A SEQUEL TO COMMON SENSE: OR, THE AMERICAN CONTROVERSY CONSIDERED IN TWO POINTS OF VIEW HITHERTO UNNOTICED.
FIRST.—That Parliaments cannot be supreme in all cases whatsoever, without being infallible also.
SECOND.—That Colonies, when they find themselves competent, that is,
come of age,
may, in consequence of an unanimity, nay, a majority of voices, throw off all subjection to the originating parent state, a power derived from God, and authorized by the necessity of things.
BY THEOPHILUS PHILADELPHUS.
Inutiles amputans feliciores inserit.
The SECOND EDITION, corrected and enlarged.
DUBLIN: Printed by ALEX. STUART, in St.
Audeon's-Arch.
MDCCLXXVII.
PREFACE.
Were Despotism's life not short as vile,
Biography's chaste pages to defile,
Existence were a curse from God's right-hand,
And everlasting Justice at a stand.
THE Freedom of the Press is our glory and palladium. It is, indeed, our national breath of existence, as a free independent State. It is the Heart of the Body-politic, through which constitutional Life circulates freely and vigorously, giving strength, exertion, and activity, to every member. When it is obstructed partially, or totally destroyed, disease, or death inevitable, ensues. All nations, in proportion as they enjoy a FREE-PRESS, enjoy the inestimable blessings of personal Liberty, and proprietary possession. Some have it perfect and unlimited, for instance, BRITAIN, and BRITISH AMERICA: Britain and America are, therefore, perfectly and without limitation, a free people. Some in a qualified and discretionary degree, like France; whose subjects accordingly taste the exquisite delights of Freedom, just as the ruling Powers are disposed, from a well-conditioned though ever-varying sense of right and justice, to fix the precise point of discretion and qualification. Others, again, in the most absolute terms of despotic prohibition, of which the Pontifical States are an example: Rome and Italy, of course, are, at this present time, in the most deplorable state of stupified ignorance, and brow-fallen subjection, a state infinitely worse than if they had not existed as a people at all.
From this short representation it is plain, that no people now upon earth are possessed of Freedom, in any sense worthy of Men and Christians, but BRITONS, in which term I would comprehend Great-Britain and Ireland, America, and all their widely spread dependancies, now (alas!) in a violent convulsive state of being torn and rent asunder, by the councils and machinations of wicked and abandoned men!—Wonderful and dishonourable tale! that nine parts of ten, of our habitable globe, should have passively and patiently worn away the progressive series of more than
fifty centuries,
only to become the very reverse of what God, the Creator, intended Man to be! The contemplation of this subject plunges the human mind into a fathomless reverie, from which it never emerges, without that irresistible influx of strong sensibilities, the effect of which is always pain and debasement, beyond the picturation of words. Especially is the reflective philosophical soul wounded in its feelings, when it is considered, that so enormous a disproportion of our species all along suffered themselves to be sunk into so wretched and brutal a state, for the sake of a
few individuals
(I mean kings) who in the grasp of the people, had the people retained any portion of the Divinity among them, would have been no more than the crush of a midge under an elephant's foot.—A sort of two-fold consideration tends to deepen and inveterate this wound.
Kings, for being such, far less to become tyrants, had no original natural right whatever; no right, in short, exclusive of the free election of the People, but what the barbarian, the ruffian, the robber, and the murderer, may assume. This matter is set in a clear uncontrovertible light, in consequence of knowing the will and appointment of Heaven. The will and appointment of Heaven, we, that are Christians, and, what is more, Protestants, with the New Testament in our hands, know perfectly. Let it be premised, that what latterly has been found the moral intentions of God, respecting the grand line of conduct among nations and individuals, was always the moral intentions of God, tho' not promulgated. Neither is the justice of God impeachable here, for not promulgating them sooner, by express Revelation; because the universal or endemic disease did not sooner arrive at its crisis to be cured; and because, in reality, such a promulgation actually took place at the creation of Man; under the vigorous effect of which, it is well known, that for many successive ages after our race had been created, the Patriarchal state of equality, or the shepherd erratic state, subsisted and flourished, without any subordination, but what spontaneously, and in the course of things, resulted from parental seniority, venerable gravity, piety, wisdom and experience.
True, matters altered for the worse very soon; bad dispositions discovered themselves; bad habits were contracted; envy, avarice, jealousy, and ambition, seized on the human mind, as a sort of prey; virtuous unsuspicious equality ceased, and Government, with its appending evils, and proneness to degenerate, began. The first promulgated moral intentions of Heaven were, consequently, superceded, declining gradually, till, at length, they became totally forgotten, and absorpt in the abandoned vices and idolatry of the Heathen world.—But this brings not the Moral Law, first imprinted on the heart of man, into dispute; for the same objection lies against Revelation itself, which, in its spirit and legislative government of the Christian world, has been as much abused, corrupted, neglected, and set aside, as the Primary Law of Nature, the creational standard of conduct, ever was by the Heathen world.—Having, I hope, pretty clearly evinced this point; the will and appointment of Heaven, with regard to the present circumstances of nations, remains to be ascertained.
In times posterior to the Great Christian Lawgiver, our test and proof must be taken from the Scriptures undoubtedly. CHRIST'S little kingdom, at first, consisted of himself and his twelve Apostles. Dictating in this kingdom, which will one day be supreme over all, this is his explicit command, as conveying the will and appointment of Heaven throughout all generations.
The princes of the Gentiles
(Heathens, Pagans)
exercise dominion over them, and they that are great, exercise authority upon them: but it shall not be so among you; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your Minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.
Now, the point of discussion here is, whether this remarkable precept, so clearly expressed, be a general, or a partial one; that is, comprehensive of Kings, Rulers, and Governors, or barely restricted to individuals, in obscure, social life: or to give it another face still; whether Emperors and Kings are not as strictly and minutely bound down to the performance of all the Christian virtues, of which mercy, placability, forbearance, justice, equity, truth, self-denial, and universal benevolence, are the principal, as the meanest of those that are styled their subjects. Who dare affirm they are not? I dare affirm, however novel and unpopular the affirmation, they are. To admit the contrary involves conclusions, ruinous to the peace, welfare, and happiness of society. If Kings and Magistrates are not included in the Christian code of moral precepts, or have an indemnification, peculiar to their order, for transgressing them, then are tyranny and oppression, the ravages of countries and devastations of kingdoms, carried forward, and needs must be carried forward through all future ages, under the auspices and protection of Heaven. An Alexander, a Nero, a Charles XII, a Lewis XIV, not to mention any more of the butchers and plunderers of the world, would have felt themselves perfectly beatified in the thought.
But the argument need not be extended. God knows no artificial complex bodies; such bodies can have no identity, or responsibility, in the aggregate, in another world. A king will be judged, not as a king, but as a man: his kingly acts were not appointed by God, but his acts as a man, are, on the contrary, the express appointment of God, and are indispensable. State necessity, the
arcana imperii,
or the accommodable municipal law of nations, will not bring Kings off, any more than a critical urgent train of circumstances, into the embarrassment of which he has voluntarily brought himself, will excuse an individual guilty of violence, robbery or blood. The law of nations, and the secrets and policy of states, are the institutions of mere men acting as their own lawgivers, without precept or injunction from Heaven; therefore, can avail nothing as a justification in instances where a superior law has been broken and trodden under foot.
This is clearly the state of things on the great Christian scale of required duty; so that, modern kings have but one alternative, in the midst of their astonishing artificial greatness, either to deny they are Christians, throw off the appellative altogether, or confess that the same simple, pure, unaffected, disinterested morality, in all cases whatsoever, is as much required from them, and those they depute in authority under them, as from the very lowest of the people; those they proudly call their subjects and vassals. Nor can a king, with any prospect of being heard, retire to his closet to ask God forgiveness for his sins, if he has, by the medium of his fleets and armies, shed the blood of one man, or taken his property from him, wrongfully, not to mention the blood of thousands, perhaps, lying at his door, whose ghosts are now soliciting restitution from, and vengeance upon him, in the invisible world.
Very true, he cannot be called to account in this life, except by another king, haply as flagitious, bloody-minded, and inexorable as himself; while in the mean time, he is surrounded and kept in countenance by his generals and soldiers, his courtiers and clergy. What then? These with himself shall, in the natural course of things, be reduced to that dust they now tread upon, as insignificant in memory as the monarchs and ministers of state before the flood.
A higher authority than any king's has said,
Requite not evil, but rather return evil for good.
This is addressed to sovereigns, as well as to beggars; nor have I the smallest doubt, that should a king's duty as a Man, and a Christian, essentially interfere with his duty as a king, or an elected head of a community, that he should unquestionly prefer the first to the last: And should it even come to that grand decisive declaratory point, by which he must either cease to be king, or wound his own conscience by disobeying God, however importunate the fastidious and self-created exigencies of a court might be that should impel him to act contrarily, he ought, undoubtedly, to resign his sceptre and his crown, for the same reason that a minister under him should give up his commission, and emoluments annexed, when any thing has been officially injoined him inconsistent with his honour, virtue and integrity.—I believe, not one instance of the former has occurred in the annals of our world, and of the latter, comparatively, very few. But the paucity, in either case, establishes no precedent. The superior exertions of disinterested greatness, and heroic excellence, though seldom, very seldom occurring, to ennoble our nature, are, notwithstanding, still within the requisitions of Christianity.
The destruction of freedom, in so many Christian kingdoms (I may say in all, except Great-Britain) the natural birthright of men, and in the defence of which taking the life of another is no crime, by princes and kings, is an accumulation of guilt upon
their head,
which they may support for a few years, by means of adventitious aids, but which must assuredly overwhelm them, when they stand common naked spirits in another world. The extinction of Freedom is the extinction of every noble, manly, generous virtue, as well as Christian grace. All tyrants, therefore, have this additional guilt lying heavy on their souls, however insensible they are of it. To deface the image of God in millions, and from day to day prevent them from recovering it, is an enormity of the first magnitude, but it wants a name. Multitudes of nefarious execrable deeds, in the primary movements of every state, according as it is more or less tyrannical, have no appropriate terms in our dictionaries. They are too black and horrid, and too industriously hid behind Tartarian veils from the inspection of the people, to be admitted into the language of humanity. But of all the deeds of darkness, and insolent outrage on the privileges of mankind, to destroy
the Liberty of the Press,
is surely the most diabolical. It is laying an embargo on the human mind; saying to its divine faculties,
hitherto shall ye come, and no farther.
The same spirit, were it competent to the act, would lay an embargo on the sun, and say to the heavenly brightener of our habitations, hitherto shalt thou come, proud luminary, and here shall thy proud beams be staid. Nay, the very air we breathe, in sweet and pure diffusion, could the same spirit stop or confine its circulation, it malignantly would.
The fact, however, is this. What is just, right, and fit, in England, is just, right and fit, in France, Germany, Turky, and in all the kingdoms of the earth. Nations may be called great individuals under the eye of Nature's sovereign Lord, subject to eternal laws superior to themselves, which they may not, on any pretence whatsoever, relax, accommodate, or explain away, to serve their own partial local circumstances. Were such a pre-eminent immutable law supposed not to exist, let the intelligent reader mark the consequences. Every nation must be considered as absolutely supreme and infallible in itself, not with reference to man only, but with reference to God, the Creator of man. This absurdity is too mighty to be swallowed. Another preposterous conclusion likewise follows. The customs, fashions, peculiarities, caprices, prejudices, soil and climate, of different countries, would be ever varying the religion and virtue of each place; so that men should have as many standards independent on each other, of virtue and religion, as there are independent states; whereby truth and moral rectitude should become a mere political engine, a mere ministerial manoeuvre of the state. Such unavoidable conclusions need only be barely mentioned, with the keenest effect of ridicule to flash men in the face.
This blessed deduction, however, which ought to afford such comfort, and not ignoble triumph, to every British bosom, would amply soothe the writer's trouble, had he taken more to expose them. Need he mention it? Every grateful freeborn Briton will at the instant anticipate it in his thoughts. It is this, that wherever despotism, dark sullen despotism, slavery, and oppression, subsist now in Europe, THERE
the liberty of the press
is destroyed, absolutely annihilated. A stigma of ineffable infamy on all tyrants, had they time to be struck with it, from the indulgence of their vices and sensualities: — they can only make men slaves by keeping them in impenetrable darkness and ignorance, no remove from instinctive tameness, and bestial stupidity. As soon as ever men ascend a degree above beasts of burden, and brutes that feed on grass, in happy light and knowledge, they begin to be conscious of self-dignity; feel the long smothered fire of heaven, the incitements of immortality, stir in their bosoms; look upon their tyrant oppressors and tax-masters, with indignant and disdainful eye dragging them to instant account, as delinquents of the most capital atrociousness, though pavilioned in all the terror and awfulness of majesty and empire.
Prescient of what monsters kings would eventually turn out, as free agents, in the progress of time, is it any wonder that God repeatedly refused a king to
his own people,
the Jews, and that when he was importuned by Samuel to grant them one, the gift was tacked with his
hot displeasure,
and with the denunciation of endless woes and miseries that unavoidably must accompany it? The language of Heaven is so strong, declaratory, pointed, and irresistible, that the writer, in self-vindication, cannot but transcribe it here.
Now therefore
(says God to Samuel)
hearken unto their voice
(the voice of the people)
howbeit, protest solemnly unto them the manner of the king that shall rule over them.
