The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Textual Introduction
• France 1820–21
• 1.: Journal and Notebook of a Year In France May 1820 to July 1821
• 2.: Traité De Logique 1820-21
• Chapitre I: ConsidÉrations GÈnÉrales
• Chapitre II: Des IdÉes En GÈnÉral
• Chapitre III: Sources OÙ Nous Puisons Nos IdÉes
• Chapitre IV: Classification Des IdÉes
• Chapitre V: Des Notions Abstraites
• Chapitre VI: De La Division
• Chapitre VII: De La DÉfinition
• Chapitre VIII: Du Langage
• Chapitre IX: De L’origine Des IdÉes
• 3.: Lecture Notes On Logic 1820-21
• Debating Speeches 1823–29
• 4.: The Utility of Knowledge 1823
• 5.: Parliamentary Reform [1] August 1824
• 6.: Parliamentary Reform [2] August 1824
• 7.: Population: Proaemium 1825
• 8.: Population 1825
• 9.: Population: Reply to Thirlwall 1825
• 10.: Cooperation: First Speech 1825
• 11.: Cooperation: Intended Speech 1825
• 12.: Cooperation: Closing Speech 1825
• 13.: Cooperation: Notes 1825
• 14.: Influence of the Aristocracy 9 December, 1825
• 15.: Primogeniture 20 January, 1826
• 16.: Catiline’s Conspiracy 28 February, 1826
• 17.: The Universities [1] 7 April, 1826
• 18.: The Universities [2] 7 April, 1826
• 19.: The British Constitution [1] 19 May [?], 1826
• 20.: The British Constitution [2] 19 May, 1826
• 21.: The Influence of Lawyers 30 March, 1827?
• 22.: The Use of History 1827
• 23.: The Coalition Ministry 29 June, 1827
• 24.: The Present State of Literature 16 November, 1827
• 25.: The Church 15 February, 1828
• 26.: Perfectibility 2 May, 1828
• 27.: Wordsworth and Byron 30 January, 1829
• 28.: Montesquieu 3 April, 1829

DEBATING SPEECHES

1823–29

4.

The Utility of Knowledge

1823

the beneficial effects produced upon the human mind and upon the structure of society by the revival of science and by the cessation of feudal darkness have been so obvious that there is scarcely room for the smallest discussion. No one, I apprehend, would insult the ^aunderstanding^a of this Society by reviving the ascetic sophistry of the fanatic Rousseau by maintaining that what are called the comforts and conveniences of life are in fact neither comforts nor conveniences, and add not the smallest particle to human happiness; that the progress of civilization is in fact the progress of barbarism and that the Hurons and the Iroquois are the happiest and the most enlightened of mankind.¹ Were such a reasoner to arise I should ask him by what authority he claims to know better than A, B and C what constitutes the happiness of A, B and C. I should maintain that what all men have uniformly considered as comforts and conveniences cannot be otherwise than comforts and conveniences, and I should require him who considers knowledge as standing in the way of happiness to go and legislate for those savages upon whose blissful state of ignorance he would have ^b an opportunity of trying his skill without those obstacles which he finds in the knowledge of this comparatively enlightened country.

Such doctrines are scarcely worthy of a serious reply, but as the refutation may be made remarkably pointed and concise, it may be better to give it. In reasoning on these general questions a want of precision in the use of language is the principal engine of sophistry. Here the confusion lies in the word knowledge, a word so vague and indefinite as to be an easy instrument in the hands of mala fide arguers, being capable of signifying just as much or as little as they please. It is not this kind of knowledge which is of such extensive importance. The only useful knowledge is that which teaches us how to seek what is good and avoid what is evil; in short, how to increase the sum of human happiness. This is the great end: it may be well or ill pursued, but to say that knowledge can be an enemy to happiness is to say that men will enjoy less happiness, when they know how to seek it, than when they do not. This reasoning is on a par with that of anyone who should refuse when asked to point out the road to York, saying that his inquirer would have a much better chance of reaching York without direction than with it. It is impossible then to suppose that anyone should get up in this Society and maintain that knowledge in the abstract is mischievous. Arguments may indeed be directed against much of what passes current under the name of knowledge to show that it is not really knowledge but prejudice, and is therefore not favourable but unfavourable to happiness. But this is one of those cases where the reason of the exception proves the truth of the general rule. It is precisely because knowledge is useful that prejudice is mischievous.

The question, simple in itself, is in some degree confused by the manner in which it is worded, and which, with deference to the worthy proposer,² might I conceive have been made more clearly expressive of his meaning. If asked whether the revival of letters has tended to promote happiness I know what to say, and by what arguments to support it; but if I am asked whether it tends to refine or to corrupt manners I confess myself at a stand. The three words, manners, corrupt and refine, are to me in the sense here bestowed upon them equally enigmatical. If by refinement of manners is meant that ceremonious politeness in intercourse between the higher orders, and that assiduous gallantry towards the fair sex which were the distinguishing characteristics of the old feudal aristocracy, then I should say that manners had not gained but lost by the revival of letters: but far from lamenting I should rejoice in the change, as I do in everything which turns the attention of mankind from the frivolous details of a petty and ceremonious trifling to the concerns which interest their real and substantial welfare. But if the intention of the proposer was to enquire into the effect of increased civilization in promoting genuine morality, then although on a general view of the question all will probably agree with me that this effect has been highly beneficial, it will be no loss of time to examine in detail from how dreadful a state of misery the human race has been elevated by knowledge into a state where they have at least the hope, the speedy hope, of establishing a better state of things.

The revival of art and science has contributed to promote morality in two ways; by the increase of wealth and by the diffusion of information. The discoveries in chemical and mechanical philosophy—should I not rather say the creation of these branches of ^cknowledge?^c —has enabled the human race to provide themselves abundantly at little expense of labour with those necessaries and comforts which formerly they either could not procure at all, or if at all, only in a very small amount and with very great labour. This increase of wealth must have contributed greatly to the improvement of morality. I would not be understood as affirming that the rich are more moral than the poor. As far as general reasoning and my own particular experience can lead me I should rather adopt the contrary conclusion. But when the augmentation of wealth is not, by being confined in the hands of a few, reduced to be but one expedient more for the oppression of the many; when I say instead of being exclusively devoted to the enjoyment of a few the increase of wealth is generally and equally diffused throughout the whole community; then by conferring upon the working classes the inestimable benefit of leisure, it forces them to seek society, it forces them to seek education. Each working man becomes himself better qualified to distinguish right from wrong, while each knows that he is under the constant surveillance of hundreds and thousands equally instructed with himself. Thus does the improvement of the physical sciences, by increasing and diffusing wealth, indirectly tend to promote morality.

But the evils which man is doomed to suffer from the hands of nature are nothing when compared to those which man frequently suffers from man. Communities have been known to flourish in spots which Nature seems to have selected for the sepulchre of the universe; but there is no country, however favoured by nature, which superstition and misgovernment do not suffice to ruin. Let us therefore take a general view of the situation of our ancestors with respect to these two main points, religion and government.

And first as to their government: he must be an adept in the art of rendering mankind miserable who could devise anything more destructive of all happiness. It was not here the common vice of a rude government, where each man has not yet learned to trust his neighbour, and where no one will as yet renounce the privilege of protecting himself. ^dThese^d are imperfect governments for they afford imperfect securities for happiness, but they are not in every sense as execrable as the feudal system. Imagine a tribe with a government such as that to which I have alluded spreading itself by conquest over a large portion of the globe, and reducing the native population to the state of domestic cattle! Each chief absolute master of thousands of human beings, and himself acknowledging no regular government, but striving to retain his pristine independency! Not only is no one secure from the arbitrary will of a master; even that master cannot afford him protection against other despots and slaves! It has frequently been made a question whether despotism or anarchy is worst; but this is not the question here, for the feudal system united the evils of both. The laws were openly and flagrantly violated, and the violations remained unpunished. Judge of the security which the administration of justice could afford when the trial by battle was the best expedient which could be devised to ensure the purity of judicature, and where it was usual for the party who was ^ecast^e in a lawsuit to challenge his judge to mortal combat.

The religion of our ancestors is next to be considered, and here I shall begin by laying down a principle of which the ordinary reasoners on these subjects have usually lost sight. It is not indeed extremely recondite for it is no other than this, that priests are men. They are usually considered as partaking of that perfect goodness and wisdom which they verbally attribute to the Great Master whom they profess to serve, although the actions and precepts which they ascribe to Him partake but too often of a contrary character.

From the principle that priests are men I draw the inference that in those cases which very frequently occur, and in which their individual interest is opposed to the interest of mankind, they will act as other men would act in similar circumstances; they would pursue their own interest to the detriment of mankind. Now if all men agree to believe whatever they say, they have a decided interest in making them believe everything which is likely to make them venerate and worship their spiritual guides; and if true opinions on the subject of religion are not of a nature calculated to inspire the requisite degree of veneration, it would be unfair to expect that these irresponsible directors of the public mind should confine themselves strictly to what is true; and we might indeed predict with tolerable certainty that they would not fail to intermingle much of what is utterly false, the more so as they may do this without the slightest insincerity. There is no fact better ascertained than the facility with which men are persuaded to believe what they wish. It is only necessary that there should be someone, who may be either a knave or a madman, to start a falsehood; if it is unfavourable to the clergy he will be hunted down as a heretic, but if it is favourable to them it will not be long before he finds many sincere disciples among the clergy themselves, who of course propagate it among the laity. It is in this way that the Catholic priesthood added to their religion the profitable doctrine of purgatory and masses for the dead, the crime-promoting doctrine of indulgences, and above all the terrific engines of auricular confession and absolution, the concentration of which, and particularly of the former, in the hands of the clergy, make it astonishing that mankind should ever have emancipated themselves from the terrific sway of priests and their coadjutors, aristocracies and kings. If at this day we rarely hear of murders perpetrated in the name of religion, still more rarely of those terrible persecutions which once disgraced every nation in Europe, we owe this to the revival of letters and the consequent diffusion of knowledge.

