whatever inspires us with awe, in all things which belong ever so
+remotely to terror, that nothing else can stand in their presence. There
+lie the qualities of beauty either dead or unoperative; or at most
+exerted to mollify the rigor and sternness of the terror, which is the
+natural concomitant of greatness. Besides the extraordinary great in
+every species, the opposite to this, the dwarfish and diminutive, ought
+to be considered. Littleness, merely as such, has nothing contrary to
+the idea of beauty. The humming-bird, both in shape and coloring, yields
+to none of the winged species, of which it is the least; and perhaps his
+beauty is enhanced by his smallness. But there are animals, which, when
+they are extremely small, are rarely (if ever) beautiful. There is a
+dwarfish size of men and women, which is almost constantly so gross and
+massive in comparison of their height, that they present us with a very
+disagreeable image. But should a man be found not above two or three
+feet high, supposing such a person to have all the parts of his body of
+a delicacy suitable to such a size, and otherwise endued with the common
+qualities of other beautiful bodies, I am pretty well convinced that a
+person of such a stature might be considered as beautiful; might be the
+object of love; might give us very pleasing ideas on viewing him. The
+only thing which could possibly interpose to check our pleasure is, that
+such creatures, however formed, are unusual, and are often therefore
+considered as something monstrous. The large and gigantic, though very
+compatible with the sublime, is contrary to the beautiful. It is
+impossible to suppose a giant the object of love. When we let our
+imagination loose in romance, the ideas we naturally annex to that size
+are those of tyranny, cruelty, injustice, and everything horrid and
+abominable. We paint the giant ravaging the country, plundering the
+innocent traveller, and afterwards gorged with his half-living flesh:
+such are Polyphemus, Cacus, and others, who make so great a figure in
+romances and heroic poems. The event we attend to with the greatest
+satisfaction is their defeat and death. I do not remember, in all that
+multitude of deaths with which the Iliad is filled, that the fall of any
+man, remarkable for his great stature and strength, touches us with
+pity; nor does it appear that the author, so well read in human nature,
+ever intended it should. It is Simoisius, in the soft bloom of youth,
+torn from his parents, who tremble for a courage so ill suited to his
+strength; it is another hurried by war from the new embraces of his
+bride, young and fair, and a novice to the field, who melts us by his
+untimely fate. Achilles, in spite of the many qualities of beauty which
+Homer has bestowed on his outward form, and the many great virtues with
+which he has adorned his mind, can never make us love him. It may be
+observed, that Homer has given the Trojans, whose fate he has designed
+to excite our compassion, infinitely more of the amiable, social virtues
+than he has distributed among his Greeks. With regard to the Trojans,
+the passion he chooses to raise is pity; pity is a passion founded on
+love; and these _lesser_, and if I may say domestic virtues, are
+certainly the most amiable. But he has made the Greeks far their
+superiors in the politic and military virtues. The councils of Priam are
+weak; the arms of Hector comparatively feeble; his courage far below
+that of Achilles. Yet we love Priam more than Agamemnon, and Hector more
+than his conqueror Achilles. Admiration is the passion which Homer would
+excite in favor of the Greeks, and he has done it by bestowing on them
+the virtues which have but little to do with love. This short digression
+is perhaps not wholly beside our purpose, where our business is to show
+that objects of great dimensions are incompatible with beauty, the more
+incompatible as they are greater; whereas the small, if ever they fail
+of beauty, this failure is not to be attributed to their size.
+
+
+SECTION XXV.
+
+OF COLOR.
+
+With regard to color, the disquisition is almost infinite; but I
+conceive the principles laid down in the beginning of this part are
+sufficient to account for the effects of them all, as well as for the
+agreeable effects of transparent bodies, whether fluid or solid. Suppose
+I look at a bottle of muddy liquor, of a blue or red color; the blue or
+red rays cannot pass clearly to the eye, but are suddenly and unequally
+stopped by the intervention of little opaque bodies, which without
+preparation change the idea, and change it too into one disagreeable in
+its own nature, conformably to the principles laid down in Sect. 24. But
+when the ray passes without such opposition through the glass or liquor,
+when the glass or liquor is quite transparent, the light is sometimes
+softened in the passage, which makes it more agreeable even as light;
+and the liquor reflecting all the rays of its proper color _evenly_, it
+has such an effect on the eye, as smooth opaque bodies have on the eye
+and touch. So that the pleasure here is compounded of the softness of
+the transmitted, and the evenness of the reflected light. This pleasure
+may be heightened by the common principles in other things, if the shape
+of the glass which holds the transparent liquor be so judiciously
+varied, as to present the color gradually and interchangeably, weakened
+and strengthened with all the variety which judgment in affairs of this
+nature shall suggest. On a review of all that has been said of the
+effects, as well as the causes of both, it will appear that the sublime
+and beautiful are built on principles very different, and that their
+affections are as different: the great has terror for its basis, which,
+when it is modified, causes that emotion in the mind, which I have
+called astonishment; the beautiful is founded on mere positive pleasure,
+and excites in the soul that feeling which is called love. Their causes
+have made the subject of this fourth part.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[29] Part I. sect. 7.
+
+[30] Part I. sect. 10.
+
+[31] I do not here enter into the question debated among physiologists,
+whether pain be the effect of a contraction, or a tension of the nerves.
+Either will serve my purpose; for by tension, I mean no more than a
+violent pulling of the fibres which compose any muscle or membrane, in
+whatever way this is done.
+
+[32] Part II. sect. 2.
+
+[33] Part II. sect. 1.
+
+[34] Part I. sect. 7. Part II. sect. 2.
+
+[35] Part II. sect. 7.
+
+[36] Part II. sect. 10.
+
+[37] Part II. sect. 3.
+
+
+
+
+PART V.
+
+
+SECTION I.
+
+OF WORDS.
+
+Natural objects affect us by the laws of that connection which
+Providence has established between certain motions and configurations of
+bodies, and certain consequent feelings in our mind. Painting affects in
+the same manner, but with the superadded pleasure of imitation.
+Architecture affects by the laws of nature and the law of reason; from
+which latter result the rules of proportion, which make a work to be
+praised or censured, in the whole or in some part, when the end for
+which it was designed is or is not properly answered. But as to words;
+they seem to me to affect us in a manner very different from that in
+which we are affected by natural objects, or by painting or
+architecture; yet words have as considerable a share in exciting ideas
+of beauty and of the sublime as many of those, and sometimes a much
+greater than any of them; therefore an inquiry into the manner by which
+they excite such emotions is far from being unnecessary in a discourse
+of this kind.
+
+
+SECTION II.
+
+THE COMMON EFFECTS OF POETRY, NOT BY RAISING IDEAS OF THINGS.
+
+The common notion of the power of poetry and eloquence, as well as that
+of words in ordinary conversation, is, that they affect the mind by
+raising in it ideas of those things for which custom has appointed them
+to stand. To examine the truth of this notion, it may be requisite to
+observe that words may be divided into three sorts. The first are such
+as represent many simple ideas _united by nature_ to form some one
+determinate composition, as man, horse, tree, castle, &c. These I call
+_aggregate words_. The second are they that stand for one simple idea of
+such compositions, and no more; as red, blue, round, square, and the
+like. These I call _simple abstract_ words. The third are those which
+are formed by an union, an _arbitrary_ union of both the others, and of
+the various relations between them in greater or lesser degrees of
+complexity; as virtue, honor, persuasion, magistrate, and the like.
+These I call _compound abstract_ words. Words, I am sensible, are
+capable of being classed into more curious distinctions; but these seem
+to be natural, and enough for our purpose; and they are disposed in that
+order in which they are commonly taught, and in which the mind gets the
+ideas they are substituted for. I shall begin with the third sort of
+words; compound abstracts, such as virtue, honor, persuasion, docility.
+Of these I am convinced, that whatever power they may have on the
+passions, they do not derive it from any representation raised in the
+mind of the things for which they stand. As compositions, they are not
+real essences, and hardly cause, I think, any real ideas. Nobody, I
+believe, immediately on hearing the sounds, virtue, liberty, or honor,
+conceives any precise notions of the particular modes of action and
+thinking, together with the mixed and simple ideas, and the several
+relations of them for which these words are substituted; neither has he
+any general idea compounded of them; for if he had, then some of those
+particular ones, though indistinct perhaps, and confused, might come
+soon to be perceived. But this, I take it, is hardly ever the case. For,
+put yourself upon analyzing one of these words, and you must reduce it
+from one set of general words to another, and then into the simple
+abstracts and aggregates, in a much longer series than may be at first
+imagined, before any real idea emerges to light, before you come to
+discover anything like the first principles of such compositions; and
+when you have made such a discovery of the original ideas, the effect of
+the composition is utterly lost. A train of thinking of this sort is
+much too long to be pursued in the ordinary ways of conversation; nor is
+it at all necessary that it should. Such words are in reality but mere
+sounds; but they are sounds which being used on particular occasions,
+wherein we receive some good, or suffer some evil; or see others
+affected with good or evil; or which we hear applied to other
+interesting things or events; and being applied in such a variety of
+cases, that we know readily by habit to what things they belong, they
+produce in the mind, whenever they are afterwards mentioned, effects
+similar to those of their occasions. The sounds being often used without
+reference to any particular occasion, and carrying still their first
+impressions, they at last utterly lose their connection with the
+particular occasions that gave rise to them; yet the sound, without any
+annexed notion, continues to operate as before.
+
+
+SECTION III.
+
+GENERAL WORDS BEFORE IDEAS.
+
+Mr. Locke has somewhere observed, with his usual sagacity, that most
+general words, those belonging to virtue and vice, good and evil
+especially, are taught before the particular modes of action to which
+they belong are presented to the mind; and with them, the love of the
+one, and the abhorrence of the other; for the minds of children are so
+ductile, that a nurse, or any person about a child, by seeming pleased
+or displeased with anything, or even any word, may give the disposition
+of the child a similar turn. When, afterwards, the several occurrences
+in life come to be applied to these words, and that which is pleasant
+often appears under the name of evil; and what is disagreeable to nature
+is called good and virtuous; a strange confusion of ideas and affections
+arises in the minds of many; and an appearance of no small contradiction
+between their notions and their actions. There are many who love virtue
+and who detest vice, and this not from hypocrisy or affectation, who
+notwithstanding very frequently act ill and wickedly in particulars
+without the least remorse; because these particular occasions never came
+into view, when the passions on the side of virtue were so warmly
+affected by certain words heated originally by the breath of others; and
+for this reason, it is hard to repeat certain sets of words, though
+owned by themselves unoperative, without being in some degree affected;
+especially if a warm and affecting tone of voice accompanies them, as
+suppose,
+
+  Wise, valiant, generous, good, and great.
+
+These words, by having no application, ought to be unoperative; but
+when words commonly sacred to great occasions are used, we are affected
+by them even without the occasions. When words which have been generally
+so applied are put together without any rational view, or in such a
+manner that they do not rightly agree with each other, the style is
+called bombast. And it requires in several cases much good sense and
+experience to be guarded against the force of such language; for when
+propriety is neglected, a greater number of these affecting words may be
+taken into the service, and a greater variety may be indulged in
+combining them.
+
+
+SECTION IV.
+
+THE EFFECT OF WORDS.
+
+If words have all their possible extent of power, three effects arise in
+the mind of the hearer. The first is, the _sound_; the second, the
+_picture_, or representation of the thing signified by the sound; the
+third is, the _affection_ of the soul produced by one or by both of the
+foregoing. _Compounded abstract_ words, of which we have been speaking,
+(honor, justice, liberty, and the like,) produce the first and the last
+of these effects, but not the second. _Simple abstracts_ are used to
+signify some one simple idea without much adverting to others which may
+chance to attend it, as blue, green, hot, cold, and the like; these are
+capable of affecting all three of the purposes of words; as the
+_aggregate_ words, man, castle, horse, &c. are in a yet higher degree.
+But I am of opinion, that the most general effect, even of these words,
+does not arise from their forming pictures of the several things they
+would represent in the imagination; because, on a very diligent
+examination of my own mind, and getting others to consider theirs, I do
+not find that once in twenty times any such picture is formed, and when
+it is, there is most commonly a particular effort of the imagination for
+that purpose. But the aggregate words operate, as I said of the
+compound-abstracts, not by presenting any image to the mind, but by
+having from use the same effect on being mentioned, that their original
+has when it is seen. Suppose we were to read a passage to this effect:
+"The river Danube rises in a moist and mountainous soil in the heart of
+Germany, where, winding to and fro, it waters several principalities,
+until, turning into Austria, and laving the walls of Vienna, it passes
+into Hungary; there with a vast flood, augmented by the Save and the
+Drave, it quits Christendom, and rolling through the barbarous countries
+which border on Tartary, it enters by many mouths in the Black Sea." In
+this description many things are mentioned, as mountains, rivers,
+cities, the sea, &c. But let anybody examine himself, and see whether he
+has had impressed on his imagination any pictures of a river, mountain,
+watery soil, Germany, &c. Indeed it is impossible, in the rapidity and
+quick succession of words in conversation, to have ideas both of the
+sound of the word, and of the thing represented; besides, some words,
+expressing real essences, are so mixed with others of a general and
+nominal import, that it is impracticable to jump from sense to thought,
+from particulars to generals, from things to words, in such a manner as
+to answer the purposes of life; nor is it necessary that we should.
+
+
+SECTION V.
+
+EXAMPLES THAT WORDS MAY AFFECT WITHOUT RAISING IMAGES.
+
+I find it very hard to persuade several that their passions are affected
+by words from whence they have no ideas; and yet harder to convince them
+that in the ordinary course of conversation we are sufficiently
+understood without raising any images of the things concerning which we
+speak. It seems to be an odd subject of dispute with any man, whether he
+has ideas in his mind or not. Of this, at first view, every man, in his
+own forum, ought to judge without appeal. But, strange as it may appear,
+we are often at a loss to know what ideas we have of things, or whether
+we have any ideas at all upon some subjects. It even requires a good
+deal of attention to be thoroughly satisfied on this head. Since I wrote
+these papers, I found two very striking instances of the possibility
+there is, that a man may hear words without having any idea of the
+things which they represent, and yet afterwards be capable of returning
+them to others, combined in a new way, and with great propriety, energy,
+and instruction. The first instance is that of Mr. Blacklock, a poet
+blind from his birth. Few men blessed with the most perfect sight can
+describe visual objects with more spirit and justness than this blind
+man; which cannot possibly be attributed to his having a clearer
+conception of the things he describes than is common to other persons.
+Mr. Spence, in an elegant preface which he has written to the works of
+this poet, reasons very ingeniously, and, I imagine, for the most part,
+very rightly, upon the cause of this extraordinary phenomenon; but I
+cannot altogether agree with him, that some improprieties in language
+and thought, which occur in these poems, have arisen from the blind
+poet's imperfect conception of visual objects, since such improprieties,
+and much greater, may be found in writers even of a higher class than
+Mr. Blacklock, and who, notwithstanding, possessed the faculty of seeing
+in its full perfection. Here is a poet doubtless as much affected by his
+own descriptions as any that reads them can be; and yet he is affected
+with this strong enthusiasm by things of which he neither has, nor can
+possibly have, any idea further than that of a bare sound: and why may
+not those who read his works be affected in the same manner that he was;
+with as little of any real ideas of the things described? The second
+instance is of Mr. Saunderson, professor of mathematics in the
+University of Cambridge. This learned man had acquired great knowledge
+in natural philosophy, in astronomy, and whatever sciences depend upon
+mathematical skill. What was the most extraordinary and the most to my
+purpose, he gave excellent lectures upon light and colors; and this man
+taught others the theory of those ideas which they had, and which he
+himself undoubtedly had not. But it is probable that the words red,
+blue, green, answered to him as well as the ideas of the colors
+themselves; for the ideas of greater or lesser degrees of refrangibility
+being applied to these words, and the blind man being instructed in what
+other respects they were found to agree or to disagree, it was as easy
+for him to reason upon the words as if he had been fully master of the
+ideas. Indeed it must be owned he could make no new discoveries in the
+way of experiment. He did nothing but what we do every day in common
+discourse. When I wrote this last sentence, and used the words _every
+day_ and _common discourse_, I had no images in my mind of any
+succession of time; nor of men in conference with each other; nor do I
+imagine that the reader will have any such ideas on reading it. Neither
+when I spoke of red, or blue, and green, as well as refrangibility, had
+I these several colors, or the rays of light passing into a different
+medium, and there diverted from their course, painted before me in the
+way of images. I know very well that the mind possesses a faculty of
+raising such images at pleasure; but then an act of the will is
+necessary to this; and in ordinary conversation or reading it is very
+rarely that any image at all is excited in the mind. If I say, "I shall
+go to Italy next summer," I am well understood. Yet I believe nobody has
+by this painted in his imagination the exact figure of the speaker
+passing by land or by water, or both; sometimes on horseback, sometimes
+in a carriage: with all the particulars of the journey. Still less has
+he any idea of Italy, the country to which I proposed to go; or of the
+greenness of the fields, the ripening of the fruits, and the warmth of
+the air, with the change to this from a different season, which are the
+ideas for which the word _summer_ is substituted; but least of all has
+he any image from the word _next_; for this word stands for the idea of
+many summers, with the exclusion of all but one: and surely the man who
+says _next summer_ has no images of such a succession, and such an
+exclusion. In short, it is not only of those ideas which are commonly
+called abstract, and of which no image at all can be formed, but even of
+particular, real beings, that we converse without having any idea of
+them excited in the imagination; as will certainly appear on a diligent
+examination of our own minds. Indeed, so little does poetry depend for
+its effect on the power of raising sensible images, that I am convinced
+it would lose a very considerable part of its energy, if this were the
+necessary result of all description. Because that union of affecting
+words, which is the most powerful of all poetical instruments, would
+frequently lose its force along with its propriety and consistency, if
+the sensible images were always excited. There is not, perhaps, in the
+whole AEneid a more grand and labored passage than the description of
+Vulcan's cavern in Etna, and the works that are there carried on. Virgil
+dwells particularly on the formation of the thunder which he describes
+unfinished under the hammers of the Cyclops. But what are the principles
+of this extraordinary composition?
+
+    Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosae
+    Addiderant; rutili tres ignis, et alitis austri:
+    Fulgores nunc terrificos, sonitumque, metumque
+    Miscebant operi, flammisque sequacibus iras.
+
+This seems to me admirably sublime: yet if we attend coolly to the kind
+of sensible images which a combination of ideas of this sort must form,
+the chimeras of madmen cannot appear more wild and absurd than such a
+picture. "_Three rays of twisted showers, three of watery clouds, three
+of fire, and three of the winged south wind; then mixed they in the work
+terrific lightnings, and sound, and fear, and anger, with pursuing
+flames._" This strange composition is formed into a gross body; it is
+hammered by the Cyclops, it is in part polished, and partly continues
+rough. The truth is, if poetry gives us a noble assemblage of words
+corresponding to many noble ideas, which are connected by circumstances
+of time or place, or related to each other as cause and effect, or
+associated in any natural way, they may be moulded together in any form,
+and perfectly answer their end. The picturesque connection is not
+demanded; because no real picture is formed; nor is the effect of the
+description at all the less upon this account. What is said of Helen by
+Priam and the old men of his council, is generally thought to give us
+the highest possible idea of that fatal beauty.
+
+    [Greek:
+    Ou nemesis, Troas kai euknemidas 'Achaious
+    Toied' amphi gunaiki polun chronon algea paschein
+    Ainos athanatesi thees eis opa eoiken.]
+
+   "They cried, No wonder such celestial charms
+    For nine long years have set the world in arms;
+    What winning graces! what majestic mien!
+    She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen."
+
+                                        POPE.
+
+Here is not one word said of the particulars of her beauty; nothing
+which can in the least help us to any precise idea of her person; but
+yet we are much more touched by this manner of mentioning her, than by
+those long and labored descriptions of Helen, whether handed down by
+tradition, or formed by fancy, which are to be met with in some authors.
+I am sure it affects me much more than the minute description which
+Spenser has given of Belphebe; though I own that there are parts, in
+that description, as there are in all the descriptions of that excellent
+writer, extremely fine and poetical. The terrible picture which
+Lucretius has drawn of religion in order to display the magnanimity of
+his philosophical hero in opposing her, is thought to be designed with
+great boldness and spirit:--
+
+    Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret,
+    In terris, oppressa gravi sub religione,
+    Quae caput e coeli regionibus ostendebat
+    Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans;
+    Primus Graius homo mortales tollere contra
+    Est oculos ausus.
+
+What idea do you derive from so excellent a picture? none at all, most
+certainly: neither has the poet said a single word which might in the
+least serve to mark a single limb or feature of the phantom, which he
+intended to represent in all the horrors imagination can conceive. In
+reality, poetry and rhetoric do not succeed in exact description so well
+as painting does; their business is, to affect rather by sympathy than
+imitation; to display rather the effect of things on the mind of the
+speaker, or of others, than to present a clear idea of the things
+themselves. This is their most extensive province, and that in which
+they succeed the best.
+
+
+SECTION VI.
+
+POETRY NOT STRICTLY AN IMITATIVE ART.
+
+Hence we may observe that poetry, taken in its most general sense,
+cannot with strict propriety be called an art of imitation. It is indeed
+an imitation so far as it describes the manners and passions of men
+which their words can express; where _animi motus effert interprete
+lingua_. There it is strictly imitation; and all merely _dramatic_
+poetry is of this sort. But _descriptive_ poetry operates chiefly by
+_substitution_; by the means of sounds, which by custom have the effect
+of realities. Nothing is an imitation further than as it resembles some
+other thing; and words undoubtedly have no sort of resemblance to the
+ideas for which they stand.
+
+
+SECTION VII.
+
+HOW WORDS INFLUENCE THE PASSIONS.
+
+Now, as words affect, not by any original power, but by representation,
+it might be supposed, that their influence over the passions should be
+but light; yet it is quite otherwise; for we find by experience, that
+eloquence and poetry are as capable, nay indeed much more capable, of
+making deep and lively impressions than any other arts, and even than
+nature itself in very many cases. And this arises chiefly from these
+three causes. First, that we take an extraordinary part in the passions
+of others, and that we are easily affected and brought into sympathy by
+any tokens which are shown of them; and there are no tokens which can
+express all the circumstances of most passions so fully as words; so
+that if a person speaks upon any subject, he can not only convey the
+subject to you, but likewise the manner in which he is himself affected
+by it. Certain it is, that the influence of most things on our passions
+is not so much from the things themselves, as from our opinions
+concerning them; and these again depend very much on the opinions of
+other men, conveyable for the most part by words only. Secondly, there
+are many things of a very affecting nature, which can seldom occur in
+the reality, but the words that represent them often do; and thus they
+have an opportunity of making a deep impression and taking root in the
+mind, whilst the idea of the reality was transient; and to some perhaps
+never really occurred in any shape, to whom it is notwithstanding very
+affecting, as war, death, famine, &c. Besides many ideas have never been
+at all presented to the senses of any men but by words, as God, angels,
+devils, heaven, and hell, all of which have however a great influence
+over the passions. Thirdly, by words we have it in our power to make
+such _combinations_ as we cannot possibly do otherwise. By this power of
+combining we are able, by the addition of well-chosen circumstances, to
+give a new life and force to the simple object. In painting we may
+represent any fine figure we please; but we never can give it those
+enlivening touches which it may receive from words. To represent an
+angel in a picture, you can only draw a beautiful young man winged: but
+what painting can furnish out anything so grand as the addition of one
+word, "the angel of the _Lord_"? It is true, I have here no clear idea;
+but these words affect the mind more than the sensible image did; which
+is all I contend for. A picture of Priam dragged to the altar's foot,
+and there murdered, if it were well executed, would undoubtedly be very
+moving; but there are very aggravating circumstances, which it could
+never represent:
+
+     Sanguine foedantem _quos ipse sacraverat_ ignes.
+
+As a further instance, let us consider those lines of Milton, where he
+describes the travels of the fallen angels through their dismal
+habitation:
+
+          "O'er many a dark and dreary vale
+    They passed, and many a region dolorous;
+    O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp;
+    Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,
+    A universe of death."
+
+Here is displayed the force of union in
+
+   "Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades"
+
+which yet would lose the greatest part of their effect, if they were not
+the
+
+   "Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades--of _Death_."
+
+
+This idea or this affection caused by a word, which nothing but a word
+could annex to the others, raises a very great degree of the sublime,
+and this sublime is raised yet higher by what follows, a "_universe of
+death_." Here are again two ideas not presentable but by language, and
+an union of them great and amazing beyond conception; if they may
+properly be called ideas which present no distinct image to the mind;
+but still it will be difficult to conceive how words can move the
+passions which belong to real objects, without representing these
+objects clearly. This is difficult to us, because we do not sufficiently
+distinguish, in our observations upon language, between a clear
+expression and a strong expression. These are frequently confounded with
+each other, though they are in reality extremely different. The former
+regards the understanding, the latter belongs to the passions. The one
+describes a thing as it is, the latter describes it as it is felt. Now,
+as there is a moving tone of voice, an impassioned countenance, an
+agitated gesture, which affect independently of the things about which
+they are exerted, so there are words, and certain dispositions of words,
+which being peculiarly devoted to passionate subjects, and always used
+by those who are under the influence of any passion, touch and move us
+more than those which far more clearly and distinctly express the
+subject-matter. We yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The
+truth is, all verbal description, merely as naked description, though
+never so exact, conveys so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing
+described, that it could scarcely have the smallest effect, if the
+speaker did not call in to his aid those modes of speech that mark a
+strong and lively feeling in himself. Then, by the contagion of our
+passions, we catch a fire already kindled in another, which probably
+might never have been struck out by the object described. Words, by
+strongly conveying the passions by those means which we have already
+mentioned, fully compensate for their weakness in other respects. It may
+be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for
+their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in
+strength. The French language has that perfection and that defect.
+Whereas the Oriental tongues, and in general the languages of most
+unpolished people, have a great force and energy of expression, and this
+is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of
+things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason
+they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and
+therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner. If
+the affection be well conveyed, it will work its effect without any
+clear idea, often without any idea at all of the thing which has
+originally given rise to it.
+
+It might be expected, from the fertility of the subject, that I should
+consider poetry, as it regards the sublime and beautiful, more at large;
+but it must be observed, that in this light it has been often and well
+handled already. It was not my design to enter into the criticism of the
+sublime and beautiful in any art, but to attempt to lay down such
+principles as may tend to ascertain, to distinguish, and to form a sort
+of standard for them; which purposes I thought might be best effected
+by an inquiry into the properties of such things in nature, as raise
+love and astonishment in us; and by showing in what manner they operated
+to produce these passions. Words were only so far to be considered as to
+show upon what principle they were capable of being the representatives
+of these natural things, and by what powers they were able to affect us
+often as strongly as the things they represent, and sometimes much more
+strongly.
+
+
+
+
+A
+
+SHORT ACCOUNT
+
+OF
+
+A LATE SHORT ADMINISTRATION.
+
+1766.
+
+
+The late administration came into employment, under the mediation of the
+Duke of Cumberland, on the tenth day of July, 1765; and was removed,
+upon a plan settled by the Earl of Chatham, on the thirtieth day of
+July, 1766, having lasted just one year and twenty days.
+
+In that space of time
+
+The distractions of the British empire were composed, by _the repeal of
+the American stamp act_;
+
+But the constitutional superiority of Great Britain was preserved by
+_the act for securing the dependence of the colonies_.
+
+_Private_ houses were relieved from the jurisdiction of the excise, by
+_the repeal of the cider tax_.
+
+The personal liberty of the subject was confirmed, by _the resolution
+against general warrants_.
+
+The lawful secrets of business and friendship were rendered inviolable,
+by _the resolution for condemning the seizure of papers_.
+
+The trade of America was set free from injudicious and ruinous
+impositions,--its revenue was improved, and settled upon a rational
+foundation,--its commerce extended with foreign countries; while all
+the advantages were secured to Great Britain, by _the act for repealing
+certain duties, and encouraging, regulating, and securing the trade of
+this kingdom, and the British dominions in America_.
+
+Materials were provided and insured to our manufactures,--the sale of
+these manufactures was increased,--the African trade preserved and
+extended,--the principles of the act of navigation pursued, and the plan
+improved,--and the trade for bullion rendered free, secure, and
+permanent, by _the act for opening certain ports in Dominica and
+Jamaica_.
+
+That administration was the first which proposed and encouraged public
+meetings and free consultations of merchants from all parts of the
+kingdom; by which means the truest lights have been received; great
+benefits have been already derived to manufactures and commerce; and the
+most extensive prospects are opened for further improvement.
+
+Under them, the interests of our northern and southern colonies, before
+that time jarring and dissonant, were understood, compared, adjusted,
+and perfectly reconciled. The passions and animosities of the colonies,
+by judicious and lenient measures, were allayed and composed, and the
+foundation laid for a lasting agreement amongst them.
+
+Whilst that administration provided for the liberty and commerce of
+their country, as the true basis of its power, they consulted its
+interests, they asserted its honor abroad, with temper and with
+firmness; by making an advantageous treaty of commerce with Russia; by
+obtaining a liquidation of the Canada bills, to the satisfaction of the
+proprietors; by reviving and raising from its ashes the negotiation for
+the Manilla ransom, which had been extinguished and abandoned by their
+predecessors.
+
+They treated their sovereign with decency; with reverence. They
+discountenanced, and, it is hoped, forever abolished, the dangerous and
+unconstitutional practice of removing military officers for their votes
+in Parliament. They firmly adhered to those friends of liberty, who had
+run all hazards in its cause; and provided for them in preference to
+every other claim.
+
+With the Earl of Bute they had no personal connection; no correspondence
+of councils. They neither courted him nor persecuted him. They practised
+no corruption; nor were they even suspected of it. They sold no offices.
+They obtained no reversions or pensions, either coming in or going out,
+for them selves, their families, or their dependents.
+
+In the prosecution of their measures they were traversed by an
+opposition of a new and singular character; an opposition of placemen
+and pensioners. They were supported by the confidence of the nation. And
+having held their offices under many difficulties and discouragements,
+they left them at the express command, as they had accepted them at the
+earnest request, of their royal master.
+
+These are plain facts; of a clear and public nature; neither extended by
+elaborate reasoning, nor heightened by the coloring of eloquence. They
+are the services of a single year.
+
+The removal of that administration from power is not to them premature;
+since they were in office long enough to accomplish many plans of public
+utility; and, by their perseverance and resolution, rendered the way
+smooth and easy to their successors; having left their king and their
+country in a much better condition than they found them. By the temper
+they manifest, they seem to have now no other wish than that their
+successors may do the public as real and as faithful service as they
+have done.
+
+
+
+
+OBSERVATIONS
+
+ON A LATE PUBLICATION,
+
+INTITULED
+
+"THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION."
+
+   "O Tite, si quid ego adjuvero curamve levasso,
+    Quae nunc te coquit, et versat sub pectore fixa,
+    Ecquid erit pretii?"
+
+                                        ENN. ap. CIC.
+
+1769.
+
+
+Party divisions, whether on the whole operating for good or evil, are
+things inseparable from free government. This is a truth which, I
+believe, admits little dispute, having been established by the uniform
+experience of all ages. The part a good citizen ought to take in these
+divisions has been a matter of much deeper controversy. But God forbid
+that any controversy relating to our essential morals should admit of no
+decision. It appears to me, that this question, like most of the others
+which regard our duties in life, is to be determined by our station in
+it. Private men may be wholly neutral, and entirely innocent: but they
+who are legally invested with public trust, or stand on the high ground
+of rank and dignity, which is trust implied, can hardly in any case
+remain indifferent, without the certainty of sinking into
+insignificance; and thereby in effect deserting that post in which, with
+the fullest authority, and for the wisest purposes, the laws and
+institutions of their country have fixed them. However, if it be the
+office of those who are thus circumstanced, to take a decided part, it
+is no less their duty that it should be a sober one. It ought to be
+circumscribed by the same laws of decorum, and balanced by the same
+temper, which bound and regulate all the virtues. In a word, we ought to
+act in party with all the moderation which does not absolutely enervate
+that vigor, and quench that fervency of spirit, without which the best
+wishes for the public good must evaporate in empty speculation.
+
+It is probably from some such motives that the friends of a very
+respectable party in this kingdom have been hitherto silent. For these
+two years past, from one and the same quarter of politics, a continual
+fire has been kept upon them; sometimes from the unwieldy column of
+quartos and octavos; sometimes from the light squadrons of occasional
+pamphlets and flying sheets. Every month has brought on its periodical
+calumny. The abuse has taken every shape which the ability of the
+writers could give it; plain invective, clumsy raillery, misrepresented
+anecdote.[38] No method of vilifying the measures, the abilities, the
+intentions, or the persons which compose that body, has been omitted.
+
+On their part nothing was opposed but patience and character. It was a
+matter of the most serious and indignant affliction to persons who
+thought themselves in conscience bound to oppose a ministry dangerous
+from its very constitution, as well as its measures, to find themselves,
+whenever they faced their adversaries, continually attacked on the rear
+by a set of men who pretended to be actuated by motives similar to
+theirs. They saw that the plan long pursued, with but too fatal a
+success, was to break the strength of this kingdom, by frittering down
+the bodies which compose it, by fomenting bitter and sanguinary
+animosities, and by dissolving every tie of social affection and public
+trust. These virtuous men, such I am warranted by public opinion to call
+them, were resolved rather to endure everything, than co-operate in that
+design. A diversity of opinion upon almost every principle of politics
+had indeed drawn a strong line of separation between them and some
+others. However, they were desirous not to extend the misfortune by
+unnecessary bitterness; they wished to prevent a difference of opinion
+on the commonwealth from festering into rancorous and incurable
+hostility. Accordingly they endeavored that all past controversies
+should be forgotten; and that enough for the day should be the evil
+thereof. There is however a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a
+virtue. Men may tolerate injuries whilst they are only personal to
+themselves. But it is not the first of virtues to bear with moderation
+the indignities that are offered to our country. A piece has at length
+appeared, from the quarter of all the former attacks, which upon every
+public consideration demands an answer. Whilst persons more equal to
+this business may be engaged in affairs of greater moment, I hope I
+shall be excused, if, in a few hours of a time not very important, and
+from such materials as I have by me (more than enough however for this
+purpose), I undertake to set the facts and arguments of this wonderful
+performance in a proper light. I will endeavor to state what this piece
+is; the purpose for which I take it to have been written; and the
+effects (supposing it should have any effect at all) it must necessarily
+produce.
+
+This piece is called "The Present State of the Nation." It may be
+considered as a sort of digest of the avowed maxims of a certain
+political school, the effects of whose doctrines and practices this
+country will fuel long and severely. It is made up of a farrago of
+almost every topic which has been agitated on national affairs in
+parliamentary debate, or private conversation, for these last seven
+years. The oldest controversies are hauled out of the dust with which
+time and neglect had covered them. Arguments ten times repeated, a
+thousand times answered before, are here repeated again. Public accounts
+formerly printed and reprinted revolve once more, and find their old
+station in this sober meridian. All the commonplace lamentations upon
+the decay of trade, the increase of taxes, and the high price of labor
+and provisions, are here retailed again and again in the same tone with
+which they have drawled through columns of Gazetteers and Advertisers
+for a century together. Paradoxes which affront common sense, and
+uninteresting barren truths which generate no conclusion, are thrown in
+to augment unwieldy bulk, without adding anything to weight. Because two
+accusations are better than one, contradictions are set staring one
+another in the face, without even an attempt to reconcile them. And, to
+give the whole a sort of portentous air of labor and information, the
+table of the House of Commons is swept into this grand reservoir of
+politics.
+
+As to the composition, it bears a striking and whimsical resemblance to
+a funeral sermon, not only in the pathetic prayer with which it
+concludes, but in the style and tenor of the whole performance. It is
+piteously doleful, nodding every now and then towards dulness; well
+stored with pious frauds, and, like most discourses of the sort, much
+better calculated for the private advantage of the preacher than the
+edification of the hearers.
+
+The author has indeed so involved his subject, that it is frequently far
+from being easy to comprehend his meaning. It is happy for the public
+that it is never difficult to fathom his design. The apparent intention
+of this author is to draw the most aggravated, hideous and deformed
+picture of the state of this country, which his querulous eloquence,
+aided by the arbitrary dominion he assumes over fact, is capable of
+exhibiting. Had he attributed our misfortunes to their true cause, the
+injudicious tampering of bold, improvident, and visionary ministers at
+one period, or to their supine negligence and traitorous dissensions at
+another, the complaint had been just, and might have been useful. But
+far the greater and much the worst part of the state which he exhibits
+is owing, according to his representation, not to accidental and
+extrinsic mischiefs attendant on the nation, but to its radical weakness
+and constitutional distempers. All this however is not without purpose.
+The author is in hopes, that, when we are fallen into a fanatical terror
+for the national salvation, we shall then be ready to throw
+ourselves,--in a sort of precipitate trust, some strange disposition of
+the mind jumbled up of presumption and despair,--into the hands of the
+most pretending and forward undertaker. One such undertaker at least he
+has in readiness for our service. But let me assure this generous
+person, that however he may succeed in exciting our fears for the public
+danger, he will find it hard indeed to engage us to place any confidence
+in the system he proposes for our security.
+
+His undertaking is great. The purpose of this pamphlet, at which it
+aims directly or obliquely in every page, is to persuade the public of
+three or four of the most difficult points in the world,--that all the
+advantages of the late war were on the part of the Bourbon alliance;
+that the peace of Paris perfectly consulted the dignity and interest of
+this country; and that the American Stamp Act was a masterpiece of
+policy and finance; that the only good minister this nation has enjoyed
+since his Majesty's accession, is the Earl of Bute; and the only good
+managers of revenue we have seen are Lord Despenser and Mr. George
+Grenville; and, under the description of men of virtue and ability, he
+holds them out to us as the only persons fit to put our affairs in
+order. Let not the reader mistake me: he does not actually name these
+persons; but having highly applauded their conduct in all its parts, and
+heavily censured every other set of men in the kingdom, he then
+recommends us to his men of virtue and ability.
+
+Such is the author's scheme. Whether it will answer his purpose I know
+not. But surely that purpose ought to be a wonderfully good one, to
+warrant the methods he has taken to compass it. If the facts and
+reasonings in this piece are admitted, it is all over with us. The
+continuance of our tranquillity depends upon the compassion of our
+rivals. Unable to secure to ourselves the advantages of peace, we are at
+the same time utterly unfit for war. It is impossible, if this state of
+things be credited abroad, that we can have any alliance; all nations
+will fly from so dangerous a connection, lest, instead of being
+partakers of our strength, they should only become sharers in our ruin.
+If it is believed at home, all that firmness of mind, and dignified
+national courage, which used to be the great support of this isle
+against the powers of the world, must melt away, and fail within us.
+
+In such a state of things can it be amiss if I aim at holding out some
+comfort to the nation; another sort of comfort, indeed, than that which
+this writer provides for it; a comfort not from its physician, but from
+its constitution: if I attempt to show that all the arguments upon which
+he founds the decay of that constitution, and the necessity of that
+physician, are vain and frivolous? I will follow the author closely in
+his own long career, through the war, the peace, the finances, our
+trade, and our foreign politics: not for the sake of the particular
+measures which he discusses; that can be of no use; they are all
+decided; their good is all enjoyed, or their evil incurred: but for the
+sake of the principles of war, peace, trade, and finances. These
+principles are of infinite moment. They must come again and again under
+consideration; and it imports the public, of all things, that those of
+its ministers be enlarged, and just, and well confirmed, upon all these
+subjects. What notions this author entertains we shall see presently;
+notions in my opinion very irrational, and extremely dangerous; and
+which, if they should crawl from pamphlets into counsels, and be
+realized from private speculation into national measures, cannot fail of
+hastening and completing our ruin.
+
+This author, after having paid his compliment to the showy appearances
+of the late war in our favor, is in the utmost haste to tell you that
+these appearances were _fallacious_, that they were no more than an
+_imposition_.--I fear I must trouble the reader with a pretty long
+quotation, in order to set before him the more clearly this author's
+peculiar way of conceiving and reasoning:
+
+"Happily (the K.) was then advised by ministers, who did not suffer
+themselves to be dazzled by the glare of brilliant appearances; but,
+knowing them to be _fallacious_, they wisely resolved to profit of their
+splendor before our enemies should also _discover the imposition_.--The
+increase in the exports was found to have been occasioned chiefly by the
+demands of _our own fleets and armies_, and, instead of bringing wealth
+to the nation, was to be paid for by oppressive taxes upon the people of
+England. While the British seamen were consuming on board our men of war
+and privateers, foreign ships and foreign seamen were employed in the
+transportation of our merchandise; and the carrying trade, so great a
+source of wealth and marine, _was entirely engrossed by the neutral
+nations_. The number of British ships annually arriving in our ports was
+reduced 1756 sail, containing 92,559 tons, on a medium of the six years'
+war, compared with the six years of peace preceding it.--The conquest of
+the Havannah had, indeed, stopped the remittance of specie from Mexico
+to Spain; but it had not enabled England to seize it: on the contrary,
+our merchants suffered by the detention of the galleons, as their
+_correspondents in Spain were disabled from paying them for their goods
+sent to America. The loss of the trade to Old Spain was a further bar to
+an influx of specie_; and the attempt upon Portugal had not only
+deprived us of an import of bullion from thence, but the payment of our
+troops employed in its defence was a fresh drain opened for the
+diminution of our circulating specie.--The high premiums given for new
+loans had sunk the price of the old stock near a third of its original
+value; so that the purchasers had an obligation from the state to repay
+them with an addition of 33 per cent to their capital. Every new loan
+required new taxes to be imposed; new taxes must add to the price of our
+manufactures, _and lessen their consumption among foreigners_. The decay
+of our trade must necessarily _occasion a decrease of the public
+revenue_; and a deficiency of our funds must either be made up by fresh
+taxes, which would only add to the calamity, or our national credit must
+be destroyed, by showing the public creditors the inability of the
+nation to repay them their principal money.--Bounties had already been
+given for recruits which exceeded the year's wages of the ploughman and
+reaper; and as these were exhausted, and _husbandry stood still for want
+of hands_, the manufacturers were next to be tempted to quit the anvil
+and the loom by higher offers.--_France, bankrupt France, had no such
+calamities impending over her; her distresses were great, but they were
+immediate and temporary; her want of credit preserved her from a great
+increase of debt, and the loss of her ultramarine dominions lessened her
+expenses. Her colonies had, indeed, put themselves into the hands of the
+English; but the property of her subjects had been preserved by
+capitulations, and a way opened for making her those remittances which
+the war had before suspended, with as much security as in time of
+peace_.--Her armies in Germany had been hitherto prevented from seizing
+upon Hanover; but they continued to encamp on the same ground on which
+the first battle was fought; and, as it must ever happen from the policy
+of that government, _the last troops she sent into the field were
+always found to be the best, and her frequent losses only served to fill
+her regiments with better soldiers. The conquest of Hanover became
+therefore every campaign more probable_.--It is to be noted, that the
+French troops received subsistence only, for the last three years of the
+war; and that, although large arrears were due to them at its
+conclusion, the charge was the less during its continuance."[39]
+
+If any one be willing to see to how much greater lengths the author
+carries these ideas, he will recur to the book. This is sufficient for a
+specimen of his manner of thinking. I believe one reflection uniformly
+obtrudes itself upon every reader of these paragraphs. For what purpose,
+in any cause, shall we hereafter contend with France? Can we ever
+flatter ourselves that we shall wage a more successful war? If, on our
+part, in a war the most prosperous we ever carried on, by sea and by
+land, and in every part of the globe, attended with the unparalleled
+circumstance of an immense increase of trade and augmentation of
+revenue; if a continued series of disappointments, disgraces, and
+defeats, followed by public bankruptcy, on the part of France; if all
+these still leave her a gainer on the whole balance, will it not be
+downright frenzy in us ever to look her in the face again, or to contend
+with her any, even the most essential points, since victory and defeat,
+though by different ways, equally conduct us to our ruin? Subjection to
+France without a struggle will indeed be less for our honor, but on
+every principle of our author it must be more for our advantage.
+According to his representation of things, the question is only
+concerning the most easy fall. France had not discovered, our statesman
+tells us, at the end of that war, the triumphs of defeat, and the
+resources which are derived from bankruptcy. For my poor part, I do not
+wonder at their blindness. But the English ministers saw further. Our
+author has at length let foreigners also into the secret, and made them
+altogether as wise as ourselves. It is their own fault if (_vulgato
+imperii arcano_) they are imposed upon any longer. They now are apprised
+of the sentiments which the great candidate for the government of this
+great empire entertains; and they will act accordingly. They are taught
+our weakness and their own advantages.
+
+He tells the world,[40] that if France carries on the war against us in
+Germany, every loss she sustains contributes to the achievement of her
+conquest. If her armies are three years unpaid, she is the less
+exhausted by expense. If her credit is destroyed, she is the less
+oppressed with debt. If her troops are cut to pieces, they will by her
+policy (and a wonderful policy it is) be improved, and will be supplied
+with much better men. If the war is carried on in the colonies, he tells
+them[41] that the loss of her ultramarine dominions lessens her
+expenses, and insures her remittances:--
+
+    Per damna, per caedes, ab ipso
+    Ducit opes animumque ferro.
+
+If so, what is it we can do to hurt her?--it will be all an
+_imposition_, all _fallacious_. Why, the result must be,--
+
+                Occidit, occidit
+    Spes omnis, et fortuna nostri
+    Nominis.
+
+
+The only way which the author's principles leave for our escape, is to
+reverse our condition into that of France, and to take her losing cards
+into our hands. But though his principles drive him to it, his politics
+will not suffer him to walk on this ground. Talking at our ease and of
+other countries, we may bear to be diverted with such speculations; but
+in England we shall never be taught to look upon the annihilation of our
+trade, the ruin of our credit, the defeat of our armies, and the loss of
+our ultramarine dominions (whatever the author may think of them), to be
+the high road to prosperity and greatness.
+
+The reader does not, I hope, imagine that I mean seriously to set about
+the refutation of these uningenious paradoxes and reveries without
+imagination. I state them only that we may discern a little in the
+questions of war and peace, the most weighty of all questions, what is
+the wisdom of those men who are held out to us as the only hope of an
+expiring nation. The present ministry is indeed of a strange character:
+at once indolent and distracted. But if a ministerial system should be
+formed, actuated by such maxims as are avowed in this piece, the vices
+of the present ministry would become their virtues; their indolence
+would be the greatest of all public benefits, and a distraction that
+entirely defeated every one of their schemes would be our only security
+from destruction.
+
+To have stated these reasonings is enough, I presume, to do their
+business. But they are accompanied with facts and records, which may
+seem of a little more weight. I trust, however, that the facts of this
+author will be as far from bearing the touchstone, as his arguments. On
+a little inquiry, they will be found as great an imposition as the
+successes they are meant to depreciate; for they are all either false
+or fallaciously applied; or not in the least to the purpose for which
+they are produced.
+
+First the author, in order to support his favorite paradox, that our
+possession of the French colonies was of no detriment to France, has
+thought proper to inform us, that[42] "they put themselves into the
+hands of the English." He uses the same assertion, in nearly the same
+words, in another place;[43] "her colonies had put themselves into our
+hands." Now, in justice, not only to fact and common sense, but to the
+incomparable valor and perseverance of our military and naval forces
+thus unhandsomely traduced, I must tell this author, that the French
+colonies did not "put themselves into the hands of the English." They
+were compelled to submit; they were subdued by dint of English valor.
+Will the five years' war carried on in Canada, in which fell one of the
+principal hopes of this nation, and all the battles lost and gained
+during that anxious period, convince this author of his mistake? Let him
+inquire of Sir Jeffery Amherst, under whose conduct that war was carried
+on; of Sir Charles Saunders, whose steadiness and presence of mind saved
+our fleet, and were so eminently serviceable in the whole course of the
+siege of Quebec; of General Monckton, who was shot through the body
+there, whether France "put her colonies into the hands of the English."
+
+Though he has made no exception, yet I would be liberal to him; perhaps
+he means to confine himself to her colonies in the West Indies. But
+surely it will fare as ill with him there as in North America, whilst we
+remember that in our first attempt at Martinico we were actually
+defeated; that it was three months before we reduced Guadaloupe; and
+that the conquest of the Havannah was achieved by the highest conduct,
+aided by circumstances of the greatest good fortune. He knows the
+expense both of men and treasure at which we bought that place. However,
+if it had so pleased the peacemakers, it was no dear purchase; for it
+was decisive of the fortune of the war and the terms of the treaty: the
+Duke of Nivernois thought so; France, England, Europe, considered it in
+that light; all the world, except the then friends of the then ministry,
+who wept for our victories, and were in haste to get rid of the burden
+of our conquests. This author knows that France did not put those
+colonies into the hands of England; but he well knows who did put the
+most valuable of them into the hands of France.
+
+In the next place, our author[44] is pleased to consider the conquest of
+those colonies in no other light than as a convenience for the
+remittances to France, which he asserts that the war had before
+suspended, but for which a way was opened (by our conquest) as secure as
+in time of peace. I charitably hope he knows nothing of the subject. I
+referred him lately to our commanders, for the resistance of the French
+colonies; I now wish he would apply to our custom-house entries, and our
+merchants, for the advantages which we derived from them.