THIS SHALL BE THE MANNER OF THE KING THAT SHALL RULE OVER THEM.—
He will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariots: and he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to till his ground, and to reap his harvests, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots: and he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers: and he will take your fields, and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants: and he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give them to his officers and to his servants: and he will take the tenth of your men servants, and your maid servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work: and he will take the tenth of your sheep, and ye shall be his servants;
AND YE SHALL CRY OUT IN THAT DAY, BECAUSE OF THE KING WHICH YE SHALL HAVE CHOSEN, AND THE LORD WILL NOT HEAR YOU IN THAT DAY.—
Modern monarchy and tyranny, wherever they are associated, are here depicted to the life; indeed, so perfectly exact and literal, that no mortal can mistake the prophetic description and fulfilment. Perhaps, not one in a thousand has attended to this
assage, significant and striking as it is, and coming even from Almighty God himself: for, it cannot but be remarked,
on account
of the multitudes of Cl
rgymen among us, that take upon them the utterance of Inspiration, to save mankind the trouble, hat a thousand remarkable and important portions of the Word of God are as little known among
s, as little attended to, as if they were really pas
ages of the Turkish Alcoran, or the Empress of
ussia's new code of laws for her subjects.—This reproachful ignorance it is, that renders us such willing submissive slaves to corruption and vice, to arbitra
y kings, and insolent statesmen.
Britons, upon the whole, cannot but see the indissoluble connection, fa
beyond that of kings and subjects, or even the ties of flesh and blood, between
light, knowledge,
and the preservation of
freedom;
and that the only means, short of a miracle, of perpetuating ligh
and knowledge, and diffusing them equally around, is most religiously to preserve
the liberty of the press,
from the rude impious check of kings, and the contaminating breath of the servants of king
.
The liberty of the press
brought about the Reformation:
the same Liberty of the Press
effected the thrice glorious Revolution: and the transcendent, unspeakable blessings of both can alone be preserved, and transmitted to a grateful posterity, by
the liberty of the press.
With respect to every advocate and stickler for restrictions on a
free press,
he need only be asked, in plain honest language, would you be a
papist?
Would you be a
slave?
A wretch degraded from your rank in Creation, to kiss the Pope's toe? Or a wretch no less degraded from the same rank, to drink, without trial, the tyrant's poisoned draught, or stoop without asking a question, to the bowstring of a Mute?—
There is no medium here:
the p
ess
must be totally free, or not at all. Whenever its freedom comes to be defined or circumscribed, we must forthwith apply to my lord Chamberlain to know if God has permitted us to
feel
or not, to
think
or not, and to
express
our tho
ghts and feelings. Britons will never condescend to this, till they become Italian monks, or d
spicable Musselmen. The noted Ovidian saying,
n medio tutissimus ibis,
is here a mean prosaical falsehood, and holds a falchion at the throat of Britih Liberty, and British Independence.
The half-conditioned friends of our constitution, and those sagacious politic
ans that would
take in
our Liberties and Properties with half an eye, will be ready to exclaim here, What! is not the Press become the noted vehic
e of scandal, slander and defamation? is any thing sacred from its attempts, even Kings, Lords, o
Commons?—All this is acknowledged, and that scandal, slander, and defamation, are evils that require speedy discountenance and suppresson. What then? these, and other evils inseparable from a
free press,
if injurious to private character or property, are all actionable at common law, and cognizable by a jury of peers. Here then is an instant remedy for the disease: but would you destroy the human body, that is, take away a man's life, because that body is liable to infection and malady? The sun has been, and will be, the
wicked
cause direct of many formidable natural evils; would you deprive us of the sun? The earth is often
guilty
of volcanos and earthquakes, would you dispossess us of the earth to stand upon? Even the air around us, times without number, has been highly
culpable,
in affording a menstruum and vehicle to plague and pestilence, by which millions of our species have been cut off; would you rob us of the air, the pure, salubrious, life-sustaining air? And, to have done with particulars, many kings of England have been tyrants, persecutors, and ruffians, not behind the most savage in oppression and cruelty; would you disinherit England of kings,
the anointed of the Lord, the breath of our nostrils,
and thus leave the Lords, and Commons to fight it out, like the dogs in the fable, pell-mell, harum-scarum, rantum-scantum, higgledy-piggledy, topsy-turvy? This last is addressed to prime-ministers, an
argumentum ad hominem.
Perhaps, no degree of levity becomes the writer on so solemn and momentous an occasion: he asks the reader's pardon, therefore, for the indecorum.—Indeed, our times, and the present critical situation of public affairs, would seem objects that cannot be too seriously contemplated, by the true lover of his country, the good Protestant, and the virtuous good man. The whole force of the Empire exerted, and
more
than its own force, to subdue
three millions
of people placed by Providence on an immense Continent, three thousand miles off, who only originally offended respecting the
mode,
not the
matter
of taxation, is an unparalleled, awful period in English history, and especially affecting, as the event is absolutely contingent and precarious, hid deep in the bosom of futurity, though the probability of success would seem much against the
mother
country rising against her children; the
old
and
infirm,
against the
young
and
vigorous.
The reflecting brow, and pensive countenance, should be characteristic of Britons at present, however unaccompanied by the example of our rulers, who, mean time, are hyeing to farces, pantomimes and masquerades. Only a tyrant, a glutton, and a savage, played on his fiddle, when Rome was in flames.— Papists have ceased to persecute and massacre Protestants, stung at last with compunction and remorse. Protestants in the full possession of this long-wished cardinal blessing, fall out among themselves, snatch up the weapons which papists had laid down, and destroy and murder one another. Let us hear no more of Popish cruelty, and Popish devastations.—Add to this. A whole bench of
Protestant bishops,
in the senate, either promoted or abetted this horrid, this ruinous, this accursed social war, except one or two illustrious and divine spirits, illustrious and divine in spite of their mitres: while the whole
representative body
of the clergy petitioned the King (suspecting him to be naturally prone to justice and mercy) to unsheath the sword of slaughter, and plunge it in the bosoms of brethren, citizens and countrymen. The scene is of a piece, criminally aggravated, portentous, unprecedented, black and deformed throughout. It is a national call upon GOD to behold a spectacle he hates and abhors; one set of human beings butchering and destroying another. For what? That the vanquished may adorn the triumphal entrance of Victory, dragged at her chariot wheels, or led through the streets in chains before her saturated eye.—For what? To satiate the longings of revenge, the cravings of corrupt avarice, the unsufferable pride of power, and the unextinguishable thirst of Empire, and of human blood.
In the foregoing strictures on Kings, and any that may afterwards occur, the writer would not be understood to involve the Monarch on the throne. Whether the eventful and yet unknown operation of those vast armaments now fitted and gone out from Great Britain, shall discover that his servants have acted wisely and faithfully towards
him,
or grossly deceived and abused
his
confidence, God only knows, and a messenger from God can only tell. The world thinks differently on this vast and interesting subject. The writer's sentiments may be collected from this Preface, and what follows. Whatever they may be termed, he cannot suppress them, without wounding his inward convictions, and laying an embargo on his mind; for doing which, as a Freeman, and a Protestant, Kings or ministers of state, might reward him, were he of consequence enough, but could not recompense him.
The diseases of a state, like many of those that attack the human constitution, are almost always chronical, that is, run through an indeterminate period, not within the political physician's calculation, before they end fatally, nevertheless, are as sure in their progress as they are slow. While such numbers are daily permitted, in the news-papers, even by
patent royal,
to deliver their thoughts of all disorders incident to our species, on which immediately depend the lives of his majesty's liege subjects, and to prescribe their nostrums accordingly; surely individuals may with the utmost license step forward on the theatre of public notice, to remark on the consumptive habit and decline of the
body politic,
on which depend the liberty and property of his majesty's liege subjects, and propose without fee or reward, that regimen, and those palliatives, which have been found most useful to such a constitution; the chief of which are these; A perfect conquest of the
royal
passions—a total relinquishment of extraordinary
royal
cares and worldly acquisitions—peace and tranquillity of the
royal
mind—temperance, patience, resignation, and contentment with regard to the grand vicissitudes of the world, under the direction of Providence, and superior to the councils of Kings.—Authors writing on such a subject, have a plea in their favour, beyond medical speculatists, and all patentee-doctors; a plea really amounting to
self-preservation,
since writing on the diseases of the body politic, they undoubtedly write on their
own diseases,
being members of the body politic, which every man has an indisputable right to do, even independent of
royal patent,
as a denizen of a popular state. The matter rests here; and here would rest the writer's apology for the boldness and unreservedness of his remarks; seeing the same sacred voluntary right that placed GEORGE III, and continues him, on the throne of England, in preference of an arbitrary, Roman-catholic discarded prince, privileges the
present
writer, and
every
writer of the British Empire, to deliver his opinions freely, of public measures, and public exigencies. Nor can this Preface be concluded in a more suitable manner, than by most fervently wishing GEORGE III, the appointed and recognized first magistrate of these realms, far more than the tumultuous crowded reflections of fluctuating empire,—wishing him the present and the future consolations of a just and honest man, the only character GOD attends to, connected with his being the tender-hearted and affectionate father of his people, independent of all selfishness and jealousy about the defence or extension of
mere personal prerogative,
hitherto undefined, and to all eternity undefinable, except by the people.—To have done,
The
Sequel to Common Sense,
is an adventurous and unceremonious production (like its forerunner) but, I hope, is calculated to give Britons and Irishmen an
idea
and
feeling
of liberty, which, as to the writer it appears, very few of them have had before, at least, if they really have it, they
act,
especially our representatives in Parliament, the delegates of the people, as if they had it not, which is infinitely worse than brutish insensibility. Liberty, civil and religious, is the sum of human good, and the ever present object of every man's ambition, who has not been previously acted upon and stupified, deprived of all principle, manhood, virtue, dignity and spirit, by the deadening squeeze of
Corruption's
torpedinous hand.—We seem to have lost all duty to God, our
Maker, Governour,
and
Judge,
all consideration of his Most Excellent Majesty, in our preposterous, shameful, senseless, impious
idolatry
of Kings, and the vicegerents of Kings: expending on the dust and rags of mortality, called
royal
and
imperial,
those high epithets, those superlatively august titles (Most Dread Sovereign, Most Sacred Majesty, Most Excellent Majesty, &c. &c.) which alone belong to the God of Heaven, and the Lord of universal nature. On this account, though little attended to
(God is a jealous God)
added to our vicious morals, and the universal profligacy of our manners, while we are mocking God in Cathedrals, Churches, and Chapels, with the conceit, mummery and flippery of worship, some awful revolutional punishment, if not speedily deprecated and warded off, certainly awaits our nation.
A SEQUEL TO COMMON SENSE, &c.
NOTWITHSTANDING what has been written, by the inquisitive, the ingenious, the learned, and the industrious, on American affairs, and that most people think the subject exhausted, to me it appears (I have no vanity on the occasion) there are
two considerations
hitherto untouched, that tend to throw a decisive air on the whole: that is, if we take our rule of judgment from first principles, original rights, and general rectitude, confirmed and illustrated by that excellent morality delivered to us in Revelation, and not from the narrowed corporational maxims of a particular state or kingdom, even with admired and idolized
patriotism
on our-side, which must always give place to humanity, and reverence for Heaven. Nor do I think it would reflect any discredit on the greatest monarch, or greatest statesman, to be instructed in his duty from Heaven, less than the meanest private individual: but surely it realizes a disgrace on modern times not to be gilded over or concealed, that the grand movements of government are now conducted on the same confined, partial, mercenary, despotic, unjust, cruel scale, that was the standard of Pagan times and Heathenish manners; nay, I will be bold to affirm, on a worse scale in many particulars. Our European kings are now called Christian, and many of them have pompous Christian epithets appended to their armorial titles: Is there any idea annexed to the term Christian? Or is it a mere convenient designation of popular honour to flourish at a market-cross, in the mouth of an herald or king at arms? Our MOST CHRISTIAN KINGS are as little Christian, except in the raree-show of public worship, bordering upon idolatry and romance, imposed upon them by fellow mortals, as any that reigned a thousand years before Christ. From such premises we must not draw our conclusions; from such models we must not finish our copies. There is a standard beyond the etiquette of a court, the records of Parliament, or the secreted schedules of a Cabinet Council, that will always determine the true philosophical politician, or political philosopher. By this standard, the standard of humanity, inforced by Christian ethics, the following pages must be judged, as, indeed, it is confessed, they cannot abide any other. I have no object but the establishment and elucidation of truth, as leaning on general primary axioms, not on mere territorial authority, and Machiavelian usage. I have no lucrative expectations from any person in power, nor would I accept of remuneration from any government upon earth, in the light of a hireling pensioned writer. I am in a professionary situation to
live.
What can a monarch or his prime minister say more? Let my judges be the species at large, let me have an appeal to Heaven, and let Lord North try me when he pleases.
While something more tremendously definitive than speculation, is now carrying on between the principals in the grand contest, the sons of leisure and literature may be indulged in the exercise of the pen; unsupported and unsanctified by which, the sword, even supposing a Caesar, or an Alexander to wield it, had better have reposed in its scabbard, covered with rust, and edgeless from disuse. The longest and strongest sword may precipitate all things before it in this world. But what is this world in comparison with existence to come? No more than a hillock of ants in the front of a sultan's palace, or in the midst of his gardens, destroying one another, did ants destroy one another like men. The sword forms no defence in a future world, nor is it admitted as evidence. Even upon earth a man with a sword in his hand would not be suffered to approach a bar of justice or assize. No! he must there appear disarmed, if any person can be said to be disarmed, who trusts his cause to judicial trial, on the manly principles of right reason, and convincing argument. But not to lose sight of the two considerations we set out with; let them be mentioned.—They are these.
First, Parliaments cannot be supreme in all cases whatsoever, without being infallible also. Secondly, Colonies when they find themselves able, that is,
come of age,
may, in consequence of an unanimity, nay a majority of voices, throw off all subjection to the originating parent Sate, a power derived from God, and authorized by the necessity of things. To suppose the negative of either of these, would be to suppose contradictions admissible.—Of these in their order.
