CHAP. I. FEUDAL SYSTEM.

THE most prominent feature in the moral face of Europe, was imprinted upon it by conquest. It is the result of the subordination necessary among military savages, on their becoming cultivators of the soil which they had desolated, and making an advantageous use of such of the inhabitants as they did not choose to massacre, and could not sell to foreigners for slaves.

The relation thus established between the offi­cers and the soldiers, between the victors and the van­quished, and between them all and the lands which they were to cultivate, modified by the experience of unlettered ages, has obtained the name of the Feudal System, and may be considered as the foun­dation of all the political institutions in this quar­ter of the world. The claims resulting to parti­cular classes of men, under this modification of society, are called Feudal Rights; and to the in­dividual possessors they are either nominal or real, conveying an empty title or a substantial profit.

My intention is not to enter on the details of this system, as a lawyer, or to trace its progress with the accuracy of an historian, and show its peculiar fitness to the rude ages of society which [Page 18] gave it birth. But, viewing it as an ancient edi­fice, whose foundation, worn away by the current of events, can no longer support its weight, I would sketch a few drawings to show the stile of its architecture, and compare it with the model of the new building to be erected in its place.

The philosophy of the Feudal System, is all that remains of it worthy of our contemplation. This I will attempt to trace in some of its leading points, leaving the practical part to fall, with its ancient founders and its modern admirers, into the peace­ful gulph of oblivion; to which I wish it a spee­dy and an unobstructed passage.

The original object of this institution was un­doubtedly, what it was alleged to be, the preser­vation of turbulent societies, in which men are held together but by feeble ties; and it effected its purpose by uniting the personal interest of the head of each family, with the perpetual safety of the state. Thus far the purpose was laudable, and the means extremely well calculated for the end. But it was the fortune of this system to attach itself to those passions of human nature which vary not with the change of circumstances. While national motives ceased by degrees to re­quire its continuance, family motives forbade to lay it aside. The same progressive improvements in society, which rendered military tenures and military titles first unnecessary and then injurious to the general interest, at the same time sharpen­ed the avarice, and piqued the honour of those who possessed them, to preserve the exclusive pri­vileges which rendered them thus distinguished. And these privileges, united with the operations of the church, have founded and supported the [Page 19] despotisms of Europe in all their divisions, com­binations, and refinements.

Feudal Rights are either territorial or personal. I shall divide them into these two classes, for the sake of bestowing a few observations upon each.

The pernicious effects of the system on territo­rial tenures are inconceivable, various and great. In a legal view, it has led to those intricacies and vexations, which we find attached to every cir­cumstance of real property, which have perplex­ed the science of civil jurisprudence, which have perpetuated the ignorance of the people relative to the administration of justice, rendered necessary the intervention of lawyers, and multiplied the means of oppression. But, in a political view, its consequences are still more serious, and demand a particular consideration.

The first quality of the feudal tenure is to con­fine the descendible property to the eldest male issue. To say that this is contrary to nature, is but a feeble expression. So abominable is its ope­ration, that it has seduced and perverted nature; her voice is stifled, interest itself is laid asleep, and nothing but the eloquence of an incomprehensible pride is heard on the occasion. You will hear father and mother, younger brothers and sisters, rejoice in this provision of the law; the former consigning their daughters to the gloomy prison of a convent, and their younger sons to the church or the army, to ensure their celibacy; that no rem­nant of the family may remain but the heir of the estate entire; the latter congratulating each other, that the elder brother will transmit unimpaired the title and the property, while they themselves are content to perish in the obscurity of their several destinations. It is probable that, in another age, [Page 20] a tale of this kind will scarcely gain credit, and that the tear of sensibility may be spared by a disbelief of the fact. It is, however, no creature of the imagination; it happened every day in France previous to the revolution; I have seen it with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears; it is now to be seen and heard in most other Catholic countries.

But other points of view show this disposition of the law to be still more reprehensible in the eye of political philosophy. It swells the inequality of wealth, which, even in the best regulated socie­ty, is but too considerable; it habituates the peo­ple to believe in an unnatural inequality in the rights of men, and by these means prepares them for servility and oppression; it prevents the im­provement of lands, and impedes the progress of industry and cultivation, which are best promoted on small estates, where proprietors cultivate for themselves; it discourages population, by indu­cing to a life of celibacy.—But I shall speak of celibacy when I speak of the church.

Whether men are born to govern, or to obey, or to enjoy equal liberty, depends not on the ori­ginal capacity of the mind, but on the instinct of analogy, or the habit of thinking. When children of the same family are taught to believe in the un­conquerable distinctions of birth among them­selves, they are completely fitted for a feudal go­vernment; because their minds are familiarised with all the gradations and degradations that such a government requires. The birth-right of domi­neering is not more readily claimed on the one hand, than it is acknowledged on the other; and the Jamaica planter is not more habitually con­vinced [Page 21] that an European is superior to an African, than he is that a Lord is better than himself.

This subject deserves to be placed in a light, in which no writer, as far as I know, has yet considered it. When a person was repeating to Fontenelle the common adage habit is the second nature, the philosopher replied, and do me the fa­vour to tell me which is the first. When we assert that nature has established inequalities among men, and has thus given to some the right of governing others, or when we maintain the contrary of this position, we should be careful to define what sort of nature we mean, whether the first or second nature; or whether we mean that there is but one. A mere savage, Colocolo ^* for instance, would decide the question of equality by a trial of bodi­ly strength, designating the man that could lift the heaviest beam to be the legislator; and unless all men could lift the same beam, they could not be equal in their rights. Aristotle would give the preference to him that excelled in mental ca­pacity. Ulysses would make the decision upon a compound ratio of both. But there appears to me another step in this ladder, and that the habit of thinking is the only safe and universal criterion to which, in practice, the question can be refer­red. Indeed, when interest is laid aside, it is the only one to which, in civilized ages, it ever is referred. We never submit to a King, because he is stronger than we in bodily force, nor because he is superior in understanding or in information; but because we believe him born to govern, or at least, because a majority of the society believes it.

[Page 22]This habit of thinking has so much of nature in it, it is so undistinguishable from the indelible marks of the man, that it is a perfectly safe foun­dation for any system that we may choose to build upon it; indeed it is the only foundation, for it is the only point of contact by which men commu­nicate as moral associates. As a practical position therefore, and as relating to almost all places and almost all times, in which the experiment has yet been made, Aristotle was as right in teaching, That some are born to command, and others to be commanded, as the National Assembly was in de­claring, That men are born and always continue free and equal in respect to their rights. The latter is as apparently false in the diet of Ratisbon, as the former is in the hall of the Jacobins.

Abstractly considered, there can be no doubt of the unchangeable truth of the assembly's de­claration; and they have taken the right method to make it a practical truth, by publishing it to the world for discussion. A general belief that it is a truth, makes it at once practical, confirms it in one nation, and extends it to others.

A due attention to the astonishing effects that are wrought in the world by the habit of thinking, will serve many valuable purposes. I cannot therefore dismiss the subject so soon as I intended; but will mention one or two instances of these effects, and leave the reflection of the reader to make the application to a thousand others.

First, It is evident that all the arbitrary systems in the world are founded and supported on this se­cond nature of man, in counteraction of the first. Systems which distort and crush and subjugate every thing that we can suppose original and cha­racteristic in man, as an undistorted being. It [Page 23] sustains the most absurd and abominable theories of religion, and honours them with as many mar­tyrs as it does those that are the most peaceful and beneficent.

But secondly, we find for our consolation, that it will likewise support systems of equal liberty and national happiness. In the United States of Ame­rica, the science of liberty is universally under­stood, felt, and practised, as much by the simple as the wise, the weak as the strong. Their deep-rooted and inveterate habit of thinking is, that all men are equal in their rights, that it is impossible to make them otherwise; and this being their un­disturbed belief, they have no conception how any man in his senses can entertain any other. This point once settled, every thing is settled. Many operations, which in Europe have been considered as incredible tales or dangerous experiments, are but the infallible consequences of this great prin­ciple. The first of these operations is the business of election, which, with that people, is carried on with as much gravity as their daily labour. There is no jealousy on the occasion, nothing lucrative in office; any man in society may attain to any place in the government, and may exercise its functions. They believe that there is nothing more difficult in the management of the affairs of a nation, than the affairs of a family; that it only requires more hands. They believe that it is the juggle of keep­ing up impositions to blind the eyes of the vul­gar, that constitutes the intricacy of state. Banish the mysticism of inequality, and you banish almost all the evils attendant on human nature.

The people, being habituated to the election of all kinds of officers, the magnitude of the office makes no difficulty in the case. The president of [Page 24] the United States, who has more power while in office than some of the kings of Europe, is chosen with as little commotion as a churchwarden. There is a public service to be performed, and the people say who shall do it. The servant feels honoured with the confidence reposed in him, and generally expresses his gratitude by a faithful performance.

Another of these operations is making every citizen a soldier, and every soldier a citizen; not only permitting every man to arm, but obliging him to arm. This fact, told in Europe, previous to the French revolution, would have gained lit­tle credit; or at least it would have been regarded as a mark of an uncivilized people, extremely dangerous to a well ordered society. Men who build systems on an inversion of nature, are obliged to invert every thing that is to make part of that system. It is because the people are civili­zed, that they are with safety armed. It is an ef­fect of their conscious dignity, as citizens enjoy­ing equal rights, that they wish not to invade the rights of others. The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the govern­ment, not to the society; and as long as they have nothing to revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage.

Power, habitually in the hands of a whole community, loses all the ordinary associated ideas of power. The exercise of power is a relative term; it supposes an opposition,—something to operate upon. We perceive no exertion of power in the motion of the planetary system, but a very strong one in the movement of a whirlwind, it is [Page 25] because we see obstructions to the latter, but none to the former. Where the government is not in the hands of the people, there you find opposition, you perceive two contending interests, and get an idea of the exercise of power; and whether this power be in the hands of the government or of the people, or whether it change from side to side, it is always to be dreaded. But the word people, in America, has a different meaning from what it has in Europe. It there means the whole community, and comprehends every human crea­ture; here it means something else, more diffi­cult to define.

Another consequence of the habitual idea of equality, is the facility of changing the structure of their government, whenever, and as often as the so­ciety shall think there is any thing in it to amend. As Mr. Burke has written no ‘reflections on the revolution’ in America, the people there have never yet been told that they have no right ‘to frame a government for themselves;’ they have therefore done much in this business, with­out ever affixing to it the idea of "sacrilege" or "usurpation," or any other term of rant, to be found in that gentleman's vocabulary.

Within a few years the fifteen states have not only framed each its own state constitution, and two successive federal constitutions; but since the settlement of the present general government in the year 1789, three of the states, Pennsylvania, South-Carolina, and Georgia, have totally new modelled their own. And all this is done without the least confusion; the operation being scarcely known beyond the limits of the state where it is performed. Thus they are in the habit of ‘choos­ing [Page 26] their own governors,’ of ‘cashiering them for misconduct,’ of ‘framing a government for themselves,’ and all those abominable things, the mere naming of which, in Mr. Burke's opi­nion, has polluted the pulpit in the Old Jewry. ^*

But it is said, These things will do very well for America, where the people are less numerous, less indigent, and better instructed; but they will not apply to Europe. This objection deserves a reply, not because it is solid, but because it is fashionable. It may be answered, that some parts of Spain, much of Poland, and almost the whole of Russia, are less peopled than the settled coun­try in the United States; that poverty and igno­rance are effects of slavery rather than its causes; but the best answer to be given, is the example of France. To the event of that revolution I will trust the argument. Let the people have time to become thoroughly and soberly grounded in the doctrine of equality, and there is no danger of op­pression either from government or from anarchy. Very little instruction is necessary to teach a man his rights; and there is no person of common in­tellects, in the most ignorant corner of Europe, but receives lessons enough, if they were of the proper kind. For writing and reading are not in­dispensable to the object; it is thinking right which makes them act right. Every child is taught to repeat about fifty Latin prayers, which set up the Pope, the Bishop, and the King, as the trinity of his adoration; he is taught that the powers that [Page 27] be, are ordained of God, and therefore the soldier quartered in the parish has a right to cut his throat. Half this instruction, upon opposite prin­ciples, would go a great way; in that case nature would be assisted, while here she is counteracted. Engrave it on the heart of a man, that all men are equal in rights, and that the government is their own, and then persuade him to sell his crucifix and buy a musquet,—and you have made him a good citizen.

Another consequence of a settled belief in the equality of rights is, that under this belief there is no danger from anarchy. This word has likewise acquired a different meaning in America from what we read of it in books. In Europe it means confusion, attended with mobs and carnage, where the innocent perish with the guilty. But it is very different where a country is used to a repre­sentative government, though it should have an interval of no government at all. Where the peo­ple at large feel and know that they can do every thing by themselves personally, they really do noth­ing by themselves personally. In the heat of the American revolution, when the people in some states were for a long time without the least sha­dow of law or government, they always acted by committees and representation. This they must call anarchy, for they know no other.

These are materials for the formation of go­vernments, which need not be dreaded, though disjointed and laid asunder to make some repairs. They are deep-rooted habits of thinking, which almost change the moral nature of man; they are principles as much unknown to the ancient republics as to the modern monarchies of Eu­rope.

[Page 28]We must not therefore rely upon systems drawn from the experimental reasonings of Aristotle, when we find them contradicted by what we feel to be the eternal truth of nature, and see them brought to the test of our own experience. Aris­totle was certainly a great politician; and Clau­dius Ptolemy was a great geographer; but the latter has said not a word of America, the largest quarter of the globe; nor the former, of repre­sentative republics, the resource of afflicted hu­manity.

Since I have brought these two great luminaries of science so near together, I will keep them in company a moment longer, to show the strange partiality that we may retain for one superstition after having laid aside another, though they are built on similar foundations. Ptolemy wrote a system of Astronomy; in which he taught among other things, that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the heavenly bodies moved round it. This system is now taught (to the ex­clusion by an anathema of all others) in Turkey, Arabia, Persia, Palestine, Egypt, and where ever the doctrines of Mahomet are taught; while at the same time, and with the same reverence, the politics of Aristotle are taught at the university of Oxford. The ground which supports the one is, that the sun stopt its course at the command of Joshua, which it could not have done, had it not been in motion; and the other, that the powers that be, are ordained of God. Mention to a Mus­selman the Copernican system, and you might as well speak to Mr. Burke about the rights of man; they both call you an atheist.—But I will proceed with the feudal system.

The next quality of a feudal tenure is what is [Page 29] commonly called on the Continent the right of substitution, in the English law, known by the name of entail. Of all the methods that have yet been discovered to prevent men from enjoying the advantages that nature has laid before them, this is the most extraordinary, and in many res­pects the most effectual. There have been super­stitions entertained by many nations relative to property in lands; rendering them more difficult of alienation than any other possessions, and con­sequently less productive. Such were the jus re­tractus of the Romans, the family-right of re­demption, and the absolute restoration once in fifty years among the Jews, similar regulations among the ancient Egyptians, and laws to the same purpose under the government of the Incas in Peru.

These were all calculated to perpetuate family distinctions, and to temper the minds of men to an aristocratical subordination. But none of them were attended with the barbarous exclusion of younger brothers; nor had they the presumption to put it into the power of a dying man, who could not regulate the disposition of his sandals for one hour after his death, to say to all mankind thenceforward to the end of time, "Touch not my inheritance! I will that this tract of coun­try, on which I have taken my pleasure, shall remain to the wild beasts and to the fowls of hea­ven; that one man only of each generation shall exist upon it; that all the rest, even of my own posterity, shall be driven out hence, as soon as born; and that the inheritor himself shall not in­crease his enjoyments by alienating a part to ame­liorate the rest."

[Page 30]There might have been individual madmen, in all ages, capable of expressing a desire of this kind; but for whole nations, for many centuries toge­ther, to agree to reverence and execute such hostile testaments as these, comported not with the wis­dom of the ancients; it is a suicide of society, reserved for the days of chivalry,—to support the governments of modern Europe.

Sir Edward Coke should have spared his pane­gyric on the parliament of Edward the first, as the fathers of the laws of entailments. He quotes with singular pleasure the words of Sir William Herle, who informs us, that ‘King Edward I. was the wisest King that ever was, and they were sage men, who made this statute.’ Whatever wisdom there is in the statute, is of an elder growth. It is a plant of genuine feudal extraction, brought into England by the Normans or Saxons, or some other conquerors; and though settled as common law, it began to be disregarded and despised by the judicial tribunals, as a sense of good policy prevailed. But the progress of li­berality was arrested by that parliament, and the law of entailments passed into the statute of West­minster the second.

This was considered as law in America, previ­ous to the revolution. But that epoch of light and liberty has freed one quarter of the world from this miserable appendage of Gothicism; and France has now begun to break the shackles from another quarter, where they were more strongly rivetted. The simple destruction of these two laws, of entailment and primogeniture, if you add to it the freedom of the press, will ensure the continuance of liberty in any country where it is once established.

[Page 31]Other territorial rights, peculiar to the feudal tenure, are less general in their operation, though almost infinite in their number and variety. Not a current of water, nor a mill-seat, nor a fish­pond, nor a forest, nor the dividing line of a village or a farm, but gives name to and supports some seigneurial imposition; besides the number­less claims predicated upon all the possible actions and ceremonies that pass, or are supposed to pass, between the great Lord and the little Lord, and between the little Lord and the less Lord, and between him and the Lord knows whom. The National Assembly, in one decree, suppressed about one hundred and fifty of these taxes by name, besides a general sweeping clause in the act, which perhaps destroyed as many more, the names of which no man could report.

One general character will apply to all these im­positions: they are a discouragement to agricul­ture, an embarrassment to commerce,—they hu­miliate one part of the community, swell the pride of the other, and are a real pecuniary disad­vantage to both.

But it is time to pay our respects to those feu­dal claims that we call personal. The first of these is allegiance,—in its genuine Gothic sense, called perpetual allegiance. It is difficult to express a suitable contempt for this idea, without descend­ing to language below the dignity of philosophy. On the first investiture of a fief, the superior Lord (supposing he had any right to it himself) has doubtless the power of granting it on whatever terms the vassal will agree to. It is an even bar­gain between the parties; and an unchangeable allegiance during the lives of these parties may be a condition of it. But for a man to be born to [Page 32] such an allegiance to another man, is to have an evil star indeed; it is to be born to unchangeable slavery.

A nobleman of Venice, at this moment, can­not step his foot over the limits of the republic without leave from the Senate, on pain of for­feiting his estate. Similar laws prevail in all feudal countries, where revolutions have not yet prevailed. They flee before the searching eye of liberty, and will soon flee from Europe.

Hitherto we have treated of claims, whether personal or territorial, that are confined to the eldest sons of families; but there is one genuine feudal claim, which "spreads undivided" to all the children, runs in all collateral directions, and extends to every drop of noble blood, wherever found, however mixt or adulterated,—it is the claim of idleness. In general it is supposed, that all indigent noble children are to be provided for by the government. But alas! the swarm is too great to be easily hived. Though the army, the navy, and the church, with all their possible mul­tiplication of places, are occupied only by them, yet their number becomes so considerable, that many remain out of employment and destitute of the means of support.

In contemplating the peculiar destiny of this description of men, we cannot but feel a mixture of emotions, in which compassion gets the better of contempt. In addition to the misfortunes in­cident to other classes of society, their noble birth has entailed upon them a singular curse; it has interdicted them every kind of business or occu­pation, even for procuring the necessaries of life. Other men may be found who have been deprived of their just inheritance by the barbarous laws of [Page 33] descent, who may have been neglected in youth and not educated to business, or who by aversion to industry are rendered incapable of any useful employment; but none but the offspring of a no­ble family can experience the superadded fatality of being told, that to put his hand to the plough, or his foot into a counting-house, would disgrace an illustrious line of ancestors, and wither a tree of genealogy, which takes its root in a groom of some fortunate robber, who perhaps was an arch­er of Charlemagne.

Every capital in Europe, if you except Lon­don, throngs with this miserable class of noblesse, who are really and literally tormented between their pride and their poverty. Indeed, such is the preposterous tyranny of custom, that those who are rich, and take the lead in society, have the cruelty to make idleness a criterion of noblesse. A proof of inoccupation is a ticket of admission into their houses, and an indispensible badge of welcome to their parties.