+
+In 1761, there was no entry of goods from any of the conquered places
+but Guadaloupe; in that year it stood thus:--
+
+  Imports from Guadaloupe,       value, L482,179
+                                        --------
+
+In 1762, when we had not yet delivered up our conquests, the account
+was,
+
+  Guadaloupe                            L513,244
+  Martinico                              288,425
+                                        --------
+  Total imports in 1762,         value, L801,669
+                                        --------
+
+In 1763, after we had delivered up the sovereignty of these islands, but
+kept open a communication with them, the imports were,
+
+  Guadaloupe                            L412,303
+  Martinico                              344,161
+  Havannah                               249,386
+                                      ----------
+  Total imports in 1763,         value, L1,005,850
+                                      ----------
+
+Besides, I find, in the account of bullion imported and brought to the
+Bank, that, during that period in which the intercourse with the
+Havannah was open, we received at that one shop, in treasure, from that
+one place, 559,810_l._; in the year 1763, 389,450_l._; so that the
+import from these places in that year amounted to 1,395,300_l._
+
+On this state the reader will observe, that I take the imports from, and
+not the exports to, these conquests, as the measure of the advantages
+which we derived from them. I do so for reasons which will be somewhat
+worthy the attention of such readers as are fond of this species of
+inquiry. I say therefore I choose the import article, as the best, and
+indeed the only standard we can have, of the value of the West India
+trade. Our export entry does not comprehend the greatest trade we carry
+on with any of the West India islands, the sale of negroes: nor does it
+give any idea of two other advantages we draw from them; the
+remittances for money spent here, and the payment of part of the balance
+of the North American trade. It is therefore quite ridiculous, to strike
+a balance merely on the face of an excess of imports and exports, in
+that commerce; though, in most foreign branches, it is, on the whole,
+the best method. If we should take that standard, it would appear, that
+the balance with our own islands is, annually, several hundred thousand
+pounds against this country.[45] Such is its aspect on the custom-house
+entries; but we know the direct contrary to be the fact. We know that
+the West-Indians are always indebted to our merchants, and that the
+value of every shilling of West India produce is English property. So
+that our import from them, and not our export, ought always to be
+considered as their true value; and this corrective ought to be applied
+to all general balances of our trade, which are formed on the ordinary
+principles.
+
+If possible, this was more emphatically true of the French West India
+islands, whilst they continued in our hands. That none or only a very
+contemptible part, of the value of this produce could be remitted to
+France, the author will see, perhaps with unwillingness, but with the
+clearest conviction, if he considers, that in the year 1763, _after we
+had ceased to export_ to the isles of Guadaloupe and Martinico, and to
+the Havannah, and after the colonies were free to send all their
+produce to Old France and Spain, if they had any remittance to make; he
+will see, that we imported from those places, in that year, to the
+amount of 1,395,300_l._ So far was the whole annual produce of these
+islands from being adequate to the payments of their annual call upon
+us, that this mighty additional importation was necessary, though not
+quite sufficient, to discharge the debts contracted in the few years we
+held them. The property, therefore, of their whole produce was ours; not
+only during the war, but even for more than a year after the peace. The
+author, I hope, will not again venture upon so rash and discouraging a
+proposition concerning the nature and effect of those conquests, as to
+call them a convenience to the remittances of France; he sees, by this
+account, that what he asserts is not only without foundation, but even
+impossible to be true.
+
+As to our trade at that time, he labors with all his might to represent
+it as absolutely ruined, or on the very edge of ruin. Indeed, as usual
+with him, he is often as equivocal in his expression as he is clear in
+his design. Sometimes he more than insinuates a decay of our commerce in
+that war; sometimes he admits an increase of exports; but it is in order
+to depreciate the advantages we might appear to derive from that
+increase, whenever it should come to be proved against him. He tells
+you,[46] "that it was chiefly occasioned by the demands of our own
+fleets and armies, and, instead or bringing wealth to the nation, was to
+be paid for by oppressive taxes upon the people of England." Never was
+anything more destitute of foundation. It might be proved, with the
+greatest ease, from the nature and quality of the goods exported, as
+well as from the situation of the places to which our merchandise was
+sent, and which the war could no wise affect, that the supply of our
+fleets and armies could not have been the cause of this wonderful
+increase of trade: its cause was evident to the whole world; the ruin of
+the trade of France, and our possession of her colonies. What wonderful
+effects this cause produced the reader will see below;[47] and he will
+form on that account some judgment of the author's candor or
+information.
+
+Admit however that a great part of our export, though nothing is more
+remote from fact, was owing to the supply of our fleets and armies; was
+it not something?--was it not peculiarly fortunate for a nation, that
+she was able from her own bosom to contribute largely to the supply of
+her armies militating in so many distant countries? The author allows
+that France did not enjoy the same advantages. But it is remarkable,
+throughout his whole book, that those circumstances which have ever been
+considered as great benefits, and decisive proofs of national
+superiority, are, when in our hands, taken either in diminution of some
+other apparent advantage, or even sometimes as positive misfortunes. The
+optics of that politician must be of a strange conformation, who beholds
+everything in this distorted shape.
+
+So far as to our trade. With regard to our navigation, he is still more
+uneasy at our situation, and still more fallacious in his state of it.
+In his text, he affirms it "to have been _entirely_ engrossed by the
+neutral nations."[48] This he asserts roundly and boldly, and without
+the least concern; although it cost no more than a single glance of the
+eye upon his own margin to see the full refutation of this assertion.
+His own account proves against him, that, in the year 1761, the British
+shipping amounted to 527,557 tons,--the foreign to no more than 180,102.
+The medium of his six years British, 2,449,555 tons,--foreign only
+906,690. This state (his own) demonstrates that the neutral nations did
+not _entirely engross our navigation_.
+
+I am willing from a strain of candor to admit that this author speaks at
+random; that he is only slovenly and inaccurate, and not fallacious. In
+matters of account, however, this want of care is not excusable; and the
+difference between neutral nations entirely engrossing our navigation,
+and being only subsidiary to a vastly augmented trade, makes a most
+material difference to his argument. From that principle of fairness,
+though the author speaks otherwise, I am willing to suppose he means no
+more than that our navigation had so declined as to alarm us with the
+probable loss of this valuable object. I shall however show, that his
+whole proposition, whatever modifications he may please to give it, is
+without foundation; that our navigation had not decreased; that, on the
+contrary, it had greatly increased in the war; that it had increased by
+the war; and that it was probable the same cause would continue to
+augment it to a still greater height; to what an height it is hard to
+say, had our success continued.
+
+But first I must observe, I am much less solicitous whether his fact be
+true or no, than whether his principle is well established. Cases are
+dead things, principles are living and productive. I affirm then, that,
+if in time of war our trade had the good fortune to increase, and at the
+same time a large, nay the largest, proportion of carriage had been
+engrossed by neutral nations, it ought not in itself to have been
+considered as a circumstance of distress. War is a time of inconvenience
+to trade; in general it must be straitened, and must find its way as it
+can. It is often happy for nations that they are able to call in neutral
+navigation. They all aim at it. France endeavored at it, but could not
+compass it. Will this author say, that, in a war with Spain, such an
+assistance would not be of absolute necessity? that it would not be the
+most gross of all follies to refuse it?
+
+In the next place, his method of stating a medium of six years of war,
+and six years of peace, to decide this question, is altogether unfair.
+To say, in derogation of the advantages of a war, that navigation is not
+equal to what it was in time of peace, is what hitherto has never been
+heard of. No war ever bore that test but the war which he so bitterly
+laments. One may lay it down as a maxim, that an average estimate of an
+object in a steady course of rising or of falling, must in its nature be
+an unfair one; more particularly if the cause of the rise or fall be
+visible, and its continuance in any degree probable. Average estimates
+are never just but when the object fluctuates, and no reason can be
+assigned why it should not continue still to fluctuate. The author
+chooses to allow nothing at all for this: he has taken an average of six
+years of the war. He knew, for everybody knows, that the first three
+years were on the whole rather unsuccessful; and that, in consequence of
+this ill success, trade sunk, and navigation declined with it; but _that
+grand delusion_ of the three last years turned the scale in our favor.
+At the beginning of that war (as in the commencement of every war),
+traders were struck with a sort of panic. Many went out of the
+freighting business. But by degrees, as the war continued, the terror
+wore off; the danger came to be better appreciated, and better provided
+against; our trade was carried on in large fleets, under regular
+convoys, and with great safety. The freighting business revived. The
+ships were fewer, but much larger; and though the number decreased, the
+tonnage was vastly augmented: insomuch that in 1761 the _British_
+shipping had risen by the author's own account to 527,557 tons.--In the
+last year he has given us of the peace, it amounted to no more than
+494,772; that is, in the last year of the war it was 32,785 tons more
+than in the correspondent year of his peace average. No year of the
+peace exceeded it except one, and that but little.
+
+The fair account of the matter is this. Our trade had, as we have just
+seen, increased to so astonishing a degree in 1761, as to employ British
+and foreign ships to the amount of 707,659 tons, which is 149,500 more
+than we employed in the last year of the peace.--Thus our trade
+increased more than a fifth; our British navigation had increased
+likewise with this astonishing increase of trade, but was not able to
+keep pace with it; and we added about 120,000 tons of foreign shipping
+to the 60,000, which had been employed in the last year of the peace.
+Whatever happened to our shipping in the former years of the war, this
+would be no true state of the case at the time of the treaty. If we had
+lost something in the beginning, we had then recovered, and more than
+recovered, all our losses. Such is the ground of the doleful complaints
+of the author, that _the carrying trade was wholly engrossed by the
+neutral nations_.
+
+I have done fairly, and even very moderately, in taking this year, and
+not his average, as the standard of what might be expected in future,
+had the war continued. The author will be compelled to allow it, unless
+he undertakes to show; first, that the possession of Canada, Martinico,
+Guadaloupe, Grenada, the Havannah, the Philippines, the whole African
+trade, the whole East India trade, and the whole Newfoundland fishery,
+had no certain inevitable tendency to increase the British shipping;
+unless, in the second place, he can prove that those trades were, or
+might be, by law or indulgence, carried on in foreign vessels; and
+unless, thirdly, he can demonstrate that the premium of insurance on
+British ships was rising as the war continued. He can prove not one of
+these points. I will show him a fact more that is mortal to his
+assertions. It is the state of our shipping in 1762. The author had his
+reasons for stopping short at the preceding year. It would have
+appeared, had he proceeded farther, that our tonnage was in a course of
+uniform augmentation, owing to the freight derived from our foreign
+conquests, and to the perfect security of our navigation from our clear
+and decided superiority at sea. This, I say, would have appeared from
+the state of the two years:--
+
+  1761. British       527,557 tons.
+  1762. Ditto         559,537 tons.
+  1761. Foreign       180,102 tons.
+  1762. Ditto         129,502 tons.
+
+The two last years of the peace were in no degree equal to these. Much
+of the navigation of 1763 was also owing to the war; this is manifest
+from the large part of it employed in the carriage from the ceded
+islands, with which the communication still continued open. No such
+circumstances of glory and advantage ever attended upon a war. Too happy
+will be our lot, if we should again be forced into a war, to behold
+anything that shall resemble them; and if we were not then the better
+for them, it is net in the ordinary course of God's providence to mend
+our condition.
+
+In vain does the author declaim on the high premiums given for the loans
+during the war. His long note swelled with calculations on that subject
+(even supposing the most inaccurate of all calculations to be just)
+would be entirety thrown away, did it not serve to raise a wonderful
+opinion of his financial skill in those who are not less surprised than
+edified, when, with a solemn face and mysterious air, they are told that
+two and two make four. For what else do we learn from this note? That
+the more expense is incurred by a nation, the more money will be
+required to defray it; that in proportion to the continuance of that
+expense, will be the continuance of borrowing; that the increase of
+borrowing and the increase of debt will go hand in hand; and lastly,
+that the more money you want, the harder it will be to get it; and that
+the scarcity of the commodity will enhance the price. Who ever doubted
+the truth, or the insignificance, of these propositions? what do they
+prove? that war is expensive, and peace desirable. They contain nothing
+more than a commonplace against war; the easiest of all topics. To bring
+them home to his purpose, he ought to have shown that our enemies had
+money upon better terms; which he has not shown, neither can he. I shall
+speak more fully to this point in another place. He ought to have shown
+that the money they raised, upon whatever terms, had procured them a
+more lucrative return. He knows that our expenditure purchased commerce
+and conquest: theirs acquired nothing but defeat and bankruptcy.
+
+Thus the author has laid down his ideas on the subject of war. Next
+follow those he entertains on that of peace. The treaty of Paris upon
+the whole has his approbation. Indeed, if his account of the war be
+just, he might have spared himself all further trouble. The rest is
+drawn on as an inevitable conclusion.[49] If the House of Bourbon had
+the advantage, she must give the law; and the peace, though it were much
+worse than it is, had still been a good one. But as the world is yet
+_deluded_ on the state of that war, other arguments are necessary; and
+the author has in my opinion very ill supplied them. He tells of many
+things we have got, and of which he has made out a kind of bill. This
+matter may be brought within a very narrow compass, if we come to
+consider the requisites of a good peace under some plain distinct heads.
+I apprehend they may be reduced to these: 1. Stability; 2.
+Indemnification; 3. Alliance.
+
+As to the first, the author more than obscurely hints in several places,
+that he thinks the peace not likely to last. However, he does furnish a
+security; a security, in any light, I fear, but insufficient; on his
+hypothesis, surely a very odd one. "By stipulating for the entire
+possession of the Continent (says he) the restored French islands are
+become in some measure dependent on the British empire; and the good
+faith of France in observing the treaty guaranteed by the value at which
+she estimates their possession."[50] This author soon grows weary of his
+principles. They seldom last him for two pages together. When the
+advantages of the war were to be depreciated, then the loss of the
+ultramarine colonies lightened the expenses of France, facilitated her
+remittances, and therefore _her colonists put them into our hands_.
+According to this author's system, the actual possession of those
+colonies ought to give us little or no advantage in the negotiation for
+peace; and yet the chance of possessing them on a future occasion gives
+a perfect security for the preservation of that peace.[51] The conquest
+of the Havannah, if it did not serve Spain, rather distressed England,
+says our author.[52] But the molestation which her galleons may suffer
+from our station in Pensacola gives us advantages, for which we were not
+allowed to credit the nation for the Havannah itself; a place surely
+full as well situated for every external purpose as Pensacola, and of
+more internal benefit than ten thousand Pensacolas.
+
+The author sets very little by conquests;[53] I suppose it is because he
+makes them so very lightly. On this subject he speaks with the greatest
+certainty imaginable. We have, according to him, nothing to do, but to
+go and take possession, whenever we think proper, of the French and
+Spanish settlements. It were better that he had examined a little what
+advantage the peace gave us towards the invasion of these colonies,
+which we did not possess before the peace. It would not have been amiss
+if he had consulted the public experience, and our commanders,
+concerning the absolute certainty of those conquests on which he is
+pleased to found our security. And if, after all, he should have
+discovered them to be so very sure, and so very easy, he might at least,
+to preserve consistency, have looked a few pages back, and (no
+unpleasing thing to him) listened to himself, where he says, "that the
+most successful enterprise could not compensate to the nation for the
+waste of its people, by carrying on war in unhealthy climates."[54] A
+position which he repeats again, p. 9. So that, according to himself,
+his security is not worth the suit; according to fact, he has only a
+chance, God knows what a chance, of getting at it; and therefore,
+according to reason, the giving up the most valuable of all possessions,
+in hopes to conquer them back, under any advantage of situation, is the
+most ridiculous security that ever was imagined for the peace of a
+nation. It is true his friends did not give up Canada; they could not
+give up everything; let us make the most of it. We have Canada, we know
+its value. We have not the French any longer to fight in North America;
+and from this circumstance we derive considerable advantages. But here
+let me rest a little. The author touches upon a string which sounds
+under his fingers but a tremulous and melancholy note. North America was
+once indeed a great strength to this nation, in opportunity of ports, in
+ships, in provisions, in men. We found her a sound, an active, a
+vigorous member of the empire. I hope, by wise management, she will
+again become so. But one of our capital present misfortunes is her
+discontent and disobedience. To which of the author's favorites this
+discontent is owing, we all know but too sufficiently. It would be a
+dismal event, if this foundation of his security, and indeed of all our
+public strength, should, in reality, become our weakness; and if all the
+powers of this empire, which ought to fall with a compacted weight upon
+the head of our enemies, should be dissipated and distracted by a
+jealous vigilance, or by hostile attempts upon one another. Ten Canadas
+cannot restore that security for the peace, and for everything valuable
+to this country, which we have lost along with the affection and the
+obedience of our colonies. He is the wise minister, he is the true
+friend to Britain, who shall be able to restore it.
+
+To return to the security for the peace. The author tells us, that the
+original great purposes of the war were more than accomplished by the
+treaty. Surely he has experience and reading enough to know, that, in
+the course of a war, events may happen, that render its original very
+far from being its principal purpose. This original may dwindle by
+circumstances, so as to become not a purpose of the second or even the
+third magnitude. I trust this is so obvious that it will not be
+necessary to put cases for its illustration. In that war, as soon as
+Spain entered into the quarrel, the security of North America was no
+longer the sole nor the foremost object. The _Family Compact_ had been I
+know not how long before in agitation. But then it was that we saw
+produced into daylight and action the most odious and most formidable of
+all the conspiracies against the liberties of Europe that ever has been
+framed. The war with Spain was the first fruits of that league; and a
+security against that league ought to have been the fundamental point of
+a pacification with the powers who compose it. We had materials in our
+hands to have constructed that security in such a manner as never to be
+shaken. But how did the virtuous and able men of our author labor for
+this great end? They took no one step towards it. On the contrary they
+countenanced, and, indeed, as far as it depended on them, recognized it
+in all its parts; for our plenipotentiary treated with those who acted
+for the two crowns, as if they had been different ministers of the same
+monarch. The Spanish minister received his instructions, not from
+Madrid, but from Versailles.
+
+This was not hid from our ministers at home; and the discovery ought to
+have alarmed them, if the good of their country had been the object of
+their anxiety. They could not but have seen that the whole Spanish
+monarchy was melted down into the cabinet of Versailles. But they
+thought this circumstance an advantage; as it enabled them to go through
+with their work the more expeditiously. Expedition was everything to
+them; because France might happen during a protracted negotiation to
+discover the great imposition of our victories.
+
+In the same spirit they negotiated the terms of the peace. If it were
+thought advisable not to take any positive security from Spain, the most
+obvious principles of policy dictated that the burden of the cessions
+ought to fall upon France; and that everything which was of grace and
+favor should be given to Spain. Spain could not, on her part, have
+executed a capital article in the family compact, which obliged her to
+compensate the losses of France. At least she could not do it in
+America; for she was expressly precluded by the treaty of Utrecht from
+ceding any territory or giving any advantage in trade to that power.
+What did our ministers? They took from Spain the territory of Florida,
+an object of no value except to show our dispositions to be quite equal
+at least towards both powers; and they enabled France to compensate
+Spain by the gift of Louisiana: loading us with all the harshness,
+leaving the act of kindness with France, and opening thereby a door to
+the fulfilling of this the most consolidating article of the family
+compact. Accordingly that dangerous league, thus abetted and authorized
+by the English ministry without an attempt to invalidate it in any way,
+or in any of its parts, exists to this hour; and has grown stronger and
+stronger every hour of its existence.
+
+As to the second component of a good peace, _compensation_, I have but
+little trouble; the author has said nothing upon that head. He has
+nothing to say. After a war of such expense, this ought to have been a
+capital consideration. But on what he has been so prudently silent, I
+think it is right to speak plainly. All our new acquisitions together,
+at this time, scarce afford matter of revenue, either at home or abroad,
+sufficient to defray the expense of their establishments; not one
+shilling towards the reduction of our debt. Guadaloupe or Martinico
+alone would have given us material aid; much in the way of duties, much
+in the way of trade and navigation. A good ministry would have
+considered how a renewal of the _Assiento_ might have been obtained. We
+had as much right to ask it at the treaty of Paris as at the treaty of
+Utrecht. We had incomparably more in our hands to purchase it. Floods of
+treasure would have poured into this kingdom from such a source; and,
+under proper management, no small part of it would have taken a public
+direction, and have fructified an exhausted exchequer.
+
+If this gentleman's hero of finance, instead of flying from a treaty,
+which, though he now defends, he could not approve, and would not
+oppose; if he, instead of shifting into an office, which removed him
+from the manufacture of the treaty, had, by his credit with the then
+great director, acquired for us these, or any of these, objects, the
+possession of Guadaloupe or Martinico, or the renewal of the _Assiento_,
+he might have held his head high in his country; because he would have
+performed real service; ten thousand times more real service, than all
+the economy of which this writer is perpetually talking, or all the
+little tricks of finance which the expertest juggler of the treasury can
+practise, could amount to in a thousand years. But the occasion is lost;
+the time is gone, perhaps forever.
+
+As to the third requisite, _alliance_, there too the author is silent.
+What strength of that kind did they acquire? They got no one new ally;
+they stript the enemy of not a single old one. They disgusted (how
+justly, or unjustly, matters not) every ally we had; and from that time
+to this we stand friendless in Europe. But of this naked condition of
+their country I know some people are not ashamed. They have their system
+of politics; our ancestors grew great by another. In this manner these
+virtuous men concluded the peace; and their practice is only consonant
+to their theory.
+
+Many things more might be observed on this curious head of our author's
+speculations. But, taking leave of what the writer says in his serious
+part, if he be serious in any part, I shall only just point out a piece
+of his pleasantry. No man, I believe, ever denied that the time for
+making peace is that in which the best terms maybe obtained. But what
+that time is, together with the use that has been made of it, we are to
+judge by seeing whether terms adequate to our advantages, and to our
+necessities, have been actually obtained. Here is the pinch of the
+question, to which the author ought to have set his shoulders in
+earnest. Instead of doing this, he slips out of the harness by a jest;
+and sneeringly tells us, that, to determine this point, we must know the
+secrets of the French and Spanish cabinets[55], and that Parliament was
+pleased to approve the treaty of peace without calling for the
+correspondence concerning it. How just this sarcasm on that Parliament
+may be, I say not; but how becoming in the author, I leave it to his
+friends to determine.
+
+Having thus gone through the questions of war and peace, the author
+proceeds to state our debt, and the interest which it carried, at the
+time of the treaty, with the unfairness and inaccuracy, however, which
+distinguish all his assertions, and all his calculations. To detect
+every fallacy, and rectify every mistake, would be endless. It will be
+enough to point out a few of them, in order to show how unsafe it is to
+place anything like an implicit trust in such a writer.
+
+The interest of debt contracted during the war is stated by the author
+at 2,614,892_l._ The particulars appear in pp. 14 and 15. Among them is
+stated the unfunded debt, 9,975,017_l._, supposed to carry interest on a
+medium at 3 per cent, which amounts to 299,250_l._ We are referred to
+the "Considerations on the Trade and Finances of the Kingdom," p. 22,
+for the particulars of that unfunded debt. Turn to the work, and to the
+place referred to by the author himself, if you have a mind to see a
+clear detection of a capital fallacy of this article in his account. You
+will there see that this unfunded debt consists of the nine following
+articles: the remaining subsidy to the Duke of Brunswick; the remaining
+_dedommagement_ to the Landgrave of Hesse; the German demands; the army
+and ordnance extraordinaries; the deficiencies of grants and funds; Mr.
+Touchet's claim; the debts due to Nova Scotia and Barbadoes; exchequer
+bills; and navy debt. The extreme fallacy of this state cannot escape
+any reader who will be at the pains to compare the interest money, with
+which he affirms us to have been loaded, in his "State of the Nation,"
+with the items of the principal debt to which he refers in his
+"Considerations." The reader must observe, that of this long list of
+nine articles, only two, the exchequer bills, and part of the navy debt,
+carried any interest at all. The first amounted to 1,800,000_l._; and
+this undoubtedly carried interest. The whole navy debt indeed amounted
+to 4,576,915_l._; but of this only a _part_ carried interest. The author
+of the "Considerations," &c. labors to prove this very point in p. 18;
+and Mr. G. has always defended himself upon the same ground, for the
+insufficient provision he made for the discharge of that debt. The
+reader may see their own authority for it.[56]
+
+Mr. G. did in fact provide no more than 2,150,000_l._ for the discharge
+of these bills in two years. It is much to be wished that these
+gentlemen would lay their heads together, that they would consider well
+this matter, and agree upon something. For when the scanty provision
+made for the unfunded debt is to be vindicated, then we are told it is a
+very _small part_ of that debt which carries interest. But when the
+public is to be represented in a miserable condition, and the
+consequences of the late war to be laid before us in dreadful colors,
+then we are to be told that the unfunded debt is within a trifle of ten
+millions, and so large a portion of it carries interest that we must not
+compute less than 3 per cent upon the _whole_.
+
+In the year 1764, Parliament voted 650,000_l._ towards the discharge of
+the navy debt. This sum could not be applied solely to the discharge of
+bills carrying interest; because part of the debt due on seamen's wages
+must have been paid, and some bills carried no interest at all.
+Notwithstanding this, we find by an account in the journals of the House
+of Commons, in the following session, that the navy debt carrying
+interest was, on the 31st of December, 1764, no more than 1,687,442_l._
+I am sure therefore that I admit too much when I admit the navy debt
+carrying interest, after the creation of the navy annuities in the year
+1763, to have been 2,200,000_l._ Add the exchequer bills; and the whole
+unfunded debt carrying interest will be four millions instead of ten;
+and the annual interest paid for it at 4 per cent will be 160,000_l._
+instead of 299,250_l._ An error of no small magnitude, and which could
+not have been owing to inadvertency.
+
+The misrepresentation of the increase of the peace establishment is
+still more extraordinary than that of the interest of the unfunded debt.
+The increase is great, undoubtedly. However, the author finds no fault
+with it, and urges it only as a matter of argument to support the
+strange chimerical proposals he is to make us in the close of his work
+for the increase of revenue. The greater he made that establishment, the
+stronger he expected to stand in argument: but, whatever he expected or
+proposed, he should have stated the matter fairly. He tells us that this
+establishment is nearly 1,500,000_l._ more than it was in 1752, 1753,
+and other years of peace. This he has done in his usual manner, by
+assertion, without troubling himself either with proof or probability.
+For he has not given us any state of the peace establishment in the
+years 1753 and 1754, the time which he means to compare with the
+present. As I am obliged to force him to that precision, from which he
+always flies as from his most dangerous enemy, I have been at the
+trouble to search the journals in the period between the two last wars:
+and I find that the peace establishment, consisting of the navy, the
+ordnance, and the several incidental expenses, amounted to 2,346,594_l._
+Now is this writer wild enough to imagine, that the peace establishment
+of 1764 and the subsequent years, made up from the same articles, is
+3,800,000_l._ and upwards? His assertion however goes to this. But I
+must take the liberty of correcting him in this gross mistake, and from
+an authority he cannot refuse, from his favorite work, and standing
+authority, the "Considerations." We find there, p. 43[57], the peace
+establishment of 1764 and 1765 stated at 3,609,700_l._ This is near two
+hundred thousand pounds less than that given in "The State of the
+Nation." But even from this, in order to render the articles which
+compose the peace establishment in the two periods correspondent (for
+otherwise they cannot be compared), we must deduct first, his articles
+of the deficiency of land and malt, which amount to 300,000_l._ They
+certainly are no part of the establishment; nor are they included in
+that sum, which I have stated above for the establishment in the time of
+the former peace. If they were proper to be stated at all, they ought to
+be stated in both accounts. We must also deduct the deficiencies of
+funds, 202,400_l._ These deficiencies are the difference between the
+interest charged on the public for moneys borrowed, and the produce of
+the taxes laid for the discharge of that interest. Annual provision is
+indeed to be made for them by Parliament: but in the inquiry before us,
+which is only what charge is brought on the public by interest paid or
+to be paid for money borrowed, the utmost that the author should do, is
+to bring into the account the full interest for all that money. This he
+has done in p. 15; and he repeats it in p. 18, the very page I am now
+examining, 2,614,892_l._ To comprehend afterwards in the peace
+establishment the deficiency of the fund created for payment of that
+interest, would be laying twice to the account of the war part of the
+same sum. Suppose ten millions borrowed at 4 per cent, and the fund for
+payment of the interest to produce no more than 200,000_l._ The whole
+annual charge on the public is 400,000_l._ It can be no more. But to
+charge the interest in one part of the account, and then the deficiency
+in the other, would be charging 600,000_l._ The deficiency of funds must
+therefore be also deducted from the peace establishment in the
+"Considerations"; and then the peace establishment in that author will
+be reduced to the same articles with those included in the sum I have
+already mentioned for the peace establishment before the last war, in
+the year 1753, and 1754.
+
+  Peace establishment in the "Considerations"     L3,609,700
+  Deduct deficiency of land and malt    L300,000
+  Ditto of funds                         202,400
+                                        --------     502,400
+                                                   ---------
+                                                   3,107,300
+  Peace establishment before the late war, in
+    which no deficiencies of land and malt, or
+    funds are included                             2,346,594
+                                                   ---------
+
+                           Difference               L760,706
+
+
+Being about half the sum which our author has been pleased to suppose
+it.
+
+Let us put the whole together. The author states,--
+
+  Difference of peace establishment before and
+    since the war                                 L1,500,000
+  Interest of Debt contracted by the war           2,614,892
+                                                   ---------
+                                                   4,114,892
+  The _real_ difference in the peace
+    establishment is                    L760,706
+
+  The actual interest of the
+    funded debt, including
+    that charged on the
+    sinking fund            L2,315,642
+
+  The actual interest of
+    unfunded debt at most      160,000
+                             ---------
+  Total interest of debt
+    contracted by the war              2,475,642
+                                       ---------
+  Increase of peace establishment, and interest of
+    new debt                                       3,236,348
+                                                   ---------
+  Error of the author                               L878,544
+
+
+It is true, the extraordinaries of the army have been found considerably
+greater than the author of the "Considerations" was pleased to foretell
+they would be. The author of "The Present State" avails himself of that
+increase, and, finding it suit his purpose, sets the whole down in the
+peace establishment of the present times. If this is allowed him, his
+error perhaps may be reduced to 700,000_l._ But I doubt the author of
+the "Considerations" will not thank him for admitting 200,000_l._ and
+upwards, as the peace establishment for extraordinaries, when that
+author has so much labored to confine them within 35,000_l._
+
+These are some of the capital fallacies of the author. To break the
+thread of my discourse as little as possible, I have thrown into the
+margin many instances, though God knows far from the whole of his
+inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and want of common care. I think myself
+obliged to take some notice of them, in order to take off from any
+authority this writer may have; and to put an end to the deference which
+careless men are apt to pay to one who boldly arrays his accounts, and
+marshals his figures, in perfect confidence that their correctness will
+never be examined.[58]
+
+However, for argument, I am content to take his state of it. The debt
+was and is enormous. The war was expensive. The best economy had not
+perhaps been used. But I must observe, that war and economy are things
+not easily reconciled; and that the attempt of leaning towards parsimony
+in such a state may be the worst management, and in the end the worst
+economy in the world, hazarding the total loss of all the charge
+incurred, and of everything along with it.
+
+But _cui bono_ all this detail of our debt? Has the author given a
+single light towards any material reduction of it? Not a glimmering. We
+shall see in its place what sort of thing he proposes. But before he
+commences his operations, in order to scare the public imagination, he
+raises by art magic a thick mist before our eyes, through which glare
+the most ghastly and horrible phantoms:
+
+    Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necesse est.
+    Non radii solis, neque lucida tela diei
+    Discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque.
+
+Let us therefore calmly, if we can for the fright into which he has put
+us, appreciate those dreadful and deformed gorgons and hydras, which
+inhabit the joyless regions of an imagination fruitful in nothing but
+the production of monsters.
+
+His whole representation, is founded on the supposed operation of our
+debt, upon our manufactures, and our trade. To this cause he attributes
+a certain supposed dearness of the necessaries of life, which must
+compel our manufacturers to emigrate to cheaper countries, particularly
+to France, and with them the manufacture. Thence consumption declining,
+and with it revenue. He will not permit the real balance of our trade to
+be estimated so high as 2,500,000_l._; and the interest of the debt to
+foreigners carries off 1,500,000_l._ of that balance. France is not in
+the same condition. Then follow his wailings and lamentings, which he
+renews over and over, according to his custom--a declining trade, and
+decreasing specie--on the point of becoming tributary to France--of
+losing Ireland--of having the colonies torn away from us.
+
+The first thing upon which I shall observe is,[60] what he takes for
+granted as the clearest of all propositions, the emigration of our
+manufacturers to France. I undertake to say that this assertion is
+totally groundless, and I challenge the author to bring any sort of
+proof of it. If living is cheaper in France, that is, to be had for less
+specie, wages are proportionably lower. No manufacturer, let the living
+be what it will, was ever known to fly for refuge to low wages. Money is
+the first thing which attracts him. Accordingly our wages attract
+artificers from all parts of the world. From two shillings to one
+shilling, is a fall in all men's imaginations, which no calculation upon
+a difference in the price of the necessaries of life can compensate. But
+it will be hard to prove that a French artificer is better fed, clothed,
+lodged, and warmed, than one in England; for that is the sense, and the
+only sense, of living cheaper. If, in truth and fact, our artificer
+fares as well in all these respects as one in the same state in
+France,--how stands the matter in point of opinion and prejudice, the
+springs by which people in that class of life are chiefly actuated? The
+idea of our common people concerning French living is dreadful;
+altogether as dreadful as our author's can possibly be of the state of
+his own country; a way of thinking that will hardly ever prevail on them
+to desert to France.[61]
+
+But, leaving the author's speculations, the fact is, that they have not
+deserted; and of course the manufacture cannot be departed, or
+departing, with them. I am not indeed able to get at all the details of
+our manufactures; though, I think, I have taken full as much pains for
+that purpose as our author. Some I have by me; and they do not hitherto,
+thank God, support the author's complaint, unless a vast increase of the
+quantity of goods manufactured be a proof of losing the manufacture. On
+a view of the registers in the West Riding of Yorkshire, for three years
+before the war, and for the three last, it appears, that the quantities
+of cloths entered were as follows:
+
+                            Pieces broad.    Pieces narrow.
+                  1752           60,724           72,442
+                  1753           55,358           71,618
+                  1754           56,070           72,394
+                                -------          -------
+                                172,152          216,454
+
+                            Pieces broad.    Pieces narrow.
+                  1765           54,660           77,419
+                  1766           72,575           78,893
+                  1767          102,428           78,819
+                                -------          -------
+  3 years, ending 1767          229,663          235,131
+  3 years, ending 1754          172,152          216,464
+                                -------          -------
+                   Increase      57,511           18,677
+
+
+In this manner this capital branch of manufacture has increased, under
+the increase of taxes; and this not from a declining, but from a greatly
+flourishing period of commerce. I may say the same on the best authority
+of the fabric of thin goods at Halifax; of the bays at Rochdale; and of
+that infinite variety of admirable manufactures that grow and extend
+every year among the spirited, inventive, and enterprising traders of
+Manchester.
+
+A trade sometimes seems to perish when it only assumes a different form.
+Thus the coarsest woollens were formerly exported in great quantities to
+Russia. The Russians now supply themselves with these goods. But the
+export thither of finer cloths has increased in proportion as the other
+has declined. Possibly some parts of the kingdom may have felt something
+like a languor in business. Objects like trade and manufacture, which
+the very attempt to confine would certainly destroy, frequently change
+their place; and thereby, far from being lost, are often highly
+improved. Thus some manufactures have decayed in the west and south,
+which have made new and more vigorous shoots when transplanted into the
+north. And here it is impossible to pass by, though the author has said
+nothing upon it, the vast addition to the mass of British trade, which
+has been made by the improvement of Scotland. What does he think of the
+commerce of the city of Glasgow, and of the manufactures of Paisley and
+all the adjacent country? Has this anything like the deadly aspect and
+_facies Hippocratica_ which the false diagnostic of our state physician
+has given to our trade in general? Has he not heard of the iron-works of
+such magnitude even in their cradle which are set up on the Carron, and
+which at the same time have drawn nothing from Sheffield, Birmingham, or
+Wolverhampton?
+
+This might perhaps be enough to show the entire falsity of the complaint
+concerning the decline of our manufactures. But every step we advance,
+this matter clears up more; and the false terrors of the author are
+dissipated, and fade away as the light appears. "The trade and
+manufactures of this country (says he) going to ruin, and a diminution
+of our _revenue from consumption_ must attend the loss of so many seamen
+and artificers." Nothing more true than the general observation: nothing
+more false than its application to our circumstances. Let the revenue on
+consumption speak for itself:--
+
+  Average of net excise, since the new duties,
+    three years ending 1767                       L4,590,734
+  Ditto before the new duties, three years
+    ending 1759                                    3,261,694
+                                                   ---------
+                    Average increase              L1,329,040
+
+Here is no diminution. Here is, on the contrary, an immense increase.
+This is owing, I shall be told, to the new duties, which may increase
+the total bulk, but at the same time may make some diminution of the
+produce of the old. Were this the fact, it would be far from supporting
+the author's complaint. It might have proved that the burden lay rather
+too heavy; but it would never prove that the _revenue from, consumption_
+was impaired, which it was his business to do. But what is the real
+fact? Let us take, as the best instance for the purpose, the produce of
+the old hereditary and temporary excise granted in the reign of Charles
+the Second, whose object is that of most of the new impositions, from
+two averages, each of eight years.
+
+  Average, first period, eight years, ending 1754   L525,317
+  Ditto, second period, eight years, ending 1767     538,542
+                                                     -------
+                             Increase               L613,225
+
+I have taken these averages as including in each a war and a peace
+period; the first before the imposition of the new duties, the other
+since those impositions; and such is the state of the oldest branch of
+the revenue from consumption. Besides the acquisition of so much new,
+this article, to speak of no other, has rather increased under the
+pressure of all those additional taxes to which the author is pleased to
+attribute its destruction. But as the author has made his grand effort
+against those moderate, judicious, and necessary levies, which support
+all the dignity, the credit, and the power of his country, the reader
+will excuse a little further detail on this subject; that we may see how
+little oppressive those taxes are on the shoulders of the public, with
+which he labors so earnestly to load its imagination. For this purpose
+we take the state of that specific article upon which the two capital
+burdens of the war leaned the most immediately, by the additional
+duties on malt, and upon beer.
+
+                                                  Barrels.
+  Average of strong beer, brewed in eight years
+    before the additional malt and beer duties   3,895,059
+
+  Average of strong beer, eight years since
+    the duties                                   4,060,726
+                                                 ---------
+              Increase in the last period          165,667
+
+Here is the effect of two such daring taxes as 3_d._ by the bushel
+additional on malt, and 3_s._ by the barrel additional on beer. Two
+impositions laid without remission one upon the neck of the other; and
+laid upon an object which before had been immensely loaded. They did not
+in the least impair the consumption: it has grown under them. It appears
+that, upon the whole, the people did not feel so much inconvenience from
+the new duties as to oblige them to take refuge in the private brewery.
+Quite the contrary happened in both these respects in the reign of King
+William; and it happened from much slighter impositions.[62] No people
+can long consume a commodity for which they are not well able to pay. An
+enlightened reader laughs at the inconsistent chimera of our author, of
+a people universally luxurious, and at the same time oppressed with
+taxes and declining in trade. For my part, I cannot look on these duties
+as the author does. He sees nothing but the burden. I can perceive the
+burden as well as he; but I cannot avoid contemplating also the strength
+that supports it. From thence I draw the most comfortable assurances of
+the future vigor, and the ample resources, of this great, misrepresented
+country; and can never prevail on myself to make complaints which have
+no cause, in order to raise hopes which have no foundation.
+
+When a representation is built on truth and nature, one member supports
+the other, and mutual lights are given and received from every part.
+Thus, as our manufacturers have not deserted, nor the manufacture left
+us, nor the consumption declined, nor the revenue sunk; so neither has
+trade, which is at once the result, measure, and cause of the whole, in
+the least decayed, as our author has thought proper sometimes to affirm,
+constantly to suppose, as if it were the most indisputable of all
+propositions. The reader will see below the comparative state of our
+trade[63] in three of the best years before our increase of debt and
+taxes, and with it the three last years since the author's date of our
+ruin.
+
+In the last three years the whole of our exports was between 44 and 45
+millions. In the three years preceding the war, it was no more than from
+35 to 36 millions. The average balance of the former period was
+3,706,000_l._; of the latter, something above four millions. It is true,
+that whilst the impressions of the author's destructive war continued,
+our trade was greater than it is at present. One of the necessary
+consequences of the peace was, that France must gradually recover a part
+of those markets of which she had been originally in possession.
+However, after all these deductions, still the gross trade in the worst
+year of the present is better than in the best year of any former period
+of peace. A very great part of our taxes, if not the greatest, has been
+imposed since the beginning of the century. On the author's principles,
+this continual increase of taxes must have ruined our trade, or at least
+entirely checked its growth. But I have a manuscript of Davenant, which
+contains an abstract of our trade for the years 1703 and 1704; by which
+it appears that the whole export from England did not then exceed
+6,552,019_l._ It is now considerably more than double that amount. Yet
+England was then a rich and flourishing nation.
+
+The author endeavors to derogate from the balance in our favor as it
+stands on the entries, and reduces it from four millions, as it there
+appears, to no more than 2,500,000_l._ His observation on the looseness
+and inaccuracy of the export entries is just; and that the error is
+always an error of excess, I readily admit. But because, as usual, he
+has wholly omitted some very material facts, his conclusion is as
+erroneous as the entries he complains of.
+
+On this point of the custom-house entries I shall make a few
+observations. 1st. The inaccuracy of these entries can extend only to
+FREE GOODS, that is, to such British products and manufactures, as are
+exported without drawback and without bounty; which do not in general
+amount to more than two thirds at the very utmost of the whole export
+even of _our home products_. The valuable articles of corn, malt,
+leather, hops, beer, and many others, do not come under this objection
+of inaccuracy. The article of CERTIFICATE GOODS re-exported, a vast
+branch of our commerce, admits of no error, (except some smaller frauds
+which cannot be estimated,) as they have all a drawback of duty, and the
+exporter must therefore correctly specify their quantity and kind. The
+author therefore is not warranted from the known error in some of the
+entries, to make a general defalcation from the whole balance in our
+favor. This error cannot affect more than half, if so much, of the
+export article. 2dly. In the account made up at the Inspector-General's
+office, they estimate only the original cost of British products as they
+are here purchased; and on foreign goods, only the prices in the country
+from whence they are sent. This was the method established by Mr.
+Davenant; and as far as it goes, it certainly is a good one. But the
+profits of the merchant at home, and of our factories abroad, are not
+taken into the account; which profit on such an immense quantity of
+goods exported and re-exported cannot fail of being very great: five per
+cent, upon the whole, I should think, a very moderate allowance. 3dly.
+It does not comprehend the advantage arising from the employment of
+600,000 tons of shipping, which must be paid by the foreign consumer,
+and which, in many bulky articles of commerce, is equal to the value of
+the commodity. This can scarcely be rated at less than a million
+annually. 4thly. The whole import from Ireland and America, and from the
+West Indies, is set against us in the ordinary way of striking a balance
+of imports and exports; whereas the import and export are both our own.
+This is just as ridiculous, as to put against the general balance of the
+nation, how much more goods Cheshire receives from London than London
+from Cheshire. The whole revolves and circulates through this kingdom,
+and is, so far as regards our profit, in the nature of home trade, as
+much as if the several countries of America and Ireland were all pieced
+to Cornwall. The course of exchange with all these places is fully
+sufficient to demonstrate that this kingdom has the whole advantage of
+their commerce. When the final profit upon a whole system of trade rests
+and centres in a certain place, a balance struck in that place merely on
+the mutual sale of commodities is quite fallacious. 5thly. The
+custom-house entries furnish a most defective, and, indeed, ridiculous
+idea of the most valuable branch of trade we have in the world,--that
+with Newfoundland. Observe what you export thither; a little spirits,
+provision, fishing-lines, and fishing-hooks. Is this _export_ the true
+idea of the Newfoundland trade in the light of a beneficial branch of
+commerce? Nothing less. Examine our imports from thence; it seems upon
+this vulgar idea of exports and imports, to turn the balance against
+you. But your exports to Newfoundland are your own goods. Your import is
+your own food; as much your own, as that you raise with your ploughs out
+of your own soil; and not your loss, but your gain; your riches, not
+your poverty. But so fallacious is this way of judging, that neither the
+export nor import, nor both together, supply any idea approaching to
+adequate of that branch of business. The vessels in that trade go
+straight from Newfoundland to the foreign market; and the sale there,
+not the import here, is the measure of its value. That trade, which is
+one of your greatest and best, is hardly so much as seen in the
+custom-house entries; and it is not of less annual value to this nation
+than 400,000_l._ 6thly. The quality of your imports must be considered
+as well as the quantity. To state the whole of the foreign import _as
+loss_, is exceedingly absurd. All the iron, hemp, flax, cotton, Spanish
+wool, raw silk, woollen and linen-yarn, which we import, are by no means
+to be considered as the matter of a merely luxurious consumption; which
+is the idea too generally and loosely annexed to our import article.
+These above mentioned are materials of industry, not of luxury, which
+are wrought up here, in many instances, to ten times, and more, of their
+original value. Even where they are not subservient to our exports, they
+still add to our internal wealth, which consists in the stock of useful
+commodities, as much as in gold and silver. In looking over the specific
+articles of our export and import, I have often been astonished to see
+for how small a part of the supply of our consumption, either luxurious
+or convenient, we are indebted to nations properly foreign to us.
+
+These considerations are entirely passed over by the author; they have
+been but too much neglected by most who have speculated on this subject.
+But they ought never to be omitted by those who mean to come to anything
+like the true state of the British trade. They compensate, and they more
+than compensate, everything which the author can cut off with any
+appearance of reason for the over-entry of British goods; and they
+restore to us that balance of four millions, which the author has
+thought proper on such a very poor and limited comprehension of the
+object to reduce to 2,500,000_l._
+
+In general this author is so circumstanced, that to support his theory
+he is obliged to assume his facts: and then, if you allow his facts,
+they will not support his conclusions. What if all he says of the state
+of this balance were true? did not the same objections always lie to
+custom-house entries? do they defalcate more from the entries of 1766
+than from those of 1754? If they prove us ruined, we were always ruined.
+Some ravens have always indeed croaked out this kind of song. They have
+a malignant delight in presaging mischief, when they are not employed in
+doing it: they are miserable and disappointed at every instance of the
+public prosperity. They overlook us like the malevolent being of the
+poet:--
+
+             Tritonida conspicit arcem
+    Ingeniis, opibusque, et festa pace virentem;
+    Vixque tenet lacrymas quia nil lacrymabile cernit.
+
+
+It is in this spirit that some have looked upon those accidents that
+cast an occasional damp upon trade. Their imaginations entail these
+accidents upon us in perpetuity. We have had some bad harvests. This
+must very disadvantageously affect the balance of trade, and the
+navigation of a people, so large a part of whose commerce is in grain.
+But, in knowing the cause, we are morally certain, that, according to
+the course of events, it cannot long subsist. In the three last years,
+we have exported scarcely any grain; in good years, that export hath
+been worth twelve hundred thousand pounds and more; in the two last
+years, far from exporting, we have been obliged to import to the amount
+perhaps of our former exportation. So that in this article the balance
+must be 2,000,000_l._ against us; that is, one million in the ceasing of
+gain, the other in the increase of expenditure. But none of the author's
+promises or projects could have prevented this misfortune; and, thank
+God, we do not want him or them to relieve us from it; although, if his
+friends should now come into power, I doubt not but they will be ready
+to take credit for any increase of trade or excise, that may arise from
+the happy circumstance of a good harvest.
+
+This connects with his loud laments and melancholy prognostications
+concerning the high price of the necessaries of life and the products of
+labor. With all his others, I deny this fact; and I again call upon him
+to prove it. Take average and not accident, the grand and first
+necessary of life is cheap in this country; and that too as weighed, not
+against labor, which is its true counterpoise, but against money. Does
+he call the price of wheat at this day, between 32 and 40 shillings per
+quarter in London dear?[64] He must know that fuel (an object of the
+highest order in the necessaries of life, and of the first necessity in
+almost every kind of manufacture) is in many of our provinces cheaper
+than in any part of the globe. Meat is on the whole not excessively
+dear, whatever its price may be at particular times and from particular
+accidents. If it has had anything like an uniform rise, this enhancement
+may easily be proved not to be owing to the increase of taxes, but to
+uniform increase of consumption and of money. Diminish the latter, and
+meat in your markets will be sufficiently cheap in account, but much
+dearer in effect: because fewer will be in a condition to buy. Thus your
+apparent plenty will be real indigence. At present, even under temporary
+disadvantages, the use of flesh is greater here than anywhere else; it
+is continued without any interruption of Lents or meagre days; it is
+sustained and growing even with the increase of our taxes. But some have
+the art of converting even the signs of national prosperity into
+symptoms of decay and ruin. And our author, who so loudly disclaims
+popularity, never fails to lay hold of the most vulgar popular
+prejudices and humors, in hopes to captivate the crowd. Even those
+peevish dispositions which grow out of some transitory suffering, those
+passing clouds which float in our changeable atmosphere, are by him
+industriously figured into frightful shapes, in order first to terrify,
+and then to govern the populace.