Till it is impossible for Parliaments to err, to be tyrannical, to be cruel and unjust, the absolute supremacy of Parliament is—
vox et preterea nihil.
A word indeed of infinite sonorous energy in the mouth of him whose highest ambition looks but upward to a place, or who wishes to preserve the place he has already got. But witnesses of this kind are to be accounted partial and suborned.—Since then it is possible for Parliaments to err (all historical evidence proves it) it follows of course, that a power to detect that error exists somewhere in the aggregate body. Otherwise one error, how fatal soever esteemed, would beget another, and yet another, until the constitution should actually fall by the hands of its own guardians and protectors. But who is to judge of the emergency? The party aggrieved doubtless. Supposing, however,
that
party inconsiderable. What is to be done? Why it must submit merely from necessity and the duty of self-preservation; but with an abiding consciousness of having been deeply injured, connected with the consolation of a future appeal, where arbitrary inforcement, and superior numbers, avail nothing, unless it be to give aggravation to offence, and crimson to guilt. Farther, admitting the party aggrieved nearly on a par with the high-handed insolent aggressors; in such a case, all the laws of God and man authorize a spirit of defence, resistance, repulse, and reprisal. If unsuccessful in the attempt, the want of success by no means tends to infer delinquency, rather indeed the contrary in most cases, as people unworthily disposed always wish to carry by numbers and dragooning violence what they are well aware the justice and integrity of their cause could never effectuate.
This latent unrepressible spirit pervading the several parts of a mighty empire, is in truth its basis and security. For did not the governing powers decree and act, under the intimidation and eventual interference of a
greater
power
in diffuso,
every state would become despotic, and every Prince a tyrant. The very freedom of a state is a standing recognition, a tacit acknowledgment, of a mightier power than the governing and the legislative, existing in the body of the people. In this sense, the common adage—
vox populi, vox Dei
— has both significance and propriety.
According to this representation, it is plain, that only despotic governments can, in any appropriate sense, be called supreme or infallible, that is to say, irreprehensible and uncontroulable by any cotemporary power upon earth; for could their legislation be reprehended and controuled, they should not any longer be despotic, but free.—To draw matters to a point.
Great Britain is a free popular state. This is acknowledged on all hands, and remains an instance of her consummate wisdom, persevering virtue and heroism, truly respectable and venerable. Her freedom and popularity then, amidst surrounding arbitrary nations, serve as an illustrious and irrefragable proof, that her legislation may be disputed, and her executive powers resisted, in many possible cases. When they happen, every member of the empire (not to mention great provincial divisions of it) has an undoubted right to judge for himself. If inadequate to the momentous risque of resistance, to do himself justice, after every intermediate moderate step has been taken in vain, he has a clear right to annihilate his connections with such a state, and commence a freeman in any latitude, or upon any shore, more kindly to his prospects, and more congenial with his sentiments. God, the supreme king and governor of all nations, to whom monarchs are as subject as slaves, invests him with this paramount privilege, from the same principle of benignity and fitness he has planted the strong sense of self-preservation in his breast, to avoid the tyger and the lion, when he finds himself unable to subdue either.—To throw one's self in the way of a lion or a tyger, when a method of escape presents itself, would not be gallantry or spirit, but fool-hardiness and
bedlamiteism.
It is granted, people may often imagine themselves aggrieved with little or no reason, and that it is an heinous offence to disturb the peace and tranquility of a state: but then, the possibility of the reverse becoming a necessitous duty, lays a foundation of contingent resistance, even in the most correct and guarded theory. I shall beg leave to give an exemplification in point. Suppose Parliament should conceive the idea, and put it into operation, of depriving a particular county of its two representatives, yet nevertheless continue to levy taxes and all public burdens upon its inhabitants; would not such a county have sufficient cause to think itself most injuriously treated, and consequentially authorized to run thro' all the mediums petitional of retributory redress, even undismayed by the last resort, insurgency against its oppressors, though no less high in official department, than high in the flagitiousness of offence? And if unable, with any probable views of success, to carry matters in this way, would not the inhabitants of such a county merit the highest elogiums due to spirit and magnanimity, should they nobly take the resolution of removing their effects, and emigrating beyond seas, to a more hospitable and righteous clime, the seat of common right and independence?—God, in the first instance, is the giver of property, and the great protector of property; to whom there lies an appeal from all mankind, how great soever, when it is unjustly and violently invaded, and to whom we must be circumstantially accountable for its use and abuse, its embezzlement and preservation; as property, aptly secured and judiciously laid out, is effective of excellent ends and purposes in this world. Persons that have an important trust or deposit in their hands, if from indolence, carelessness, want of spirit, or want of fortitude, they suffer it to fall a prey to wicked men, private pilferers, or open robbers, however at first these wicked men varnished over their intentions with plausibility, such persons are betrayers of their trust, unworthy of generous confidence, and chargeable with the worst of crimes at the bar of justice and equity. All our possessions we hold from God in trust: it cannot be ours absolutely and indefinitively, because that same power whose gift or transfer the possession is, disposes likewise of the possessor's life, either sooner or later: therefore, to suffer property to be lessened or taken away, without our assent and concurrence, is disloyalty and unfaithfulness to God. Duty to kings (magistrates or agents of
our own
selection and recognition) cannot supercede or set
these
aside.
Something of the same nature with the foregoing was actually seen to happen, not long ago, in Ireland, respecting not a county alone, but a whole province, the province of Ulster. The Dissenters, making by far the most considerable body in that province, without being either represented, or having personal votes in vestries, were made subject to be taxed, by act of parliament, for the repairs and ornaments of churches (places of worship against their consciences) at the discretion of people too much disposed to hold them in durance and contempt. It is true, an act so arbitrary, ungenerous, and unmanly, was no proof of the spirit of the times. It originated with a single person, a great ecclesiastic (ecclesiastics have always been at the bottom of slavery and oppression) and was suffered to pass somewhat unaccountably, through the negligence of some, and the supine inattention of others, in which circumstances most dark and wicked schemes are pushed into form.
The Dissenters to a man were irritated and alarmed, being conscious of no defaulture. They had several meetings and consultations, touching the necessity of declaring their united sentiments on so critical an occasion, and at length unanimously agreed to petition Parliament. They did so, from their respective parish districts, in a decent, dispassionate, but able manner. The prayer of their petitions was heard by a sensible, liberal-minded majority in the House of Commons; the obnoxious act repealed, and peace and security restored to a vast body of opulent, well-affected people; who, otherwise, might have been precipitated into that species of ill-humour and discontent which every wise government will always appease and soothe in the first instance, where a useful and numerous set of men are concerned.
Indeed it cannot but be observed here, that the procedure of the governing powers, with reference to the Vestry-Act, contradicted their general line of conduct in American affairs. The Vestry-Act, and the right of internally taxing the Colonies, proceeded on the same principle. The ostensible cause of the one, was the delinquency of a riotous mob in the town of Boston; of the other, a refractory disposition shewn by a few dissenting congregations, with regard to the repair of churches. In both cases, how inadequate the
cause
to the
effect!
how disproportionate the
punishment
to the
offence!
— When the
Hearts of Steel
committed such disturbances in two or three Northern counties, had Government sent fleets and armies to punish Ireland, by the demolition of her towns, and the destruction of her inhabitants, what brass-complexioned courtier would have held up his face to justify the deed? The instances are exactly parallel. I cannot possibly look upon them in any other light. For the same reason that America is
now
surrounded with predatory fleets and invasive armies, and the taxation law against the Dissenters was enacted; the trade of Ireland should now be destroyed, her maritime towns thrown into conflagration, and her children slaughtered by an unpitying soldiery, on account of the acts of insurgency and violence committed by the
Steel-Boys.
Politicians may refine away the similarity, as politicians have before now refined away private judgment and the liberty of the subject, into indefeasible right, non-resistance, and church authority: but all such refinements are only those of Satan to establish his kingdom upon earth. On the ground of general humanity, the law of nations, jurisprudential rectitude, and political integrity, subject to a test paramount to them all, the Divine Law, (for sure we call ourselves Christians) I invite any one to prove that the above cited cases are not perfectly in point, and his arguments shall have fair play. Should such a person object to the invitation, being anonymous, let him make his best efforts on the subject, and the writer hereof promises, to step forward, in reply, with his name at full length to his book; not begrudging him the full advantage of all that the learned doctors Johnson and Shebbeare have declaimed on the same side with himself.
It is true, the Americans stand itemed
Rebels
in the Parliament records, and in the K—'s speeches; but with the most dutiful respect for the S—, and veneration for the Council of the nation, I do aver it, that no K— or Parliament upon earth, has authority to fix the meaning of language for me, or alter the nature of things, by a particular arbitrary use of terms. Many great and good men about the K—, and in parliament, reprobated the term, and protested against the application of it. Are no men honest but such as are paid for being dishonest, I mean, those in lucrative places and on the pension list, not to mention the unmarshalled tribe standing on the tiptoe of court expectation?—I may take
my
license of speech, and nickname
those
rebels and traitors to the then crowned and sceptred monarch, that brought WILLIAM into England, and afterwards set him upon the throne; in consequence of which GEORGE now inhabits a royal palace, and reigns over a mighty (would to God they were a united) people. Will their lordships B—, N—, M—, S—, G—, H—,
&c. &c.
give me credit for
my
term? if not, why should I, a free member of the British empire, though not in any place at court, give them credit for
theirs?
Language is common to the species, and cannot be monopolized, or unalterably fixt, till our legs and necks shall be first fitted to the yoke and the fetters. In such a case, language would be of no use to us, more than to the ox or the ass; for were we to upbraid our tyrants, it would only be to have our tongues cut out of our heads, lest in the aggrievement and indignation of our spirits, we should spit upon them next.—This matter may require a farther discussion, the discussion of Common Sense and common honesty.
What government, led at the discretion of lords North, Mansfield and company, now calls rebellion, should be styled, by the same legislative authority, directed by a Chatham or a Camden, a necessary laudable spirit of resistance; that identical spirit which seated GEORGE III. on the throne of the British empire, and excluded for ever the lineal heir of these realms. Are the former noble lords endued with infallibility, in their interpretation of words, beyond the latter? Who that thinks or reads beyond a Primmer, other than a pensioner, or the hungry expectant of a pension, will take upon him to assert this? Oh, will it be replied by our legal vociferators of rebellion, that the latter noble lords are
out
of place and would stretch every nerve to get
in:
hence their abhorrence of what they affect to call our present court idioms, and
juntonian
phraseology. Even allowing this its utmost validity (which I would never allow but for argument's sake) still it amounts to a presumption only, a bare begging of the question. The now vernacular usage of speech, crying out rebellion! rebellion! within the environs of St. James's, rests upon the proof of the same arbitrary, disingenuous, time-serving kind,
actually positive.
The ministerial exclaimers of rebellion have all, in substantial possession, places, pensions, douceurs, gratuities, almost beyond arithmetic: the above, therefore, is one of these unfortunate proofs that have two edges, the one obtuse and harmless, the other keen and cutting. Those assailants that use it, fondly imagining they are doing wondrous execution, and dealing wounds and death around them, never advert to the circumstance of their having mistaken the side, deeply wounding and mangling themselves, without once piercing even the scarf-skin of those they assail.—My lords Chatham and Camden positively will not call the Americans rebels, because they
want
places at court: my lords North and Mansfield reiterate the odious appellation, and paste it in capitals on the back of the Americans, because they
have
places:
ergo,
a negative must take place of an affirmative, or else the former Right Hon. Peers have
indeed
adhered to the chasteness, purity, dignity, and manliness of language. The court and its dependants using the abominable hue-and-cry terms
rebels, traitors,
in doubtful cases, and by no means universally acknowledged, is the same thing as two persons met on the ground, in single combat, and the one calling the other a rascal and a scoundrel. What lord in Administration, so critically stationed, would call his antagonist a rascal or a scoundrel? Should any lord act so unlike himself, before he discharged his pistol, or made his lounge, he would deserve to be treated with silent but manly contempt, or to be horsewhipt by his adversary's coachman, rather than indulged with the honourable event of a duel.—It may be argued, that the constitution must be preserved at any rate, and whatever the expence of blood and treasure its preservation may require, if we would exist as a nation or people at all. Agreed: but the true way of preserving the constitution, is to know precisely the diseases it is liable to, and, when they happen, to apply the proper remedies; otherwise, political death must ensue of course, as natural death, when the human body labours under a disorder for which there is no cure. Moreover, the Americans are the people, at present, that are preserving the constitution, by defending
the principle
on which it is founded, the right of assent and consent in taxation, either personal or substitutional; without which no state can subsist free, but soon sink into abject slavery, even through the medium of its own taxational largesses.
Supremacy of Parliament
on the one hand, and
unconditional submission
on the other, are the dogmas and language of Turks, not of Britons. God himself requires not unconditional submission from his creatures, but submission on the clearest moral evidence and internal conviction. G—III. and his high-priests N—h, M—s—d, G—m—ne, we suppose, are Beings of superior order to their MAKER.
In short, it would not be our Country, or the general interests of the species we should assist, by taking our construction of words from the noble lords North and Mansfield, even with the erudite lexicographical critic, Dr.
Johnson,
at their elbow, in preference of the still nobler lords, Chatham and Camden; but the prime minister for the time being, and his satellitary circle. Had lord Chatham or lord Camden, directed the helm of affairs for some time past, the inglorious and destructive emergency which now serves as an apology for official despotism and ministerial depredation, to the honour of our species, and the glory of Britain, would not have marked the historical page of the times with civil blood, nor sent abroad through the land, among kinsmen, citizens and neighbours, the horrid, the infernal cry of
murder!