But in France their hands are at last untied; the charm is broken, and the feudal system, with all its infamous idolatries, has fallen to the ground. Honour is restored to the heart of man, instead of being suspended from his button-hole; and useful industry gives a title to respect. The men who were formerly Dukes and Marquisses, are now exalted to farmers, manufacturers and merchants; the rising generation among all clas­ses of people are forming their maxims on a just estimate of things; and society is extracting the poisoned dagger which conquest had planted in her vitals.

CHAP. II. THE CHURCH.

BUT it would have been impossible for the feudal system, with all its powers of inversion, to have held human nature so long debased, with­out the aid of an agent more powerful than an arm of flesh, and without assailing the mind with other weapons than those which are furnished from its temporal concerns. Mankind are by nature religious; the governors of nations, or those persons, who contrive to live upon the la­bours of their fellow-creatures must necessarily be few, in comparison to those who bear the bur­thens of the whole; their object therefore is to dupe the community at large, to conceal the strength of the many, and magnify that of the few. An open arrangement of forces, whether physi­cal or moral, must be artfully avoided; for men, however ignorant, are as naturally disposed to calculation, as they are to religion; they perceive as readily that an hundred soldiers can destroy the captain they have made, as that thunder and light­ning can destroy a man. Recourse must there­fore be had to mysteries and invisibilities; an en­gine must be forged out of the religion of human nature, and erected on its credulity, to play upon and extinguish the light of reason, which was placed in the mind as a caution to the one, and a kind companion to the other.

[Page 35]This engine, in all ages of the world, has been the Church ^*. It has varied in its appellation, at different periods and in different countries, accor­ding to the circumstances of nations; but has ne­ver changed its character; and it is difficult to say, under which of its names it has done the most mischief, and exterminated the greatest number of the human race. Were it not for the danger of being misled by the want of information, we should readily determine, that under the assump­tion of christianity it has committed greater ra­vages than under any other of its dreadful deno­minations.

But we must not be hasty in deciding this ques­tion; as, during the last fifteen centuries, in which we are able to trace with compassionate [Page 36] indignation the frenzy of our ancestors, and con­template the wandering demon of carnage, con­ducted by the cross of the West, the lights of history fail us with regard to the rest of the world,—we cannot travel with the crescent of the East, in its unmeasurable devastations from the Euxine to the Ganges; nor tell by what other incantations mankind have been inflamed with the lust of slaughter, from thence to the north of Siberia or to the south of Africa.

Could we form an estimate of the lives lost in the wars and persecutions of the Christian Church alone, we should find it nearly equal to the num­ber of souls now existing in Europe. But it is per­haps a mercy to mankind, that we are not able to calculate, with any accuracy, even this portion of human calamities. When Constantine order­ed that the hierarchy should assume the name of Christ, we are not to consider him as forming a new weapon of destruction; he only changed a name, which had grown into disrepute, and would serve the purpose no longer, for one that was gaining an extensive reputation; it being built on a faith that was likely to meet the assent of a considerable portion of mankind. The cold-hearted ^* cruelty of that monarch's character, and [Page 37] his embracing the new doctrines with a temper hardened in the slaughter of his relations, were omens unfavourable to the future complexion of the hierarchy; though he had thus coupled it with a name that had hitherto been remarkable for its meekness and humlity. This transaction has therefore given colour to a scene of enormities, which may be regarded as nothing more than the genuine offspring of the alliance of church and state.

This fatal deviation from the principles of the first founder of the faith, who declared that his [Page 38] kingdom was not of this world, has deluged Europe in blood for a long succession of ages, and carried occasional ravages into all the other quarters of the globe. The pretence of extirpating the idol­atries of ancient establishments, and the innumer­able heresies of the new, has been the never-fail­ing argument of princes as well as pontiffs, from the wars of Constantine, down to the pitiful, still­born rebellion of Calonne and the Count d'Ar­tois ^*.

From the time of the conversion of Clovis, through all the Merovingian race, France and Germany groaned under the fury of ecclesiastical monsters, hunting down the Druids, overturning the temples of the Roman Polytheists, and drench­ing the plains with the blood of Arians ^†. The [Page 39] wars of Charlemagne against the Saxons, the Huns, the Lombards and the Moors, which de­solated Europe for forty years, had for their prin­cipal object the extending and purifying of the Christian faith. The crusades, which drained Europe of its young men at eight successive pe­riods, must have sacrificed, including Asiatics and Africans, at least four millions of lives. The wars of the Guelfs, and Gibelins, or Pope and Anti-pope, ravaged Italy, and involved half Eu­rope in factions for two centuries together. The expulsion of the Moors from Spain depopulated that kingdom, by a war of seven hundred years, and established the inquisition to interdict the re­surrection of society; while millions of the na­tives of South America have been destroyed by attempting to convert them.

In this enumeration, we have taken no notice of that train of calamities, which attended the re­conversion of the eastern empire, and attaching it to the faith of Mahomet; nor of the various ha­voc, which followed the dismemberment of the catholic church, by that fortunate schism, which, by some, is denominated the Lutheran heresy, and by others, the Protestant reformation.

But these, it will be said, are only general traits of uncivilized character, which we all con­template with equal horror, and which, among enlightened nations, there can be no danger of see­ing renewed. It is true, that, in several coun­tries, the glooms of intolerance seem to be pierced by the rays of philosophy; and we may soon ex­pect to see Europe universally disclaiming the right of one man to interfere in the religion of another. We may remark, however, first, that this is far [Page 40] from being the case at this moment; and secondly, that it is a blessing which never can originate from any state-establishment of religion. For proofs of the former, we need not penetrate into Spain or Italy, nor recal the history of the late fanatical management of the war in Brabant,—but look to the two most enlightened countries in Europe; see the riots at Birminham, and the conduct of the refractory priests in France.

With regard to the second remark,—we may as well own the truth at first as at last, and have sense this year as the next: The existence of any kind of liberty is incompatible with the existence of any kind of church. By liberty, I mean the enjoy­ment of equal rights, and by church I mean any mode of worship declared to be national, or declar­ed to have any preference in the eye of the law.

To render this truth a little more familiar to the mind of any reader who shall find himself sta [...]ed with it, we will take a view of the church in a different light from what we have yet consi­dered it. We have hitherto noticed only its most striking characteristics, in which it appears like a giant, stalking over society, and wielding the sword of slaughter; but it likewise performs the office of silent disease, and of unperceived decay; where we may contemplate it as a canker, corrod­ing the vitals of the moral world, and debasing all that is noble in man.

If I mention some traits which are rather pe­culiar to the Roman Catholic constitution, it is because that is the predominant church in those parts of Europe, where revolutions are soonest expected; and not because it is any worse, or any better, than any other that ever has or ever can exist. I hinted before, and it may not be amiss [Page 41] to repeat, that the hierarchy is every where the same, so far as the circumstances of society will permit; for it borrows and lends, and interchanges its features, in some measure, with the age and nation, with which it has to deal, without ever losing sight of its object. It is every where the same engine of state; and whether it be guided by a Lama or a Mufti, by a Pontifex or a Pope, by a Bramin, a Bishop or a Druid, it is entitled to an equal share of respect.

The first great object of the priest is to establish a belief in the minds of the people, that he him­self is possessed of supernatural powers; and the church at all times has made its way in the world, in proportion as the priest has succeeded in this particular. This is the foundation of every thing,—the life and soul of all that is subversive and unaccountable in human affairs; it is intro­ducing a new element into society; it is the rud­der under the water, steering the ship almost di­rectly contrary to the wind that gives it motion.

A belief in the supernatural powers of the priest, has been inspired by means, which, in different nations, have been known by different names,—such as astrologies auguries, oracles, or incantations. This article once established, its continuation is not a difficult task. For, as the church acquires wealth, it furnishes itself with the necessary apparatus, and the trade is carried on to advantage. The imposition too becomes more easy from the authority of precedent, by which the inquisitive faculties of the mind are benumbed; men believe by prescription, and orthodoxy is heriditary.

In this manner every nation of antiquity re­ceived [Page 42] the poison in its infancy, and was rendered incapable of acquiring a vigorous manhood, of speaking a national will, or of acting with that dignity and generosity, which are natural to man in society. The moment that Romulus consulted the oracles for the building of his city, that mo­ment he interdicted its future citizens the enjoy­ment of liberty among themselves, as well as all ideas of justice towards their neighbours. Men never act their own opinions, in company with those who can give them the opinions of Gods; and as long as governors have an established mode of consulting the auspices, there is no necessity to establish any mode of consulting the people. Nihil publice sine auspiciis nec domi nec militiae gere­batur ^*, was the Roman Magna Charta; and it stood in place of a declaration of the rights of man. There is something extremely imposing in a maxim of this kind. Nothing is more pious, peaceful, and moderate in appearance; and noth­ing more savage and abominable in its operation. But it is a genuine church-maxim, and, as such, deserves a further consideration.

One obvious tendency of this maxim is, like the feudal rights, to inculcate radical ideas of ine­qualities among men; and it does this in a much greater degree. The feudal distance between man and man, is perceptible and definite; but the mo­ment you give one member of society a familiar intercourse with God, you launch him into the region of infinities and invisibilities; you unfit him, and his brethren, to live together, on any terms but those of stupid reverence and of insolent abuse.

[Page 43]Another tendency is to make men cruel and savage in a preternatural degree. When a person believes that he is doing the immediate work of God, he divests himself of the feelings of a man. And an ambitious general, who wishes to extir­pate or to plunder a neighbouring nation, has on­ly to order the priest to do his duty, and set the people at work by an oracle; they then know no other bounds to their frenzy than the will of their leader, pronounced by the priest; whose voice to them is the voice of God. In this case the least attention to mercy or justice would be abhorred as a disobedience to the divine command. This cir­cumstance alone, is sufficient to account for two-thirds of the cruelty of all wars,—perhaps in a great measure for their existence,—and has given rise to an opinion, that nations are cruel in pro­portion as they are religious. But the observation ought to stand thus, That nations are cruel in pro­portion as they are guided by priests; than which there is no axiom more undeniably without ex­ception.

Another tendency of governing men by oracles, is to make them factious and turbulent in the use of liberty, when they feel themselves in possession of it. In all ancient democracies, the great body of the people enjoyed no liberty at all; and those who were called freemen, exercised it only by starts, for the purpose of revenging injuries,—not in a regular constituted mode of preventing them: the body politic used liberty as a medicine, and not as daily bread. Hence it has happened, that the histories of ancient democracies, and of modern insurrections, are quoted upon us, to the insult of common sense, to prove that a whole people is not capable of governing itself. The whole of [Page 44] the reasoning on this subject, from the profound disquisitions of Aristotle, down to the puny whin­ings of Dr. Tatham, ^* are founded on a direct in­version of historical fact. It is the want of liber­ty, not the enjoyment of it, which has occasioned all the factions in society from the beginning of time, and will do so to the end; it is because the people are not habitually free from civil and eccle­siastical tyrants, that they are disposed to exercise tyranny themselves. Habitual freedom produces effects directly the reverse in every particular. For a proof of this, look into America, or, if that be too much trouble, look into human nature, with the eyes of common sense.

When the Christian religion was perverted, and pressed into the service of government, under the name of the christian church, it became necessary that its priests should set up for supernatural pow­ers, and invest themselves in the same cloak of in­fallibility, of which they had stripped their pre­decessors, the druids and the augurs. This they effected by miracles; for which they gained so great a reputation, that they were canonized after death, and have furnished modern Europe with a much greater catalogue of saints, than could be found in any breviary of the ancients. The poly­theism of the catholic church, is more splendid for the number of its divinities, than that of the [Page 45] Eleusinian; and they are not inferior in point of attributes. The Denis of France is at least equal to the Jupiter of Greece or the Apis of Egypt. As to supernatural powers, the case is precisely the same in both; and the portions of infallibility are dealt out from the pope to the subordinate priests, according to their rank, in such a manner as to complete the harmony of the system.

Cicero has written with as much judgment and erudition on the "corruptions" of the old Roman Church, as Dr. Priestly has on those of the new. But the difficulty is not that the church is corrupt­ed by men; it is, that men are corrupted by the church; for the very existence of a church, as I have before defined it, is founded on a lie; it sets out with the blasphemy of giving to one class of men the attributes of God; and the practising of these sorceries by that class, and the believing of them by another, corrupt and vitiate the whole.

One of the most admirable contrivances of the Christian church, is the business of confessions. It requires great reflection to give us an idea of the effects wrought on society by this part of the machinary. It is a solemn recognition of the supernatural powers of the priest, repeated every day in the year, by every human creature above the age of twelve years. Nothing is more natu­ral than for men to judge of every thing around them, and even of themselves, by comparison; and in this case, what opinion are the laity to form of their own dignity? When a poor, ig­norant, vitious mortal is set up for the God, what must be the man? I cannot conceive of any person going seriously to a confessional and belie­ving in the equality of rights, or possessing one [Page 46] moral sentiment, that is worthy of a rational being ^*.

Another contrivance of the same sort, and lit­tle inferior in efficacy, is the law of celibacy, imposed on the priesthood, both male and female, in almost all church-establishments, that have hitherto existed. The priest is in the first place armed with the weapons of moral destruction, by which he is made the professional enemy of his fellow men; and then, for fear he should neg­lect to use those weapons,—for fear he should con­tract the feelings and friendships of rational be­ings, by mingling with society and becoming one of its members,—for fear his impositions should be discovered by the intimacy of family connexions,—he is interdicted the most cordial endearments of life; he is severed from the sym­pathies of his fellow-creatures, and yet compelled to be with them; his affections are held in the mortmain of perpetual inactivity; and, like the [Page 47] dead men of Mezentius, he is lashed to society for tyranny and contamination.

The whole of this management, in selecting, preparing, and organizing the members of the ecclesiastical body, is pursued with the same uni­form, cold-blooded hostility, against the social harmonies of life. The subjects are taken from the younger sons of noble families, who, from their birth, are considered as a nuisance to the house, and an outcast from parental attachment. They are then cut off from all opportunities of forming fraternal affections, and educated in a cloister; till they enter upon their public func­tions, as disconnected from the feelings of the community, as it is designed they shall ever re­main from its interests.

I will not mention the corruption of morals, which must result from the combined causes of the ardent passions of constrained celibacy, and the secret interviews of the priest with the women of his charge, for the purpose of confession [...]: I will draw no arguments from the dissensions sown in families; the jealousies and consequent aberrations of both husband and wife, occasioned by an in­triguing stranger being in the secrets of both; the discouragements la [...]d upon matrimony by a gene­ral dread of these consequences, in the minds of men of reflection,—effects which are remarkable in all catholic countries; but I will conclude this article by observing the direct influence that eccle­siastical celibacy alone, has had on the population of Europe.

This policy of the church must have produced, at least, as great an effect, in thining society, as the whole of her wars and persecutions. In ca­tholic Europe, there must be near a million of ec­clesiastics. [Page 48] ^* This proportion of mankind con­tinuing deducted from the agents of population, for fifteen centuries, must have precluded the ex­istence of more than one hundred millions of the human species.

Should the reader be disposed, on this remark, to listen to the reply, which is sometimes made, that Europe is sufficiently populous; I beg he would suspend his decision, till he shall see what may be said, in the course of this work, on pro­tected industry; and until he shall well consider the effects of liberty on the means of subsistence. That reply is certainly one of the axioms of ty­ranny, and is of kin to the famous wish of Cali­gula, that the whole Roman people had but one neck.

The French have gone as far in the destruction of the hierarchy as could have been expected, considering the habits of the people, and the pre­sent circumstances of Europe. The church in that country was like royalty,—the prejudices in its favour were too strong to be vanquished all at once. The most that could be done, was to tear the bandage fro [...] [...] eyes of mankind, break the [Page 49] charm of inequality, demolish ranks and infalli­billities, and teach the people that mitres and crowns did not confer supernatural powers. As long as public teachers are chosen by the people, are salaried and removeable by the people, are born and married among the people, have fami­lies to be educated and protected from oppression and from vice,—as long as they have all the com­mon sympathies of society, to bind them to the public interest, there is very little danger of their becoming tyrants by force; and the liberty of the press will preven [...] their being so by craft.

In the United States of America there is no church; and this is one of the principal circum­stances which distinguish that government from all others, that ever existed; it ensures the unem­barrassed exercise of religion, the continuation of public instruction, in the science of liberty and happiness, and promises a long duration to a rep­resentative government.

CHAP. III. THE MILITARY SYSTEM.

THE church, in all modern Europe, may be considered as a kind of standing army; as the members of that community have been, in every nation, the surest supporters of arbitrary power, both for internal oppression and for external vio­lence. But this not being sufficient of itself, an additional instrument, to be known by the name of the military system, became necessary; and it seems to have been expedient to call up another element of human nature, out of which this new instrument might be created and maintained. The church was in possession of the strongest ground that could be taken in the human mind, the principle of religion; a principle dealing with things invisible; and consequently the most capa­ble of being itself perverted, and then of pervert­ing the whole mind, and subjecting it to any un­reasonable pursuit.

Next to that of religion, and similar to it in most of its characteristic [...], is the principle of ho­nour. Honour, like religion, is an original, in­delible sentiment of the mind, an indispensable ingredient in our nature. But its object is inca­pable of precise definition; and consequently, though given us in aid of the more definable feel­ings of morality, it is capable of total perversion, of losing sight of its own original nature, and [Page 51] still retaining its name; of pursuing the destruc­tion of moral sentiments, instead of being their ornament; of debasing, instead of supporting, the dignity of man.

This camelion principle was, therefore, a proper element of imposition, and was destined to make an immense figure in the world, as the foundation and support of the military system of all unequal governments. We must look pretty far into human nature, before we shall discover the cause, why killing men in battle should be deemed, in itself, an honourable employment. A hangman is universally despised; he exercises an office, which not only the feelings, but the policy of all nations, have agreed to regard as infamous. What is it that should make the difference of these two occupations, in favour of the former? Surely it is not because the victims in the former case are innocent, and the latter guilty. To assert this, would be a greater libel upon human societiy, than I can bring myself to utter; it would make the tyranny of opinion the most detestable, as well as the most sovereign of all possible tyrannies. But what can it be? It is not, what is sometimes alleged, that courage is the foundation of the bu­siness; that fighting is honourable because it is dangerous; there is often as much courage dis­played in highway-robbery, as in the warmest conflict of armies; and yet it does no honour to the party; a Robin Hood is as dishonourable a character as a Jack Ketch. It is not because there is any idea of justice or honesty in the case; for, to say the best that can be said of war, it is impossible that more than one side can be just or honest; and yet both sides of every contest are [Page 52] equally the road to fame; where a distinguished killer of men, is sure to gain immortal honour. It is not patriotism, even in that sense of the word which deviates the most from general philanthro­py; for a total stranger to both parties in a war, may enter into it [...]n either side, as a volunteer, perform more than a vulgar share of the slaugh­ter, and be for ever applauded, even by his ene­mies. Finally, it is not from any pecuniary advan­tages that are ordinarily attached to the profession of arms; for soldiers are generally poor, though part of their business be to plunder.

Indeed, I can see but one reason in nature, why the principal of honour should be selected from all human incentives, and relied on for the support of the military system; it is because it was convenient for the governing power; that power being in the hands of a small part of the commu­nity, whose business was to support it by imposi­tion. No principle of a permanent nature, whose object is unequivocal, and whose slightest deviations are perceptible, would have answered the purpose. Justice, for instance, is a principle of common use, of which every man can dis­cern the application. Should the Prince say it was just, to commence an unprovoked war with his weak neighbours, and plunder their country, the falshood would be too glaring; all men would judge for themselves, and give him the lie; and no man would follow his standard, unless bribed by his avarice. But honour is of another nature; it is what we all can feel, but no one can define; it is therefore whatever the Prince may choose to name it: and so powerful is its operation, that all the useful sentiments of life lose their effect: morality is not only banished [Page 53] from political cabinets, but generally and profes­sionally from the bosoms of men, who pursue ho­nour, in the profession of arms.

It is common for a King, who wishes to make a thing fashionable, to practise it himself; and in this he is sure of general imitation and success. As this device is extremely natural, and as the existence of wars is absolutely necessary to the existence of Kings; to give a fashion to the trade must have been a considerable motive to the an­cient Kings, for exposing themselves so much as they usually did in battle. They said, Let human slaughter be honourable, and honourable it was.