Such a government and such a religion as our ancestors had the happiness to enjoy afford us in some degree the means of appreciating that ancestorial wisdom which is even now held up to us as a model for imitation.³ In the nineteenth century we are not infrequently called upon to pursue the course which was followed by those sages, our ancestors, in the eleventh and twelfth. But this appeal from the age of civilization to the age ^fof^f barbarism is made, we may observe, by those and by those alone who now, as then, would wish to see the great mass of mankind subject to the despotic sway of nobles, priests and kings. But although it is in one respect true that the aristocracy of wealth and rank has given place to the democracy of intellect, I would not insinuate that the evils of feudal despotism and superstition are altogether eradicated even from this enlightened country. Knowledge has done much, but it has not yet done all. We are still subject to a constitution which is at best a shattered fragment of the feudal system; we are still subject to a priesthood who do whatever is yet in their power to excite a spirit of religious intolerance and to support the domination of a despotic aristocracy. We cannot therefore be surprised that those who are interested in misgovernment should raise a cry against the diffusion of knowledge on the ground that it renders the people dissatisfied with their institutions. When despotism and superstition were in their greatest vigour the same cry was raised, and for the same reason. Knowledge has triumphed. It has worked the downfall of much that is mischievous. It is in vain to suppose that it will pass by and spare any institution the existence of which is pernicious to mankind.

5.

Parliamentary Reform [1]

AUGUST 1824

it is not every one, Sir, I am convinced, who can appreciate the difficulties of my present situation. To be the successful advocate of opinions, which are at once so important, and with a large class of society so unpopular, as those which I profess, is a task, for which all the logic of an Aristotle, and all the eloquence of a Demosthenes,¹ would not be too much. But I who am not more conscious of the inexpressible importance of the question, than I am of my utter inability to do it justice; I who am so little habituated to public speaking, that even my thoughts, and my reasonings, feeble as they may be, will appear still feebler by my manner of expressing them;—and who to all my personal disadvantages, add the farther disadvantage, of not even being a member of the Society, upon whose indulgence I venture to throw myself,—I must indeed be arrogant, indeed vainly and presumptuously confident, if I did not feel great embarrassment in entering upon the task which I have undertaken.

Indeed where success is doubtful, and obloquy certain, I might well be permitted to hesitate; and whatever may be my other deficiencies I do give myself credit for some portion of courage, in braving the hard names which I know will be levelled at me. For it has been too common to consider the word Reform as a mere cover for sinister designs, and all who presume to doubt that our Constitution is perfect, as enemies to social order and to the existence of property. If then I should be so fortunate, as to overcome all the preliminary obstacles, and in spite of my own deficiencies, and the difficulty of the subject, to present an intelligible exposition of my views; I might possibly do no more than bring disrepute upon myself, without serving the cause in which I am engaged. I am content however that they should call me radical, revolutionist, anarchist, jacobin, if they please. I am content to be treated as an enemy to establishments, to institutions, and to order. For though I profess no attachment to bad institutions, I hope to prove that I am as sincerely a friend to good institutions, as any person here: and the attempt to cry down the truth, by applying bad names to its supporters, though it might have some success in a darker age, may in the present state of the human mind be regarded I think as nearly hopeless.

We all know, Sir, that the simple forms of government as they are called, are three: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Each of these is universally allowed to have its advantages: each of them has also its disadvantages: and it has been pretty generally the doctrine of British statesmen, and of British politicians, that in every one of them, the disadvantages preponderate. Of every one of them, it is affirmed that more may be said against it than for it: that more evil than good would be the consequence of its unqualified adoption: and in short, that a nation is almost sure to be ill governed, whether it be under a monarchy, a democracy or an aristocracy. All the simple forms of government being thus objectionable, the only chance for good government is to be found, they allege, in a mixture of the three: a mixture absurd, indeed, and inconsistent in theory, but which is said to be realized in the British Constitution; a Constitution which, according to them, combines all the advantages of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy.

Granting for the present what I am fully prepared to deny, viz. first that a mixed government is possible, and next, that our own is a mixed government, I wonder it should never have occurred to them as a possible case, that some turbulent fellow might dispute the assumption, that if the three forms of government are thrown pell mell into the melting-pot, they would come out freed from all their defects, and retaining their advantages: that this same turbulent fellow might further maintain, that he had looked more closely into the melting-pot than they had, and that instead of coming out refined and corrected, all the pure spirit had evaporated, and nothing but the scum and dross remained: to use plainer language, Sir, that the British Constitution instead of combining the advantages, combined all the disadvantages of the simple forms of government. If this were said, I do not well see what on their own principles they could say against it, nor what means they would possess of silencing the turbulent fellow,—except by the old established method of knocking him down.

I have heard a great deal, Sir, about the balance of the Constitution.² What this means, I confess myself to be in ignorance. One would think it must be something unspeakably excellent, judging from the encomiums which are heaped upon it. It is in truth a mere metaphor. There seems to be something singularly captivating in the word balance: as if, because any thing is called a balance, it must, for that reason, be necessarily good. I know no artifice of language, more pernicious than this: to invent a metaphorical expression, and then reason from it as if it was the name of something real, of something tangible. What is there, that may not be proved in this way? What form of government, what person, what thing may not be demonstrated to be excellent, if nothing is required but to call it by some fine high sounding name?

Even admitting the metaphor, one would think that if all the moving forces are in equilibrio, the machine must stand still. This inference seems to flow at least as naturally from the premises, as the former.

Stripped of its metaphorical language, the doctrine is that the British Constitution is a system of mutual checks; that each of the three branches when it oversteps its limits, and attempts to do wrong, is restrained by the other two. But why should the three branches check one another in doing wrong? Of three equal forces, any two must be stronger than the third. May not two of them unite in doing wrong and overthrow the third if it opposes them? What is to hinder the monarchical branch, and the aristocratic branch, from uniting for the overthrow of the democratic? Not only is this probable but certain. The reason why the monarch would unite with the aristocracy, rather than either of them with the people, is, that it can never be the interest of the people to unite with either of them. It must always be the interest of the people, that neither of them should enjoy more power than is absolutely necessary for good government. It is their interest, to take as much power as they can get. For this purpose, they are sure to conspire against their common enemy, or at least the common enemy of their sinister designs,—the people. Assertion, however, is so much easier than proof, that no attempt to prove it has yet come under my observation.³

But it is needless to enquire whether a mixed government is possible, or what would be its consequences if it were so. I contend, Sir, that whether a mixed government be possible or not, the British Constitution, at any rate, is not a mixed government. I am prepared to maintain, that the British government is an aristocracy: and I request the most serious attention of this society to the proof. I am prepared to make it appear, that there is not one of the distinguishing characteristics of an aristocracy, which the British Constitution does not possess: that it is controuled by a few; that it is administered by a few, that it is conducted wholly for the benefit of a few; and that there is no check, upon the conduct of those few, which would not equally exist under an Oriental despotism, if the subjects of that despotism were equally wise, virtuous, and enlightened with the people of Great Britain.

By the general admission of political writers in the present day, as well those who are enemies, as those who are friends to reform, the governing power in these kingdoms, the dominant authority under the British Constitution, is lodged in the House of Commons. The royal negative is become a mere name; and the Peers, though highly powerful by their influence over elections, do not, in their capacity of Peers exercise much influence on the legislation of the country.

But if this be true—if the supreme power is vested in the House of Commons, whoever chuses the House of Commons, possesses the supreme power. Now evidence was tendered at the bar of that House to prove that two thirds of its members were actually nominated and appointed by less than two hundred aristocratic families, mostly landholders.⁴ The offer not having been accepted, the proof was never given to the world: but from the circumstance that without being refuted an assertion like this was not permitted to be proved, I should be entitled to consider it as fully made out, even if it were not, as it is, notorious to all the world. It is an insult to our understandings to tell us that this is a mixed government. In every government the supreme power must be vested somewhere; if it is vested in one, the government is a monarchy: if in a few, it is an aristocracy; if in the people, through an assembly responsible to them, it is a democracy. In this country, the supreme power is vested in the House of Commons; and a great majority in the House of Commons is returned by two hundred families. Those two hundred families therefore, possess absolute control over the government: and if a government controuled by two hundred families, is not an aristocracy, then such a thing as an aristocracy cannot be said to exist.

They will call this theory, Sir: and so it is: but so also it is to be remembered that the doctrine of the balance is a theory: I will say more: I will say, that if ever there was a theory which deserved the epithets of wild and visionary, it is this: that there never was a balance; that there never can be a balance; and that every government which has ever been called a balance, has really been an aristocracy. It is not however necessary at present to speak of any other government than our own. It being proved that our own government is a government of two hundred families: and it being evident that according to the laws of human nature, a government of two hundred families cannot be otherwise than a bad one: any one may supply the conclusion. They may call this theory, Sir: but they cannot prove it to be false: they cannot detect a flaw in the reasoning which proves it to be true.

Let us endeavour for a moment, to conceive what it is possible for them to say. They cannot say without flying in the face of fact that the House of Commons is not controuled by a small number of families. Nor, one would think, can they say that absolute power, lodged in a few families, is not sure to be abused. This, however, is what they will say: I shall be accused of calumniating Honourable Gentlemen. The idea that such men should not be perfectly disinterested, will be scouted with disdain; and my venturing to suppose that they can abuse their power, will without doubt be treated as an insult.

Nothing, in fact, is easier, than to get rid of obnoxious opinions in this way. It is a compendious method of refutation. It is one of the most hackneyed artifices of those who have a bad cause to defend, to turn it into a personal question. With me, Sir, it is not a personal question. I am willing to admit that ministers, and members of parliament are as good as any other men. I will even grant that they are better than most. All I contend for is, that good as they may be, they are men: and would they have us believe that they are angels? Would they assert, that they are exempt from bias—superior to seductive motives—that their judgment is never warped by their interest? They may say so; but I hope and trust no one will believe them.

If uncontrouled power is not sure to be abused, give me despotism: let me have one master, who may be wise and honest, not a body of masters who cannot. The theory however of the British Constitution, is, that unchecked power is always abused: and it is because the King would be a tyrant, if he could, that a House of Commons is given us, to controul him. How absurd then to say that the same check which is required by a king, is not required by a House of Commons! Have a hundred despots ever been found to be a less evil than one?

Perhaps we shall be told, that the people though they have not a direct, have an indirect controul over parliament: that a ministry must be sensible that it cannot stand against the declared wishes of the people; and that this consciousness serves to keep them from all flagrant abuses of power: that in public opinion is to be found the real checking power, the real balance of the Constitution that is in appearance an aristocracy, but in truth is nevertheless a mixed government, and unites the advantages of democracy, aristocracy and monarchy.