+
+It was not enough for the author's purpose to give this false and
+discouraging picture of the state of his own country. It did not fully
+answer his end, to exaggerate her burdens, to depreciate her successes,
+and to vilify her character. Nothing had been done, unless the
+situation of France were exalted in proportion as that of England had
+been abased. The reader will excuse the citation I make at length from
+his book; he outdoes himself upon this occasion. His confidence is
+indeed unparalleled, and altogether of the heroic cast:--
+
+"If our rival nations were in the same circumstances with ourselves, the
+_augmentation of our taxes would produce no ill consequences_: if we
+were obliged to raise our prices, they must, from the same causes, do
+the like, and could take no advantage by underselling and under-working
+us. But the alarming consideration to Great Britain is, _that France is
+not in the same condition_. Her distresses, during the war, were great,
+but they were immediate; her want of credit, as has been said, compelled
+her to impoverish her people, by raising the greatest part of her
+supplies within the year; _but the burdens she imposed on them were, in
+a great measure, temporary, and must be greatly diminished by a few
+years of peace_. She could procure no considerable loans, therefore she
+has mortgaged no _such oppressive taxes as those Great Britain has
+imposed in perpetuity for payment of interest_. Peace must, therefore,
+soon re-establish her commerce and manufactures, especially as the
+comparative _lightness of taxes_, and the cheapness of living, in that
+country, must make France an asylum for British manufacturers and
+artificers." On this the author rests the merit of his whole system. And
+on this point I will join issue with him. If France is not at least in
+the _same condition_, even in that very condition which the author
+falsely represents to be ours,--if the very reverse of his proposition
+be not true, then I will admit his state of the nation to be just; and
+all his inferences from that state to be logical and conclusive. It is
+not surprising, that the author should hazard our opinion of his
+veracity. That is a virtue on which great statesmen do not perhaps pique
+themselves so much; but it is somewhat extraordinary, that he should
+stake on a very poor calculation of chances, all credit for care, for
+accuracy, and for knowledge of the subject of which he treats. He is
+rash and inaccurate, because he thinks he writes to a public ignorant
+and inattentive. But he may find himself in that respect, as in many
+others, greatly mistaken. In order to contrast the light and vigorous
+condition of France with that of England, weak, and sinking under her
+burdens, he states, in his tenth page, that France had raised
+50,314,378_l._ sterling _by taxes within the several years_ from the
+year 1756 to 1762 both inclusive. All Englishman must stand aghast at
+such a representation: To find France able to _raise within the year_
+sums little inferior to all that we were able even to _borrow_ on
+interest with all the resources of the greatest and most established
+credit in the world! Europe was filled with astonishment when they saw
+England _borrow_ in one year twelve millions. It was thought, and very
+justly, no small proof of national strength and financial skill, to find
+a fund for the payment of the interest upon this sum. The interest of
+this, computed with the one per cent annuities, amounted only to
+600,000_l._ a year. This, I say, was thought a surprising effort even of
+credit. But this author talks, as of a thing not worth proving, and but
+just worth observing, that France in one year raised sixteen times that
+sum without borrowing, and continued to raise sums not far from equal to
+it for several years together. Suppose some Jacob Henriques had
+proposed, in the year 1762, to prevent a perpetual charge on the nation
+by raising ten millions within the year: he would have been considered,
+not as a harsh financier, who laid a heavy hand on the public; but as a
+poor visionary, who had run mad on supplies and taxes. They who know
+that the whole land-tax of England, at 4_s._ in the pound, raises but
+two millions, will not easily apprehend that any such sums as the author
+has conjured up can be raised even in the most opulent nations. France
+owed a large debt, and was encumbered with heavy establishments, before
+that war. The author does not formally deny that she borrowed something
+in every year of its continuance; let him produce the funds for this
+astonishing annual addition to all her vast preceding taxes; an
+addition, equal to the whole excise, customs, land and malt-taxes of
+England taken together.
+
+But what must be the reader's astonishment, perhaps his indignation, if
+he should find that this great financier has fallen into the most
+unaccountable of all errors, no less an error than that of mistaking the
+_identical sums borrowed by France upon interest, for supplies raised
+within the year_! Can it be conceived that any man, only entered into
+the first rudiments of finance, should make so egregious a blunder;
+should write it, should print it; should carry it to a second edition;
+should take it not collaterally and incidentally, but lay it down as the
+corner-stone of his whole system, in such an important point as the
+comparative states of France and England? But it will be said, that it
+was his misfortune to be ill-informed. Not at all. A man of any loose
+general knowledge, and of the most ordinary sagacity, never could have
+been misinformed in so gross a manner; because he would have immediately
+rejected so wild and extravagant an account.
+
+The fact is this: the credit of France, bad as it might have been, did
+enable her (not to raise within the year) but to _borrow_ the very sums
+the author mentions; that is to say, 1,106,916,261 livres, making, in
+the author's computation, 50,314,378_l._ The credit of France was low;
+but it was not annihilated. She did not derive, as our author chooses to
+assert, any advantages from the debility of her credit. Its consequence
+was the natural one: she borrowed; but she borrowed upon bad terms,
+indeed on the most exorbitant usury.
+
+In speaking of a foreign revenue, the very pretence to accuracy would be
+the most inaccurate thing in the world. Neither the author nor I can
+with certainty authenticate the information we communicate to the
+public, nor in an affair of eternal fluctuation arrive at perfect
+exactness. All we can do, and this we may be expected to do, is to avoid
+gross errors and blunders of a capital nature. We cannot order the
+proper officer to lay the accounts before the House. But the reader must
+judge on the probability of the accounts we lay before him. The author
+speaks of France as raising her supplies for war by taxes within the
+year; and of her debt, as a thing scarcely worthy of notice. I affirm
+that she borrowed large sums in every year; and has thereby accumulated
+an immense debt. This debt continued after the war infinitely to
+embarrass her affairs; and to find some means for its reduction was then
+and has ever since been the first object of her policy. But she has so
+little succeeded in all her efforts, that the _perpetual_ debt of
+France is at this hour little short of 100,000,000_l._ sterling; and she
+stands charged with at least 40,000,000 of English pounds on life-rents
+and tontines. The annuities paid at this day at the Hotel de Ville of
+Paris, which are by no means her sole payments of that nature, amount to
+139,000,000 of livres, that is to 6,318,000_l._; besides _billets au
+porteur_, and various detached and unfunded debts, to a great amount,
+and which bear an interest.
+
+At the end of the war, the interest payable on her debt amounted to
+upwards of seven millions sterling. M. de la Verdy, the last hope of the
+French finances, was called in, to aid in the reduction of an interest,
+so light to our author, so intolerably heavy upon those who are to pay
+it. After many unsuccessful efforts towards reconciling arbitrary
+reduction with public credit, he was obliged to go the plain high road
+of power, and to impose a tax of 10 per cent upon a very great part of
+the capital debt of that kingdom; and this measure of present ease, to
+the destruction of future credit, produced about 500,000_l._ a year,
+which was carried to their _Caisse d'amortissement_ or sinking fund. But
+so unfaithfully and unsteadily has this and all the other articles which
+compose that fund been applied to their purposes, that they have given
+the state but very little even of present relief, since it is known to
+the whole world that she is behindhand on every one of her
+establishments. Since the year 1763, there has been no operation of any
+consequence on the French finances; and in this enviable condition is
+France at present with regard to her debt.
+
+Everybody knows that the principal of the debt is but a name; the
+interest is the only thing which can distress a nation. Take this idea,
+which will not be disputed, and compare the interest paid by England
+with that paid by France:
+
+  Interest paid by France, funded and
+    unfunded, for perpetuity or on lives,
+    after the tax of 10 per cent                L6,500,000
+  Interest paid by England, as stated by
+    the author, p. 27                            4,600,000
+                                                ----------
+  Interest paid by France exceeds that
+    paid by England                             L1,900,000
+
+
+The author cannot complain, that I state the interest paid by England as
+too low. He takes it himself as the extremest term. Nobody who knows
+anything of the French finances will affirm that I state the interest
+paid by that kingdom too high. It might be easily proved to amount to a
+great deal more: even this is near two millions above what is paid by
+England.
+
+There are three standards to judge of the good condition of a nation
+with regard to its finances. 1st, The relief of the people. 2nd, The
+equality of supplies to establishments. 3rd, The state of public credit.
+Try France on all these standards.
+
+Although our author very liberally administers relief to the people of
+France, its government has not been altogether so gracious. Since the
+peace, she has taken off but a single _vingtieme_, or shilling in the
+pound, and some small matter in the capitation. But, if the government
+has relieved them in one point, it has only burdened them the more
+heavily in another. The _Taille_,[65] that grievous and destructive
+imposition, which all their financiers lament, without being able to
+remove or to replace, has been augmented no less than six millions of
+livres, or 270,000 pounds English. A further augmentation of this or
+other duties is now talked of; and it is certainly necessary to their
+affairs: so exceedingly remote from either truth or verisimilitude is
+the author's amazing assertion, _that the burdens of France in the war
+were in a great measure temporary, and must be greatly diminished by a
+few years of peace_.
+
+In the next place, if the people of France are not lightened of taxes,
+so neither is the state disburdened of charges. I speak from very good
+information, that the annual income of that state is at this day thirty
+millions of livres, or 1,350,000_l._ sterling, short of a provision for
+their ordinary peace establishment; so far are they from the attempt or
+even hope to discharge any part of the capital of their enormous debt.
+Indeed, under such extreme straitness and distraction labors the whole
+body of their finances, so far does their charge outrun their supply in
+every particular, that no man, I believe, who has considered their
+affairs with any degree of attention or information, but must hourly
+look for some extraordinary convulsion in that whole system: the effect
+of which on France, and even on all Europe, it is difficult to
+conjecture.
+
+In the third point of view, their credit. Let the reader cast his eye on
+a table of the price of French funds, as they stood a few weeks ago,
+compared with the state of some of our English stocks, even in their
+present low condition:--
+
+        French.                          British.
+  5 per cents              63      Bank stock, 5-1/2   159
+  4 per cent (not taxed)   57      4 per cent cons.    100
+  3 per cent    "   "      49      3 per cent cons.     88
+
+
+This state of the funds of France and England is sufficient to convince
+even prejudice and obstinacy, that if France and England are not in the
+same condition (as the author affirms they are not) the difference is
+infinitely to the disadvantage of France. This depreciation of their
+funds has not much the air of a nation lightening burdens and
+discharging debts.
+
+Such is the true comparative state of the two kingdoms in those capital
+points of view. Now as to the nature of the taxes which provide for this
+debt, as well as for their ordinary establishments, the author has
+thought proper to affirm that "they are comparatively light"; that "she
+has mortgaged no such oppressive taxes as ours"; his effrontery on this
+head is intolerable. Does the author recollect a single tax in England
+to which something parallel in nature, and as heavy in burden, does not
+exist in France; does he not know that the lands of the noblesse are
+still under the load of the greater part of the old feudal charges, from
+which the gentry of England have been relieved for upwards of a hundred
+years, and which were in kind, as well as burden, much worse than our
+modern land-tax? Besides that all the gentry of France serve in the army
+on very slender pay, and to the utter ruin of their fortunes, all those
+who are not noble have their lands heavily taxed. Does he not know that
+wine, brandy, soap, candles, leather, saltpetre, gunpowder, are taxed in
+France? Has he not heard that government in France has made a monopoly
+of that great article of _salt?_ that they compel the people to take a
+certain quantity of it, and at a certain rate, both rate and quantity
+fixed at the arbitrary pleasure of the imposer?[66] that they pay in
+France the _Taille_, an arbitrary imposition on presumed property? that
+a tax is laid in fact and name, on the same arbitrary standard, upon the
+acquisitions of their _industry_? and that in France a heavy
+_capitation-tax_ is also paid, from the highest to the very poorest sort
+of people? Have we taxes of such weight, or anything at all of the
+compulsion, in the article of _salt_? do we pay any _taillage_, any
+_faculty-tax_, any _industry-tax?_ do we pay any _capitation-tax_
+whatsoever? I believe the people of London would fall into an agony to
+hear of such taxes proposed upon them as are paid at Paris. There is not
+a single article of provision for man or beast which enters that great
+city, and is not excised; corn, hay, meal, butcher's-meat, fish, fowls,
+everything. I do not here mean to censure the policy of taxes laid on
+the consumption of great luxurious cities. I only state the fact. We
+should be with difficulty brought to hear of a tax of 50_s._ upon every
+ox sold in Smithfield. Yet this tax is paid in Paris. Wine, the lower
+sort of wine, little better than English small beer, pays 2_d._ a
+bottle.
+
+We, indeed, tax our beer; but the imposition on small beer is very far
+from heavy. In no part of England are eatables of any kind the object of
+taxation. In almost every other country in Europe they are excised, more
+or less. I have by me the state of the revenues of many of the principal
+nations on the Continent; and, on comparing them with ours, I think I am
+fairly warranted to assert, that England is the most lightly taxed of
+any of the great states of Europe. They, whose unnatural and sullen joy
+arises from a contemplation of the distresses of their country, will
+revolt at this position. But if I am called upon, I will prove it beyond
+all possibility of dispute; even though this proof should deprive these
+gentlemen of the singular satisfaction of considering their country as
+undone; and though the best civil government, the best constituted, and
+the best managed revenue that ever the world beheld, should be
+thoroughly vindicated from their perpetual clamors and complaints. As to
+our neighbor and rival France, in addition to what I have here
+suggested, I say, and when the author chooses formally to deny, I shall
+formally prove it, that her subjects pay more than England, on a
+computation of the wealth of both countries; that her taxes are more
+injudiciously and more oppressively imposed; more vexatiously collected;
+come in a smaller proportion to the royal coffers, and are less applied
+by far to the public service. I am not one of those who choose to take
+the author's word for this happy and flourishing condition of the French
+finances, rather than attend to the changes, the violent pushes and the
+despair of all her own financiers. Does he choose to be referred for the
+easy and happy condition of the subject in France to the remonstrances
+of their own parliaments, written with such an eloquence, feeling, and
+energy, as I have not seen exceeded in any other writings? The author
+may say, their complaints are exaggerated, and the effects of faction. I
+answer, that they are the representations of numerous, grave, and most
+respectable bodies of men, upon the affairs of their own country. But,
+allowing that discontent and faction may pervert the judgment of such
+venerable bodies in France, we have as good a right to suppose that the
+same causes may full as probably have produced from a private, however
+respectable person, that frightful, and, I trust I have shown,
+groundless representation of our own affairs in England.
+
+The author is so conscious of the dangerous effects of that
+representation, that he thinks it necessary, and very necessary it is,
+to guard against them. He assures us, "that he has not made that display
+of the difficulties of his country, to expose her counsels to the
+ridicule of other states, or to provoke a vanquished enemy to insult
+her; nor to excite the people's rage against their governors, or sink
+them into a despondency of the public welfare." I readily admit this
+apology for his intentions. God forbid I should think any man capable of
+entertaining so execrable and senseless a design. The true cause of his
+drawing so shocking a picture is no more than this; and it ought rather
+to claim our pity than excite our indignation; he finds himself out of
+power; and this condition is intolerable to him. The same sun which
+gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine
+upon disappointed ambition. It is something that rays out of darkness,
+and inspires nothing but gloom and melancholy. Men in this deplorable
+state of mind find a comfort in spreading the contagion of their spleen.
+They find an advantage too; for it is a general, popular error, to
+imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious
+for its welfare. If such persons can answer the ends of relief and
+profit to themselves, they are apt to be careless enough about either
+the means or the consequences.
+
+Whatever this complainant's motives may be, the effects can by no
+possibility be other than those which he so strongly, and I hope truly,
+disclaims all intention of producing. To verify this, the reader has
+only to consider how dreadful a picture he has drawn in his 32nd page,
+of the state of this kingdom; such a picture as, I believe, has hardly
+been applicable, without some exaggeration, to the most degenerate and
+undone commonwealth that ever existed. Let this view of things be
+compared with the prospect of a remedy which he proposes in the page
+directly opposite, and the subsequent. I believe no man living could
+have imagined it possible, except for the sake of burlesquing a subject,
+to propose remedies so ridiculously disproportionate to the evil, so
+full of uncertainty in their operation, and depending for their success
+in every step upon the happy event of so many new, dangerous, and
+visionary projects. It is not amiss, that he has thought proper to give
+the public some little notice of what they may expect from his friends,
+when our affairs shall be committed to their management. Let us see how
+the accounts of disease and remedy are balanced in his "State of the
+Nation." In the first place, on the side of evils, he states, "an
+impoverished and heavily-burdened public. A declining trade and
+decreasing specie. The power of the crown never so much extended over
+the great; but the great without influence over the lower sort.
+Parliament losing its reverence with the people. The voice of the
+multitude set up against the sense of the legislature; a people
+luxurious and licentious, impatient of rule, and despising all
+authority. Government relaxed in every sinew, and a corrupt selfish
+spirit pervading the whole. An opinion of many, that the form of
+government is not worth contending for. No attachment in the bulk of
+the people towards the constitution. No reverence for the customs of our
+ancestors. No attachment but to private interest, nor any zeal but for
+selfish gratifications. Trade and manufactures going to ruin. Great
+Britain in danger of becoming tributary to France, and the descent of
+the crown dependent on her pleasure. Ireland, in case of a war, to
+become a prey to France; and Great Britain, unable to recover Ireland,
+cede it by treaty," (the author never can think of a treaty without
+making cessions,) "in order to purchase peace for herself. The colonies
+left exposed to the ravages of a domestic, or the conquest of a foreign
+enemy."--Gloomy enough, God knows. The author well observes,[67] _that a
+mind not totally devoid of feeling cannot look upon such a prospect
+without horror; and an heart capable of humanity must be unable to hear
+its description_. He ought to have added, that no man of common
+discretion ought to have exhibited it to the public, if it were true; or
+of common honesty, if it were false.
+
+But now for the comfort; the day-star which is to arise in our hearts;
+the author's grand scheme for totally reversing this dismal state of
+things, and making us[68] "happy at home and respected abroad,
+formidable in war and flourishing in peace."
+
+In this great work he proceeds with a facility equally astonishing and
+pleasing. Never was financier less embarrassed by the burden of
+establishments, or with the difficulty of finding ways and means. If an
+establishment is troublesome to him, he lops off at a stroke just as
+much of it as he chooses. He mows down, without giving quarter, or
+assigning reason, army, navy, ordnance, ordinary, extraordinaries;
+nothing can stand before him. Then, when he comes to provide, Amalthea's
+horn is in his hands; and he pours out with an inexhaustible bounty,
+taxes, duties, loans, and revenues, without uneasiness to himself, or
+burden to the public. Insomuch that, when we consider the abundance of
+his resources, we cannot avoid being surprised at his extraordinary
+attention to savings. But it is all the exuberance of his goodness.
+
+This book has so much of a certain tone of power, that one would be
+almost tempted to think it written by some person who had been high in
+office. A man is generally rendered somewhat a worse reasoner for having
+been a minister. In private, the assent of listening and obsequious
+friends; in public, the venal cry and prepared vote of a passive senate,
+confirm him in habits of begging the question with impunity, and
+asserting without thinking himself obliged to prove. Had it not been for
+some such habits, the author could never have expected that we should
+take his estimate for a peace establishment solely on his word.
+
+This estimate which he gives,[69] is the great groundwork of his plan
+for the national redemption; and it ought to be well and firmly laid, or
+what must become of the superstructure? One would have thought the
+natural method in a plan of reformation would be, to take the present
+existing estimates as they stand; and then to show what may be
+practicably and safely defalcated from them. This would, I say, be the
+natural course; and what would be expected from a man of business. But
+this author takes a very different method. For the ground of his
+speculation of a present peace establishment, he resorts to a former
+speculation of the same kind, which was in the mind of the minister of
+the year 1764. Indeed it never existed anywhere else. "The plan,"[70]
+says he, with his usual ease, "has been already formed, and the outline
+drawn, by the administration of 1764. I shall attempt to fill up the
+void and obliterated parts, and trace its operation. The standing
+expense of the present (his projected) peace establishment, _improved by
+the experience of the two last years, may be thus estimated_"; and he
+estimates it at 3,468,161_l._
+
+Here too it would be natural to expect some reasons for condemning the
+subsequent actual establishments, which have so much transgressed the
+limits of his plan of 1764, as well as some arguments in favor of his
+new project; which has in some articles exceeded, in others fallen
+short, but on the whole is much below his old one. Hardly a word on any
+of these points, the only points however that are in the least
+essential; for unless you assign reasons for the increase or diminution
+of the several articles of public charge, the playing at establishments
+and estimates is an amusement of no higher order, and of much less
+ingenuity, than _Questions and commands_, or _What is my thought like_?
+To bring more distinctly under the reader's view this author's strange
+method of proceeding, I will lay before him the three schemes; viz. the
+idea of the ministers in 1764, the actual estimates of the two last
+years as given by the author himself, and lastly the new project of his
+political millennium:--
+
+  Plan of establishment for 1764, as by
+    "Considerations," p. 43              [71]   L3,609,700
+  Medium of 1767 and 1768, as by
+    "State of the Nation," p. 29 and 30          3,919,375
+  Present peace establishment, as by the
+    project in "State of the Nation," p. 33      3,468,161
+
+
+It is not from anything our author has anywhere said, that you are
+enabled to find the ground, much less the justification, of the immense
+difference between these several systems; you must compare them
+yourself, article by article; no very pleasing employment, by the way,
+to compare the agreement or disagreement of two chimeras. I now only
+speak of the comparison of his own two projects. As to the latter of
+them, it differs from the former, by having some of the articles
+diminished, and others increased.[72] I find the chief article of
+reduction arises from the smaller deficiency of land and malt, and of
+the annuity funds, which he brings down to 295,561_l._ in his new
+estimate, from 502,400_l._ which he had allowed for those articles in
+the "Considerations." With this _reduction_, owing, as it must be,
+merely to a smaller deficiency of funds, he has nothing at all to do. It
+can be no work and no merit of his. But with regard to the _increase_,
+the matter is very different. It is all his own; the public is loaded
+(for anything we can see to the contrary) entirely _gratis_. The chief
+articles of the increase are on the navy,[73] and on the army and
+ordnance extraordinaries; the navy being estimated in his "State of the
+Nation" 50,000_l._ a year more, and the army and ordnance
+extraordinaries 40,000_l._ more, than he had thought proper to allow for
+them in that estimate in his "Considerations," which he makes the
+foundation of his present project. He has given no sort of reason,
+stated no sort of necessity, for this additional allowance, either in
+the one article or the other. What is still stronger, he admits that his
+allowance for the army and ordnance extras is too great, and expressly
+refers you to the "Considerations";[74] where, far from giving
+75,000_l._ a year to that service, as the "State of the Nation" has
+done, the author apprehends his own scanty provision of 35,000_l._ to be
+by far too considerable, and thinks it may well admit of further
+reductions.[75] Thus, according to his own principles, this great
+economist falls into a vicious prodigality; and is as far in his
+estimate from a consistency with his own principles as with the real
+nature of the services.
+
+Still, however, his present establishment differs from its archetype of
+1764, by being, though raised in particular parts, upon the whole, about
+141,000_l._ smaller. It is improved, he tells us, by the experience of
+the two last years. One would have concluded that the peace
+establishment of these two years had been less than that of 1764, in
+order to suggest to the author his improvements, which enabled him to
+reduce it. But how does that turn out?
+
+  Peace establishment[76] 1767 and 1768, medium       L3,919,375
+  Ditto, estimate in the "Considerations," for 1764    3,609,700
+                                                       ---------
+                            Difference                  L309,675
+
+A vast increase instead of diminution. The experience then of the two
+last years ought naturally to have given the idea of a heavier
+establishment; but this writer is able to diminish by increasing, and to
+draw the effects of subtraction from the operations of addition. By
+means of these new powers, he may certainly do whatever he pleases. He
+is indeed moderate enough in the use of them, and condescends to settle
+his establishments at 3,468,161_l._ a year.
+
+However, he has not yet done with it; he has further ideas of saving,
+and new resources of revenue. These additional savings are principally
+two: 1st, _It is to be hoped_,[77] says he, that the sum of 250,000_l._
+(which in the estimate he allows for the deficiency of land and malt)
+will be less by 37,924_l._[78]
+
+2nd, That the sum of 20,000_l._ allowed for the Foundling Hospital, and
+1800_l._ for American Surveys, will soon cease to be necessary, as the
+services will be completed.
+
+What follows, with regard to the resources,[79] is very well worthy the
+reader's attention. "Of this estimate," says he, "upwards of 300,000_l._
+will be for the plantation service; and that sum, _I hope_, the people
+of Ireland and the colonies _might be induced_ to take off Great
+Britain, and defray between them, in the proportion of 200,000_l._ by
+the colonies, and 100,000_l._ by Ireland."
+
+Such is the whole of this mighty scheme. Take his reduced estimate, and
+his further reductions, and his resources all together, and the result
+will be,--he will _certainly_ lower the provision made for the navy. He
+will cut off largely (God knows what or how) from the army and ordnance
+extraordinaries. He may be _expected_ to cut off more. He _hopes_ that
+the deficiencies on land and malt will be less than usual; and he
+_hopes_ that America and Ireland might be _induced_ to take off
+300,000_l._ of our annual charges.
+
+If any of these Hopes, Mights, Insinuations, Expectations, and
+Inducements, should fail him, there will be a formidable gaping breach
+in his whole project. If all of them should fail, he has left the nation
+without a glimmering of hope in this thick night of terrors which he has
+thought fit to spread about us. If every one of them, which, attended
+with success, would signify anything to our revenue, can have no effect
+but to add to our distractions and dangers, we shall be if possible in a
+still worse condition from his projects of cure, than he represents us
+from our original disorders.
+
+Before we examine into the consequences of these schemes, and the
+probability of these savings, let us suppose them all real and all safe,
+and then see what it is they amount to, and how he reasons on them:--
+
+  Deficiency on land and malt, less by             L37,000
+  Foundling Hospital                                20,000
+  American Surveys                                   1,800
+                                                   -------
+                                                   L58,800
+
+This is the amount of the only articles of saving he specifies: and yet
+he chooses to assert,[81] "that we may venture on the credit of them to
+reduce the standing expenses of the estimate (from 3,468,161_l._) to
+3,300,000_l._"; that is, for a saving of 58,000_l._ he is not ashamed
+to take credit for a defalcation from his own ideal establishment in a
+sum of no less than 168,161_l._! Suppose even that we were to take up
+the estimate of the "Considerations" (which is however abandoned in the
+"State of the Nation"), and reduce his 75,000_l._ extraordinaries to the
+original 35,000_l._, still all these savings joined together give us but
+98,800_l._; that is, near 70,000_l._ short of the credit he calls for,
+and for which he has neither given any reason, nor furnished any data
+whatsoever for others to reason upon.
+
+Such are his savings, as operating on his own project of a peace
+establishment. Let us now consider them as they affect the existing
+establishment and our actual services. He tells us, the sum allowed in
+his estimate for the navy is "69,321_l._ less than the grant for that
+service in 1767; but in that grant 30,000_l._ was included for the
+purchase of hemp, and a saving of about 25,000_l._ was made in that
+year." The author has got some secret in arithmetic. These two sums put
+together amount, in the ordinary way of computing, to 55,000_l._, and
+not to 69,321_l._ On what principle has he chosen to take credit for
+14,321_l._ more? To what this strange inaccuracy is owing, I cannot
+possibly comprehend; nor is it very material, where the logic is so bad,
+and the policy so erroneous, whether the arithmetic be just or
+otherwise. But in a scheme for making this nation "happy at home and
+respected abroad, formidable in war and flourishing in peace," it is
+surely a little unfortunate for us, that he has picked out the _Navy_,
+as the very first object of his economical experiments. Of all the
+public services, that of the navy is the one in which tampering may be
+of the greatest danger, which can worst be supplied upon an emergency,
+and of which any failure draws after it the longest and heaviest train
+of consequences. I am far from saying, that this or any service ought
+not to be conducted with economy. But I will never suffer the sacred
+name of economy to be bestowed upon arbitrary defalcation of charge. The
+author tells us himself, "that to suffer the navy to rot in harbor for
+want of repairs and marines, would be to invite destruction." It would
+be so. When the author talks therefore of savings on the navy estimate,
+it is incumbent on him to let us know, not what sums he will cut off,
+but what branch of that service he deems superfluous. Instead of putting
+us off with unmeaning generalities, he ought to have stated what naval
+force, what naval works, and what naval stores, with the lowest
+estimated expense, are necessary to keep our marine in a condition
+commensurate to its great ends. And this too not for the contracted and
+deceitful space of a single year, but for some reasonable term.
+Everybody knows that many charges cannot be in their nature regular or
+annual. In the year 1767 a stock of hemp, &c., was to be laid in; that
+charge intermits, but it does not end. Other charges of other kinds take
+their place. Great works are now carrying on at Portsmouth, but not of
+greater magnitude than utility; and they must be provided for. A year's
+estimate is therefore no just idea at all of a permanent peace
+establishment. Had the author opened this matter upon these plain
+principles, a judgment might have been formed, how far he had contrived
+to reconcile national defence with public economy. Till he has done it,
+those who had rather depend on any man's reason than the greatest man's
+authority, will not give him credit on this head, for the saving of a
+single shilling. As to those savings which are already made, or in
+course of being made, whether right or wrong, he has nothing at all to
+do with them; they can be no part of his project, considered as a plan
+of reformation. I greatly fear that the error has not lately been on the
+side of profusion.
+
+Another head is the saving on the army and ordnance extraordinaries,
+particularly in the American branch. What or how much reduction may be
+made, none of us, I believe, can with any fairness pretend to say; very
+little, I am convinced. The state of America is extremely unsettled;
+more troops have been sent thither; new dispositions have been made; and
+this augmentation of number, and change of disposition, has rarely, I
+believe, the effect of lessening the bill for extraordinaries, which, if
+not this year, yet in the next we must certainly feel. Care has not been
+wanting to introduce economy into that part of the service. The author's
+great friend has made, I admit, some regulations: his immediate
+successors have made more and better. This part will be handled more
+ably and more minutely at another time: but no one can cut down this
+bill of extraordinaries at his pleasure. The author has given us
+nothing, but his word, for any certain or considerable reduction; and
+this we ought to be the more cautious in taking, as he has promised
+great savings in his "Considerations," which he has not chosen to abide
+by in his "State of the Nation."
+
+On this head also of the American extraordinaries, he can take credit
+for nothing. As to his next, the lessening of the deficiency of the land
+and malt-tax, particularly of the malt-tax, any person the least
+conversant in that subject cannot avoid a smile. This deficiency arises
+from charge of collection, from anticipation, and from defective
+produce. What has the author said on the reduction of any head of this
+deficiency upon the land-tax? On these points he is absolutely silent.
+As to the deficiency on the malt-tax, which is chiefly owing to a
+defective produce, he has and can have nothing to propose. If this
+deficiency should he lessened by the increase of malting in any years
+more than in others, (as it is a greatly fluctuating object,) how much
+of this obligation shall we owe to this author's ministry? will it not
+be the case under any administration? must it not go to the general
+service of the year, in some way or other, let the finances be in whose
+hands they will? But why take credit for so extremely reduced a
+deficiency at all? I can tell him he has no rational ground for it in
+the produce of the year 1767; and I suspect will have full as little
+reason from the produce of the year 1768. That produce may indeed become
+greater, and the deficiency of course will be less. It may too be far
+otherwise. A fair and judicious financier will not, as this writer has
+done, for the sake of making out a specious account, select a favorable
+year or two, at remote periods, and ground his calculations on those. In
+1768 he will not take the deficiencies of 1753 and 1754 for his
+standard. Sober men have hitherto (and must continue this course, to
+preserve this character,) taken indifferently the mediums of the years
+immediately preceding. But a person who has a scheme from which he
+promises much to the public ought to be still more cautious; he should
+ground his speculation rather on the lowest mediums because all new
+schemes are known to be subject to some defect or failure not foreseen;
+and which therefore every prudent proposer will be ready to allow for,
+in order to lay his foundation as low and as solid as possible. Quite
+contrary is the practice of some politicians. They first propose
+savings, which they well know cannot be made, in order to get a
+reputation for economy. In due time they assume another, but a different
+method, by providing for the service they had before cut off or
+straitened, and which they can then very easily prove to be necessary.
+In the same spirit they raise magnificent ideas of revenue on funds
+which they know to be insufficient. Afterwards, who can blame them, if
+they do not satisfy the public desires? They are great artificers but
+they cannot work without materials.
+
+These are some of the little arts of great statesmen. To such we leave
+them, and follow where the author leads us, to his next resource, the
+Foundling Hospital. Whatever particular virtue there is in the mode of
+this saving, there seems to be nothing at all new, and indeed nothing
+wonderfully important in it. The sum annually voted for the support of
+the Foundling Hospital has been in a former Parliament limited to the
+establishment of the children then in the hospital. When they are
+apprenticed, this provision will cease. It will therefore fall in more
+or less at different times; and will at length cease entirely. But,
+until it does, we cannot reckon upon it as the saving on the
+establishment of any given year: nor can any one conceive how the author
+comes to mention this, any more than some other articles, as a part of a
+_new_ plan of economy which is to retrieve our affairs. This charge will
+indeed cease in its own time. But will no other succeed to it? Has he
+ever known the public free from some contingent charge, either for the
+just support of royal dignity or for national magnificence, or for
+public charity, or for public service? does he choose to flatter his
+readers that no such will ever return? or does he in good earnest
+declare, that let the reason, or necessity, be what they will, he is
+resolved not to provide for such services?
+
+Another resource of economy yet remains, for he gleans the field very
+closely,--1800_l._ for the American surveys. Why, what signifies a
+dispute about trifles? he shall have it. But while he is carrying it
+off, I shall just whisper in his ear, that neither the saving that is
+allowed, nor that which is doubted of, can at all belong to that future
+proposed administration, whose touch is to cure all our evils. Both the
+one and the other belong equally (as indeed all the rest do) to the
+present administration, to any administration; because they are the gift
+of time, and not the bounty of the exchequer.
+
+I have now done with all the minor, preparatory parts of the author's
+scheme, the several articles of saving which he proposes. At length
+comes the capital operation, his new resources. Three hundred thousand
+pounds a year from America and Ireland.--Alas! alas! if that too should
+fail us, what will become of this poor undone nation? The author, in a
+tone of great humility, _hopes_ they may be induced to pay it. Well, if
+that be all, we may hope so too: and for any light he is pleased to give
+us into the ground of this hope, and the ways and means of this
+inducement, here is a speedy end both of the question and the revenue.
+
+It is the constant custom of this author, in all his writings, to take
+it for granted, that he has given you a revenue, whenever he can point
+out to you where you may have money, if you can contrive how to get at
+it; and this seems to be the masterpiece of his financial ability. I
+think, however, in his way of proceeding, he has behaved rather like a
+harsh step-dame, than a kind nursing-mother to his country. Why stop at
+300,000_l._ If his state of things be at all founded, America and
+Ireland are much better able to pay 600,000_l._ than we are to satisfy
+ourselves with half that sum. However, let us forgive him this one
+instance of tenderness towards Ireland and the colonies.
+
+He spends a vast deal of time[82] in an endeavor to prove that Ireland
+is able to bear greater impositions. He is of opinion, that the poverty
+of the lower class of people there is, in a great measure, owing to _a
+want_ of judicious taxes; that a land-tax will enrich her tenants; that
+taxes are paid in England which are not paid there; that the colony
+trade is increased above 100,000_l._ since the peace; that she _ought_
+to have further indulgence in that trade; and ought to have further
+privileges in the woollen manufacture. From these premises, of what she
+has, what she has not, and what she ought to have, he infers that
+Ireland will contribute 100,000_l._ towards the extraordinaries of the
+American establishment.
+
+I shall make no objections whatsoever, logical or financial, to this
+reasoning: many occur; but they would lead me from my purpose, from
+which I do not intend to be diverted, because it seems to me of no small
+importance. It will be just enough to hint, what I dare say many readers
+have before observed, that when any man proposes new taxes in a country
+with which he is not personally conversant by residence or office, he
+ought to lay open its situation much more minutely and critically than
+this author has done, or than perhaps he is able to do. He ought not to
+content himself with saying that a single article of her trade is
+increased 100,000_l._ a year; he ought, if he argues from the increase
+of trade to the increase of taxes, to state the whole trade, and not one
+branch of trade only; he ought to enter fully into the state of its
+remittances, and the course of its exchange; he ought likewise to
+examine whether all its establishments are increased or diminished; and
+whether it incurs or discharges debts annually. But I pass over all
+this; and am content to ask a few plain questions.
+
+Does the author then seriously mean to propose in Parliament a land-tax,
+or any tax for 100,000_l._ a year upon Ireland? If he does, and if
+fatally, by his temerity and our weakness, he should succeed; then I say
+he will throw the whole empire from one end of it to the other into
+mortal convulsions. What is it that can satisfy the furious and
+perturbed mind of this man? is it not enough for him that such projects
+have alienated our colonies from the mother-country, and not to propose
+violently to tear our sister kingdom also from our side, and to convince
+every dependent part of the empire, that, when a little money is to be
+raised, we have no sort of regard to their ancient customs, their
+opinions, their circumstances, or their affections? He has however a
+_douceur_ for Ireland in his pocket; benefits in trade, by opening the
+woollen manufacture to that nation. A very right idea in my opinion; but
+not more strong in reason, than likely to be opposed by the most
+powerful and most violent of all local prejudices and popular passions.
+First, a fire is already kindled by his schemes of taxation in America;
+he then proposes one which will set all Ireland in a blaze; and his way
+of quenching both is by a plan which may kindle perhaps ten times a
+greater flame in Britain.
+
+Will the author pledge himself, previously to his proposal of such a
+tax, to carry this enlargement of the Irish trade? If he does not, then
+the tax will be certain; the benefit will be less than problematical. In
+this view, his compensation to Ireland vanishes into smoke; the tax, to
+their prejudices, will appear stark naked in the light of an act of
+arbitrary power and oppression. But, if he should propose the benefit
+and tax together, then the people of Ireland, a very high and spirited
+people, would think it the worst bargain in the world. They would look
+upon the one as wholly vitiated and poisoned by the other; and, if they
+could not be separated, would infallibly resist them both together. Here
+would be taxes, indeed, amounting to a handsome sum; 100,000_l._ very
+effectually voted, and passed through the best and most authentic forms;
+but how to be collected?--This is his perpetual manner. One of his
+projects depends for success upon another project, and this upon a
+third, all of them equally visionary. His finance is like the Indian
+philosophy; his earth is poised on the horns of a bull, his bull stands
+upon an elephant, his elephant is supported by a tortoise; and so on
+forever.
+
+As to his American 200,000_l._ a year, he is satisfied to repeat
+gravely, as he has done an hundred times before, that the Americans are
+able to pay it. Well, and what then? does he lay open any part of his
+plan how they may be compelled to pay it, without plunging ourselves
+into calamities that outweigh tenfold the proposed benefit? or does he
+show how they may be induced to submit to it quietly? or does he give
+any satisfaction concerning the mode of levying it; in commercial
+colonies, one of the most important and difficult of all considerations?
+Nothing like it. To the Stamp Act, whatever its excellences may be, I
+think he will not in reality recur, or even choose to assert that he
+means to do so, in case his minister should come again into power. If he
+does, I will predict that some of the fastest friends of that minister
+will desert him upon this point. As to port duties he has damned them
+all in the lump, by declaring them[83] "contrary to the first principles
+of colonization, and not less prejudicial to the interests of Great
+Britain than to those of the colonies." Surely this single observation
+of his ought to have taught him a little caution; he ought to have begun
+to doubt, whether there is not something in the nature of commercial
+colonies, which renders them an unfit object of taxation; when port
+duties, so large a fund of revenue in all countries, are by himself
+found, in this case, not only improper, but destructive. However, he has
+here pretty well narrowed the field of taxation. Stamp Act, hardly to be
+resumed. Port duties, mischievous. Excises, I believe, he will scarcely
+think worth the collection (if any revenue should be so) in America.
+Land-tax (notwithstanding his opinion of its immense use to agriculture)
+he will not directly propose, before he has thought again and again on
+the subject. Indeed he very readily recommends it for Ireland, and
+seems to think it not improper for America; because, he observes, they
+already raise most of their taxes internally, including this tax. A most
+curious reason, truly! because their lands are already heavily burdened,
+he thinks it right to burden them still further. But he will recollect,
+for surely he cannot be ignorant of it, that the lands of America are
+not, as in England, let at a rent certain in money, and therefore
+cannot, as here, be taxed at a certain pound rate. They value them in
+gross among themselves; and none but themselves in their several
+districts can value them. Without their hearty concurrence and
+co-operation, it is evident, we cannot advance a step in the assessing
+or collecting any land-tax. As to the taxes which in some places the
+Americans pay by the acre, they are merely duties of regulation; they
+are small; and to increase them, notwithstanding the secret virtues of a
+land-tax, would be the most effectual means of preventing that
+cultivation they are intended to promote. Besides, the whole country is
+heavily in arrear already for land-taxes and quit-rents. They have
+different methods of taxation in the different provinces, agreeable to
+their several local circumstances. In New England by far the greatest
+part of their revenue is raised by _faculty-taxes_ and _capitations_.
+Such is the method in many others. It is obvious that Parliament,
+unassisted by the colonies themselves, cannot take so much as a single
+step in this mode of taxation. Then what tax is it he will impose? Why,
+after all the boasting speeches and writings of his faction for these
+four years, after all the vain expectations which they have held out to
+a deluded public, this their great advocate, after twisting the subject
+every way, after writhing himself in every posture, after knocking at
+every door, is obliged fairly to abandon every mode of taxation
+whatsoever in America.[84] He thinks it the best method for Parliament
+to impose the sum, and reserve the account to itself, leaving the mode
+of taxation to the colonies. But how and in what proportion? what does
+the author say? O, not a single syllable on this the most material part
+of the whole question! Will he, in Parliament, undertake to settle the
+proportions of such payments from Nova Scotia to Nevis, in no fewer than
+six-and-twenty different countries, varying in almost every possible
+circumstance one from another? If he does, I tell him, he adjourns his
+revenue to a very long day. If he leaves it to themselves to settle
+these proportions, he adjourns it to doomsday.
+
+Then what does he get by this method on the side of acquiescence? will
+the people of America relish this course, of giving and granting and
+applying their money, the better because their assemblies are made
+commissioners of the taxes? This is far worse than all his former
+projects; for here, if the assemblies shall refuse, or delay, or be
+negligent, or fraudulent, in this new-imposed duty, we are wholly
+without remedy; and neither our custom-house officers, nor our troops,
+nor our armed ships can be of the least use in the collection. No idea
+can be more contemptible (I will not call it an oppressive one, the
+harshness is lost in the folly) than that of proposing to get any
+revenue from the Americans but by their freest and most cheerful
+consent. Most moneyed men know their own interest right well; and are as
+able as any financier, in the valuation of risks. Yet I think this
+financier will scarcely find that adventurer hardy enough, at any
+premium, to advance a shilling upon a vote of such taxes. Let him name
+the man, or set of men, that would do it. This is the only proof of the
+value of revenues; what would an interested man rate them at? His
+subscription would be at ninety-nine per cent discount the very first
+day of its opening. Here is our only national security from ruin; a
+security upon which no man in his senses would venture a shilling of his
+fortune. Yet he puts down those articles as gravely in his supply for
+the peace establishment, as if the money had been all fairly lodged in
+the exchequer.
+
+          American revenue                      L200,000
+          Ireland                                100,000
+
+Very handsome indeed! But if supply is to be got in such a manner,
+farewell the lucrative mystery of finance! If you are to be credited for
+savings, without showing how, why, or with what safety, they are to be
+made; and for revenues, without specifying on what articles, or by what
+means, or at what expense, they are to be collected; there is not a
+clerk in a public office who may not outbid this author, or his friend,
+for the department of chancellor of the exchequer; not an apprentice in
+the city, that will not strike out, with the same advantages, the same,
+or a much larger plan of supply.
+
+Here is the whole of what belongs to the author's scheme for saving us
+from impending destruction. Take it even in its most favorable point of
+view, as a thing within possibility; and imagine what must be the wisdom
+of this gentleman, or his opinion of ours, who could first think of
+representing this nation in such a state, as no friend can look upon but
+with horror, and scarcely an enemy without compassion, and afterwards
+of diverting himself with such inadequate, impracticable, puerile
+methods for our relief! If these had been the dreams of some unknown,
+unnamed, and nameless writer, they would excite no alarm; their weakness
+had been an antidote to their malignity. But as they are universally
+believed to be written by the hand, or, what amounts to the same thing,
+under the immediate direction, of a person who has been in the
+management of the highest affairs, and may soon be in the same
+situation, I think it is not to be reckoned amongst our greatest
+consolations, that the yet remaining power of this kingdom is to be
+employed in an attempt to realize notions that are at once so frivolous,
+and so full of danger. That consideration will justify me in dwelling a
+little longer on the difficulties of the nation, and the solutions of
+our author.
+
+I am then persuaded that he cannot be in the least alarmed about our
+situation, let his outcry be what he pleases. I will give him a reason
+for my opinion, which, I think, he cannot dispute. All that he bestows
+upon the nation, which it does not possess without him, and supposing it
+all sure money, amounts to no more than a sum of 300,000_l._ a year.
+This, he thinks, will do the business completely, and render us
+flourishing at home, and respectable abroad. If the option between glory
+and shame, if our salvation or destruction, depended on this sum, it is
+impossible that he should have been active, and made a merit of that
+activity, in taking off a shilling in the pound of the land-tax, which
+came up to his grand desideratum, and upwards of 100,000_l._ more. By
+this manoeuvre, he left our trade, navigation, and manufactures, on the
+verge of destruction, our finances in ruin, our credit expiring, Ireland
+on the point of being ceded to France, the colonies of being torn to
+pieces, the succession of the crown at the mercy of our great rival, and
+the kingdom itself on the very point of becoming tributary to that
+haughty power. All this for want of 300,000_l._; for I defy the reader
+to point out any other revenue, or any other precise and defined scheme
+of politics, which he assigns for our redemption.
+
+I know that two things may be said in his defence, as bad reasons are
+always at hand in an indifferent cause; that he was not sure the money
+would be applied as he thinks it ought to be, by the present ministers.
+I think as ill of them as he does to the full. They have done very near
+as much mischief as they can do, to a constitution so robust as this is.
+Nothing can make them more dangerous, but that, as they are already in
+general composed of his disciples and instruments, they may add to the
+public calamity of their own measures, the adoption of his projects. But
+be the ministers what they may, the author knows that they could not
+avoid applying this 450,000_l._ to the service of the establishment, as
+faithfully as he, or any other minister, could do. I say they could not
+avoid it, and have no merit at all for the application. But supposing
+that they should greatly mismanage this revenue. Here is a good deal of
+room for mistake and prodigality before you come to the edge of ruin.
+The difference between the amount of that real and his imaginary revenue
+is, 150,000_l._ a year at least; a tolerable sum for them to play with:
+this might compensate the difference between the author's economy and
+their profusion; and still, notwithstanding their vices and ignorance,
+the nation might he saved. The author ought also to recollect, that a
+good man would hardly deny, even to the worst of ministers, the means of
+doing their duty; especially in a crisis when our being depended on
+supplying them with some means or other. In such a case their penury of
+mind, in discovering resources, would make it rather the more necessary,
+not to strip such poor providers of the little stock they had in hand.
+
+Besides, here is another subject of distress, and a very serious one,
+which puts us again to a stand. The author may possibly not come into
+power (I only state the possibility): he may not always continue in it:
+and if the contrary to all this should fortunately for us happen, what
+insurance on his life can be made for a sum adequate to his loss? Then
+we are thus unluckily situated, that the _chance_ of an American and
+Irish revenue of 300,000_l._ to be managed by him, is to save us from
+ruin two or three years hence at best, to make us happy at home and
+glorious abroad; and the actual possession of 400,000_l._ English taxes
+cannot so much as protract our ruin without him. So we are staked on
+four chances; his power, its permanence, the success of his projects,
+and the duration of his life. Any one of these failing, we are gone.
+_Propria haec si dona fuissent!_ This is no unfair representation;
+ultimately all hangs on his life, because, in his account of every set
+of men that have held or supported administration, he finds neither
+virtue nor ability in any but himself. Indeed he pays (through their
+measures) some compliments to Lord Bute and Lord Despenser. But to the
+latter, this is, I suppose, but a civility to old acquaintance: to the
+former, a little stroke of politics. We may therefore fairly say, that
+our only hope is his life; and he has, to make it the more so, taken
+care to cut off any resource which we possessed independently of him.
