cess, and to overestimate its results, is natural to all youthful parties as to the youthful individual; and the sanguine anticipations of men like Priestley implied but an indistinct apprehension of that belief in progress which corresponds to a scientific theory of evolution. The doctrine was not worked into the substance of his creed, though it was congenial to his habitual mode of thought. Some of his fellow-labourers could dispense with it altogether. Price, in particular, represents the growing discontent, as Priestley represents the growing hopes of the reforming party. The two writers agree in their view of the ideal state; but Priestley thinks that his ideal is about to be realised, whilst Price thinks that we are drifting further away from it. He takes up the tone of lamentation made popular in England by Brown, and thinks that the dreaded evil, luxury, is sapping the national vitality. Indifference is gaining ground; the House of Commons is corrupt, short parliaments are hopeless, standing armies are inevitable, the debt grows, national extravagance increases, the Middlesex election has set a dangerous precedent, and the subjection of the East India Company to the Crown has increased the power of corruption. Price's reputation for statistical knowledge enabled him to give a colouring of systematic proof to these gloomy forebodings. From some imperfect information as to the number of burials and the product of the house-tax, he tried to show that the population was actually declining in numbers, under the influence of the luxury which was ruining our virtue and weakening our physical constitution. 131. The principles by which we were to be saved, if, indeed, salvation was possible, were the principles of Rousseau. Price, indeed, has some cold approbation for the British Constitution. According to some recent statistics, 5,723 voters elected half the House of Commons, and 364 voters chose a ninth part of it.2 If voters were not corrupt, nor representatives influenced by the Crown, he thinks that even this inadequate representation would afford a sufficient security for our liberties. But his doctrines fit in rather awkwardly with this concession. His theory is briefly expressed by the phrase quoted from Montesquieu,3 that, in a free state 1 Price's Additional Observations,' p. 50. 2 Price's Observations,' p. 10. 'Esprit des Lois,' book xi. ch. vi. S VOL. II. 6 every man is his own legislator. All taxes are free gifts; all laws established by common consent, and all magistrates are deputies for carrying out this voluntary agreement. Of such liberty, he says, it is impossible that there should be an excess. He infers that the people are absolute, that they never divest themselves of their indefeasible rights; and Parliament, their creature, cannot rightfully oppose their will. Such a theory is the only security against oppression, because a people will never oppress itself, and cannot safely trust anybody else. On this theory is founded the only system which can stimulate industry, by giving due security for its fruits, and the only system compatible with the 'natural equality of mankind.' 'Mankind came with this right from the hands of their Maker,' and civil government is but an institution for maintaining it. Government is thus limited to the narrowest functions. It is a maxim true universally that, as far as anyone does not molest others, others ought not to molest him.' Government, as he elsewhere says, should never trench upon private liberty, 'except so far as the exercise of private liberty entrenches on the liberties of others.' Government, in short, though he does not explicity state the proposition, is an evil, and the less we have of it the better. The practical application of these theories implies the condemnation of all despotic and corrupt governments, and especially of all 'provincial governments.' The relation of England to the American colonies was flatly opposed to his theory of liberty, and to that corollary from it embodied in the British Constitution, in which the right of a people to give and grant their own money' is a fundamental principle. 10 The claim to tax America at our pleasure was, in fact, a claim to despotic power; the more invidious because, whilst we were corrupt, the Americans themselves were 'in the happiest state of society, or in that middle state of civilisation between its first rude and its last refined and corrupted state.'" Americans, in fact, both in their corporate and in their individual capacity, * Ib. p. 12. 1 Price's 'Observations,' p. 6, 'Add. Ob.' p. 9. 'Ob.' p. 13. 'Ad. Ob.' p. 37. 10 Ob.' p. 49. 11 Ib. p. 70. • Ib. p. 22. Ib. p. 27. were beginning to represent the democratic principle; and Price, Priestley, and Paine, all of them advocates of American independence, were all identified at a later period with the French application of the same theories of the indefeasible rights of man. 132. In America, indeed, as I have already said, both the English constitutional theory and the purely democratic theory were represented by able advocates. The doctrines. popular with the party which still cling to English theories, though repudiating the English connection, are best expounded in the 'Federalist.' The series of papers bearing that name appeared in 1788, during the discussions which preceded the acceptance of the present constitution. The chief author was Alexander Hamilton, though a considerable number of articles were contributed by Madison, and a few by Jay. The 'Federalist' is a very remarkable example of the calm and logical discussion of an exciting political question, and is creditable, not only to the sagacity of the writers, but to the intelligence of the readers whom it influenced. Its design, however, does not include the discussion of first principles in politics. The writers are not proposing to build up a