If this be true, Sir, I say that we have no occasion for a parliament. To resort to this doctrine is to give up the theory of the Constitution. The Constitution supposes that the House of Commons is a check. But no! it seems, the House of Commons, instead of being a check, itself requires to be checked, and there is no check except public opinion. But if the governing body is neither elected by nor responsible to the people, and is only kept in awe by the partial and inefficient check of naked and disarmed public opinion, where is the use of keeping up a cumbrous and operose machinery to cheat the people by persuading them that they really have some security in the constitution of the House of Commons? If it comes to this at last, that the House of Commons are tyrants, but tyrants subdued and kept down by the dread of public opinion, methinks it were more honest to take off the mask, that the people might know henceforward to what they have to trust, and may look to nothing for security, but their own unassisted exertions.

No, Sir, it is a cruel mockery, to say that public opinion is a check upon the members of parliament when public opinion can neither remove them nor punish them. Carry this into practice. Let any one consider how far he would be inclined to trust to public opinion for the prevention and punishment of theft or robbery. Yet a thief is far more unpopular than a bad member of parliament. How absurd to bid us trust for the security of our happiness and of our lives, to a check that we would not confide in for the safety of a few shillings or pounds.

Driven from the theoretical ground, the defenders of the Constitution will take refuge in what they are pleased to call practice. The experience of ages, it will be said is in favour of the British Constitution. Notwithstanding some theoretical imperfections, so long as it has lasted, it has worked well, and still continues to do so. Why quit a certain good for one which is uncertain? Why substitute abstract theories for practical experience?

We are well as we are. This is their grand argument. What do they mean? Well as compared to better? But this is absurd. Well as compared to worse? Truly a stupendous merit. They must therefore mean, well as compared to what we once were. But this, far from being a reason for stopping short, is one of the strongest of all arguments for advancing. For if we look back and ask ourselves, why it is that we are well, as compared with what we were 300 years ago,—what is the cause to which we owe this prodigious difference,—we shall find it to be progression,—improvement,—amelioration. Then too we were well, as compared with our condition at a still earlier period; then too the certainty of present good and the chance of future evil, might have been urged as successfully as in the present day; then too we might have stopped short, and said We are well as we are; all farther progression is unnecessary. Nor were the aristocracies and hierarchies of those days more slack than those of the present in diffusing and inculcating those moderate, loyal, sober, experimental, practical opinions. Our ancestors disregarded their interested diatribes: improvement went on, and we are now in a situation as much preferable to theirs, as theirs was to that of their wise and venerable ancestors who painted their bodies and wandered naked in the forests. Let our rulers then who so frequently insist upon our imitating our forefathers in their crimes and in their follies imitate them also in their wisdom. Let them no longer attempt to fix a period when improvement has gone far enough, when mankind are sufficiently wise, and sufficiently happy: assured that they can discover no argument for stopping now, which would not have justified our ancestors in stopping long ago.

I will concede to them, if they please, that our Constitution is already a good one: but they shall not be allowed to assume that it is the best possible, and that all farther improvement is unnecessary. I will grant, if it be required, that some wonderful genius, soaring above the level of a barbarous age, was the inventor and framer of our Constitution. Was it by inspiration that he devised so perfect, so all-sufficing a plan? For if it was by human reason, how inconsistent is it to maintain, that reason ought not to criticize the work which reason has produced, and that to apply wisdom to the improvement of a monument of wisdom, is a presumptuous and uncalled for innovation!

I know not whether the contriver of our Constitution, if our Constitution really had a contriver, partook in or was exempt from the barbarism of his age. But this much I know, that if he was really wise, he would have delighted in nothing more than in the improvement of his work: that it is not from him that the cry of innovation would have proceeded, but from the unwise or interested supporters of the imperfections of the system. He knew well that his own work, when first it was devised, was an innovation, and that he could quote no argument against its improvers, which would not have been as much more strong against himself than against them, as the change from anarchy to a regular government is greater than from one form of government to another. Let not these worshippers of the wisdom of our ancestors, profess opinions which would stamp those ancestors with the grossest folly. Our forefathers, barbarous in all besides, in this alone were wise, that they were innovators. And their pretended admirers would snatch from their brows the only glory to which they are justly entitled, that of being sensible of their unfavorable situation, and desiring amendment.

It would be easy, indeed, if that were the question, to shew that the Constitution is far, very far, from working well. I might compute all the useless places, all the excessive salaries, all the unmerited pensions, which have been given under this admirable Constitution. I might calculate all the blood and treasure which has been spent in wars, for purposes entirely useless, if not mischievous: for the honours of the flag, for the interests of continental despots, or to prevent the establishment of free institutions in foreign countries—I might enumerate all the restraints under which commerce has laboured and still labours; all the oppressive powers lodged in aristocratical magistrates; all the laws which have been made to aid the rich in oppressing the poor;—above all I might call your attention to that barbarous and confused mass of precedents and of statutes to which the much abused name of Law is in this country applied.

But I will not occupy the time by detailing all the evils under which we groan. From the mere existence of these evils, nothing can be inferred. I should be as little justified in reprobating the Constitution, on the mere ground that evil exists, as my opponents are in applauding it, because every thing is not evil. And if no mischiefs at all had as yet resulted from the Constitution, the obligation to reform it, if it were proved to have a tendency to evil, would not be a whit less imperative. Contrivance, combination, foresight, are the characteristics of the philosopher: to wait for specific experience is that of the man who is incapable of doing more than groping in the dark.

What, then? (it will be said) Do you set up visionary theories as the rule of conduct? Is it not upon experience, and experience alone, that all human knowledge, is founded?—Yes. Experience is the only legitimate guide of human actions. By no other test can we determine what is good and what is bad. None but a madman would question the authority of experience.

But this experience, this infallible directive rule, to which we must adhere or perish, does not consist in judging after a model,—in never departing from what already exists—and in copying implicitly both the excellencies and the defects of some favorite system. If this be the meaning of the term, improvement in human affairs can only be effected by deviating from experience. In this sense, the savage had experience against him, when he first fixed his cabin in one spot, and commenced cultivating the earth. Very different is the experience of a philosopher. His is an experience which compares, which analyses: which takes to pieces a complicated machine, and distinguishes between the parts which promote and the parts which impede its operation. In this sense, experience is synonymous with sound and enlightened theory. By theory I mean general propositions; by sound theory, I mean theory conformable to experience: theory founded on observation. Not observation limited to a single field, but an enlarged view of the actions and motives of mankind.

A country with the natural resources, and with the capital of Great Britain, in a period of profound peace, and when commerce is subjected only to moderate restraints, must be ill governed indeed, if it does not rapidly increase in wealth; and before we ascribe any part of its prosperity to the goodness of its government, we must ascertain what are likely to be the effects of that government when no other causes of prosperity exist. And if we can obtain a practical experiment of the effects which that government produces when unassisted by favorable circumstances, it will go far towards the ultimate decision of the question.

Fortunately for our purpose, such an experiment presents itself in Ireland. That country which enjoys in so preeminent a degree the blessings of tranquillity and social order, admirably exemplifies the tendency of our institutions. The Irish are in the full enjoyment of the English Constitution; nor of that alone, but of the unspeakable blessings which we owe to it: our admirable system of law, an established Protestant Church,⁵ and a landed aristocracy. With all these glorious things, Ireland ought to be “the envy of surrounding nations, and the admiration of the world.”⁶ But what is it? The completest specimen upon record of the combined horrors of despotism and anarchy! These are the effects of the system which works well. If therefore England is more prosperous than Ireland—if we have not yet fallen quite so low—it is not to our institutions that we are to ascribe our superiority.

After all, when I consider attentively the situation of this country, I really cannot see what foundation there is for such unbounded self applause, nor what these astonishing advantages are, which distinguish us so preeminently above all other nations. We enjoy, it is true, a certain degree of security for person and property: but how deficient this security is, daily experience demonstrates. For greater security for person and property has existed under governments universally acknowledged to be bad. Under the Emperor Napoleon, the police was so efficient that scarcely any crime remained free from detection. Then as to cheapness, the other requisite of good government, no one, I apprehend, will attribute this quality to our Constitution. A debt of 800 millions, and an annual taxation of 60, (without counting tithes or poor rates) are indeed proud monuments of national prosperity! If frequent wars are a proof of misrule, we have been engaged, since the Revolution of 1688, in a greater number than any other nation in Europe. If the degree in which the body of Civil and Penal Law answers its purpose, be the circumstance chosen for the criterion of good government; in this respect no European nation is worse, and one, at least, in a remarkable degree is better, than ourselves. If discretionary powers entrusted to public officers be regarded as a symptom of misgovernment, our justices of peace may well be set off against the most arbitrary and oppressive authority which ever existed under the most despotic government.

I pity the man who can see any thing to admire in all this. I should prefer even the straightforward despot, who is not imbecil enough to be duped by his own fallacies but feels and acknowledges the power of sinister interest.⁷ He, I am sure, would ere long be convinced, that it is no longer for his advantage to hold out against popular feeling: that the age is gone by when he could hope to do so with success. For a time is approaching when the enquiry, What has been, shall no longer supersede the enquiry, What ought to be, and when the rust of antiquity shall no longer be permitted to sanctify institutions which reason and the public interest condemn. In vain do they who profit by misrule persist in shutting their eyes to the advancement of knowledge in the world. In vain do they judge of the future by the past, and hope to see the public sink back into the apathy in which they were plunged during the age of despotism and superstition. Never did the circumstances of the world bear the most distant resemblance to their present state. Never were the blessings of education so widely diffused, never were political questions so freely discussed. Never were so many men in existence whose enlarged and philosophic views will enable them, when reform takes place, to lead the public mind and guard it from going astray as heretofore. To prevent a change may, at the present day, be fairly pronounced impossible. The only question is, Shall it be effected by moderate or by violent means. The people have always been and still are peaceably inclined. They seek not violence; they avoid it. May they avoid it ever, unless they are driven to it. But moderate means have been tried. Petitions without number have been poured into Parliament. If our rulers still persist in their resistance, it is they and not the Reformers, who endeavour to excite insurrection. It is true, the Reformers do not consider tranquillity as absolutely the end of government, and if the greater good, a government responsible to the people, can only be obtained by means of a commotion, no weak and feminine humanity will induce me at least to deprecate such a result. But if (which God forbid) it should come at last to this; and if moderate means, after repeated trials, should fail to produce the desired effect; let all the evils necessarily occasioned by those commotions, which are the last and dangerous resort of the people, be on the heads of those eternal enemies of mankind, who, by their interested resistance to the spirit of the age,⁸ will have rendered such a crisis inevitable.