+
+In the next place it may be said, to excuse any appearance of
+inconsistency between the author's actions and his declarations, that he
+thought it right to relieve the landed interest, and lay the burden
+where it ought to lie, on the colonies. What! to take off a revenue so
+necessary to our being, before anything whatsoever was acquired in the
+place of it? In prudence, he ought to have waited at least for the first
+quarter's receipt of the new anonymous American revenue, and Irish
+land-tax. Is there something so specific for our disorders in American,
+and something so poisonous in English money, that one is to heal, the
+other to destroy us? To say that the landed interest _could_ not
+continue to pay it for a year or two longer, is more than the author
+will attempt to prove. To say that they _would_ pay it no longer, is to
+treat the landed interest, in my opinion, very scurvily. To suppose that
+the gentry, clergy, and freeholders of England do not rate the commerce,
+the credit, the religion, the liberty, the independency of their
+country, and the succession of their crown, at a shilling in the pound
+land-tax! They never gave him reason to think so meanly of them. And, if
+I am rightly informed, when that measure was debated in Parliament, a
+very different reason was assigned by the author's great friend, as well
+as by others, for that reduction: one very different from the critical
+and almost desperate state of our finances. Some people then endeavored
+to prove, that the reduction might be made without detriment to the
+national credit, or the due support of a proper peace establishment;
+otherwise it is obvious that the reduction could not be defended in
+argument. So that this author cannot despair so much of the
+commonwealth, without this American and Irish revenue, as he pretends to
+do. If he does, the reader sees how handsomely he has provided for us,
+by voting away one revenue, and by giving us a pamphlet on the other.
+
+I do not mean to blame the relief which was then given by Parliament to
+the land. It was grounded on very weighty reasons. The administration
+contended only for its continuance for a year, in order to have the
+merit of taking off the shilling in the pound immediately before the
+elections; and thus to bribe the freeholders of England with their own
+money.
+
+It is true, the author, in his estimate of ways and means, takes credit
+for 400,000_l._ a year, _Indian Revenue_. But he will not very
+positively insist, that we should put this revenue to the account of his
+plans or his power; and for a very plain reason: we are already near two
+years in possession of it. By what means we came to that possession, is
+a pretty long story; however, I shall give nothing more than a short
+abstract of the proceeding, in order to see whether the author will take
+to himself any part in that measure.
+
+The fact is this; the East India Company had for a good while solicited
+the ministry for a negotiation, by which they proposed to pay largely
+for some advantages in their trade, and for the renewal of their
+charter. This had been the former method of transacting with that body.
+Government having only leased the monopoly for short terms, the Company
+has been obliged to resort to it frequently for renewals. These two
+parties had always negotiated (on the true principle of credit) not as
+government and subject, but as equal dealers, on the footing of mutual
+advantage. The public had derived great benefit from such dealing. But
+at that time new ideas prevailed. The ministry, instead of listening to
+the proposals of that Company, chose to set up a claim of the crown to
+their possessions. The original plan seems to have been, to get the
+House of Commons to compliment the crown with a sort of juridical
+declaration of a title to the Company's acquisitions in India; which the
+crown on its part, with the best air in the world, was to bestow upon
+the public. Then it would come to the turn of the House of Commons again
+to be liberal and grateful to the crown. The civil list debts were to be
+paid off; with perhaps a pretty augmentation of income. All this was to
+be done on the most public-spirited principles, and with a politeness
+and mutual interchange of good offices, that could not but have charmed.
+But what was best of all, these civilities were to be without a farthing
+of charge to either of the kind and obliging parties. The East India
+Company was to be covered with infamy and disgrace, and at the same time
+was to pay the whole bill.
+
+In consequence of this scheme, the terrors of a parliamentary inquiry
+were hung over them. A judicature was asserted in Parliament to try this
+question. But lest this judicial character should chance to inspire
+certain stubborn ideas of law and right, it was argued, that the
+judicature was arbitrary, and ought not to determine by the rules of
+law, but by their opinion of policy and expediency. Nothing exceeded the
+violence of some of the managers, except their impotence. They were
+bewildered by their passions, and by their want of knowledge or want of
+consideration of the subject. The more they advanced, the further they
+found themselves from their object.--All things ran into confusion. The
+ministers quarrelled among themselves. They disclaimed one another. They
+suspended violence, and shrunk from treaty. The inquiry was almost at
+its last gasp; when some active persons of the Company were given to
+understand that this hostile proceeding was only set up _in terrorem_;
+that government was far from an intention of seizing upon the
+possessions of the Company. Administration, they said, was sensible,
+that the idea was in every light full of absurdity; and that such a
+seizure was not more out of their power, than remote from their wishes;
+and therefore, if the Company would come in a liberal manner to the
+House, they certainly could not fail of putting a speedy end to this
+disagreeable business, and of opening a way to an advantageous treaty.
+
+On this hint the Company acted: they came at once to a resolution of
+getting rid of the difficulties which arose from the complication of
+their trade with their revenue; a step which despoiled them of their
+best defensive armor, and put them at once into the power of
+administration. They threw their whole stock of every kind, the revenue,
+the trade, and even their debt from government, into one fund, which
+they computed on the surest grounds would amount to 800,000_l._, with a
+large probable surplus for the payment of debt. Then they agreed to
+divide this sum in equal portions between themselves and the public,
+400,000_l._ to each. This gave to the proprietors of that fund an annual
+augmentation of no more than 80,000_l._ dividend. They ought to receive
+from government 120,000_l._ for the loan of their capital. So that, in
+fact, the whole, which on this plan they reserved to themselves, from
+their vast revenues, from their extensive trade, and in consideration of
+the great risks and mighty expenses which purchased these advantages,
+amounted to no more than 280,000_l._, whilst government was to receive,
+as I said, 400,000_l._
+
+This proposal was thought by themselves liberal indeed; and they
+expected the highest applauses for it. However, their reception was very
+different from their expectations. When they brought up their plan to
+the House of Commons, the offer, as it was natural, of 400,000_l._ was
+very well relished. But nothing could be more disgustful than the
+80,000_l._ which the Company had divided amongst themselves. A violent
+tempest of public indignation and fury rose against them. The heads of
+people turned. The Company was held well able to pay 400,000_l._ a year
+to government; but bankrupts, if they attempted to divide the fifth part
+of it among themselves. An _ex post facto_ law was brought in with great
+precipitation, for annulling this dividend. In the bill was inserted a
+clause, which suspended for about a year the right, which, under the
+public faith, the Company enjoyed, of making their own dividends. Such
+was the disposition and temper of the House, that although the plain
+face of facts, reason, arithmetic, all the authority, parts, and
+eloquence in the kingdom, were against this bill; though all the
+Chancellors of the Exchequer, who had held that office from the
+beginning of this reign, opposed it; yet a few placemen of the
+subordinate departments sprung out of their ranks, took the lead, and,
+by an opinion _of some sort of secret support_, carried the bill with a
+high hand, leaving the then Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the
+Exchequer in a very moderate minority. In this distracted situation, the
+managers of the bill, notwithstanding their triumph, did not venture to
+propose the payment of the civil list debt. The Chancellor of the
+Exchequer was not in good humor enough, after his late defeat by his own
+troops, to co-operate in such a design; so they made an act, to lock up
+the money in the exchequer until they should have time to look about
+them, and settle among themselves what they were to do with it.
+
+Thus ended this unparalleled transaction. The author, I believe, will
+not claim any part of the glory of it: he will leave it whole and entire
+to the authors of the measure. The money was the voluntary, free gift of
+the Company; the rescinding bill was the act of legislature, to which
+they and we owe submission: the author has nothing to do with the one or
+with the other. However, he cannot avoid rubbing himself against this
+subject merely for the pleasure of stirring controversies, and
+gratifying a certain pruriency of taxation that seems to infect his
+blood. It is merely to indulge himself in speculations of taxing, that
+he chooses to harangue on this subject. For he takes credit for no
+greater sum than the public is already in possession of. He does not
+hint that the Company means, or has ever shown any disposition, if
+managed with common prudence, to pay less in future; and he cannot doubt
+that the present ministry are as well inclined to drive them by their
+mock inquiries, and real rescinding bills, as he can possibly be with
+his taxes. Besides, it is obvious, that as great a sum might have been
+drawn from that Company, without affecting property, or shaking the
+constitution, or endangering the principle of public credit, or running
+into his golden dreams of cockets on the Ganges, or visions of
+stamp-duties on _Perwannas_, _Dusticks_, _Kistbundees_, and
+_Husbulhookums_. For once, I will disappoint him in this part of the
+dispute; and only in a very few words recommend to his consideration,
+how he is to get off the dangerous idea of taxing a public fund, if he
+levies those duties in England; and if he is to levy them in India, what
+provision he has made for a revenue establishment there; supposing that
+he undertakes this new scheme of finance independently of the Company,
+and against its inclinations.
+
+So much for these revenues; which are nothing but his visions, or
+already the national possessions without any act of his. It is easy to
+parade with a high talk of Parliamentary rights, of the universality of
+legislative powers, and of uniform taxation. Men of sense, when new
+projects come before them, always think a discourse proving the mere
+right or mere power of acting in the manner proposed, to be no more than
+a very unpleasant way of misspending time. They must see the object to
+be of proper magnitude to engage them; they must see the means of
+compassing it to be next to certain; the mischiefs not to counterbalance
+the profit; they will examine how a proposed imposition or regulation
+agrees with the opinion of those who are likely to be affected by it;
+they will not despise the consideration even of their habitudes and
+prejudices. They wish to know how it accords or disagrees with the true
+spirit of prior establishments, whether of government or of finance;
+because they well know, that in the complicated economy of great
+kingdoms, and immense revenues, which in a length of time, and by a
+variety of accidents have coalesced into a sort of body, an attempt
+towards a compulsory equality in all circumstances, and an exact
+practical definition of the supreme rights in every case, is the most
+dangerous and chimerical of all enterprises. The old building stands
+well enough, though part Gothic, part Grecian, and part Chinese, until
+an attempt is made to square it into uniformity. Then it may come down
+upon our heads altogether, in much uniformity of ruin; and great will be
+the fall thereof. Some people, instead of inclining to debate the
+matter, only feel a sort of nausea, when they are told, that "protection
+calls for supply," and that "all the parts ought to contribute to the
+support of the whole." Strange argument for great and grave
+deliberation! As if the same end may not, and must not, be compassed,
+according to its circumstances, by a great diversity of ways. Thus, in
+Great Britain, some of our establishments are apt for the support of
+credit. They stand therefore upon a principle of their own, distinct
+from, and in some respects contrary to, the relation between prince and
+subject. It is a new species of contract superinduced upon the old
+contract of the state. The idea of power must as much as possible be
+banished from it; for power and credit are things adverse, incompatible;
+_Non bene conveniunt, nec in una sede morantur_. Such establishments are
+our great _moneyed_ companies. To tax them would be critical and
+dangerous, and contradictory to the very purpose of their institution;
+which is credit, and cannot therefore be taxation. But the nation, when
+it gave up that power, did not give up the advantage; but supposed, and
+with reason, that government was overpaid in credit, for what it seemed
+to lose in authority. In such a case to talk of the rights of
+sovereignty is quite idle. Other establishments supply other modes of
+public contribution. Our _trading_ companies, as well as individual
+importers, are a fit subject of revenue by customs. Some establishments
+pay us by a _monopoly_ of their consumption and their produce. This,
+nominally no tax, in reality comprehends all taxes. Such establishments
+are our colonies. To tax them would be as erroneous in policy, as
+rigorous in equity. Ireland supplies us by furnishing troops in war; and
+by bearing part of our foreign establishment in peace. She aids us at
+all times by the money that her absentees spend amongst us; which is no
+small part of the rental of that kingdom. Thus Ireland contributes her
+part. Some objects bear port-duties. Some are fitter for an inland
+excise. The mode varies, the object is the same. To strain these from
+their old and inveterate leanings, might impair the old benefit, and not
+answer the end of the new project. Among all the great men of antiquity,
+_Procrustes_ shall never be my hero of legislation; with his iron bed,
+the allegory of his government, and the type of some modern policy, by
+which the long limb was to be cut short, and the short tortured into
+length. Such was the state-bed of uniformity! He would, I conceive, be a
+very indifferent farmer, who complained that his sheep did not plough,
+or his horses yield him wool, though it would be an idea full of
+equality. They may think this right in rustic economy, who think it
+available in the politic:
+
+    Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carimna, Maevi!
+    Atque idem jungat vulpes, et mulgeat hircos.
+
+
+As the author has stated this Indian taxation for no visible purpose
+relative to his plan of supply, so he has stated many other projects
+with as little, if any distinct end; unless perhaps to show you how full
+he is of projects for the public good; and what vast expectations may be
+formed of him or his friends, if they should be translated into
+administration. It is also from some opinion that these speculations may
+one day become our public measures, that I think it worth while to
+trouble the reader at all about them.
+
+Two of them stand out in high relievo beyond the rest. The first is a
+change in the internal representation of this country, by enlarging our
+number of constituents. The second is an addition to our
+representatives, by new American members of Parliament. I pass over here
+all considerations how far such a system will be an improvement of our
+constitution according to any sound theory. Not that I mean to condemn
+such speculative inquiries concerning this great object of the national
+attention. They may tend to clear doubtful points, and possibly may
+lead, as they have often done, to real improvements. What I object to,
+is their introduction into a discourse relating to the immediate state
+of our affairs, and recommending plans of practical government. In this
+view, I see nothing in them but what is usual with the author; an
+attempt to raise discontent in the people of England, to balance those
+discontents which the measures of his friends had already raised in
+America. What other reason can he have for suggesting, that we are not
+happy enough to enjoy a sufficient number of voters in England? I
+believe that most sober thinkers on this subject are rather of opinion,
+that our fault is on the other side; and that it would be more in the
+spirit of our constitution, and more agreeable to the pattern of our
+best laws, by lessening the number, to add to the weight and
+independency of our voters. And truly, considering the immense and
+dangerous charge of elections; the prostitute and daring venality, the
+corruption of manners, the idleness and profligacy of the lower sort of
+voters, no prudent man would propose to increase such an evil, if it be,
+as I fear it is, out of our power to administer to it any remedy. The
+author proposes nothing further. If he has any improvements that may
+balance or may lessen this inconvenience, he has thought proper to keep
+them as usual in his own breast. Since he has been so reserved, I should
+have wished he had been as cautious with regard to the project itself.
+First, because he observes justly, that his scheme, however it might
+improve the platform, can add nothing to the authority of the
+legislature; much I fear, it will have a contrary operation; for,
+authority depending on opinion at least as much as on duty, an idea
+circulated among the people that our constitution is not so perfect as
+it ought to be, before you are sure of mending it, is a certain method
+of lessening it in the public opinion. Of this irreverent opinion of
+Parliament, the author himself complains in one part of his book; and he
+endeavors to increase it in the other.
+
+Has he well considered what an immense operation any change in our
+constitution is? how many discussions, parties, and passions, it will
+necessarily excite; and when you open it to inquiry in one part, where
+the inquiry will stop? Experience shows us, that no time can be fit for
+such changes but a time of general confusion; when good men, finding
+everything already broken up, think it right to take advantage of the
+opportunity of such derangement in favor of an useful alteration.
+Perhaps a time of the greatest security and tranquillity both at home
+and abroad may likewise be fit; but will the author affirm this to be
+just such a time? Transferring an idea of military to civil prudence, he
+ought to know how dangerous it is to make an alteration of your
+disposition in the face of an enemy.
+
+Now comes his American representation. Here too, as usual, he takes no
+notice of any difficulty, nor says anything to obviate those objections
+that must naturally arise in the minds of his readers. He throws you his
+politics as he does his revenue; do you make something of them if you
+can. Is not the reader a little astonished at the proposal of an
+American representation from that quarter? It is proposed merely as a
+project[85] of speculative improvement; not from the necessity in the
+case, not to add anything to the authority of Parliament, but that we
+may afford a greater attention to the concerns of the Americans, and
+give them a better opportunity of stating their grievances, and of
+obtaining redress. I am glad to find the author has at length discovered
+that we have not given a sufficient attention to their concerns, or a
+proper redress to their grievances. His great friend would once have
+been exceedingly displeased with any person, who should tell him, that
+he did not attend sufficiently to those concerns. He thought he did so,
+when he regulated the colonies over and over again: he thought he did so
+when he formed two general systems of revenue; one of port-duties, and
+the other of internal taxation. These systems supposed, or ought to
+suppose, the greatest attention to and the most detailed information
+of, all their affairs. However, by contending for the American
+representation, he seems at last driven virtually to admit, that great
+caution ought to be used in the exercise of _all_ our legislative rights
+over an object so remote from our eye, and so little connected with our
+immediate feelings; that in prudence we ought not to be quite so ready
+with our taxes, until we can secure the desired representation in
+Parliament. Perhaps it may be some time before this hopeful scheme can
+be brought to perfect maturity, although the author seems to be in no
+wise aware of any obstructions that lie in the way of it. He talks of
+his union, just as he does of his taxes and his savings, with as much
+_sang froid_ and ease as if his wish and the enjoyment were exactly the
+same thing. He appears not to have troubled his head with the infinite
+difficulty of settling that representation on a fair balance of wealth
+and numbers throughout the several provinces of America and the West
+Indies, under such an infinite variety of circumstances. It costs him
+nothing to fight with nature, and to conquer the order of Providence,
+which manifestly opposes itself to the possibility of such a
+Parliamentary union.
+
+But let us, to indulge his passion for projects and power, suppose the
+happy time arrived, when the author comes into the ministry, and is to
+realize his speculations. The writs are issued for electing members for
+America and the West Indies. Some provinces receive them in six weeks,
+some in ten, some in twenty. A vessel may be lost, and then some
+provinces may not receive them at all. But let it be, that they all
+receive them at once, and in the shortest time. A proper space must be
+given for proclamation and for the election; some weeks at least. But
+the members are chosen; and if ships are ready to sail, in about six
+more they arrive in London. In the mean time the Parliament has sat and
+business far advanced without American representatives. Nay, by this
+time, it may happen that the Parliament is dissolved; and then the
+members ship themselves again, to be again elected. The writs may arrive
+in America, before the poor members of a Parliament in which they never
+sat, can arrive at their several provinces. A new interest is formed,
+and they find other members are chosen whilst they are on the high seas.
+But, if the writs and members arrive together, here is at best a new
+trial of skill amongst the candidates, after one set of them have well
+aired themselves with their two voyages of 6000 miles.
+
+However, in order to facilitate everything to the author, we will
+suppose them all once more elected, and steering again to Old England,
+with a good heart, and a fair westerly wind in their stern. On their
+arrival, they find all in a hurry and bustle; in and out; condolence and
+congratulation; the crown is demised. Another Parliament is to be
+called. Away back to America again on a fourth voyage, and to a third
+election. Does the author mean to make our kings as immortal in their
+personal as in their politic character? or whilst he bountifully adds to
+their life, will he take from them their prerogative of dissolving
+Parliaments, in favor of the American union? or are the American
+representatives to be perpetual, and to feel neither demises of the
+crown, nor dissolutions of Parliament?
+
+But these things may be granted to him, without bringing him much nearer
+to his point. What does he think of re-election? is the American member
+the only one who is not to take a place, or the only one to be exempted
+from the ceremony of re-election? How will this great politician
+preserve the rights of electors, the fairness of returns, and the
+privilege of the House of Commons, as the sole judge of such contests?
+It would undoubtedly be a glorious sight to have eight or ten petitions,
+or double returns, from Boston and Barbadoes, from Philadelphia and
+Jamaica, the members returned, and the petitioners, with all their train
+of attorneys, solicitors, mayors, selectmen, provost-marshals, and above
+five hundred or a thousand witnesses, come to the bar of the House of
+Commons. Possibly we might be interrupted in the enjoyment of this
+pleasing spectacle, if a war should break out, and our constitutional
+fleet, loaded with members of Parliament, returning-officers, petitions,
+and witnesses, the electors and elected, should become a prize to the
+French or Spaniards, and be conveyed to Carthagena, or to La Vera Cruz,
+and from thence perhaps to Mexico or Lima, there to remain until a
+cartel for members of Parliament can be settled, or until the war is
+ended.
+
+In truth the author has little studied this business; or he might have
+known, that some of the most considerable provinces of America, such,
+for instance, as Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay, have not in each of
+them two men who can afford, at a distance from their estates, to spend
+a thousand pounds a year. How can these provinces be represented at
+Westminster? If their province pays them, they are American agents, with
+salaries, and not independent members of Parliament. It is true, that
+formerly in England members had salaries from their constituents; but
+they all had salaries, and were all, in this way, upon a par. If these
+American representatives have no salaries, then they must add to the
+list of our pensioners and dependents at court, or they must starve.
+There is no alternative.
+
+Enough of this visionary union; in which much extravagance appears
+without any fancy, and the judgment is shocked without anything to
+refresh the imagination. It looks as if the author had dropped down from
+the moon, without any knowledge of the general nature of this globe, of
+the general nature of its inhabitants, without the least acquaintance
+with the affairs of this country. Governor Pownall has handled the same
+subject. To do him justice, he treats it upon far more rational
+principles of speculation; and much more like a man of business. He
+thinks (erroneously, I conceive; but he does think) that our legislative
+rights are incomplete without such a representation. It is no wonder,
+therefore, that he endeavors by every means to obtain it. Not like our
+author, who is always on velvet, he is aware of some difficulties; and
+he proposes some solutions. But nature is too hard for both these
+authors; and America is, and ever will be, without actual representation
+in the House of Commons; nor will any minister be wild enough even to
+propose such a representation in Parliament; however he may choose to
+throw out that project, together with others equally far from his real
+opinions, and remote from his designs, merely to fall in with the
+different views, and captivate the affections, of different sorts of
+men.
+
+Whether these projects arise from the author's real political
+principles, or are only brought out in subservience to his political
+views, they compose the whole of anything that is like precise and
+definite, which the author has given us to expect from that
+administration which is so much the subject of his praises and prayers.
+As to his general propositions, that "there is a deal of difference
+between impossibilities and great difficulties"; that "a great scheme
+cannot be carried unless made the business of successive
+administrations"; that "virtuous and able men are the fittest to serve
+their country"; all this I look on as no more than so much rubble to
+fill up the spaces between the regular masonry. Pretty much in the same
+light I cannot forbear considering his detached observations on
+commerce; such as, that "the system for colony regulations would be very
+simple, and mutually beneficial to Great Britain and her colonies, if
+the old navigation laws were adhered to."[86] That "the transportation
+should be in all cases in ships belonging to British subjects." That
+"even British ships should not be _generally_ received into the colonies
+from any part of Europe, except the dominions of Great Britain." That
+"it is unreasonable that corn and such like products should be
+restrained to come first to a British port." What do all these fine
+observations signify? Some of them condemn, as ill practices, things
+that were never practised at all. Some recommend to be done, things that
+always have been done. Others indeed convey, though obliquely and
+loosely, some insinuations highly dangerous to our commerce. If I could
+prevail on myself to think the author meant to ground any practice upon
+these general propositions, I should think it very necessary to ask a
+few questions about some of them. For instance, what does he mean by
+talking of an adherence to the old navigation laws? Does he mean, that
+the particular law, 12 Car. II. c. 19, commonly called "The Act of
+Navigation," is to be adhered to, and that the several subsequent
+additions, amendments, and exceptions, ought to be all repealed? If so,
+he will make a strange havoc in the whole system of our trade laws,
+which have been universally acknowledged to be full as well founded in
+the alterations and exceptions, as the act of Charles the Second in the
+original provisions; and to pursue full as wisely the great end of that
+very politic law, the increase of the British navigation. I fancy the
+writer could hardly propose anything more alarming to those immediately
+interested in that navigation than such a repeal. If he does not mean
+this, he has got no farther than a nugatory proposition, which nobody
+can contradict, and for which no man is the wiser.
+
+That "the regulations for the colony trade would be few and simple if
+the old navigation laws were adhered to," I utterly deny as a fact. That
+they ought to be so, sounds well enough; but this proposition is of the
+same nugatory nature with some of the former. The regulations for the
+colony trade ought not to be more nor fewer, nor more nor less complex,
+than the occasion requires. And, as that trade is in a great measure a
+system of art and restriction, they can neither be few nor simple. It is
+true, that the very principle may be destroyed, by multiplying to excess
+the means of securing it. Never did a minister depart more from the
+author's ideas of simplicity, or more embarrass the trade of America
+with the multiplicity and intricacy of regulations and ordinances, than
+his boasted minister of 1764. That minister seemed to be possessed with
+something, hardly short of a rage, for regulation and restriction. He
+had so multiplied bonds, certificates, affidavits, warrants,
+sufferances, and cockets; had supported them with such severe penalties,
+and extended them without the least consideration of circumstances to so
+many objects, that, had they all continued in their original force,
+commerce must speedily have expired under them. Some of them, the
+ministry which gave them birth was obliged to destroy: with their own
+hand they signed the condemnation of their own regulations; confessing
+in so many words, in the preamble of their act of the 5th Geo. III.,
+that some of these regulations had laid _an unnecessary restraint on the
+trade and correspondence of his Majesty's American subjects_. This, in
+that ministry, was a candid confession of a mistake; but every
+alteration made in those regulations by their successors is to be the
+effect of envy, and American misrepresentation. So much for the author's
+simplicity in regulation.
+
+I have now gone through all which I think immediately essential in the
+author's idea of war, of peace, of the comparative states of England and
+France, of our actual situation; in his projects of economy, of finance,
+of commerce, and of constitutional improvement. There remains nothing
+now to be considered, except his heavy censures upon the administration
+which was formed in 1765; which is commonly known by the name of the
+Marquis of Rockingham's administration, as the administration which
+preceded it is by that of Mr. Grenville. These censures relate chiefly
+to three heads:--1. To the repeal of the American Stamp Act. 2. To the
+commercial regulations then made. 3. To the course of foreign
+negotiations during that short period.
+
+A person who knew nothing of public affairs but from the writings of
+this author, would be led to conclude, that, at the time of the change
+in June, 1765, some well-digested system of administration, founded in
+national strength, and in the affections of the people, proceeding in
+all points with the most reverential and tender regard to the laws, and
+pursuing with equal wisdom and success everything which could tend to
+the internal prosperity, and to the external honor and dignity of this
+country, had been all at once subverted, by an irruption of a sort of
+wild, licentious, unprincipled invaders, who wantonly, and with a
+barbarous rage, had defaced a thousand fair monuments of the
+constitutional and political skill of their predecessors. It is natural
+indeed that this author should have some dislike to the administration
+which was formed in 1765. Its views, in most things, were different from
+those of his friends; in some, altogether opposite to them. It is
+impossible that both of these administrations should be the objects of
+public esteem. Their different principles compose some of the strongest
+political lines which discriminate the parties even now subsisting
+amongst us. The ministers of 1764 are not indeed followed by very many
+in their opposition; yet a large part of the people now in office
+entertain, or pretend to entertain, sentiments entirely conformable to
+theirs; whilst some of the former colleagues of the ministry which was
+formed in 1765, however they may have abandoned the connection, and
+contradicted by their conduct the principles of their former friends,
+pretend, on their parts, still to adhere to the same maxims. All the
+lesser divisions, which are indeed rather names of personal attachment
+than of party distinction, fall in with the one or the other of these
+leading parties.
+
+I intend to state, as shortly as I am able, the general condition of
+public affairs, and the disposition of the minds of men, at the time of
+the remarkable change of system in 1765. The reader will have thereby a
+more distinct view of the comparative merits of these several plans, and
+will receive more satisfaction concerning the ground and reason of the
+measures which were then pursued, than, I believe, can be derived from
+the perusal of those partial representations contained in the "State of
+the Nation," and the other writings of those who have continued, for now
+nearly three years, in the undisturbed possession of the press. This
+will, I hope, be some apology for my dwelling a little on this part of
+the subject.
+
+On the resignation of the Earl of Bute, in 1763, our affairs had been
+delivered into the hands of three ministers of his recommendation: Mr.
+Grenville, the Earl of Egremont, and the Earl of Halifax. This
+arrangement, notwithstanding the retirement of Lord Bute, announced to
+the public a continuance of the same measures; nor was there more reason
+to expect a change from the death of the Earl of Egremont. The Earl of
+Sandwich supplied his place. The Duke of Bedford, and the gentlemen who
+act in that connection, and whose general character and politics were
+sufficiently understood, added to the strength of the ministry, without
+making any alteration in their plan of conduct. Such was the
+constitution of the ministry which was changed in 1765.
+
+As to their politics, the principles of the peace of Paris governed in
+foreign affairs. In domestic, the same scheme prevailed, of
+contradicting the opinions, and disgracing most of the persons, who had
+been countenanced and employed in the late reign. The inclinations of
+the people were little attended to; and a disposition to the use of
+forcible methods ran through the whole tenor of administration. The
+nation in general was uneasy and dissatisfied. Sober men saw causes for
+it, in the constitution of the ministry and the conduct of the
+ministers. The ministers, who have usually a short method on such
+occasions, attributed their unpopularity wholly to the efforts of
+faction. However this might be, the licentiousness and tumults of the
+common people, and the contempt of government, of which our author so
+often and so bitterly complains, as owing to the mismanagement of the
+subsequent administrations, had at no time risen to a greater or more
+dangerous height. The measures taken to suppress that spirit were as
+violent and licentious as the spirit itself; injudicious, precipitate,
+and some of them illegal. Instead of allaying, they tended infinitely to
+inflame the distemper; and whoever will be at the least pains to
+examine, will find those measures not only the causes of the tumults
+which then prevailed, but the real sources of almost all the disorders
+which have arisen since that time. More intent on making a victim to
+party than an example of justice, they blundered in the method of
+pursuing their vengeance. By this means a discovery was made of many
+practices, common indeed in the office of Secretary of State, but wholly
+repugnant to our laws, and to the genius of the English constitution.
+One of the worst of these was, the wanton and indiscriminate seizure of
+papers, even in cases where the safety of the state was not pretended in
+justification of so harsh a proceeding. The temper of the ministry had
+excited a jealousy, which made the people more than commonly vigilant
+concerning every power which was exercised by government. The abuse,
+however sanctioned by custom, was evident; but the ministry, instead of
+resting in a prudent inactivity, or (what would have been still more
+prudent) taking the lead, in quieting the minds of the people, and
+ascertaining the law upon those delicate points, made use of the whole
+influence of government to prevent a Parliamentary resolution against
+these practices of office. And lest the colorable reasons, offered in
+argument against this Parliamentary procedure, should be mistaken for
+the real motives of their conduct, all the advantage of privilege, all
+the arts and finesses of pleading, and great sums of public money were
+lavished, to prevent any decision upon those practices in the courts of
+justice. In the mean time, in order to weaken, since they could not
+immediately destroy, the liberty of the press, the privilege of
+Parliament was voted away in all accusations for a seditious libel. The
+freedom of debate in Parliament itself was no less menaced. Officers of
+the army, of long and meritorious service, and of small fortunes, were
+chosen as victims for a single vote, by an exertion of ministerial
+power, which had been very rarely used, and which is extremely unjust,
+as depriving men not only of a place, but a profession, and is indeed of
+the most pernicious example both in a civil and a military light.
+
+Whilst all things were managed at home with such a spirit of disorderly
+despotism, abroad there was a proportionable abatement of all spirit.
+Some of our most just and valuable claims were in a manner abandoned.
+This indeed seemed not very inconsistent conduct in the ministers who
+had made the treaty of Paris. With regard to our domestic affairs, there
+was no want of industry; but there was a great deficiency of temper and
+judgment, and manly comprehension of the public interest. The nation
+certainly wanted relief, and government attempted to administer it. Two
+ways were principally chosen for this great purpose. The first by
+regulations; the second by new funds of revenue. Agreeably to this plan,
+a new naval establishment was formed at a good deal of expense, and to
+little effect, to aid in the collection of the customs. Regulation was
+added to regulation; and the strictest and most unreserved orders were
+given, for a prevention of all contraband trade here, and in every part
+of America. A teasing custom-house, and a multiplicity of perplexing
+regulations, ever have, and ever will appear, the masterpiece of finance
+to people of narrow views; as a paper against smuggling, and the
+importation of French finery, never fails of furnishing a very popular
+column in a newspaper.
+
+The greatest part of these regulations were made for America; and they
+fell so indiscriminately on all sorts of contraband, or supposed
+contraband, that some of the most valuable branches of trade were driven
+violently from our ports; which caused an universal consternation
+throughout the colonies. Every part of the trade was infinitely
+distressed by them. Men-of-war now for the first time, armed with
+regular commissions of custom-house officers, invested the coasts, and
+gave to the collection of revenue the air of hostile contribution. About
+the same time that these regulations seemed to threaten the destruction
+of the only trade from whence the plantations derived any specie, an act
+was made, putting a stop to the future emission of paper currency, which
+used to supply its place among them. Hand in hand with this went
+another act, for obliging the colonies to provide quarters for soldiers.
+Instantly followed another law, for levying throughout all America new
+port duties, upon a vast variety of commodities of their consumption,
+and some of which lay heavy upon objects necessary for their trade and
+fishery. Immediately upon the heels of these, and amidst the uneasiness
+and confusion produced by a crowd of new impositions and regulations,
+some good, some evil, some doubtful, all crude and ill-considered, came
+another act, for imposing an universal stamp-duty on the colonies; and
+this was declared to be little more than an experiment, and a foundation
+of future revenue. To render these proceedings the more irritating to
+the colonies, the principal argument used in favor of their ability to
+pay such duties was the liberality of the grants of their assemblies
+during the late war. Never could any argument be more insulting and
+mortifying to a people habituated to the granting of their own money.
+
+Taxes for the purpose of raising revenue had hitherto been sparingly
+attempted in America. Without ever doubting the extent of its lawful
+power, Parliament always doubted the propriety of such impositions. And
+the Americans on their part never thought of contesting a right by which
+they were so little affected. Their assemblies in the main answered all
+the purposes necessary to the internal economy of a free people, and
+provided for all the exigencies of government which arose amongst
+themselves. In the midst of that happy enjoyment, they never thought of
+critically settling the exact limits of a power, which was necessary to
+their union, their safety, their equality, and even their liberty. Thus
+the two very difficult points, superiority in the presiding state, and
+freedom in the subordinate, were on the whole sufficiently, that is,
+practically, reconciled; without agitating those vexatious questions,
+which in truth rather belong to metaphysics than politics, and which can
+never be moved without shaking the foundations of the best governments
+that have ever been constituted by human wisdom. By this measure was let
+loose that dangerous spirit of disquisition, not in the coolness of
+philosophical inquiry, but inflamed with all the passions of a haughty,
+resentful people, who thought themselves deeply injured, and that they
+were contending for everything that was valuable in the world.
+
+In England, our ministers went on without the least attention to these
+alarming dispositions; just as if they were doing the most common things
+in the most usual way, and among a people not only passive, but pleased.
+They took no one step to divert the dangerous spirit which began even
+then to appear in the colonies, to compromise with it, to mollify it, or
+to subdue it. No new arrangements were made in civil government; no new
+powers or instructions were given to governors; no augmentation was
+made, or new disposition, of forces. Never was so critical a measure
+pursued with so little provision against its necessary consequences. As
+if all common prudence had abandoned the ministers, and as if they meant
+to plunge themselves and us headlong into that gulf which stood gaping
+before them; by giving a year's notice of the project of their Stamp
+Act, they allowed time for all the discontents of that country to fester
+and come to a head, and for all the arrangements which factious men
+could make towards an opposition to the law. At the same time they
+carefully concealed from the eye of Parliament those remonstrances which
+they had actually received; and which in the strongest manner indicated
+the discontent of some of the colonies, and the consequences which might
+be expected; they concealed them even in defiance of an order of
+council, that they should be laid before Parliament. Thus, by concealing
+the true state of the case, they rendered the wisdom of the nation as
+improvident as their own temerity, either in preventing or guarding
+against the mischief. It has indeed, from the beginning to this hour,
+been the uniform policy of this set of men, in order at any hazard to
+obtain a present credit, to propose whatever might be pleasing, as
+attended with no difficulty; and afterwards to throw all the
+disappointment of the wild expectations they had raised, upon those who
+have the hard task of freeing the public from the consequences of their
+pernicious projects.
+
+Whilst the commerce and tranquillity of the whole empire were shaken in
+this manner, our affairs grew still more distracted by the internal
+dissensions of our ministers. Treachery and ingratitude were charged
+from one side; despotism and tyranny from the other; the vertigo of the
+regency bill; the awkward reception of the silk bill in the House of
+Commons, and the inconsiderate and abrupt rejection of it in the House
+of Lords; the strange and violent tumults which arose in consequence,
+and which were rendered more serious by being charged by the ministers
+upon one another; the report of a gross and brutal treatment of the
+----, by a minister at the same time odious to the people; all conspired
+to leave the public, at the close of the session of 1765, in as
+critical and perilous a situation, as ever the nation was, or could be,
+in a time when she was not immediately threatened by her neighbors.
+
+It was at this time, and in these circumstances, that a new
+administration was formed. Professing even industriously, in this public
+matter, to avoid anecdotes; I say nothing of those famous
+reconciliations and quarrels, which weakened the body that should have
+been the natural support of this administration. I run no risk in
+affirming, that, surrounded as they were with difficulties of every
+species, nothing but the strongest and most uncorrupt sense of their
+duty to the public could have prevailed upon some of the persons who
+composed it to undertake the king's business at such a time. Their
+preceding character, their measures while in power, and the subsequent
+conduct of many of them, I think, leave no room to charge this assertion
+to flattery. Having undertaken the commonwealth, what remained for them
+to do? to piece their conduct upon the broken chain of former measures?
+If they had been so inclined, the ruinous nature of those measures,
+which began instantly to appear, would not have permitted it. Scarcely
+had they entered into office, when letters arrived from all parts of
+America, making loud complaints, backed by strong reasons, against
+several of the principal regulations of the late ministry, as
+threatening destruction to many valuable branches of commerce. These
+were attended with representations from many merchants and capital
+manufacturers at home, who had all their interests involved in the
+support of lawful trade, and in the suppression of every sort of
+contraband. Whilst these things were under consideration, that
+conflagration blazed out at once in North America; an universal
+disobedience, and open resistance to the Stamp Act; and, in consequence,
+an universal stop to the course of justice, and to trade and navigation,
+throughout that great important country; an interval during which the
+trading interest of England lay under the most dreadful anxiety which it
+ever felt.
+
+The repeal of that act was proposed. It was much too serious a measure,
+and attended with too many difficulties upon every side, for the then
+ministry to have undertaken it, as some paltry writers have asserted,
+from envy and dislike to their predecessors in office. As little could
+it be owing to personal cowardice, and dread of consequences to
+themselves. Ministers, timorous from their attachment to place and
+power, will fear more from the consequences of one court intrigue, than
+from a thousand difficulties to the commerce and credit of their country
+by disturbances at three thousand miles distance. From which of these
+the ministers had most to apprehend at that time, is known, I presume,
+universally. Nor did they take that resolution from a want of the
+fullest sense of the inconveniences which must necessarily attend a
+measure of concession from the sovereign to the subject. That it must
+increase the insolence of the mutinous spirits in America, was but too
+obvious. No great measure indeed, at a very difficult crisis, can be
+pursued, which is not attended with some mischief; none but conceited
+pretenders in public business will hold any other language: and none but
+weak and unexperienced men will believe them, if they should. If we were
+found in such a crisis, let those, whose bold designs, and whose
+defective arrangements, brought us into it, answer for the consequences.
+The business of the then ministry evidently was, to take such steps, not
+as the wishes of our author, or as their own wishes dictated, but as the
+bad situation in which their predecessors had left them, absolutely
+required.
+
+The disobedience to this act was universal throughout America; nothing,
+it was evident, but the sending a very strong military, backed by a very
+strong naval force, would reduce the seditious to obedience. To send it
+to one town, would not be sufficient; every province of America must be
+traversed, and must be subdued. I do not entertain the least doubt but
+this could be done. We might, I think, without much difficulty, have
+destroyed our colonies. This destruction might be effected, probably in
+a year, or in two at the utmost. If the question was upon a foreign
+nation, where every successful stroke adds to your own power, and takes
+from that of a rival, a just war with such a certain superiority would
+be undoubtedly an advisable measure. But _four million_ of debt due to
+our merchants, the total cessation of a trade annually worth _four
+million_more, a large foreign traffic, much home manufacture, a very
+capital immediate revenue arising from colony imports, indeed the
+produce of every one of our revenues greatly depending on this trade,
+all these were very weighty accumulated considerations, at least well to
+be weighed, before that sword was drawn, which even by its victories
+must produce all the evil effects of the greatest national defeat. How
+public credit must have suffered, I need not say. If the condition of
+the nation, at the close of our foreign war, was what this author
+represents it, such a civil war would have been a bad couch, on which
+to repose our wearied virtue. Far from being able to have entered into
+new plans of economy, we must have launched into a new sea, I fear a
+boundless sea, of expense. Such an addition of debt, with such a
+diminution of revenue and trade, would have left us in no want of a
+"State of the Nation" to aggravate the picture of our distresses.
+
+Our trade felt this to its vitals; and our then ministers were not
+ashamed to say, that they sympathized with the feelings of our
+merchants. The universal alarm of the whole trading body of England,
+will never be laughed at by them as an ill-grounded or a pretended
+panic. The universal desire of that body will always have great weight
+with them in every consideration connected with commerce: neither ought
+the opinion of that body to be slighted (notwithstanding the
+contemptuous and indecent language of this author and his associates) in
+any consideration whatsoever of revenue. Nothing amongst us is more
+quickly or deeply affected by taxes of any kind than trade; and if an
+American tax was a real relief to England, no part of the community
+would be sooner or more materially relieved by it than our merchants.
+But they well know that the trade of England must be more burdened by
+one penny raised in America, than by three in England; and if that penny
+be raised with the uneasiness, the discontent, and the confusion of
+America, more than by ten.
+
+If the opinion and wish of the landed interest is a motive, and it is a
+fair and just one, for taking away a real and large revenue, the desire
+of the trading interest of England ought to be a just ground for taking
+away a tax of little better than speculation, which was to be collected
+by a war, which was to be kept up with the perpetual discontent of those
+who were to be affected by it, and the value of whose produce even after
+the _ordinary_ charges of collection, was very uncertain;[87] after the
+_extraordinary_, the dearest purchased revenue that ever was made by any
+nation.
+
+These were some of the motives drawn from principles of convenience for
+that repeal. When the object came to be more narrowly inspected, every
+motive concurred. These colonies were evidently founded in subservience
+to the commerce of Great Britain. From this principle, the whole system
+of our laws concerning them became a system of restriction. A double
+monopoly was established on the part of the parent country; 1. A
+monopoly of their whole import, which is to be altogether from Great
+Britain; 2. A monopoly of all their export, which is to be nowhere but
+to Great Britain, as far as it can serve any purpose here. On the same
+idea it was contrived that they should send all their products to us
+raw, and in their first state; and that they should take everything from
+us in the last stage of manufacture.
+
+Were ever a people under such circumstances, that is, a people who were
+to export raw, and to receive manufactured, and this, not a few
+luxurious articles, but all articles, even to those of the grossest,
+most vulgar, and necessary consumption, a people who were in the hands
+of a general monopolist, were ever such a people suspected of a
+possibility of becoming a just object of revenue? All the ends of their
+foundation must be supposed utterly contradicted before they could
+become such an object. Every trade law we have made must have been
+eluded, and become useless, before they could be in such a condition.
+
+The partisans of the new system, who, on most occasions, take credit for
+full as much knowledge as they possess, think proper on this occasion to
+counterfeit an extraordinary degree of ignorance, and in consequence of
+it to assert, "that the balance (between the colonies and Great Britain)
+is unknown, and that no important conclusion can be drawn from premises
+so very uncertain."[88] Now to what can this ignorance be owing? were
+the navigation laws made, that this balance should be unknown? is it
+from the course of exchange that it is unknown, which all the world
+knows to be greatly and perpetually against the colonies? is it from the
+doubtful nature of the trade we carry on with the colonies? are not
+these schemists well apprised that the colonists, particularly those of
+the northern provinces, import more from Great Britain, ten times more,
+than they send in return to us? that a great part of their foreign
+balance is and must be remitted to London? I shall be ready to admit
+that the colonies ought to be taxed to the revenues of this country,
+when I know that they are out of debt to its commerce. This author will
+furnish some ground to his theories, and communicate a discovery to the
+public, if he can show this by any medium. But he tells us that "their
+seas are covered with ships, and their rivers floating with
+commerce."[89] This is true. But it is with _our_ ships that these seas
+are covered; and their rivers float with British commerce. The American
+merchants are our factors; all in reality, most even in name. The
+Americans trade, navigate, cultivate, with English capitals; to their
+own advantage, to be sure; for without these capitals their ploughs
+would be stopped, and their ships wind-bound. But he who furnishes the
+capital must, on the whole, be the person principally benefited; the
+person who works upon it profits on his part too; but he profits in a
+subordinate way, as our colonies do; that is, as the servant of a wise
+and indulgent master, and no otherwise. We have all, except the
+_peculium_; without which even slaves will not labor.
+
+If the author's principles, which are the common notions, be right, that
+the price of our manufactures is so greatly enhanced by our taxes; then
+the Americans already pay in that way a share of our impositions. He is
+not ashamed to assert, that "France and China may be said, on the same
+principle, to bear a part of our charges, for they consume our
+commodities."[90] Was ever such a method of reasoning heard of? Do not
+the laws absolutely confine the colonies to buy from us, whether foreign
+nations sell cheaper or not? On what other idea are all our
+prohibitions, regulations, guards, penalties, and forfeitures, framed?
+To secure to us, not a commercial preference, which stands in need of no
+penalties to enforce it; it finds its own way; but to secure to us a
+trade, which is a creature of law and institution. What has this to do
+with the principles of a foreign trade, which is under no monopoly, and
+in which we cannot raise the price of our goods, without hazarding the
+demand for them? None but the authors of such measures could ever think
+of making use of such arguments.
+
+Whoever goes about to reason on any part of the policy of this country
+with regard to America, upon the mere abstract principles of government,
+or even upon those of our own ancient constitution, will be often
+misled. Those who resort for arguments to the most respectable
+authorities, ancient or modern, or rest upon the clearest maxims, drawn
+from the experience of other states and empires, will be liable to the
+greatest errors imaginable. The object is wholly new in the world. It is
+singular; it is grown up to this magnitude and importance within the
+memory of man; nothing in history is parallel to it. All the reasonings
+about it, that are likely to be at all solid, must be drawn from its
+actual circumstances. In this new system a principle of commerce, of
+artificial commerce, must predominate. This commerce must be secured by
+a multitude of restraints very alien from the spirit of liberty; and a
+powerful authority must reside in the principal state, in order to
+enforce them. But the people who are to be the subjects of these
+restraints are descendants of Englishmen; and of a high and free spirit.
+To hold over them a government made up of nothing but restraints and
+penalties, and taxes in the granting of which they can have no share,
+will neither be wise nor long practicable. People must be governed in a
+manner agreeable to their temper and disposition; and men of free
+character and spirit must be ruled with, at least, some condescension to
+this spirit and this character. The British, colonist must see something
+which will distinguish him from the colonists of other nations.
+
+Those seasonings, which infer from the many restraints under which we
+have already laid America, to our right to lay it under still more, and
+indeed under all manner of restraints, are conclusive; conclusive as to
+right; but the very reverse as to policy and practice. We ought rather
+to infer from our having laid the colonies under many restraints, that
+it is reasonable to compensate them by every indulgence that can by any
+means be reconciled to our interest. We have a great empire to rule,
+composed of a vast mass of heterogeneous governments, all more or less
+free and popular in their forms, all to be kept in peace, and kept out
+of conspiracy, with one another, all to be held in subordination to this
+country; while the spirit of an extensive and intricate and trading
+interest pervades the whole, always qualifying, and often controlling,
+every general idea of constitution and government. It is a great and
+difficult object; and I wish we may possess wisdom and temper enough to
+manage it as we ought. Its importance is infinite. I believe the reader
+will be struck, as I have been, with one singular fact. In the year
+1704, but sixty-five years ago, the whole trade with our plantations was
+but a few thousand pounds more in the export article, and a third less
+in the import, than that which we now carry on with the single island of
+Jamaica:--
+
+                                      Exports.    Imports.
+  Total English plantations in 1704  L488,265     L814,491
+  Jamaica, 1767                       467,681    1,243,742
+
+
+From the same information I find that our dealing with most of the
+European nations is but little increased: these nations have been pretty
+much at a stand since that time, and we have rivals in their trade. This
+colony intercourse is a new world of commerce in a manner created; it
+stands upon principles of its own; principles hardly worth endangering
+for any little consideration of extorted revenue.
+
+The reader sees, that I do not enter so fully into this matter as
+obviously I might. I have already been led into greater lengths than I
+intended. It is enough to say, that before the ministers of 1765 had
+determined to propose the repeal of the Stamp Act in Parliament, they
+had the whole of the American constitution and commerce very fully
+before them. They considered maturely; they decided with wisdom: let me
+add, with firmness. For they resolved, as a preliminary to that repeal,
+to assert in the fullest and least equivocal terms the unlimited
+legislative right of this country over its colonies; and, having done
+this, to propose the repeal, on principles, not of constitutional right,
+but on those of expediency, of equity, of lenity, and of the true
+interests present and future of that great object for which alone the
+colonies were founded, navigation and commerce. This plan I say,
+required an uncommon degree of firmness, when we consider that some of
+those persons who might be of the greatest use in promoting the repeal,
+violently withstood the declaratory act; and they who agreed with
+administration in the principles of that law, equally made, as well the
+reasons on which the declaratory act itself stood, as those on which it
+was opposed, grounds for an opposition to the repeal.