Hence it is, that warriors have been termed heroes; and the eulogy of heroes has been the constant business of historians and poets, from the days of Nimrod down to the present century. Homer, for his astonishing variety, animation, and sublimity, has not a warmer admirer than myself; he has been for three thousand years, like a reigning sovereign, applauded as a matter of course, whether from love or fear; for no man with safety to his own character can refuse to join the chorus of his praise. I never can express (and his other admirers have not done it for me) the pleasure I receive from his poems; but in a view of philantrophy, I consider his existence as having been a serious misfortune to the human race. He has given to military life, a charm, which few men can resist, a splendour which [...] ­velopes the scenes of carnage in a cloud of glory, which dazzles the eyes of every beholder, steals from us our natural sensibilities, in exchange for the artificial, debases men to brutes, under the pre­text of exalting them to Gods, and obliterates, with the same irresistable stroke, the moral duties [Page 54] of life and the true policy of nations. Alexander ^* is not the only human monster that has been form­ed after the model of Achilles; nor Persia and Egypt the only countries depopulated for no other reason than the desire of rivalling predecessors in military fame.

Another device of Princes, to render honoura­ble the profession of arms, was to make it envia­ble, by depriving the lowest or [...]ers of society of the power of becoming soldiers. Excluding the helots of all nations from any part in the glory of butchering their fellow-creatures, has had the same effect as in Sparta,—it has ennobled the trade; and this is the true feudal estimation, in which this trade has descended to us, from our Gothic ancestors.

At the same time that the feudal system was furnishing Europe with a numerous body of noblesse, it became necessary, for various purposes of despotism, that they should be prevented from mingling with the common mass of society, that they should be held together by what they call l'esprit de corps, or the corporation spirit, and be furnished with occupations, which should leave them nothing in common with their fellow men. [Page 55] These occupations were offered by the church and the army; and as the former was permanent, it was thought expedient to give permanency to the latter. Thus the military system has created the noblesse, and the noblesse the military system. They are mutually necessary to each other's exist­ence,—concurrent and reciprocal causes and ef­fects, generating and generated, perpetuating each other by interchangeable wants, and both indis­pensable to the governing power.

Those persons, therefore▪ who undertake to de­fend the noblesse as a necessary order in the great community of men, ought to be apprised of the extent of their undertaking. They must, in the first place, defend standing armies, and that too upon principles, not of national prudence, as re­lative to the circumstances of neighbours, but of internal necessity, as relative only to the organi­zation of society. They must, at the same time, extend their arguments to the increase of those ar­mies; for they infallibly must increase to a degree beyond our ordinary calculation, or they will not answer the purpose; both because the number of the noblesse, or "the men of the sword" (as they are properly styled by their friend Burke,) is con­stantly augmenting, and because the influence of the church is on the decline. As the light of philosophy illuminates the world, it shines in up­on the secrets of government; and it is necessary to make the blind as broad as the window, or the passengers will see what is doing in the cabinet. The means of imposition must be increased in the army, in proportion as they are lost in the church.

Secondly, they must vindicate war, not merely as an occurrence of fatality, and justifiable on the [Page 56] defensive; but as a thing of choice, as being the most nutritious aliment of that kind of govern­ment, which requires privileged orders, and an army▪ for it is no great figure of speech, to say that the nobility of Europe, are always fed upon human gore. They originated in war, they live by war, and without war it would be impossible to keep them from starving. Or, to drop the figure entirely, if mankind were left to the peace­able pursuit of industry, the titled orders would lose their distinctions, mingle with society, and become reasonable creatures.

Thirdly, they must defend the honor of the occupation which is allotted to the noblesse. For the age is becoming extremely sceptical on this subject; there are heretics in the world (Mr. Burke calls them athiests) who affect to disbelieve that men were made expressly for the purpose of cutting each other's throats; and who say that it is not the highest honour that a man can arrive at, to sell himself to another man for life, at a cer­tain daily price, and to hold himself in readiness, night and day, to kill individuals or nations, at home or abroad, without ever inquiring the cause. These men say, that it is no compliment to the judgment or humanity of a man, to lead such a life; and they do not see why a nobleman should not possess these qualities as well as other peo­ple.

Fourthly, they must prove that all occupations, which tend to life, and not to death, are disho­nourable and infamous▪ Agriculture, commerce, every method of augmenting the means of sub­sistence, and raising men from the savage state, must be held ignoble; or else men of honour will forget themselves so far, as to engage in them; [Page 57] and then, farewell to distinctions. The National Assembly may then create orders as fast as it has ever uncreated them; it is impossible for nobility to exist in France, or in any other country, un­less the above articles are firmly defended by arguments, and fixed in the minds of mankind.

It seems difficult for a man of reflection to write one page on the subject of government, without meeting with some old established max­ims, which are not only false, but which are precisely the reverse of truth. Of this sort is the opinion,—that inevitable wars in modern times, have given occasion to the present military system, and that standing armies are the best means of preventing wars. This is what the people of Europe are commanded to believe. With all due deference, however, to their com­manders, I would propose a contrary belief, which I will venture to lay down as the true state of the fact: That the present military system has been the cause of the wars of modern times, and that stand­ing armies are the best, if not the only means of PROMOTING wars. This position has, at least, one advantage over those that are commonly esta­blished by governments, that it is believed by him, who proposes it to the assent of others. Men, who cannot command the power of the state, ought to enforce their doctrines by the power of reason.

To apply this maxim to the case now before us; let us ask, What is war? and on what pro­pensity in human nature does it rest? For it is to MAN that we are to trace these questions, and not to Princes; we must drive them up to principle, not stop short at precedent; and endeavour to use our sense, instead of parading our learning. A­mong individual men, or savages acting in a desul­tory [Page 58] manner, antecedent to the formation of great societies, there may be many causes of quarrels and assassinations; such as love, jealousy, rapine, or the revenge of private injuries. But these do not amount to the idea of war. War supposes a vast association of men engaged in one cause, ac­tuated by one spirit, and carrying on a bloody con­test with another association in a similar predica­ment. Few of the motives which actuate private men can apply at once to such a multitude, the greatest part of which must be personal strangers to each other. Indeed, where the motives are clearly explained, and well understood by the com­munity at large, so as to be really felt by the peo­ple, there is but one of the ordinary causes above mentioned, which can actuate such a body; it is rapine, or the hope of enriching themselves by plunder. There can be then but two circum­stances under which a nation will commence an offensive war: either the people at large must be thoroughly convinced that they shall be personally rewarded, not only with conquest, but with a vast share of wealth from the conquered nation, or else they must be duped into the war by those who hold the reins of government. All motives for national offences are reduced to these two, and there can be no more. The subject, like most others, becomes extremely simple, the moment it is considered.

And how many of the wars of mankind origi­nate in the first of these motives? Among civili­zed nations, none. A people considerably numerous, approaching towards ideas of sober policy, and beginning to taste the fruits of indus­try, require but little experience to convince themselves of the following truths.—that no be­nefit [Page 59] can be derived to the great body of individu­als from conquest, though it were certain—that this event is always doubtful, and the decision to be dreaded,—that nine tenths of the losses in all wars are a clear loss to both parties, being sunk in expences,—that the remaining tenth necessarily comes in the hands of the principle managers, and produces a real misfortune even to the victo­rious party, by giving them masters at home, in­stead of riches from abroad.

The pitiful idea of feasting ourselves on a com­parison of suffering, and balancing our own losses by those of the enemy, is a stratagem of govern­ment, a calculation of cabinet arithmetic. Indi­viduals reason not in this manner. A distressed mother in England, reduced from a full to a scanty diet, and bewailing the loss of her son, receives no consolation from being told of a wo­man in France, whose son fell in the same battle, and that the taxes are equally increased in both countries by the same war. But Kings, and ministers, and Generals, and historians proclaim, as a glorious contest, every war which appears to have been as fatal to the enemy as to their own party, though one half of each nation are slaugh­tered in the field, and the other half reduced to slavery. This is one of the bare-faced impositions with which mankind are perpetually insulted, and which call upon us, in the name of humanity, to pursue this enquiry into the causes of war.

The history of ancient Rome, from beginning to end, under all its Kings, Consuls, and Em­perors, furnishes no [...] a single instance, after the conquest of the Sabines, of what may properly be called a popular offensive war; I mean a war that would have been undertaken by the people, had [Page 60] they enjoyed a free government, so organized as to have enabled them to deliberate before they acted, and to suffer nothing to be carried into exe­cution but the national will.

The same may be said of modern Europe, after a corresponding period in the progress of nations; which period should be placed at the very com­mencement of civilization. Perhaps after the settlement of the Saracens in Spain, the Lombards in Italy, the Franks in Gaul, and the Saxons in England, we should have heard no more of offen­sive operations, had they depended on the unin­fluenced wishes of the people. For we are not to regard as offensive the struggles of a nation for the recovery of liberty.

What an inconceivable mass of slaughter are we then to place to the other account; to dark, unequal government! to the magical powers, pos­sessed by a few men, of blinding the eyes of the community, and leading the people to destruction, by those who are called their fathers and their friends! These operations could not be carried on, for a long time together, in ages tolerably en­lightened, without a permanent resource. As long as the military conditions of feudal tenures remained in full vigour, they were sure to furnish the means of destruction to follow the will of the sovereign; but as the asperities of this system sof­tened away by degree, it seems that governments were threatened with the necessity of applying to the people at large for voluntary enlistments, and contributions in money; on which application the purpose must be declared. This would be too di­rect an appeal to the consciences of men on a ques­tion of offensive war, and was, if possible, to be avoided. For even the power of the church, pro­vided [Page 61] there was no question of heresy, could not be always relied on, to stimulate the people to a quarrel with their neighbours of the same faith; and still less was it sure of inducing them to part with their money. The expedient, therefore, of standing armies became necessary; and perhaps rather on account of the money than the men.— Thus money is required to levy armies, and ar­mies to levy money; and foreign wars are intro­duced as the pretended occasion for both.

One general character will apply to much the greater part of the wars of modern times,—they are political, and not vindictive. This alone is sufficient to account for their real origin. They are wars of agreement, ^* rather than of dissention; and the conquest is taxes, and not territory. To carry on this business, it is necessary not only to keep up the military spirit of the noblesse by titles and pensions, and to keep in pay a vast number of troops, who know no other God but their king; who lose all ideas of themselves, in contemplating their officers; and who forget the duties of a man, to practise those of a soldier,—this is but half the [Page 62] operation: an essential part of the military system is to disarm the people, to hold all the functions of war, as well the arm that executes, a [...] the will that declares it, equally above their reach. This part of the system has a double effect, it palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind: an habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral; and men lose at once the power of protecting them­selves, and of discerning the cause of their oppres­sion.

It is almost useless to mention the conclusions which every rational mind must draw from these considerations. But though they are too obvious to be mistaken, they are still too important to be passed over in silence; for we seem to be arrived at that epoch in human affairs, when "all useful ideas, and truths the most necessary to the happi­ness of mankind, are no longer exclusively destined to adorn the pages of a book ^*." Nations, wear­ied out with imposture begin to provide for the safety of man, instead of pursuing his destruction.

I will mention as one conclusion, which bids fair to be a practical one, that the way to prevent wars is not merely to change the military system; for that, like the church, is a necessary part of governments as they now stand, and of society as now organized: but the principle of government must be completely changed; and the consequence of this will be such a total renovation of society, as to banish standing armies, [...]verturn the military system, and exclude the possibility of war.

Only admit the original, unalterable truth, that all men are equal in their rights, and the foundation of every thing is laid; to build the superstructure [Page 63] requires no effort but that of natural deduction. The first necessary deduction will be, that the people will form an equal representative govern­ment; in which it will be impossible for orders or privileges to exist for a moment; and consequently the first materials for standing armies will be converted into peaceable members of the state. Another deduction follows, That the people will be universally armed: they will assume those weapons for security, which the art of war has invented for destruction. You will then have removed the necessity of a standing army by the organization of the legislature, and the possibility of it by the arrangement of the militia; for it is as impossible for an armed soldiery to exist in an armed nation, as for a nobility to exist under an equal government.

It is curious to remark how ill we reason on human nature, from being accustomed to view it under the disguise which the unequal governments of the world have imposed upon it. During the American war, and especially towards its close, General Washington might be said to possess the hearts of all the Americans. His recommenda­tion was law, and he was able to command the whole power of that people for any purpose of defence. The philosophers of Europe considered this as a dangerous crisis to the cause of freedom. They knew from the example of Caesar, and Sylla, and Marius, and Alcibiad [...]s, and Pericles, and Cromwell, that Washington would never lay down his arms, till he had given his country a master. But after he did lay them down, then came the miracle,—his virtue was cried up to be more than human; and it is by this miracle of [Page 64] virtue in him, that the Americans are supposed to enjoy their liberty at this day.

I believe the virtue of that great man to be equal to any that has ever yet been known; but to an American eye no extraordinary portion of it could appear in that transaction. It would have been impossible for the General or the army to have continued in the field after the enemy left it; for the soldiers were all citizens; and if it had been otherwise, their numbers were not the hundredth part of the citizens at large, who were all soldiers. To say that he was wise in discern­ing the impossibility of success in an attempt to imitate the great heroes above mentioned, is to give him only the same merit for sagacity which is common to every other person who knows that country, or who has well considered the effects of equal liberty.

Though infinite praise is due to the constituent assembly of France for the temperate resolution and manly firmness which mark their operations in general; yet it must be confessed that some of their reforms bear the marks of too timorous a hand. Preserving an heriditary King with a tre­menduous accumulation of powers, and providing an unnecessary number of priests to be paid from the national purse, and furnished with the means of rebuilding the half-destroyed ruins of the hier­archy, are circumstances to be pardoned for reasons which I have already hinted. But the enormous military force, which they have decreed shall remain as a permanent establishment, appears to me not only unnecessary, and even dangerous to liberty, but totally and directly subversive of the end they had in view. Their objects were the security of the frontiers and the tranquility of the [Page 65] state; the reverse of this will be the effect,—not perhaps that this army will be turned against the people, or involve the state in offensive wars. On the contrary, suppose that it simply and faith­fully defends the frontiers and protects the people; this defence and this protection are the evils of which I complain. They tend to weaken the nation, by deadning the spirit of the people, and teaching them to look up to others for protection, instead of depending on their own invincible arm. A people that legislate for themselves ought to be in the habit of protecting themselves; or they will lose the spirit of both. A knowledge of their own strength preserves a temperance in their own wisdom, and the performance of their duties gives a value to their rights.

This is likewise the way to increase the solid domestic force of a nation, to a degree far beyond any ideas we form of a standing army; and at the same time to annihilate its capacity as well as inclination for foreign aggressive hostilities. The true guarantee of perpetual tranquility at home and abroad, in such a case, would arise from this truth, which would pass into an incontrovertible maxim, that offensive operations would be impossible, and defensive ones infallible.

This is undoubtedly the true and only secret of exterminating wars from the face of the earth; and it must afford no small degree of consolation to every friend of humanity, to find this unspeak­able blessing resulting from that equal mode of government, which alone secures every other en­joyment for which mankind unite their interests in society. Politicians, and even sometimes honest men, are accustomed to speak of war as an [Page 66] uncontroulable event, falling on the human race like a concussion of the elements,—a scourge which admits no remedy; but for which we must wait with trembling preparation, as for an epi­demical disease, whose force we may hope to lighten, but can never avoid. They say that mankind are wicked and rapacious, and "it must be that offences will come." This reason applies to individuals; but not to nations deliberately speaking a national voice. I hope I shall not be understood to mean, that the nature of man is totally changed by living in a free republic. I allow that it is still interested men and passionate men, that direct the affairs of the world. But in national assemblies, passion is lost in deliberation, and interest: balances interest; till the good of the whole community combines the general will. Here then is a great moral entity, acting still from interested motives; but whose interest it never can be, in any possible combination of circumstan­ces, to commence an offensive war.

There is another consideration, from which we may argue the total extinction of wars, as a ne­cessary consequence of establishing governments on the representative wisdom of the people. We are all sensible that superstition is a blemish of human nature, by no means confined to subjects connected with religion. Political superstition is almost as strong as religious; and it is quite as universally used as an instrument of tyranny. To enumerate the variety of ways in which this instrument ope­rates on the mind, would be more difficult, than to form a general idea of the result of its opera­tions. In monarchies, it induces men to spill their blood for a particular family, or for a par­ticular branch of that family, who happens to [Page 67] have been born first, or last, or to have been taught to repeat a certain creed, in preference to other creeds. But the effect which I am going chiefly to notice is that which respects the territo­rial boundaries of a government. For a man in Portugal or Spain to prefer belonging to one of those nations rather than the other, is as much a superstition, as to prefer the house of Braganza to that of Bourbon, or Mary the second of England to her brother. All these subjects of preference stand upon the same footing as the turban and the hat, the cross and the crescent, or the lily and the rose.

The boundaries of nations have been fixed for the accommodation of the government, without the least regard to the convenience of the people. Kings and ministers, who make a profitable trade of governing, are interested in extending the limits of their dominion as far as possible. They have a property in the people, and in the territory that they cover. The country and its inhabitants are to them a farm stocked with sheep. When they call up these sheep to be sheared, they teach them to know their names, to follow their master, and avoid a stranger. By this unaccountable imposition it is, that men are led from one extravagant folly to another,—to adore their King, to boast of their nation, and to wish for conquest,—circumstances equally ridiculous in themselves, and equally in­compatible with that rational estimation of things, which arises from the science of liberty.

In America it is not so. Among the several states, the governments are all equal in their force, and the people are all equal in their rights. Were it possible for one State to conquer another State, without any expence of money, or of time, [Page 68] or of blood,—neither of the States, nor a single individual in either of them, would be richer or poorer for the event. The people would all be upon their own lands, and engaged in their own occupations, as before; and whether the terri­tory on which they live were called New York or Massachusetts is a matter of total indifference, about which they have no superstition. For the people belong not to the government, but the go­vernment belongs to the people.

Since the independance of those States, many territorial disputes have been settled, which had risen from the interference of their ancient char­ters. The interference of charters is a kind of policy which, I suppose, every mother country observes towards her colonies, in order to give them a subject of contention; that she may have the opportunity of keeping all parties quiet by the parental blessing of a standing army. But on the banishment of foreign control, and all ideas of European policy, the enjoyment of equal liberty has taught the Americans the secret of settling these disputes, with as much calmness as they have formed their constitution. It is found, that questions about the boundaries between free States are not matters of interest, but merely of form and convenience. And though these questions may involve a tract of country equal to an Euro­pean kingdom, it alters not the case; they are settled as merchants settle the course of exchange between two commercial cities. Several instan­ces have occured, since the revolution of deci­ding in a few days, by amicable arbitration, territorial disputes, which determine the jurisdic­tion of larger and richer tracts of country, than [Page 69] have formed the objects of all the wars of the two last centuries between France and Germany.

It is needless to spend any time in applying this idea to the circumstances of all countries, where the government should be freely and habitually in the hands of the people. It would apply to all E [...]ope; and will apply to it, as soon as a revolution shall take place in the principle of government. For such a revolution cannot stop short of fixing the power of the State on the basis allotted by nature, the unalienable rights of man; which are the same in all countries. It will eradicate the superstitions about territorial jurisdiction; and this considera­tion must promise an additional security against the possibility of war.

CHAP. IV. THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.

IT would be a curious speculation, and perhaps as useful as curious, to consider how far the moral nature of man is affected by the organization of society; and to what degree his predominant qualities depend on the nature of the government under which he lives. The adage, That men are every where the same, though not wholly false, would doubtless be found to be true only in a limited sense. [Page 70] I love to indulge the belief, that it is true so far as to ensure permanency to insti [...]utions that are good; but not so far as to discourage us from attempting to reform those that are bad. To consider it is true in an unlimited sense, would be [...] serve the purposes of despotism; for which this, like a thousand other maxims, has been invented and employed. It would teach us to sit down with a gloomy satisfaction on the state of human affairs, to pronounce the race of man emphatically "fated to be curst," a community of self-tormentors and mutual assassins, bound down by the irresistible destiny of their nature to be robbed of their reason by priests, and plun­dered of their property by Kings. It would teach us to join with S [...]ame Jenyns, and furnish new weapons to the oppressors, by our manner of pitying the misfortunes of the oppressed.

In confirmation of this adage, and as an apo­logy for the existing despotisms, it is said, That all men are by nature tyrants, and will exercise their tyrannies whenever they find opportunity. Allowing this assertion to be true, it is surely cited by the wrong party. It is an apology for equal, not for unequal governments; and the weapon belongs to those who contend for the republican principle. If government be founded on the vices of mankind, its business is to restrain those vices in all, rather than to foster them in a few. The disposition to tyrannize is effectually restrained under the exercise of the equality of rights; while it is not only rewarded in the few, but invigorated in the many, under all other forms of the social connexion. But it is almost impossi­ble to decide, among moral propensities, which of of them belong to nature, and which are the off­spring [Page 71] of habit; how many of our vices are charg­able on the permanent qualities of man, and how many result from the mutable energies of state.