And now, Sir, before I conclude, let me request as a favor what I might fairly claim as a right of the gentlemen who will take a different view of the question from myself: and who will support their opinions, I have no doubt, with far greater ability than I have supported mine;⁹ I have one thing to request: let them consider that this is a question of argument: and that by argument only, can it fairly be met: let them consider also, that if their cause is good, it has nothing to fear from argument, and every thing to fear, if all the argument should seem to be on the other side. Let me not then be met by vague and general declamation; by appeals to the wisdom of our ancestors, or by angry denunciations against innovation. This is not argument, Sir, it is unworthy of the name. My case in fact, reduces itself into a very small compass. I rest it upon two assertions: that an aristocracy is bad, and that this government is an aristocracy. One or other of these assertions they must disprove, or give up the point. If they do not touch these propositions, they are talking in the air: whatever may be their plea, it is irrelevant, and ought to be dismissed.

Having asked this for my cause, I ask nothing for myself. That cause would indeed be ill served, if its supporters feared to encounter a few hard words, for the chance of doing it service. Let them but fairly grapple with my arguments; and they have my free permission to exercise as they please, their powers either of invective or of ridicule upon myself.

6.

Parliamentary Reform [2]

AUGUST 1824

if, Sir, when I rose to open this question,¹ I felt myself to be in a difficult situation, the difficulty is greatly enhanced by the result of the debate. Contrary to my expectation, and not a little to my disappointment, there is not one among the ordinary speakers in this Society who has not differed more or less from me, and the only gentlemen from whom I have obtained unqualified support, have been those, who, like myself, stand in the situation of strangers and trespassers on your indulgence: while those speakers whose reputation stands highest in this Society, have embraced opinions irreconcilably at variance with mine. Thus circumstanced, I may be considered, like Atlas to carry the heavens on my shoulders; and I hope it will not be deemed unpardonable, if I should be unable to bear up against the weight.

Among the foremost of my opponents there is one gentleman,² from whom it is always painful for me to differ: one whom I can never allude to without the most profound respect, and with whom, if this were a question of authority—I would rather go against this whole Society, than with this whole Society against him. I had hoped, Sir, that he would not have thrown his weight into that scale, which was already so much the heaviest. I had hoped that by his support he would have added authority to the cause which I advocate, that he would have supplied as he can so well do, the numberless omissions which in so vast a subject, I must necessarily have made, and aided me in refuting the objections with which I have been assailed. Disappointed of his aid, my labour will be the greater, but I must not shrink from it: that cause in which it would have been my proudest boast to fight by his side, I must now, when left alone, endeavour to the best of my ability to defend even against him.

A considerable part of his speech consisted of a statement of objections against one of the propositions of the reformers; the plan of secret suffrage. I have abstained, Sir, throughout, and shall still abstain, from discussing the merits of this, or that plan of reform. The question as it stands is surely weighty and difficult enough without mixing it up with a hundred of other questions. It is enough for me, if I can prove that the Constitution stands in need of reform: of what precise sort of reform it stands in need will be a fit subject for discussion on a future occasion. And if that occasion should ever come; and if the gentleman should there restate his objections against secret suffrage and give me a fair opportunity of answering them; then, Sir, in spite of that multiplicity of occupations which prevent and I fear will long prevent me from aspiring to the honour of being a member of this Society, I pledge myself to be present, and to show that of his objections there is not one which is not utterly devoid even of the shadow of plausibility.

Another large portion of the gentleman’s speech was devoted to the task of defending the King and the Peers, though it must be acknowledged at the same time, that he treated the latter body rather unceremoniously, for he described them as a parcel of old women. All this, too, Sir, he will forgive me for saying appears to me to be totally irrelevant. My argument has nothing to do with the King and Peers: I have my opinion as any one else may have, on the necessity or utility of these institutions. But I maintained and still maintain, nor would it be difficult to show from the Honourable Gentleman’s own words he agrees with me, that the whole power is centered in the House of Commons, and that according as that House is democratically or aristocratically constituted, the government is a democracy or an aristocracy. So true is this, Sir, that if the King and Peers were to be abolished to-morrow, the government would remain in all its substantials exactly as it is. Proclamations indeed would be no longer issued in the name of the King; laws would be no longer passed by the King, with the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons; but the powers of government would be in exactly the same hands as they are now, and the government would to all practical purposes be equally bad.

The one proposition on which my case is supported, and the one proposition which the Honourable Gentleman should have refuted, is, that the majority in the House of Commons is returned by two hundred families.³ This proposition he has not denied. A man of his judgment and good sense, would scarcely venture to deny it. But he thinks that there is no harm in this, and unless all those who are so returned were to combine together; and as some of them are Whigs and some Tories he thinks they do not combine, but operate as a check upon one another. If this were true, Sir, it would be no argument against reform: Legislators are appointed to do good—not to check one another in doing evil. But it is a singular inference, that because they have these disputes among themselves, therefore they are a check upon one another. Is anything more common than for a band of robbers, to unite in perpetrating their robberies, and then quarrel about the division of the spoil? It does not require the intellect of the Honourable Gentleman to see that the aristocracy naturally divides itself into two parties: the one consisting of those who are contented with the share which they have got, or think they have most chance of getting more, by attaching themselves to the present ministry; this is the ministerial party: the other party, consisting of those who think they have a chance of getting a greater share of the spoil than they have got by expelling the present and putting in a different ministry; this is the opposition party. To court the public, and obtain their aid in effecting this object, the Opposition part of the aristocracy are compelled to raise a cry against the small abuser; but they are careful how they touch the great ones, by which, when they get into power, they themselves mean to profit. Accordingly that majority in the House of Commons, who are put in by the lords of the soil, and who are either landowners themselves, or the mere attornies and nominees of the landowners, if on the petty question of party they split into Whig and Tory—if those who are in abuse those who are out and those who are out abuse those who are in—it is very different when any great reform is to be opposed, or any great abuse to be upheld. Did not they almost all support the Six Acts? Do they not all support the Corn Laws? Who is it that supports the Usury Laws? The Landlords. Who is it that supports the Game Laws?⁴ The Landlords. Who was it that contracted the National Debt? But here the landlords were joined by all the rest of the aristocracy. But not to speak of anything else, is not the very greatest abuse for which our government has to answer, the unpaid magistracy, a mere creation for the benefit of the landlords? Who kicked out, without ever a hearing, the petition of an unfortunate man who complained of the misconduct of the unpaid magistrate Mr. Chetwinde?⁵ Who but the unpaid magistrates and their nominees in that house. In what other place would Mr. Holme Sumner have dared to say⁶ that no gentleman would undertake the office of a magistrate, unless his misdeeds were covered from the public eye, unless he was assured of impunity whether he was an Aristides or a Jefferies.⁷ Let me not hear then that there is no combination among the members of that house: there is combination enough: whenever there is mischief to be done.

The Honourable Gentleman further observed, that if our government is bad, we are not yet prepared for a better. For this we have his assertion it is true, but I am not aware that he attempted to give any evidence for it, or to shew why if we are not yet altogether so wise as could be wished, to be ill governed should be the best way to make us wiser. I have always been accustomed to think, Sir, that one of the worst qualities of an aristocratic government is, that it prevents men from becoming wiser: that it makes education an instrument, as witness our universities, not to emancipate the mind but to hold it in perpetual bondage, not to expand it but to keep it for ever shackled and debased. If I am to give up an opinion which I have considered to rest upon so large and so universal an experience as this, it must be on some better ground than the assertion of any men—even of the Honourable Gentleman.

I have begun, Sir, by replying to this gentleman because I consider him to be by far my most formidable antagonist. When he is disposed of, the task of dealing with my other opponents is comparatively an easy one.

I am greatly indebted to one gentleman,⁸ for the exemplary hardihood with which he has come forward to deny that the British Constitution is an aristocracy. Unfortunately however, what he denied in one part of his speech, he admitted in another; and not only admitted, but went on to justify it. After having declared the fact, that a majority of the House of Commons is returned by a few families, to rest upon no better evidence than the assertion of a few radicals, who offered to prove it, but never made good their promise,⁹ he went on to tell us, how admirable this majority of the House of Commons was, and how we ought to congratulate ourselves on being governed by such excellent men; they indeed seem to possess every virtue, their opponents every vice, and why? because the others are returned by the people, they by a few families: thus we see that the same fact can, when it suits his purpose be applauded as the highest of excellencies, or repelled as the most scandalous of insinuations. The beginning and end of this gentleman’s speech thus destroying one another, the beginning refuting the end, and the end refuting the beginning, it may seem unnecessary to take the task out of his own hands and presumptuous to suppose, that I can refute him, with greater ability than he has refuted himself. Some, indeed may think that he has shewn more skill, and been more successful in refuting himself than he has in refuting the radicals; our faith cannot stretch wide enough to include two contradictory assertions, which then are we to believe? Not the proposition which rests upon his ipse dixit alone, but the proposition which rests upon his ipse dixit also, and much better evidence besides.

The best men, he says, are sometimes returned for the rotten burghs; which is true; but which proves, not that the rotten burghs are good, but that everything else is still worse. The rotten burghs, Sir, in my opinion, are the very best part of the system: and I should be very sorry to see them abolished, if the rest of the system is to be retained. A man, if he has but a good purse, may be returned for a rotten burgh, without being a slave; but I defy any one who is not a slave, to be returned for a nobleman’s pocket burgh, or for a county.

Even radicals, the gentleman observes, have been put in by the aristocracy. This I think may fairly be doubted: but he quotes as instances, Sir S. Romilly and the great radical, Mr. Brougham.¹⁰ It must be acknowledged that the Honourable Gentleman selects his examples with singular judgment, and with a perspicacity quite peculiar to himself. I think he may justly claim the merit of having been the first to bring to light the radicalism of these gentlemen. I, for one, should never have found it out without his assistance. If he can prove that either of them ever made a speech or gave a vote on any side of any question, contrary to the interest of the great lord who put him in, I shall then say, he has done something, but till then, I shall certainly take the liberty to believe that a man is not necessarily a radical, because he opposes ministers: and that the nominee of a lord who hopes to get in is just as much an enemy to good government as the nominee of another lord who is in.