+
+If the then ministry resolved first to declare the right, it was not
+from any opinion they entertained of its future use in regular
+taxation. Their opinions were full and declared against the ordinary use
+of such a power. But it was plain, that the general reasonings which
+were employed against that power went directly to our whole legislative
+right; and one part of it could not be yielded to such arguments,
+without a virtual surrender of all the rest. Besides, if that very
+specific power of levying money in the colonies were not retained as a
+sacred trust in the hands of Great Britain (to be used, not in the first
+instance for supply, but in the last exigence for control), it is
+obvious, that the presiding authority of Great Britain, as the head, the
+arbiter, and director of the whole empire, would vanish into an empty
+name, without operation or energy. With the habitual exercise of such a
+power in the ordinary course of supply, no trace of freedom could remain
+to America.[91] If Great Britain were stripped of this right, every
+principle of unity and subordination in the empire was gone forever.
+Whether all this can be reconciled in legal speculation, is a matter of
+no consequence. It is reconciled in policy: and politics ought to be
+adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the
+reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part.
+
+Founding the repeal on this basis, it was judged proper to lay before
+Parliament the whole detail of the American affairs, as fully as it had
+been laid before the ministry themselves. Ignorance of those affairs had
+misled Parliament. Knowledge alone could bring it into the right road.
+Every paper of office was laid upon the table of the two Houses; every
+denomination of men, either of America, or connected with it by office,
+by residence, by commerce, by interest, even by injury; men of civil and
+military capacity, officers of the revenue, merchants, manufacturers of
+every species, and from every town in England, attended at the bar. Such
+evidence never was laid before Parliament. If an emulation arose among
+the ministers and members of Parliament, as the author rightly
+observes,[92] for the repeal of this act, as well as for the other
+regulations, it was not on the confident assertions, the airy
+speculations, or the vain promises of ministers, that it arose. It was
+the sense of Parliament on the evidence before them. No one so much as
+suspects that ministerial allurements or terrors had any share in it.
+
+Our author is very much displeased, that so much credit was given to the
+testimony of merchants. He has a habit of railing at them: and he may,
+if he pleases, indulge himself in it. It will not do great mischief to
+that respectable set of men. The substance of their testimony was, that
+their debts in America were very great: that the Americans declined to
+pay them, or to renew their orders, whilst this act continued: that,
+under these circumstances, they despaired of the recovery of their
+debts, or the renewal of their trade in that country: that they
+apprehended a general failure of mercantile credit. The manufacturers
+deposed to the same general purpose, with this addition, that many of
+them had discharged several of their artificers; and, if the law and the
+resistance to it should continue, must dismiss them all.
+
+This testimony is treated with great contempt by our author. It must be,
+I suppose, because it was contradicted by the plain nature of things.
+Suppose then that the merchants had, to gratify this author, given a
+contrary evidence; and had deposed, that while America remained in a
+state of resistance, whilst four million of debt remained unpaid, whilst
+the course of justice was suspended for want of stamped paper, so that
+no debt could be recovered, whilst there was a total stop to trade,
+because every ship was subject to seizure for want of stamped
+clearances, and while the colonies were to be declared in rebellion, and
+subdued by armed force, that in these circumstances they would still
+continue to trade cheerfully and fearlessly as before: would not such
+witnesses provoke universal indignation for their folly or their
+wickedness, and be deservedly hooted from the bar:[93] would any human
+faith have given credit to such assertions? The testimony of the
+merchants was necessary for the detail, and to bring the matter home to
+the feeling of the House; as to the general reasons, they spoke
+abundantly for themselves.
+
+Upon these principles was the act repealed, and it produced all the good
+effect which was expected from it: quiet was restored; trade generally
+returned to its ancient channels; time and means were furnished for the
+better strengthening of government there, as well as for recovering, by
+judicious measures, the affections of the people, had that ministry
+continued, or had a ministry succeeded with dispositions to improve that
+opportunity.
+
+Such an administration did not succeed. Instead of profiting of that
+season of tranquillity, in the very next year they chose to return to
+measures of the very same nature with those which had been so solemnly
+condemned; though upon a smaller scale. The effects have been
+correspondent, America is again in disorder; not indeed in the same
+degree as formerly, nor anything like it. Such good effects have
+attended the repeal of the Stamp Act, that the colonies have actually
+paid the taxes; and they have sought their redress (upon however
+improper principles) not in their own violence, as formerly;[94] but in
+the experienced benignity of Parliament. They are not easy indeed, nor
+ever will be so, under this author's schemes of taxation; but we see no
+longer the same general fury and confusion, which attended their
+resistance to the Stamp Act. The author may rail at the repeal, and
+those who proposed it, as he pleases. Those honest men suffer all his
+obloquy with pleasure, in the midst of the quiet which they have been
+the means of giving to their country; and would think his praises for
+their perseverance in a pernicious scheme, a very bad compensation for
+the disturbance of our peace, and the ruin of our commerce. Whether the
+return to the system of 1764, for raising a revenue in America, the
+discontents which have ensued in consequence of it, the general
+suspension of the assemblies in consequence of these discontents, the
+use of the military power, and the new and dangerous commissions which
+now hang over them, will produce equally good effects, is greatly to be
+doubted. Never, I fear, will this nation and the colonies fall back upon
+their true centre of gravity, and natural point of repose, until the
+ideas of 1766 are resumed, and steadily pursued.
+
+As to the regulations, a great subject of the author's accusation, they
+are of two sorts; one of a mixed nature, of revenue and trade; the other
+simply relative to trade. With regard to the former I shall observe,
+that, in all deliberations concerning America, the ideas of that
+administration were principally these; to take trade as the primary end,
+and revenue but as a very subordinate consideration. Where trade was
+likely to suffer, they did not hesitate for an instant to prefer it to
+taxes, whose produce at best was contemptible, in comparison of the
+object which they might endanger. The other of their principles was, to
+suit the revenue to the object. Where the difficulty of collection, from
+the nature of the country, and of the revenue establishment, is so very
+notorious, it was their policy to hold out as few temptations to
+smuggling as possible, by keeping the duties as nearly as they could on
+a balance with the risk. On these principles they made many alterations
+in the port-duties of 1764, both in the mode and in the quantity. The
+author has not attempted to prove them erroneous. He complains enough to
+show that he is in an ill-humor, not that his adversaries have done
+amiss.
+
+As to the regulations which were merely relative to commerce, many were
+then made; and they were all made upon this principle, that many of the
+colonies, and those some of the most abounding in people, were so
+situated as to have very few means of traffic with this country. It
+became therefore our interest to let them into as much foreign trade as
+could be given them without interfering with our own; and to secure by
+every method the returns to the mother country. Without some such scheme
+of enlargement, it was obvious that any benefit we could expect from
+these colonies must be extremely limited. Accordingly many facilities
+were given to their trade with the foreign plantations, and with the
+southern parts of Europe. As to the confining the returns to this
+country, administration saw the mischief and folly of a plan of
+indiscriminate restraint. They applied their remedy to that part where
+the disease existed, and to that only: on this idea they established
+regulations, far more likely to check the dangerous, clandestine trade
+with Hamburg and Holland, than this author's friends, or any of their
+predecessors had ever done.
+
+The friends of the author have a method surely a little whimsical in all
+this sort of discussions. They have made an innumerable multitude of
+commercial regulations, at which the trade of England exclaimed with one
+voice, and many of which have been altered on the unanimous opinion of
+that trade. Still they go on, just as before, in a sort of droning
+panegyric on themselves, talking of these regulations as prodigies of
+wisdom; and, instead of appealing to those who are most affected and the
+best judges, they turn round in a perpetual circle of their own
+reasonings and pretences; they hand you over from one of their own
+pamphlets to another: "See," say they, "this demonstrated in the
+'Regulations of the Colonies.'" "See this satisfactorily proved in 'The
+Considerations.'" By and by we shall have another: "See for this 'The
+State of the Nation.'" I wish to take another method in vindicating the
+opposite system. I refer to the petitions of merchants for these
+regulations; to their thanks when they were obtained; and to the strong
+and grateful sense they have ever since expressed of the benefits
+received under that administration.
+
+All administrations have in their commercial regulations been generally
+aided by the opinion of some merchants; too frequently by that of a few,
+and those a sort of favorites: they have been directed by the opinion of
+one or two merchants, who were to merit in flatteries, and to be paid in
+contracts; who frequently advised, not for the general good of trade,
+but for their private advantage. During the administration of which this
+author complains, the meetings of merchants upon the business of trade
+were numerous and public; sometimes at the house of the Marquis of
+Rockingham; sometimes at Mr. Dowdeswell's; sometimes at Sir George
+Savile's, a house always open to every deliberation favorable to the
+liberty or the commerce of his country. Nor were these meetings confined
+to the merchants of London. Merchants and manufacturers were invited
+from all the considerable towns in England. They conferred with the
+ministers and active members of Parliament. No private views, no local
+interests prevailed. Never were points in trade settled upon a larger
+scale of information. They who attended these meetings well know what
+ministers they were who heard the most patiently, who comprehended the
+most clearly, and who provided the most wisely. Let then this author and
+his friends still continue in possession of the practice of exalting
+their own abilities, in their pamphlets and in the newspapers. They
+never will persuade the public, that the merchants of England were in a
+general confederacy to sacrifice their own interests to those of North
+America, and to destroy the vent of their own goods in favor of the
+manufactures of France and Holland.
+
+Had the friends of this author taken these means of information, his
+extreme terrors of contraband in the West India islands would have been
+greatly quieted, and his objections to the opening of the ports would
+have ceased. He would have learned, from the most satisfactory analysis
+of the West India trade, that we have the advantage in every essential
+article of it; and that almost every restriction on our communication
+with our neighbors there, is a restriction unfavorable to ourselves.
+
+Such were the principles that guided, and the authority that sanctioned,
+these regulations. No man ever said, that, in the multiplicity of
+regulations made in the administration of their predecessors, none were
+useful; some certainly were so; and I defy the author to show a
+commercial regulation of that period, which he can prove, from any
+authority except his own, to have a tendency beneficial to commerce,
+that has been repealed. So far were that ministry from being guided by a
+spirit of contradiction or of innovation.
+
+The author's attack on that administration, for their neglect of our
+claims on foreign powers, is by much the most astonishing instance he
+has given, or that, I believe, any man ever did give, of an intrepid
+effrontery. It relates to the Manilla ransom; to the Canada bills; and
+to the Russian treaty. Could one imagine, that these very things, which
+he thus chooses to object to others, have been the principal subject of
+charge against his favorite ministry? Instead of clearing them of these
+charges, he appears not so much as to have heard of them; but throws
+them directly upon the administration which succeeded to that of his
+friends.
+
+It is not always very pleasant to be obliged to produce the detail of
+this kind of transactions to the public view. I will content myself
+therefore with giving a short state of facts, which, when the author
+chooses to contradict, he shall see proved, more, perhaps, to his
+conviction, than to his liking. The first fact then is, that the demand
+for the Manilla ransom had been in the author's favorite administration
+so neglected as to appear to have been little less than tacitly
+abandoned. At home, no countenance was given to the claimants; and when
+it was mentioned in Parliament, the then leader did not seem, at least,
+_a very sanguine advocate in favor of the claim_. These things made it a
+matter of no small difficulty to resume and press that negotiation with
+Spain. However, so clear was our right, that the then ministers resolved
+to revive it; and so little time was lost, that though that
+administration was not completed until the 9th of July, 1765, on the
+20th of the following August, General Conway transmitted a strong and
+full remonstrance on that subject to the Earl of Rochfort. The argument,
+on which the court of Madrid most relied, was the dereliction of that
+claim by the preceding ministers. However, it was still pushed with so
+much vigor, that the Spaniards, from a positive denial to pay, offered
+to refer the demand to arbitration. That proposition was rejected; and
+the demand being still pressed, there was all the reason in the world to
+expect its being brought to a favorable issue; when it was thought
+proper to change the administration. Whether under their circumstances,
+and in the time they continued in power, more could be done, the reader
+will judge; who will hear with astonishment a charge of remissness from
+those very men, whose inactivity, to call it by no worse a name, laid
+the chief difficulties in the way of the revived negotiation.
+
+As to the Canada bills, this author thinks proper to assert, "that the
+proprietors found themselves under a necessity of compounding their
+demands upon the French court, and accepting terms which they had often
+rejected, and which the Earl of Halifax had declared he would sooner
+forfeit his hand than sign."[95] When I know that the Earl of Halifax
+says so, the Earl of Halifax shall have an answer; but I persuade myself
+that his Lordship has given no authority for this ridiculous rant. In
+the mean time, I shall only speak of it as a common concern of that
+ministry.
+
+In the first place, then, I observe, that a convention, for the
+liquidation of the Canada bills, was concluded under the administration
+of 1766; when nothing was concluded under that of the favorites of this
+author.
+
+2. This transaction was, in every step of it, carried on in concert with
+the persons interested, and was terminated to their entire satisfaction.
+They would have acquiesced perhaps in terms somewhat lower than those
+which were obtained. The author is indeed too kind to them. He will,
+however, let them speak for themselves, and show what their own opinion
+was of the measures pursued in their favor.[96] In what manner the
+execution of the convention has been since provided for, it is not my
+present business to examine.
+
+3. The proprietors had absolutely despaired of being paid, at any time,
+any proportion, of their demand, until the change of that ministry. The
+merchants were checked and discountenanced; they had often been told, by
+some in authority, of the cheap rate at which these Canada bills had
+been procured; yet the author can talk of the composition of them as a
+necessity induced by the change in administration. They found themselves
+indeed, before that change, under a necessity of hinting somewhat of
+bringing the matter into Parliament; but they were soon silenced, and
+put in mind of the fate which the Newfoundland business had there met
+with. Nothing struck them more than the strong contrast between the
+spirit, and method of proceeding, of the two administrations.
+
+4. The Earl of Halifax never did, nor could, refuse to sign this
+convention; because this convention, as it stands, never was before
+him.[97]
+
+The author's last charge on that ministry, with regard to foreign
+affairs, is the Russian treaty of commerce, which the author thinks fit
+to assert, was concluded "on terms the Earl of Buckinghamshire had
+refused to accept of, and which had been deemed by former ministers
+disadvantageous to the nation, and by the merchants unsafe and
+unprofitable."[98]
+
+Both the assertions in this paragraph are equally groundless. The treaty
+then concluded by Sir George Macartney was not on the terms which the
+Earl of Buckinghamshire had refused. The Earl of Buckinghamshire never
+did refuse terms, because the business never came to the point of
+refusal, or acceptance; all that he did was, to receive the Russian
+project for a treaty of commerce, and to transmit it to England. This
+was in November, 1764; and he left Petersburg the January following,
+before he could even receive an answer from his own court. The
+conclusion of the treaty fell to his successor. Whoever will be at the
+trouble to compare it with the treaty of 1734, will, I believe, confess,
+that, if the former ministers could have obtained such terms, they were
+criminal in not accepting them.
+
+But the merchants "deemed them unsafe and unprofitable." What merchants?
+As no treaty ever was more maturely considered, so the opinion of the
+Russia merchants in London was all along taken; and all the instructions
+sent over were in exact conformity to that opinion. Our minister there
+made no step without having previously consulted our merchants resident
+in Petersburg, who, before the signing of the treaty, gave the most full
+and unanimous testimony in its favor. In their address to our minister
+at that court, among other things they say, "It may afford some
+additional satisfaction to your Excellency, to receive a public
+acknowledgment of _the entire and unreserved approbation of every
+article_ in this treaty, from us who are so immediately and so nearly
+concerned in its consequences." This was signed by the consul-general,
+and every British merchant in Petersburg.
+
+The approbation of those immediately concerned in the consequences is
+nothing to this author. He and his friends have so much tenderness for
+people's interests, and understand them so much better than they do
+themselves, that, whilst these politicians are contending for the best
+of possible terms, the claimants are obliged to go without any terms at
+all.
+
+One of the first and justest complaints against the administration of
+the author's friends, was the want of rigor in their foreign
+negotiations. Their immediate successors endeavored to correct that
+error, along with others; and there was scarcely a foreign court, in
+which the new spirit that had arisen was not sensibly felt,
+acknowledged, and sometimes complained of. On their coming into
+administration, they found the demolition of Dunkirk entirely at a
+stand: instead of demolition, they found construction; for the French
+were then at work on the repair of the jettees. On the remonstrances of
+General Conway, some parts of these jettees were immediately destroyed.
+The Duke of Richmond personally surveyed the place, and obtained a
+fuller knowledge of its true state and condition than any of our
+ministers had done; and, in consequence, had larger offers from the Duke
+of Choiseul than had ever been received. But, as these were short of our
+just expectations under the treaty, he rejected them. Our then
+ministers, knowing that, in their administration, the people's minds
+were set at ease upon all the essential points of public and private
+liberty, and that no project of theirs could endanger the concord of the
+empire, were under no restraint from pursuing every just demand upon
+foreign nations.
+
+The author, towards the end of this work, falls into reflections upon
+the state of public morals in this country: he draws use from this
+doctrine, by recommending his friend to the king and the public, as
+another Duke of Sully; and he concludes the whole performance with a
+very devout prayer.
+
+The prayers of politicians may sometimes be sincere; and as this prayer
+is in substance, that the author, or his friends, may be soon brought
+into power, I have great reason to believe it is very much from the
+heart. It must be owned too that after he has drawn such a picture, such
+a shocking picture, of the state of this country, he has great faith in
+thinking the means he prays for sufficient to relieve us: after the
+character he has given of its inhabitants of all ranks and classes, he
+has great charity in caring much about them; and indeed no less hope, in
+being of opinion, that such a detestable nation can ever become the care
+of Providence. He has not even found five good men in our devoted city.
+
+He talks indeed of men of virtue and ability. But where are his _men_ of
+virtue and ability to be found? Are they in the present administration?
+Never were a set of people more blackened by this author. Are they among
+the party of those (no small body) who adhere to the system of 1766?
+These it is the great purpose of this book to calumniate. Are they the
+persons who acted with his great friend, since the change in 1762, to
+his removal in 1765? Scarcely any of these are now out of employment;
+and we are in possession of his desideratum. Yet I think he hardly means
+to select, even some of the highest of them, as examples fit for the
+reformation of a corrupt world.
+
+He observes, that the virtue of the most exemplary prince that ever
+swayed a sceptre "can never warm or illuminate the body of his people,
+if foul mirrors are placed so near him as to refract and dissipate the
+rays at their first emanation."[99] Without observing upon the
+propriety of this metaphor, or asking how mirrors come to have lost
+their old quality of reflecting, and to have acquired that of
+refracting, and dissipating rays, and how far their foulness will
+account for this change; the remark itself is common and true: no less
+true, and equally surprising from him, is that which immediately
+precedes it: "It is in vain to endeavor to check the progress of
+irreligion and licentiousness, by punishing such crimes in _one
+individual_, if others equally culpable are rewarded with the honors and
+emoluments of the state."[100] I am not in the secret of the author's
+manner of writing; but it appears to me, that he must intend these
+reflections as a satire upon the administration of his happy years. Were
+over the honors and emoluments of the state more lavishly squandered
+upon persons scandalous in their lives than during that period? In these
+scandalous lives, was there anything more scandalous than the mode of
+punishing _one culpable individual_? In that individual, is anything
+more culpable than his having been seduced by the example of some of
+those very persons by whom he was thus persecuted?
+
+The author is so eager to attack others, that he provides but
+indifferently for his own defence. I believe, without going beyond the
+page I have now before me, he is very sensible, that I have sufficient
+matter of further, and, if possible, of heavier charge against his
+friends, upon his own principle. But it is because the advantage is too
+great, that I decline making use of it. I wish the author had not
+thought that all methods are lawful in party. Above all he ought to have
+taken care not to wound his enemies through the sides of his country.
+This he has done, by making that monstrous and overcharged picture of
+the distresses of our situation. No wonder that he, who finds this
+country in the same condition with that of France at the time of Henry
+the Fourth, could also find a resemblance between his political friend
+and the Duke of Sully. As to those personal resemblances, people will
+often judge of them from their affections: they may imagine in these
+clouds whatsoever figures they please; but what is the conformation of
+that eye which can discover a resemblance of this country and these
+times to those with which the author compares them? France, a country
+just recovered out of twenty-five years of the most cruel and desolating
+civil war that perhaps was ever known. The kingdom, under the veil of
+momentary quiet, full of the most atrocious political, operating upon
+the most furious fanatical factions. Some pretenders even to the crown;
+and those who did not pretend to the whole, aimed at the partition of
+the monarchy. There were almost as many competitors as provinces; and
+all abetted by the greatest, the most ambitious, and most enterprising
+power in Europe. No place safe from treason; no, not the bosoms on which
+the most amiable prince that ever lived reposed his head; not his
+mistresses; not even his queen. As to the finances, they had scarce an
+existence, but as a matter of plunder to the managers, and of grants to
+insatiable and ungrateful courtiers.
+
+How can our author have the heart to describe this as any sort of
+parallel to our situation? To be sure, an April shower has some
+resemblance to a waterspout; for they are both wet: and there is some
+likeness between a summer evening's breeze and a hurricane; they are
+both wind: but who can compare our disturbances, our situation, or our
+finances, to those of France in the time of Henry? Great Britain is
+indeed at this time wearied, but not broken, with the efforts of a
+victorious foreign war; not sufficiently relieved by an inadequate
+peace, but somewhat benefited by that peace, and infinitely by the
+consequences of that war. The powers of Europe awed by our victories,
+and lying in ruins upon every side of us. Burdened indeed we are with
+debt, but abounding with resources. We have a trade, not perhaps equal
+to our wishes, but more than ever we possessed. In effect, no pretender
+to the crown; nor nutriment for such desperate and destructive factions
+as have formerly shaken this kingdom.
+
+As to our finances, the author trifles with us. When Sully came to those
+of France, in what order was any part of the financial system? or what
+system was there at all? There is no man in office who must not be
+sensible that ours is, without the act of any parading minister, the
+most regular and orderly system perhaps that was ever known; the best
+secured against all frauds in the collection, and all misapplication in
+the expenditure of public money.
+
+I admit that, in this flourishing state of things, there are appearances
+enough to excite uneasiness and apprehension. I admit there is a
+cankerworm in the rose:
+
+             Medio de fonte leporum
+    Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat.
+
+This is nothing else than a spirit of disconnection, of distrust, and of
+treachery among public men. It is no accidental evil, nor has its effect
+been trusted to the usual frailty of nature; the distemper has been
+inoculated. The author is sensible of it, and we lament it together.
+This distemper is alone sufficient to take away considerably from the
+benefits of our constitution and situation, and perhaps to render their
+continuance precarious. If these evil dispositions should spread much
+farther, they must end in our destruction; for nothing can save a people
+destitute of public and private faith. However, the author, for the
+present state of things, has extended the charge by much too widely; as
+men are but too apt to take the measure of all mankind from their own
+particular acquaintance. Barren as this age may be in the growth of
+honor and virtue, the country does not want, at this moment, as strong,
+and those not a few examples, as were ever known, of an unshaken
+adherence to principle, and attachment to connection, against every
+allurement of interest. Those examples are not furnished by the great
+alone; nor by those, whose activity in public affairs may render it
+suspected that they make such a character one of the rounds in their
+ladder of ambition; but by men more quiet, and more in the shade, on
+whom an unmixed sense of honor alone could operate. Such examples indeed
+are not furnished in great abundance amongst those who are the subjects
+of the author's panegyric. He must look for them in another camp. He who
+complains of the ill effects of a divided and heterogeneous
+administration, is not justifiable in laboring to render odious in the
+eyes of the public those men, whose principles, whose maxims of policy,
+and whose personal character, can alone administer a remedy to this
+capital evil of the age: neither is he consistent with himself, in
+constantly extolling those whom he knows to be the authors of the very
+mischief of which he complains, and which the whole nation feels so
+deeply.
+
+The persons who are the objects of his dislike and complaint are many
+of them of the first families, and weightiest properties, in the
+kingdom; but infinitely more distinguished for their untainted honor,
+public and private, and their zealous, but sober attachment to the
+constitution of their country, than they can be by any birth, or any
+station. If they are the friends of any one great man rather than
+another, it is not that they make his aggrandizement the end of their
+union; or because they know him to be the most active in caballing for
+his connections the largest and speediest emoluments. It is because they
+know him, by personal experience, to have wise and enlarged ideas of the
+public good, and an invincible constancy in adhering to it; because they
+are convinced, by the whole tenor of his actions, that he will never
+negotiate away their honor or his own: and that, in or out of power,
+change of situation will make no alteration in his conduct. This will
+give to such a person in such a body, an authority and respect that no
+minister ever enjoyed among his venal dependents, in the highest
+plenitude of his power; such as servility never can give, such as
+ambition never can receive or relish.
+
+This body will often be reproached by their adversaries, for want of
+ability in their political transactions; they will be ridiculed for
+missing many favorable conjunctures, and not profiting of several
+brilliant opportunities of fortune; but they must be contented to endure
+that reproach; for they cannot acquire the reputation of _that kind_ of
+ability without losing all the other reputation they possess.
+
+They will be charged too with a dangerous spirit of exclusion and
+proscription, for being unwilling to mix in schemes of administration,
+which have no bond of union, or principle of confidence. That charge too
+they must suffer with patience. If the reason of the thing had not
+spoken loudly enough, the miserable examples of the several
+administrations constructed upon the idea of systematic discord would be
+enough to frighten them from such, monstrous and ruinous conjunctions.
+It is however false, that the idea of an united administration carries
+with it that of a proscription of any other party. It does indeed imply
+the necessity of having the great strongholds of government in
+well-united hands, in order to secure the predominance of right and
+uniform principles; of having the capital offices of deliberation and
+execution of those who can deliberate with mutual confidence, and who
+will execute what is resolved with firmness and fidelity. If this system
+cannot be rigorously adhered to in practice, (and what system can be
+so?) it ought to be the constant aim of good men to approach as nearly
+to it as possible. No system of that kind can be formed, which will not
+leave room fully sufficient for healing coalitions: but no coalition,
+which, under the specious name of independency, carries in its bosom the
+unreconciled principles of the original discord of parties, ever was, or
+will be, an healing coalition. Nor will the mind of our sovereign ever
+know repose, his kingdom settlement, or his business order, efficiency,
+or grace with his people, until things are established upon the basis of
+some set of men, who are trusted by the public, and who can trust one
+another.
+
+This comes rather nearer to the mark than the author's description of a
+proper administration, under the name of _men of ability and virtue_,
+which conveys no definite idea at all; nor does it apply specifically
+to our grand national distemper. All parties pretend to these qualities.
+The present ministry, no favorites of the author, will be ready enough
+to declare themselves persons of virtue and ability; and if they choose
+a vote for that purpose, perhaps it would not be quite impossible for
+them to procure it. But, if the disease be this distrust and
+disconnection, it is easy to know who are sound and who are tainted; who
+are fit to restore us to health, who to continue, and to spread the
+contagion. The present ministry being made up of draughts from all
+parties in the kingdom, if they should profess any adherence to the
+connections they have left, they must convict themselves of the blackest
+treachery. They therefore choose rather to renounce the principle
+itself, and to brand it with the name of pride and faction. This test
+with certainty discriminates the opinions of men. The other is a
+description vague and unsatisfactory.
+
+As to the unfortunate gentlemen who may at any time compose that system,
+which, under the plausible title of an administration, subsists but for
+the establishment of weakness and confusion; they fall into different
+classes, with different merits. I think the situation of some people in
+that state may deserve a certain degree of compassion; at the same time
+that they furnish an example, which, it is to be hoped, by being a
+severe one, will have its effect, at least, on the growing generation;
+if an original seduction, on plausible but hollow pretences, into loss
+of honor, friendship, consistency, security, and repose, can furnish it.
+It is possible to draw, even from the very prosperity of ambition,
+examples of terror, and motives to compassion.
+
+I believe the instances are exceedingly rare of men immediately passing
+over a clear, marked line of virtue into declared vice and corruption.
+There are a sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes;
+there is something uncertain on the confines of the two empires which
+they first pass through, and which renders the change easy and
+imperceptible. There are even a sort of splendid impositions so well
+contrived, that, at the very time the path of rectitude is quitted
+forever, men seem to be advancing into some higher and nobler road of
+public conduct. Not that such impositions are strong enough in
+themselves; but a powerful interest, often concealed from those whom it
+affects, works at the bottom, and secures the operation. Men are thus
+debauched away from those legitimate connections, which they had formed
+on a judgment, early perhaps, but sufficiently mature, and wholly
+unbiassed. They do not quit them upon any ground of complaint, for
+grounds of just complaint may exist, but upon the flattering and most
+dangerous of all principles, that of mending what is well. Gradually
+they are habituated to other company; and a change in their habitudes
+soon makes a way for a change in their opinions. Certain persons are no
+longer so very frightful, when they come to be known and to be
+serviceable. As to their old friends, the transition is easy; from
+friendship to civility; from civility to enmity: few are the steps from
+dereliction to persecution.
+
+People not very well grounded in the principles of public morality find
+a set of maxims in office ready made for them, which they assume as
+naturally and inevitably, as any of the insignia or instruments of the
+situation. A certain tone of the solid and practical is immediately
+acquired. Every former profession of public spirit is to be considered
+as a debauch of youth, or, at best, as a visionary scheme of
+unattainable perfection. The very idea of consistency is exploded. The
+convenience of the business of the day is to furnish the principle for
+doing it. Then the whole ministerial cant is quickly got by heart. The
+prevalence of faction is to be lamented. All opposition is to be
+regarded as the effect of envy and disappointed ambition. All
+administrations are declared to be alike. The same necessity justifies
+all their measures. It is no longer a matter of discussion, who or what
+administration is; but that administration is to be supported, is a
+general maxim. Flattering themselves that their power is become
+necessary to the support of all order and government; everything which
+tends to the support of that power is sanctified, and becomes a part of
+the public interest.
+
+Growing every day more formed to affairs, and better knit in their
+limbs, when the occasion (now the only rule) requires it, they become
+capable of sacrificing those very persons to whom they had before
+sacrificed their original friends. It is now only in the ordinary course
+of business to alter an opinion, or to betray a connection. Frequently
+relinquishing one set of men and adopting another, they grow into a
+total indifference to human feeling, as they had before to moral
+obligation; until at length, no one original impression remains upon
+their minds: every principle is obliterated; every sentiment effaced.
+
+In the mean time, that power, which all these changes aimed at securing,
+remains still as tottering and as uncertain as ever. They are delivered
+up into the hands of those who feel neither respect for their persons,
+nor gratitude for their favors; who are put about them in appearance to
+serve, in reality to govern them; and, when the signal is given, to
+abandon and destroy them in order to set up some new dupe of ambition,
+who in his turn is to be abandoned and destroyed. Thus living in a state
+of continual uneasiness and ferment, softened only by the miserable
+consolation of giving now and then preferments to those for whom they
+have no value; they are unhappy in their situation, yet find it
+impossible to resign. Until, at length, soured in temper, and
+disappointed by the very attainment of their ends, in some angry, in
+some haughty, or some negligent moment, they incur the displeasure of
+those upon whom they have rendered their very being dependent. Then
+_perierunt tempora longi servitii;_ they are cast off with scorn; they
+are turned out, emptied of all natural character, of all intrinsic
+worth, of all essential dignity, and deprived of every consolation of
+friendship. Having rendered all retreat to old principles ridiculous,
+and to old regards impracticable, not being able to counterfeit
+pleasure, or to discharge discontent, nothing being sincere, or right,
+or balanced in their minds, it is more than a chance, that, in the
+delirium of the last stage of their distempered power, they make an
+insane political testament, by which they throw all their remaining
+weight and consequence into the scale of their declared enemies, and the
+avowed authors of their destruction. Thus they finish their course. Had
+it been possible that the whole, or even a great part of these effects
+on their minds, I say nothing of the effect upon their fortunes, could
+have appeared to them in their first departure from the right line, it
+is certain they would have rejected every temptation with horror. The
+principle of these remarks, like every good principle in morality, is
+trite; but its frequent application is not the less necessary.
+
+As to others, who are plain practical men, they have been guiltless at
+all times of all public pretence. Neither the author nor any one else
+has reason to be angry with them. They belonged to his friend for their
+interest; for their interest they quitted him; and when it is their
+interest, he may depend upon it, they will return to their former
+connection. Such people subsist at all times, and, though the nuisance
+of all, are at no time a worthy subject of discussion. It is false
+virtue and plausible error that do the mischief.
+
+If men come to government with right dispositions, they have not that
+unfavorable subject which this author represents to work upon. Our
+circumstances are indeed critical; but then they are the critical
+circumstances of a strong and mighty nation. If corruption and meanness
+are greatly spread, they are not spread universally. Many public men are
+hitherto examples of public spirit and integrity. Whole parties, as far
+as large bodies can be uniform, have preserved character. However they
+may be deceived in some particulars, I know of no set of men amongst us,
+which does not contain persons on whom the nation, in a difficult
+exigence, may well value itself. Private life, which is the nursery of
+the commonwealth, is yet in general pure, and on the whole disposed to
+virtue; and the people at large want neither generosity nor spirit. No
+small part of that very luxury, which is so much the subject of the
+author's declamation, but which, in most parts of life, by being well
+balanced and diffused, is only decency and convenience, has perhaps as
+many, or more good than evil consequences attending it. It certainly
+excites industry, nourishes emulation, and inspires some sense of
+personal value into all ranks of people. What we want is to establish
+more fully an opinion of uniformity, and consistency of character, in
+the leading men of the state; such as will restore some confidence to
+profession and appearance, such as will fix subordination upon esteem.
+Without this, all schemes are begun at the wrong end. All who join in
+them are liable to their consequences. All men who, under whatever
+pretext, take a part in the formation or the support of systems
+constructed in such a manner as must, in their nature, disable them from
+the execution of their duty, have made themselves guilty of all the
+present distraction, and of the future ruin, which they may bring upon
+their country.
+
+It is a serious affair, this studied disunion in government. In cases
+where union is most consulted in the constitution of a ministry, and
+where persons are best disposed to promote it, differences, from the
+various ideas of men, will arise; and from their passions will often
+ferment into violent heats, so as greatly to disorder all public
+business. What must be the consequence, when the very distemper is made
+the basis of the constitution; and the original weakness of human nature
+is still further enfeebled by art and contrivance? It must subvert
+government from the very foundation. It turns our public councils into
+the most mischievous cabals; where the consideration is, not how the
+nation's business shall be carried on, but how those who ought to carry
+it on shall circumvent each other. In such a state of things, no order,
+uniformity, dignity, or effect, can appear in our proceedings, either at
+home or abroad. Nor will it make much difference, whether some of the
+constituent parts of such an administration are men of virtue or
+ability, or not; supposing it possible that such men, with their eyes
+open, should choose to make a part in such a body.
+
+The effects of all human contrivances are in the hand of Providence. I
+do not like to answer, as our author so readily does, for the event of
+any speculation. But surely the nature of our disorders, if anything,
+must indicate the proper remedy. Men who act steadily on the principles
+I have stated may in all events be very serviceable to their country; in
+one case, by furnishing (if their sovereign should be so advised) an
+administration formed upon ideas very different from those which have
+for some time been unfortunately fashionable. But, if this should not be
+the case, they may be still serviceable; for the example of a large body
+of men, steadily sacrificing ambition to principle, can never be without
+use. It will certainly be prolific, and draw others to an imitation.
+_Vera gloria radices agit, atque etiam propagatur_.
+
+I do not think myself of consequence enough to imitate my author, in
+troubling the world with the prayers or wishes I may form for the
+public: full as little am I disposed to imitate his professions; those
+professions are long since worn out in the political service. If the
+work will not speak for the author, his own declarations deserve but
+little credit.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[38] History of the Minority. History of the Repeal of the Stamp Act.
+Considerations on Trade and Finance. Political Register, &c., &c.
+
+[39] Pages 6-10.
+
+[40] Pages 9, 10.
+
+[41] Page 9.
+
+[42] Page 9.
+
+[43] Page 6.
+
+[44] Page 9.
+
+[45]
+  Total imports from the West Indies in 1764    L2,909,411
+  Exports to ditto in ditto                        896,511
+                                                ----------
+  Excess of imports                             L2,012,900
+
+In this, which is the common way of stating the balance, it will appear
+upwards of two millions against us, which is ridiculous.
+
+[46] Page 6.
+
+[47]
+            1754.                           L     _s.  d._
+  Total export of British goods  value, 8,317,506  15   3
+  Ditto of foreign goods in time        2,910,836  14   9
+  Ditto of ditto out of time              559,485   2  10
+                                       ------------------
+  Total exports of all kinds           11,787,828  12  10
+  Total imports                         8,093,479  15   0
+                                       ------------------
+  Balance in favor of England          L3,094,355  17  10
+                                       ------------------
+
+            1761.                           L      _s.  d._
+  Total export of British goods        10,649,581  12   6
+  Ditto of foreign goods in time        3,553,692   7   1
+  Ditto of ditto out of time              355,015   0   2
+                                       ------------------
+  Total exports of all kinds           14,558,288  19   9
+  Total imports                         9,294,915   1   6
+                                       ------------------
+  Balance in favor of England          L5,263,373  18   3
+                                       ------------------
+
+Here is the state of our trade in 1761, compared with a very good year
+of profound peace: both are taken from the authentic entries at the
+custom-house. How the author can contrive to make this increase of the
+export of English produce agree with his account of the dreadful want of
+hands in England, page 9, unless he supposes manufactures to be made
+without hands, I really do not see. It is painful to be so frequently
+obliged to set this author right in matters of fact. This state will
+fully refute all that he has said or insinuated upon the difficulties
+and decay of our trade, pages 6, 7, and 9.
+
+[48] Page 7. See also page 13.
+
+[49] Pages 12, 13.
+
+[50] Page 17.
+
+[51] Page 6.
+
+[52] "Our merchants suffered by the detention of the galleons, as their
+correspondents in Spain were disabled from paying them for their goods
+sent to America."--State of the Nation, p. 7.
+
+[53] Pages 12, 13.
+
+[54] Page 6.
+
+[55] Something however has transpired in the quarrels among those
+concerned in that transaction. It seems the _good Genius_ of Britain, so
+much vaunted by our author, did his duty nobly. Whilst we were gaining
+such advantages, the court of France was astonished at our concessions.
+"J'ai apporte a Versailles, il est vrai, les Ratifications du Roi
+d'Angleterre, _a vostre grand etonnement, et a celui de bien d'autres_.
+Je dois cela au bontes du Roi d'Angleterre, a celles de Milord Bute, a
+Mons. le Comte de Viry, a Mons. le Duc de Nivernois, et en fin a mon
+scavoir faire."--Lettres, &c., du Chev. D'Eon, p. 51.
+
+[56] "The navy bills are not due till six months after they have been
+issued; six months also of the seamen's wages by act of Parliament must
+be, and in consequence of the rules prescribed by that act, twelve
+months' wages generally, and often much more are retained; and there has
+been besides at all times a large arrear of pay, which, though kept in
+the account, could never be claimed, the persons to whom it was due
+having left neither assignees nor representatives. The precise amount of
+such sums cannot be ascertained; but they can hardly be reckoned less
+than thirteen or fourteen hundred thousand pounds. On 31st Dec, 1754,
+when the navy debt was reduced nearly as low as it could be, it still
+amounted to 1,296,567_l._ 18_s._ 11-3/4_d._ consisting chiefly of
+articles which could not then be discharged; such articles will be
+larger now, in proportion to the increase of the establishment; and an
+allowance must always be made for them in judging of the state of the
+navy debt, though they are not distinguishable in the account. In
+providing for that which is payable, the principal object of the
+legislature is always to discharge the bills, for they are the greatest
+article; they bear an interest of 4 per cent; and, when the quantity of
+them is large, they are a heavy incumbrance upon all money transactions"
+
+[57]
+  Navy                                            L1,450,900
+  Army                                             1,268,500
+  Ordnance                                           174,600
+  The four American governments                       19,200
+  General surveys in America                           1,600
+  Foundling Hospital                                  38,000
+  To the African committee                            13,000
+  For the civil establishment on the coast of Africa   5,500
+  Militia                                            100,000
+  Deficiency of land and malt                        300,000
+  Deficiency of funds                                202,400
+  Extraordinaries of the army and navy                35,000
+                                                  ----------
+                                   Total          L3,609,700
+
+[58] Upon the money borrowed in 1760, the premium of one per cent was
+for twenty-one years, not for twenty; this annuity has been paid eight
+years instead of seven; the sum paid is therefore 640,000_l._ instead of
+560,000_l._; the remaining term is worth, ten years and a quarter
+instead of eleven years;[59] its value is 820,000_l._ instead of
+880,000_l._; and the whole value of that premium is 1,460,000_l._
+instead of 1,440,000_l._ The like errors are observable in his
+computation on the additional capital of three per cent on the loan of
+that year. In like manner, on the loan of 1762, the author computes on
+five years' payment instead of six; and says in express terms, that take
+5 from 19, and there remain 13. These are not errors of the pen or the
+press; the several computations pursued in this part of the work with
+great diligence and earnestness prove them errors upon much
+deliberation. Thus the premiums in 1759 are cast up 90,000_l._ too
+little, an error in the first rule of arithmetic. "The annuities
+borrowed in 1756 and 1758 are," says he, "to continue till redeemed by
+Parliament." He does not take notice that the first are irredeemable
+till February, 1771, the other till July, 1782. In this the amount of
+the premiums is computed on the time which they have run. Weakly and
+ignorantly; for he might have added to this, and strengthened his
+argument, such as it is, by charging also the value of the additional
+one per cent from the day on which he wrote, to at least that day on
+which these annuities become redeemable. To make ample amends, however,
+he has added to the premiums of 15 per cent in 1759, and three per cent
+in 1760, the annuity paid for them since their commencement; the fallacy
+of which is manifest; for the premiums in these cases can he neither
+more nor less than the additional capital for which the public stands
+engaged, and is just the same whether five or five hundred years'
+annuity has been paid for it. In private life, no man persuades himself
+that he has borrowed 200_l._ because he happens to have paid twenty
+years' interest on a loan of 100_l._
+
+[59] See Smart and Demoivre.
+
+[60] Pages 30-32.
+
+[61] In a course of years a few manufacturers have been tempted abroad,
+not by cheap living, but by immense premiums, to set up as masters, and
+to introduce the manufacture. This must happen in every country eminent
+for the skill of its artificers, and has nothing to do with taxes and
+the price of provisions.
+
+[62] Although the public brewery has considerably increased in this
+latter period, the produce of the malt-tax has been something less than
+in the former; this cannot be attributed to the new malt-tax. Had this
+been the cause of the lessened consumption, the public brewery, so much
+more burdened, must have felt it more. The cause of this diminution of
+the malt-tax I take to have been principally owing to the greater
+dearness of corn in the second period than in the first, which, in all
+its consequences, affected the people in the country much more than
+those in the towns. But the revenue from consumption was not, on the
+whole, impaired; as we have seen in the foregoing page.
+
+[63]
+         Total Imports, value,                Exports, ditto.
+  1752           L7,889,369                    L11,694,912
+  1753            8,625,029                     12,243,604
+  1754            8,093,472                     11,787,828
+                  ---------                     ----------
+  Total         L24,607,870                     35,726,344
+                                                24,607,870
+                                                ----------
+           Exports exceed imports               11,118,474
+                                                ----------
+           Medium balance                       L3,706,158
+                                                ----------
+
+         Total Imports, value,                Exports, ditto.
+  1764          L10,818,946                    L16,104,532
+  1765           10,889,742                     14,550,507
+  1766           11,475,825                     14,024,964
+                -----------                    -----------
+  Total         L32,685,513                     44,740,003
+                -----------                     32,683,613
+                                               -----------
+           Exports exceed                       12,054,490
+                                               -----------
+  Medium balance for three last years           L4,018,163
+
+
+[64] It is dearer in some places, and rather cheaper in others; but it
+must soon all come to a level.
+
+[65] A tax rated by the intendant in each generality, on the presumed
+fortune of every person below the degree of a gentleman.
+
+[66] Before the war it was sold to, or rather forced on, the consumer at
+11 sous, or about 5_d._ the pound. What it is at present, I am not
+informed. Even this will appear no trivial imposition. In London, salt
+may be had at a penny farthing per pound from the last retailer.
+
+[67] Page 31.
+
+[68] Page 33.
+
+[69] Page 33.
+
+[70] Page 33.
+
+[71] The figures in the "Considerations" are wrongly cast up; it should
+be 3,608,700_l._
+
+[72] "Considerations," p. 43. "State of the Nation," p. 33.
+
+[73] Ibid.
+
+[74] Page 34.
+
+[75] The author of the "State of the Nation," p. 34, informs us, that
+the sum of 75,000_l._ allowed by him for the extras of the army and
+ordnance, is far less than was allowed for the same service in the years
+1767 and 1768. It is so undoubtedly, and by at least 200,000_l._ He sees
+that he cannot abide by the plan of the "Considerations" in this point,
+nor is he willing wholly to give it up. Such an enormous difference as
+that between 35,000_l._ and 300,000_l._ puts him to a stand. Should he
+adopt the latter plan of increased expense, he must then confess that he
+had, on a former occasion, egregiously trifled with the public; at the
+same time all his future promises of reduction must fall to the ground.
+If he stuck to the 35,000_l._ he was sure that every one must expect
+from him some account how this monstrous charge came to continue ever
+since the war, when it was clearly unnecessary; how all those
+successions of ministers (his own included) came to pay it, and why his
+great friend in Parliament, and his partisans without doors, came not to
+pursue to ruin, at least to utter shame, the authors of so groundless
+and scandalous a profusion. In this strait he took a middle way; and, to
+come nearer the real state of the service, he outbid the
+"Considerations," at one stroke, 40,000_l._; at the same time he hints
+to you, that you may _expect_ some benefit also from the original plan.
+But the author of the "Considerations" will not suffer him to escape it.
+He has pinned him down to his 35,000_l._; for that is the sum he has
+chosen, not as what he thinks will probably be required, but as making
+the most ample allowance for every possible contingency. See that
+author, p. 42 and 43.
+
+[76] He has done great injustice to the establishment of 1768; but I
+have not here time for this discussion; nor is it necessary to this
+argument.
+
+[77] Page 34.
+
+[78] In making up this account, he falls into a surprising error of
+arithmetic. "The deficiency of the land-tax in the year 1754 and
+1755,[80] when it was at 2_s._, amounted to no more, on a medium, than
+49,372_l._; to which, if we add _half the sum_, it will give us
+79,058_l._ as the peace deficiency at 3_s._"
+
+            Total                                 L49,372
+            Add the half                           24,686
+                                                  -------
+                                                  L74,058
+
+Which he makes 79,058_l._ This is indeed in disfavor of his argument;
+but we shall see that he has ways, by other errors, of reimbursing
+himself.
+
+[79] Page 34.
+
+[80] Page 33.
+
+[81] Page 43.
+
+[82] Page 35.
+
+[83] Page 37.
+
+[84] Pages 37, 38.
+
+[85] Pages 39, 40.
+
+[86] Page 39.
+
+[87] It is observable, that the partisans of American taxation, when
+they have a mind to represent this tax as wonderfully beneficial to
+England, state it as worth 100,000_l._ a year; when they are to
+represent it as very light on the Americans, it dwindles to 60,000_l._
+Indeed it is very difficult to compute what its produce might have been.
+
+[88] "Considerations," p. 74.
+
+[89] "Considerations," p. 79.
+
+[90] Ibid., p. 74.
+
+[91] I do not here enter into the unsatisfactory disquisition concerning
+representation real or presumed. I only say, that a great people who
+have their property, without any reserve, in all cases, disposed of by
+another people, at an immense distance from them, will not think
+themselves in the enjoyment of freedom. It will be hard to show to those
+who are in such a state, which of the usual parts of the definition or
+description of a free people are applicable to them; and it is neither
+pleasant nor wise to attempt to prove that they have no right to be
+comprehended in such a description.
+
+[92] Page 21.