new order from its base, but simply to unite political bodies already existing into a more stable confederacy. They are mainly preoccupied with the necessity of conjuring down the unreasonable jealousy of their countrymen, who saw in their proposed President a George III. or a Cromwell. The popular cry about loss of liberties' was as loud in America as in the old country. Several gentlemen, we are told, in one of the State conventions called to ratify the constitution, mentioned, as a warning, the fate of those nations which have lost their liberty by lengthening the duration of their parliaments; whereupon another member very sensibly asked what were those nations. He could remember none, and nobody was prepared with an instance.' Of such platitudes and of references to the Amphictyonic league, and other commonplaces of political philosophers, there was, of course, an abundance. The Federalist' disposes of them with excellent sense, and with pithy appropiate argument. 133. In a book intended to recommend the greatest 1 Elliot's 'Debates,' ii. 4. product of the constitution-mongering art in modern times, there is, of course, occasionally an undue reliance upon the power of paper regulations. The belief, for example, in the efficacy of the system of double election illustrates the illusion, natural to legislators, that the spirit in which laws are designed will determine the spirit in which they are worked. In a more general sense, the efficacy of the great social forces which determine the destiny of a nation is underestimated in comparison with the efficacy of mere external arrangements and legal compacts. Such weaknesses are natural in men who belong to the school of Montesquieu 2 and Delolme. But, on the whole, the Federalist' is a very remarkable instance of statesmanlike ability, in which a certain amount of pedantry and affectation may well be pardoned in consideration of the clearness with which the conditions of a great political crisis are appreciated. Hamilton, whose influence is most perceptible, was by far the ablest representative of what may be called the English theory of government in the United States; and took no inconsiderable share in carrying into execution the plan which he had so ably defended. But a full account of the Federalist' would belong rather to the history of American than of English speculation. Another writer, born, like Hamilton, a British subject, but, unlike Hamilton, brought up in England, and under popular English influences, demands a rather fuller consideration. 134. We have already encountered Paine as an assailant of the religious belief of the day. No ingenuity of hero-worship can represent him as an altogether edifying phenomenon. Indeed, he is commonly made to serve the purpose of a scarecrow in religious tracts. One of his biographers describes his first interview with the old reprobate after his final flight to America. Paine appeared shabbily dressed, with a beard of a week's growth, and a 'face well carbuncled, fiery as the setting sun.' Sitting over a table loaded with beer, brandy, 1 'Federalist,' No. 68. 2 See e.g. Nos. 43 and 47, in which Montesquieu's authority is specially invoked. See .g. remarks in No. 51 on the advantage of dividing the legislature into branches. Hamilton's share is variously estimated at from forty-eight to over sixty of the eighty-five papers. Jay wrote four or five, Madison the remainder. and a beefsteak, he repeated the introduction of his reply to Watson; a process which occupied half an hour, and was performed with perfect clearness, in spite of the speaker's intoxication. The details of his habits during the few remaining years of his life are simply disgusting; he was constantly drunk, filthy beyond all powers of decent expression, brutal to the woman he had seduced from her husband, constantly engaged in the meanest squabbles, and, in short, as disreputable an old wretch as was at that time to be found in New York. Two or three well-meaning persons tried to extort some sort of confession from the dying infidel; but he died in a state of surly adherence to his principles. The wretched carcase, about which he seems to have felt some anxiety, was buried in his farm; and there rested till the bones were dug up by Cobbett, with the intention, which signally failed, of converting them into relics for the admiration of his fellowbelievers. 135. And yet Paine, though even his earlier years were but too good a preparation for this miserable close, had in him the seeds of something like genius. Of his chief political writings the tract called 'Common Sense,' published in January 1776, had, as was thought at the time, very great influence in producing the Declaration of Independence; and the Rights of Man,' published in 1791, in answer to Burke's 'Reflections,' had an enormous sale. The attack upon the established creed in politics showed, in fact, the same qualities as his attack upon the established creed in religion. He was confronted, indeed, in his later writings by an opponent of incomparably greater power than the orthodox theologians who shrieked at the blasphemies of the Age of Reason.' But though Burke moves in an intellectual sphere altogether superior to that in which Paine was able to rise, and though the richness of Burke's speculative power is as superior to Paine's meagre philosophy as his style is superior in the am Cheetham's 'Life of Paine,' Preface. 2 Paine says, in the Preface to the second part of the Rights of Man,' that between 40,000 and 50,000 copies of the first part had been sold. Cheetham says (Biog. p. 63) that probably more than 100,000 were published; the remainder, I suppose, being circulated by the revolutionary committees. The printer of the first part offered him successively 100, 500, and 1,000 guineas for the copy of the second part (see 'State Trials,' xxii. 403). |