The Honourable Gentleman feels a very proper contempt for those members of parliament who are controlled by what he is pleased to call mob influence, or who can brook the slavery of being totally dependent upon their constituents. Vile tools. They are compelled to do their duty. They are restrained from abusing their power: how mean, how base, how despicable: can too much scorn possibly be felt for those who can submit to so miserable a servitude? This reminds one of the monarch, who said that if he could not do what he pleased, it was of no use being a king; to be sure, what was royalty good for, but to enable him to rob and murder as he pleased. The Honourable Gentleman is a great stickler for something called independence: he is for having members of parliament independent: I presume he would have the king too independent; although you had once a king who wished to be independent, and for this you sent him packing, to count his beads at home. It is a fine thing, Sir, this independence, but I should like to know, where is it to end? Is the Grand Seignor¹¹ independent enough to suit the gentleman’s taste? I cannot say that I relish this species of independence. What I want is good government: and for this purpose I should prefer a king and parliament not independent but dependent upon the people, that there might be somebody to watch over them, and turn them out if they misbehave. I dare say the Honourable Gentleman would be very angry if I were to tell him that he is an anarchist: yet the only difference is that an anarchist is for making everybody independent, and he only the king and parliament. An anarchist, therefore, applies the Honourable Gentleman’s principles with greater consistency than the Honourable Gentleman himself.

Among other proofs of the excellence of our Constitution the Honourable Gentleman has assigned the excellence of our coats. I should have thought that was rather a proof of the excellence of our tailors; and might have been more appropriately urged, if any one had proposed a radical reform in that useful branch of industry. I cannot learn, however, that among the grievances complained of at the hands of the parliament, any one has yet included the cut of their coats, or that a petition imploring his majesty to change his ministers, has ever been coupled with a request that he would change his tailor: Even in tailoring, I doubt whether the Honourable Gentleman’s argument will hold water: He himself, for aught I know may be peculiarly fortunate in his tailor, but for my part I can assure him that I have philosophy enough to bear improvement even in this respect, with resignation; and though I certainly think it of more importance that we should be well governed than well clothed, yet if my tailor should offer to furnish me henceforward with cheaper or better coats than I have hitherto worn, I should be the last person in the world to find fault with him on that account.

As a further argument against reform, the Honourable Gentleman alleges the goodness of our roads: thinking apparently that in the event of a reform, they would infallibly be broken up by the hoofs of the swinish multitude.¹² Far be it from me, Sir, to dispute the excellence of our roads, particularly when Macadamized,¹³ but I own I cannot precisely see the connexion between the Honourable Gentleman’s premises, and his conclusion, nor why, because our roads are good we should suffer our Constitution always to continue bad.

But it is not in our coats and roads alone that the beauty of our Constitution manifests itself to the world, it shines forth still more conspicuously in the beauty of our women: for every thing with this gentleman is a proof of the excellence of our Constitution, and I have no doubt that if our women were all ugly he would find the means of drawing the same conclusion from their ugliness, as he now does from their beauty, and certainly with as much reason. Sir, no one would lament more than myself, that any deterioration should take place in female beauty; but I must say, I think the Honourable Gentleman has failed in proving that our women would be less handsome, after parliamentary reform than before it, and I do say, Sir, that we have some reason to complain of the Honourable Gentleman for having attempted by scandalous insinuations, to prejudice the fair sex against us. If any lady after hearing the Honourable Gentleman’s speech should have gone away as I fear may be the case, with the impression that we wish to make a bonfire of all the fine women in the country, I hasten to undeceive her, and I beg that she will not believe such a charge, even if he should swear it.

But this is not all. Good dinners, it seems, are still to be had in this country, ergo, parliamentary reform is unnecessary. With all my admiration for the Honourable Gentleman I cannot quite go along with him in this inference: I see how it is: I see that we have been calumniated: the Honourable Gentleman’s mind has been poisoned against us: some insidious person has been practising upon his fears, and has persuaded him that as the French constituent assembly abolished titles,¹⁴ so a reformed House of Commons would abolish good dinners, would shut up the London tavern, and decree that we should all live upon bread and water. Sir, if I were at all apprehensive that parliamentary reform would lead to such consequences, I am not sure that I should not turn round and join with the Honourable Gentleman, though I hope I should not reason quite so ill; but I own I cannot participate in the Honourable Gentleman’s alarm: though the aldermen of the city of London might be deprived of some of their privileges, I do not believe that they would be deprived of their turtle soup: we wage no war on innocent enjoyment, though we would strongly recommend to them to beware of indigestion: and if the Honourable Gentleman be fond of French wines, I think I could promise him that in the event of a reform, they would be as cheap or cheaper than port, so that, on the whole, I think he may quiet his apprehension.

All these proofs of the excellence of our Constitution may perhaps prove rather more than he would wish. It is quite true that in this country there are fine women, good dinners and good coats for the rich: it is quite true that not only this but all foreign countries are ransacked, to pamper their appetites, or minister to their gratifications. That the rich man however is feasting upon venison and turtle is small consolation to the beggar who is starving at his door. It would be well if this gentleman whose imagination seems to riot so voluptuously in the luxuries of the rich, would bestow some commiseration on the sufferings of the poor. Let him withdraw his eyes for one moment from the palace and fix them on the hovel. There he will see rather a different spectacle: not a good dinner, or a good coat will he see there: nothing but rags and starvation: or let him visit our gaols: he will find that two thirds of the unhappy convicts date the loss of their innocence, of their character, and of every virtuous propensity, from the day when they were first incarcerated,¹⁵ the victims of those savage laws created for the sole purpose of supplying one viand more to the luxurious tables of the lords of the soil. If this were all, Sir, this would suffice to prove to us what an aristocracy is, and what value the man of power sets upon the virtue and happiness of thousands of his countrymen, in comparison with one paltry gratification of his own. I say this, Sir, for you, and for this society, not for the Honourable Gentleman. He is above being affected by the little miseries of little men: and he gave us on the last evening a specimen of the temper with which he regards the people and their wrongs. That triumphant laugh, which burst from that part of the room where the Honourable Gentleman was seated, when their wisdom and their virtue were mentioned in higher terms than he thought they deserved—That laugh by which he seemed to glory in the successful resistance which men like him have offered to the diffusion of knowledge among the mass of people, and in the ignorance and brutality which they have hitherto been able to perpetuate. If this is a sign of what he wishes to be considered his feelings; I hope they are not his real ones. If they are, I do not envy him. What renders others miserable makes him laugh: what causes the woes of nations excites his scorn. Sir, in the sacred writings it is said—Scornful men bring a city into a snare:¹⁶ and it is ill for one who can feel scorn where he ought to feel pity and indignation. It is well for the Honourable Gentleman that he holds so high a rank in this Society as he does: had it happened to any less eminent individual—had it happened to me, to do as he has done, never more could I have faced this Society—never more could I have shewn myself among a portion of that people, of whose dearest interests I had made a mockery, and whose wrongs had been to me a subject of laughter and merriment.

Perhaps, however, the Honourable Gentleman may plead ignorance: he may not have been aware that there are good dinners and good coats only for those who can pay for them. If so, I acquit him of inhumanity and I moreover admire the short and easy method which he has discovered of arriving at conclusions. We are very happy: we are the happiest people in the world: no nation ever came up to us in felicity: all this happiness we owe to change: all change therefore is wicked and abominable: a process of reasoning which, if not altogether logical, is at any rate convenient: but the Honourable Gentleman seems to think its conclusiveness not sufficiently manifest: for he backs it by another and a still stronger argument. I have read in books of logic that a reasoner after stating his proof sometimes brings an auxiliary syllogism, to prove the conclusiveness of the former one:¹⁷ the Honourable Gentleman’s auxiliary syllogism is a very short one and it amounts to this. My argument is conclusive: why? because all who dispute it are radicals and cut throat thieves, which is a very pretty way of arguing and a short cut to infallibility. The Honourable Gentleman seems to be well read in that facetious history The Tale of a Tub and to have taken some lessons from the celebrated Lord Peter. That worthy, as is well known, doubtless, to all who hear me, was accustomed to maintain some rather paradoxical opinions, among others that a crust of bread was a shoulder of mutton and claret, a proposition which an ordinary stomach might have had some difficulty in digesting. Lord Peter, however, had one very powerful argument, by the help of which he could establish that, or any thing else that he pleased: his astonished hearers were to believe it at their peril, and why? because, I give you his own words, damn their souls if they did not.¹⁸ To this irresistible mode of proof, the line of argument adopted by the Honourable Gentleman seems to bear no slight analogy.

The Honourable Gentleman has been called a political Goliath,¹⁹ and seems indeed to be a Goliath in assertion: but to some it may perhaps appear, that an apter analogy would have been that of Samson, who in his eagerness to overwhelm his enemies, pulled down an old house about his own ears.²⁰

But enough of this: I pass to those gentlemen, whose arguments, if not more conclusive, are at any rate less ludicrous and require a more serious reply.

One gentleman²¹ admitted every evil of which I complained to be real, and joined with me in reprobating the system under which such evils could exist. But it was not the Constitution according to him, which was the cause of the evils but the abuses which had crept into the Constitution.

One might suppose from this, that the abuses were of recent origin and that there was a time when the Constitution existed in all its purity, and made manifest its goodness by the beauty of its effects. When was this time? Never. At all times, both in this and in every other nation, the powers of government have uniformly been monopolised in the hands of a privileged few, to whose interests, the interests of the many have uniformly been sacrificed: with only one difference, that of old, when the public were far more ignorant and prejudiced than they now are, misgovernment was proportionately more flagrant.

It were indeed strange, if at that period of our history, when all the other arts and sciences were in their infancy—when the earth was believed to be a flat surface in the centre of the universe, and the sea to flow round its outer circumference—when the philosopher’s stone and the universal medicine were the only object of chemistry, and to foretell events by the stars the sole purpose of astronomy—when our roads were inferior to the worst lanes of the present day and when navigators rarely trusted themselves out of sight of the shore: it were strange I say, if a people among whom such things were could, amid all their ignorance, superstition and barbarism, have taken an enlarged view of human nature and human society—have foreseen every possible mode of oppression and provided efficient securities against all—should in a word have established a Constitution which could secure in perpetuity the blessings of good government to mankind.

The word Constitution, Sir, is often used very loosely as it was by the Honourable Gentleman²² who on the last evening made it include I know not what fundamental laws and charters. Laws, Sir, without somebody to stand up for them are a dead letter: and as for charters if vague and general injunctions to govern well are sufficient to make a good Constitution, what country was ever without one? What I understand by the Constitution is, the securities which are taken for the good conduct of public functionaries. When those securities are insufficient, the Constitution is bad. In England, the Honourable Gentleman had acknowledged that the securities are insufficient, for he has acknowledged that public functionaries do misconduct themselves. This is to admit every thing that I require. It is to admit that the Constitution is inadequate to its end. Government may justly be held responsible for all the evils which it might and does not prevent.