+
+[93] Here the author has a note altogether in his usual strain of
+reasoning; he finds out that somebody, in the course of this
+multifarious evidence, had said, "that a very considerable part of the
+orders of 1765 transmitted from America had been afterwards suspended;
+but that in case the Stamp Act was repealed, those orders were to be
+executed in the present year, 1766"; and that, on the repeal of the
+Stamp Act, "the exports to the colonies would be at least double the
+value of the exports of the past year." He then triumphs exceedingly on
+their having fallen short of it on the state of the custom-house
+entries. I do not well know what conclusion he draws applicable to his
+purpose from these facts. He does not deny that all the orders which
+came from America subsequent to the disturbances of the Stamp Act were
+on the condition of that act being repealed; and he does not assert
+that, notwithstanding that act should be enforced by a strong hand,
+still the orders would be executed. Neither does he quite venture to say
+that this decline of the trade in 1766 was owing to the repeal. What
+does he therefore infer from it, favorable to the enforcement of that
+law? It only comes to this, and no more; those merchants, who thought
+our trade would be doubled in the subsequent year, were mistaken in
+their speculations. So that the Stamp Act was not to be repealed unless
+this speculation of theirs was a probable event. But it was not repealed
+in order to double our trade in that year, as everybody knows (whatever
+some merchants might have said), but lest in that year we should have no
+trade at all. The fact is, that during the greatest part of the year
+1755, that is, until about the month of October, when the accounts of
+the disturbances came thick upon us, the American trade went on as
+usual. Before this time, the Stamp Act could not affect it. Afterwards,
+the merchants fell into a great consternation; a general stagnation in
+trade ensued. But as soon as it was known that the ministry favored the
+repeal of the Stamp Act, several of the bolder merchants ventured to
+execute their orders; others more timid hung back; in this manner the
+trade continued in a state of dreadful fluctuation between the fears of
+those who had ventured, for the event of their boldness, and the anxiety
+of those whose trade was suspended, until the royal assent was finally
+given to the bill of repeal. That the trade of 1766 was not equal to
+that of 1765, could not be owing to the repeal; it arose from quite
+different causes, of which the author seems not to be aware: 1st, Our
+conquests during the war had laid open the trade of the French and
+Spanish West Indies to our colonies much more largely than they had ever
+enjoyed it; this continued for some time after the peace; but at length
+it was extremely contracted, and in some places reduced to nothing. Such
+in particular was the state of Jamaica. On the taking the Havannah all
+the stores of that island were emptied into that place, which produced
+unusual orders for goods, for supplying their own consumption, as well
+as for further speculations of trade. These ceasing, the trade stood on
+its own bottom. This is one cause of the diminished export to Jamaica,
+and not the childish idea of the author, of an impossible contraband
+from the opening of the ports.--2nd, The war had brought a great influx
+of cash into America, for the pay and provision of the troops; and this
+an unnatural increase of trade, which, as its cause failed, must in some
+degree return to its ancient and natural bounds.--3rd, When the
+merchants met from all parts, and compared their accounts, they were
+alarmed at the immensity of the debt due to them from America. They
+found that the Americans had over-traded their abilities. And, as they
+found too that several of them were capable of making the state of
+political events an excuse for their failure in commercial punctuality,
+many of our merchants in some degree contracted their trade from that
+moment. However, it is idle, in such an immense mass of trade, so liable
+to fluctuation, to infer anything from such a deficiency as one or even
+two hundred thousand pounds. In 1767, when the disturbances subsided,
+this deficiency was made up again.
+
+[94] The disturbances have been in Boston only; and were not in
+consequence of the late duties.
+
+[95] Page 24.
+
+[96] "They are happy in having found, in your zeal for the dignity of
+this nation, the means of liquidating their claims, and of concluding
+with the court of France a convention for the final satisfaction of
+their demands; and have given us commission, in their names, and on
+their behalf, most earnestly to entreat your acceptance of their
+grateful acknowledgments. Whether they consider themselves as Britons,
+or as men more particularly profiting by your generous and spirited
+interposition, they see great reasons to be thankful, for having been
+supported by a minister, in whose public affections, in whose wisdom and
+activity, both the national honor, and the interests of individuals,
+have been at once so well supported and secured."--Thanks of the Canada
+merchants to General Conway, London, April 28, 1766.
+
+[97] See the Convention itself, printed by Owen and Harrison,
+Warwick-lane, 1766; particularly the articles two and thirteen.
+
+[98] Page 23.
+
+[99] Page 46.
+
+[100] Page 46.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+So much misplaced industry has been used by the author of "The State of
+the Nation," as well as by other writers, to infuse discontent into the
+people, on account of the late war, and of the effects of our national
+debt; that nothing ought to be omitted which may tend to disabuse the
+public upon these subjects. When I had gone through the foregoing
+sheets, I recollected, that, in pages 58, 59, 60, I only gave the
+comparative states of the duties collected by the excise at large;
+together with the quantities of strong beer brewed in the two periods
+which are there compared. It might be still thought, that some other
+articles of popular consumption, of general convenience, and connected
+with our manufactures, might possibly have declined. I therefore now
+think it right to lay before the reader the state of the produce of
+three capital duties on such articles; duties which have frequently been
+made the subject of popular complaint. The duty on candles; that on
+soap, paper, &c.; and that on hides.
+
+  Average of net produce of duty on soap,
+    &c., for eight years ending 1767              L264,902
+  Average of ditto for eight years ending 1754     228,114
+                                                  --------
+                    Average increase               L36,788
+
+  Average of net produce of duty on candles
+    for eight years ending 1767                   L155,789
+  Average of ditto for eight years ending 1754     136,716
+                                                  --------
+                    Average increase               L19,073
+
+  Average net produce of duty on hides,
+    eight years, ending 1767                      L189,216
+  Ditto eight years, ending 1754                   168,200
+                                                  --------
+                    Average increase               L21,016
+
+This increase has not arisen from any additional duties. None have been
+imposed on these articles during the war. Notwithstanding the burdens of
+the war, and the late dearness of provisions, the consumption of all
+these articles has increased, and the revenue along with it.
+
+There is another point in "The State of the Nation," to which, I fear, I
+have not been so full in my answer as I ought to have been, and as I am
+well warranted to be. The author has endeavored to throw a suspicion, or
+something more, on that salutary, and indeed necessary measure of
+opening the ports in Jamaica. "Orders were given," says he, "in
+_August_, 1765, for the free admission of Spanish vessels into all the
+colonies."[101] He then observes, that the exports to Jamaica fell
+40,904_l._ short of those of 1764; and that the exports of the
+succeeding year, 1766, fell short of those of 1765, about eighty pounds;
+from whence he wisely infers, that this decline of exports being _since_
+the relaxation of the laws of trade, there is a just ground of
+suspicion, that the colonies have been supplied with foreign commodities
+instead of British.
+
+Here, as usual with him, the author builds on a fact which is
+absolutely false; and which, being so, renders his whole hypothesis
+absurd and impossible. He asserts, that the order for admitting Spanish
+vessels was given in _August_, 1765. That order was not _signed at the
+treasury board until the 15th day of the November following_; and
+therefore so far from affecting the exports of the year 1765, that,
+supposing all possible diligence in the commissioners of the customs in
+expediting that order, and every advantage of vessels ready to sail, and
+the most favorable wind, it would hardly even arrive in Jamaica, within
+the limits of that year.
+
+This order could therefore by no possibility be a cause of the decrease
+of exports in 1765. If it had any mischievous operation, it could not be
+before 1766. In that year, according to our author, the exports fell
+short of the preceding, just _eighty_ pounds. He is welcome to that
+diminution; and to all the consequences he can draw from it.
+
+But, as an auxiliary to account for this dreadful loss, he brings in the
+Free-port Act, which he observes (for his convenience) to have been made
+in spring, 1766; but (for his convenience likewise) he forgets, that, by
+the express provision of the act, the regulation was not to be in force
+in Jamaica until the November following. Miraculous must be the activity
+of that contraband whose operation in America could, before the end of
+that year, have reacted upon England, and checked the exportation from
+hence! Unless he chooses to suppose, that the merchants at whose
+solicitation this act had been obtained, were so frightened at the
+accomplishment of their own most earnest and anxious desire, that,
+before any good or evil effect from it could happen, they immediately
+put a stop to all further exportation.
+
+It is obvious that we must look for the true effect of that act at the
+time of its first possible operation, that is, in the year 1767. On this
+idea how stands the account?
+
+  1764, Exports to Jamaica                       L 456,528
+  1765                                             415,624
+  1766                                             415,544
+  1767  (first year of the Free-port Act)          467,681
+
+This author, for the sake of a present momentary credit, will hazard any
+future and permanent disgrace. At the time he wrote, the account of 1767
+could not be made up. This was the very first year of the trial of the
+Free-port Act; and we find that the sale of British commodities is so
+far from being lessened by that act, that the export of 1767 amounts to
+52,000_l._ more than that of either of the two preceding years, and is
+11,000_l._ above that of his standard year 1764. If I could prevail on
+myself to argue in favor of a great commercial scheme from the
+appearance of things in a single year, I should from this increase of
+export infer the beneficial effects of that measure. In truth, it is not
+wanting. Nothing but the thickest ignorance of the Jamaica trade could
+have made any one entertain a fancy, that the least ill effect on our
+commerce could follow from this opening of the ports. But, if the author
+argues the effect of regulations in the American trade from the export
+of the year in which they are made, or even of the following; why did he
+not apply this rule to his own? He had the same paper before him which I
+have now before me. He must have seen that in his standard year (the
+year 1764), the principal year of his new regulations, the export fell
+no less than 128,450_l._ short of that in 1763! Did the export trade
+revive by these regulations in 1765, during which year they continued in
+their full force? It fell about 40,000_l._ still lower. Here is a fall
+of 168,000_l._; to account for which, would have become the author much
+better than piddling for an 80_l._ fall in the year 1766 (the only year
+in which _the order_ he objects to could operate), or in presuming a
+fall of exports from a regulation which took place only in November,
+1766; whose effects could not appear until the following year; and
+which, when they do appear, utterly overthrow all his flimsy reasons and
+affected suspicions upon the effect of opening the ports.
+
+This author, in the same paragraph, says, that "it was asserted by _the
+American factors and agents_, that the commanders of our ships of war
+and tenders, having custom-house commissions, and the strict orders
+given in 1764 for a due execution of the laws of trade in the colonies,
+had deterred the Spaniards from trading with us; that the sale of
+British manufactures in the West Indies had been greatly lessened, and
+the receipt of large sums of specie prevented."
+
+If the _American factors and agents_ asserted this, they had good ground
+for their assertion. They knew that the Spanish vessels had been driven
+from our ports. The author does not positively deny the fact. If he
+should, it will be proved. When the factors connected this measure, and
+its natural consequences, with an actual fall in the exports to Jamaica,
+to no less an amount than 128,460_l._ in one year, and with a further
+fall in the next, is their assertion very wonderful? The author himself
+is full as much alarmed by a fall of only 40,000_l._; for giving him
+the facts which he chooses to coin, it is no more. The expulsion of the
+Spanish vessels must certainly have been one cause, if not of the first
+declension of the exports, yet of their continuance in their reduced
+state. Other causes had their operation, without doubt. In what degree
+each cause produced its effect, it is hard to determine. But the fact of
+a fall of exports upon the restraining plan, and of a rise upon the
+taking place of the enlarging plan, is established beyond all
+contradiction.
+
+This author says, that the facts relative to the Spanish trade were
+asserted by _American factors and agents_; insinuating, that the
+ministry of 1766 had no better authority for their plan of enlargement
+than such assertions. The moment he chooses it, he shall see the very
+same thing asserted by governors of provinces, by commanders of
+men-of-war, and by officers of the customs; persons the most bound in
+duty to prevent contraband, and the most interested in the seizures to
+be made in consequence of strict regulation. I suppress them for the
+present; wishing that the author may not drive me to a more full
+discussion of this matter than it may be altogether prudent to enter
+into. I wish he had not made any of these discussions necessary.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[101] His note, p. 22.
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS
+
+ON
+
+THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS.
+
+     Hoc vero occultum, intestinum, domesticum malum, non modo non
+     existit, verum etiam opprimit, antequam perspicere atque explorare
+     potueris.
+                                        CIC.
+
+1770.
+
+
+
+It is an undertaking of some degree of delicacy to examine into the
+cause of public disorders. If a man happens not to succeed in such an
+inquiry, he will be thought weak and visionary; if he touches the true
+grievance, there is a danger that he may come near to persons of weight
+and consequence, who will rather be exasperated at the discovery of
+their errors, than thankful for the occasion of correcting them. If he
+should be obliged to blame the favorites of the people, he will be
+considered as the tool of power; if he censures those in power, he will
+be looked on as an instrument of faction. But in all exertions of duty
+something is to be hazarded. In cases of tumult and disorder, our law
+has invested every man, in some sort, with the authority of a
+magistrate. When the affairs of the nation are distracted, private
+people are, by the spirit of that law, justified in stepping a little
+out of their ordinary sphere. They enjoy a privilege, of somewhat more
+dignity and effect, than that of idle lamentation over the calamities of
+their country. They may look into them narrowly; they may reason upon
+them liberally; and if they should be so fortunate as to discover the
+true source of the mischief, and to suggest any probable method of
+removing it, though they may displease the rulers for the day, they are
+certainly of service to the cause of government. Government is deeply
+interested in everything which, even through the medium of some
+temporary uneasiness, may tend finally to compose the minds of the
+subject, and to conciliate their affections. I have nothing to do here
+with the abstract value of the voice of the people. But as long as
+reputation, the most precious possession of every individual, and as
+long as opinion, the great support of the state, depend entirely upon
+that voice, it can never be considered as a thing of little consequence
+either to individuals or to governments. Nations are not primarily ruled
+by laws: less by violence. Whatever original energy may be supposed
+either in force or regulation, the operation of both is, in truth,
+merely instrumental. Nations are governed by the same methods, and on
+the same principles, by which an individual without authority is often
+able to govern those who are his equals or his superiors; by a knowledge
+of their temper, and by a judicious management of it; I mean,--when
+public affairs are steadily and quietly conducted; not when government
+is nothing but a continued scuffle between the magistrate and the
+multitude; in which sometimes the one and sometimes the other is
+uppermost; in which they alternately yield and prevail, in a series of
+contemptible victories, and scandalous submissions. The temper of the
+people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be the first study of
+a statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is by no means
+impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being
+ignorant of what it is his duty to learn.
+
+To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors
+of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the
+future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind;
+indeed the necessary effects of the ignorance and levity of the vulgar.
+Such complaints and humors have existed in all times; yet as all times
+have _not_ been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself in
+distinguishing that complaint which only characterizes the general
+infirmity of human nature, from those which are symptoms of the
+particular distemperature of our own air and season.
+
+Nobody, I believe, will consider it merely as the language of spleen or
+disappointment, if I say, that there is something particularly alarming
+in the present conjuncture. There is hardly a man, in or out of power,
+who holds any other language. That government is at once dreaded and
+contemned; that the laws are despoiled of all their respected and
+salutary terrors; that their inaction is a subject of ridicule, and
+their exertion of abhorrence; that rank, and office and title, and all
+the solemn plausibilities of the world, have lost their reverence and
+effect; that our foreign politics are as much deranged as our domestic
+economy; that our dependencies are slackened in their affection, and
+loosened from their obedience; that we know neither how to yield nor how
+to enforce; that hardly anything above or below, abroad or at home, is
+sound and entire; but that disconnection and confusion, in offices, in
+parties, in families, in Parliament, in the nation, prevail beyond the
+disorders of any former time: these are facts universally admitted and
+lamented.
+
+This state of things is the more extraordinary, because the great
+parties which formerly divided and agitated the kingdom are known to be
+in a manner entirely dissolved. No great external calamity has visited
+the nation; no pestilence or famine. We do not labor at present under
+any scheme of taxation new or oppressive in the quantity or in the mode.
+Nor are we engaged in unsuccessful war; in which, our misfortunes might
+easily pervert our judgment; and our minds, sore from the loss of
+national glory, might feel every blow of fortune as a crime in
+government.
+
+It is impossible that the cause of this strange distemper should not
+sometimes become a subject of discourse. It is a compliment due, and
+which I willingly pay, to those who administer our affairs, to take
+notice in the first place of their speculation. Our ministers are of
+opinion, that the increase of our trade and manufactures, that our
+growth by colonization, and by conquest, have concurred to accumulate
+immense wealth in the hands of some individuals; and this again being
+dispersed among the people, has rendered them universally proud,
+ferocious, and ungovernable; that the insolence of some from their
+enormous wealth, and the boldness of others from a guilty poverty, have
+rendered them capable of the most atrocious attempts; so that they have
+trampled upon all subordination, and violently borne down the unarmed
+laws of a free government; barriers too feeble against the fury of a
+populace so fierce and licentious as ours. They contend, that no
+adequate provocation has been given for so spreading a discontent; our
+affairs having been conducted throughout with remarkable temper and
+consummate wisdom. The wicked industry of some libellers, joined to the
+intrigues of a few disappointed politicians, have, in their opinion,
+been able to produce this unnatural ferment in the nation.
+
+Nothing indeed can be more unnatural than the present convulsions of
+this country, if the above account be a true one. I confess I shall
+assent to it with great reluctance, and only on the compulsion of the
+clearest and firmest proofs; because their account resolves itself into
+this short, but discouraging proposition, "That we have a very good
+ministry, but that we are a very bad people"; that we set ourselves to
+bite the hand that feeds us; that with a malignant insanity, we oppose
+the measures, and ungratefully vilify the persons, of those whose sole
+object is our own peace and prosperity. If a few puny libellers, acting
+under a knot of factious politicians, without virtue, parts, or
+character, (such they are constantly represented by these gentlemen,)
+are sufficient to excite this disturbance, very perverse must be the
+disposition of that people, amongst whom such a disturbance can be
+excited by such means. It is besides no small aggravation of the public
+misfortune, that the disease, on this hypothesis, appears to be without
+remedy. If the wealth of the nation be the cause of its turbulence, I
+imagine it is not proposed to introduce poverty, as a constable to keep
+the peace. If our dominions abroad are the roots which feed all this
+rank luxuriance of sedition, it is not intended to cut them off in order
+to famish the fruit. If our liberty has enfeebled the executive power,
+there is no design, I hope, to call in the aid of despotism, to fill up
+the deficiencies of law. Whatever may be intended, these things are not
+yet professed. We seem therefore to be driven to absolute despair; for
+we have no other materials to work upon, but those out of which God has
+been pleased to form the inhabitants of this island. If these be
+radically and essentially vicious, all that can be said is, that those
+men are very unhappy, to whose fortune or duty it falls to administer
+the affairs of this untoward people. I hear it indeed sometimes
+asserted, that a steady perseverance in the present measures, and a
+rigorous punishment of those who oppose them, will in course of time
+infallibly put an end to these disorders. But this, in my opinion, is
+said without much observation of our present disposition, and without
+any knowledge at all of the general nature of mankind. If the matter of
+which this nation is composed be so very fermentable as these gentlemen
+describe it, leaven never will be wanting to work it up, as long as
+discontent, revenge, and ambition, have existence in the world.
+Particular punishments are the cure for accidental distempers in the
+state; they inflame rather than allay those heats which arise from the
+settled mismanagement of the government, or from a natural indisposition
+in the people. It is of the utmost moment not to make mistakes in the
+use of strong measures; and firmness is then only a virtue when it
+accompanies the most perfect wisdom. In truth, inconstancy is a sort of
+natural corrective of folly and ignorance.
+
+I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong.
+They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries
+and in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their
+rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favor of the people.
+Experience may perhaps justify me in going further. When popular
+discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed and
+supported, that there has been generally something found amiss in the
+constitution, or in the conduct of government. The people have no
+interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error, and not
+their crime. But with the governing part of the state, it is for
+otherwise. They certainly may act ill by design, as well as by mistake.
+"_Les revolutions qui arrivent dans les grands etats ne sont point un
+effect du hazard, ni du caprice des peuples. Rien ne revolte _les
+grands_ d'un royaume comme _un gouvernement foible et derange_. Pour la
+_populace_, ce n'est jamais par envie d'attaquer qu'elle se souleve,
+mais par impatience de souffrir._"[102] These are the words of a great
+man; of a minister of state; and a zealous assertor of monarchy. They
+are applied to the _system of favoritism_ which was adopted by Henry the
+Third of France, and to the dreadful consequences it produced. What he
+says of revolutions, is equally true of all great disturbances. If this
+presumption in favor of the subjects against the trustees of power be
+not the more probable, I am sure it is the more comfortable speculation;
+because it is more easy to change an administration, than to reform a
+people.
+
+Upon a supposition, therefore, that, in the opening of the cause, the
+presumptions stand equally balanced between the parties, there seems
+sufficient ground to entitle any person to a fair hearing, who attempts
+some other scheme beside that easy one which is fashionable in some
+fashionable companies, to account for the present discontents. It is not
+to be argued that we endure no grievance, because our grievances are not
+of the same sort with those under which we labored formerly; not
+precisely those which we bore from the Tudors, or vindicated on the
+Stuarts. A great change has taken place in the affairs of this country.
+For in the silent lapse of events as material alterations have been
+insensibly brought about in the policy and character of governments and
+nations, as those which have been marked by the tumult of public
+revolutions.
+
+It is very rare indeed for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning
+public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon the
+cause of it. I have constantly observed, that the generality of people
+are fifty years, at least, behindhand in their politics. There are but
+very few who are capable of comparing and digesting what passes before
+their eyes at different times and occasions, so as to form the whole
+into a distinct system. But in books everything is settled for them,
+without the exertion of any considerable diligence or sagacity. For
+which reason men are wise with but little reflection, and good with
+little self-denial, in the business of all times except their own. We
+are very uncorrupt and tolerably enlightened judges of the transactions
+of past ages; where no passions deceive, and where the whole train of
+circumstances, from the trifling cause to the tragical event, is set in
+an orderly series before us. Few are the partisans of departed tyranny;
+and to be a Whig on the business of an hundred years ago, is very
+consistent with every advantage of present servility. This retrospective
+wisdom, and historical patriotism, are things of wonderful convenience,
+and serve admirably to reconcile the old quarrel between speculation and
+practice. Many a stern republican, after gorging himself with a full
+feast of admiration of the Grecian commonwealths and of our true Saxon
+constitution, and discharging all the splendid bile of his virtuous
+indignation on King John and King James, sits down perfectly satisfied
+to the coarsest work and homeliest job of the day he lives in. I believe
+there was no professed admirer of Henry the Eighth among the instruments
+of the last King James; nor in the court of Henry the Eighth was there,
+I dare say, to be found a single advocate for the favorites of Richard
+the Second.
+
+No complaisance to our court, or to our age, can make me believe nature
+to be so changed, but that public liberty will be among us as among our
+ancestors, obnoxious to some person or other; and that opportunities
+will be furnished for attempting, at least, some alteration to the
+prejudice of our constitution. These attempts will naturally vary in
+their mode according to times and circumstances. For ambition, though it
+has ever the same general views, has not at all times the same means,
+nor the same particular objects. A great deal of the furniture of
+ancient tyranny is worn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion.
+Besides, there are few statesmen so very clumsy and awkward in their
+business, as to fall into the identical snare which has proved fatal to
+their predecessors. When an arbitrary imposition is attempted upon the
+subject, undoubtedly it will not bear on its forehead the name of
+_Ship-money_. There is no danger that an extension of the _Forest laws_
+should be the chosen mode of oppression in this age. And when we hear
+any instance of ministerial rapacity, to the prejudice of the rights of
+private life, it will certainly not be the exaction of two hundred
+pullets, from a woman of fashion, for leave to lie with her own
+husband.[103]
+
+Every age has its own manners, and its politics dependent upon them;
+and the same attempts will not be made against a constitution fully
+formed and matured, that were used to destroy it in the cradle, or to
+resist its growth during its infancy.
+
+Against the being of Parliament, I am satisfied, no designs have ever
+been entertained since the revolution. Every one must perceive, that it
+is strongly the interest of the court, to have some second cause
+interposed between the ministers and the people. The gentlemen of the
+House of Commons have an interest equally strong in sustaining the part
+of that intermediate cause. However they may hire out the _usufruct_ of
+their voices, they never will part with the _fee and inheritance_.
+Accordingly those who have been of the most known devotion to the will
+and pleasure of a court have, at the same time, been most forward in
+asserting a high authority in the House of Commons. When they knew who
+were to use that authority, and how it was to be employed, they thought
+it never could be carried too far. It must be always the wish of an
+unconstitutional statesman, that a House of Commons, who are entirely
+dependent upon him, should have every right of the people entirely
+dependent upon their pleasure. It was soon discovered, that the forms of
+a free, and the ends of an arbitrary government, were things not
+altogether incompatible.
+
+The power of the crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown
+up anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the name of
+Influence. An influence, which operated without noise and without
+violence; an influence, which converted the very antagonist into the
+instrument of power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle of
+growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of
+the country equally tended to augment, was an admirable substitute for a
+prerogative, that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices,
+had moulded in its original stamina irresistible principles of decay and
+dissolution. The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a temporary
+system; the interest of active men in the state is a foundation
+perpetual and infallible. However, some circumstances, arising, it must
+be confessed, in a great degree from accident, prevented the effects of
+this influence for a long time from breaking out in a manner capable of
+exciting any serious apprehensions. Although government was strong and
+flourished exceedingly, the _court_ had drawn far less advantage than
+one would imagine from this great source of power.
+
+At the revolution, the crown, deprived, for the ends of the revolution
+itself, of many prerogatives, was found too weak to struggle against all
+the difficulties which pressed so new and unsettled a government. The
+court was obliged therefore to delegate a part of its powers to men of
+such interest as could support, and of such fidelity as would adhere to,
+its establishment. Such men were able to draw in a greater number to a
+concurrence in the common defence. This connection, necessary at first,
+continued long after convenient; and properly conducted might indeed, in
+all situations, be an useful instrument of government. At the same time,
+through the intervention of men of popular weight and character, the
+people possessed a security for their just proportion of importance in
+the state. But as the title to the crown grew stronger by long
+possession, and by the constant increase of its influence, these helps
+have of late seemed to certain persons no better than incumbrances. The
+powerful managers for government were not sufficiently submissive to the
+pleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal favor, sometimes
+from a confidence in their own strength, natural and acquired; sometimes
+from a fear of offending their friends, and weakening that lead in the
+country which gave them a consideration independent of the court. Men
+acted as if the court could receive, as well as confer, an obligation.
+The influence of government, thus divided in appearance between the
+court and the leaders of parties, became in many cases an accession
+rather to the popular than to the royal scale; and some part of that
+influence, which would otherwise have been possessed as in a sort of
+mortmain and unalienable domain, returned again to the great ocean from
+whence it arose, and circulated among the people. This method,
+therefore, of governing by men of great natural interest or great
+acquired consideration was viewed in a very invidious light by the true
+lovers of absolute monarchy. It is the nature of despotism to abhor
+power held by any means but its own momentary pleasure; and to
+annihilate all intermediate situations between boundless strength on its
+own part, and total debility on the part of the people.
+
+To get rid of all this intermediate and independent importance, and _to
+secure to the court the unlimited and uncontrolled use of its own vast
+influence, under the sole direction of its own private favor_, has for
+some years past been the great object of policy. If this were
+compassed, the influence of the crown must of course produce all the
+effects which the most sanguine partisans of the court could possibly
+desire. Government might then be carried on without any concurrence on
+the part of the people; without any attention to the dignity of the
+greater, or to the affections of the lower sorts. A new project was
+therefore devised by a certain set of intriguing men, totally different
+from the system of administration which had prevailed since the
+accession of the House of Brunswick. This project, I have heard, was
+first conceived by some persons in the court of Frederick Prince of
+Wales.
+
+The earliest attempt in the execution of this design was to set up for
+minister, a person, in rank indeed respectable, and very ample in
+fortune; but who, to the moment of this vast and sudden elevation, was
+little known or considered in the kingdom. To him the whole nation was
+to yield an immediate and implicit submission. But whether it was from
+want of firmness to bear up against the first opposition; or that things
+were not yet fully ripened, or that this method was not found the most
+eligible; that idea was soon abandoned. The instrumental part of the
+project was a little altered, to accommodate it to the time and to bring
+things more gradually and more surely to the one great end proposed.
+
+The first part of the reformed plan was to draw _a line which should
+separate the court from the ministry_. Hitherto these names had been
+looked upon as synonymous; but for the future, court and administration
+were to be considered as things totally distinct. By this operation, two
+systems of administration were to be formed; one which should be in the
+real secret and confidence; the other merely ostensible to perform the
+official and executory duties of government. The latter were alone to be
+responsible; whilst the real advisers, who enjoyed all the power, were
+effectually removed from all the danger.
+
+Secondly, _A party under these leaders was to be formed in favor of the
+court against the ministry_: this party was to have a large share in the
+emoluments of government, and to hold it totally separate from, and
+independent of, ostensible administration.
+
+The third point, and that on which the success of the whole scheme
+ultimately depended, was _to bring Parliament to an acquiescence in this
+project_. Parliament was therefore to be taught by degrees a total
+indifference to the persons, rank, influence, abilities, connections,
+and character of the ministers of the crown. By means of a discipline,
+on which I shall say more hereafter, that body was to be habituated to
+the most opposite interests, and the most discordant politics. All
+connections and dependencies among subjects were to be entirely
+dissolved. As, hitherto, business had gone through the hands of leaders
+of Whigs or Tories, men of talents to conciliate the people, and to
+engage their confidence; now the method was to be altered: and the lead
+was to be given to men of no sort of consideration or credit in the
+country. This want of natural importance was to be their very title to
+delegated power. Members of Parliament were to be hardened into an
+insensibility to pride as well as to duty. Those high and haughty
+sentiments, which are the great support of independence, were to be let
+down gradually. Points of honor and precedence were no more to be
+regarded in Parliamentary decorum than in a Turkish army. It was to be
+avowed, as a constitutional maxim, that the king might appoint one of
+his footmen, or one of your footmen for minister; and that he ought to
+be, and that he would be, as well followed as the first name for rank or
+wisdom in the nation. Thus Parliament was to look on as if perfectly
+unconcerned, while a cabal of the closet and back-stairs was substituted
+in the place of a national administration.
+
+With such a degree of acquiescence, any measure of any court might well
+be deemed thoroughly secure. The capital objects, and by much the most
+flattering characteristics of arbitrary power, would be obtained.
+Everything would be drawn from its holdings in the country to the
+personal favor and inclination of the prince. This favor would be the
+sole introduction to power, and the only tenure by which it was to be
+held; so that no person looking towards another, and all looking towards
+the court, it was impossible but that the motive which solely influenced
+every man's hopes must come in time to govern every man's conduct; till
+at last the servility became universal, in spite of the dead letter of
+any laws or institutions whatsoever.
+
+How it should happen that any man could be tempted to venture upon such
+a project of government, may at first view appear surprising. But the
+fact is that opportunities very inviting to such an attempt have
+offered; and the scheme itself was not destitute of some arguments, not
+wholly unplausible, to recommend it. These opportunities and these
+arguments, the use that has been made of both, the plan for carrying
+this new scheme of government into execution, and the effects which it
+has produced, are, in my opinion, worthy of our serious consideration.
+
+His Majesty came to the throne of these kingdoms with more advantages
+than any of his predecessors since the revolution. Fourth in descent,
+and third in succession of his royal family, even the zealots of
+hereditary right, in him, saw something to flatter their favorite
+prejudices; and to justify a transfer of their attachments, without a
+change in their principles. The person and cause of the Pretender were
+become contemptible; his title disowned throughout Europe; his party
+disbanded in England. His Majesty came, indeed, to the inheritance of a
+mighty war; but, victorious in every part of the globe, peace was always
+in his power, not to negotiate, but to dictate. No foreign habitudes or
+attachments withdrew him from the cultivation of his power at home. His
+revenue for the civil establishment, fixed (as it was then thought) at a
+large, but definite sum, was ample without being invidious. His
+influence, by additions from conquest, by an augmentation of debt, by an
+increase of military and naval establishment, much strengthened and
+extended. And coming to the throne in the prime and full vigor of youth,
+as from affection there was a strong dislike, so from dread there seemed
+to be a general averseness, from giving anything like offence to a
+monarch, against whose resentment opposition could not look for a refuge
+in any sort of reversionary hope.
+
+These singular advantages inspired his Majesty only with a more ardent
+desire to preserve unimpaired the spirit of that national freedom, to
+which he owed a situation so full of glory. But to others it suggested
+sentiments of a very different nature. They thought they now beheld an
+opportunity (by a certain sort of statesmen never long undiscovered or
+unemployed) of drawing to themselves by the aggrandizement of a court
+faction, a degree of power which they could never hope to derive from
+natural influence or from honorable service; and which it was impossible
+they could hold with the least security, whilst the system of
+administration rested upon its former bottom. In order to facilitate the
+execution of their design, it was necessary to make many alterations in
+political arrangement, and a signal change in the opinions, habits, and
+connections of the greatest part of those who at that time acted in
+public.
+
+In the first place, they proceeded gradually, but not slowly, to destroy
+everything of strength which did not derive its principal nourishment
+from the immediate pleasure of the court. The greatest weight of popular
+opinion and party connection were then with the Duke of Newcastle and
+Mr. Pitt. Neither of these held their importance by the _new tenure_ of
+the court; they were not therefore thought to be so proper as others for
+the services which were required by that tenure. It happened very
+favorably for the new system, that under a forced coalition there
+rankled an incurable alienation and disgust between the parties which
+composed the administration. Mr. Pitt was first attacked. Not satisfied
+with removing him from power, they endeavored by various artifices to
+ruin his character. The other party seemed rather pleased to get rid of
+so oppressive a support; not perceiving, that their own fall was
+prepared by his, and involved in it. Many other reasons prevented them
+from daring to look their true situation in the face. To the great Whig
+families it was extremely disagreeable, and seemed almost unnatural, to
+oppose the administration of a prince of the House of Brunswick. Day
+after day they hesitated, and doubted, and lingered, expecting that
+other counsels would take place; and were slow to be persuaded, that all
+which had been done by the cabal was the effect not of humor, but of
+system. It was more strongly and evidently the interest of the new court
+faction, to get rid of the great Whig connections, than to destroy Mr.
+Pitt. The power of that gentleman was vast indeed and merited; but it
+was in a great degree personal, and therefore transient. Theirs was
+rooted in the country. For, with a good deal less of popularity, they
+possessed a far more natural and fixed influence. Long possession of
+government; vast property; obligations of favors given and received;
+connection of office; ties of blood, of alliance, of friendship (things
+at that time supposed of some force); the name of Whig, dear to the
+majority of the people; the zeal early begun and steadily continued to
+the royal family: all these together formed a body of power in the
+nation, which was criminal and devoted. The great ruling principle of
+the cabal, and that which animated and harmonized all their proceedings,
+how various soever they may have been, was to signify to the world that
+the court would proceed upon its own proper forces only; and that the
+pretence of bringing any other into its service was an affront to it,
+and not a support. Therefore when the chiefs were removed, in order to
+go to the root, the whole party was put under a proscription, so general
+and severe, as to take their hard-earned bread from the lowest officers,
+in a manner which had never been known before, even in general
+revolutions. But it was thought necessary effectually to destroy all
+dependencies but one; and to show an example of the firmness and rigor
+with which the new system was to be supported.
+
+Thus for the time were pulled down, in the persons of the Whig leaders
+and of Mr. Pitt (in spite of the services of the one at the accession of
+the royal family, and the recent services of the other in the war), the
+_two only securities for the importance of the people; power arising
+from popularity; and power arising from connection_. Here and there
+indeed a few individuals were left standing, who gave security for their
+total estrangement from the odious principles of party connection and
+personal attachment; and it must be confessed that most of them have
+religiously kept their faith. Such a change could not however be made
+without a mighty shock to government.
+
+To reconcile the minds of the people to all these movements, principles
+correspondent to them had been preached up with great zeal. Every one
+must remember that the cabal set out with the most astonishing prudery,
+both moral and political. Those, who in a few months after soused over
+head and ears into the deepest and dirtiest pits of corruption, cried
+out violently against the indirect practices in the electing and
+managing of Parliaments, which had formerly prevailed. This marvellous
+abhorrence which the court had suddenly taken to all influence, was not
+only circulated in conversation through the kingdom, but pompously
+announced to the public, with many other extraordinary things, in a
+pamphlet[104] which had all the appearance of a manifesto preparatory to
+some considerable enterprise. Throughout it was a satire, though in
+terms managed and decent enough, on the politics of the former reign.
+It was indeed written with no small art and address.
+
+In this piece appeared the first dawning of the new system: there first
+appeared the idea (then only in speculation) of _separating the court
+from the administration_; of carrying everything from national
+connection to personal regards; and of forming a regular party for that
+purpose, under the name of _king's men_.
+
+To recommend this system to the people, a perspective view of the court,
+gorgeously painted, and finely illuminated from within, was exhibited to
+the gaping multitude. Party was to be totally done away, with all its
+evil works. Corruption was to be cast down from court, as _Ate_ was from
+heaven. Power was thenceforward to be the chosen residence of public
+spirit; and no one was to be supposed under any sinister influence,
+except those who had the misfortune to be in disgrace at court, which
+was to stand in lieu of all vices and all corruptions. A scheme of
+perfection to be realized in a monarchy far beyond the visionary
+republic of Plato. The whole scenery was exactly disposed to captivate
+those good souls, whose credulous morality is so invaluable a treasure
+to crafty politicians. Indeed there was wherewithal to charm everybody,
+except those few who are not much pleased with professions of
+supernatural virtue, who know of what stuff such professions are made,
+for what purposes they are designed, and in what they are sure
+constantly to end. Many innocent gentlemen, who had been talking prose
+all their lives without knowing anything of the matter, began at last to
+open their eyes upon their own merits, and to attribute their not having
+been lords of the treasury and lords of trade many years before, merely
+to the prevalence of party, and to the ministerial power, which had
+frustrated the good intentions of the court in favor of their abilities.
+Now was the time to unlock the sealed fountain of royal bounty, which
+had been infamously monopolized and huckstered, and to let it flow at
+large upon the whole people. The time was come, to restore royalty to
+its original splendor. _Mettre le Roy hors de page_, became a sort of
+watchword. And it was constantly in the mouths of all the runners of the
+court, that nothing could preserve the balance of the constitution from
+being overturned by the rabble, or by a faction of the nobility, but to
+free the sovereign effectually from that ministerial tyranny under which
+the royal dignity had been oppressed in the person of his Majesty's
+grandfather.
+
+These were some of the many artifices used to reconcile the people to
+the great change which was made in the persons who composed the
+ministry, and the still greater which was made and avowed in its
+constitution. As to individuals, other methods were employed with them;
+in order so thoroughly to disunite every party, and even every family,
+that _no concert, order, or effect, might appear in any future
+opposition_. And in this manner an administration without connection
+with the people, or with one another, was first put in possession of
+government. What good consequences followed from it, we have all seen;
+whether with regard to virtue, public or private; to the ease and
+happiness of the sovereign; or to the real strength of government. But
+as so much stress was then laid on the necessity of this new project, it
+will not be amiss to take a view of the effects of this royal servitude
+and vile durance, which was so deplored in the reign of the late
+monarch, and was so carefully to be avoided in the reign of his
+successor. The effects were these.
+
+In times full of doubt and danger to his person and family, George II.
+maintained the dignity of his crown connected with the liberty of his
+people, not only unimpaired, but improved, for the space of thirty-three
+years. He overcame a dangerous rebellion, abetted by foreign force, and
+raging in the heart of his kingdoms; and thereby destroyed the seeds of
+all future rebellion that could arise upon the same principle. He
+carried the glory, the power, the commerce of England, to a height
+unknown even to this renowned nation in the times of its greatest
+prosperity: and he left his succession resting on the true and only true
+foundations of all national and all regal greatness; affection at home,
+reputation abroad, trust in allies, terror in rival nations. The most
+ardent lover of his country cannot wish for Great Britain a happier fate
+than to continue as she was then left. A people, emulous as we are in
+affection to our present sovereign, know not how to form a prayer to
+heaven for a greater blessing upon his virtues, or a higher state of
+felicity and glory, than that he should live, and should reign, and when
+Providence ordains it, should die, exactly like his illustrious
+predecessor.
+
+A great prince may be obliged (though such a thing cannot happen very
+often) to sacrifice his private inclination to his public interest. A
+wise prince will not think that such a restraint implies a condition of
+servility; and truly, if such was the condition of the last reign, and
+the effects were also such as we have described, we ought, no less for
+the sake of the sovereign whom we love, than for our own, to hear
+arguments convincing indeed, before we depart from the maxims of that
+reign, or fly in the face of this great body of strong and recent
+experience.
+
+One of the principal topics which was then, and has been since, much
+employed by that political[105] school, is an affected terror of the
+growth of an aristocratic power, prejudicial to the rights of the crown,
+and the balance of the constitution. Any new powers exercised in the
+House of Lords, or in the House of Commons, or by the crown, ought
+certainly to excite the vigilant and anxious jealousy of a free people.
+Even a new and unprecedented course of action in the whole legislature,
+without great and evident reason, may be a subject of just uneasiness. I
+will not affirm, that there may not have lately appeared in the House of
+Lords, a disposition to some attempts derogatory to the legal rights of
+the subject. If any such have really appeared, they have arisen, not
+from a power properly aristocratic, but from the same influence which is
+charged with having excited attempts of a similar nature in the House of
+Commons; which House, if it should have been betrayed into an
+unfortunate quarrel with its constituents, and involved in a charge of
+the very same nature, could have neither power nor inclination to repel
+such attempts in others. Those attempts in the House of Lords can no
+more be called aristocratic proceedings, than the proceedings with
+regard to the county of Middlesex in the House of Commons can with any
+sense be called democratical.
+
+It is true, that the peers have a great influence in the kingdom, and
+in every part of the public concerns. While they are men of property, it
+is impossible to prevent it, except by such means as must prevent all
+property from its natural operation: an event not easily to be
+compassed, while property is power; nor by any means to be wished, while
+the least notion exists of the method by which the spirit of liberty
+acts, and of the means by which it is preserved. If any particular
+peers, by their uniform, upright, constitutional conduct, by their
+public and their private virtues, have acquired an influence in the
+country; the people, on whose favor that influence depends, and from
+whom it arose, will never be duped into an opinion, that such greatness
+in a peer is the despotism of an aristocracy, when they know and feel it
+to be the effect and pledge of their own importance.
+
+I am no friend to aristocracy, in the sense at least in which that word
+is usually understood. If it were not a bad habit to moot cases on the
+supposed ruin of the constitution, I should be free to declare, that if
+it must perish, I would rather by far see it resolved into any other
+form, than lost in that austere and insolent domination. But, whatever
+my dislikes may be, my fears are not upon that quarter. The question, on
+the influence of a court, and of a peerage, is not, which of the two
+dangers is the more eligible, but which is the more imminent. He is but
+a poor observer, who has not seen, that the generality of peers, far
+from supporting themselves in a state of independent greatness, are but
+too apt to fall into an oblivion of their proper dignity, and to run
+headlong into an abject servitude. Would to God it were true, that the
+fault of our peers were too much spirit. It is worthy of some
+observation that these gentlemen, so jealous of aristocracy, make no
+complaints of the power of those peers (neither few nor inconsiderable)
+who are always in the train of a court, and whose whole weight must be
+considered as a portion of the settled influence of the crown. This is
+all safe and right; but if some peers (I am very sorry they are not as
+many as they ought to be) set themselves, in the great concern of peers
+and commons, against a back-stairs influence and clandestine government,
+then the alarm begins; then the constitution is in danger of being
+forced into an aristocracy.
+
+I rest a little the longer on this court topic, because it was much
+insisted upon at the time of the great change, and has been since
+frequently revived by many of the agents of that party; for, whilst they
+are terrifying the great and opulent with the horrors of mob-government,
+they are by other managers attempting (though hitherto with little
+success) to alarm the people with a phantom of tyranny in the nobles.
+All this is done upon their favorite principle of disunion, of sowing
+jealousies amongst the different orders of the state, and of disjointing
+the natural strength of the kingdom; that it may be rendered incapable
+of resisting the sinister designs of wicked men, who have engrossed the
+royal power.
+
+Thus much of the topics chosen by the courtiers to recommend their
+system; it will be necessary to open a little more at large the nature
+of that party which was formed for its support. Without this, the whole
+would have been no better than a visionary amusement, like the scheme of
+Harrington's political club, and not a business in which the nation had
+a real concern. As a powerful party, and a party constructed on a new
+principle, it is a very inviting object of curiosity.
+
+It must be remembered, that since the revolution, until the period we
+are speaking of, the influence of the crown had been always employed in
+supporting the ministers of state, and in carrying on the public
+business according to their opinions. But the party now in question is
+formed upon a very different idea. It is to intercept the favor,
+protection, and confidence of the crown in the passage to its ministers;
+it is to come between them and their importance in Parliament; it is to
+separate them from all their natural and acquired dependencies; it is
+intended as the control, not the support, of administration. The
+machinery of this system is perplexed in its movements, and false in its
+principle. It is formed on a supposition that the king is something
+external to his government; and that he may be honored and aggrandized,
+even by its debility and disgrace. The plan proceeds expressly on the
+idea of enfeebling the regular executory power. It proceeds on the idea
+of weakening the state in order to strengthen the court. The scheme
+depending entirely on distrust, on disconnection, on mutability by
+principle, on systematic weakness in every particular member; it is
+impossible that the total result should be substantial strength of any
+kind.
+
+As a foundation of their scheme, the cabal have established a sort of
+_rota_ in the court. All sorts of parties, by this means, have been
+brought into administration; from whence few have had the good fortune
+to escape without disgrace; none at all without considerable losses. In
+the beginning of each arrangement no professions of confidence and
+support are wanting, to induce the leading men to engage. But while the
+ministers of the day appear in all the pomp and pride of power, while
+they have all their canvas spread out to the wind, and every sail filled
+with the fair and prosperous gale of royal favor, in a short time they
+find, they know not how, a current, which sets directly against them:
+which prevents all progress; and even drives them backwards. They grow
+ashamed and mortified in a situation, which, by its vicinity to power,
+only serves to remind them the more strongly of their insignificance.
+They are obliged either to execute the orders of their inferiors, or to
+see themselves opposed by the natural instruments of their office. With
+the loss of their dignity they lose their temper. In their turn they
+grow troublesome to that cabal which, whether it supports or opposes,
+equally disgraces and equally betrays them. It is soon found necessary
+to get rid of the heads of administration; but it is of the heads only.
+As there always are many rotten members belonging to the best
+connections, it is not hard to persuade several to continue in office
+without their leaders. By this means the party goes out much thinner
+than it came in; and is only reduced in strength by its temporary
+possession of power. Besides, if by accident, or in course of changes,
+that power should be recovered, the junto have thrown up a retrenchment
+of these carcasses, which may serve to cover themselves in a day of
+danger. They conclude, not unwisely, that such rotten members will
+become the first objects of disgust and resentment to their ancient
+connections.
+
+They contrive to form in the outward administration two parties at the
+least; which, whilst they are tearing one another to pieces, are both
+competitors for the favor and protection of the cabal; and, by their
+emulation, contribute to throw everything more and more into the hands
+of the interior managers.
+
+A minister of state will sometimes keep himself totally estranged from
+all his colleagues; will differ from them in their councils, will
+privately traverse, and publicly oppose, their measures. He will,
+however, continue in his employment. Instead of suffering any mark of
+displeasure, he will be distinguished by an unbounded profusion of court
+rewards and caresses; because he does what is expected, and all that is
+expected, from men in office. He helps to keep some form of
+administration in being, and keeps it at the same time as weak and
+divided as possible.
+
+However, we must take care not to be mistaken, or to imagine that such
+persons have any weight in their opposition. When, by them,
+administration is convinced of its insignificancy, they are soon to be
+convinced of their own. They never are suffered to succeed in their
+opposition. They and the world are to be satisfied, that neither office,
+nor authority, nor property, nor ability, eloquence, counsel, skill, or
+union, are of the least importance; but that the mere influence of the
+court, naked of all support, and destitute of all management, is
+abundantly sufficient for all its own purposes.
+
+When any adverse connection is to be destroyed, the cabal seldom appear
+in the work themselves. They find out some person of whom the party
+entertains a high opinion. Such a person they endeavor to delude with
+various pretences. They teach him first to distrust, and then to quarrel
+with his friends; among whom, by the same arts, they excite a similar
+diffidence of him; so that in this mutual fear and distrust, he may
+suffer himself to be employed as the instrument in the change which is
+brought about. Afterwards they are sure to destroy him in his turn, by
+setting up in his place some person in whom he had himself reposed the
+greatest confidence, and who serves to carry off a considerable part of
+his adherents.
+
+When such a person has broke in this manner with his connections, he is
+soon compelled to commit some flagrant act of iniquitous, personal
+hostility against some of them (such as an attempt to strip a particular
+friend of his family estate), by which the cabal hope to render the
+parties utterly irreconcilable. In truth, they have so contrived
+matters, that people have a greater hatred to the subordinate
+instruments than to the principal movers.
+
+As in destroying their enemies they make use of instruments not
+immediately belonging to their corps, so in advancing their own friends
+they pursue exactly the same method. To promote any of them to
+considerable rank or emolument, they commonly take care that the
+recommendation shall pass through the hands of the ostensible ministry:
+such a recommendation might however appear to the world, as some proof
+of the credit of ministers, and some means of increasing their strength.
+To prevent this, the persons so advanced are directed, in all companies,
+industriously to declare, that they are under no obligations whatsoever
+to administration; that they have received their office from another
+quarter; that they are totally free and independent.
+
+When the faction has any job of lucre to obtain, or of vengeance to
+perpetrate, their way is, to select, for the execution, those very
+persons to whose habits, friendships, principles, and declarations, such
+proceedings are publicly known to be the most adverse; at once to
+render the instruments the more odious, and therefore the more
+dependent, and to prevent the people from ever reposing a confidence in
+any appearance of private friendship or public principle.