—The plain English, therefore, of the whole is this; A senatorial majority (let them tell from what ennobled, disinterested, self-denied principle)
feel
themselves pertinaciously disposed to support the lords Mansfield and North, in preference of the lords Chatham and Camden. Is this the amount of Parliamentary integrity? Parliamentary public spirit? Parliamentary affection for GEORGE III, and the Protestant succession? Or shall a Murray or a North, in point of pre-eminent rectitude of intention, solidity of honest talents, and celebrity of fame, stand unblushing competitors with a PITT or a PRATT?—The
latter
(last war) reduced the haughty Spaniard and the Gaul to the humility of soliciting peace at the footstool of GEORGE III, and spread the conquering names of BRITONS to the farthest parts of the earth: Let us be told what the
former
have done to excite admiration and gratitude, if we except their superlative merit in plunging us into all the complicated horrors and miseries of civil war, a war among kinsmen, brethren and friends!—Compare them together. — Nay rather, let every freeborn Briton lay his hand on his untutored heart, and generously exculpate the Americans (who have as true a right to property from God, as the Premier or his master) in their CONGRESSIONAL resistance to a tyrannical, rapacious, vindictive Minister; who is now convulsing a mighty, and hitherto a glorious, empire, in order to glut a herd of needy dependants with rapine and plunder; the rapine of virtuous citizens, and the plunder of genuine Protestants.—
A private writer taking so much upon him, with such freedom and boldness, will, no doubt, be severely censured by those who are accustomed to think differently on the subject, perhaps, find their account in so doing. It may be sufficient, in reply to this, to observe, that many writers, on the contrary side, have written, at least, with equal boldness and freedom, with a strain of acrimonious dogmatism, and abusive inflation of language superadded, not to be imitated by writers that have no partial views or private inducements—not to be imitated by the present writer. To speak in the first person of allowable egotism; though a private and an anonymous writer, I am a denizen of the British empire, not to mention a higher title still, a denizen of GOD's universal empire, the world. I support in my place, and variously circumstanced, the exigencies of the state; help to pay the army and navy, those brave fellows that hitherto have been prodigal of their blood in the defence of Liberty, pure and uncorrupted from court pollution. Nay, to ascend in my importance, I help to maintain GEORGE III, to feed him, to clothe him, and incircle his person with majesty, by contributing to pay the public taxes. What were GEORGE III, king of England, without his thousands, and his ten thousands,
like me,
to pay their quotas into the national treasury?—True, what I pay is but a mite compared with the proportions of others; but a levied
mite
had once an high compliment paid it, and by a good judge. I also gratefully acknowledge, that I have, full value received in present protection and freedom, for every tax I pay, even to the light that shines through my window, and the fire that burns on my hearth. What then?—this very circumstance creates an anxiety not to be repressed, looking forward to the preservation and continuance of this protection and freedom; without which the
present
possession would be little beyond a purse of gold in our pockets on Hounslow-heath. This gives me also and sanctifies my right to speak freely of public measures, in which I am as truly concerned as any Prime Minister of the land. If the British empire be lost, leaning on its first principle, virtuous, equal liberty, I lose my all. In the immediate, or even the remote prospect of this, shall I hold my tongue, because I have not a paltry pension or ministerial bribe for speaking?—My right to speak and write, so far as I refrain from injuring private characters, and private property, (which I shall ever do) is beyond that of a member of Parliament, or privy counsellor. By that original and divine authority which makes all kings, members of Parliament, and privy counsellors, I write; and were it not for this transcendant and unalienable right, lodged with Man by the great Creator of heaven and earth, kings, members of Parliament, and privy counsellors, instead of applying annually to the People for the very breath of their nostrils, the very meat they eat, and the cloaths they wear, would in the persons of bailiffs and constables, enter our—more than royal palaces—our virtuous habitations; empty our coffers into their pockets, the fruit of our honest industry; and, perhaps, in an act of uniform familiarity, ravish our wives and debauch our daughters.—There is a time for national rest, and constitutional slumbers: but there is likewise a time (would to God, it were not what
now
throws shadows on our dials!) for the thunder-clothed vehemence of the mouth, and the lightning-kindled enthusiasm of the pen. The cannon, even under the match of a Briton, cannot silence the one, nor the sword, even wielded by a Briton, cannot outflash the other.—Long, eternally long, may the experiment remain to be tried, and Britain,
almost imperceptibl
in the internal poise of its three equipolent estates, be like the earth, with nothing material or visible to support it, yet balanced unmoveably on its own axis!—
From the above induction of particulars, it would appear, that the supremacy of Parliament is in fact nothing else, in our corrupt degenerate day than the supremacy of the Prime minister; whose supremacy can be no farther absolute, than that of the enthroned Roman Pontiff, and
his
no more respectable than the sweat and filth of his toe, however extended for adosculation.—There are many things Parliament cannot do, with all its height of pretension, and magnificence of claim. It
cannot
set aside the verdict of a Jury in a criminal cause. It
cannot
interfere in the business of elections for its own members, otherwise than by its Speaker issuing writs. It
cannot
take away from the King the power of a negative on all its legislative acts. It
cannot
impose taxes of interior operation, where there is no deliberative assent of the people, either personally or representatively present. Nor, to mention no more instances, can it prolong itself beyond its octennnial term of existence. With all these marks of impotence and non-efficiency on its forehead, to hear of Parliamentary supremacy, i. e. omnipotence and infallibility (they are convertible ideas) forces one (however unwilling) to picture to himself a snail carrying its little shell about with it, but assuring the
limacious circle
around, that it is indeed an elephant with a cohort of soldiers on its back: or an ephemeron stepping into existence to-day, and out of it to-morrow, but at the same time declaring itself immortal.—All these acts of parliamentary impotence just now specified are, however, resistless acts of spontaneity in the people at large, whenever they are struck with the expedience and necessity of interposing; i. e. whenever court measures and ministerial edicts, have a direct instant tendency to issue in their slavery. At such an awful critical period, God, the Monarch paramount of the world, calls upon the people to do their posterity right, by emancipating themselves from those bolts and fetters they were neuer created for.—God—under whom the greatest emperor that wears a diadem, is no more than a viceroy or governor of a province under an earthly king; and both no more, when compared with the majesty and almightiness of the sebjects at large, than a master-sheep at the head of the flock, with a bell about his neck.—Such a renunciation of tyrannical masters, the elastic recovery of a people to the original poise of their own rights, were such a sentimental exertion of duty to God, the alone supreme king of all the earth, as the Jews would have exhibited, when they got a king from Heaven
in wrath,
had they thrown themselves upon the clemency and providence of God, by once more recognizing him as their
alone
king and governor. Hear their own appropriate language to Samuel.
Pray for thy servants unto
Lord thy God
(they durst not call him
our God) that we die not, for we have added unto our sins
THIS EVIL—
to ask a king.
—The people being thrown into disorder and confusion, in consequence of this re-assumption of original rights, is no objection to the effort against voluntary slavery, as nothing can be pure, that owes its existence to art, without a previous fermentation; and as no future system can become perfect and permanent, without the experience of former systems having been imperfect and precarious. Beside, men would always wish to suffer
with hope
(if suffer they must) rather than to suffer without it: there is no hope, however, in slavery, but—
death,
—Let it be understood here, to blunt the edge of outrageous remark, that the writer would not insinuate the lawfulness or expediency of an effort in the people, till the last extreme, the impassable and unsurmountable extreme shall call them forth, like a voice from Heaven, to the field.
The People alone, therefore, not kings or parliaments, can with any decency challenge the high prerogative of being supreme, that is, ultimately decisive and unresponsible. Kings and parliaments are in the last instance responsible to those that made them—the People. Who made the People? —God!—
Nihil vero verius
—Kings and Parliaments otherwise would be of no use to the People, but rather a curse and a scourge. It is owing entirely to their being controulable and accountable in the dernier resort, that freemen could derive any advantage from their rulers and governors; for, unquestionably, no body of men would be so stupid and senseless as to chuse a ruler or governor to deteriorate their condition, or render their right to or possession of property
more
ambiguous and periclitated, than in a state of nature. The social compact, and the complicated form of government grounded upon it, commenced for the greater security of life, personal freedom, and property: but if, in such a situation they become
less
secure, then is the state of Nature preferable to that of society and government.—To descend from general to local views, from great to little objects.
The Rev. JOHN WESLEY'S arguments, and those of all writers on his side, wrought in JOHNSONIAN tissue as they are, must pass for nought, till the above leading data are disproved. Picking straws off the surface will never gratify genuine ambition, while inestimable beds of pearl below deride our want of courage, or want of apparatus, to dive for it. Political expedience connected with a particular system, chiefly lucrative to men officially employed, and general rectitude, involving the common concerns of mankind, and referable to God as the supreme arbiter and judge, are two distinct things; nor was it becoming a Christian divine (he would be thought so) to ground his deductions on the former, and not on the latter.
His
deductions, indeed, they cannot be called. The Rev.
John Wesley
is a plagiary, without being honest enough to apologize for it. Dr.
Johnson
not only furnished him with his reasonings (if such they may be called) but his language also. True, we are told
The Critical Reviewers would screen him most shamefully, by alledging he could not find better thoughts or expressions: an excuse for all literary theft, even did a new set of Reviewers arise, pilfer the Critical, and vend their monthly labours as their own.
he could not adopt better on the side he took: but shall a man counterfeit the current coin of a kingdom, from the circumstance of his not having more valuable models to take his impressions from? Nor was it a seemly excuse for robbing a great and growing people of their rights and franchises, that he had before robbed a celebrated author of his writings.—Our second Consideration remains to be brought before the reader
It may not be improper to mention here, the outlines of two Gentlemen's opinions that have figured, but widely differed, in the dispute between
England
and
America,
I mean EDMOND BURKE,
Esq
and Dr. TUCKER,
Dean of Gloucester.
Notwithstanding the
latter
affects to despise the explosive effects of the
former
's rhetorical thunder and lightning, the most cursory reader cannot but remark, that the
Rev. Dean
found himself violently scorched by the one, and sonorously roused to wounded self-consequence by the other. He expresses great deference for the House of Commons, and
modestly
hints his regret in entering on a question then before that House; but respecting Mr. Burke, a member thereof, he professedly loosens himself from all ceremony, and, indeed, would notably reduce him to a mere senatorial mummy of splendid diction, simile, and metaphor. Where is the Dean's decorum or consistency here? It is not the House that covers the members, but the members that constitute the House, that ought to be considered in connection with the Dean's idea of augustness. For the same reason that the House of Commons is intitled to deference and respect, Mr. Burke is, whether in or out of the House. In either case his identity is the same; and as he is confessedly one of the most superior speakers there, both with regard to the weight of argumentative ability, and masterly display of elocution, he certainly comprises, in his single person, a degree of augustness and pre-eminence beyond the
one half
of that assembly, made up of mere monosyllabic
yeas
and
noes;
who, if they have capacity,
cannot discover it,
and if they have knowledge,
cannot communicate it.
The learned Dean, therefore, while he pays his tribute to the House of Commons, and, at the same time, would withhold it from Mr. Burke, undoes with his
right
hand what he had endeavoured to do with his
left.
This must either be the amount of our Dean's attempt, or he must be understood to mean, that the stone and mortar of the House of Commons, and the benches on which the members sit, actually constitute
the house.
Waving, however, the point of contrariety between the House and Mr. Burke, to me it appears no breach of deference or respect for the augustness of the
representative body,
in Parliament assembled, to take up and canvas any subject, though instantly in deliberation before that body. The Clergy are always excessively complaisant and well bred. The same right that authorises us to send representatives to Parliament, authorizes us to
think, speak,
and
write,
even antecedent to the decisions of that assembly. Every member of a free state, sits in a greater than any Parliament House — in the area of Humanity, a theatre only bounded by the poles; where he sits and deliberates in right of a summons from the great CREATOR, instead of a writ issued by the Speaker of a popular, local assembly. Respect and deference in durance to the
latter,
and not to the
former,
in their consequential stages of advance, always arrive at that obsequiousness and submission, which the despot cannot but contemplate with satisfaction, and the vain empty man ever accepts of with avidity.