I ought now to make some remarks upon the speech of my Honourable friend²³ who opened the adjourned question on the former evening: but upon consideration, I do not know whether I have any fault to find with my Honourable friend: for all he professes to prove is, that if certain amendments were made in the British Constitution it would be the best possible government: now this is all that I say of the British Constitution: I will add, or of any Constitution whatever. There are few governments, even the most despotic, which might not be made exceedingly good, by one single addition: viz. that of a properly constituted representative organ, with the proper powers. Now, Sir, I shall be contented with this degree of reform in the British Constitution: give me but a real, instead of a sham representation of the people, and every thing else that is desirable will follow in its train.

One thing, however, my Honourable friend has said which imperiously calls for a reply. He has endeavoured to show that all governments however democratic in their forms, necessarily degenerate into aristocracies: that even in a debating society, there is always an aristocratic committee of management, and in the American democracy the President and the Representatives are chosen in a Committee of leading men called a Caucus.²⁴ In using this argument give me leave to observe the Honourable Gentleman commits one of the most obvious of all mistakes: he confounds the influence of the understanding over the understanding, with the influence of the will over the will. The Caucus can only recommend; and if the landlord or the borough patron did no more than recommend, I, for one, should be far from wishing that influence of this kind should cease. What is more to be desired than that the wisest men, those who are most competent to decide, should meet and discuss the merits of the various candidates! So long as they cannot force the people to vote as they recommend, their influence is purely beneficial. Their object is to convince: for this purpose they must state in the clearest manner they can, the claims and pretensions of the candidate whose cause they expound; being clearly stated, these pretensions, if false, may be clearly refuted: but they cannot force down the throats of the people a man of whom they know nothing, or nothing but what is bad: from all mischievous kinds of influence they are debarred: the useful kinds are alone within their reach. And as for the allusion to a debating society I must say that my Honourable friend pays a very poor compliment to the understandings of this society, if he thinks they will suffer that Committee, in which my Honourable friend holds so distinguished a place to combine²⁵ themselves into an aristocracy. I will do this Society the justice to believe, that they would resist such an attempt to the utmost of their means, and that if the Committee were to abuse their power or were to forget themselves so far as to endeavour to procure their re-election by any other than proper means, I say if so very unlikely an event were to take place, they would reap no fruit from it but the shame of the attempt.

It has been urged on us this evening that the British Constitution affords security to person and property: and that to secure person and property being the chief end of government, if this be attained, the government cannot be a bad one. This is so far true, that to secure person and property is one of the grand objects of government: but I take the liberty to suggest, that gold may be bought too dear: is there no difference between securing person and property at the expense of two or three millions a year and that of fifty or sixty millions? But I have more to say than this: I disrate the fundamental assumption. Person and property it is said enjoy security under the Constitution: but it is easy to cloak under a vague phrase the most pernicious of all fallacies. When we say that person and property are secure we may either mean that every individual is permitted to enjoy with the greatest possible certainty, the fruits of his labor, which is what constitutes good government, or we may only mean that our purses are secured from the pickpocket, our houses from the burglar, and our lives from the assassin. Even in this last sense of the word, it is far from being strictly true that we have security for person and property: and in the other sense it is not true at all. Look at the government of Napoleon Bonaparte: if security from robbery and murderers constituted good government, there never was a better government than his. But security from robbers and murderers is a small part of good government and includes only that very subordinate department called police. Why do we call Bonaparte’s government a bad one? Because if person and property were secure against individuals, they were not secure against the despot. He suppressed all robbers and murderers but himself. Here, Sir, we are far from having attained even this degree of excellence. Here, Sir, and under the British Constitution a rich landlord is free to oppress his poor neighbour almost without restraint: and if he cannot put him to death, he can however inflict upon him in the shape of imprisonment, torments worse than death, on the most frivolous pretexts.²⁶ If any one doubts this, let him look at the recent convictions for breaking partridge’s eggs or cutting off the bough of a tree.²⁷ I myself know an instance in Surrey in which a Whig lord kept a man in prison five months for picking up a stick in his park and another in Yorkshire in which a man suffered three months hard labour at the treadmill for being found in broad day on a public thoroughfare through a gentleman’s grounds and suspected of being a poacher.²⁸ But why need I go further. I appeal to any one who has read in the Morning Chronicle of last Tuesday the case of John Franks, whether after such a case it is not a mockery to talk of English liberty! The law, indeed, is open to the poor man, and so said Horne Tooke, is the London tavern, if he will pay for it, but if he cannot, it is vain to expect a dinner at the one or justice at the other.²⁹

And now, Sir, in what I have said, I have already anticipated the great part of what it is necessary to say, in answer to the very eloquent speech which we have heard this evening:³⁰ since that speech, eloquent as it was, contained in it very few arguments which we had not heard before, and none which give me any great alarm as to the effect which they can produce on this Society. In truth, that speech is the most difficult to answer of any—for the difficulty of refutation is usually proportional to the insignificance of the arguments, and it is not easy to reply, where nothing has been adduced.

Yet there are some things even in that speech which it may be of use to notice and particularly the lesson which the gentleman recommends us to take from the Greek and Roman democracies. I maintain, Sir, and if it were required, I could prove that these democracies with which he frightens us never had any existence: that the ancient governments were all of them aristocracies, though sometimes with the forms of popular government, and whatever evil they did, is fairly chargeable, not upon democracy, but upon aristocracy. If however, the Honourable Gentleman should dispute this, and should affirm that these governments were real democracies, let it be as he pleases: but if they were democracies, it is not such a kind of democracies that I advocate: and I tell the Honourable Gentleman for his information, that what I want is a representative democracy, such as exists in the United States of America, and never existed any where else, giving him leave however, to tack a king and peers to it if he pleases, for I shall not enter upon this question at present.

The strong point of the Honourable Gentleman’s argument seems to be, that all I have urged is theory. If by calling it theory he means to allege that it is unfounded, this is precisely the question on which we are at issue. I dare him to the proof, but if by theory, he means general principles I agree with him: every opinion in politics involves a theory: the question is, not whether it is a theory, but whether it is true. After accusing me, however, of being governed by theory, he proceeded to inform us that he himself is governed by experience: and it may be so: but experience, Sir, is a word of double acceptation. The quack is guided by experience, as well as the philosopher: examine well the doctrines of this gentleman, and you will find that it is precisely the experience of the quack, which he is unconsciously passing off upon himself. Wherein consists the experience of the quack? He has tried his nostrum, and the patient has survived: he knows this, and it is evident that he knows no more. But he tells a different story; according to him, experience teaches, not only that the patient has survived, but that it is his drug which has saved him: all he really knows is that it has not killed him. Yet he calls this experience. It is the same sort of experience which has been quoted against me. The British Constitution is excellent: Why? because the country is prosperous; a bold assumption: but granting that the country is prosperous: what does it prove? Why, that the country is prosperous: of the cause it proves nothing: except that there must have been some cause: but when we go farther and endeavour to ascertain what that cause is, this is not fact, but inference; not practice, but theory. So much for the quack: now for the scientific physician. Is it enough for him that a medicine has been tried once, twice, or a hundred times? No, Sir, his experience is of a different sort: he reasons from the properties of the human body, and so, Sir, I reason from the properties of the human mind. Is there any better mode of reasoning? If there is, let the Honourable Gentleman point it out, but if not only there is no better mode of reasoning, but no other which is not sure to mislead, and if the Honourable Gentleman openly rejects the only correct mode of reasoning by proclaiming his aversion to theory, it only proves what we all knew before, that to be an orator, and to be a philosopher, are two very different things.

When I wish to foretel men’s actions, I endeavour to put myself in possession of the motives under which they act, and to see how other men would act in their situation.

Sir, I deny that we have experience of the British Constitution. In any sense in which experience can be said to prove any thing, we have no experience of it. It is not true, even between two forms of government both in actual operation, the one attended with happiness, the other with misery, that we could at once decide the one government to be good, the other bad. There are a thousand causes of prosperity besides good government. But even this sort of experience, inadequate and inconclusive as it is, is much better, much more deserving of the name experience, than any that we have of the British Constitution. You say, we are happy under the British Constitution—therefore no reform is needed. Do you know what it is you say when you assert that no reform is needed? You think, perhaps, that you are only affirming the British Constitution to be good: but you affirm a great deal more: you affirm that the proposed form of government is not so good. You hold up experience, specific experience, as the only ground of inference: and here you are found vituperating a Constitution of which you not only have no experience, but obstinately refuse to have any. You assume a great deal more than you would be entitled to assume, even if the reformers’ Constitution had been tried and failed: since even then it would have been premature to affirm that it had failed in consequence of its badness. On what ground do you affirm that the plan of the reformers is ineligible? From experience? but you have none: From its presumed tendency—This is something. Well then it is on this presumed tendency that we are willing to meet you. And I ask from what is the tendency of a government to be presumed, but from those general principles of human nature, and of political philosophy, which under the name of theory you cry down as visionary and chimerical.

I will not lengthen a speech already too long by going into any other of the gentleman’s arguments: but I think, on the whole, that the pleas of him and his supporters are remarkably curious and instructive. I have often thought that if all the arguments which have been urged against reform were noted down and collected together, they would form a singular exhibition. These arguments are numerous and cogent. First of all, they are all villains, who say that reform is necessary. This is sound and substantial: and why: because they are all villains, who dare to dispute it. Well! this is one argument, favour us with another. The Greeks, or, more properly speaking the Athenians, were all villains; and at a time when all the rest of the world was distinguished for civilization and morality they were sunk in the lowest brutality and barbarism. A third reason why the British Constitution needs no amendment is, that the people who say it does are called Radicals. A fourth reason is that Mr. Canning says it is not needed.³¹ A fifth which may be called the argumentum ad hominem, and which is the standing argument of the John Bull against great reform is that Mr. Hume’s name is Joseph, that he was a surgeon in India, and made a small fortune there; that he very often speaks scotch, and often makes grammatical blunders.³² A sixth reason is, that Robespierre cut throats.³³ A seventh reason is that George IV is the best of princes. An eighth reason is, that Cobbett and Hunt³⁴ are rather suspicious characters. A ninth reason is, that the world has always been very foolish, and therefore there is no reason it should improve. It was reserved for a member of this Society to furnish a tenth, viz. the goodness of our dinners and coats, and the beauty of our women. It remains to be seen whether this Society will give their votes in favour of a cause for which these are the choicest and best of the arguments which can be urged; or whether they will not rather pronounce that a Constitution which has produced the Game Laws, the Corn Laws, and the Court of Chancery,³⁵ is more worthy of the barbarous age which gave it birth, than of the civilized age which is now called upon to gaze and worship without inquiry.

7.