+
+If the administration seem now and then, from remissness, or from fear
+of making themselves disagreeable, to suffer any popular excesses to go
+unpunished, the cabal immediately sets up some creature of theirs to
+raise a clamor against the ministers, as having shamefully betrayed the
+dignity of government. Then they compel the ministry to become active in
+conferring rewards and honors on the persons who have been the
+instruments of their disgrace; and, after having first vilified them
+with the higher orders for suffering the laws to sleep over the
+licentiousness of the populace, they drive them (in order to make amends
+for their former inactivity) to some act of atrocious violence, which
+renders them completely abhorred by the people. They, who remember the
+riots which attended the Middlesex election, the opening of the present
+Parliament, and the transactions relative to Saint George's Fields, will
+not be at a loss for an application of these remarks.
+
+That this body may be enabled to compass all the ends of its
+institution, its members are scarcely ever to aim at the high and
+responsible offices of the state. They are distributed with art and
+judgment through all the secondary, but efficient, departments of
+office, and through the households of all the branches of the royal
+family: so as on one hand to occupy all the avenues to the throne; and
+on the other to forward or frustrate the execution of any measure,
+according to their own interests. For with the credit and support which
+they are known to have, though for the greater part in places which are
+only a genteel excuse for salary, they possess all the influence of the
+highest posts; and they dictate publicly in almost everything, even with
+a parade of superiority. Whenever they dissent (as it often happens)
+from their nominal leaders, the trained part of the senate,
+instinctively in the secret, is sure to follow them: provided the
+leaders, sensible of their situation, do not of themselves recede in
+time from their most declared opinions. This latter is generally the
+case. It will not be conceivable to any one who has not seen it, what
+pleasure is taken by the cabal in rendering these heads of office
+thoroughly contemptible and ridiculous. And when they are become so,
+they have then the best chance for being well supported.
+
+The members of the court faction are fully indemnified for not holding
+places on the slippery heights of the kingdom, not only by the lead in
+all affairs, but also by the perfect security in which they enjoy less
+conspicuous, but very advantageous situations. Their places are in
+express legal tenure, or, in effect, all of them for life. Whilst the
+first and most respectable persons in the kingdom are tossed about like
+tennis-balls, the sport of a blind and insolent caprice, no minister
+dares even to cast an oblique glance at the lowest of their body. If an
+attempt be made upon one of this corps, immediately he flies to
+sanctuary, and pretends to the most inviolable of all promises. No
+conveniency of public arrangement is available to remove any one of them
+from the specific situation he holds; and the slightest attempt upon one
+of them, by the most powerful minister, is a certain preliminary to his
+own destruction.
+
+Conscious of their independence, they bear themselves with a lofty air
+to the exterior ministers. Like janissaries, they derive a kind of
+freedom from the very condition of their servitude. They may act just as
+they please; provided they are true to the great ruling principle of
+their institution. It is, therefore, not at all wonderful, that people
+should be so desirous of adding themselves to that body, in which they
+may possess and reconcile satisfactions the most alluring, and seemingly
+the most contradictory; enjoying at once all the spirited pleasure of
+independence, and all the gross lucre and fat emoluments of servitude.
+
+Here is a sketch, though a slight one, of the constitution, laws, and
+policy of this new court corporation. The name by which they choose to
+distinguish themselves, is that of _king's men_ or the _king's friends_,
+by an invidious exclusion of the rest of his Majesty's most loyal and
+affectionate subjects. The whole system, comprehending the exterior and
+interior administrations, is commonly called, in the technical language
+of the court, _double cabinet_; in French or English, as you choose to
+pronounce it.
+
+Whether all this be a vision of a distracted brain, or the invention of
+a malicious heart, or a real faction in the country, must be judged by
+the appearances which things have worn for eight years past. Thus far I
+am certain, that there is not a single public man, in or out of office,
+who has not, at some time or other, borne testimony to the truth of what
+I have now related. In particular, no persons have been more strong in
+their assertions, and louder and more indecent in their complaints, than
+those who compose all the exterior part of the present administration;
+in whose time that faction has arrived at such an height of power, and
+of boldness in the use of it, as may, in the end, perhaps bring about
+its total destruction.
+
+It is true, that about four years ago, during the administration of the
+Marquis of Rockingham, an attempt was made to carry on government
+without their concurrence. However, this was only a transient cloud;
+they were hid but for a moment; and their constellation blazed out with
+greater brightness, and a far more vigorous influence, some time after
+it was blown over. An attempt was at that time made (but without any
+idea of proscription) to break their corps, to discountenance their
+doctrines, to revive connections of a different kind, to restore the
+principles and policy of the Whigs, to reanimate the cause of liberty by
+ministerial countenance; and then for the first time were men seen
+attached in office to every principle they had maintained in opposition.
+No one will doubt, that such men were abhorred and violently opposed by
+the court faction, and that such a system could have but a short
+duration.
+
+It may appear somewhat affected, that in so much discourse upon this
+extraordinary party, I should say so little of the Earl of Bute, who is
+the supposed head of it. But this was neither owing to affectation nor
+inadvertence. I have carefully avoided the introduction of personal
+reflections of any kind. Much the greater part of the topics which have
+been used to blacken this nobleman are either unjust or frivolous. At
+best, they have a tendency to give the resentment of this bitter
+calamity a wrong direction, and to turn a public grievance into a mean,
+personal, or a dangerous national quarrel. Where there is a regular
+scheme of operations carried on, it is the system, and not any
+individual person who acts in it, that is truly dangerous. This system
+has not arisen solely from the ambition of Lord Bute, but from the
+circumstances which favored it, and from an indifference to the
+constitution which had been for some time growing among our gentry. We
+should have been tried with it, if the Earl of Bute had never existed;
+and it will want neither a contriving head nor active members, when the
+Earl of Bute exists no longer. It is not, therefore, to rail at Lord
+Bute, but firmly to embody against this court party and its practices,
+which can afford us any prospect of relief in our present condition.
+
+Another motive induces me to put the personal consideration of Lord Bute
+wholly out of the question. He communicates very little in a direct
+manner with the greater part of our men of business. This has never been
+his custom. It is enough for him that he surrounds them with his
+creatures. Several imagine, therefore, that they have a very good excuse
+for doing all the work of this faction, when they have no personal
+connection with Lord Bute. But whoever becomes a party to an
+administration, composed of insulated individuals, without faith
+plighted, tie, or common principle; an administration constitutionally
+impotent, because supported by no party in the nation; he who
+contributes to destroy the connections of men and their trust in one
+another, or in any sort to throw the dependence of public counsels upon
+private will and favor, possibly may have nothing to do with the Earl of
+Bute. It matters little whether he be the friend or the enemy of that
+particular person. But let him be who or what he will, he abets a
+faction that is driving hard to the ruin of his country. He is sapping
+the foundation of its liberty, disturbing the sources of its domestic
+tranquillity, weakening its government over its dependencies, degrading
+it from all its importance in the system of Europe.
+
+It is this unnatural infusion of a _system of favoritism_ into a
+government which in a great part of its constitution is popular, that
+has raised the present ferment in the nation. The people, without
+entering deeply into its principles, could plainly perceive its effects,
+in much violence, in a great spirit of innovation, and a general
+disorder in all the functions of government. I keep my eye solely on
+this system; if I speak of those measures which have arisen from it, it
+will be so far only as they illustrate the general scheme. This is the
+fountain of all those bitter waters of which, through an hundred
+different conduits, we have drunk until we are ready to burst. The
+discretionary power of the crown in the formation of ministry, abused by
+bad or weak men, has given rise to a system, which, without directly
+violating the letter of any law, operates against the spirit of the
+whole constitution.
+
+A plan of favoritism for our executory government is essentially at
+variance with the plan of our legislature. One great end undoubtedly of
+a mixed government like ours, composed of monarchy, and of controls, on
+the part of the higher people and the lower, is that the prince shall
+not be able to violate the laws. This is useful indeed and fundamental.
+But this, even at first view, is no more than a negative advantage; an
+armor merely defensive. It is therefore next in order, and equal in
+importance, _that the discretionary powers which are necessarily vested
+in the monarch, whether for the execution of the laws, or for the
+nomination to magistracy and office, or for conducting the affairs of
+peace and war, or for ordering the revenue, should all be exercised upon
+public principles and national grounds, and, not on the likings or
+prejudices, the intrigues or policies, of a court_. This, I said, is
+equal in importance to the securing a government according to law. The
+laws reach but a very little way. Constitute government how you please,
+infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the
+powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of
+ministers of state. Even all the use and potency of the laws depends
+upon them. Without them, your commonwealth is no better than a scheme
+upon paper; and not a living, active, effective constitution. It is
+possible that through negligence, or ignorance, or design artfully
+conducted, ministers may suffer one part of government to languish,
+another to be perverted from its purposes, and every valuable interest
+of the country to fall into ruin and decay, without possibility of
+fixing any single act on which a criminal prosecution can be justly
+grounded. The due arrangement of men in the active part of the state,
+far from being foreign to the purposes of a wise government, ought to be
+among its very first and dearest objects. When, therefore, the abettors
+of the new system tell us, that between them and their opposers there is
+nothing but a struggle for power, and that therefore we are no ways
+concerned in it; we must tell those who have the impudence to insult us
+in this manner, that, of all things, we ought to be the most concerned
+who, and what sort of men they are that hold the trust of everything
+that is dear to us. Nothing can render this a point of indifference to
+the nation, but what must either render us totally desperate, or soothe
+us into the security of idiots. We must soften into a credulity below
+the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted
+with a malignity truly diabolical to believe all the world to be equally
+wicked and corrupt. Men are in public life as in private, some good,
+some evil. The elevation of the one, and the depression of the other,
+are the first objects of all true policy. But that form of government,
+which, neither in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate
+tendency, has contrived to throw its affairs into the most trustworthy
+hands, but has left its whole executory system to be disposed of
+agreeably to the uncontrolled pleasure of any one man, however excellent
+or virtuous, is a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but
+consequentially erroneous in every part of it.
+
+In arbitrary governments, the constitution of the ministry follows the
+constitution of the legislature. Both the law and the magistrate are the
+creatures of will. It must be so. Nothing, indeed, will appear more
+certain, on any tolerable consideration of this matter, than that _every
+sort of government ought to have its administration correspondent to its
+legislature_. If it should be otherwise, things must fall into an
+hideous disorder. The people of a free commonwealth, who have taken such
+care that their laws should be the result of general consent, cannot be
+so senseless as to suffer their executory system to be composed of
+persons on whom they have no dependence, and whom no proofs of the
+public love and confidence have recommended to those powers, upon the
+use of which the very being of the state depends.
+
+The popular election of magistrates, and popular disposition of rewards
+and honors, is one of the first advantages of a free state. Without it,
+or something equivalent to it, perhaps the people cannot long enjoy the
+substance of freedom; certainly none of the vivifying energy of good
+government. The frame of our commonwealth did not admit of such an
+actual election: but it provided as well, and (while the spirit of the
+constitution is preserved) better for all the effects of it than by the
+method of suffrage in any democratic state whatsoever. It had always,
+until of late, been held the first duty of Parliament _to refuse to
+support government, until power was in the hands of persons who were
+acceptable to the people, or while factions predominated in the court in
+which the nation had no confidence_. Thus all the good effects of
+popular election were supposed to be secured to us, without the
+mischiefs attending on perpetual intrigue, and a distinct canvass for
+every particular office throughout the body of the people. This was the
+most noble and refined part of our constitution. The people, by their
+representatives and grandees, were intrusted with a deliberative power
+in making laws; the king with the control of his negative. The king was
+intrusted with the deliberative choice and the election to office; the
+people had the negative in a Parliamentary refusal to support. Formerly
+this power of control was what kept ministers in awe of Parliaments, and
+Parliaments in reverence with the people. If the use of this power of
+control on the system and persons of administration is gone, everything
+is lost, Parliament and all. We may assure ourselves, that if Parliament
+will tamely see evil men take possession of all the strongholds of their
+country, and allow them time and means to fortify themselves, under a
+pretence of giving them a fair trial, and upon a hope of discovering,
+whether they will not be reformed by power, and whether their measures
+will not be better than their morals; such a Parliament will give
+countenance to their measures also, whatever that Parliament may
+pretend, and whatever those measures may be.
+
+Every good political institution must have a preventive operation as
+well as a remedial. It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude bad
+men from government, and not to trust for the safety of the state to
+subsequent punishment alone; punishment, which has ever been tardy and
+uncertain; and which, when power is suffered in bad hands, may chance to
+fall rather on the injured than the criminal.
+
+Before men are put forward into the great trusts of the state, they
+ought by their conduct to have obtained such a degree of estimation in
+their country, as may be some sort of pledge and security to the public,
+that they will not abuse those trusts. It is no mean security for a
+proper use of power, that a man has shown by the general tenor of his
+actions, that the affection, the good opinion, the confidence of his
+fellow-citizens have been among the principal objects of his life; and
+that he has owed none of the gradations of his power or fortune to a
+settled contempt, or occasional forfeiture of their esteem.
+
+That man who before he comes into power has no friends, or who coming
+into power is obliged to desert his friends, or who losing it has no
+friends to sympathize with him; he who has no sway among any part of the
+landed or commercial interest, but whose whole importance has begun with
+his office, and is sure to end with it, is a person who ought never to
+be suffered by a controlling Parliament to continue in any of those
+situations which confer the lead and direction of all our public
+affairs; because such a man _has no connection with the interest of the
+people_.
+
+Those knots or cabals of men who have got together, avowedly without any
+public principle, in order to sell their conjunct iniquity at the higher
+rate, and are therefore universally odious, ought never to be suffered
+to domineer in the state; because they have _no connection with the
+sentiments and opinions of the people_.
+
+These are considerations which in my opinion enforce the necessity of
+having some better reason, in a free country, and a free Parliament, for
+supporting the ministers of the crown, than that short one, _That the
+king has thought proper to appoint them_. There is something very
+courtly in this. But it is a principle pregnant with all sorts of
+mischief, in a constitution like ours, to turn the views of active men
+from the country to the court. Whatever be the road to power, that is
+the road which will be trod. If the opinion of the country be of no use
+as a means of power or consideration, the qualities which usually
+procure that opinion will be no longer cultivated. And whether it will
+be right, in a state so popular in its constitution as ours, to leave
+ambition without popular motives, and to trust all to the operation of
+pure virtue in the minds of kings, and ministers, and public men, must
+be submitted to the judgment and good sense of the people of England.
+
+Cunning men are here apt to break in, and, without directly
+controverting the principle, to raise objections from the difficulty
+under which the sovereign labors, to distinguish the genuine voice and
+sentiments of his people, from the clamor of a faction, by which it is
+so easily counterfeited. The nation, they say, is generally divided into
+parties, with views and passions utterly irreconcilable. If the king
+should put his affairs into the hands of any one of them, he is sure to
+disgust the rest; if he select particular men from among them all, it is
+a hazard that he disgusts them all. Those who are left out, however
+divided before, will soon run into a body of opposition; which, being a
+collection of many discontents into one focus, will without doubt be hot
+and violent enough. Faction will make its cries resound through the
+nation, as if the whole were in an uproar, when by far the majority, and
+much the better part, will seem for a while as it were annihilated by
+the quiet in which their virtue and moderation incline them to enjoy the
+blessings of government. Besides that the opinion of the mere vulgar is
+a miserable rule even with regard to themselves, on account of their
+violence and instability. So that if you were to gratify them in their
+humor to-day, that very gratification would be a ground of their
+dissatisfaction on the next. Now as all these rules of public opinion
+are to be collected with great difficulty, and to be applied with equal
+uncertainty as to the effect, what better can a king of England do, than
+to employ such men as he finds to have views and inclinations most
+conformable to his own; who are least infected with pride and self-will;
+and who are least moved by such popular humors as are perpetually
+traversing his designs, and disturbing his service; trusting that, when
+he means no ill to his people, he will be supported in his appointments,
+whether he chooses to keep or to change, as his private judgment or his
+pleasure leads him? He will find a sure resource in the real weight and
+influence of the crown, when it is not suffered to become an instrument
+in the hands of a faction.
+
+I will not pretend to say, that there is nothing at all in this mode of
+reasoning; because I will not assert that there is no difficulty in the
+art of government. Undoubtedly the very best administration must
+encounter a great deal of opposition; and the very worst will find more
+support than it deserves. Sufficient appearances will never be wanting
+to those who have a mind to deceive themselves. It is a fallacy in
+constant use with those who would level all things, and confound right
+with wrong, to insist upon the inconveniences which are attached to
+every choice, without taking into consideration the different weight and
+consequence of those inconveniences. The question is not concerning
+_absolute_ discontent or _perfect_ satisfaction in government; neither
+of which can be pure and unmixed at any time, or upon any system. The
+controversy is about that degree of good humor in the people, which may
+possibly be attained, and ought certainly to be looked for. While some
+politicians may be waiting to know whether the sense of every individual
+be against them, accurately distinguishing the vulgar from the better
+sort, drawing lines between the enterprises of a faction and the efforts
+of a people, they may chance to see the government, which they are so
+nicely weighing, and dividing, and distinguishing, tumble to the ground
+in the midst of their wise deliberation. Prudent men, when so great an
+object as the security of government, or even its peace, is at stake,
+will not run the risk of a decision which may be fatal to it. They who
+can read the political sky will see a hurricane in a cloud no bigger
+than a hand at the very edge of the horizon, and will run into the first
+harbor. No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. They
+are a matter incapable of exact definition. But, though no man can draw
+a stroke between the confines of day and night, yet light and darkness
+are upon the whole tolerably distinguishable. Nor will it be impossible
+for a prince to find out such a mode of government, and such persons to
+administer it, as will give a great degree of content to his people;
+without any curious and anxious research for that abstract, universal,
+perfect harmony, which while he is seeking, he abandons those means of
+ordinary tranquillity which are in his power without any research at
+all.
+
+It is not more the duty than it is the interest of a prince, to aim at
+giving tranquillity to his government. But those who advise him may have
+an interest in disorder and confusion. If the opinion of the people is
+against them, they will naturally wish that it should have no
+prevalence. Here it is that the people must on their part show
+themselves sensible of their own value. Their whole importance, in the
+first instance, and afterwards their whole freedom, is at stake. Their
+freedom cannot long survive their importance. Here it is that the
+natural strength of the kingdom, the great peers, the leading landed
+gentlemen, the opulent merchants and manufacturers, the substantial
+yeomanry, must interpose, to rescue their prince, themselves, and their
+posterity.
+
+We are at present at issue upon this point. We are in the great crisis
+of this contention; and the part which men take, one way or other, will
+serve to discriminate their characters and their principles. Until the
+matter is decided, the country will remain in its present confusion. For
+while a system of administration is attempted, entirely repugnant to the
+genius of the people, and not conformable to the plan of their
+government, everything must necessarily be disordered for a time, until
+this system destroys the constitution, or the constitution gets the
+better of this system.
+
+There is, in my opinion, a peculiar venom and malignity in this
+political distemper beyond any that I have heard or read of. In former
+times the projectors of arbitrary government attacked only the liberties
+of their country; a design surely mischievous enough to have satisfied a
+mind of the most unruly ambition. But a system unfavorable to freedom
+may be so formed, as considerably to exalt the grandeur of the state;
+and men may find, in the pride and splendor of that prosperity, some
+sort of consolation for the loss of their solid privileges. Indeed the
+increase of the power of the state has often been urged by artful men,
+as a pretext for some abridgment of the public liberty. But the scheme
+of the junto under consideration, not only strikes a palsy into every
+nerve of our free constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and
+stupefies the whole executive power: rendering government in all its
+grand operations languid, uncertain, ineffective; making ministers
+fearful of attempting, and incapable of executing any useful plan of
+domestic arrangement, or of foreign politics. It tends to produce
+neither the security of a free government, nor the energy of a monarchy
+that is absolute. Accordingly the crown has dwindled away, in proportion
+to the unnatural and turgid growth of this excrescence on the court.
+
+The interior ministry are sensible, that war is a situation which sets
+in its full light the value of the hearts of a people; and they well
+know, that the beginning of the importance of the people must be the end
+of theirs. For this reason they discover upon all occasions the utmost
+fear of everything, which by possibility may lead to such an event. I do
+not mean that they manifest any of that pious fear which is backward to
+commit the safety of the country to the dubious experiment of war. Such
+a fear, being the tender sensation of virtue, excited, as it is
+regulated, by reason, frequently shows itself in a seasonable boldness,
+which keeps danger at a distance, by seeming to despise it. Their fear
+betrays to the first glance of the eye, its true cause, and its real
+object. Foreign powers, confident in the knowledge of their character,
+have not scrupled to violate the most solemn treaties; and, in defiance
+of them, to make conquests in the midst of a general peace, and in the
+heart of Europe. Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professed
+enemies of the freedom of mankind, in defiance of those who were
+formerly its professed defenders. We have had just claims upon the same
+powers: rights which ought to have been sacred to them as well as to us,
+as they had their origin in our lenity and generosity towards France and
+Spain in the day of their great humiliation. Such I call the ransom of
+Manilla, and the demand on France for the East India prisoners. But
+these powers put a just confidence in their resource of the _double
+cabinet_. These demands (one of them at least) are hastening fast
+towards an acquittal by prescription. Oblivion begins to spread her
+cobwebs over all our spirited remonstrances. Some of the most valuable
+branches of our trade are also on the point of perishing from the same
+cause. I do not mean those branches which bear without the hand of the
+vine-dresser; I mean those which the policy of treaties had formerly
+secured to us; I mean to mark and distinguish the trade of Portugal, the
+loss of which, and the power of the cabal, have one and the same era.
+
+If by any chance, the ministers who stand before the curtain possess or
+affect any spirit, it makes little or no impression. Foreign courts and
+ministers, who were among the first to discover and to profit by this
+invention of the _double cabinet_, attend very little to their
+remonstrances. They know that those shadows of ministers have nothing to
+do in the ultimate disposal of things. Jealousies and animosities are
+sedulously nourished in the outward administration, and have been even
+considered as a _causa sine qua non_ in its constitution: thence foreign
+courts have a certainty, that nothing can be done by common counsel in
+this nation. If one of those ministers officially takes up a business
+with spirit, it serves only the better to signalize the meanness of the
+rest, and the discord of them all. His colleagues in office are in haste
+to shake him off, and to disclaim the whole of his proceedings. Of this
+nature was that astonishing transaction, in which Lord Rochford, our
+ambassador at Paris, remonstrated against the attempt upon Corsica, in
+consequence of a direct authority from Lord Shelburne. This remonstrance
+the French minister treated with the contempt that was natural: as he
+was assured, from the ambassador of his court to ours, that these orders
+of Lord Shelburne were not supported by the rest of the (I had like to
+have said British) administration. Lord Rochford, a man of spirit,
+could not endure this situation. The consequences were, however,
+curious. He returns from Paris, and comes home full of anger. Lord
+Shelburne, who gave the orders, is obliged to give up the seals. Lord
+Rochford, who obeyed these orders, receives them. He goes, however, into
+another department of the same office, that he might not be obliged
+officially to acquiesce, in one situation, under what he had officially
+remonstrated against, in another. At Paris, the Duke of Choiseul
+considered this office arrangement as a compliment to him: here it was
+spoken of as an attention to the delicacy of Lord Rochford. But whether
+the compliment was to one or both, to this nation it was the same. By
+this transaction the condition of our court lay exposed in all its
+nakedness. Our office correspondence has lost all pretence to
+authenticity: British policy is brought into derision in those nations,
+that a while ago trembled at the power of our arms, whilst they looked
+up with confidence to the equity, firmness, and candor, which shone in
+all our negotiations. I represent this matter exactly in the light in
+which it has been universally received.
+
+Such has been the aspect of our foreign politics, under the influence of
+a _double cabinet_. With such an arrangement at court, it is impossible
+it should have been otherwise. Nor is it possible that this scheme
+should have a better effect upon the government of our dependencies, the
+first, the dearest, and most delicate objects, of the interior policy of
+this empire. The colonies know, that administration is separated from
+the court, divided within itself, and detested by the nation. The
+_double cabinet_ has, in both the parts of it, shown the most malignant
+dispositions towards them, without being able to do them the smallest
+mischief.
+
+They are convinced, by sufficient experience, that no plan, either of
+lenity, or rigor, can be pursued with uniformity and perseverance.
+Therefore they turn their eyes entirely from Great Britain, where they
+have neither dependence on friendship, nor apprehension from enmity.
+They look to themselves, and their own arrangements. They grow every day
+into alienation from this country; and whilst they are becoming
+disconnected with our government, we have not the consolation to find,
+that they are even friendly in their new independence. Nothing can equal
+the futility, the weakness, the rashness, the timidity, the perpetual
+contradiction in the management of our affairs in that part of the
+world. A volume might be written on this melancholy subject; but it were
+better to leave it entirely to the reflections of the reader himself,
+than not to treat it in the extent it deserves.
+
+In what manner our domestic economy is affected by this system, it is
+needless to explain. It is the perpetual subject of their own
+complaints.
+
+The court party resolve the whole into faction Having said something
+before upon this subject, I shall only observe here, that, when they
+give this account of the prevalence of faction, they present no very
+favorable aspect of the confidence of the people in their own
+government. They may be assured, that however they amuse themselves with
+a variety of projects for substituting something else in the place of
+that great and only foundation of government, the confidence of the
+people, every attempt will but make their condition worse. When men
+imagine that their food is only a cover for poison, and when they
+neither love nor trust the hand that serves it, it is not the name of
+the roast beef of Old England, that will persuade them to sit down to
+the table that is spread for them. When the people conceive that laws,
+and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends
+of their institution, they find in those names of degenerated
+establishments only new motives to discontent. Those bodies, which, when
+full of life and beauty, lay in their arms, and were their joy and
+comfort, when dead and putrid, become but the more loathsome from
+remembrance of former endearments. A sullen gloom and furious disorder
+prevail by fits; the nation loses its relish for peace and prosperity;
+as it did in that season of fulness which opened our troubles in the
+time of Charles the First. A species of men to whom a state of order
+would become a sentence of obscurity are nourished into a dangerous
+magnitude by the heat of intestine disturbances; and it is no wonder
+that, by a sort of sinister piety, they cherish, in their turn, the
+disorders which are the parents of all their consequence. Superficial
+observers consider such persons as the cause of the public uneasiness,
+when, in truth, they are nothing more than the effect of it. Good men
+look upon this distracted scene with sorrow and indignation. Their hands
+are tied behind them. They are despoiled of all the power which might
+enable them to reconcile the strength of government with the rights of
+the people. They stand in a most distressing alternative. But in the
+election among evils they hope better things from temporary confusion,
+than from established servitude. In the mean time, the voice of law is
+not to be heard. Fierce licentiousness begets violent restraints. The
+military arm is the sole reliance; and then, call your constitution what
+you please, it is the sword that governs. The civil power, like every
+other that calls in the aid of an ally stronger than itself, perishes by
+the assistance it receives. But the contrivers of this scheme of
+government will not trust solely to the military power; because they are
+cunning men. Their restless and crooked spirit drives them to rake in
+the dirt of every kind of expedient. Unable to rule the multitude, they
+endeavor to raise divisions amongst them. One mob is hired to destroy
+another; a procedure which at once encourages the boldness of the
+populace, and justly increases their discontent. Men become pensioners
+of state on account of their abilities in the array of riot, and the
+discipline of confusion. Government is put under the disgraceful
+necessity of protecting from the severity of the laws that very
+licentiousness, which the laws had been before violated to repress.
+Everything partakes of the original disorder. Anarchy predominates
+without freedom, and servitude without submission or subordination.
+These are the consequences inevitable to our public peace, from the
+scheme of rendering the executory government at once odious and feeble;
+of freeing administration from the constitutional and salutary control
+of Parliament, and inventing for it a _new control_, unknown to the
+constitution, an _interior cabinet_; which brings the whole body of
+government into confusion and contempt.
+
+After having stated, as shortly as I am able, the effects of this system
+on our foreign affairs, on the policy of our government with regard to
+our dependencies, and on the interior economy of the commonwealth;
+there remains only, in this part of my design, to say something of the
+grand principle which first recommended this system at court. The
+pretence was, to prevent the king from being enslaved by a faction, and
+made a prisoner in his closet. This scheme might have been expected to
+answer at least its own end, and to indemnify the king, in his personal
+capacity, for all the confusion into which it has thrown his government.
+But has it in reality answered this purpose? I am sure, if it had, every
+affectionate subject would have one motive for enduring with patience
+all the evils which attend it.
+
+In order to come at the truth in this matter, it may not be amiss to
+consider it somewhat in detail. I speak here of the king, and not of the
+crown; the interests of which we have already touched. Independent of
+that greatness which a king possesses merely by being a representative
+of the national dignity, the things in which he may have an individual
+interest seem to be these:--wealth accumulated; wealth spent in
+magnificence, pleasure, or beneficence; personal respect and attention;
+and, above all, private ease and repose of mind. These compose the
+inventory of prosperous circumstances, whether they regard a prince or a
+subject; their enjoyments differing only in the scale upon which they
+are formed.
+
+Suppose then we were to ask, whether the king has been richer than his
+predecessors in accumulated wealth, since the establishment of the plan
+of favoritism? I believe it will be found that the picture of royal
+indigence, which our court has presented until this year, has been truly
+humiliating. Nor has it been relieved from this unseemly distress, but
+by means which have hazarded the affection of the people, and shaken
+their confidence in Parliament. If the public treasures had been
+exhausted in magnificence and splendor, this distress would have been
+accounted for, and in some measure justified. Nothing would be more
+unworthy of this nation, than with a mean and mechanical rule, to mete
+out the splendor of the crown. Indeed I have found very few persons
+disposed to so ungenerous a procedure. But the generality of people, it
+must be confessed, do feel a good deal mortified, when they compare the
+wants of the court with its expenses. They do not behold the cause of
+this distress in any part of the apparatus of royal magnificence. In all
+this, they see nothing but the operations of parsimony, attended with
+all the consequences of profusion. Nothing expended, nothing saved.
+Their wonder is increased by their knowledge, that besides the revenue
+settled on his Majesty's civil list to the amount of 800,000_l._ a year,
+he has a farther aid from a large pension list, near 90,000_l._ a year,
+in Ireland; from the produce of the duchy of Lancaster (which we are
+told has been greatly improved); from the revenue of the duchy of
+Cornwall; from the American quit-rents; from the four and a half per
+cent duty in the Leeward Islands; this last worth to be sure
+considerably more than 40,000_l._ a year. The whole is certainly not
+much short of a million annually.
+
+These are revenues within the knowledge and cognizance of our national
+councils. We have no direct right to examine into the receipts from his
+Majesty's German dominions, and the bishopric of Osnaburg. This is
+unquestionably true. But that which is not within the province of
+Parliament, is yet within the sphere of every man's own reflection. If
+a foreign prince resided amongst us, the state of his revenues could not
+fail of becoming the subject of our speculation. Filled with an anxious
+concern for whatever regards the welfare of our sovereign, it is
+impossible, in considering the miserable circumstances into which he has
+been brought, that this obvious topic should be entirely passed over.
+There is an opinion universal, that these revenues produce something not
+inconsiderable, clear of all charges and establishments. This produce
+the people do not believe to be hoarded, nor perceive to be spent. It is
+accounted for in the only manner it can, by supposing that it is drawn
+away, for the support of that court faction, which, whilst it distresses
+the nation, impoverishes the prince in every one of his resources. I
+once more caution the reader, that I do not urge this consideration
+concerning the foreign revenue, as if I supposed we had a direct right
+to examine into the expenditure of any part of it; but solely for the
+purpose of showing how little this system of favoritism has been
+advantageous to the monarch himself; which, without magnificence, has
+sunk him into a state of unnatural poverty; at the same time that he
+possessed every means of affluence, from ample revenues, both in this
+country, and in other parts of his dominions.
+
+Has this system provided better for the treatment becoming his high and
+sacred character, and secured the king from those disgusts attached to
+the necessity of employing men who are not personally agreeable? This is
+a topic upon which for many reasons I could wish to be silent; but the
+pretence of securing against such causes of uneasiness, is the
+corner-stone of the court-party. It has however so happened, that if I
+were to fix upon any one point, in which this system has been more
+particularly and shamefully blamable, the effects which it has produced
+would justify me in choosing for that point its tendency to degrade the
+personal dignity of the sovereign, and to expose him to a thousand
+contradictions and mortifications. It is but too evident in what manner
+these projectors of royal greatness have fulfilled all their magnificent
+promises. Without recapitulating all the circumstances of the reign,
+every one of which is, more or less, a melancholy proof of the truth of
+what I have advanced, let us consider the language of the court but a
+few years ago, concerning most of the persons now in the external
+administration: let me ask, whether any enemy to the personal feelings
+of the sovereign could possibly contrive a keener instrument of
+mortification, and degradation of all dignity, than almost every part
+and member of the present arrangement? Nor, in the whole course of our
+history, has any compliance with the will of the people ever been known
+to extort from any prince a greater contradiction to all his own
+declared affections and dislikes, than that which is now adopted, in
+direct opposition to everything the people approve and desire.
+
+An opinion prevails, that greatness has been more than once advised to
+submit to certain condescensions towards individuals, which have been
+denied to the entreaties of a nation. For the meanest and most dependent
+instrument of this system knows, that there are hours when its existence
+may depend upon his adherence to it; and he takes his advantage
+accordingly. Indeed it is a law of nature, that whoever is necessary to
+what we have made our object is sure, in some way, or in some time or
+other, to become our master. All this however is submitted to, in order
+to avoid that monstrous evil of governing in concurrence with the
+opinion of the people. For it seems to be laid down as a maxim, that a
+king has some sort of interest in giving uneasiness to his subjects:
+that all who are pleasing to them, are to be of course disagreeable to
+him: that as soon as the persons who are odious at court are known to be
+odious to the people, it is snatched at as a lucky occasion of showering
+down upon them all kinds of emoluments and honors. None are considered
+as well-wishers to the crown, but those who advise to some unpopular
+course of action; none capable of serving it, but those who are obliged
+to call at every instant upon all its power for the safety of their
+lives. None are supposed to be fit priests in the temple of government,
+but the persons who are compelled to fly into it for sanctuary. Such is
+the effect of this refined project; such is ever the result of all the
+contrivances, which are used to free men from the servitude of their
+reason, and from the necessity of ordering their affairs according to
+their evident interests. These contrivances oblige them to run into a
+real and ruinous servitude, in order to avoid a supposed restraint, that
+might be attended with advantage.
+
+If therefore this system has so ill answered its own grand pretence of
+saving the king from the necessity of employing persons disagreeable to
+him, has it given more peace and tranquillity to his Majesty's private
+hours? No, most certainly. The father of his people cannot possibly
+enjoy repose, while his family is in such a state of distraction. Then
+what has the crown or the king profited by all this fine-wrought scheme?
+Is he more rich, or more splendid, or more powerful, or more at his
+ease, by so many labors and contrivances? Have they not beggared his
+exchequer, tarnished the splendor of his court, sunk his dignity, galled
+his feelings, discomposed the whole order and happiness of his private
+life?
+
+It will be very hard, I believe, to state in what respect the king has
+profited by that faction which presumptuously choose to call themselves
+_his friends_.
+
+If particular men had grown into an attachment, by the distinguished
+honor of the society of their sovereign; and, by being the partakers of
+his amusements, came sometimes to prefer the gratification of his
+personal inclinations to the support of his high character, the thing
+would be very natural, and it would be excusable enough. But the
+pleasant part of the story is, that these _king's friends_ have no more
+ground for usurping such a title, than a resident freeholder in
+Cumberland or in Cornwall. They are only known to their sovereign by
+kissing his hand, for the offices, pensions, and grants, into which they
+have deceived his benignity. May no storm ever come, which will put the
+firmness of their attachment to the proof; and which, in the midst of
+confusions, and terrors, and sufferings, may demonstrate the eternal
+difference between a true and severe friend to the monarchy, and a
+slippery sycophant of the court! _Quantum infido scurrae distabit
+amicus._
+
+So far I have considered the effect of the court system, chiefly as it
+operates upon the executive government, on the temper of the people, and
+on the happiness of the sovereign. It remains that we should consider,
+with a little attention, its operation upon Parliament.
+
+Parliament was indeed the great object of all these politics, the end
+at which they aimed, as well as the instrument by which they were to
+operate. But, before Parliament could be made subservient to a system,
+by which it was to be degraded from the dignity of a national council
+into a mere member of the court, it must be greatly changed from its
+original character.
+
+In speaking of this body, I have my eye chiefly on the House of Commons.
+I hope I shall be indulged in a few observations on the nature and
+character of that assembly; not with regard to its _legal form and
+power_, but to its _spirit_, and to the purposes it is meant to answer
+in the constitution.
+
+The House of Commons was supposed originally to be _no part of the
+standing government of this country_. It was considered as a _control_
+issuing _immediately_ from the people, and speedily to be resolved into
+the mass from whence it arose. In this respect it was in the higher part
+of government what juries are in the lower. The capacity of a magistrate
+being transitory, and that of a citizen permanent, the latter capacity
+it was hoped would of course preponderate in all discussions, not only
+between the people and the standing authority of the crown, but between
+the people and the fleeting authority of the House of Commons itself. It
+was hoped that, being of a middle nature between subject and government,
+they would feel with a more tender and a nearer interest everything that
+concerned the people, than the other remoter and more permanent parts of
+legislature.
+
+Whatever alterations time and the necessary accommodation of business
+may have introduced, this character can never be sustained, unless the
+House of Commons shall be made to bear some stamp of the actual
+disposition of the people at large. It would (among public misfortunes)
+be an evil more natural and tolerable, that the House of Commons should
+be infected with every epidemical frenzy of the people, as this would
+indicate some consanguinity, some sympathy of nature with their
+constituents, than that they should in all cases be wholly untouched by
+the opinions and feelings of the people out of doors. By this want of
+sympathy they would cease to be a House of Commons. For it is not the
+derivation of the power of that House from the people, which makes it in
+a distinct sense their representative. The king is the representative of
+the people; so are the lords; so are the judges. They all are trustees
+for the people, as well as the commons; because no power is given for
+the sole sake of the holder; and although government certainly is an
+institution of divine authority, yet its forms, and the persons who
+administer it, all originate from the people.
+
+A popular origin cannot therefore be the characteristical distinction of
+a popular representative. This belongs equally to all parts of
+government and in all forms. The virtue, spirit, and essence of a House
+of Commons consists in its being the express image of the feelings of
+the nation. It was not instituted to be a control _upon_ the people, as
+of late it has been taught, by a doctrine of the most pernicious
+tendency. It was designed as a control _for_ the people. Other
+institutions have been formed for the purpose of checking popular
+excesses; and they are, I apprehend, fully adequate to their object. If
+not, they ought to be made so. The House of Commons, as it was never
+intended for the support of peace and subordination, is miserably
+appointed for that service; having no stronger weapon than its mace,
+and no better officer than its serjeant-at-arms, which it can command of
+its own proper authority. A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and
+judicial magistracy; an anxious care of public money; an openness,
+approaching towards facility, to public complaint: these seem to be the
+true characteristics of a House of Commons. But an addressing House of
+Commons, and a petitioning nation; a House of Commons full of
+confidence, when the nation is plunged in despair; in the utmost harmony
+with ministers, whom the people regard with the utmost abhorrence; who
+vote thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them for impeachments;
+who are eager to grant, when the general voice demands account; who, in
+all disputes between the people and administration, presume against the
+people; who punish their disorders, but refuse even to inquire into the
+provocations to them; this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things
+in this constitution. Such an assembly may be a great, wise, awful
+senate; but it is not, to any popular purpose, a House of Commons. This
+change from an immediate state of procuration and delegation to a course
+of acting as from original power, is the way in which all the popular
+magistracies in the world have been perverted from their purposes. It is
+indeed their greatest and sometimes their incurable corruption. For
+there is a material distinction between that corruption by which
+particular points are carried against reason, (this is a thing which
+cannot be prevented by human wisdom, and is of loss consequence,) and
+the corruption of the principle itself For then the evil is not
+accidental, but settled. The distemper becomes the natural habit.
+
+For my part, I shall be compelled to conclude the principle of
+Parliament to be totally corrupted, and therefore its ends entirely
+defeated, when I see two symptoms: first, a rule of indiscriminate
+support to all ministers; because this destroys the very end of
+Parliament as a control, and is a general, previous sanction to
+misgovernment: and secondly, the setting up any claims adverse to the
+right of free election; for this tends to subvert the legal authority by
+which the House of Commons sits.
+
+I know that, since the Revolution, along with many dangerous, many
+useful powers of government have been weakened. It is absolutely
+necessary to have frequent recourse to the legislature. Parliaments must
+therefore sit every year, and for great part of the year. The dreadful
+disorders of frequent elections have also necessitated a septennial
+instead of a triennial duration. These circumstances, I mean the
+constant habit of authority, and the unfrequency of elections, have
+tended very much to draw the House of Commons towards the character of a
+standing senate. It is a disorder which has arisen from the cure of
+greater disorders; it has arisen from the extreme difficulty of
+reconciling liberty under a monarchical government, with external
+strength and with internal tranquillity.
+
+It is very clear that we cannot free ourselves entirely from this great
+inconvenience; but I would not increase an evil, because I was not able
+to remove it; and because it was not in my power to keep the House of
+Commons religiously true to its first principles, I would not argue for
+carrying it to a total oblivion of them. This has been the great scheme
+of power in our time. They, who will not conform their conduct to the
+public good, and cannot support it by the prerogative of the crown, have
+adopted a new plan. They have totally abandoned the shattered and
+old-fashioned fortress of prerogative, and made a lodgment in the
+stronghold of Parliament itself. If they have any evil design to which
+there is no ordinary legal power commensurate, they bring it into
+Parliament. In Parliament the whole is executed from the beginning to
+the end. In Parliament the power of obtaining their object is absolute;
+and the safety in the proceeding perfect: no rules to confine, no
+after-reckonings to terrify. Parliament cannot, with any great
+propriety, punish others for things in which they themselves have been
+accomplices. Thus the control of Parliament upon the executory power is
+lost; because Parliament is made to partake in every considerable act of
+government. _Impeachment, that great guardian of the purity of the
+constitution, is in danger of being lost, even to the idea of it._
+
+By this plan several important ends are answered to the cabal. If the
+authority of Parliament supports itself, the credit of every act of
+government, which they contrive, is saved; but if the act be so very
+odious that the whole strength of Parliament is insufficient to
+recommend it, then Parliament is itself discredited; and this discredit
+increases more and more that indifference to the constitution, which it
+is the constant aim of its enemies, by their abuse of Parliamentary
+powers, to render general among the people. Whenever Parliament is
+persuaded to assume the offices of executive government, it will lose
+all the confidence, love, and veneration, which it has ever enjoyed
+whilst it was supposed the _corrective and control_ of the acting powers
+of the state. This would be the event, though its conduct in such a
+perversion of its functions should be tolerably just and moderate; but
+if it should be iniquitous, violent, full of passion, and full of
+faction, it would be considered as the most intolerable of all the modes
+of tyranny.
+
+For a considerable time this separation of the representatives from
+their constituents went on with a silent progress; and had those, who
+conducted the plan for their total separation, been persons of temper
+and abilities any way equal to the magnitude of their design, the
+success would have been infallible: but by their precipitancy they have
+laid it open in all its nakedness; the nation is alarmed at it: and the
+event may not be pleasant to the contrivers of the scheme. In the last
+session, the corps called the _king's friends_ made a hardy attempt, all
+at once, _to alter the right of election itself_; to put it into the
+power of the House of Commons to disable any person disagreeable to them
+from sitting in Parliament, without any other rule than their own
+pleasure; to make incapacities, either general for descriptions of men,
+or particular for individuals; and to take into their body, persons who
+avowedly had never been chosen by the majority of legal electors, nor
+agreeably to any known rule of law.
+
+The arguments upon which this claim was founded and combated, are not my
+business here. Never has a subject been more amply and more learnedly
+handled, nor upon one side, in my opinion, more satisfactorily; they who
+are not convinced by what is already written would not receive
+conviction _though, one arose from the dead_.
+
+I too have thought on this subject: but my purpose here, is only to
+consider it as a part of the favorite project of government; to observe
+on the motives which led to it; and to trace its political consequences.
+
+A violent rage for the punishment of Mr. Wilkes was the pretence of the
+whole. This gentleman, by setting himself strongly in opposition to the
+court cabal, had become at once an object of their persecution, and of
+the popular favor. The hatred of the court party pursuing, and the
+countenance of the people protecting him, it very soon became not at all
+a question on the man, but a trial of strength between the two parties.
+The advantage of the victory in this particular contest was the present,
+but not the only, nor by any means the principal object. Its operation
+upon the character of the House of Commons was the great point in view.
+The point to be gained by the cabal was this; that a precedent should be
+established, tending to show, _That the favor of the people was not so
+sure a road as the favor of the court even to popular honors and popular
+trusts_. A strenuous resistance to every appearance of lawless power; a
+spirit of independence carried to some degree of enthusiasm; an
+inquisitive character to discover, and a bold one to display, every
+corruption and every error of government; these are the qualities which
+recommend a man to a seat in the House of Commons, in open and merely
+popular elections. An indolent and submissive disposition; a disposition
+to think charitably of all the actions of men in power, and to live in a
+mutual intercourse of favors with them; an inclination rather to
+countenance a strong use of authority, than to bear any sort of
+licentiousness on the part of the people; these are unfavorable
+qualities in an open election for members of Parliament.
+
+The instinct which carries the people towards the choice of the former,
+is justified by reason; because a man of such a character, even in its
+exorbitances, does not directly contradict the purposes of a trust, the
+end of which is a control on power. The latter character, even when it
+is not in its extreme, will execute this trust but very imperfectly;
+and, if deviating to the least excess, will certainly frustrate instead
+of forwarding the purposes of a control on government. But when the
+House of Commons was to be new modelled, this principle was not only to
+be changed but reversed. Whilst any errors committed in support of power
+were left to the law, with every advantage of favorable construction, of
+mitigation, and finally of pardon; all excesses on the side of liberty,
+or in pursuit of popular favor, or in defence of popular rights and
+privileges, were not only to be punished by the rigor of the known law,
+but by a _discretionary_ proceeding, which brought on _the loss of the
+popular object itself_. Popularity was to be rendered, if not directly
+penal, at least highly dangerous. The favor of the people might lead
+even to a disqualification of representing them. Their odium might
+become, strained through the medium of two or three constructions, the
+means of sitting as the trustee of all that was dear to them. This is
+punishing the offence in the offending part. Until this time, the
+opinion of the people, through the power of an assembly, still in some
+sort popular, led to the greatest honors and emoluments in the gift of
+the crown. Now the principle is reversed; and the favor of the court is
+the only sure way of obtaining and holding those honors which ought to
+be in the disposal of the people.
+
+It signifies very little how this matter may be quibbled away. Example,
+the only argument of effect in civil life, demonstrates the truth of my
+proposition. Nothing can alter my opinion concerting the pernicious
+tendency of this example, until I see some man for his indiscretion in
+the support of power, for his violent and intemperate servility,
+rendered incapable of sitting in Parliament. For as it now stands, the
+fault of overstraining popular qualities, and, irregularly if you
+please, asserting popular privileges, has led to disqualification; the
+opposite fault never has produced the slightest punishment. Resistance
+to power has shut the door of the House of Commons to one man;
+obsequiousness and servility, to none.
+
+Not that I would encourage popular disorder, or any disorder. But I
+would leave such offences to the law, to be punished in measure and
+proportion. The laws of this country are for the most part constituted,
+and wisely so, for the general ends of government, rather than for the
+preservation of our particular liberties. Whatever therefore is done in
+support of liberty, by persons not in public trust, or not acting merely
+in that trust, is liable to be more or less out of the ordinary course
+of the law; and the law itself is sufficient to animadvert upon it with
+great severity. Nothing indeed can hinder that severe letter from
+crushing us, except the temperaments it may receive from a trial by
+jury. But if the habit prevails of _going beyond the law_, and
+superseding this judicature, of carrying offences, real or supposed,
+into the legislative bodies, who shall establish themselves into _courts
+of criminal equity_ (so the _Star Chamber_ has been called by Lord
+Bacon), all the evils of the _Star Chamber_ are revived. A large and
+liberal construction in ascertaining offences, and a discretionary
+power in punishing them, is the idea of _criminal equity_; which is in
+truth a monster in jurisprudence. It signifies nothing whether a court
+for this purpose be a committee of council, or a House of Commons, or a
+House of Lords; the liberty of the subject will be equally subverted by
+it. The true end and purpose of that House of Parliament, which
+entertains such a jurisdiction, will be destroyed by it.
+
+I will not believe, what no other man living believes, that Mr. Wilkes
+was punished for the indecency of his publications, or the impiety of
+his ransacked closet. If he had fallen in a common slaughter of
+libellers and blasphemers, I could well believe that nothing more was
+meant than was pretended. But when I see, that, for years together, full
+as impious, and perhaps more dangerous writings to religion, and virtue,
+and order, have not been punished, nor their authors discountenanced;
+that the most audacious libels on royal majesty have passed without
+notice; that the most treasonable invectives against the laws,
+liberties, and constitution of the country, have not met with the
+slightest animadversion; I must consider this as a shocking and
+shameless pretence. Never did an envenomed scurrility against everything
+sacred and civil, public and private, rage through the kingdom with such
+a furious and unbridled license. All this while the peace of the nation
+must be shaken, to ruin one libeller, and to tear from the populace a
+single favorite.