With regard to a plan of Colonistic accommodation, the point agitated between these two Gentlemen, singularly important and interesting as its consequences would seem, it can never be brought to any issue, so as to carry conviction to either of their bosoms: they proceed on different data, and opposite principles. The Great Senator maintains that the Colonies are
not
in rebellion, but urged to self-defence, and irritated to hostile repulsion, by arbitrary exaction, and high-handed assessments. On this ground the excellent speaker has held forth a plan of accommodation, judicious, solid, pertinent, and salutary, alike becoming
freemen
to offer, and
freemen
to accept. The learned Dean, on the contrary, falls in with the minister's majority in Parliament, and considers the Americans as
rebels,
flying in the face of the parent state, and aiming at a
traitorous
independence; hence have subjected themselves to all that parliamentary indignation and resentment, which have been avowed and put into executive force against them. The Rev. Dean has quite forgot here, that no one is a
rebel
till he has been proved such on trial before his peers, and at common law; and that to nickname and punish a man as a
rebel
or
traitor,
prior to his being tried and found guilty, is the same thing as to punish an individual, as a robber or murderer, before he has been proved such. A royal proclamation can neither
make,
nor
set aside
law, except in France or Turkey: if it supercedes trial at bar or by jury, it supercedes courts of justice, and renders Parliaments useless — In short, the Dean's reasonings and conclusions, in general, and to say the utmost of them, rest upon one pillar only—the supremacy and omnipotence of Parliament: if the substruction can be removed, the superstructure falls of course. Nothing can be supreme or omnipotent, without being infallible also. Till Parliaments become absolutely infallible (I believe it will not happen in our day) Parliaments are—un-omnipotent and un-supreme. To say that Parliament is supreme and omnipotent in all cases whatsoever, is saying that Lord North, or the ostensible minister for the time being, is supreme and omnipotent in all cases whatsoever. While the minister holds the national bag, as Judas did his Master's, he turns Parliaments at pleasure, as the winds turn the weathercock, but not (alas!) with the same innocence and want of consciousness.—It is no less notorious, than the false grandeur, gaming, dissipation and shameful luxury of the times, that
placemen, pensioners,
and
military servants,
always make up the determining majority in both Houses, a packed, disqualified, un-constitutional junto, not excepting the Right Rev. Bench. Can such be called competent, equitable judges, any more than jurymen or witnesses, in trials of life and death and property, who have been bribed and suborned?—The analogy is pointed and decisive, and evinces with what matureness of judgment, as well as superiority of talents, the
oratorial light
of the British senate revolved his subject. But, alas! the aera, the honourable and inestimable aera, of
accommodation
is now over, in despite of a CHATHAM and a BURKE; whose reasonings, one would have thought, were sufficient to illuminate a world, instead of three insular spots: the Americans have declared themselves INDEPENDENT; while our egregious rulers, sitting on their hobby-horse of supremacy and omnipotence, have the sweets of a sugar plumb to roll in their mouths, for losing one half division of a great empire, hitherto, in conjunction with AMERICA, the arbitress of Europe, and empress of the seas.
.
COLONIZATION is the voluntary deliberate act of a few leaving the parent country, to begin an adopted one in a distant region, under the instant disadvantages of an unknown situation (inhabited by hostile natives) paucity, exposure, want of order, and want of form. The parent country is no less naturally induced to protect, cherish and fondle this infant colony, than parents of another kind to protect, cherish, and fondle their puling offspring: nor would a dereliction of duty and kind affections, in the one case, be a greater crime than in that of the other. As our children run through the progressive stages of infancy, childhood, youth, manhood,
&c.
and demand attentions from their parents applicable and appropriate to each stage; so do colonies, from their first settlement to their ripening into internal subordination and Empire; and are certainly intitled to attentions of a similar nature from the mother state. But by the police of all well constituted kingdoms, a certain time arrives, which we are accustomed to call the age of adultness, when nonage ceases, when children become independent of parents, and privileged to commence, in their own persons, possessors of property, under no parental limitation or controul. In a correspondent way Colonies, by the persevering exercise of virtue and industry, the melioration of their lands, and the extension of their commerce, added to the capital circumstance of a prodigious, still increasing, population, are authorized by the law of Nature and Providence, the only original binding moral law, to stand on their own legs, and to do for themselves, unconnected feudally or legislatively with the parent State. In their political nonage, indisputably, they felt, and grew beneath the protecting hand of the parent; who in return for protection, and by way of entire indemnification, beheld a concentration of the children's commercial goods and property annually pouring into her coffers: but shall this monopoly be still insisted on and inforced, this stated requital for favours received, when the favours are no longer needed or required? Real children, under age, owe passive obedience to parents, as a return for support and maintenance; but come of age, passive obedience ceases of course with the support and maintenance being no longer requisite. In both cases the necessity of the thing ought to strike us with the full force and energy of truth.
Did not children at a certain time become independent of their parents, with regard to free agency and moral accountableness, there would happen in an indefinite number of instances, such an accumulation of domestic government, as would soon grow to be loaded with all the miseries and abominations of the feudal system, perfectly oppressive and unsufferable, even to the destruction of national police, and socialcompact. A father might live to be a great-grand-father, and under his absolute dominion in one house, at the same time, have two or three hundred children, grand-children, and great-grand-children, accommodated and employed respectively as he himself should arbitrarily dictate, often, perhaps, only influenced by the restless lust of rule, caprice, spleen, or unaccountable prejudice. In this way children should be incapacitated to act as free members of a free state; so that such a monopolization and perpetuation of domestic authority, would not only interfere with, but end in, the total abolition of municipal freedom, political subordination, and personal property. Wisely therefore have all governments, in self-preservation, fixt the term of maturity, and the boundaries of adolescential subjection: in short, set children free from all tyes to parents, but those of reverence, gratitude and affection, which are spontaneous conditional duties, always at the command of an excellent and deserving object.
With regard to Colonies, the precise period of political adultness, has not been ascertained. For what power is competent to ascertain it? There are no visible existing powers, that we know of, above the kingdoms of this earth. It is therefore the alone province of Heaven to take the lead in this magnificent and magnitudinous affair; to fix the
ne plus ultra
of supremacy on the one hand, and of submission on the other. Heaven, indeed, has not left the exact limits upon record, so as not to be mistaken: but the sense and will of Heaven may be clearly made out from the plainest deductions of reason and common sense, which in many intricate and doubtful cases are our only guides, and the only infallible standard men have upon earth, in penetrating the art and disguise of things; bringing forward primordial privileges, and authenticating the stamp of derived and delegated power, from that possessively underived and undelegated, except from Heaven.
Should we leave the decision of the matter to parent states, the term of Colonian puberty would never arrive. States, as regulated by mere men, are as subject to a wretched poverty of intellect, a sordid narrowness of spirit, a selfish mediocrity of concession, as individuals. Selfishness, though variously habited and disguised, is the characteristic of polished cultivated humanity, except in punctilious attentions to one another, among members of official departments, at levees, and in drawing-rooms. Where shall we find an individual who will coolly and willingly relinquish to another what he looks upon as his sole property, and the chief support of his personal significance among mankind? Or where shall we find a great kingdom that will coolly and willingly relinquish to a Colonian rival or cotemporary in power, what it looks upon as its sole property, and the chief support of its territorial signification among nations? We must not seek for either instance in the latitudes of our earth. Yet the negative of conduct thrown into interrogation here, with respect to individuals, is the opprobrium of our nature, and the malady of all societies; one set of men gorged to the throat with luxury, another set starving but for our alms on our dunghills: and with respect to nations, the same negative was the destruction of the Grecian and Roman empires; which, instead of supporting themselves at the zenith of power and glory by the means that acquired them, internal virtue, temperance and piety, vainly thought to consolidate universal dominion by exorbitant exactions, and arbitrary stretches of authority, in their distant provinces and colonies; whereby they roused up such a spirit of dissatisfaction and resentment, in the members against the head, as soon issued, assisted by interior vice, immorality and licentiousness, in their final ruin and extinction. Particular kingdoms, therefore, must not be admitted umpires to decide the weighty and momentous question of Colonian maturity, or ripeness for self-government.
A kingdom to all eternity (were kingdoms eternal) would no more give up its Colonies to the liberty and independence itself enjoys, than a tyrannical unnatural parent would wish to liberate a son from his jurisdiction, were he not liable to be forced by the law of his country, and, indeed, in most cases, by the necessity of the thing itself. But let the consequences be seriously and candidly marked.
Were there no compulsory statutes for the liberation of children from their parents, at a specified time, parents, even the most opulent, would not be able to maintain their successions of offspring, except in wretchedness and penury; which in a very few generations would reduce the wealthiest nations to the condition of Indians, living on the uncultivated fruits of the earth, and the unsolicited fish crowding to their shores. And even should industry be admitted to take place between a father and his sons, still the admission is shackled with an absurdity impossible to be thrown off, which would shortly annihilate the whole pater-familial dynasty. In instances of disagreements between father and son, disagreements not in the nature of things to be avoided, strength, bodily strength, would be the
lex ultima judicandi,
as force is confessedly the
ultima ratio regum.
A son might be very often stronger than his father, or two or more sons might conspire against a father, and subdue him, whereby the whole domestic chain of government would be unlinked, while brawny limbs and athletic shoulders, not wise heads and experienced hoary locks, would bear off the chaplet of victory, and the younger reign in the elder's stead.—
Thus it appears, that the adult domestic period has been established in all well regulated States, with a degree of sapient foresight on which their existence, as well as property, depends. The adult period of Colonies comes next to be considered. Such a period, it has been observed, would never arrive, were it left to the option and discretion of the Colonian parent. But notwithstanding this peevish, impoverished, and jaundiced maxim of State, shall it never arrive? This is just saying, with more illiterate dogmatism than truth, that States shall never grow old, diseased, enfeebled, and decrepit; i. e. it is an attempt to stop the course of Nature, arrest the progress of mortal labefaction, and check the material dissolution of parts; suspend the attrition of wheels, and counteract the wearing of machinery. States are subject to all the vicissitudes of the human body; like it must increase, decrease, and moulder into dust. Shall an old palsied man then wrestle with the young and vigorous? the diseased with the healthy? the weaker with the stronger?—In other words, shall parent States be eternal? and shall Colonies never become parent States? Absurd and fanciful indeed!—Mark the extravagance and self-delusion here. In many supposable cases, not to mention cases that have really happened, Colonies may become greater, wealthier, and more powerful, than the birth-giving State. At such a crisis, what is to be done? Shall the lesser legislatively controul the greater? The poorer the wealthier? Or the weaker the stronger?—The questions would seem to answer themselves, and may be left to Lord North himself, if he has not altogether abandoned the sterling currency of Idea and Language (the reverse of his conduct with regard to the coin) and has not folded up, for ever and for ever, the un-corporational rectitude and integrity of things, in the plaitings of his Aulic-robe, or the duplications of his Blue Ribbon.
All nations upon earth were once Colonies, except the first stationary spot of its inhabitants: and even that may be called a Colony from Heaven, at least so long as the disposition of Heaven reigned there, peace, love, friendship, and content. All nations were once in the most helpless condition of infant territory, and nascent civilization. How have these Colonies expiated the guilt of their becoming great and flourishing kingdoms, the terror and admiration of the world, the Ethiopic, the Grecian, and the Roman? Lord North and his conclave of Senators ought to write maledictory epitaphs to their memory; send some of their order from their silent, or abused seats in Parliament, upon an eastern tour; and there instead of falling down on their knees, with sepulchral decency, unutterable consciousness, and holy admiration, spurn the ashes of their dead Generals, Heroes and Orators; trample on the marmorean relics of their glory, and deface the ingravements of their unenvied immortality! They should find no interruption in the solitude of their exploits (as their consciences were left behind them) but from the remonstrances of awakened echoes, or the inarticulated murmurings of passing winds!
The progress from Colonian nonage and imbecility to the adultness and lustihood of empire, has been as observable, since the beginning of time, as the growth of the human body from infancy to manhood. The world may be called a great body made up of continents, islands, empires, kingdoms, principalities, and states, its individuals in a
figurative
sense; a kingdom likewise is a great lesser body, made up of men and women, its individuals in a
real
sense. Men and Women have a progression of growth from birth to the period of legal maturity. Nothing can obstruct or limit this regular growth without doing violence to God and Nature, as well as society; a crime, multiform and penal, equal to mutilation, maiming, dismembering, partially robbing life of its subsistence, or totally destroying it. Empires, kingdoms and states, have likewise a progression of increase from their first colonizing existence to the ripened aera of their independence: nothing can obstruct or limit this regular increase, without doing violence to God in the first instance, the King of
all
kings, and the Lord of
all
lords; a crime for which kings, ministers, and parliaments must be one day as responsible, as those tyrants and monsters that would, by external implements and force (a thing quite possible) stop the growth of an infant to a child; of a child to a youth; or of a youth to a man.
This seems to be the true and unaffected view of the subject, unwarpt by party, and unallied to worldly hopes and fears; which alas! too often serve to silence the voice of truth, fully its brightness, or muddy its channels. It is so obvious and reasonable, that I cannot help wondering it does not strike every mind left to its own freedom, and not abashed to borrow light from Christianity; that admirable, but not half enough admired system of right conduct, pure equity, disinterested justice, genuine ambition, refined morals, exquisite philosophy, gentle affections, and generous principles; without which, adopted and revered in courts and cabinets, no kingdoms can rise to greatness, become greatness, or secure greatness, any more than individuals. This I would assert, and hand down to posterity (could any thing of mine reach posterity) under every circumstance of discouragement and unpopularity; and notwithstanding the accommodated reasonings of Dr. Johnson, Dean Tucker, and Sir John Dalrymple, without forgetting to mention our little tabernacle politician, though indeed nothing better than a dangling satellite at the belt of Jupiter. Though blunt and bold truths coming unawares upon men, and overturning accustomed modes of thinking, at first rather tend to fix the character of extreme singularity on the author, than to convince the reader; yet a time will come, when the unrestrained powers of reflection, and the natural good sense of mankind, will take the lead of habit, fashion and prejudice, like re-action recovering, that is, reinstating, what was lost by simple action or pressure: or to speak more Justly, like condensed air, and concentrated sunbeams, regaining that medium and expansion, made their natural properties by the great Creator, and best accommodated to general use and benefit.
Many people, in the official departments of the State, who somehow or other imagine themselves called upon to defend Government at all hazards, whether right or wrong, will probably be very ready to exclaim against the bold and free spirit of these remarks, not
spying the beam in their own eye.
Politicians, indeed, are not obliged to be good Christians. They will call them Republican, and in their latitude and tendency dangerous to civil Administration, as well as disrespectful to the K—. Yet such persons will as probably never reflect, that while the foregoing remarks can only do imaginary harm, even upon their own supposition of their being dangerous, they themselves do substantial irreparable harm to the State, to their King and Country, by the dissoluteness and profligacy of their live. It scarcely can be denied, that most of our Rulers are men of gross morals and irreligious private conduct. It may be argued, they are not worse than other members of the State: But if they are no better, they are virtually worse; as persons in power and trust ought to be exemplary for superior and uncommon virtues. The routine of public worship is not religion, though from the throne to the cottage it unaccountably passes as such.