If it be in the power of a bad government to render men worse than nature has made them, why should we say it is not in the power of a good one to render them better? and if the latter be capable of producing this effect in any perceiva­ble degree, where shall we limit the progress of human wisdom, and the force of its institutions, in ameliorating, not only the social condition, but the controlling principles of man?

Among the component parts of government, that, whose operation is the most direct on the moral habit of life, is the Administration of Ju­stice. In this every person has a peculiar isolated interest, which is almost detached from the common sympathies of society. It it this which operates with a singular concentrated energy, collecting the whole force of the state from the community at large, and bringing it to act upon a single individual, affecting his life, reputation, or property; so that the govern­ing power may say with peculiar propriety to the minister of justice, divide et impera; for, in case of oppression, the victim's cries will be too feeble to excite opposition; his cause having nothing in common with that of the citizens at large. If, therefore, we would obtain an idea of the condi­tion of men on any given portion of the earth, we must pay a particular attention to their judiciary sys [...], not in its form and theory, but in its spi [...]i [...] and practice. It may be said in general of this part of the civil polity of a nation, that, as it i [...] a st [...]eam flowing from the common fountain of the government, and must be tinged with what­ever [Page 72] impurities are found in the source from whence it descends, the only hope of cleansing the stream is by purifying the fountain.

If I were able to give an energetic sketch of the office and dignity of a rational system of juris­prudence, describe the full extent of its effects on the happiness of men, and then exhibit the per­versions and corruptions attendant on this busi­ness in most of the governments of Europe, it would furnish one of the most powerful arguments in favour of a general revolution, and afford no small consolation to those persons who look for­word with certainty to such an event. But my plan embraces too many subjects, to be particular on any; all that I can promise myself is to seize the rough features of systems, and mark the moral attitudes of man as placed in the necessary posture to support them.

It is generally understood, that the object o [...] government, in this part of its administration, I merely to restrain the vices of men. But there is another object prior to this: an office more sacred, and equally indispensable, is to prevent their vices, —to correct them in their origin, or eradicate them totally from the adolescent mind. The lat­ter is performed by instruction, the former by coercion; the one is the tender duty of a father, the other, the unrelenting drudgery of a master; but both are the business of government, and ought to be made concurrent branches of the system of jurisprudence.

The absurd and abominable doctrine, that pri­vate vices are public benefits, it is hoped will be blotted from the memory of man, expunged from the catalogue of human follies, with the system [...] of government which gave it birth. The ground [Page 73] of this insulting doctrine is, that advantage may be taken of the extravagant foibles of individuals to increase the revenues of the State; as if the chief end of society were, to steal money for the government's purse! to be squandered by the go­vernors, to render then more insolent in their oppressions! it is humiliating, to answer such arguments as these; where we must lay open the most degrading retreats of prostituted logic, to discover the positions on which they are founded. But Orders and Privileges will lead to any thing: once teach a man, that some are born to command and others to be commanded; and after that, there is no camel too big for him to swallow.

This idea of the objects to be kept in view by the system of Justice, involving in it the business of prevention as well as of restriction, leads us to some observations on the particular subject of cri­minal jurisprudence. Every society, considered in itself as a moral and physical entity, has the un­doubted faculty of self-preservation. It is an independent being; and, towards other beings in like circumstances of independence, it has a right to use this faculty of defending itself, without previous notice to the party; or without the ob­servance of any duty, but that of abstaining from offensive operations. But when it acts towards the members of its own family, towards those dependent and defenceless beings that make part of itself, the right of coercion is preceded by the duty of instruction. It may be safely pronounced, that a State has no right to punish a man, to whom it has given no previous instruction; and consequently, any person has a right to do any action, unless he has been informed that it has an evil tendency. [Page 74] It is [...]ue, that, as relative to particular cases, the having given this information is a thing that the society must sometimes presume, and is not always obliged to prove. But these cases are rare, and ought never to form a general rule. This presumption has, however, passed into a general rule, and is adopted as universal practice. With what justice or propriety it is so adopted, a very little reflection will enable us to decide.

The great out-lines of morality are extremely simple and easy to be understood; they may be said to be written on the heart of a man antece­dent to his associating with his fellow-creatures. As a self-dependent being he is self-instructed; and as long as he should remain a simple child of nature, he would receive from nature all the les­sons necessary to his condition. He would be [...] complete moral agent; and should he violate the rights of another independent man like himself, he would sin against sufficient light, to merit [...] punishment that the offended party might inflict upon him. But society opens upon us a new field of contemplation; it furnishes man with another class of rights, and imposes upon him an addi­tional system of duties; it enlarges the sphere of his moral agency, and makes him a kind of arti­ficial being, propelling and propelled by new dependencies, in which nature can no longer serve him as a guide. Being removed from her rudimental school, and entered in the college of society, he is called to encounter problems which the elementary tables of his heart will not always enable him to solve. Society then ought to be consistent with herself in her own institutions; if she sketches the lines of his duty with a variable pencil, too slight for his natural perception, she [Page 75] should lend him her optical glasses to disce [...] [...]hem, if she takes the ferule in one hand, she is bound to use the fescue with the other.

We must observe farther,—that though society itself be a state of nature, as relative to the nation at large,—though it be a state to which mankind naturally recur to satisfy their wants and increase the sum of their happiness,—though all its laws and regulations may be perfectly reasonable, and calculated to promote the good of the whole,—yet, with regard to an individual member, his having consented to these laws, or even chose to live in the society, is but a fiction? and a rigid discipline, founded on a fiction, is surely hard upon its ob­ject. In general it may be said, that a man comes into society by birth; he neither consents nor dissents respecting his relative condition; he first opens his eyes on that state of human affairs in which the interests of his moral associates are infinitely complicated; with these his duties are so blended and intermingled, that nature can give him but little assistance in finding them out. His morality itself must be arbitrary; it must be varied at every moment, to comprehend some local and positive regulation; his science is to begin where that of preceding ages has ended; his alpha is their omega; and he is called upon to act by in­stinct what they have but learnt to do from the experience of all mankind. Natural reason may teach me not to strike my neighbour without a cause; but it will never forbid my sending a sack of wool from England, or printing the French con­stitution in Spain. These are positive prohibi­tions which nature has not written in her book; she has therefore never taught them to her children. [Page 76] The [...] may be said of all regulations that arise from the social compact.

It is a truth, I believe, not to be called in quest­ion, that every man is born with an imprescrip­tible claim to a portion of the elements; which portion is termed his birth-right. Society may vary this right, as to its form, but never can destroy it in substance. She has no control over the man, till he is born; and the right being born with him, and being necessary to his existence, she can no more annihilate the one than the other, though she has the power of new—modelling both. But on coming into the world, he finds that the ground which nature had promised him is taken up, and in the occupancy of others; society has changed the form of his birth-right; the general stock of elements, from which the lives of men are to be supported, has undergone a new modifi­cation; and his portion among the rest. He is told that he cannot claim it in its present form, [...] an independent inheritance; that he must draw on the stock of society, instead of the stock of nature; that he is banished from the moth­er and must cleave to the nurse. In this unex­pected occurrence he is unprepared to act but knowledge is a part of the stock of society; and an indispensable part to be allotted in the portion of the claimant is instruction relative to the new arrangement of natural right. To withhold th [...] instruction therefore would be, not merely the omission of a duty, but the commission of a crime; and society in this case would sin against the man▪ before the man could sin against society.

I should hope to meet the assent of all unpreju­diced readers, in carrying this idea still farther. In cases where a person is born of poor parents, [Page 77] or finds himself brought into the community of men without the means of subsistence, society is bound in duty to furnish him the means. She ought not only to instruct him in the artificial laws by which property is secured, but in the artificial industry by which it is obtained. She is bound, in justice as well as policy, to give him some art or trade. For the reason of his incapacity is, that she has usurped his birth-right; and this is restor­ing it to him in another form, more convenient for both parties. The failure of society in this branch of her duty is the occasion of much the greater part of the evils that call for criminal jurisprudence. The individual feels that he is robbed of his natural right; he cannot bring his process to reclaim it from the great community, by which he is overpowered; he therefore feels authorized in reprisal; in taking another's goods to replace his own. And it must be confessed, that in numberless instances the conduct of society justifies him in this proceeding; she has seized upon his property, and commenced the war against him.

Some, who perceive these truths, say that it is unsafe for society to publish them; but I say it is unsafe not to publish them. For the party from which the mischief is expected to arise has the knowledge of them already, and has acted upon them in all ages. It is the wise who are ignorant of these things, and not the foolish. They are truths of nature; and in them the teachers of mankind are the only party that remains to be taught. It is a subject on which the logic of indigence is much clearer than that of opulence. The latter reasons from contrivance, the former from feeling; and God has not endowed us with [Page 78] false feelings, in things that so weightily concern our happiness.

None can deny that the obligation is much stronger on me, to support my life, than to support the claim that my neighbour has to his property. Nature commands the first, society the second:— in one I obey the laws of God, which are universal and eternal; in the other, the laws of man, which are local and temporary.

It has been the folly of all old governments, to begin every thing at the wrong end, and to erect their institutions on an inversion of principle. This is more sadly the case in their systems or jurispru­dence, than is commonly imagined. Compelling justice is always mistaken for rendering justice. But this important branch of administration con­sists not merely in compelling men to be just to each other, and individuals to society,—this is not the whole, nor is it the principal part, nor eve [...] the beginning, of the operation. The source of power is said to be the source of justice; but it does not answer this description, as long as it contents itself with compulsion. Justice must be­gin by flowing from its source; and the first as well as the most important object is, to open its channels from society to all the individual mem­bers. This part of the administration being well devised and diligently executed, the other parts would lessen away by degrees to matters of infe­rior consideration.

It is an undoubted truth, that our duty is in­separably connected with our happiness. And why should we despair of convincing every mem­ber of society of a truth so important for him to know? Should any person object, by saying▪ that nothing like this, has ever yet been done; I [Page 79] answer, that nothing like this has ever yet been tried. Society has hitherto been curst with go­vernments, whose existence depended on the extinction of truth. Every moral light has been smothered under the bushel of perpetual imposi­tion; from whence it emits but faint and glim­mering rays, always insufficient to form any luminous system on any of the civil concerns of men. But these covers are crumbling to the dust, with the governments which they support; and the probability becomes more apparent, the more it is considered, that society is capable of curing all the evils to which it has given birth.

It seems that men, to diminish the physical evils that surround them, connect themselves in society; and from this connection their moral evils arise. But the immediate, occasion of the moral evils is nothing more than the remainder of the physical, that still exist even under the regu­lations that society makes to banish them. The direct object therefore of the government ought to be, to destroy as far as possible the remaining quantity of physical evils: and the moral would so far follow their destruction. But the mistake that is always made on this subject is, that go­vernments, instead of laying the axe at the root of the tree, aim their strokes at the branches; they attack the moral evils directly by vindictive justice, instead of removing the physical by distributive justice.

There are two distinct kinds of physical evils; one arises from want, or the apprehension of want; the other from bodily disease. The for­mer seems capable of being removed by society; the latter is inevitable. But the latter gives no occasion to moral disorders; it being the common [Page 80] lot of all, we all bear our part in silence, with­out complaining of each other, or revenging our­selves on the community. As it is out of the power of our neighbour's goods to relieve us, we do not covet them for this purpose. The former is the only kind from which moral evils arise; and to this the energies of government ought to be chiefly directed; especially that part which is called the administration of justice.

No nation is yet so numerous, nor any country so populous, as it is capable of becoming. Eu­rope, taken together, would support at least five times its present number, even on its present system of cultivation; and how many times this increased population may be multiplied by new discoveries in the infinite science of subsistence, no man will pretend to calculate. This of itself is sufficient to prove, that society at present has the means of rendering all its members happy in every respect, except the removal of bodily dis­ease. The common stock of the community appears abundantly sufficient for this purpose. By common stock, I would not be understood to mean the goods exclusively appropriated to indi­viduals. Exclusive property is not only consistent with good order among men, but it is conceived by some to be necessary to the existence of society. But the common stock of which I speak consists, first, in knowledge, or the improvement which men have made in the means of acquiring a sup­port; and secondly, in the contributions which it is necessary should be collected from individuals, and applied to the maintenance of tranquillity in the State. The property exclusively belonging to individuals can only be the surplusage remain­ing in their hands, after deducting what is neces­sary [Page 81] to the real wants of society. Society is the first proprieter; as she is the original cause of the appropriation of wealth, and its indispensable guardian in the hands of the individual.

Society then is bound, in the first place, to distribute knowledge to every person according to his wants, to enable him to be useful and hap­py; so far as to dispose him to take an active interest in the welfare of the State. Secondly, where the faculties of the individual are naturally defective, so that he remains unable to provide for himself, she is bound still to support and ren­der him happy. It is her duty in all cases to induce every human creature, by rational motives, to place his happiness in the tranquillity of the public, and in the security of individual peace and property. But thirdly, in cases where these precautions shall fail of their effect, she is dri­ven indeed to the last extremity,—she is to use the rod of correction. These instances would doubtless be rare; and if we could suppose a long continuance of wise administration, such as a well-organized government would ensure to every na­tion in the world, we may almost persuade our­selves to believe that the necessity for punishment would be reduced to nothing.

Proceeding however on the supposition of the existence of crimes, it must still remain an object of legislative wisdom, to discriminate between their different classes, and apply to each its proper remedy, in the quantity and mode of punishment. It is no part of my subject to enter into this in­quiry, any farther than simply to observe, that it is the characteristic of arbitrary governments to be jealous of their power. And, as jealousy is, of all human passions, the most vindictive and [Page 82] the least rational, these governments seek th [...] revenge of injuries in the most absurd and tre­menduous punishments that their fury can invent. As far as any rule can be discovered in their gra­dation of punishments, it appears to be this, That the severity of the penalty is in proportion to the injustice of the law. The reason of this is simple, —the laws which counteract nature the most, are the most likely to be violated.

The publication, within the last half century, of a great number of excellent treatises on the subject of penal laws, without producing the least effect in any part of Europe, is a proof that no reform is to be expected in the general system of criminal jurisprudence, but from a radical change in the principle of government ^*.

A method of communicating instruction to every member of society is not difficult to discover, and would not be expensive in practice. The government generally establishes ministers of jus­tice in every part of the dominion. The first object of these ministers ought to be, to see that every person is well instructed in his duties and in his rights; that he is rendered perfectly acquainted with every law, in its true spirit and tendency, in order that he may know the reason of his obedi­ence, and the manner of obtaining redress, in case [Page 83] he should deem it unjust; that he is taught to feel the cares and interests of an active citizen, to consider himself as a real member of the state, know that the government is his own, that the society is his friend, and that the officers of the state are the servants of the people A person possessing these ideas will never violate the laws, unless it be from necessity; and such necessity is to be prevented by means which are equally obvious.

For the purposes of compulsive justice it is not enough that the laws be rendered familiar to the people; but the tribunals ought to be near at hand, easy of access, and equally open to the poor as to the rich; the means of coming at justice should be cheap, expeditious, and certain; the mode of process should be simple and perfectly intelligible to the meanest capacity, unclouded with mysteries and unperplexed with forms. In short, justice should familiarise itself as the well-known friend of every man; and the consequence seems na­tural, that every man would be a friend to jus­tice.

After considering what is the duty of society, and what would be the practice of a well-organized government, relative to the subject of this chapter, it is almost useles [...] to inquire, what is the practice of all the old governments of Europe. We may be sure beforehand, that it is directly the contra­ry,—that, like all other parts of the system, it is the inversion of every thing that is right and rea­sonable. The pyramid is every where placed on the little end, and all sorts of extraneous rubbish are constantly brought to prop it up.

Unequal governments are necessarily founded in ignorance, and they must be supported by igno­rance; to deviate from their principle would be [Page 84] voluntary suicide. The first great object of their policy is to perpetuate that undisturbed ignorance of the people, which is the companion of po­verty, the parent of crimes, and the pillar of the State.

In England, the people at large are as perfectly ignorant of the acts of parliament after they are made, as they possibly can be before. They are printed by one man only, who is called the King's printer,—in the old German character, which few men can read,—and sold at a price that few can afford to pay. But lest some scraps or com­ments upon them should come to the people through the medium of public newspapers, every such paper is stamped with a heavy duty; and an act of parliament is made to prevent men from letting their papers to read ^*; so that not one person in a hundred sees a newspaper once in a year. If a man at the bottom of Yorkshire discovers by in­stinct that a law is made, which is interesting for him to know, he has only to make a journey to London, find out the King's printer, pay▪ halfpenny a page for the law, and learn the Ger­man [Page 85] alphabet. He is then prepared to spell out his duty.

As to the general system of the laws of the land, on which all property depends, no man in the kingdom knows them, and no man pretends to know them. They are a fathomless abyss, that exceeds all human faculties to sound. They are studied, not to be understood, but to be disputed; not to give information, but to breed confu­sion. The man, whose property is depending on a suit at law, dares not look into the gulph that se­parates him from the wished-for decision; he has no confidence in himself, nor in reason, nor in justice; he mounts on the back of a lawyer, like one of Mr. Burke's heroes of chivalry between the wings of a griffin, and trusts the pilotage of a man, who is superior to himself only in the confidence which results from having nothing at stake.

To penetrate into what are called the courts of justice on the continent, and expose the general system of their administration in those points which are common to most countries in Europe, would be to lay open an inconcievable scene of in­iquity; it would be,

What are we to do with our sensibili [...] ▪ with our honest instinct of prop [...]ety, how [...] from exclamations of horror, while we contemplate a set of men, assuming the sacred garb of justice, for the uniform and well-known purpose of selling their decisions to the highest bidder! For a judge to receive a bribe, we should think an indelible stain upon his character as a man; but what shall we say of the state of human nature, where it is no disgrace to him as a judge? where it is not [Page 86] only expected as a matter of course, and practised without disguise, but is made almost a necessary part of the judiciary system?

Whether the practice of receiving bribes was the original idea on which is founded the venality of offices in modern governments, it is not to our purpose to inquire. But certain it is, they are concomitant ideas, and co-extensive practices; and it is designed that they should be so. In France, before the revolution, the office of judge was not indeed hereditary, like that of king; but it was worse; it was held up for sale by the king, and put at auction by the minister. As a part of the king's revenue arose from the sale of justice, the government sold all the offices in that department at fixed prices; but the minister made the bargains with those who would give him in most. Thus the seats of the judges became objects of specu­lation, open to all the world; and the man, whose conscience was the best fitted to make a profitable trade of deciding causes, could afford to give the highest price, and was consequently sure to be judge.

Justice then was a commodity which necessarily gave a profit to three sets of men, before it could be purchased by the suitor; even supposing it might have flowed to him in a direct channel. But this was a thing impossible; there were other descriptions of men, more numerous, if not more greedy, than those of whom we have spoken, through whose hands it must pass and repass, be­fore it could arrive at the client, who had paid his money to the judge. These men, who infested the tribunals in all stages of the business, were divided in France, into about six classes. For want of the precise names in English to designate all their official distinctions, we shall rank the [Page 87] whole under the great appellation of Lawyers ^*. But though we here confound them together, as we often do objects at a distance; yet they were not to be so treated by the client. He must ad­dress them all distinctly and respectfully, with the same argumentum ad patronum, with which he had addressed the judge: as one or more of each class had a necessary part in bringing forward and putting backward every cause that came into court.

Lawyers in France served two important pur­poses, which it is supposed they do not serve in England: they added considerably to the revenues of the crown by the purchase of their places; and they covered the iniquity of the judges under the impenetrable vail of their own. In a cause of ordinary consequence, there was more writing to be done in France than there is even in England, perhaps by a hundred and fifty pages. The rea­son of this was, that it was more necessary to in­volve the question in mysteries and perplexities that should be absolutely inscrutable. For it must never be known, either at the time of trial or ever after, on what point or principle the cause was decided. To answer this end, the multiplying of the different orders of the managers, as well as encreasing the quantity of writing, had an admira­ble effect; it removed the possibility of fixing a [Page 88] charge of fraud or mismanagement on any one of the great fraternity, or of discovering, among the formidable piles of papers and parchments that enveloped the mysteries of the trial, in what stage the iniquity was introduced.