+
+Nor is it that vice merely skulks in an obscure and contemptible
+impunity. Does not the public behold with indignation, persons not only
+generally scandalous in their lives, but the identical persons who, by
+their society, their instruction, their example, their encouragement,
+have drawn this man into the very faults which have furnished the cabal
+with a pretence for his persecution, loaded with every kind of favor,
+honor, and distinction, which a court can bestow? Add but the crime of
+servility (the _foedum crimen servitutis_) to every other crime, and the
+whole mass is immediately transmuted into virtue, and becomes the just
+subject of reward and honor. When therefore I reflect upon this method
+pursued by the cabal in distributing rewards and punishments, I must
+conclude that Mr. Wilkes is the object of persecution, not on account of
+what he has done in common with others who are the objects of reward,
+but for that in which he differs from many of them: that he is pursued
+for the spirited dispositions which are blended with his vices; for his
+unconquerable firmness, for his resolute, indefatigable, strenuous
+resistance against oppression.
+
+In this case, therefore, it was not the man that was to be punished, nor
+his faults that were to be discountenanced. Opposition to acts of power
+was to be marked by a kind of civil proscription. The popularity which
+should arise from such an opposition was to be shown unable to protect
+it. The qualities by which court is made to the people, were to render
+every fault inexpiable, and every error irretrievable. The qualities by
+which court is made to power, were to cover and to sanctify everything.
+He that will have a sure and honorable seat in the House of Commons must
+take care how he adventures to cultivate popular qualities; otherwise he
+may remember the old maxim, _Breves et infaustos populi Romani amores_.
+If, therefore, a pursuit of popularity expose a man to greater dangers
+than a disposition to servility, the principle which is the life and
+soul of popular elections will perish out of the constitution.
+
+It behoves the people of England to consider how the House of Commons,
+under the operation of these examples, must of necessity be constituted.
+On the side of the court will be, all honors, offices, emoluments; every
+sort of personal gratification to avarice or vanity; and, what is of
+more moment to most gentlemen, the means of growing, by innumerable
+petty services to individuals, into a spreading interest in their
+country. On the other hand, let us suppose a person unconnected with the
+court, and in opposition to its system. For his own person, no office,
+or emolument, or title; no promotion, ecclesiastical, or civil, or
+military, or naval, for children, or brothers, or kindred. In vain an
+expiring interest in a borough calls for offices, or small livings, for
+the children of mayors, and aldermen, and capital burgesses. His court
+rival has them all. He can do an infinite number of acts of generosity
+and kindness, and even of public spirit. He can procure indemnity from
+quarters. He can procure advantages in trade. He can get pardons for
+offences. He can obtain a thousand favors, and avert a thousand evils.
+He may, while he betrays every valuable interest of the kingdom, be a
+benefactor, a patron, a father, a guardian angel to his borough. The
+unfortunate independent member has nothing to offer, but harsh refusal,
+or pitiful excuse, or despondent representation of a hopeless interest.
+Except from his private fortune, in which he may be equalled, perhaps
+exceeded, by his court competitor, he has no way of showing any one good
+quality, or of making a single friend. In the House, he votes forever in
+a dispirited minority. If he speaks, the doors are locked. A body of
+loquacious placemen go out to tell the world that all he aims at is to
+get into office. If he has not the talent of elocution, which is the
+case of many as wise and knowing men as any in the House, he is liable
+to all these inconveniences, without the _eclat_ which attends upon any
+tolerably successful exertion of eloquence. Can we conceive a more
+discouraging post of duty than this? Strip it of the poor reward of
+popularity; suffer even the excesses committed in defence of the popular
+interest to become a ground for the majority of that House to form a
+disqualification out of the line of the law, and at their pleasure,
+attended not only with the loss of the franchise, but with every kind of
+personal disgrace.--If this shall happen, the people of this kingdom may
+be assured that they cannot be firmly or faithfully served by any man.
+It is out of the nature of men and things that they should; and their
+presumption will be equal to their folly if they expect it. The power of
+the people, within the laws, must show itself sufficient to protect
+every representative in the animated performance of his duty, or that
+duty cannot be performed. The House of Commons can never be a control on
+other parts of government, unless they are controlled themselves by
+their constituents; and unless those constituents possess some right in
+the choice of that House, which it is not in the power of that House to
+take away. If they suffer this power of arbitrary incapacitation to
+stand, they have utterly perverted every other power of the House of
+Commons. The late proceeding I will not say _is_ contrary to law; it
+_must_ be so; for the power which is claimed cannot, by any possibility,
+be a legal power in any limited member of government.
+
+The power which they claim, of declaring incapacities, would not be
+above the just claims of a final judicature, if they had not laid it
+down as a leading principle, that they had no rule in the exercise of
+this claim, but their own _discretion_. Not one of their abettors has
+ever undertaken to assign the principle of unfitness, the species or
+degree of delinquency, on which the House of Commons will expel, nor the
+mode of proceeding upon it, nor the evidence upon which it is
+established. The direct consequence of which is, that the first
+franchise of an Englishman, and that on which all the rest vitally
+depend, is to be forfeited for some offence which no man knows, and
+which is to be proved by no known rule whatsoever of legal evidence.
+This is so anomalous to our whole constitution, that I will venture to
+say, the most trivial right, which the subject claims, never was, nor
+can be, forfeited in such a manner.
+
+The whole of their usurpation is established upon this method of
+arguing. We do not _make_ laws. No; we do not contend for this power. We
+only _declare_ law; and as we are a tribunal both competent and supreme,
+what we declare to be law becomes law, although it should not have been
+so before. Thus the circumstance of having no _appeal_ from their
+jurisdiction is made to imply that they have no _rule_ in the exercise
+of it: the judgment does not derive its validity from its conformity to
+the law; but preposterously the law is made to attend on the judgment;
+and the rule of the judgment is no other than the _occasional will of
+the House_. An arbitrary discretion leads, legality follows; which is
+just the very nature and description of a legislative act.
+
+This claim in their hands was no barren theory. It was pursued into its
+utmost consequences; and a dangerous principle has begot a correspondent
+practice. A systematic spirit has been shown upon both sides. The
+electors of Middlesex chose a person whom the House of Commons had voted
+incapable; and the House of Commons has taken in a member whom the
+electors of Middlesex had not chosen. By a construction on that
+legislative power which had been assumed, they declared that the true
+legal sense of the country was contained in the minority, on that
+occasion; and might, on a resistance to a vote of incapacity, be
+contained in any minority.
+
+When any construction of law goes against the spirit of the privilege it
+was meant to support, it is a vicious construction. It is material to us
+to be represented really and _bona fide_, and not in forms, in types,
+and shadows, and fictions of law. The right of election was not
+established merely as a _matter of form_, to satisfy some method and
+rule of technical reasoning; it was not a principle which might
+substitute a _Titius_ or a _Maevius_, a _John Doe_ or _Richard Roe_, in
+the place of a man specially chosen; not a principle which was just as
+well satisfied with one man as with another. It is a right, the effect
+of which is to give to the people that man, and _that man only_, whom,
+by their voices actually, not constructively given, they declare that
+they know, esteem, love, and trust. This right is a matter within their
+own power of judging and feeling; not an _ens rationis_ and creature of
+law: nor can those devices, by which anything else is substituted in the
+place of such an actual choice, answer in the least degree the end of
+representation.
+
+I know that the courts of law have made as strained constructions in
+other cases. Such is the construction in common recoveries. The method
+of construction which in that case gives to the persons in remainder,
+for their security and representative, the door-keeper, crier, or
+sweeper of the court, or some other shadowy being without substance or
+effect, is a fiction of a very coarse texture. This was however suffered
+by the acquiescence of the whole kingdom, for ages; because the evasion
+of the old statute of Westminster, which authorized perpetuities, had
+more sense and utility than the law which was evaded. But an attempt to
+turn the right of election into such a farce and mockery as a fictitious
+fine and recovery, will, I hope, have another fate; because the laws
+which give it are infinitely dear to us, and the evasion is infinitely
+contemptible.
+
+The people indeed have been told, that this power of discretionary
+disqualification is vested in hands that they may trust, and who will be
+sure not to abuse it to their prejudice. Until I find something in this
+argument differing from that on which every mode of despotism has been
+defended, I shall not be inclined to pay it any great compliment. The
+people are satisfied to trust themselves with the exercise of their own
+privileges, and do not desire this kind intervention of the House of
+Commons to free them from the burden. They are certainly in the right.
+They ought not to trust the House of Commons with a power over their
+franchises; because the constitution, which placed two other co-ordinate
+powers to control it, reposed no such confidence in that body. It were a
+folly well deserving servitude for its punishment, to be full of
+confidence where the laws are full of distrust; and to give to a House
+of Commons, arrogating to its sole resolution the most harsh and odious
+part of legislative authority, that degree of submission which is due
+only to the legislature itself.
+
+When the House of Commons, in an endeavor to obtain new advantages at
+the expense of the other orders of the state, for the benefit of the
+_commons at large_, have pursued strong measures; if it were not just,
+it was at least natural, that the constituents should connive at all
+their proceedings; because we were ourselves ultimately to profit. But
+when this submission is urged to us, in a contest between the
+representatives and ourselves, and where nothing can be put into their
+scale which is not taken from ours, they fancy us to be children when
+they tell us they are our representatives, our own flesh and blood, and
+that all the stripes they give us are for our good. The very desire of
+that body to have such a trust contrary to law reposed in them, shows
+that they are not worthy of it. They certainly will abuse it; because
+all men possessed of an uncontrolled discretionary power leading to the
+aggrandizement and profit of their own body have always abused it: and I
+see no particular sanctity in our times, that is at all likely, by a
+miraculous operation, to overrule the course of nature.
+
+But we must purposely shut our eyes, if we consider this matter merely
+as a contest between the House of Commons and the electors. The true
+contest is between the electors of the kingdom and the crown; the crown
+acting by an instrumental House of Commons. It is precisely the same,
+whether the ministers of the crown can disqualify by a dependent House
+of Commons, or by a dependent Court of _Star Chamber_, or by a dependent
+Court of King's Bench If once members of Parliament can be practically
+convinced that they do not depend on the affection or opinion of the
+people for their political being, they will give themselves over,
+without even an appearance of reserve, to the influence of the court.
+
+Indeed a Parliament unconnected with the people is essential to a
+ministry unconnected with the people; and therefore those who saw
+through what mighty difficulties the interior ministry waded, and the
+exterior were dragged, in this business, will conceive of what
+prodigious importance, the new corps of _king's men_ held this principle
+of occasional and personal incapacitation, to the whole body of their
+design.
+
+When the House of Commons was thus made to consider itself as the master
+of its constituents, there wanted but one thing to secure that House
+against all possible future deviation towards popularity: an _unlimited_
+fund of money to be laid out according to the pleasure of the court.
+
+To complete the scheme of bringing our court to a resemblance to the
+neighboring monarchies, it was necessary, in effect, to destroy those
+appropriations of revenue, which seem to limit the property, as the
+other laws had done the powers, of the crown. An opportunity for this
+purpose was taken, upon an application to Parliament for payment of the
+debts of the civil list; which in 1769 had amounted to 513,000_l._ Such
+application had been made upon former occasions; but to do it in the
+former manner would by no means answer the present purpose.
+
+Whenever the crown had come to the commons to desire a supply for the
+discharging of debts due on the civil list, it was always asked and
+granted with one of the three following qualifications; sometimes with
+all of them. Either it was stated, that the revenue had been diverted
+from its purposes by Parliament; or that those duties had fallen short
+of the sum for which they were given by Parliament, and that the
+intention of the legislature had not been fulfilled; or that the money
+required to discharge the civil list debt was to be raised chargeable on
+the civil list duties. In the reign of Queen Anne, the crown was found
+in debt. The lessening and granting away some part of her revenue by
+Parliament was alleged as the cause of that debt, and pleaded as an
+equitable ground, such it certainly was, for discharging it. It does not
+appear that the duties which were then applied to the ordinary
+government produced clear above 580,000_l._ a year; because, when they
+were afterwards granted to George the First, 120,000_l._ was added to
+complete the whole to 700,000_l._ a year. Indeed it was then asserted,
+and, I have no doubt, truly, that for many years the net produce did not
+amount to above 550,000_l._ The queen's extraordinary charges were
+besides very considerable; equal, at least, to any we have known in our
+time. The application to Parliament was not for an absolute grant of
+money; but to empower the queen to raise it by borrowing upon the civil
+list funds.
+
+The civil list debt was twice paid in the reign of George the First. The
+money was granted upon the same plan which had been followed in the
+reign of Queen Anne. The civil list revenues were then mortgaged for the
+sum to be raised, and stood charged with the ransom of their own
+deliverance.
+
+George the Second received an addition to his civil list. Duties were
+granted for the purpose of raising 800,000_l._ a year. It was not until
+he had reigned nineteen years, and after the last rebellion, that he
+called upon Parliament for a discharge of the civil list debt. The
+extraordinary charges brought on by the rebellion, account fully for the
+necessities of the crown. However, the extraordinary charges of
+government were not thought a ground fit to be relied on.
+
+A deficiency of the civil list duties for several years before was
+stated as the principal, if not the sole ground on which an application
+to Parliament could be justified. About this time the produce of these
+duties had fallen pretty low; and even upon an average of the whole
+reign they never produced 800,000_l._ a year clear to the treasury.
+
+That prince reigned fourteen years afterwards: not only no new demands
+were made; but with so much good order were his revenues and expenses
+regulated, that, although many parts of the establishment of the court
+were upon a larger and more liberal scale than they have been since,
+there was a considerable sum in hand, on his decease, amounting to about
+170,000_l._ applicable to the service of the civil list of his present
+Majesty. So that, if this reign commenced with a greater charge than
+usual, there was enough and more than enough, abundantly to supply all
+the extraordinary expense. That the civil list should have been exceeded
+in the two former reigns, especially in the reign of George the First,
+was not at all surprising. His revenue was but 700,000_l._ annually; if
+it ever produced so much clear. The prodigious and dangerous
+disaffection to the very being of the establishment, and the cause of a
+pretender then powerfully abetted from abroad, produced many demands of
+an extraordinary nature both abroad and at home. Much management and
+great expenses were necessary. But the throne of no prince has stood
+upon more unshaken foundations than that of his present Majesty.
+
+To have exceeded the sum given for the civil list, and to have incurred
+a debt without special authority of Parliament, was _prima facie_, a
+criminal act: as such, ministers ought naturally rather to have
+withdrawn it from the inspection, than to have exposed it to the
+scrutiny of Parliament. Certainly they ought, of themselves, officially
+to have come armed with every sort of argument, which, by explaining,
+could excuse, a matter in itself of presumptive guilt. But the terrors
+of the House of Commons are no longer for ministers.
+
+On the other hand, the peculiar character of the House of Commons, as
+trustee of the public purse, would have led them to call with a
+punctilious solicitude for every public account, and to have examined
+into them with the most rigorous accuracy.
+
+The capital use of an account is, that the reality of the charge, the
+reason of incurring it, and the justice and necessity of discharging it,
+should all appear antecedent to the payment. No man ever pays first, and
+calls for his account afterwards; because he would thereby let out of
+his hands the principal, and indeed only effectual, means of compelling
+a full and fair one. But, in national business, there is an additional
+reason for a previous production of every account. It is a check,
+perhaps the only one, upon a corrupt and prodigal use of public money.
+An account after payment is to no rational purpose an account. However,
+the House of Commons thought all these to be antiquated principles:
+they were of opinion, that the most Parliamentary way of proceeding was,
+to pay first what the court thought proper to demand, and to take its
+chance for an examination into accounts at some time of greater leisure.
+
+The nation had settled 800,000_l._ a year on the crown, as sufficient
+for the support of its dignity, upon the estimate of its own ministers.
+When ministers came to Parliament, and said that this allowance had not
+been sufficient for the purpose, and that they had incurred a debt of
+500,000_l._, would it not have been natural for Parliament first to have
+asked how, and by what means, their appropriated allowance came to be
+insufficient? Would it not have savored of some attention to justice, to
+have seen in what periods of administration this debt had been
+originally incurred; that they might discover, and if need were,
+animadvert on the persons who were found the most culpable? To put their
+hands upon such articles of expenditure as they thought improper or
+excessive, and to secure, in future, against such misapplication or
+exceeding? Accounts for any other purposes are but a matter of
+curiosity, and no genuine Parliamentary object. All the accounts which
+could answer any Parliamentary end were refused, or postponed by
+previous questions. Every idea of prevention was rejected, as conveying
+an improper suspicion of the ministers of the crown.
+
+When every loading account had been refused, many others were granted
+with sufficient facility.
+
+But with great candor also, the House was informed, that hardly any of
+them could be ready until the next session; some of them perhaps not so
+soon. But, in order firmly to establish the precedent of _payment
+previous to account_, and to form it into a settled rule of the House,
+the god in the machine was brought down, nothing less than the
+wonder-working _law of Parliament_. It was alleged, that it is the law
+of Parliament, when any demand comes from the crown, that the House must
+go immediately into the committee of supply; in which committee it was
+allowed, that the production and examination of accounts would be quite
+proper and regular. It was therefore carried, that they should go into
+the committee without delay, and without accounts, in order to examine
+with great order and regularity things that could not possibly come
+before them. After this stroke of orderly and Parliamentary wit and
+humor, they went into the committee; and very generously voted the
+payment.
+
+There was a circumstance in that debate too remarkable to be overlooked.
+This debt of the civil list was all along argued upon the same footing
+as a debt of the state, contracted upon national authority. Its payment
+was urged as equally pressing upon the public faith and honor; and when
+the whole year's account was stated, in what is called _the budget_, the
+ministry valued themselves on the payment of so much public debt, just
+as if they had discharged 500,000_l._ of navy or exchequer bills.
+Though, in truth, their payment, from the sinking fund, of debt which
+was never contracted by Parliamentary authority, was, to all intents and
+purposes, so much debt incurred. But such is the present notion of
+public credit, and payment of debt. No wonder that it produces such
+effects.
+
+Nor was the House at all more attentive to a provident security against
+future, than it had been to a vindictive retrospect to past
+mismanagements. I should have thought indeed that a ministerial promise,
+during their own continuance in office, might have been given, though
+this would have been but a poor security for the public. Mr. Pelham gave
+such an assurance, and he kept his word. But nothing was capable of
+extorting from our ministers anything which had the least resemblance to
+a promise of confining the expenses of the civil list within the limits
+which had been settled by Parliament. This reserve of theirs I look upon
+to be equivalent to the clearest declaration, that they were resolved
+upon a contrary course.
+
+However, to put the matter beyond all doubt, in the speech from the
+throne, after thanking Parliament for the relief so liberally granted,
+the ministers inform the two Houses, that they will _endeavor_ to
+confine the expenses of the civil government--within what limits, think
+you? those which the law had prescribed? Not in the least--"such limits
+as the _honor of the crown_ can possibly admit."
+
+Thus they established an _arbitrary_ standard for that dignity which
+Parliament had defined and limited to a _legal_ standard. They gave
+themselves, under the lax and indeterminate idea of the _honor of the
+crown_, a full loose for all manner of dissipation, and all manner of
+corruption. This arbitrary standard they were not afraid to hold out to
+both Houses; while an idle and unoperative act of Parliament, estimating
+the dignity of the crown at 800,000_l._ and confining it to that sum,
+adds to the number of obsolete statutes which load the shelves of
+libraries, without any sort of advantage to the people.
+
+After this proceeding, I suppose that no man can be so weak as to think
+that the crown is limited to any settled allowance whatsoever. For if
+the ministry has 800,000_l._ a year by the law of the land; and if by
+the law of Parliament all the debts which exceed it are to be paid
+previously to the production of any account; I presume that this is
+equivalent to an income with no other limits than the abilities of the
+subject and the moderation of the court; that is to say, it is such an
+income as is possessed by every absolute monarch in Europe. It amounts,
+as a person of great ability said in the debate, to an unlimited power
+of drawing upon the sinking fund. Its effect on the public credit of
+this kingdom must be obvious; for in vain is the sinking fund the great
+buttress of all the rest, if it be in the power of the ministry to
+resort to it for the payment of any debts which they may choose to
+incur, under the name of the civil list, and through the medium of a
+committee, which thinks itself obliged by law to vote supplies without
+any other account than that of the mere existence of the debt.
+
+Five hundred thousand pounds is a serious sum. But it is nothing to the
+prolific principle upon which the sum was voted: a principle that may be
+well called, _the fruitful mother of an hundred more_. Neither is the
+damage to public credit of very great consequence, when compared with
+that which results to public morals and to the safety of the
+constitution, from the exhaustless mine of corruption opened by the
+precedent, and to be wrought by the principle, of the late payment of
+the debts of the civil list. The power of discretionary disqualification
+by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the
+civil list by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed,
+must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make
+Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever
+was invented by the wit of man. This is felt. The quarrel is begun
+between the representatives and the people. The court faction have at
+length committed them.
+
+In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed, and the boldest
+staggered. The circumstances are in a great measure new. We have hardly
+any landmarks from the wisdom of our ancestors, to guide us. At best we
+can only follow the spirit of their proceeding in other cases. I know
+the diligence with which my observations on our public disorders have
+been made; I am very sure of the integrity of the motives on which they
+are published; I cannot be equally confident in any plan for the
+absolute cure of those disorders, or for their certain future
+prevention. My aim is to bring this matter into more public discussion.
+Let the sagacity of others work upon it. It is not uncommon for medical
+writers to describe histories of diseases very accurately, on whose cure
+they can say but very little.
+
+The first ideas which generally suggest themselves, for the cure of
+Parliamentary disorders, are, to shorten the duration of Parliaments;
+and to disqualify all, or a great number of placemen, from a seat in the
+House of Commons. Whatever efficacy there may be in those remedies, I am
+sure in the present state of things it is impossible to apply them. A
+restoration of the right of free election is a preliminary indispensable
+to every other reformation. What alterations ought afterwards to be made
+in the constitution, is a matter of deep and difficult research.
+
+If I wrote merely to please the popular palate, it would indeed be as
+little troublesome to me as to another, to extol these remedies, so
+famous in speculation, but to which their greatest admirers have never
+attempted seriously to resort in practice. I confess then, that I have
+no sort of reliance upon either a triennial Parliament, or a place-bill.
+With regard to the former, perhaps it might rather serve to counteract,
+than to promote the ends that are proposed by it. To say nothing of the
+horrible disorders among the people attending frequent elections, I
+should be fearful of committing, every three years, the independent
+gentlemen of the country into a contest with the treasury. It is easy to
+see which of the contending parties would be ruined first. Whoever has
+taken a careful view of public proceedings, so as to endeavor to ground
+his speculations on his experience, must have observed how prodigiously
+greater the power of ministry is in the first and last session of a
+Parliament, than it is in the intermediate period, when members sit a
+little firm on their seats. The persons of the greatest Parliamentary
+experience, with whom I have conversed, did constantly, in canvassing
+the fate of questions, allow something to the court side, upon account
+of the elections depending or imminent. The evil complained of, if it
+exists in the present state of things, would hardly be removed by a
+triennial Parliament: for, unless the influence of government in
+elections can be entirely taken away, the more frequently they return,
+the more they will harass private independence; the more generally men
+will be compelled to fly to the settled systematic interest of
+government, and to the resources of a boundless civil list. Certainly
+something may be done, and ought to be done, towards lessening that
+influence in elections; and this will be necessary upon a plan either
+of longer or shorter duration of Parliament. But nothing can so
+perfectly remove the evil, as not to render such contentions, too
+frequently repeated, utterly ruinous, first to independence of fortune,
+and then to independence of spirit. As I am only giving an opinion on
+this point, and not at all debating it in an adverse line, I hope I may
+be excused in another observation. With great truth I may aver, that I
+never remember to have talked on this subject with any man much
+conversant with public business, who considered short Parliaments as a
+real improvement of the constitution. Gentlemen, warm in a popular
+cause, are ready enough to attribute all the declarations of such
+persons to corrupt motives. But the habit of affairs, if, on one hand,
+it tends to corrupt the mind, furnishes it, on the other, with the means
+of better information. The authority of such persons will always have
+some weight. It may stand upon a par with the speculations of those who
+are less practised in business; and who, with perhaps purer intentions,
+have not so effectual means of judging. It is besides an effect of
+vulgar and puerile malignity to imagine, that every statesman is of
+course corrupt; and that his opinion, upon every constitutional point,
+is solely formed upon some sinister interest.
+
+The next favorite remedy is a place-bill. The same principle guides in
+both; I mean, the opinion which is entertained by many, of the
+infallibility of laws and regulations, in the cure of public distempers.
+Without being as unreasonably doubtful as many are unwisely confident, I
+will only say, that this also is a matter very well worthy of serious
+and mature reflection. It is not easy to foresee, what the effect would
+be, of disconnecting with Parliament the greatest part of those who hold
+civil employments, and of such mighty and important bodies as the
+military and naval establishments. It were better, perhaps, that they
+should have a corrupt interest in the forms of the constitution, than
+that they should have none at all. This is a question altogether
+different from the disqualification of a particular description of
+revenue-officers from seats in Parliament; or, perhaps, of all the lower
+sorts of them from votes in elections. In the former case, only the few
+are affected; in the latter, only the inconsiderable. But a great
+official, a great professional, a great military and naval interest, all
+necessarily comprehending many people of the first weight, ability,
+wealth, and spirit, has been gradually formed in the kingdom. These new
+interests must be let into a share of representation, else possibly they
+may be inclined to destroy those institutions of which they are not
+permitted to partake. This is not a thing to be trifled with; nor is it
+every well-meaning man that is fit to put his hands to it. Many other
+serious considerations occur. I do not open them here, because they are
+not directly to my purpose; proposing only to give the reader some taste
+of the difficulties that attend all capital changes in the constitution;
+just to hint the uncertainty, to say no worse, of being able to prevent
+the court, as long as it has the means of influence abundantly in its
+power, of applying that influence to Parliament; and perhaps, if the
+public method were precluded, of doing it in some worse and more
+dangerous method. Underhand and oblique ways would be studied. The
+science of evasion, already tolerably understood, would then be brought
+to the greatest perfection. It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to
+know how much of an evil ought to be tolerated; lest, by attempting a
+degree of purity impracticable in degenerate times and manners, instead
+of cutting off the subsisting ill-practices, new corruptions might be
+produced for the concealment and security of the old. It were better,
+undoubtedly, that no influence at all could affect the mind of a member
+of Parliament. But of all modes of influence, in my opinion, a place
+under the government is the least disgraceful to the man who holds it,
+and by far the most safe to the country. I would not shut out that sort
+of influence which is open and visible, which is connected with the
+dignity and the service of the state, when it is not in my power to
+prevent the influence of contracts, of subscriptions, of direct bribery,
+and those innumerable methods of clandestine corruption, which are
+abundantly in the hands of the court, and which will be applied as long
+as these means of corruption, and the disposition to be corrupted, have
+existence amongst us. Our constitution stands on a nice equipoise, with
+steep precipices and deep waters upon all sides of it. In removing it
+from a dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be a risk of
+oversetting it on the other. Every project of a material change in a
+government so complicated as ours, combined at the same time with
+external circumstances still more complicated, is a matter full of
+difficulties: in which a considerate man will not be too ready to
+decide; a prudent man too ready to undertake; or an honest man too ready
+to promise. They do not respect the public nor themselves, who engage
+for more than they are sure that they ought to attempt, or that they are
+able to perform. These are my sentiments, weak perhaps, but honest and
+unbiassed; and submitted entirely to the opinion of grave men,
+well-affected to the constitution of their country, and of experience in
+what may best promote or hurt it.
+
+Indeed, in the situation in which we stand, with an immense revenue, an
+enormous debt, mighty establishments, government itself a great banker
+and a great merchant, I see no other way for the preservation of a
+decent attention to public interest in the representatives, but _the
+interposition of the body of the people itself_, whenever it shall
+appear, by some flagrant and notorious act, by some capital innovation,
+that these representatives are going to overleap the fences of the law,
+and to introduce an arbitrary power. This interposition is a most
+unpleasant remedy. But, if it be a legal remedy, it is intended on some
+occasion to be used; to be used then only, when it is evident that
+nothing else can hold the constitution to its true principles.
+
+The distempers of monarchy were the great subjects of apprehension and
+redress, in the last century; in this the distempers of Parliament. It
+is not in Parliament alone that the remedy for Parliamentary disorders
+can be completed; hardly indeed can it begin there. Until a confidence
+in government is re-established, the people ought to be excited to a
+more strict and detailed attention to the conduct of their
+representatives. Standards for judging more systematically upon their
+conduct ought to be settled in the meetings of counties and
+corporations. Frequent and correct lists of the voters in all important
+questions ought to be procured.
+
+By such means something may be done. By such means it may appear who
+those are, that, by an indiscriminate support of all administrations,
+have totally banished all integrity and confidence out of public
+proceedings; have confounded the best men with the worst; and weakened
+and dissolved, instead of strengthening and compacting, the general
+frame of government. If any person is more concerned for government and
+order, than for the liberties of his country; even he is equally
+concerned to put an end to this course of indiscriminate support. It is
+this blind and undistinguishing support, that feeds the spring of those
+very disorders, by which he is frightened into the arms of the faction
+which contains in itself the source of all disorders, by enfeebling all
+the visible and regular authority of the state. The distemper is
+increased by his injudicious and preposterous endeavors, or pretences,
+for the cure of it.
+
+An exterior administration, chosen for its impotency, or after it is
+chosen purposely rendered impotent, in order to be rendered subservient,
+will not be obeyed. The laws themselves will not be respected, when
+those who execute them are despised: and they will be despised, when
+their power is not immediate from the crown, or natural in the kingdom.
+Never were ministers better supported in Parliament. Parliamentary
+support comes and goes with office, totally regardless of the man, or
+the merit. Is government strengthened? It grows weaker and weaker. The
+popular torrent gains upon it every hour. Let us learn from our
+experience. It is not support that is wanting to government, but
+reformation. When ministry rests upon public opinion, it is not indeed
+built upon a rock of adamant; it has, however, some stability. But when
+it stands upon private humor, its structure is of stubble, and its
+foundation is on quicksand. I repeat it again,--He that supports every
+administration subverts all government. The reason is this: The whole
+business in which a court usually takes an interest goes on at present
+equally well, in whatever hands, whether high or low, wise or foolish,
+scandalous or reputable; there is nothing therefore to hold it firm to
+any one body of men, or to any one consistent scheme of politics.
+Nothing interposes, to prevent the full operation of all the caprices
+and all the passions of a court upon the servants of the public. The
+system of administration is open to continual shocks and changes, upon
+the principles of the meanest cabal, and the most contemptible intrigue.
+Nothing can be solid and permanent. All good men at length fly with
+horror from such a service. Men of rank and ability, with the spirit
+which ought to animate such men in a free state, while they decline the
+jurisdiction of dark cabal on their actions and their fortunes, will,
+for both, cheerfully put themselves upon their country. They will trust
+an inquisitive and distinguishing Parliament; because it does inquire,
+and does distinguish. If they act well, they know, that, in such a
+Parliament they will be supported against any intrigue; if they act ill,
+they know that no intrigue can protect them. This situation, however
+awful, is honorable. But in one hour, and in the self-same assembly,
+without any assigned or assignable cause, to be precipitated from the
+highest authority to the most marked neglect, possibly into the greatest
+peril of life and reputation, is a situation full of danger, and
+destitute of honor. It will be shunned equally by every man of prudence,
+and every man of spirit.
+
+Such are the consequences of the division of court from the
+administration; and of the division of public men among themselves. By
+the former of these, lawful government is undone; by the latter, all
+opposition to lawless power is rendered impotent. Government may in a
+great measure be restored, if any considerable bodies of men have
+honesty and resolution enough never to accept administration, unless
+this garrison of _king's men_, which is stationed, as in a citadel, to
+control and enslave it, be entirely broken and disbanded, and every work
+they have thrown up be levelled with the ground. The disposition of
+public men to keep this corps together, and to act under it, or to
+co-operate with it, is a touchstone by which every administration ought
+in future to be tried. There has not been one which has not sufficiently
+experienced the utter incompatibility of that faction with the public
+peace, and with all the ends of good government: since, if they opposed
+it, they soon lost every power of serving the crown; if they submitted
+to it, they lost all the esteem of their country. Until ministers give
+to the public a full proof of their entire alienation from that system,
+however plausible their pretences, we may be sure they are more intent
+on the emoluments than the duties of office. If they refuse to give this
+proof, we know of what stuff they are made. In this particular, it ought
+to be the electors' business to look to their representatives. The
+electors ought to esteem it no less culpable in their member to give a
+single vote in Parliament to such an administration, than to take an
+office under it; to endure it, than to act in it. The notorious
+infidelity and versatility of members of Parliament, in their opinions
+of men and things, ought in a particular manner to be considered by the
+electors in the inquiry which is recommended to them. This is one of
+the principal holdings of that destructive system, which has endeavored
+to unhinge all the virtuous, honorable, and useful connections in the
+kingdom.
+
+This cabal has, with great success, propagated a doctrine which serves
+for a color to those acts of treachery; and whilst it receives any
+degree of countenance it will be utterly senseless to look for a
+vigorous opposition to the court party. The doctrine is this: That all
+political connections are in their nature factious, and as such ought to
+be dissipated and destroyed; and that the rule for forming
+administrations is more personal ability, rated by the judgment of this
+cabal upon it, and taken by draughts from every division and
+denomination of public men. This decree was solemnly promulgated by the
+head of the court corps, the Earl of Bute himself, in a speech which he
+made, in the year 1766, against the then administration, the only
+administration which he has ever been known directly and publicly to
+oppose.
+
+It is indeed in no way wonderful, that such persons should make such
+declarations. That connection and faction are equivalent terms, is an
+opinion which has been carefully inculcated at all times by
+unconstitutional statesmen. The reason is evident. Whilst men are linked
+together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil
+design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose
+it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without
+concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel
+difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted
+with each other's principles, nor experienced in each other's talents,
+nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by
+joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no
+common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that
+they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy.
+In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of
+the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents
+are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by
+vainglory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single,
+unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavors are of power to defeat
+the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men
+combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an
+unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
+
+It is not enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth, that a man
+means well to his country; it is not enough that in his single person he
+never did an evil act, but always voted according to his conscience, and
+even harangued against every design which he apprehended to be
+prejudicial to the interests of his country. This innoxious and
+ineffectual character, that seems formed upon a plan of apology and
+disculpation, falls miserably short of the mark of public duty. That
+duty demands and requires, that what is right should not only be made
+known, but made prevalent; that what is evil should not only be
+detected, but defeated. When the public man omits to put himself in a
+situation of doing his duty with effect, it is an omission that
+frustrates the purposes of his trust almost as much as if he had
+formally betrayed it. It is surely no very rational account of a man's
+life, that he has always acted right; but has taken special care, to act
+in such a manner that his endeavors could not possibly be productive of
+any consequence.
+
+I do not wonder that the behavior of many parties should have made
+persons of tender and scrupulous virtue somewhat out of humor with all
+sorts of connection in politics. I admit that people frequently acquire
+in such confederacies a narrow, bigoted, and prescriptive spirit; that
+they are apt to sink the idea of the general good in this circumscribed
+and partial interest. But, where duty renders a critical situation a
+necessary one, it is our business to keep free from the evils attendant
+upon it; and not to fly from the situation itself. If a fortress is
+seated in an unwholesome air, an officer of the garrison is obliged to
+be attentive to his health, but he must not desert his station. Every
+profession, not excepting the glorious one of a soldier, or the sacred
+one of a priest, is liable to its own particular vices; which, however,
+form no argument against those ways of life; nor are the vices
+themselves inevitable to every individual in those professions. Of such
+a nature are connections in politics; essentially necessary for the full
+performance of our public duty, accidentally liable to degenerate into
+faction. Commonwealths are made of families, free commonwealths of
+parties also; and we may as well affirm, that our natural regards and
+ties of blood tend inevitably to make men bad citizens, as that the
+bonds of our party weaken those by which we are held to our country.
+
+Some legislators went so far as to make neutrality in party a crime
+against the state. I do not know whether this might not have been rather
+to overstrain the principle. Certain it is, the best patriots in the
+greatest commonwealths have always commended and promoted such
+connections. _Idem sentire de republica_, was with them a principal
+ground of friendship and attachment; nor do I know any other capable of
+forming firmer, dearer, more pleasing, more honorable, and more virtuous
+habitudes. The Romans carried this principle a great way. Even the
+holding of offices together, the disposition of which arose from chance,
+not selection, gave rise to a relation which continued for life. It was
+called _necessitudo sortis_; and it was looked upon with a sacred
+reverence. Breaches of any of these kinds of civil relation were
+considered as acts of the most distinguished turpitude. The whole people
+was distributed into political societies, in which they acted in support
+of such interests in the state as they severally affected. For it was
+then thought no crime to endeavor by every honest means to advance to
+superiority and power those of your own sentiments and opinions. This
+wise people was far from imagining that those connections had no tie,
+and obliged to no duty; but that men might quit them without shame, upon
+every call of interest. They believed private honor to be the great
+foundation of public trust; that friendship was no mean step towards
+patriotism; that he who, in the common intercourse of life, showed he
+regarded somebody besides himself, when he came to act in a public
+situation, might probably consult some other interest than his own.
+Never may we become _plus sages que les sages_, as the French comedian
+has happily expressed it, wiser than all the wise and good men who have
+lived before us. It was their wish, to see public and private virtues,
+not dissonant and jarring, and mutually destructive, but harmoniously
+combined, growing out of one another in a noble and orderly gradation,
+reciprocally supporting and supported. In one of the most fortunate
+periods of our history this country was governed by a _connection_; I
+mean, the great connection of Whigs in the reign of Queen Anne. They
+were complimented upon the principle of this connection by a poet who
+was in high esteem with them. Addison, who knew their sentiments, could
+not praise them for what they considered as no proper subject of
+commendation. As a poet who knew his business, he could not applaud them
+for a thing which in general estimation was not highly reputable.
+Addressing himself to Britain,--
+
+   "Thy favorites grow not up by fortune's sport,
+    Or from the crimes or follies of a court.
+    On the firm basis of desert they rise,
+    From long-tried faith, and friendship's holy ties."
+
+
+The Whigs of those days believed that the only proper method of rising
+into power was through hard essays of practised friendship and
+experimented fidelity. At that time it was not imagined, that patriotism
+was a bloody idol, which required the sacrifice of children and parents,
+or dearest connections in private life, and of all the virtues that rise
+from those relations. They were not of that ingenious paradoxical
+morality, to imagine that a spirit of moderation was properly shown in
+patiently bearing the sufferings of your friends; or that
+disinterestedness was clearly manifested at the expense of other
+people's fortune. They believed that no men could act with effect, who
+did not act in concert; that no men could act in concert, who did not
+act with confidence; that no men could act with confidence, who were not
+bound together by common opinions, common affections, and common
+interests.
+
+These wise men, for such I must call Lord Sunderland, Lord Godolphin,
+Lord Somers, and Lord Marlborough, were too well principled in these
+maxims upon which the whole fabric of public strength is built, to be
+blown off their ground by the breath of every childish talker. They were
+not afraid that they should be called an ambitious junto; or that their
+resolution to stand or fall together should, by placemen, be interpreted
+into a scuffle for places.
+
+Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the
+national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all
+agreed. For my part, I find it impossible to conceive, that any one
+believes in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any weight, who
+refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into practice. It is
+the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of
+government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher
+in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ
+them with effect. Therefore every honorable connection will avow it is
+their first purpose, to pursue every just method to put the men who hold
+their opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry their
+common plans into execution, with all the power and authority of the
+state. As this power is attached to certain situations, it is their duty
+to contend for these situations. Without a proscription of others, they
+are bound to give to their own party the preference in all things; and
+by no means, for private considerations, to accept any offers of power
+in which the whole body is not included; nor to suffer themselves to be
+led, or to be controlled, or to be overbalanced, in office or in
+council, by those who contradict the very fundamental principles on
+which their party is formed, and even those upon which every fair
+connection must stand. Such a generous contention for power, on such
+manly and honorable maxims, will easily be distinguished from the mean
+and interested struggle for place and emolument. The very style of such
+persons will serve to discriminate them from those numberless impostors,
+who have deluded the ignorant with professions incompatible with human
+practice, and have afterwards incensed them by practices below the level
+of vulgar rectitude.
+
+It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals, that their
+maxims have a plausible air: and, on a cursory view, appear equal to
+first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as
+copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first
+capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the
+worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of _Not men, but
+measures_; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every
+honorable engagement. When I see a man acting this desultory and
+disconnected part, with as much detriment to his own fortune as
+prejudice to the cause of any party, I am not persuaded that he is
+right; but I am ready to believe he is in earnest. I respect virtue in
+all its situations; even when it is found in the unsuitable company of
+weakness. I lament to see qualities, rare and valuable, squandered away
+without any public utility. But when a gentleman with great visible
+emoluments abandons the party in which he has long acted, and tells you,
+it is because he proceeds upon his own judgment; that he acts on the
+merits of the several measures as they arise; and that he is obliged to
+follow his own conscience, and not that of others; he gives reasons
+which it is impossible to controvert, and discovers a character which it
+is impossible to mistake. What shall we think of him who never differed
+from a certain set of men until the moment they lost their power, and
+who never agreed with them in a single instance afterwards? Would not
+such a coincidence of interest and opinion be rather fortunate? Would it
+not be an extraordinary cast upon the dice, that a man's connections
+should degenerate into faction, precisely at the critical moment when
+they lose their power, or he accepts a place? When people desert their
+connections, the desertion is a manifest _fact_, upon which a direct
+simple issue lies, triable by plain men. Whether a _measure_ of
+government be right or wrong, is _no matter of fact_, but a mere affair
+of opinion, on which men may, as they do, dispute and wrangle without
+end. But whether the individual _thinks_ the measure right or wrong, is
+a point at still a greater distance from the reach of all human
+decision. It is therefore very convenient to politicians, not to put the
+judgment of their conduct on overt acts, cognizable in any ordinary
+court, but upon such matter as can be triable only in that secret
+tribunal, where they are sure of being heard with favor, or where at
+worst the sentence will be only private whipping.
+
+I believe the reader would wish to find no substance in a doctrine which
+has a tendency to destroy all test of character as deduced from conduct.
+He will therefore excuse my adding something more, towards the further
+clearing up a point, which the great convenience of obscurity to
+dishonesty has been able to cover with some degree of darkness and
+doubt.
+
+In order to throw an odium on political connection, those politicians
+suppose it a necessary incident to it, that you are blindly to follow
+the opinions of your party, when in direct opposition to your own clear
+ideas; a degree of servitude that no worthy man could bear the thought
+of submitting to; and such as, I believe, no connections (except some
+court factions) ever could be so senselessly tyrannical as to impose.
+Men thinking freely, will, in particular instances, think differently.
+But still as the greater part of the measures which arise in the course
+of public business are related to, or dependent on, some great,
+_leading_, _general principles in government_, a man must be peculiarly
+unfortunate in the choice of his political company, if he does not agree
+with them at least nine times in ten. If he does not concur in these
+general principles upon which the party is founded, and which
+necessarily draw on a concurrence in their application, he ought from
+the beginning to have chosen some other, more conformable to his
+opinions. When the question is in its nature doubtful, or not very
+material, the modesty which becomes an individual, and, (in spite of our
+court moralists) that partiality which becomes a well-chosen friendship,
+will frequently bring on an acquiescence in the general sentiment. Thus
+the disagreement will naturally be rare; it will be only enough to
+indulge freedom, without violating concord, or disturbing arrangement.
+And this is all that ever was required for a character of the greatest
+uniformity and steadiness in connection. How men can proceed without any
+connection at all, is to me utterly incomprehensible. Of what sort of
+materials must that man be made, how must he be tempered and put
+together, who can sit whole years in Parliament, with five hundred and
+fifty of his fellow-citizens, amidst the storm of such tempestuous
+passions, in the sharp conflict of so many wits, and tempers, and
+characters, in the agitation of such mighty questions, in the discussion
+of such vast and ponderous interests, without seeing any one sort of
+men, whose character, conduct, or disposition, would lead him to
+associate himself with them, to aid and be aided, in any one system of
+public utility?
+
+I remember an old scholastic aphorism, which says, "that the man who
+lives wholly detached from others, must be either an angel or a devil."
+When I see in any of these detached gentlemen of our times the angelic
+purity, power, and beneficence, I shall admit them to be angels. In the
+mean time we are born only to be men. We shall do enough if we form
+ourselves to be good ones. It is therefore our business carefully to
+cultivate in our minds, to rear to the most perfect vigor and maturity,
+every sort of generous and honest feeling, that belongs to our nature.
+To bring the dispositions that are lovely in private life into the
+service and conduct of the commonwealth; so to be patriots, as not to
+forget we are gentlemen. To cultivate friendships, and to incur
+enmities. To have both strong, but both selected: in the one, to be
+placable; in the other immovable. To model our principles to our duties
+and our situation. To be fully persuaded, that all virtue which is
+impracticable is spurious; and rather to run the risk of falling into
+faults in a course which leads us to act with effect and energy, than to
+loiter out our days without blame, and without use. Public life is a
+situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps
+upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.
+
+There is, however, a time for all things. It is not every conjuncture
+which calls with equal force upon the activity of honest men; but
+critical exigencies now and then arise; and I am mistaken, if this be
+not one of them. Men will see the necessity of honest combination; but
+they may see it when it is too late. They may embody, when it will be
+ruinous to themselves, and of no advantage to the country; when, for
+want of such a timely union as may enable them to oppose in favor of the
+laws, with the laws on their side, they may at length find themselves
+under the necessity of conspiring, instead of consulting. The law, for
+which they stand, may become a weapon in the hands of its bitterest
+enemies; and they will be cast, at length, into that miserable
+alternative between slavery and civil confusion, which no good man can
+look upon without horror; an alternative in which it is impossible he
+should take either part, with a conscience perfectly at repose. To keep
+that situation of guilt and remorse at the utmost distance is,
+therefore, our first obligation. Early activity may prevent late and
+fruitless violence. As yet we work in the light. The scheme of the
+enemies of public tranquillity has disarranged, it has not destroyed us.
+
+If the reader believes that there really exists such a faction as I have
+described; a faction ruling by the private inclinations of a court,
+against the general sense of the people; and that this faction, whilst
+it pursues a scheme for undermining all the foundations of our freedom,
+weakens (for the present at least) all the powers of executory
+government, rendering us abroad contemptible, and at home distracted; he
+will believe also, that nothing but a firm combination of public men
+against this body, and that, too, supported by the hearty concurrence of
+the people at large, can possibly get the better of it. The people will
+see the necessity of restoring public men to an attention to the public
+opinion, and of restoring the constitution to its original principles.
+Above all, they will endeavor to keep the House of Commons from assuming
+a character which does not belong to it. They will endeavor to keep that
+House, for its existence, for its powers, and its privileges, as
+independent of every other, and as dependent upon themselves, as
+possible. This servitude is to a House of Commons (like obedience to the
+Divine law) "perfect freedom." For if they once quit this natural,
+rational, and liberal obedience, having deserted the only proper
+foundation of their power, they must seek a support in an abject and
+unnatural dependence somewhere else. When, through the medium of this
+just connection with their constituents, the genuine dignity of the
+House of Commons is restored, it will begin to think of casting from it,
+with scorn, as badges of servility, all the false ornaments of illegal
+power, with which it has been, for some time, disgraced. It will begin
+to think of its old office of CONTROL. It will not suffer that last of
+evils to predominate in the country: men without popular confidence,
+public opinion, natural connection, or mutual trust, invested with all
+the powers of government.
+
+When they have learned this lesson themselves, they will be willing and
+able to teach the court, that it is the true interest of the prince to
+have but one administration; and that one composed of those who
+recommend themselves to their sovereign through the opinion of their
+country, and not by their obsequiousness to a favorite. Such men will
+serve their sovereign with affection and fidelity; because his choice of
+them, upon such principles, is a compliment to their virtue. They will
+be able to serve him effectually; because they will add the weight of
+the country to the force of the executory power. They will be able to
+serve their king with dignity; because they will never abuse his name to
+the gratification of their private spleen or avarice. This, with
+allowances for human frailty, may probably be the general character of a
+ministry, which thinks itself accountable to the House of Commons; when
+the House of Commons thinks itself accountable to its constituents. If
+other ideas should prevail, things must remain in their present
+confusion, until they are hurried into all the rage of civil violence,
+or until they sink into the dead repose of despotism.
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[102] Mem. de Sully, tom. i. p. 133.
+
+[103] "Uxor Hugonis de Nevill dat Domino Regi ducentas Gallinas, eo quod
+possit jacere una nocte cum Domino suo Hugone de Nevill."--Maddox, Hist.
+Exch. c. xiii. p. 326.
+
+[104] Sentiments of an Honest Man.
+
+[105] See the political writings of the late Dr. Brown, and many others.
+
+
+
+
+*** Transcriber's notes, corrections ***
+
+p329 behindhand         : was "behind-hand", inconsistent with p442
+p403 pernicious         : was "prenicious"
+
+(see HTML version for pagenumbers)
+*** End Transcriber's notes ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable
+Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12), by Edmund Burke
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDMUND BURKE, VOL. I. (OF 12) ***
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