Luxury, effeminacy, and sensuality, these are the hydra evils that hurt a State, sap the foundations of Government, and undermine slowly but surely, the platform of municipal freedom; while the Essay Writer, with the worst intentions, only gives the world an opportunity to examine, and in cases of error in his positions, of confuting him. Hereby Government, in truth, acquires additional strength, splendor, and beauty, instead of being injured. No theoretical reasoning, or speculative opinions, can disturb or periclitate a State, though they may disturb and periclitate men in the possession of abused power, and ill-acquired opulence. If bad, they are easily answered, and as assignable to oblivion, as rockets and soap-bubbles into air. If good, that is, founded on unalterable maxims, and the general convictions of mankind, no opposition can suppress them; nay, the opposition of courts and hierarchies, will add to their currency and effect. But what remedy can radically conquer national degeneracy, a depravity of manners infecting the whole body-politic, with fashion and breeding and the Clergy, their grand allies?
The command of the powers of a State, and self-command, being at the head of Government, and at the head of self-government, are quite different things. Ministers, without the last, can never acquit themselves honourably or successfully, with respect to the first. Private virtue is the only foundation of public, as the whole can no other way be made up, but of the parts; and
public virtue
is the only secure basis of national peace, freedom, prosperity and glory. To loosen the links of this chain, were to disjoin vegetable circulatory life and the growth of the oak, or to separate light and heat from the body of the sun.— Alas! while the ostensible friends and servants of Government are sending out mighty fleets and armies, to support what they are pleased to call the honour and character of the nation, they tarnish its true honour and character in the private paths of life: i. e. while they stick a feather in Britannia's cap, they are aiming a dagger at her heart, by the vicious dissipation, corrupt prodigality, and pleasurable extravagance, of their lives. Fleets and armies, in this case, are no more than the bravadoing of presumption and confidence; and demonstrate a mode of procedure in our rulers totally inconsistent and a-jar with itself.—What their fleets and armies may be supposed to do abroad, our
gubernatorial
great men are more than undoing at home, by their scandalous vices and glaring immoralities. Are these the pillars of the realm? Of government? Of monarchy? Yes; but they are rotten pillars, that must shortly give way, and bury in their ruins the glorious and superb sabric of British Liberty, without even the consolation of one truly valiant, virtuous man, like him of
Gaza,
to consecrate the mighty devastation.
While our parliamentary court leaders, our cabinet and privy counsellors, by means of the basest venality, breach of honour, and breach of integrity, to their constitutional masters, the People, get the public money into their hands, to squander away on parade of living, a false style of life, profusion, licentiousness and libertinism, (the overthrow of the once illustrious empires of Greece and Rome) to squander away on parasites, sycophants, mistresses, lackies, horses and dogs; they can never succeed or prosper in any undertaking, except in destroying, sooner or later, our happy and envied constitution.—They are, with veritable sadness it may be said, the
real
libellers and defamers of king and government, and justly may be styled rebels and traitors of the most dangerous, because the least suspected kind; the dark though smiling assassins, the certain though insidious underminers of their country; and not the writer who asserts strong facts and bold truths, that offend more by their novelty, than any error or danger they contain.
The power of the delegated branches of the state, of the crown, privy councils, and parliaments, has been stretched so fatally high, by a variety of popular court writers of late, writing for pay, not for immortality; that it is become the unavoidable duty of every free member of the empire, to counteract the obvious intention of their writings. Dr. Johnson in particular, a man of genius, erudition, and celebrity, has dipt his (once admired) pen so deep in prerogative poison, and aristocratic infection, that every generous unpensioned quill in the kingdom should be exerted to prepare an antidote against him, before his poison spread with canine velocity, and the infection become epidemical throughout the land.—How has the sublime ethic philosopher fallen into the foul suds of politics! How has the admirable critic, and classical wit, sunk in the mire and dirt of a court! Hid himself behind the shadow of my Lord North, in a voluntary eclipse, whose brightness, primary and diffusive, might have illuminated a whole kingdom, and thrown even a Court into occultation!—The morning sun, serene and radiant, suddenly losing itself in the fogs and vapours of night!—The pure unruffled element, that always returned true pictures of objects around, nay, heightened representations of beauty, disturbed and muddied by the blackening tempest!—
Born with a poignant philosophic taste,
Bright his ideas, his conceptions chaste;
Born with a fancy ethic heights to soar,
Where rob'd in light but angels soar'd before:
Born with those masculine superior pow'rs,
No schools bestow, the gift of heav'n, not ours;
To trace the mazes of the human mind,
And all the secret springs that move mankind;
Whether of friendship, love, of hope or fear,
With perceant insight, accuracy severe:
The bard admired, the critic sternly dread,
Form'd each at inspiration's fountain head;
To mark those beauties, that creation new,
Shakespear from his exhaustless treasures drew;
Depaint with art's whole lore, but nature's ken,
The shining glories of the classic pen;
The Attic, Roman genius to pervade,
In all its bold results of light and shade;
Nay, while his eye o'er their rich landskips thrown,
To sketch out finer landskips of his own;
his diction with invention's noon tide glowing,
With grace, strength, energy, majestic flowing:
Such once was Johnson, e'er diseas'd and poor,
He sat a pauper at St. James's door;
Poor poor in spirit, in his soul diseas'd,
With alms like other wretched beggars pleas'd;
The offals of ambition, Lord North's crumbs,
His broken sweet-meats, fragment sugar-plumes.
Johnson, the mighty Johnson, mighty wit,
With tops and marbles now like schoolboy smit;
A pension'd purchase, as the Indian sells,
His furs and ores for trinkets, beads and bells.
A drudge
juntonian,
a badg'd pamphleteer,
For (pottage-mess) three hundred pounds a year,
Aspersing and belying, like a slave,
Three Millions
of the virtuous, free, and brave.
O! piteous lapse of faculties divine,
A diamond on the muzzle of a swine!
A Bacon's lapse from same, most vile, most wise,
And Lucifer twice fallen from the skies!
ANON.
—It is no matter who are the encouragers of such writings, and at the bottom of our national disgrace, whether a Caledonian jacobite Thane, or an Anglican tory Lord: both have adulterated ideas of liberty, unworthy conceptions of their species, and an affected, unvirtuous, illiterate disregard for Posterity, a death or life-giving Posterity, into whose temple no tyrant or satrap of a tyrant is admitted.—It may be just mentioned here, that even the clergy have taken an active part against Revolutional freedom and the rightful possession of property, by petitioning the K— in behalf of violent invasion, praedatory conquest, carnage and blood. —O shame, everlasting shame, on our English and Scottish messengers of
mercy,
and ministers of
peace!
—Time it is to look about us, when our pulpit teachers, a set of men we create, feed and clothe, would cut our throats in cold blood, and seize on our possessions like public robbers.—If reformation of morals and manners be the salvation of a corrupt and vicious state, deliberate, justified, gloried-in acts of piracy, plunder and manslaughter, would seem a bad preparative for it: the times of war, a war among friends, fellow citizens, and compatriots, a most unfortunate season: a war without an object, such as Virtue and Christianity cannot petition Heaven to bless, stretching into boundlessness, and without any probable termination. Is this the
clerical period
for reformation? for the chaste exercises of a meek, quiet, holy, self-denied spirit,
forbearing one another, and forgiving one another?
—The Clergy of all times and nations have been alike: studying to set men by the ears; to partake of the spoils, and profit by the miseries and ravages of mankind. Nor will Dr. ROBERTSON'S historical fame, fair and admired as it is, ever wipe off that
black spot
from his character, as a Minister of the Gospel of peace, which it contracted by moving for and signing the General Assembly's Petition to the K—, to write out his subjects sentence with Draco's pencil dipt in blood.— Rather,—to call in the gentle aid of the Muse,
PEACE to the Man, Peace to his latter End,
To his Example may all Worlds attend,
Who to reform the Age, and SAVE the State,
Reforms himself first ere reform too late.
Were this the leading care of one, of all,
At Self-conviction's honest bosom call;
Soon would the State grow better, save itself,
From its worst Foes,—
pride, pleasure, gaming, pelf.
Pelf, to which priests ev'n elevate the Eye,
More than to Stephen's Vision-op'ning Sky.
All Projects else, e'en morally refin'd,
Are but fine Pictures offer'd to the Mind;
Which Indolence, constrain'd by Taste, admires,
But feels no kindling imitative Fires:
A Moonshine Sea side Landskip all serene,
No Breeze to interrupt the solemn Scene,
Stealing in Languor on the passive Soul,
Controul'd most in the Absence of Controul:
Not so when that proud Element enrag'd;
With warring Winds and counter Tides engag'd;
It wakes Sensation, all Life's active Springs,
Into precautious instant Motion brings.
Virtue in private Life is public Fame,
But the reverse—uncoverable Shame.
Vice, low-born Vice, unmans the Human-kind,
And throws a sick'ning Torpor o'er the Mind;
Holds ev'ry gen'rous Passion in controul,
And checks the nobler Sallies of the Soul;
Unspokes sublime Ambition, melts away,
That hardy Valour nothing should dismay.
Hence, dries up Patriotism's holy Springs,
And to the Life of Freedom murd
rous clings.
Fleets, Armies, are the Bugbears of a State,
Tho' held at Court unconquerably great;
The Bullies and Prize-fighters of the Land,
By Calms, Diseases, Panics, at a Stand;
Objects immense of sov'reign sneer to Foes,
If Virtue steers not while the fresh Breeze blows;
Should Piety nor spread nor trim the sails,
To catch Heav'n's Friendship—more than Tides or Gales;
Inspirit not, beyond the lust of Gain,
The glitt'ring Legions on the martial Plain.
This Superstition?—this Enthusiast's Zeal?
Well—be it so—may no Court Fogs conceal:
No cinders, Ashes, from St James's blown,
On the immortal quenchless Flame be thrown.
Were Politicians Philosophers, and Philosophers genuine Christians; or did Philosophy and Revelation, as well as politics, conspire to form a patriot K. and statesman; kings and statesmen would not only consider the legislative supremacy of a state as definable, but the Limits of Empire likewise terminable. Generally speaking, the less extended and stretched any of them be, on the juster and surer basis it rests. If one has a right to assume jurisdictive Omnipotence in all cases whatsoever, every State hath, however different in internal conformation, wisdom, virtue and policy: but no state can have it but from Colonian derivation, teritorial increment, and gradual accretion of numbers associating together; therefore, all Colonies that can keep off the attacks of foreign invaders, let them be who they will, whether quondam friends or hereditary enemies, so as to attend uninterruptedly to interior improvement and cultivation, may attain to that opulence and strength, on which alone the so much boasted supremacy of states can be founded. The ruling legislative powers of one state, indeed, may truly be styled supreme and infallible, with regard to the ruling powers of any other state; but that these ruling powers should arrogate supremacy in a state within which they originated, and are contingently liable to be curtailed and destroyed, is such an instance of extreme human vanity in rulers and governors, as will serve to sanctify all the execrable Tyrants that have ever deformed and dishonoured the Earth, or ever shall.
We have already seen, that all Kingdoms without exception were once Colonies: it is only stepping high enough up in the Records of Time to be as certainly convinced of this, as that every Man was once a Boy, and every Parent once a Child. Even Great-Britain itself, now standing on the pinnacle of Self-eulogy and Self-idolization, is an example of it. What was right, fit, lawful, necessary, expedient, and practicable, two, four, six thousand Years ago (if we may suppose the World so old) is right, fit, lawful, necessary, expedient, and practicable now, in the Year MDCCLXXVI. of the Christian aera. If Politicians and Courtiers can advance any thing in redarguation, they must recur to that pitiful policy which we call Corporational, by way of stigma and reproach: a policy which would stimulate Great-Britain to plunder and destroy France, Spain, Germany, and all the nations of the Earth, WERE SHE ABLE. For one Kingdom has no more right from God, the Guardian and Protector of Kingdoms, to rob and destroy another, than one individual has to rob and destroy another individual. In the latter case, it would be
private
felony and murder; in the former, public, complicated, unbounded, undefinable, Felony and Murder. With regard to the private commissions of offences so atrocious, all civilized States have appointed the most awful Tribunals, and exemplary punishments, indeed, in simple self-preservation, as Robbers and Murderers unchecked, would throw all Kingdoms into uproar, distraction, and misery. Is it to be supposed then, that in public national Commissions of the same atrocious offences, God, the King and Judge supreme of all the Earth, will take no cognizance, appoint no judicial Bars of Trial, no final punitive award? Then should God exhibit himself to Creation as inferior to an earthly Sovereign, in sagacity, foresight, and prudence; as in consequence of these public enormous commissions, if unrestrained by his unseen, but Almighty Interference, his general dominion of our World, consisting of all the Governments now established among mankind, would be thrown into anarchy, tumultuation, and blood; while one daring, successful tyranny would overspread the face of the whole Earth, and swallow up his providential, and gradually evolving, plans of future peace, virtue, and happiness. The analogy cannot be broken without breaking the entire chain of Nature and Things.— Chaste and enlightened ideas of our specific situation as subjects of God, who not only reigns over us, with a jealous anxiety about the performance of our duty to Him, but who created us also, must always be our rule of conduct, when contemplating ourselves the subjects of an earthly Prince, who under God, equally
his
King as ours, has no farther right to claim Subjection from us, if at any Time clashing with our Subjection to God, the higher Power, than a Viceroy or Embassador has to claim Subjection manifestly and of right only claimable by Him they represent. The analogy stands upon impregnable ground.