Population: Proaemium

1825

mr. chairman, If among those whom I now attempt to address there be any one who has ever been placed in the situation in which I stand, he is capable of appreciating the difficulties under which I labour. When a question is proposed, in comparison with which the questions which have hitherto been deemed the most important, are but as a feather in the scale—a question of such magnitude that if mankind were right on every other subject, and wrong on this, there would need no more to ensure their perpetual misery and degradation; he who undertakes to bring such a question before you, had he the logic of an Aristotle and the eloquence of a Demosthenes, would at all times have a difficult task to perform. But I who am not more conscious of the inexpressible importance of the question, than I am of my utter inability to do it justice; I who am so little habituated to public speaking, that even my thoughts and my reasonings, feeble as they may be, will appear still feebler by my manner of expressing them;—and who to all my personal disadvantages, add the farther disadvantage of not even being a member of the Society, upon whose indulgence I venture to throw myself,—I must indeed be presumptuous, indeed vainly and arrogantly confident, if I did not feel considerable embarrassment in entering upon the task which I have proposed to myself,—and you will readily believe that my embarrassment is not diminished, by the unpopularity of the opinions, which I have undertaken to advocate. They are indeed opinions of which it has been little the fashion in this country to speak well. Men of the most opposite principles have united in reprobating them: Tory, Whig, and Radical, however they may differ in other respects, agree in heaping opprobrium upon the opinions which I hold, and which I am about to express: and to crown all, though these opinions owe their chief celebrity to their having been promulgated by a parson,¹ other parsons have not hesitated to stigmatize them as unchristian and impious. There is no evil however without its good: and the very unpopularity of my cause is in some respects a circumstance in my favour. It may convince you of one thing: that as there is no credit to be gained by advocating such a cause it is not for the sake of gaining credit, that I have espoused it: that as there is no faction or party by which it is not condemned, it is not devotion to any faction or party which numbers me among its supporters; in short, that nothing but sincerity in my opinion, and a deep conviction of its importance, can be in any way concerned in bringing me here: and if sincerity and conviction give any claim upon your attention, if you value them as I do, far beyond the brilliant talents of the advocate,—I venture to hold myself assured of a favourable hearing.

To me, Sir, who have so many causes to fear it may be allowed at least to deprecate one of them: to hope that those who hear me will not be alarmed at the supposed dryness of the subject, nor fear to be wearied if they apply their attention to it. I am well aware that the most interesting subject may be made dry by being unskilfully treated, and if through a defect in power of thinking, energy of language, or skill in illustration, I should fail of exciting that attention which I have ventured to request, the fault is in me, and not in my hearers. All I ask is, that they will not confound the defects of the speaker with those of his cause, nor believe that the subject is devoid of interest and importance, because I may fail to shew that it possesses the one or the other. It is not indeed such a subject as is commonly selected for a debating society. It gives little scope to panegyric on the one hand, or invective on the other. It leaves little room for vivid painting, for glowing and poetical description. It affords no place for elegant metaphor, or florid declamation. If a subject in which the happiness of the mass of mankind is involved in a degree far surpassing almost any other question which can be named—if such a subject can be a dry one, this subject is dry indeed. But if in the estimation of this Society, a question is dry, in proportion as it is frivolous and useless, interesting in proportion as it is great, comprehensive, and important, then, Sir, a more interesting question than the present never was proposed in this Society.

8.

Population

1825

i scarcely expected, Sir, when I entered the room on the last evening of discussion, that any thing could have added to my persuasion of the truth of the principle of population. That principle appeared to me to rest upon evidence so clear and so incontrovertible, that to understand it, is to assent to it, and to assent to it once is to assent to it for ever: I flattered myself, that I understood it completely; I assented to it without any reservation; and I could not have believed that any discussion could have rendered my comprehension of it more clear, or my assent to it more confident and undoubting. Sir, that which I did not conceive to be possible has actually come to pass: I have been strengthened in my opinions by the discussion which they have undergone. It is not that any new evidence has been brought forward in their support, or that I have heard any thing advanced in their favour of which I was not previously aware. I knew all which could be said on our side of the question; but I knew not, nor was it possible to foresee, how little could be said on the other. Gratifying as it was, Sir, to hear my own opinions so eloquently and powerfully advocated as they were on the former evening by my Honourable friend,¹ yet even this was not half so gratifying as to find that those who attempted to answer him, not only did not refute his arguments, but did not venture even to look them in the face.

It was objected to my Honourable friend on the former evening that he did not understand Mr. Owen’s system.² That objection will not apply to me. I flatter myself that I do understand Mr. Owen’s system; if not in its details yet in its general principles. Should I unintentionally commit any misstatements with respect to the system, I hope that some of the gentlemen on the other side will do me the favour to set me right. But I must say that it appears to me a very suspicious circumstance attaching to Mr. Owen’s system, that whenever we bring forward any arguments against the principle of that system, they constantly meet us with the assertion, that we do not understand the system; but at the same time, they do not tell us in what respect we have misconceived the system, in order that we may misconceive it no longer.³

The charge which was brought against my Honourable friend, of not understanding Mr. Owen’s system, was in the first place untrue, and if true, it was irrelevant. Untrue, because notwithstanding the vehemence with which Mr. Owen’s friends have reiterated the charge, they have as yet failed of shewing any one instance, in which he has misrepresented the system. Irrelevant, because if it were ever so true, that my Honourable friend does not understand Mr. Owen’s system, we are not now discussing Mr. Owen’s system, but the principle of population: and in any other assembly than this, the principle of population might have been discussed without adverting to Mr. Owen’s system at all. It is true that if we should come to the conclusion that no system which does not provide a check to population can possibly be of any permanent utility, and if Mr. Owen’s system does not provide a check to population, Mr. Owen’s system must be as inefficient as the rest. But this proposition, however closely it may follow as a corollary from the principle of population, surely is not a part of the principle; still less is the truth of the principle of population itself in any degree dependant upon the goodness or badness of Mr. Owen’s system. The principle of population would have been just the same, though Mr. Owen and his system, had never been heard of. First settle the general principle, and then there can be no difficulty in applying it to the particular case. If the principle of population can be shewn to be a necessary consequence of the immutable laws of nature, it follows of course that neither Mr. Owen nor any other person, not commissioned to work miracles, can have it in his power to set these laws aside.

I wish, Sir, to make this subject as clear as possible: and when the clearness of the subject has been impaired, and the difficulty of coming to an agreement, a difficulty already so great, has been still ^afarther^a enhanced by the different meanings which different speakers have chosen to attach to a word, I am willing to give up that word, and to sacrifice whatever advantage my case might have derived from its employment, rather than that any unnecessary obstacle should stand in the way of a clear understanding of the subject. In the present discussion it appears to me, that some such confusion as I have described has arisen from the application of the word capital: a word which almost all the speakers have employed, and which scarcely any two of them seem to have understood in the same sense. One gentleman has confounded capital with money, and insisted that production could go on without capital, because it would go on if we had leather money instead of gold and silver: which is certainly true, but nothing at all to the purpose. Another gentlemen understands capital to mean nothing more than the materials and the instruments of production. Another extends it a little wider, and includes under it the whole of the surplus which remains after the immediate wants of the labourer have been supplied: and others, of whom I am one, include under the word capital, all that portion of the produce which is in any shape whatever applied to the purpose of reproduction: whether as buildings, implements, materials, or in paying or feeding the labourers. A word which has so many significations is unfit for philosophical discussion, and I shall discard, not only the name, but the very idea which it implies. In doing this, I wish it to be understood how great is the concession which I make. The whole of the arguments of Mr. Owen’s friends are founded upon the assertion, that subsistence will follow mouths.⁴ Now, granting this, I might fairly reply, that subsistence must precede mouths. Obvious and important as this proposition is, I will consent to waive it. I will consent to argue, as if, in order to set the labourers to work, it were not necessary to have accumulated a previous supply of implements, buildings, seed and material together with food sufficient to maintain the labourers, at least till the first year’s harvest could be gathered in. I will consent to let the controversy rest upon this single question, whether subsistence would follow mouths.

Now, Sir, I admit that subsistence would follow mouths; that every addition to the mouths would occasion an addition to the subsistence, but I maintain that the addition to the subsistence would be not by any means proportional to the addition to the mouths; I maintain that there would be a much greater addition to the mouths than there would be to the subsistence, and consequently that the condition of the whole would be deteriorated. I rest this assertion, upon the immutable laws prescribed by nature with regard to the productive powers of the soil.

It is a well known fact that after a piece of land has been cultivated up to a certain point, any further increase of cultivation must be attended with a considerable diminution of return. If the labour of ten men on the soil, produce a return of ten bushels, the labour of a second ten men, superadded to the former ten, will not produce so much as ten bushels, and the twenty together will not be able to produce so much as twenty bushels, probably not more than seventeen or eighteen. By increasing the labour you increase the return, but not in the same proportion. By doubling the labour, you do not double the return. It is perfectly clear, therefore, that if the first ten labourers had not more than enough to eat, when they had ten bushels to themselves, the twenty will not have a sufficiency, when they have only seventeen or eighteen bushels among them. If another ten labourers be added to the population, the return to their labour will be still less: probably not more than five or six bushels. An addition of ten to the population causes an addition of five or six only, to the production; there will now be thirty labourers and they will only have twenty four bushels among them: they will therefore be still worse off than before.

This is the death blow to the gainsayers of the principle of population. They all say, as so many persons said in this room that subsistence would follow population. I answer—so it would; but as soon as that point of cultivation was attained, at which any further application of labour to the soil is attended with a diminution of return, subsistence would follow population it is true, but it would follow at a rate which is much slower, and which is every day growing still slower than before; it would follow at a limping, halting pace, and would be continually falling more and more behind.

What that point is, it is impossible exactly to say, but that there is proof positive that not in this country alone, but in almost all the countries of the old Continent, it has been long since attained. The proof is that in all these countries it has been found necessary to cultivate the barren soils. Land as is well known, is of various degrees of fertility. In this country land even of the ninth and tenth degree of fertility ^bhas^b long since been taken into cultivation. But it is demonstratively certain not only that we should never have cultivated the ninth and tenth, but that we should not even have cultivated the second quality of land, if we could have gone on applying our labour to the land of the highest quality, without any diminution of return as at first. If the labour of ten men on the best land produces ten bushels, and the labour of ten men on the second best can produce only nine, so long as every additional ten men could continue on the best land to produce ten additional bushels, it could never be the interest of anybody to employ them upon the second best, and produce no more than nine. The farmer who had, as almost all farmers have, land of all degrees of fertility on his farm would employ all his labourers in adding to the productiveness of the best land and would leave all the other land untouched. But does this happen? We find on the contrary that the inferior lands are cultivated; and some lands are in cultivation, which with a given quantity of labour do not yield probably one tenth part as much as the best land of all. And how, I once more ask,—how can this be accounted for? Why should the farmer employ any of his labourers on the inferior lands, if he could employ them to greater advantage on the better qualities? He can have no reason but one: and that one is satisfactory. The better sort of lands are now cultivated up to so high a point that any additional labour employed upon them would not now yield a greater return than it does upon the very worst lands which are at present in cultivation.