To call this whole system of operations a solemn farce, is to give no utterance to our feelings; to say it is a splendid mockery of justice by which individuals are robbed of their property, is almost to speak its praise.—The reflecting mind cannot rest upon it a moment, without glancing over society, and bewailing the terrible inroads made upon morals public and private, the devastation of principle, the outrage upon nature, the degrada­tion of the last particle of dignity by which we re­cognize our own resemblance in man.

Its obvious tendency is, by its enormous ex­pence, to bar the door of justice against the poor, who in such countries are sure to form the great body of mankind,—to render them enemies to society, by teaching that society is an enemy to them,—to stimulate them to crimes both from their own necessities, and from the example of their masters,—and to spread over the people at large an incrustation of ignorance, which exclu­ding all ideas of their duties and their rights, com­pels them to forget their relation to the human race.

Are these to be ranked among the circumstances which call for a change in the governments of Eu­rope? Or are we to join with Mr. Burke, and lament as an evil of the French revolution, That the ancient system "of jurisprudence will no more be studied?" The whi [...]ing of that good gentle­man on this idea, is about as rational, as it would be to lament that the noble science of Heraldry [Page 89] was in danger of being forgotten; or that men had lost the mystical meaning of Abracadabra. This word, serving as a charm, answered the same purpose in Medicine, as heraldry does in honour; or the old jurisprudence, in justice: it rendered men superstitious; and consequently, im­moral and unhappy.

It is so fashionable in Europe, especially among Englishmen, to speak in praise of the English jurisprudence, and to consider it as a model of perfection, that it may seem necessary for a person to begin with an apology for offering his ideas on that subject, if he means to deviate from the o­pinion so generally established. But instead of doing this, I will begin by apologizing for those who at this day support the established opinion: Your fairest apology, Gentleman, is, that you understand nothing of the matter. To assign any other, would be less favourable to your characters as honest men.

Exclusive of the rules by which the merits of a cause are to be decided (and which, if they could be ascertained, would be the law), the mere form of bringing a question before a court is of itself a science, an art, less understood, and more difficult to learn, than the construction and use of the most complicated machine, or even the motions of the heavenly bodies. It is not enough, that the administration of justice (which ought to be as simple as possible) is so involved in perplexity, that none but men of professional skill can pretend to understand it; but the professors are divided, as in France, into several distinct classes; each of which is absolutely necessary to lend a helping hand in every step of the progress of a cause. This [Page 90] dark multiplicity of form has not only removed the knowledge of law from the generality of men, but▪ has created such an expence in obtaining justice, that very few ever make the attempt. The courts are effectually shut against the great body of the people, and justice as much out of their reach, as if no laws existed ^*.

Those who have attempted to purchase justice through the necessary forms have never been known to pronounce eulogies on the courts. But their number has always been so small, that, had they uttered the anathemas that the system de­serves, their feeble voice could scarcely have been heard. No man, whose eyes are not blinded by fees or by prejudice, can look upon the enormous mass of writings which accumulate in a cause, without reflecting with indignation on the expence; one hundredth part of which would have been [Page 91] more than sufficient for every purpose of obtaining justice between the parties. A writer who should give the names and descriptions of the various par [...]s of a process, with the expences annexed to each part, would scarcely gain credit, except with professional men. Several hundred pounds are expended only in writing Bills, Subpoenas, Pleas, Demurrers, Answers, Petitions, Orders, Mo­tions, Amendments, Notices, Reports, &c. in a single cause, where no witness is called.

Let us trace a few of the windings, and see where some of the paths lead which are laid down as necessary to obtaining a decision in Chancery; we shall there find how hundreds, and sometimes thousands of pounds are expended in a cause, before any defence is set up, and where no defence is ever intended to be set up. The suitor begins his incomprehensible operation, by stating his claim, in what is called a Bill, which he leaves at a cer­tain office belonging to the court, and obtains an order, called a subpoena, for summoning the defendant. This being done, the court requires the defendant to send an Attorney to write his name at another office of the court. This writing the name, is called an appearance; it answers no possible purpose, but that of increasing expences and fees of office, for which it is a powerful engine. For if the defendant does not comply, an expence of thousands of pounds may be made, to compel him. A cap [...]as, a process for outlawry, a commis­sion of rebellion, and an order and commission of sequestration, are pursued in their proper routine, till he consents to write his name.

If the plaintiff has property to go through this process, he may be said to be able just to keep his ground; and his cause is in every respect [Page 92] precisely where it was at first. If he has not sufficient property, the cause is lost for want of fees; and he is no better than if he had never been able to have begun the suit.

We will, however, suppose, that the defendant very good naturedly writes his name; he is then entitled to a certain delay, during which, the court informs him, he must plead, demur, or answer to the bill. When this time expires, he is inti­tled to a farther delay of four weeks. But though he is entitled to this farther delay, and neither the plaintiff nor the court can refuse it, still he must employ a solicitor to make a brief for counsel; and this solicitor must attend the counsel, and give him and his clerk their fees, for moving the court for this delay, which cannot be refused. The counsel must attend the court and make the motion; the solicitor must attend the court, and pay for the order, entry, and copy; and then must cause it to be served.

At the end of this term of four weeks, the de­fendant is entitled to a farther delay of three weeks; which again cannot be refused. But he must pay his solicitor for drawing and engrossing a petition for that purpose, and the petition must be present­ed, and answered for which he must pay; he must also pay for order, entry, copy and service. At the end of these three weeks, he is in the same manner entitled to a farther delay of two weeks; but the same farce must be acted over again to ob­tain it. And a very solemn farce it is to the par­ties, a very pleasant farce to the officers of the court, and a very ridiculous farce to every body else

If, during all this time, the defendant had sto [...] paying, or the solicitor had stopt writing, the same [Page 93] process, which was used to compel his appear­ance, must have been repeated, to wit, capias, outlawry, commission of rebellion, and sequestration. But we have arrived at the time when the defend­ant is in duty bound to answer to the bill; and here, if he does not answer, then capias, outlawry, rebellion, and sequestration again.

These terms must be explained to the reader; and this is the best opportunity to do it. For the cause still remaining precisely where it was at first, we may suppose it sufficiently at rest, not to move during the explanation. A capias is an order, to take the man, and hold him in gaol till he obeys the order of the court; whether it be to write his name, or any thing else. The word outlawry explains, of itself, this horrid engine of the court. A commission of rebellion is an order issued, after the officer with the capias has searched and cannot find the man, and after an outlawry has taken place. It is directed to other persons, requiring them to take up the man who was guilty of rebellion in refusing to write his name. But as the officer with the capias, before outlawry, could not find the man, the issuing the commission of rebellion now, has no other meaning but fees. A sequestration is taking the whole property of the defendant into the hands of the court. And when this is done, the cause is soon done also; for no estate could last long there. When the money is gone the proceedings cease.

But let us suppose that the defendant has com­plied with all orders thus far, and has put in a good and sufficient answer. Let us leave out of our account all motions, petitions, decrees, or­ders, &c. for amending the bill, for referring to Masters the insufficiency of answers, reports upon those answers, and farther answers, and excep­tions [Page 94] to Masters' reports, and orders and decisions relative to them; and, instead of inquiring into the expence of these, let us go back and ask wha [...] is the use of all, or of any part of this process? Thirty thousand Lawyers (this is said to be the number in the kingdom) are n [...]w living on just such stuff as the process here described; and I call on them all, to point out the purpose that any of it ever served, or ever can serve to their cli­ents.

It must be remembered, that all the proceed­ings thus far were to end in three pretended ob­jects,—to compel an appearance; to obtain the usual and legal time for the defendant to prepare [...]is answer; and to compel him to give his an­swer. For the appearance, which is the solemn appellation given to the action of writing a name, it would be an insult to the understanding of a child, to tell him that this could be of any service towards forwarding justice. Next comes the suc­cession of applications and orders, for time to an­swer the bill. The practice of the court, which is the law in this case, allows the defendant, [...] a short term, and then the delay of four weeks▪ three weeks, and two weeks; which in all reck­onings, unless it be in law, make nine weeks▪ And if that be a reasonable time, when divide into three parts, why is it not so before it is d [...]vided? And if neither the party, nor the cour [...] nor any body else, has a right to refuse that te [...] of time, why might not the defendant take it without the expence of asking three times? Th [...] remainder of the process goes to compel the de [...]fendant to give in an answer to the bill. A [...] what is the importance of an answer? To [...] [Page 95] this question, let us consider the object of the bill, to which the answer is required.

The bill expresses the claim of the plaintiff, and points out the nature of the decree, which he prays may be made in his favour against the de­fendant. Notice is given to the defendant that such a suit is pending, and that he may appear and show cause why the decree should not be made. Having given this notice, it is not only cruel, but absurd, to think of forcing him to defend himself whether he will or no. One would suppose it little to the purpose, to make the attempt, Why may not the subpoena, which gives notice to the defendant, point out the day, beyond which he cannot give an answer? then, if he chooses to de­fend, hear him candidly; but if he refuses to come, and does not choose to defend,—proceed in the cause; he is willing that the decree should pass. Can it be reasonable,—can it be any thing short of flat contradiction and nonsense, to compel him to appear, to compel him to ask for a delay, and to compel him to defend? Can his defence be necessary in doing justice to the plaintiff? and, if he will not defend himself, can you make him? Can any one of the whole host of all the professions of the law show the least shadow of use in all this flourish of process thus far, but fees on the one hand, and oppression on the other?

To proceed through all the forms, to the end of a suit in chancery, would be to write a com­mentary on many volumes of practice, and would be calling the patience of the reader to a trial, from which it would certainly shrink. but there are parts as much worse than what we have descri­bed, as this is worse than common sense. Strip from the administration of justice the forms that [Page 96] are perfectly useless and oppressive, and counsel­lors will have much less to do; while the whole order of attornies and solicitors will fall to the ground If the mysteries of nonsense were out of the way, a counsellor, who was called upon to hazard his reputation on the manner of conduct­ing his clients cause, would no more have it pre­pared and brought forward by an attorney, than a man of business would hazard his fortune by doing that business through an ignorant agent, which he could more easily do himself. The quantity of writing, really necessary, in a simple and dignified system of practice, is so small, as to be perhaps incredible to those who are acquainted only with the English process.

I have seen the mode of conducting this business in a country, where the common law of England is the general rule of decision, and where the ad­judications of Westminster-hall are authorities, as much as they are in Great-Britan. But the law [...] of that country have stripped legal process of [...] principal follies, and the consequence is, that the whole profession of attornies and solicitors [...] vanished, the counsellor does the whole business of his client; and so simple is the operation, that a man may with ease commence and carry through every stage, to final judgment and execu­tion, five hundred causes in a year. And the whole proceedings in all these shall not afford wri­ting enough to employ a single clerk one hour i [...] twenty four. The proceedings and judgments i [...] five hundred causes, in this country, would fill a warehouse. And yet in that country, every alle­gation is necessary in their declarations and plead­ings, which are necessary in Westminster-hall. [...] they are not paid by the line their declara [...] [Page 97] have but one count, and in that count there is no tantology. And so little is the expence of suits, where no more is done than is necessary for justice, that judgment, in a cause where there is no de­fence, may be obtained for less than ten shillings; and every person employed be fully paid for his service ^{* 22}.

Men who are habituated to the expenses incur­red in law-suits in England, will scarcely be per­suaded of the extent to which a reform would be carried, on a general destruction of abuses. But let them reflect, that when law proceedings are stripped of every thing, but what the nature of the [Page 98] subject requires, there is no mystery left. The rational part that remains is soon comprehended, and easily retained in memory. This would doubtless augment the number of suits; for it would open the courts to vast multitudes of people, against whom they are now effectually shut. But in proportion as it increased the number of law-suits, it would diminish the quantity of law-busi­ness; and the number of lawyers would dwindle to one tenth of what it is at present. In the S [...]ate above alluded to, the number of men supported by this profession is to the whole population, as one to 4600. Reduce the lawyers here to that pro­portion, and there would be left about three thou­sand in the kingdom. It is asserted, (I know not on what ground) that the present number is thirty thousand. Allowing it to be true, an army of twenty-seven thousand lawyers, on this reform, would find some other employment. But whether the reduction would amount to the number here sup­posed, or to half of it, is a question of little mo­ment. [Page 99] Saving the expence of maintaining twenty or thirty thousand men in an useless occupation, and sending them to profitable business, however important the object may appear, bears no pro­portion to the advantage of opening the door of justice to the people, and habituating them to an easy and well-known method of demanding their right.

[Page 100]There is a strange idea prevalent in England, (it has had its day in America) that it is good policy to raise the expences of legal proceedings above the reach of the lower classes of people; as it lessens the number of suits. This kind of reasoning ap­pears too absurd to support its own weight for a moment; and it would be beneath our serious no­tice, were it not for the reflection, that men of superficial research are perpetually caught by it. The human mind is fitted, from its own indolence, to be dazzled by the glare of a proposition; and to receive and utter for truth, what it never gives itself the trouble to examine. There is no para­dox among all the enormities of despotism, but what finds its advocates from this very circum­stance. We must not therefore scorn to encounter an argument because it is foolish. The business of sober philosophy is often a task of drudgery; it must sometimes listen to the most incoherent cla­mours, which would be unworthy of its attention, did they not form a part of the general din, by which mankind are deafened and misled.

For a man to bring into court a suit that is manifestly unjust, is a crime against the state; to hinder him from bringing one that is just, is a crime of the state against him. It is a poor com­pliment to the wisdom of a nation, to suppose that no method can be devised for preventing the first of these evils, without running into the last; and the last is ten times the greatest of the two. The French, who appear to have been destined to give lessons to the world by the wisdom of their new [Page 101] institutions, as well as by the folly of their old, have found the secret of imposing a small fine on a vexatious plaintiff; and of establishing many other regulations on this subject, which effectually shut the door of the tribunal against the oppressor, while it easily opens to the feeblest cry of the op­pressed.

They have likewise established a method of communicating the knowledge of the laws to every human creature in the kingdom, however ignorant he may be in other respects. They are printed and pasted up on public buildings in every town and village, and read and explained by the curate from the pulpit in every parish. It is in con­templation likewise to institute a general system of public instruction, on a more useful and ex­tensive plan than has ever yet been devised. Se­veral enlightened philosophers are busied in these researches; and several societies are formed, whose object is to discover and bring forward the best concerted plan for this important purpose. In their whole system of distributing knowledge and justice, they seem to be aiming at a degree of perfection which promises great success. With all my partiality for the institutions of the United States, I should quote them (in comparison to those of France) with less confidence on the subject of this chapter, than of any other.

In the administration of justice the American States in general, are too much attached to the English forms; which serve to increase the ex­pence and to mysticise the business, to a degree that is manifestly inconsistent with the dignity of a true republic. But in respect to Public Instruc­tion, there are some circumstances which deserve [Page 102] to be mentioned to their praise. I am going to speak only of the particular State with which I am best acquainted. How many of the others are better regulated in this respect, and how many are worse, I am not accurately informed. This state, (which contains less than 240,000 inhabit­ants) is divided into about one hundred towns. These are sub-divided into small portions, called school-districts, suitable for the support of small schools. Each of these districts has a drawback on the state treasury for a sum, which bears a proportion to the public taxes paid by the inha­bitants of the district, and which is about half equal to the support of a school-master. But this sum can be drawn only on condition, that a school is maintained in the district. ^*

The following remarkable consequences seem to have resulted from this provision: There is not perhaps in that state, a person of six years old, and of common intellects, who cannot rea [...] and very few, of twelve, who cannot write and cast accounts;—besides the usual books that are found in every family, it is computed that there are in the state about three hundred public libraries, which have been formed by voluntary subscription among the people of the districts and the parishes; —till about the year 1768, which was more than one hundred and thirty years after the settlement of the state, no capital punishment, as I am infor­med, had been inflicted within its jurisdiction, nor any person convicted of a capital offence; since [Page 103] that period, very few have been convicted, and those few are generally Europeans by birth and education;—there is no extreme poverty in the state, and no extraordinary wealth accumulated by individuals.

It would be absurd to suppose, that Public In­struction is by any means carried to the perfection that it ought to be, in this or any other State in the universe. But this experiment proves, that good morals and equal liberty are reciprocal causes and effects; and that they are both the parents of national happiness, and of great prosperi­ty.

All governments that lay any claim to respect­ability or justice, have proscribed the idea of ex­post-facto laws, or laws made after the performance of an action, constituting that action a crime, and punishing a party for a thing that was innocent at the time of its being done. Such laws would be so flagrant a violation of natural right, that in the French and several of the American State Consti­tutions they are solemnly interdicted in their De­clarations of Rights. This proscription is like­wise considered as a fundamental article of English liberty, and almost the only one that has not been habitually violated, within the present century. But let us resort to reason and justice, and ask what is the difference between a violation of this article and the observance of that tremenduous maxim of jurisprudence, common to all the nations above mentioned, ^* ignorantia legis neminem excusat?

Most of the laws of society are positive regula­tions, not taught by nature. Indeed, such only [Page 104] are applicable to the subject now in question. For ignorantia legis can have reference only to laws ari­sing out of society, in which our natural feelings have no concern; and where a man is ignorant of such a law, he is in the same situation as if the law did not exist. To read it to him from the tribunal, where he stands arraigned for the breach of it, is to him precisely the same thing as it would be to originate it at the time by the same tribunal, for the express purpose of his condemnation. The law till then, as relative to him, is not in being. He is therefore in the same predicament that the society in general would be, under the operation of an ex-post-facto law ^*. Hence we ought to con­clude that, as it seems difficult for a government to dispense with the maxim above-mentioned, a free people ought, in their declaration of rights, to provide for universal public instruction. If they neglect to do this, and mean to avoid the absurdity of a self-destroying policy, by adher­ing [Page 105] to a system of justice which would preserve a dignity and inspire a confidence worthy the name of liberty, they ought to reject the maxim alto­gether; and insert in their declaration of rights, that instruction alone can constitute a duty; and that laws can enforce no obedience, but where they are explained.

It is truly hard and sufficiently to be regretted that any part of society should be obliged to yield obedience to laws, to which they have not literally and personally consented. Such, however, is the state of things; it is necessary that a majority should govern. If it be an evil to obey a law to which we have not consented, it is at least a necessary evil; but to compel a compliance with orders which are unknown, is carrying injustice beyond the bounds of necessity; it is absurd, and even impossible. Laws in this case may be avenged, but cannot be obeyed; they may inspire terror, but can never command respect.

CHAP. V. REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE.

A Nation is surely in a wretched condition, when the principal object of its government is the increase of its public revenue. Such a state of things is in reality a perpetual warfare between the few individuals who govern, and the great bo­dy of the people who labour. Or, to call things by their proper names, and use the only language [Page 106] that the nature of the case will justify, the real oc­cupation of the governors is either to plunder or to steal, as will best answer their purpose; while the business of the people is to secrete their pro­perty by fraud, or to give it peaceably up, in pro­portion as the other party demands it; and then, as a consequence of being driven to this necessity, they slacken their industry, and become miserable through idleness; in order to avoid the mortifica­tion of labouring for those they hate.

The art of constructing governments has usually been to organize the Sate in such a manner, as that this operation could be carried on to the best advantage for the administrators; and the art of administring those governments has been, so to vary the means of seizing upon private property, as to bring the greatest possible quantity into the public coffers, without exciting insurrections. Those governments which are called despotic, deal more in open plunder; those that call them­selves free, and act under the cloak of what they teach the people to reverence as a constitution, are driven to the arts of stealing. These have suc­ceeded better by theft than the others have by plunder; and this is the principal difference by which they can be distinguished. Under these constitutional governments the people are more in­dustrous, and create property faster; because they are not sensible in what manner and in what quantities it is taken from them. The adminis­tration, in this case, operates by a compound movement; one is to induce the people to work, and the other to take from them their earn­ings.

In this view of government, it is no wonder hat it should be considered as a curious and com­plicated [Page 107] machine, too mysterious for vulgar con­templation, capable of being moved by none but experienced hands, and subject to fall in pieces by the slightest attempt at innovation or improvement. It is no wonder that a church and an army should be deemed necessary for its support; and that the double guilt of impiety and rebellion should follow the man who offers to enter its dark sanctuary with the profane light of reason. It is not surprising that kings and priests should be supposed to have derived their authority from God, since it is evidently not given them by men; that they should trace to a supernatural source claims which nature never has recognized, and which are at war with every principle of society.