Implicit, unexaminable submission to Kings and Governors, i
really excellent, by taking their line of Administration from God, the supreme King and Governor, might be safely acquiesced in, and submitted to: but when or where has the world hitherto found, when or where shall the world in future find, such prodigies?
A strange Phenomenon—a Black-bird white,
Owls basking joyous in the blaze of Light!
Extraord'naries indeed—Soot chang'd from black,
And Down and Plumage on a Hedge-hog's Back.
An excellent King would be one of the most marvellous spectacles upon Earth, as temptations nearly infinite, and almost invincible, solicit him on all hands to be the very reverse. A bad King is as consequentially to be expected, as that frail fragile mortals will generally give way to the seductions of power, pleasure, voluptuousness and flattery. Perhaps half a million of Kings have reigned in the various parts of the earth, of whom it may not uncharitably be said, that scarce a thousand have been truly excellent. This disproportion is immense; but not more immense than within the boundaries of fair calculation. Let it be remembered that our term of calculational comparison is —
truly excellent:
and if not truly excellent, there certainly lies an appeal from all Kings, let their extrinsic Glory, Majesty and Terror, be what they may, to a higher Power, not barely in Truth excellent, but
the Most Excellent.
Every individual is judge of this appeal. If the conviction of its necessity and rectitude should expose him to present pains and amercements, he has that indemnification in his own bosom which no tyrant, or arbitrary court, can take away, because they can neither see it, nor feel it, as an object of envy, jealousy, or appetency: And even should it expose him to the loss of life, still the loss of life would be an acquisition compared with the loss of conscience, not to mention, that the loss of life would but the sooner send him to
that
tribunal, and to
that
judge, who instituted the appeal, and will impartially hear it.
Upon the above principles, Colonies have an heaven-imparted right, prior and paramount to all Charters, to become Empires,
when they can;
that is, in consequence of internal exertion and industry, without invading the
home property,
and imperial immunities, of other countries or kingdoms. This inference is also obvious, that to contravene and impede them, under any pretext whatsoever, in their progress from the non-age to the full-age of Empire, would be the same thing as to lay the impious hand of Despotism, on Arts and Science; on Virtue and Industry; on Agriculture and Manufactures; on Trade and Commerce; the eventual unfoldings of the Human Mind divine, the diversified operations of Genius and the Understanding: the unavoidable spontaneous result of all which, in the course and issue of things, is —
Dominion, Empire, Independence.
In consequence of these, the Creation of God, instead of being rude and untrodden, a wild and howling wilderness, becomes a second time the Garden of Eden, and a prelude to the grand final Reintegration of Nature. Let
these
be confined to one spot, one island, or one continent, the restoration of things would never happen; three parts out of four of our earth would be a dreary unhospitable region, not fit for a sun-burned Indian to make his way thro', instead of a God to revisit; and the greatest proportion of mankind be wretched slaves, or more wretched sycophants. But when God revisits our earth, in any special manifestation of himself, it will not be to cast his eye around on slaves, but to reign among Freemen, and not to behold Monarchs raised as a sort of rival-gods above subjects, but to behold them levelled with subjects, and all alike His subjects.—To stop the course of Colonization, therefore, towards independence, is to supercede the decrees of Heaven, and obstruct the necessary evolutions of Divine Providence. All empires and kingdoms degenerate into tyranny. Tyranny is the plethoric disease of states, as the gout or jaundice is of corpulency. The last state upon earth must be
absolutely and perfectly free,
because the remove from that to Heaven will be immediate. It is a counter-action then of the sublime revolutionary scheme of Heaven to prevent the progress of infant Colonies and States, when we are not actually attacked in our property at home, which justly speaking, is a Nation's only rightful property, every thing else being the effect and acquisition of conquest, violent possession, barbarity, rapine and blood. Nor can I help deploring, that Great-Britain is now effectually punished, by an invisible hand, through the medium of that very Continent which she unjustifiably took possession of, at first, from the unoffending native inhabitants, who had as good a claim of property to that Western Continent, as we to any part of the Northern. —This will be called superstition perhaps. Yet I am no Moravian or Methodist; no high or low church-man; no Puritan, or Seceder; but, in short, a simple believer, without having
confessed
or
articled
myself to any Sect: so that no sect or party need be at the trouble to assume the honour of me, or throw off the discredit of me. I have never broken the Peace, nor ever will, while in my wits and senses. I love my Country and King, and assist both with my purse, whenever they have any legitimate demand upon it; and should they ever be involved in the defence of true Liberty, whether
religious
or
civil,
with foreign assailants, I will reckon my life as taxable as my purse. Yet notwithstanding all this professionary detail, I cannot suppress my sentiments on American affairs; cannot help thinking we are wrong,
kicking against the pricks,
and
fighting against God,
in so far as we would destroy the freedom and property of a great people, placed in a distant quarter of the world, and hastening fast, under the eye of an auspicious Providence, to political maturity and hardihood; whom we would ignobly depress and retard in their shooting out into the vigour of a free and independent Government, because we have abused and adulterated true Government ourselves, stretching our depredations and massacres, not only to the Eastern, but Western world: as if the Supreme Lord of the world,
by whom Kings reign, and Princes decree justice,
will not avenge blood, the blood of thousands, and ten thousands, under whatever pretence shed, short of actual self-preservation. Were the Asiatic or the North American Indians, insulting our borders, or pirating on our coasts? No! their ignorance of Navigation secured them from the guilt of murder and robbery in ten thousand instances, now crying aloud for vengeance on the head of Great-Britain.—
Put up thy sword into its sheath, for they that take the sword, shall perish by the sword. — Vengeance is mine, and I will repay it, saith the Lord.
—Scripture to my Lord North's or my Lord Mansfield's nerve of hearing, will be quite unparliamentary, unforensic, and untechnical: but,— Scripture is the politics of Heaven, nor can I suppose, with all their courtly refinement and breeding, that any noble Lords in Administration will take upon them to aver, that the politics of St. James's are the politics of Heaven. If not, let them then refrain from palming
their
intolerant plans of taxational policy, on distant latitudes and regions that positively will not accept of them, because they cannot, as Freemen born, and Trustees accountable to Posterity, unless by force, violence, and bloodshed, overpowered by numbers, and reduced to slavery; in which depressed degraded state they should seem little worth the acceptance of a great, generous, virtuous and pious Monarch. To rule over slaves is the spirit and ambition of Satan, who views a
freeman
with the same contorted countenance, and squint-eyed malignity, that he would view an angel from Heaven.—Let then our high-prerogative senators, our boastful asserters of supreme Legislation, be told, that to deny colonies the freedom they themselves enjoy, without deserving it better, is a colossian stride towards defpotism, the disgrace of manhood, and the degradation of our species; beside being such an over-exertion of authority as a Parent would be justly condemnable for, who would attempt to over-rule his children's free-agency, after they had come of age, that is, been accounted competent, by the laws of God and man, to will and act for themselves.
Many people, affecting to be thought sensible and knowing, shrewdly remark, that the Americans have begun a century too soon, to set up the standard of INDEPENDENCE. Such shrewd remarkers must suppose that
right
and
justice
have a growth, a state of unripeness and maturity, like animals and vegetables, and that actions essentially criminal now, will not be so an hundred years hence; in other words, what is actual rebellion now, will in a few generations become heroic spirit, and virtuous magnanimity. By the same process of reasoning, white will become black in due time, and snow hot; a courtier honest, and a play-actor shame-faced.
Opinions, manners, fashions, change with times,
The cast of virtues, and the cast of crimes;
But HONESTY, God's image in the soul,
Changes but with the needle and the pole.
So uncomprehensive a knowledge of things, so shallow an acquaintance with the history of nations, the progress of society, and origin of government, would seem scarcely worth recital, much less an elaborate refutation. Remarks indeed of this kind are generally in the mouth of men that enjoy emoluments under the crown, but who would wish to have the appearance of candor and moderation; i. e. hug their filthy lucre at the same time that they would not be thought seduced from truth and integrity by filthy lucre. The duplicity every mortal perceives but themselves.
It is truly a laughable circumstance in a serious affair, that Great-Britain should first qualify and enable the colonies to do for themselves, independent of the parent that begat them, and then cry out on their undutifulness and ingratitude, for acting in this line of qualification and capacity. Should a father give his son a patrimony or capital to carry on the business or trade he had instructed him in, and afterwards reprimand and punish him for disobedience, because he made use of that very capital, and applied himself effectually to business: what might we think of such a father? The answer to the question involves the deepest crimination of the present ministry. The charge of ingratitude lies not at the door of the colonies, but the charge of inconsistency and preposterous conduct lies at the door of the Premier and his conclave, speaking in the name of Great-Britain, but like many other interpreters, speaking interestedly, arbitrarily and deceitfully.
Providence has great and important revolutions to bring about in the world, before it become what we are assured by the prophetic Spirit it must become, before the termination of all things. God originally was the only acknowledged King among mankind; but as soon as vice, wickedness and idolatry, began to prevail, men in different societies and dynasties, appointed Kings for themselves. God continuing to be their King by the embassadorial medium of teachers and prophets, would have been a constant troublesome admonitory check on their enormities, an awful living evidence against them. Resolved, therefore, upon immorality, and the grossest corruptions, they agreed to emancipate themselves from Heaven, and choose Kings and rulers, that they well knew would be as immoral and corrupt as themselves, nay, in many instances take the lead in every abomination. The Jewish nation was one remarkable instance of this: we have it upon the most authentic record. While they preserved primaeval innocence and simplicity, they rejoiced and were blessed in their theocratic polity: but when they became debased and polluted by the Heathen nations around, and captivated with their vain kingly pageantry, they boldly and riotously demanded an earthly king from Samuel the messenger of Heaven, as they themselves express it,
that we may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us, and go out before us and fight our battles.
The degeneracy of the Jews, and their lust after a visible temporal King, in imitation of the Pagan world, commenced together; which demonstrates a degree of analogy between kingly domination, and the unrestrained practice of private vice and corruption, not to be resisted. As immediate communications with Heaven would always have had the effect of controuling base and unworthy passions; therefore, so soon as mankind wished freely to indulge them, they were restless and unhappy till that communication was cut off. Since that fatal and degrading epoch, things have continued in the channel of licentiousness and debauchery to this day. Courts, generally speaking, are the centre and licensed purlieus of corruption, vice and immorality, with a gauze-thin decorum and breeding, indeed, that would gild and varnish the want of virtue and integrity. But things will not, cannot last long in this retrograde path of reformation and moral improvement. As the world first began with the theocratic form of government, it will certainly also end with it, how far soever we really are at present from it. Kings and kingdoms are opposing and counter-acting one another, while they all alike wallow in the foulest vices and crimes. Thus in the end they will destroy one another, or be destroyed by formidable evils from Heaven; till the insuperable necessity shall stare men in the face, of recurring to the first institution of all, Theocracy, in the mean time fitting themselves for it, by the practice of moral virtues, and piety towards God.
Before this glorious and happy renovation, however, can take place, mankind must have the most generous, pure, and exquisite conceptions of Liberty, quite the reverse of what it is at this ignominious day throughout the world, if we except those critical, unparalleled and astonishing struggles in one great continental division of it. God cannot act sentimentally in arbitrary governments or among slaves, till he first work a miracle by instantaneously changing mens minds. Such instruments would never push forward schemes destructive of themselves, which all schemes of manly freedom, virtuous independence, and moral self-denial would be; nor can a thorough reformation of manners and principles take place in any State, where a political establishment of religion subsists; because such a reformation would be an act of dissent and non-conformity, altogether subversive of that establishment. Besides, in all national establishments the showy appearance of duty, pompous rites and ceremonies, take off from mens reverence for the reality, nay, actually supercede it in nine hundred and ninety instances of a thousand. When we have proved to our fellow-creatures that we are religious, by going to the same place of public worship, and uttering over and over the same responses with them, we seldom think of any thing farther: I keep my neighbour in countenance, and my neighbour keeps me; over and above that, my neighbour is always before my eyes, but God is invisible. Great-Britain and Ireland, therefore, (with sorrow and pain I make the observation) can never be made instrumental to bring about those grand political restorations, and religious reforms, which some time or another certainly must happen. Should they ever be effected in these kingdoms, it must be through the medium of persons unconnected by corruption with the court, and by creeds with a national hierarchy. Courts and hierarchies
swear
and
take bribes,
to preserve inviolate their respective institutions; how then can they be made instruments to perjure themselves, and save highway-men the trouble, by picking their own pockets? moreover, Truth requires no forms of adjuration among its friends, nor Virtue any undue influence to be used to insure its practice. Heaven is not reduced to such pitiful shifts.