I constantly bear in mind, that there is a res­pectable class of men in every country in Europe, who, whether immediately interested in the admi­nistration of the governments or not, are consci­entiously attached to the old established forms. I know not how much pain it may give them to see exposed to public view the various combinations of iniquity which appear to me to compose the [...]ystem. But I should pay a real compliment to their sensibility, in supposing that their anguish can be as great on viewing the picture, as mine has been in attempting to draw it; or, that they can shudder as much at the prospect of a change, as I have done in contemplating society under the distortions of its present organization. I see the noble nature of man so cruelly debased,—I see the horse and the dog in so many instances raised to a rank far superior to beings whom I must ac­knowledge as my fellow-creatures, and whom my heart cannot but embrace with a fraternal af­fection which must increase with the insults I see [Page 108] them suffer,—I see the pride of power and of rank mounted to so ungovernable a height in those whom accident has called to direct the affairs of nations,— I see the faculty of reason so completely dormant in both these classes and morality, the indispensi­ble bond of union among men, so effectually ba­nished by the unnatural combinations, which in Europe are called Society,—that I have been al­most determined to relinquish the disagreeable task which I had prescribed to myself in the first part of this work, and, returning to my country, en­deavour in the new world to forget the miseries of the old.

But I reflect that the contemplation of these miseries has already left an impression on my mind too deep to be easily effaced.—I am likewise con­vinced that all the moral evils under which we la­bour, may be traced without difficulty, to their proper source,—that the spirit of investigation, which the French revolution has awakened in ma­ny parts of Europe, is stimulating the people to pursue the enquiry, and will consequently lead them to apply the remedy. Under this prospect every person who but thinks he can throw the least light upon the subject, is called upon for his assistance; and this duty to his fellow-creatures becomes more imperious, as it is increased by the probability of success.

In considering the subject of Revenue and Expen­diture, as in other articles that I have treated, I shall confine myself chiefly to the great outlines of the system; only noticing its effect on the moral habits which must be considered as the vital prin­ciples of society, and which ought always to be kept in view as the first object of government, both in its original constitution and in every part [Page 109] of its administration. I was indeed sensible that this subject would require more details; and that it might be useful to form an estimate of the quan­tity of contributions necessary for any given portion of mankind united in a national interest; as we might thus be convinced how small a revenue would be sufficient for all the purposes of a rational government. But I find myself happily relieved from this part of my task, by the appearance of the second part of the Rights of Man, in which this branch of the subject is treated in that per­spicuous manner which might be expected from its author; a man whom I consider as a luminary of the age, and one of the greatest benefactors of mankind. Neither my work, nor any other that shall be written for ages to come, will surely find a reader, who will not have read the Rights of Man.

Men are gregarious in their nature; they form together in society, not merely from necessity, to avoid the evils of solitude, but from inclination and mutual attachment. They find a positive pleasure in yielding assistance to each other, in communi­cating their thoughts and improving their faculties. This disposition in man is the source of morals; they have their foundation in nature, and receive their nourishment from society. The different portions of this society, that call themselves nations, have generally established the principle of securing to the individuals who compose a nation, the exclusive enjoyment of the fruits of their own labour; reserving however to the governing power the right to reclaim from time to time so much of the property and labour of individuals as shall be deemed necessary for the public service. This is [Page 110] the general basis on which property, public and private, has hitherto been founded. Nations have proceeded no farther. Perhaps in a more im­proved state of society, the time will come, when a different system may be introduced; when it shall be found more congenial to the social nature of man to exclude the idea of seperate property, and with that the numerous evils which seem to be entailed upon it. But it is not my intention in this work to enter upon that enquiry.

When the feudal system, with all its ferocities, was in full operation, the superior lord, who re­presented the power of the state, granted the lands to his immediate vassals, on condition of military service. They engaged to serve in the wars of the lord paramount a certain number of days in the year, at their own expence. Thus they stipulated as to the quantity of service; but gave up the right of private judgment, as to the object of the war. This is the origin of the revenue system of mod­ern Europe; and it began by debasing the minds of the whole community; as it hurried them into actions, of which they were not to enquire into the justice or propriety. Then came the socage­tenures; which were lands granted to another class of vassals, on condition of ploughing the lord's fields and performing his husbandry. This was a more rational kind of service; though, by a shocking pervertion of terms, it was called less honorable.

In proportion as war became less productive, and its profits more precarious, than those of hus­bandry, the tenures upon knight-service were converted into socage-tenures; and finally it was found convenient in most cases, especially in Eng­land, to make a commutation of the whole into [Page 111] money, in certain fixed sums; and this, by its subsequent modifications and extensions, has ob­tained the name of a land-tax. The feudal rev­enues of the crown, though they were supposed to be sufficient for the ordinary purposes of govern­ment, were capable of being increased on any ex­traordinary occasion; and such extraordinary oc­casions were sure to happen, as often as the gov­ernment chose to draw more money from the peo­ple. It began this operation under the name of aids to the king, subsidia regis; and, in England (before it was found necessary to work the engine by regular parliaments) various expedients were used to raise from different classes of the commu­nity these extraordinary aids. In many cases the authority of the pope was brought in to the assist­ance of the king, to enable him to levy money for the court. The pope, as head of the church, re­ceived a revenue from the people of England through the English clergy; and the king, on cer­tain occasions, agreed with him that he should double his demand; on condition that the addi­tional sum to be raised, should be divided between themselves. ^*

A perpetual pretext for these additional imposi­tions was always to be found in foreign wars.— Edward the first must subdue the Welch; a long succession of kings made the glory of the British nation to consist in the reduction of Ireland; others, in conquering the tomb of Christ; and others, the crown of France. But in common occurrencies, where the call for money could not be predicated on any national object sufficiently glaring to excite the enthusiasm or rouse the fears [Page 112] of the people, it was the policy of the king to de­tach some particular classes of the community from the common interest, and to extort money from them, as from a common enemy. Thus all strangers were heavily taxed on coming into the realm; thus Jews, with all the wealth they possess­ed, were declared to be the absolute property of the king; ^* thus, after the religion of the govern­ment was changed, the papists and non-jurors were taxed double to the professors of the national re­ligion; and thus the king could take a savage ad­vantage of the misfortunes of individuals, and seize their proper [...]y, under the title of wrecks, waifs, treasure-trove, strays, amercements, and forfeitures.

These, and a vast variety of other inventions, have been practised by the English government, to legalize partial robberies, and take possession of the people's money, without the trouble of ask­ing for it. But all these means were insufficient to supply the unlimited expences of a government founded on orders, privileges, rank, and ignorance. The most effectual way to carry on the great busi­ness of revenue was found to be through the inter­vention of a parliament; and for this purpose the farce of representation has been acted over in this country, to much better effect than any species of fraud or violence has been in any other.

[Page 113]It would be an insult to the understanding of any reader at this day, to describe to him a thing so well known, as the manner in which this game is played between the different branches of the government. The secret is out; and the friends of the system, who used to be occupied in conceal­ing its operation, are now engaged in defending it. The drift of their defence is to change the mode of the deception; and persuade the people by argument, to suffer to pass before their eyes in open day-light, scenes which have hitherto been acted only in the dark. The curtain has fallen from their hands; and they now declare that the play can go on with­out it. This for England, forms a new aera in cabinet politics. While the system remains the same, the scheme for carrying it on is totally new-modelled; and, like other novelties in the course of human improvement, it becomes a proper sub­ject of our investigation.

I have known a juggler, who, after having for a long time excited wonder and drawn money from the multitude, by tricks which were suppo­sed to be the effect of magic, would come for­ward with an engaging frankness, and declare that there was really nothing supernatural in the art; that it was only the effect of a little experi­ence and attention to physical causes, not beyond the capacity of any one in the company; that, though he had deceived them thus far, he was now ready to undeceive them; and, for another fee, he would go through the same course again, with the explanations. This ingenious confession redoubled their curiosity; the spectators continu­ed their attention, and renewed their contribu­tions.

[Page 114]The government of Great Britain, under king, lords and boroughs, is now defended both in and out of parliament, by arguments unknown to for­mer politicians. As nearly as any words, except the right ones, can express the full force of these arguments, they are stated by their authors in the following language: "No people ever has been or ever can be capable of knowing what is for their own good, of making their own laws, or of understanding them after they are made: as the people of England, during the time of the com­monwealth, imbibed a different opinion, it has been thought best, especially since the last revolu­tion, to cherish them in their error, in order to come more easily at their money. We therefore told them that they were free; that they, as En­glishmen, ought to be free, because their ancestors were so; that English liberty was the envy and admiration of the world; that the French were their natural enemies, because they were slaves; and it was necessary to make a war once in seven years, to keep up this idea▪ that we were sorry for the increasing burthen of their taxes; but that was a circumstance not to be regarded by a free people, as they had the privilege of taxing them­selves, and their taxes were the price of their freedom in church and state; that, we intended to lessen their burthens as soon as the enemies to our religion and to our happy constitution were destroyed. But now, gentlemen, we see you have discovered, and we are willing to acknow­ledge, that this was all a deception: as to liberty, it is but a name; man gives it up on entering into society, in order to enjoy the benefits of being governed; it never was nor ever will be, realized by any nation under heaven; witness the horrors [Page 115] of pretended liberty in France, the daily assassina­tions and perpetual robberies which you see in Mr. Burke's book from beginning to end; wit­ness the late infatuation of the Americans; who, already recovering their senses, and sick of their boasted independence, ^* are now wishing to return to the protection of their mother-country, where they could purchase their laws ready made by us, who understand the business; as to the church, we are convinced it is no matter on what sort of religion it is founded, provided it be well connec­ted with the state. We shall say nothing in fu­ture of the burthen of taxes, as it has been falsly called, the phrase itself has no longer any mean­ing; it is now clearly known that public taxes are, in themselves, a public benefit; every well-wisher to his country must wish them to increase; and for that purpose he will do all in his power to multiply the occasions for creating them; for it is acknowledged by all good subjects, that a national debt is national prosperity, and that we grow rich in proportion to the money we pay out. We are as frank to confess, as any caveller is to assert, that the House of Commons is not a representa­tion of the people; it has no connection with them, and it is no longer to our purpose to sup­pose that it has; for the people have nothing to do with the government▪ except to be governed; but the House of Commons is retained in the state, for the same reason that the other branches of the le­gislature, and that courts and armies are retained, [Page 116] for the sake of increasing the wealth and happiness of the people in the augmentation of the revenue."

Let any person look over the whole chaos of writings and speeches that have been published within the last year against innovations in the go­vernment, and I believe he will scarcely find an argument more or less than what are here compri­zed. Now this is clearly a different ground from what has heretofore been taken in this country for the support of the old system. It used to be thought necessary to flatter and deceive; but here every thing is open and candid. Mr. Burke, in a frenzy of passion, has drawn away the veil; and aristocracy, like a decayed prostitute, whom paint­ing and patching will no longer embellish, throws off her covering, to get a livelihood by displaying her ugliness.

It is hard to pronounce with certainty on the success of a project so new; but it appears to me extremely improbable that the naked deformities of despotism can long be pleasing to a nation so enlightened as the one to which these arguments are addressed. I cannot but think they are ill addressed, and that their authors have missed their policy in suffering the people to open their eyes to their true situation. It is certain that the Cardinal de Richlieu has given them different advice. He, like most other great men, is less known by his writings than his actions; but he left a posthu­mous work, called a Political Testament, which has been remarkably neglected by those for whose good it was intended; and by none more than by the present friends of aristocracy in England. That profound politician observes, ‘That sub­jects with knowledge, sense or reason, are a [...] monstrous as a beast with an hundred eyes, and [Page 117] that such a beast would never bear its burthen peaceably The people must be hood-winked, or rather blinded, if you would have them tame and patient drudges. In short, you must treat them every way like pack-horses or mules, not excepting the bells about their necks; which by their perpetual jingling, may be of use to drown their cares.’

It must be observed, however, that in the bu­siness of taxation, which is nearly all the business of a public nature that is done by the government in England; a policy not very different from that of Richlieu has been practised with great success. The aggregate quantity of the revenue raised upon the people has indeed been somewhat known; but the portion paid by each individual, and the time, manner and reason of his paying it, are circum­stances enveloped in total darkness. To keep the subject ignorant of these things is the great secret in the modern science of finance. The money he pays to government being incorporated with every thing on which he lives, all that he can know of the matter is, that whether he eats, drinks or sleeps, walks or rides, sees the light or breathes the air,—whatever he does, drains from him a tax; and this tax is to support the luxury of those who tell him they are born to govern. But on which of these functions the tax falls the heaviest— whether the greatest proportion lies upon his bread or his beer, his shoes or his hat, his labours or his pleasures, his virtues or his vices, it is impossible for any man to know. As therefore he cannot dispense with the whole of his animal functions, without ceasing to exist, and as this expedient is not often so eligible as [...]ul [...]mit [...]ing to the imposi­tion, [Page 118] there is no danger but the tax will be col­lected.

It is difficult to describe, perhaps impossible to conceive, the quantity of evils wrought in society from this mode of collecting revenue by decep­tion; or laying the duty in such a manner, that the people shall not be sensible when or how it is paid. This is extremely unlike that manly prin­ciple of mutual confidence on which men unite in society. It is the reverse of that conduct, which, arising from the open integrity of our own hearts, is the guarantee of integrity in others. It is a policy that must have originated from two con­tending interests in the nation, from a jealousy of their own power in the legislative body, from a knowledge that something was wrong in them­selves or in the system, and from a consciousness that one or the other, or both, were unworthy of the confidence of the people by whom they were supported.

I am aware that in the doctrine which I shall labour to establish on this subject, I shall have to encounter the whole weight of opinion of mode [...] times. Men of all parties, and of all descriptions, both the friends and the enemies of equal liberty, seem to be agreed in one point relative to pub [...] contributions: That the tax should be so far disg [...]sed, as to render the payment imperceptible at the [...] of paying it. This is almost the only point [...] which the old and new systems agree, in th [...] countries where a change of principle has take [...] place; it is one of those rare positions, on which theorists themselves have formed but one opinion. It is therefore not without much reflection, and as great a degree of caution as a serious advocate for truth ought ever to observe, that I shall pro­ceed [Page 119] to examine a position, which, resting on the accumulated experience of mank [...]nd, has not yet been shaken by enquiry.

I will begin by acknowledging the force of two observations, which go to the support of the pres­ent system, as it applies to most of the existing governments and to the present state of society in Europe: 1. As long as public revenues must re­main as great as they now are, and as dispropor­tioned to the abilities of the people, it is absolutely necessary to disguise the taxes on which they de­pend; otherwise they cannot be collected. 2. As long as these revenues are applied to the purposes to which they now are, it is impossible to collect them but by fraud or violence; and violence has been found by repeated trials, especially in Eng­land, not to answer the purpose so well as fraud. While society remains divided into two parties, which are constitutionally opposed to each other, it is impossible but that they must regard each other as enemies, and their conduct must be the dictate of mutual aversion. When the people see that pay­ing money to their governors, is paying it to their enemies, they certainly never can give it with a good will; and when they know that this money serves only to strengthen the hands of their oppres­sors in forging new weapons of oppression against themselves, they must feel an obligation to with­hold it, rather than to pay it. In this case, de­frauding the revenue is considered not only as justice to themselves, but as a duty to their chil­dren. A tax under these circumstances is more naturally objectionable than the Dane-gelt, which was formerly paid in England: that contribution was made by the people, to hire a foreign enemy to leave them in peace; and it always had a tempo­rary [Page 120] good effect. But a contribution paid to the people's enemies at home, who being few in number, must soon, if unsupported, fall of them­selves, cannot promise even a temporary benefit; the hand of the enemy that receives it, does not so much as lay down its weapon while it grasps the money. As long therefore as society continues in its present disordered condition, any arguments drawn from moral propriety must be overpowered by the strong voice of necessity; for reasons of nature generally fall in a conflict with reasons of state.

But as a new order of things begins to make its appearance, and principle is no longer to be bor­rowed from precedent, we will endeavour to dis­cover the ground of the received doctrine relative to taxation; and enquire how far that doctrine is, in itself, an object of reform. Out of the seven­teen millions sterling which are annually paid in­to the exchequer in England, but about two mil­lions and a half are levied in direct taxes; that is, in taxes laid in suc [...] a manner as to be paid direct­ly to the fiscal officers by the persons on whom the burthen falls. These are chiefly comprehended in the taxes on lands and houses. In France, be­fore the revolution, the proportion of direct taxes was much greater. According to the statement of M. Necker, it was near eight millions sterling, out of about twenty-four millions and a half, of which the public revenue consisted. This is something less than a third; while the proportion in Eng­land is little more than a seventh. These propor­tions are supposed by some of the most approved reasoners on the subject, in each country, particu­larly M. Necker and Sir John Sinclair, to be as high as it would be prudent to go with direct tax­ation. [Page 121] The remaining portion of the immense revenues in these two countries, about sixteen mil­lions and a half for France, and fourteen and a half for England, was raised in the former, and is still raised in the latter, by indirect taxation; by customs, excise, and inland duties of various kinds, called taxes on consumption. The art of imposing these, so as to insure their collection, is to incor­porate the sum to be raised for government with the price of every thing for which men pay their money in the course of life. It is the hook with­in the bait of all our pleasures, of all our conveni­ences and of all our necessaries. The hook can­not be separated from the bait, nor the bait from our existence. With regard to individuals, the question is not, shall we pay the tax? but, shall we exist? The continuance of life is a continuance of the tax; and the language of the system is, pay the debt to government, or pay the debt to na­ture.

It is said in ethics, on the subject of necessity, that, supposing their is no choice of action, there can be no moral agency, and no virtue. We will not enquire into the propriety of the supposition as it re­spects our relation to the Deity, and our subjection to the great laws of nature; but there can be no doubt that the reasoning is just, when applied to the laws of society. Perhaps it is true, that, though I am prompted by the invisible destiny of nature, to do an action for the good of my fellow-creatures, this action is virtuous; but when the necessity for this action arises directly from the positive laws of society, in whose favour it is to be performed—when the argument derives its force from the ax held over my neck, no idea of virtue can be annexed to the action; it is merely me­chanical. [Page 122] On this ground we may establish a position, which I believe will not be controvert­ed: that the exercise of private judgment is the foundation of moral virtue; and consequently, that all operations of government carry destruction to the latter, in proportion as they deprive us of the former. An arbitrary order imposed by a master, whether it be upon a nation or a simple domestic servant, tends to debase the mind, and crush that native dignity which is absolutely neces­sary to the existence of merit, or of self approba­tion. And the effect that such an order produces on the mind is nearly the same, whether the action enforced be right or wrong.

The true object of the social compact is to im­prove our moral faculties, as well as to supply our physical wants; and where it fails in the first [...] these, it certainly will fail in the last. But when the moral purpose is attained, there can be no fear but that the physical one will be the inseparable consequence; place society on this footing, and there will be no aid or duty that the general inter­est can require from individuals, but what every individual will understand. His duties, when first proposed, will all [...]e voluntary, and being clearly understood to be founded on the good [...] the whole community, he will find a greater per­sonal interest in the performance than he would in the violation. There is no position more undenia­ble in my apprehension, than that this would al­ways be the case with a great majority of any peo­ple; and if we suppose a small portion of refrac­tory persons, who, from want of original con­sent; or from a subsequent change of opinion, should refuse to perform their duties; in this [...]ase, the opinions of the great majority assume the sha [...]e [Page 123] of government, and procure a compliance by com­pulsion and restraint. This is the only sure foun­dation on which we can ever build the real dignity of society, or the corresponding energy of govern­ment. It is establishing the moral relations of men on the moral sense of men; and it is this union alone that can cherish our esteem or command our respect.

On this plan, it is of the utmost importance that the wants of the state should never be dis­guised, and that the duty of the individual, in sup­plying those wants, should never be performed by deception. If the state be properly organized, such disguise and deception will be unnecessary; and if we wish to preserve it from degeneration, they will be extremely dangerous; as, by attack­ing the moral sense of the people, they sap the foundation of the state.

When a company of merchants, or other pri­vate men, engage in an enterprise that requires con­tributions in money, we hear of no difficulties in raising the stipulated sums among the different partners in the company. Every partner makes it his business to understand the nature of the con­cern; he expects an advantage from the enter­prise, and pays his money with the same willing­ness, as he would pay it in his private business. He would feel himself insulted, if any disguise were thrown upon the subject, to cheat him into his duty. Indeed, when the enterprise has come to an end, or when there is an apprehension of loss, or a suspicion of mismanagement in the agents, it is natural to expect a reluctance in payment, which is only to be overcome by the arts of deception or the compulsion of law. But this is not the case while the company is in a pros­perous [Page 124] condition, and while its members are uni­ted by mutual confidence in pursuit of a common interest. A nation, whose government should be habitually in the hands of the whole community, would always be a company in this prosperous con­dition; its concerns would be a perpetual and promising enterprise, in which every individual would find his interest and repose his confidence. Personal protection and public happiness would be the objects aimed at in the administration; and these would be infallibly attained, because no hu­man accidents could prevent it. There could be no suspicion of mismanagement in the agents, they being perpetually under the control of the whole people. Every reason, therefore, which could induce individuals to with-hold their pecuni­ary contributions, would be entirely removed; and the same motives which influence a man to give his attention and pay his money in his own personal concerns, would engage him to do the same things in the concerns of the public.

If these positions are not true, then have I mis­conceived the character of the human heart, and the real effects to be wrought on society by a ra­tional system of government; but if they are ac­knowledged to be true, it ought to be an indispen­sible maxim to abolish and avoid every vestige of indirect taxation. It must appear evident, that to raise money from the people by any other method, than by openly assigning to every one his portion, and then demanding that portion as a direct con­tribution, is unnecessary to the object of revenue, and destructive to the first principles of society. It has long been complained of in England (so long that the complaint has almost ceased to make any impression even on the minds of those who repeat [Page 125] it) that the Excise is an odious tax The reason on which the complaint is founded is what the prin­ciple of government would naturally suggest; but it is not the reason which I should assign. The tax is said to be odious, chiefly because it throws a vexatious power into the hands of the revenue officers, to search the houses and inspect the affairs of individuals. As long as the government and the people are two opposite parties in the state, at continual enmity with each other, it is natural that each party should wish to conceal its opera­tions, the better to succeed in their mutual hostil­ity and defence; for secrecy is one of the weapons of war. But if the state consisted of no [...]hing more than one great society composed of all the people, if the government was their will, and its object their happiness, the reasons for secrecy would cease, the intestine war would cease, the par­ties would cease.

The business of the state and the business of in­dividuals might be safely exposed to all the world. An open generosity of conduct, the reciprocal sign and guarantee of integrity, would mark the character of every member of society, whether acting as a public agent, or as a private citizen.

But the great objection which ought to be made against the excise, is the same as will apply to customs, duties, and all other tricks of a similar kind, by which the money is drained from the people without their knowledge or consent. The whole system of indirect taxation, so universal in Europe, so much extolled by the ablest financiers, as necessary in composing their enormous masses of extorted revenue, is wrong from its foundation, and must be vicious in its practice. It is built on [Page 126] the great aristocratical principle, that men must be governed by fraud; and it can be only necessary to that system of management which divides the nation into two permanent parties, the party that receives and the party that pays.

The wretched resource that governments have found in lotteries, ^* tontines, and annuities upon separate lives, merits the severest censure, and ought to be held up to the execration of mankind, the moment we are ready to resort to the real prin­ciples of our nature, in managing the affairs of nations. A tontine partakes at once of the nature of lotteries and of simple life-annuities, and in­volves in itself the principal vices of both. Like a lottery it is founded in the spirit of gambling; and like a life-annuity, it detaches a man from the fe [...]lings and interests of his friends, of society and of all mankind, except those of the particular class of the tontine to which he belongs; and to them he is rendered, in a literal sense, a mortal enemy.

Borrowing money upon life-annuities, as an [Page 127] operation of government, has been much more practised in France than in England. The rea­son of this is well explained by Adam Smith. ^* It was owing to the superior influence, in that country, of those unnatural distinctions among families, which prevent them from associating with each other on the principles of mutual attach­ment; principles congenial to the human heart, and no less necessary to individual happiness, than to the good order of society and the prosperity of the state. The pride of birth and the jealousy of rank operate on society like congelation and concussion on a body of water: they freeze up the whole mass, and break it into a thousand pieces; which refuse to unite among themselves, or to answer the purposes which nature has assigned to that element. The genius of aristocracy, by the dis­tinctions of birth, had established in France almost as many ranks as th [...]e were families. These were perpetually repelling and repelled, torment­ed by jealousies, and kept asunder by artificial aversions, which silenced the voice of nature, and counteracted every object of society. A man in this frozen, and repulsive state of things, becomes a proper object for the government to seduce into a selfish hostility against the generous duties of life, by the temptation of life-annuities. An elegant French author describes the annuitant as having subdued every sentiment most dear to the human heart: "He amasses his whole capital upon his own head, makes the king his universal lega [...]ee, sells his own posterity at the rate of ten per cent. disinherits his brothers, nephews, friends, and sometimes his own children. He never marries; [Page 128] he vegetates, till the return of the quarter day, and enquires with eagerness in the morning whe­ther he is still alive; his whole exercise of body and mind consists in going once in three months to the notary at the corner of the street to sign his receipt, and obtain a certificate, that he is not yet dead." The officers of government know very well the advantages derived from long humid win­ters and epidemical diseases; and they must delight in the winnings of the game thus played by the public treasury in partnership with death. ^*

I am sensible that all these maxims, which go to a change of system in the collection of revenue, are destined to rest merely in speculation, in all [Page 129] countries still afflicted with unnatural plans of government; for so they must rest, till a total change of principle shall have taken place. But let it not be said that, on this account, the hints here given, are useless. If they are founded in truth and reason, the French Republic will soon be able to adopt them. By the time that its go­vernment shall be permanently settled, public debt will doubtless be very considerably reduced. Its necessary revenue will then be so small, com­pared with what it hitherto has been, the people will be so far elevated to the dignity of freemen, and accustomed to the duties of citizens, that they will find a sensible pleasure, rather than a servile task, in paying their contributions to the state. This reasoning may likewise be thought worthy of consideration in the United States of America; where perhaps it may be followed by the same effects. With respect to other countries, we must wait. A reformation of so deep a nature must be preceded by a perfect regeneration of society; such as can only be expected from a radical change of principle in the government.

I am sensible that men, whose experience in the management of public affairs has taught them to judge with severity on the various perversities of human nature, will find many obvious objec­tions to a theory so different from that on which their practise has been founded. If I do not an­ticipate [Page 130] all their arguments in form, I certainly mean to do it in substance; for I am not unapprised of their weight. Where the revenue is to be raised only for honest purposes, and where it is to be kept within a moderate compass, so that the taxes are to be no more than what a well-organi­zed community would be willing to lay upon itself, all arguments against raising the whole by direct taxation are reducible to these two points: the improvident temper of one class of men, and the unreasonable selfishness of others, have always ren­dered it difficult to obtain from them their contri­butions by direct and open means. The first of these classes comprehends many of the poor labour­ing people in the great towns. These people are in the habit of spending all they can earn, if not for the necessaries of life, at least for superstuous or vicious gratifications. They never provide for a future want, even their own; much less would they think of providing for the wants of the state. As it is vain to ask for money where it does not exist, no tax can be collected by applying directly to that class of men. It is therefore thought best to mingle the tax with their meat and drink; and, since they will spend all their money for these, let a part of it go to the state.

To this argument several answers may be offer­ed: first, it is in a great measure owing to the inherent defects of the government, that such a class of improvident men is found in any society. That men of good intellects and found constitu­tions should be inattentive to the means of procur­ing happiness, is certainly contrary to the analogy of nature. Indeed we overlook the cause when we go back to nature for it; there is no doubt but it is always to be found in their relative situation [Page 131] in the social state. It is the want of early instruc­tion, or the want of proper objects of emulation to stimulate the mind to a sense of its own dignity, as relative to the society in which it has to act. When the man is taught to know and feel that he never can rise above the condition of a beast of burthen, he acts at least a consistent part, perhaps even a wise part, in blunting his feelings, and beating down his mind to the level of his destina­tion. But it is not necessary to suppose that per­sons in general, who are found in the class above described, have to go through the same process of reasoning, and then of killing their reason, in or­der to arrive at this condition. Such indeed must have been the origin of the business in the first instance; but afterwards, the greater part are born in this element of apathy; they are surround­ed all their lives by no other examples but beings of this sort; and they never have a thought or a wish beyond their present situation. Their only object is to banish all thought and stifle every wish; and whether they perish under the walls of an ale­house, or in a king's ship, or on the king's gal­lows, is to them a matter of perfect indifference.

Such is the deplorable condition of a numerous class of beings whom monarchs and ministers must recognize as their fellow-creatures; and if they are called more vitious than their rulers, it is be­cause we have perverted the meaning of the word. But I am not finding fault with men of any partic­ular description whatever. In this drama of hu­man misery, in which so many distorted charac­ters are acted, our moral faculties are warped and fitted to the part assigned us; and we perform it without scruple or enquiry. The judge upon the bench is scarcely more to blame, than the stupid [Page 132] felon he condemns. The oppressors and the op­pressed, of every denomination, are in general, just as wicked and just as absurd as the system of gov­ernment requires. In mercy to them all, let the system be changed, let society be restored, and human nature retrieved.

Those who compose the middle classes of man­kind, the classes in which the semblance of nature most resides, are called upon to perform this task. It is true that, as reason is slow in returning to the mind from which it has been so fatally banish­ed, it will require some time to bring the men, who now fill the two extremes in the wretched scale of rank, to a proper view of their new sta­tion of citizens. Minds that have long been crushed under the weight of privilege and pride, or of misery and dispair, are equally distant from all rational ideas of the dignity of man. But even these classes may be brought back by degrees to be useful members of the state; and there would soon be no individual, but would find himself happier from the change. Place government on the wis­dom of the whole people, and they will always have wisdom enough to conduct it.

Second, under this natural organization of the state, should there remain a small number of im­provident men; unable to perform the duties of active citizens, there would be many reasons for excusing them from any part of the public bur­then. It is probable that very few instances would be found, where the inability did not arise from mental or bodily defects; in which case, their claim on society for support, would take place of any claim that society could have upon them for the payment of a tax. In addition to these, we may suppose a few others, who, from [Page 133] accidental losses, or other misfortunes to which separate property is liable, might be unable to an­swer the demand of the collector; these the gov­ernment would naturally excuse. If, after these, there should remain another class, who, wantonly regardless of their own happiness and of their so­cial duties, should be found without the means of payment, (which is a supposition I admit only for the sake of argument) the loss to the state would be very trifling in omitting to collect from them. It would bear no comparison to the infinite mis­chiefs that proceed from the system of disguise.

As to the other point of objection, arising from the unreasonable selfishness of some sorts of people, which makes it difficult to come at their money by any direct application to their persons, it deserves a farther consideration. But to give it a full dis­cussion would lead to a new range of speculation into human nature, extending to a length which I fear would be disproportionate to the limits as­sined to this chapter. I cannot be satisfied with the common opinions we have entertained in re­gard to the effect that property would naturally have upon the human mind. I say naturally, not in contradiction to the social state, but in contra­diction to the unnatural state, in which govern­ment, founded on conquest or accident, has hither­to placed mankind. A natural state of society, or a nation organized as human reason would dictate, for the purpose of supplying the greatest quantity of our physical wants, with the corresponding improvement of our moral faculties, has never yet been thoroughly tried. It must be confessed therefore that the opinions we have formed of the human heart stand a chance of being eroneous; as they have been formed under the disguise of im­pressions [Page 134] which do not belong to its nature. The picture of man could not have been fairly drawn while he sat with a veil upon his face. These facts being premised, if we wish to come at his genuine character, the history of his actions must be received with particular caution; as but little reliance can be had upon their testimoney. The labyrinths of error in which he has been forced to wander, the delusive tapers with which he has been conducted, and the load of abuses under which he has had to struggle, must have dimmed his understanding and debased his moral powers, to a degree that cannot yet be accurately known. He rises into light, astonished at what he is, ashamed at what he has been, and unable to con­jecture at what he may arrive.

Some general traits, however, may be discov­ered in his character, and recognized as the genu­ine stamp of nature. Among these may be rec­koned a certain desire in every individual of obtain­ing the good opinion of his fellow-creatures.— Some degree of distinction, at least so far as to ac­quire an individuality of character among his equals, and merit their respect and confidence, is doubtless natural to man; and whatever, in a true sense, is natural, is, in the same sense, laud­able. A man, without the artificial aid that soci­ety gives him, has but two resources on which he can rely for obtaining this respect; these are his physical and his moral powers. By the cultivation of one or both of these, he renders himself useful, and merits the distinction that he wishes. Proper­ty, which is called, perhaps with sufficient accura­cy, the creature of society, is secured to individuals, only for their private benefit; or at most as a pledge of their attachment to the community, by [Page 135] which it is guaranteed. It is not expected, on the true principles of society, that an individual should dispose of any part of his own property to the benefit of the public. So much of it as the public requires in contributions, is demanded as a right; it belongs to the state by the nature of the social contract, in return for the guarantee of the rest. It cannot be intended therefore that this should be the way in which a man should use his property, to procure to himself respect; neither is it so in fact. The reliance he has upon it, for the purpose of respect, is founded on a differ­ent principle. Except such proportion as is ne­cessary in supplying his personal wants, the pos­sessor makes use of his property as a sign, or as a substitute, for personal merit. Indeed so far as his property is the fruit of his own exertions, it is not an unnatural indication of abilities; and even where it has descended to him from his an­cestors, it is not a more unreasonable ground of pretension, than hereditary titles of any other de­scription.

On this principle, it is easy to trace the begin­nings of a deviation from a rational estimate of things, in our attachment to property. A gov­ernment which had been founded in violence, and was to be carried on for the exclusive benefit of a small proportion of the community, must have been under the necessity, at all times, of support­ing itself by imposition. This circumstance goes at once to the discouragement and the disuse of the moral powers of individuals; as they must cease to be cultivated, the moment they cease to be res­pected. As the nation, at the same time, grew more numerous, and the success of war and other great operations were found to depend less on bodi­ly [Page 136] strength, this too began to lose its estimation, and could no longer be relied on, as a title to res­pect. A natural resource therefore, by which to escape from these unnatural restrictions, was found in a veneration for external and fallacious signs of merit, appropriated to individuals. This was the origin of all hereditary titles of honour; [...]d it must likewise have been the origin, at least in a great measure, of our excessive attachment to property.

There is another point of view in which this theory may be placed, that will show it to be still more probable. In the same proportion as this veneration for property offered a resource to in­dividuals, on their giving up the natural right of cultivating their personal talents, it also became a necessary engine in the hands of the government. It is easy to perceive, that, in a system where ev­every thing depends on hereditary rank, the per­son placed at the head ought always to be entitled to the greatest share of respect. And where should a king seek for this, but in exterior pomp? Nei­ther wisdom nor strength can be made hereditary, but titles and property may. It was absolutely requisite that those qualities, in which the king might be rivalled or surpassed by his subjects, should be brought into disrepute; and that all mankind should fix their admiration on those in which he could excel. Governments of this kind are sure to be administered in such a manner, that the king shall always be the richest man in the na­tion; and they generally go farther, and make other men rich in proportion to their servility to him. It is thus that the order of nature is invert­ed, and names are substituted for things. The simple uses of property are converted into the splen­did [Page 137] magnificence of wealth. This becomes the great and almost universal object of human ambi­tion; it excites the gaze and veneration of all classes of men. Individuals are really not to be blamed, nor their judgment to be called in ques­tion, for this manner of estimating things. Exte­rior pomp is, in fact, more useful to them, than personal qualifications. It indeed often takes place of all the solid enjoyments of life; and it never can be strange that it should do so, as long as it procures that respect, the desire of which is doubtless among the strongest passions of our na­ture. We never hear of a man committing sui­cide for the want of bread, but it is often done for the want of a coach.

Such is the passion, and such, I believe, is the origin of the inordinate passion for property, in the present state of manners. The greater part of rational men agree that these things are wrong; they agree that the general taste and sentiments of mankind, on this subject, are eroneous; and they wish they could be changed. The only point in which I differ from these men in opinion is, that I have no doubt but these things will be chan­ged. I think we discern the radical cause of the evil; I think that cause will soon be removed; and the remedy will inevitably follow; because it is nothing more than a simple operation of nature, recovering herself from restraint. I am not preaching a moral lecture on the use of riches, or the duty of charity; I am endeavouring to point out the means by which the necessity for such lec­tures may be superceded. A duty that runs con­trary to habit, is hard to be enforced, either by persuasion or by law. Rectify our habits, and our duties will rarely be omitted.

[Page 138]Good men in all civilized nations, have take [...] unwearied pains, and given themselves real grief of heart, in censuring the vices and recommend­ing the duties of mankind, relative to the use and abuse of property. Their labours have doubtless done some good; for we may readily conceive that the quantity of misery in the world is not so great as it might have been without them. But these men have not penetrated to the root of the evil; or rather, they have overlooked it; and the remedies they have proposed have always been partial, unpromising, and without success. They lay the blame to the natural propensities of the human heart, and call upon individuals for refor­mation. Whereas, the fault lies not so deep, nor is the cure to be looked from individuals, even with respect to themselves. Habit is the ape of na­ture; it assumes her appearance, and palms its vices upon her. And as the universal habit with respect to the subject now in question has arisen out of unnatural and degrading systems of govern­ment, a reformation can be expected, only from referring back to nature for a change of those sys­tems; and there is no doubt but this remedy will be effectual.

Establish government universally on the individ­ual wishes and collected wisdom of the people, and it will give a spring to the moral faculties of every human creature; because every human creature must find an interest in its welfare. It must af­ford an ample subject for contemplation and exer­tion; which cannot fail to give a perpetual im­provement to the mind, and elevate the man to a more exalted view of himself, as an active mem­ber of that social state, where virtue has a scope for expansion, and merit is sure to be rewarded. [Page 139] Being thus restored to nature, every thing is easy and progressive; the individual looks to himself for his title to respect, the moment he becomes habituated to believe and know that this is the only title that will answer his purpose. The idea of relying on the glare of exterior pomp, whether it be of wealth or hereditary rank, must be regarded as what it really is in fact, the effort of a weak mind to cover its own weakness. Such efforts being resented by the people, as attempts to im­pose upon their understanding, they must fall in­to disrepute and be laid aside. They cannot be useful, they cannot be kept in countenance, in a society founded on the basis of human reason.

It is difficult to conceive to what an extent this circumstance would operate on the character of the human mind, with respect to its attachment to property. If the present systems of government are unnatural, I am convinced that this part of the human character is unnatural; and a change in the former must produce a change in the latter. One of the uses of property, that of procuring respect would be entirely cut off. And it must be consi­dered that this is the use that has generally had the most powerful effect upon the mind; because it is immoderate and unbounded. It is well known that rivals in the display of wealth are among the most jealous rivals in the world; and that there is usually no limit to the desires of a man on this sub­ject, when they once pass the limit of his real or expected wants.

One simple fact, with respect to the French na­tion, is almost sufficient of itself to support the opinion I here advance. But I thought it neces­sary, before adducing that fact, to recur to theo­retical principles; in order to shew that both the [Page 140] fact and the opinion are founded in nature, and therefore may be trusted, so far as they go, as the foundation of a practical system. It is well known that the national character of that people within four years has undergone almost a total change, with regard to the estimation of exterior marks of distinction, of every kind. What is called rank, arising from hereditary titles, had formerly as great an influence in the country, as at court; it was held as sacred in the most sequestered walks of life, where actions obey the impulses of the heart, as in the most brilliant assembly, where they are regulated by a Master of Ceremonies. It is im­possible for wealth itself in any nation to be more respected than titles were in France among all classes and descriptions of people. Their venera­tion for king was proverbial through the world; and this was only a sample of their universal res­pect for every thing that bore the name of heredi­tary tokens of rank. Their adoration of these distinctions could scarcely be considered as the effect of habit; it had so far wound itself into the na­tive character and soul of a Frenchman, that it could not be distinguished from an element of his nature. But the change of government, like a chymical analysis, has separated the dross of habit from the gold of nature; it has melted off the courtier and shewed us the man.

This is not all. The brilliance of wealth has likewise in that country lost its former value; it being no longer considered, either by the proprie­tors or by others, as capable of commanding res­pect. I know it will be said, in answer to this, That it is owing to a temporary circumstance; that the great body of the people, who have taken the government into their own hands, are envious [Page 141] towards the rich, and are aiming to reduce all men to a level in regard to property. The plainest re­ply to this assertion which has often been repeated is, that it is not true. No people ever shewed a more sacred regard to private property than the French have uniformly done, during the whole revolution. And, as if to put calumny to the blush, and baffle all theories of sophistry against a popular reclamotion of rights, this regard to pri­vate property has been in proportion to the irregu­larity of their movements, and the opportunity for pillage. It is to be wished that governments themselves would learn a lesson of honour from these examples of anarchy instead of employing venal writers to abuse them.