There are now two great quarters of the globe occupied by
Christian freemen;
many of them Britons, or the descendants of Britons, undebauched by a corrupt and vicious court, and unembarrassed by a religious establishment: I mean our commercial territory in the East Indies, and the vast Western Continent of America, especially the latter. Great, mighty, and illustrious things may be expected from America; where men have not sworn and subscribed to one another, to limit their municipal and religious knowledge; consequently, are open and unengaged for the inspirations of Heaven, the manly exertions of generous enterprize, and the illimitable extensions of improvement on every object of literary discussion, and scientific research. There unoccupied territorial boundlessness, furnished with every thing Nature can produce, or Art require, except gold and silver mines, the pandemonium of states, affords infinite resources to a bold, free, brave, spirited, ingenious, quick-sighted, adventuring people. A people undebased by hereditary subjection to civil or religious tyrants, haughty pampered statesmen, or bishops no less haughty and pampered. Blessed situation! enviable clime!—Such would seem a theatre somewhat worthy a Divine Being to act upon, and not an insular corner of the earth possessed by a people quite corpulent and diseased with luxury —corrupted and debauched by their nobles and gentry, their corrupters and debauchers themselves abandoned to gaming-tables and horse-races, and prostituted to masquerades and brothels—their parliaments pinned to the minister's sleeve, and their elections carried on by perjury and Asiatic gold.—An insular nook—where the inhabitants have not elbow-room, without emigrating by thousands to distant shores, nor their consciences fair play, but through the tolerating grace and favour of
spiritual lorders over the Heritage of God,
my lords the Bishops—where art has got the better of innocence, and hypocrisy of virtue—and where every thing sells at an high marketable price, but—wisdom and integrity.—From this glorious Continent, doubtless, in due time, Civil and Religious Liberty, light and knowledge, will spread over all the nations of the world, now mostly merged in disgraceful slavery; groaning under royal despots, the curse of their species, or kissing the obscene toes of insolent time-serving ecclesiastics.— Such an infinity of human beings
seeming
content and happy in their worse than bestial servitude, is no proof of their being so. In many cases, their torpid acquiescence and insensibility, is an aggravation, or rather the emphasis, of their misery, the dead sign-posts of their bondage, the ante-sepulchral escutcheons of their unutterable wretchedness.
Whether the period is
now,
that America shall stand forth high and respectable on the scale of nations, or an hundred years hence, it matters not, nor does it affect our general argument. Whenever it happens, Great-Britain must yield the palm of Empire; and whether she yields it now, or a century hence, is a point of no material consequence to a true patriotic philosopher, or philosophical Briton, who would aspire to have a standard beyond times and seasons—one thing, however, cannot escape present animadversion. Lest PROVIDENCE should mistake the proper crisis, to call forth the Americans to Empire and Independence, Lord N. and his Conclave have thought it meet to push them to the grand eclaircissement by anticipation, backed by his myrmidons of the quill, Dalrymple, Shebbeare, Tucker, Johnson, not forgetting his Lordship's goose-feather champion, the Rev. John Wesley, M. A.
That excellent philosopher, critic, and politician, Lord KAIMS, has discovered so sagacious and prophetic a spirit, with regard to America, in his Sketches of the History of Man, article, "Progress of States," that I cannot resist the temptation of inserting it here. It was probably composed before our troubles began. "Our North-American colonies are in a prosperous condition, increasing rapidly in population and opulence. The colonies have the spirit of a free people, and are inflamed with patriotism. Their population will equal that of Britain and Ireland in less than a century: and they will then be a match for the mother country, if they chuse to be independent: every advantage will be on their side, as the attack must be by sea, from a very great distance." Sketches of the History of Man, article, Progress of States. Book II. Sketch IV.
In truth, our dispute with the Colonies seems to be a quarrel of the Minister's, from official pique, resentment and mortification, rather than a war upon noble, manly, equitable principles. And however it may cast up on the wheel of contingencies, the disinvolution of which, often times depend on mediums of discernment, and tests of scrutiny, seldom within the reach of mortals (tho' the events of war have hitherto been mostly in favour of the Americans) the Minister can never descend to his grave in peace, should he not have previously made it up with his God (for fashion's sake we will suppose a Prime Minister acknowledges a God) for the slaughter of his creatures, the robbery of their possessions, and the destruction of their habitations.—The casting vote of parliament, or a privy council, nay, even the approbatory smile of his Sovereign, will not, cannot acquit him, at the tribunal of his Maker (perhaps not far off) for want only and vindictively imbruing his hands in the blood of fellow men—not merely fellow men, but fellow Christians—not merely fellow Christians, but fellow Protestants.—For what? —because the descendants of Britons, would not prove themselves less than Britons, or unworthy of the name, by submitting to be amerced and dragooned like slaves into subjection, unmindful of their parentage, and unconscious of the image of God (Freedom) in their foreheads.—It may likewise be remarked here, that Kings, however at present surrounded with sycophants and flatterers, pledging themselves
he is right,
whose reigns have been marked with superserviceable war, and stained with unnecessary blood, the blood of their EQUALS in every respect, except a crown, which the most worthless and abandoned oftentimes wear, generally die unlamented, and are seldom recalled to mind by posterity, a discerning, impartial, equitable (because an uncloseted and unpensioned) Posterity, but to be execrated.
Vice, weakness, folly, first seduc'd mankind,
Body (alas!) triumphant o'er the mind,
To choose that
thing
of pageantry and straw,
We call a king, law's guardian without law:
When good, kings more than humanly excel,
Bad—are the representatives of—hell.
All the palladiums of the state seem to be giving way one by one, insomuch that, very soon, it will have nothing to exhibit, but the effigies or mummy of what it once has been: the dead lion kicked and insulted by every long-eared animal passing by (of a particular species) that knows to trudge on, humble and submiss, in the trammels of a Minister, or hold up its obscene mouth in the House, to bray for a pension.—A system of corruption has pervaded the entire body politic, as certainly to consume and destroy it, as a putrifactive taint the human, circulating with its juices, and debilitating its solids. From the Premier to the meanest clerk in office, from the court at St. James's down to the poorest country village, the fatal infection prevails and diffuses itself; the first minister and confidant of royalty bribed for his talents and oratory, and the forty-shilling freeholder bribed for his vote at elections. A constitution thus supported, in opposition to the faith, truth, and integrity of things, which amounts to a defiance of Heaven, cannot last long, and, really, the sooner it comes to an end, provided its internal powers of restoration and reform are sunk beyond hope and expectation, whatever may be the previous convulsion, the better infinitely. GOD, the patron of virtue, probity and rectitude, not only authorizes the total destruction of such a system, but will likewise propitiate and guarantee the renovation. Even our world put on its present beauteous and glorious form in consequence of a chaos; nor would the
deluvian period
ever have happened, but as a remedy for the irrecoverable wickedness and depravity of mankind before the flood. The power that made and has all a long sustained a constitution, if, in the hands of unfaithful and arbitrary governors, it counteracts its original purposes, and has a certain unequivocal tendency to overthrow the personal freedom of the subject, for the guardianship of which it was alone conceived and elaborated, such a power, I say, may and ought to
unmake and break it to pieces,
in order to throw the materials into a more perfect mold, to produce a more perfect impression. The People, the aggregate power-giving body of the state, are the almighty and unresponsible cause, here alluded to, as alone adequate to such an effect.
A political constitution is like a clock or a watch, as being of artificial structure and durability. Without any imputable guilt or feeling of remorse, the artist takes the latter machinery asunder, when the wheels and springs have been obstructed or worn down beyond repair, and substitutes new in their place. The former piece of machinery, though of the highest order of human device and fabrication, must likewise be taken asunder, as often as its defects become irreparable, and its wastes unsuppliable; neither is there delinquency, or any cause for compunction, in the one case more than the other. Indeed, as they differ pre-eminently in excellence and value, the care, the accurate inspection, the delicate demur, the deliberative matureness of final judgment, should in an equal degree be preeminent, respecting the one instance above the other. By the unquestionable analogy between the first and the last, staring them in the face in all free states, the executive servants of government, the official members of the empire, are kept in order, and long effectually prevented from running into the excesses of tyranny and aristocraticism. The whole position is rational, and perfectly consistent with itself.
Kings and statesmen, without the People to feed, clothe, and defend them, should be nothing more reputable or stable, in their high situations, than corks blown about by the winds on the surface of the waters, or buoys cut away from their anchors. Kings and ministers of state, while they so unaccountably
idolize
themselves and accept of
idolatry
from all around them, (the abject homage paid them deserves no other name) think not of the above humiliating, circumstance, which reduces them, from their recept-offices of incense, to the butter-fly, deprived of his wings, or the master bee disarmed of his sting.
The elected, representative, magistratical departments of society have presumed so extravagantly on their derived and adventitious greatness, have taken such gigantic strides in office towards despotism, that they must indeed be brought to their proper level, prostrate in submission at the footstool of their creators—the People.
By the People I would not be understood to mean, a riotous mob, a tumult at the market-cross, or a county insurrection, (from which at all times,
good God, deliver us;
) but the honourable and respectable, Yeomanry of the realm, the middle class of citizens and country gentry, whose wealth, in the gross, is the principal wealth of the nation, and support of government, and whose education, principles, studies and manners, qualify and intitle them to direct the lowest orders of society, and controul the highest, should
these
to any dangerous length exceed their delegated trust, or
those
discover a forwardness to rush into hasty association, and violent insurgency.
Nothing can be a stronger proof of our degeneracy, infatuation, and ripeness for some revolution, that will severely punish while it brings us to our senses and reforms us, than two considerations which shall now be mentioned with brevity, but pointedness. While the British empire is in the state of being rent like a garment from top to bottom, while British glory has been brought under a total eclipse, and British honour passes as a problem among the nations, the sons of Britain, in a diseased trance of ignoble ambition, are soliciting and procuring vain empty titles from the crown, which, in the absence of virtue, are no more than the colours flying of a ship, after its hulk has been eaten through and through with worms, or her rudder, cables and anchors, lost in a Storm. The m— o—t—t, after having brought his own into dispute, and endangered the real honour of the nation, by grasping at too much power and dominion, and set one part of his sub— to rob and murder the other, consoles himself with throwing away fictitious nominal honours (the disposal of which was lodged with him by the People for a quite different purpose) on men whose only merit consists in humouring and flattering him in Par—s and Priv— Coun—s. This consideration at once serves to point out the political disease of the times, and its apparent eventual termination. The other is this, In the above recited melancholy situation of public affairs, our nobles and gentry, instead of being roused to self-reformation, and hereby (the only possible method) recommending the fleets and armies of Britain to the protection and blessing of Heaven, are hurrying into every scene of vice, folly, dissipation and debauchery, horse-races, cock-fights, gambling tables, masquerades, pantomimes, farces and stews: while the public teachers of the land, the clergy, either look on with total unconcern, or actually partake themselves of such ill-timed pleasures and amusements, the lawn-sleeve bishop, and his powdered chaplain, equally lost to a sense of honour and duty. This is a fact notorious to every eye, and in the face of the sun calls upon Heaven to punish us as a nation and People. GOD, however, brings good out of evil. He has made us instruments to render a
great Continent
wise at our expence, to check the inhabitants in their career of luxury, and recal them to the almost deserted paths of piety and virtue, and hereby opened an
immense future asylum
for the good of all nations, the distressed and persecuted of all regions.—It is acknowledged, in the midst of this black and dismal prospect, the Colonies
(defending themselves)
in a state of formidable revolt, and France and Spain ready to take advantage of our blundering and distracted councils, our wretched national nakedness and imbecility; that the
fashionable routine
of public worship (like most other
fashions
) on sundays and holidays, goes regularly on: but alas! in this respect, we are no better than the Jews were of old,
scribes and pharisees, hypocrites,
when CHRIST delivered
this
prediction, which was afterwards literally accomplished.
Master, fee what manner of stones, and what buildings are here! Jesus said unto him, seest thou those great buildings?
(our Cathedrals and Churches)
There shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down!
—It is likewise acknowledged, that we have had a
public fast-day
appointed, by authority, for Great Britain and Ireland, the Priv— Coun— of E— obliged, though fomewhat
unbecomely late,
to follow the example of the Americans, without the pure piety, and virtuous patriotism, of these determined Continentalists: but Almighty God has condemned and reprobated (for ever) all such deceitful hypocritical service, the mere flourish of ambitious, temporizing ecclesiastics, imposing on the facile unexamining spirit of their S—; the mere
rant
of a party, the mere
hue-and-cry
of a mercenary political establishment. Here follow the words of inspiration, which
ought
to strike all k—s, priv— coun—s, proclam—s, Right and Most Rev. Bishops,
dumb for ever. Behold
YE
fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness.
YE SHALL NOT
fast as
YE
do
THIS DAY,
to make
YOUR
voice to be heard in high! Is it
SUCH
a fast as I have chosen?—A day for a man to afflict his
SOUL? —
Is to bow down his head as a bull-rush, and to spread sack-cloth and ashes under him?—Is not
THIS
the fast that I have chosen?—To loose the bands of wickedness?—To
UNDO
the heavy burdens, and to let the
OPPRESSED GO FREE, AND THAT YE BREAK EVERY YOKE?—To conclude the whole.
However unfashionable, unpopular, and uncourtly the introduction of
Scripture
into a political tract, I cannot help transcribing here another striking passage from the most venerable book in the world. From which it appears, that the ordinary business of life going on in its accustomed progressive channel, added to the most soothing and flattering ideas of home-security, instead of forming a barrier against overwhelming general calamities, rather tend to create suspicions of their approach, when a nation has lost its internal character of integrity, temperance, truth, virtue, justice and clemency. Notwithstanding our present
seeming
tranquility and safety, in Great Britain and Ireland, it is certain that the effort towards overturning the principles of our
once
happy and envied constitution has been made, the stroke of despotism struck, in AMERICA.—The Americans are Britons by descent as well as we; in spirit our equals, in genuine patriotism our superiors: every article of freedom we enjoy,
they
have an equal right to enjoy; therefore, ministerial oppression exerting itself
there,
is the same thing, with regard to the safety and stability of the empire at large, as if it had been exerted
here.
Tyranny failing in its attempts on the other side the Atlantic, we shall be safe at home: should it however, succeed, we shall as surely be undone, with the satisfaction indeed, the exquisite satisfaction, of being the last, indulgently, that shall be devoured by the hideous monster. —But what an act of folly and madness, not to be alarmed when our neighbour's house is on fire, because the flames have not as yet catched hold of our own!—These are the words of a Personage above all kings and legislators whatsoever.—
They did eat, they drank,—they married wives—they were given in marriage—until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat— they drank—they bought—they sold—they planted— they builded—but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from Heaven, and destroyed them all.
FINIS.