It cannot be denied, that in all other parts of Europe there are two distinct purposes to which property is applied—a resource against physical wants, and a resource for personal respect. It cannot be denied, that in France it has already ceased, in a great measure, to answer the last of these purposes, The cause of this is perfectly na­tural, and I have no doubt that it must be perma­nent. The same effect will be produced in other countries, by placing the government on the solid basis of reason, instead of propping it up on the tottering foot-stool of imposition.

I am aware that my argument is still exposed to one objection, from those readers who are ac­quainted with the present state of society in Ameri­ca. It will be said, that the people of the United States manifest a great attatchment to property, considered as wealth, and merely for the purpose of parade; that, though their government is American, their manners are European. To this I reply, in the first place, that the charge is true [Page 142] only in a limited sense. The influence of riches in that country, even on the minds of those who possess them, is by no means so great as it is in Europe. But this answer will not be completely satisfactory to the objector, neither is it so to me. We must acknowledge the fact to exist, at least in a considerable degree, and endeavour to search out the cause. The people of that country have been always accustomed to borrow their maxims, as well as their manners, from the various nations of Europe, from which they emigrated; in the tra­ding towns, many of the present inhabitants are really Europeans, having been in the country but a short time; and emigration is perpetually sup­plying all parts of the States with new adventures; fashions, and a taste for expensive modes of living, are imported with other merchandise. In the ar­ticle of public salaries, the governments them­selves have been too much guided by European ideas; which suppose it necessary that public offi­cers should envelope themselves in pomp and splendor, in order to inspire a veneration for the laws. For though salaries in general were fixed at the revolution on a scale so low as to bear little proportion to what was common in Europe, and though in some instances they have been since re­duced, yet they are still so high as to bear little proportion to what they ought to be. These things have a great effect on the general maxims of life in that country. But these things can never apply to Europe: and, on a change of government and manners in the old world, they will cease to apply to the new.

The Americans cannot be said as yet to have formed a national character. The political part of their revolution, aside from the military, was [Page 143] not of that violent and convulsive nature that shakes the whole fabric of human opinions, and enables men to decide which are to be re [...]ained as congenial to their situation, and which should be rejected as the offspring of unnatural connections. Happily, the weight of oppression there had ne­ver been so great, nor of so long a duration, as to have distorted in any extravagant degree the mo­ral features of man. He recognized himself as the same being, under the new system as the old; for the change of form had not been so perceptible as to require a great change of principle. Under these circumstances, the people continued most of their ancient maxims, though they were a mixture of foreign and domestic; and, as habit is a coin current in all countries, it is not surprising that whatever had received the stamp of authority in polished nations of Europe, should be adopted without scruple by the offspring of those nations in America.

The circumstance of their not being invested with what is called national character, though hi­therto a subject of regret, will in future be much in their favour. The public mind being open to receive impressions from abroad, they will be able to profit by the practical lessons which will now be afforded them from the change of system in this quarter of the world. It will be found there, as it is now found in France, that the display of wealth will cease to be challenged as an emblem or substitute for personal talents; and it will be coveted every where, in a less degree than at pre­sent; as it will fail to gratify the passion for res­pect. It may be farther remarked, that this is not the only circumstance in which the state of society in America will be essentially benefited by a change of manners in Europe.

[Page 144]But it must be confessed, after all, that this is a theory to which it is hard to g [...]n proselytes; especially among that class of men, whose know­ledge of the world has taught them a caution which shuns the allurement: of audacious speculati­on. And, since it must be referred to experience, to that I trust the argument. I profess nothing more in this work, than to contemplate the effects that a general revolution will produce on the affairs of nations. But in contemplating these, it is es­sential that we should be apprised of the corres­ponding change that will necessarily be wrought on the character of man; in order that, being prepared for the event, he may think of such ar­rangements as shall be likely to prevent his relaps­ing into the errors which have cost him so much misery.

A chapter which treats on the system of abuses so generally adopted in raising a revenue, can scarcely be closed with satisfaction to the reader, without some reflections on the corresponding abuses which are found in the application. I shall say nothing of high salaries, civil list, peace esta­blishment, and the other enormities on which pri­vileged orders and senseless places depend. These will so soon fall, with the wretched plans of go­vernment they support, that it really seems like an ungenerous triumph, to wish to hasten their fate. When the business of government shall be conducted, like other business, on the principles of common sense, it will be paid for, like other bu­siness, in proportion to the service performed. And unless this proportion be strictly observed in the payment, these principles will not long be observed in the service. But our observations in this place, on the application of revenue, will [Page 145] chiefly be confined to the subject of Public Debts. This subject becomes more important at this time, not merely on account of the present magnitude of those debts in most of the states of Europe, but as relative to the principle on which they are contracted and supported. Should this principle be found to be dangerous to liberty, and suitable only to a vicious form of government, it will fur­nish matter of deep reflection to a nation that wishes to establish its affairs on the basis of reason and nature.

Here we must take a review of that mode of anticipation, which is common to most of the modern governments of Europe, and known by the name of the funding system. This invention (for so the art of funding is sometimes called) has received from the hands of different writers, a considerable degree of censure, as well as much unqualified and injudicious praise. Indeed, when considered with reference to its wide sweep of at­tending circumstances, it presents itself to the mind under a variety of aspects, and forms alto­gether a stupendous object of meditation; having produced effects that have far surpassed the limits of previous calculation or belief. In politics and war, it has changed the face of Europe. With regard to other concerns, both of nations and individuals, its effects have been various, contra­dictory, delusive, and incapable of accurate esti­mation. It has astonishingly multiplied the force and activity of trade; but it has increased in an equal degree the quantity of useless and destruc­tive speculation. It has converted commerce into a weapon of war; and it has made of that tre­mendous calamity an alluring instrument of com­merce. It has brought these two occupations, so [Page 146] extremely opposite in their nature, to a cordial coalition and mutual support; and thus by the aid of both, it facilitates every project of ambition in the government; till it familiarises the public mind to a serious acquiescence in a paradox, which must have excited the ridicule of any age accus­tomed only to common calculation, That the more a nation is debilitated and exhausted, the more splendid and powerful it grows. Indeed the system is replete with so much apparent good, attended with its solid weight of evils, that we may be thought to incur the guilt of partiality or inatten­tion, should we fail to qualify our censure with some degree of approbation.

But the question, Whether the system of fund­ing ought to be admitted in all its latitude, can be decided only by striking the balance of good and evil in the effects that it must from its nature pro­duce. And I think, on considering the subject as relative to a free republic, the balance will be found much more on the side of the evil, than it is when applied to the old plans of government.

The benefits, to be derived from the system, are of two kinds;— commercial, as it facilitates the business of individuals, and political, as it aids the government in the great operations of war. It is well known, or it is universally believed, that the public debt in England, being funded on the basis of mortgaging the national revenue for its interest, has created a prodigious mass of capital in the hands of trade. By furnishing men with a kind of stock, which they are sore of turning into money at any moment they choose, it enables them to vary their operations with such facility, as to seize many ad­vantages in domestic and foreign markets, which must otherwise pass without effect. It is in a great [Page 147] measure to this circumstance, that many persons (perhaps without a due consideration of causes) have attributed the flourishing state of commerce in this kingdom. Indeed, since it is found that commerce has increased with the augmentation of taxes, the argument in favour of unlimited fund­ing has become so seducing, that the paradox has arisen almost to a solecism; it is said that public insolvency is public wealth, and the national debt is itself a national benefit.

The advantages of a political nature, which are derived from the principle of funding, consist in establishing such an unquestionable credit, that the government can at all times borrow, without the means or the intention, or even the promise of payment. This credit answers all the purpose of an inexhaustible treasury, on which the govern­ment may draw at any moment, and to any amount. It is easy to conceive the immense faci­lity thus given to the measures of administration. It enables them to begin, on the shortest notice and with the greatest secrecy, the most expensive operations, and then to pursue them to any extent; and this without consulting the wishes of the na­tion. It precludes the necessity of accumulating a national treasure by previous taxation and [...]co­nomy; a measure which must always be attended with the disadvantage of losing the use of the mo­ney, from the time it is hoarded, until it is ex­pended. It likewise avoids the necessity of another operation no less to be dreaded by officers of go­vernment in general; I mean a sudden augmenta­tion of taxes, by which the people should be called upon to support the expences of the year, within the year. A measure which, if not sometimes impossible, would often be hazardous to the repu­tation [Page 148] of ministers, and to the success of extraor­dinary enterprises.

Such is the general summary of the advantages derived from the Funding System; and this opens to our view the train of evils with which they are contrasted. These I fear will be too numerous to be particularly noticed, and too great to be readily conceived. In the hands of an administration, I will not say corrupt, but an administration whose interest is in any measure different from that of the nation at large, this system is the most danger­ous instrument that can be imagined: as it is an instrument of incalculable force, and may be al­ways wielded without opposition. This from the nature of the subject must be the case; because the expences of any projected enterprise being charged on posterity, the party most interested in making the opposition, is not in being at the time, and cannot be heard in its remonstrance. Thus, in the business of war, which is the principal object in the funding system, it enables governments to hire men to slaughter each other with more than their own swords. They wring out of the hard earnings of future generatio [...] the means of de­stroying the present. Here [...] a double violence which the generation, that goes to war by the aid of funding, commits on the age that is to follow. It precludes the existence of one part of society, by destroying those who should have been their progenitors; and it charges the portion of poste­rity, that escapes into existence, with the expen­ces of killing the fellows of their ancestors. And these expences they must pay under the cruel disadvantages of being deprived of half their na­tural resources, by a diminution of their natural numbers.

[Page 149]As military operations are now conducted, every man killed or destroyed in war, costs to the nation upwards of a thousand pounds sterling. This cal­culation is taken from a view of the last war in which England was engaged. The nation ex­pended in that war, as stated by Sir John Sinclair, ^* something more than 139 millions. No financier has calculated with any accuracy the number of lives that it cost on the part of Great Britain, in battles, hospitals, and prisons; probably it did not exceed 139 thousand. So that the people of this country are now consoling themselves for the loss of their friends and relations, by paying for their execution at the rate of a thousand pounds a head. Other jobs performed in such a wholesale manner are generally charged at a cheaper rate; but this is more expensive than the business of a like nature, which is done in the formality of de­tail, at the Old Bailey and Newgate.

It requires but a slight observation on the cha­racter of the times in different ages, to show that the object of war, and the spirit with which it is conducted, have been altogether different, within the present century, from what they were in more remote periods of modern history. In the mari­time nation [...] of Europe, the object of war has changed from religion to commerce; from a point of honour among kings, to a point of profit among merchants, ministers and generals. These sub­jects have nothing in their nature sufficiently ani­mating to rouse the enthusiasm of a whole nation to such a degree, as to render it safe for the pro­jector of a war to apply to the people for their immediate support. Therefore, to find the means [Page 150] of earning it on, they resort to a principle conge­nial to the object of the war; and it becomes sup­ported, as it is projected, in the spirit of commerce. But, as all offensive wars, in every possible cir­cumstance, can only be maintained by deceiving the people, the government in this case recurs to [...] deception, and i [...]uces them to un­dertake the burthen, on condition that the weight of it be shifted off to a future period. Such is the origin of funding; and it has evidently risen out of the necessity that governments were under, of changing the principle of deception, in order to conform to the spirit of the times.

As an engine of state, the funding system has completely taken place of religious enthusiasm; and mankind have been hurried on to their own destruction by the former, within the two last ages; with as little prudence and as much delusion, as they were by the latter, in the twelfth century. Indeed, I see no reason why a genuine crusade could not have been undertaken, even by the go­vernment of Great Britain within the last fifty years, and carried on to any extent, by the aid of the funding system. For the principle of the sys­tem is such as to prevent men from enquiring into the object of the war; as every inducement to such enquiry is almost completely taken away, with respect to every class of society. One class, by the previous operation of the same system in the increase of taxes, are rendered so wretched in their domestic condition▪ that they are glad to en­gage as soldiers in any cause, for the sake of the pay, so pitifully small as the pay of a soldier is; another class, and one that has great influence on the public opinion, is composed of generals, con­tractors, ministers and secretaries, with all their [Page 151] dependants [...] profitable job of any war, however it be conducted, and what­ever be its object; another class consists of idle speculators in the funds, whose chance of gain increases with the jostling of public affairs, and especially with the augmentation of the debt; while the rest of the community, who cannot be rendered active by the allurements of private profit, are rendered passive by deferring the pay­ment of the loss.

From the time when the predatory spirit, which led the northern Barbarians to ravage the south of Europe, had subsided, and given place to its natu­ral offspring, in the establishment of feudal mo­narchy, the history of this quarter of the world begins to assume a consistent shape; and it offers itself to our contemplation, as relative to the spirit of nations, under three successive aspects. These are the spirit of hierarchy, the spirit of chivalry, and the spirit of commerce. Out of these dif­ferent materials the genius of the government has forged instruments of oppression almost equally destructive. It has never failed to cloud the minds of the nation with some kind of superstition, con­formable to the temper of the times. In one age it is the superstition of religion, in another the superstition of honour, in another the superstition of public credit.

The deplorable use that has been made of the last of these, during the present century in Eng­land, and for a much longer period in some other governments, has induced many persons to regret that the spirit of commerce has ever become pre­dominant over that of chivalry and that of the church. They see a contracted meanness in the one, which ill compares with the open enthusiasm [Page 152] of the other two. But before we find fault with what seems to be the order of nature in these events, we ought to consider the effects that it has and will produce, in the progress of society and morals. Chivalry and hierac [...] taught us to be­lieve that all men who did not pay homage to the same monarch, or use the same mode of worship with ourselves, were our natural enemies, and ought to be extirpated. The spirit of commerce has brought us acquainted with those people; we find them to be like other men, and that they are really [...]seful to us in supplying our wants. As their existence and their prosperity are found to be advantageous to us in a commercial point of view, we cease to regard them as enemies; and refuse to go and kill them, unless we are hired to do it. But as commerce may deal in human slaugh­ter as well as in other things, when ever the go­vernment will offer us more money for destroying our neighbours than we can get by other business, we are ready to make enemies of our best friends, and to go to war, as we go to market, on a calcu­lation of profit.

This is the true spirit of commerce, as relative to war. But as this spirit has made us better ac­quainted with all foreign nations, and with our­selves, it has excited a disposition for enquiry into the moral relations of men, with a view to politi­cal happiness. The result of this enquiry is now beginning [...]n appear. It has already convinced us that there can be no possible case in which one na­tion can be the natural enemy of another; and this leads us to discover the cause why they have been factitious enemies. The whole is found to be a fatal deception perpetually imposed upon each nation by its own government, for the private be­nefit [Page 153] of its administrators. The same spirit of enquiry is now leading the people to change the form of their governments, that society may be restored to its proper foundation, the general hap­piness of the great community of men.

On examining the succession of principles which mark the character of the times through these different periods, it appears that, when the spirit of commerce had become predominant, the only engine of state, which could be relied upon to excite the people to war, was the establishment of a national credit by funding the national debts. And we should not be wide from the truth in as­serting, that to the funding system alone the prin­cipal commercial nations of Europe are to attribute the wars of the present century, as well as the enormous debts under which they have learned to struggle.

Such have been the effects of funding, under the old forms of governments; and having ascer­tained the principles on which it has operated in producing these effects, we shall be better able to determine whether it be admissible in the policy of a free republic. In this great crisis of human affairs, it behoves mankind to probe the wounds of nature to the bottom, and remove every excre­scence which might prevent a perfect cure.

Men of contemplative minds, as well as those of practical knowledge, have now become so ge­nerally agreed in the necessity of the funding sys­tem, that, though they discern the evils to which it must expose a nation, I fear it is one of the last of their established maxims that they will be wil­ling to subject to the severity of discussion. The universal opinion is that a state cannot exist with­out a national credit; unless it put itself to the [Page 154] disadvantage of hoarding up money, and keeping a treasure in reserve. And this latter measure, besides the inconvenience above-mentioned, of losing the use of the capital while it lies inactive, would throw into the hands of the executive go­vernment, the same dangerous power which is entrusted to them by the means of credit. In this respect their reasoning is just; and perhaps a full treasury would be the greatest evil of the two.

But after all, what is the advantage of a na [...]ion­al credit? I mean in the sense in which it is gen­erally understood, the facility of raising a capital on long annuities, by a mor [...]gage of revenue. Shall we not find on an investigation of this very simple question, that the advantage derived from such a credit (even supposing it never to be abused) can only be applicable to the old systems of gov­ernment? Will it not appear that it is an advan­tage totally unnecessary to a rational and manly administration, conducted by the wishes of a free and enlightened people? I am supposing, and it is but fair to suppose, that such a people will al­ways understand their own interest. Or, at least, if they make a mistake, it will be the mistake of the nation, not of the ministers; they will never suffer an enterprise to be undertaken, but what is agreeable to the majority of the active citizens. This people will never engage in any offensive war. Indeed, as soon as the surrounding nation [...] adopt the same change of government, the business of war will be forgotten; but in the interval▪ previous to this event, a real republic cannot stand in need of funds, as a preparative for wa [...] unless it be invaded. It is even safer without funds; because they might be a temptation to the officers of government to counteract the spirit of [Page 155] the republic. In case such a people be really at­tacked by an enemy, then it is that the force of society may be seen and calculated. But the cal­culation does not turn on the cabinet-rules of royal arithmetic; the power of the republic for the purpose of defence does not depend on a national credit, in the sense above-mentioned, or the fa­cility of borrowing money; the government, in making up its estimate of resistance, never asks, How many soldiers have we in pay? And how many recruits can we inlist or impress?—But of how many men does the nation consist? Armies start into being by a spontaneous impulse; every citizen feels the cause to be hi [...] own, and presents his person, or his provision [...] and his arms, not as an offering to a tyrannical master, of whose inten­tions he would be suspicious, but as a defence of his own family and property. The enemy being repulsed, whatever inequalities may be found to have arisen in this emulous contribution, are li­quidated and settled on a general scale of justice.

Even supposing the war to be of long continu­ance, and to require sums of money beyond the voluntary contributions, and beyond the power of prudent taxation for the time; (which indeed, in a wealthy and well-regulated republic, would be an extraordinary thing, and I believe never would occur) in such a case, the justice of the cause, and the natural magnanimity which habitual freedom inspires, would be a sufficient guarantee for loans, at home or abroad. It is true in nature, and the truth must prove itself beyond contradiction to the world, as soon as it shall have opportunity to judge, that a great people accustomed to exercise their rights, would never violate their duties.

[Page 156]Injustice may be expected from government [...] founded in usurpation; it is their natural charac­ter, the tenure on which they hold their authority. They never can be just, unless the deviate from their principle. What is called their penal jus­tice, as well as their pecuniary justice, is only the fruit of their fears; and ought to be regarded only as an evidence of their constitutional weakness. As every thing they do, must be done by the force of money, it is necessary that they should establish a character for mercantile punctuality, to serve as a substitue for the quality of justice, which quality the nature of their existence denies them. The reverse of this is the case with governments found­ed in reason and nature, where all the people have an active interest. Justice there is the first article in the social compact; and as neither policy nor principle can ever admit of a deviation from this, the event is not to be expected.

This is the kind of national credit that is proper for a free republic. It is involved in the nature of their system, and spurns those extraneous aids which artificial credits have required. I should consider it as a circumstance dangerous to the progress of society, if the new republics, which are to rise out of the ruins of these antiquated masses of error, should retain the two great prin­ciples of finance, an which much of that error has been supported. To raise the revenue by disguis­ing the taxes, and to force a public credit by [...]int of funding, have been equally necessary to the an­cient system; and it appears to me that they would be equally destructive to the new.

How the national debts that now exist in several countries, are to be disposed of, under a change of government, is indeed a question of serious [Page 157] magnitude. Probably that of France will be nearly extinguished by the sale of the national do­mains. That of Spain, and those of most other catholic countries, may be balanced in the same way. In some protestant nations, where the debts and the domains have lost their relative pro­portion, the case will be widely different. But, whatever may be the fate of the debts, I am as clear that they ought not, as I am that they will not, impede the progress of liberty.