This great truth—the limited fertility of the soil—was the grand proposition of my Honourable friend’s speech: it was the basis, on which his whole argument was founded. Most extraordinary it is, that not one of those who answered him condescended to notice this fundamental principle, but went on assuming that every addition to population, would occasion an equal addition to the produce, just as if the contrary had never been demonstrated. Even now, when the proposition has been separated from the various other propositions which my Honourable friend was under the necessity of mixing up with it, and held up naked to the view of this assembly—I cannot expect that a truth so new to most of those who are present, should be acceded to at once. It will doubtless be objected, that a very small proportion of the population can and does produce food for the whole; and that the period when there shall be any danger of a deficiency of subsistence, if indeed it can arrive at all, is at any rate far distant.

Let us give to this objection as much as it is worth. Let us suppose that a community is established, on the principle of Mr. Owen.⁵ A gentleman on the other side has affirmed that in his native county one man can produce food sufficient for the support of five.⁶ Let us suppose then that in this community, one fifth of the population is employed in the production of food, and the remaining four fifths in the production of clothing, of lodging, and the other necessaries and conveniences of life, in the practice of medicine, in the cultivation of knowledge and in the government of the community, for some sort of government I presume would be needed even under Mr. Owen’s system. I shall suppose also that food sufficient for the whole community could at first be raised, without having recourse to any but the very best quality of land, and without being reduced to the necessity of applying labour even to the best land with a diminution of return. This, it is to be observed, is granting much more to the system than the warmest of the panegyrizers have as yet ventured to claim. No one has as yet affirmed that under Mr. Owen’s system food for the whole community could be raised on the very best land. When we consider how very limited in extent in this and most other countries land of the highest quality is, and how small a proportion it bears in this country, not only to the whole land of the country, but even to the whole of the land which is in cultivation, it is obvious that I am granting infinitely more than the boldest of my antagonists would dare to ask. Yet I do grant it, because I have no occasion to deny it; false though it be, my argument would be equally good if it were true. Let us see, then, what would be the consequence.

Population would increase, additional mouths and additional hands would be brought into play; these additional hands, if applied to the best soils, would not produce a proportional increase of return. They must either be applied to inferior soils, or to a higher cultivation of the best; in either case they would be attended with an additional, but not proportionate addition to the return. If one man could previously raise food for five, one man, probably could now raise food for no more than four. As it is one of Mr. Owen’s rules that no other article shall be produced, until the community is supplied with all the food which it requires,⁷ a greater proportion than before must betake themselves to the production of food. One fifth of the population was formerly sufficient to produce subsistence for the whole. One fourth would now be requisite. Three fourths only, instead of four fifths would remain to supply the other wants of the community. These wants therefore could not be so well supplied as before. If the community was not previously better clothed, better lodged, better attended when sick, and better governed than enough, they could not now be well enough clothed, well enough lodged, well enough attended nor well enough governed.

If population went on, the time would speedily come when one man would be unable to produce more food than enough for three. One third of the population must now be employed in raising food; and two thirds only would remain for other purposes. With every increase in population, the proportion employed in raising food must be increased; it would rise from one third to ½, from ½ to ⅔, ¾, ⅚; and from the properties of the soil the progression would be very rapid; until at length the labour of each man applied to the soil, would not be able to produce more than enough for the subsistence of one. Then must the whole of the population apply themselves to the production of food. There would be no clothes, no houses, no furniture. There would be no physicians nor legislators. There would be nothing for elegance, nothing for ease and nothing for pleasure; mankind would be reduced to the level of a very low kind of ^canimal,^c having just two functions, that of raising, and that of consuming food. After population had reached this point, if it were still to increase, the surplus, it is evident, could not be supported. There would then not even be enough food. Starvation must overspread the community, until the destruction of the surplus population had reduced it again to that number for which food can be provided, and food alone.

Let it not be objected that this period is far distant. The consummation indeed, it is to be hoped, is far distant. The dreadful end of the series might be long delayed, though not so long as may be supposed. But though the end of the series may be distant, the series itself has long since commenced. That progressive deterioration which if not checked must end in destruction, commenced from the moment when it became necessary to cultivate any but the finest soils. The cultivation even of the second best land, demonstratively proved that additional labour could not be applied to the best land without a diminution of return. From that moment, every extension of cultivation drew and must draw a greater and greater proportion of the labourers to the production of food, and must leave a smaller proportion to the production of everything else. Let Mr. Owen’s system be ever so admirable; let his arrangements for the employment of labour be ever so efficacious: it would nevertheless be true that unless the whole of the food requisite for the nourishment of the community could be raised, not only without cultivating any but the very best soil, but without expending more than a very small quantity of labour even upon the best soil itself, every increase of population must continually draw a greater and greater proportion of the labourers to agriculture, leaving a less and less proportion for all other pursuits, and consequently deteriorating the condition of all. With every extension of cultivation, after the inferior lands come under tillage, all must have less food, or less something else.

There is only one case in which this would not be strictly true. Although there would every day be a less and less proportion of the population, to be spared for the production of the comforts and conveniences of life, it is possible that by improvements in machinery and more extended applications of the principle of the division of labour, this smaller proportion might be able to produce enough for all. That this principle has been powerfully called into action in this country there can be no doubt; and it is the only cause why the increase of our population was not stopped centuries ago by starvation and misery. But as the increase of population is constantly going on; as the proportion of labourers which can be spared from the production of food is constantly diminishing; there must likewise be a constant succession of improvements in production and we shall be as ill off as before. But a constant succession of improvements in production is what we cannot look for under any circumstances, and least of all under Mr. Owen’s system, where the benefits of the invention are to be shared with a hundred or a thousand others, and the labour is for the inventor alone. That constant succession of improvements which would be improbable even when the inventor is permitted for a time to enjoy the entire fruits of his invention may be pronounced impossible where he can have but a hundredth or thousandth part.

From the moment then when additional labour can no longer be applied to the best land with the same return as at first—a moment indicated by the commencement of tillage on the inferior lands, the ^dfarther^d increase of population must deteriorate the condition of all, unless accompanied by a constant succession of improvements in production. And even if it be so accompanied: if for every man who comes into the world, a new invention be made, which enables that man to add as much to the produce as he does to the mouths which are to consume it: no one to be sure is worse off, but give us the invention without the additional man, and all will be better off. In every case, therefore, after inferior land begins to be tilled, for every increase of population a portion of the physical comfort of the people is sacrificed; or at any rate postponed to something else. Up to a certain point it is desirable that it should be postponed to something else. A certain density of population is absolutely necessary for the complete enjoyment of the benefits of the social union. Up to that point, it is desirable that population should increase, even though it did take something from the physical comfort of each. But beyond that point every increase of population, has the effect of rendering the condition of each less favourable than it would otherwise be; beyond that point, therefore, whether under Mr. Owen’s system or any other system, an increase of population is not desirable.

I should like to know, Sir, what the gentlemen on the other side will say in answer to this. One thing I hope will now be very clearly understood. That unless they deny that original property of the soil, by which an increased application of labour is attended with a diminished rate of return, all that they can say is nothing to the purpose. They may endeavour indeed to evade this principle—they may say that by the application of labour, the most barren land may be made equal to the most fertile, and this I know they will say; for this reason, because they can say nothing else; but I have to request that when they do say it, all who hear me will have the answer ready: It is this: You may fertilise the most barren land—you may increase its produce tenfold: but it must be by increasing the number of your labourers a hundredfold. A gentleman declared on the former evening that if you had not twenty times the produce, it is only because you have not twenty times the population. The incorrectness of this assertion, I hope is now evident. For my part, I am persuaded that not with a thousand times our present population—indeed with no amount of population—and with our present means of production, could we raise twenty times our present produce. Without some gigantic invention, some machine, or other mode of increasing the productive power of labour, all the men in the universe concentrated onto this island, could not, I am satisfied, raise more than three or four times our present produce.

After what I have said, it is scarcely necessary to state, how cordially I agree in the resolution which was moved on the preceding evening, “That, etc.”

There were two objections brought against the principle, which still remain to be answered, and on which it may not be useless to add a few words more.

A gentleman affirmed on the former evening that the principle of population is unnatural: that it is contrary to nature and therefore cannot be true. What he meant by nature, and unnatural, he did not tell us: indeed he did not seem to know: nor did he offer any proof that the principle of population is unnatural. What he meant by nature I cannot tell: I will tell him what I mean by nature; I mean all the things which we see and feel: the sun, moon and stars; men and animals, trees, plants and shrubs; the earth with all its productions and these various phenomena. If all this be not nature, I should like to know what is. Now then, to what part of all this does the gentleman consider the principle of population to be contrary? Is it contrary to the sun and moon? contrary to the stars? contrary to the trees and shrubs? to the sea? to the wind? to an earthquake or a volcano? If, Sir, as is abundantly manifest, a man would make himself ridiculous by saying that the principle of population is contrary to any of these, I should like to know how that which is not contrary to any part, can be said to be contrary to the whole.

But the gentleman may reply that it is contrary to some supposed law of nature. If he can prove this, I have done. But to what law of nature is it contrary? It is a law of nature that fire burns: is it contrary to that? It is a law of nature that water freezes: is it contrary to that? No, but it is a law of nature that to every application of additional labour, the soil yields a diminishing return; and to this law of nature it is so far from being contrary, that as I have shewn, it is a necessary consequence of it.

If the word unnatural has any meaning at all, I suppose it has some indistinct reference to the will of God. And this brings me to the other objection which I promised to notice; that it is a libel on the Deity to suppose that ^ehe^e would send mouths without sending meat to put into them—that in short, the principle of population is an evil, and therefore inconsistent with the benevolence of God. One would really think, Sir, that there were no such thing as evil in the world—either physical or moral. As long as any evil exists the argument of the Honourable Gentleman is a dangerous one and may easily be carried a great deal too far. In our present state of ignorance as to the final causes of many things which we see upon the earth, the existence of any evil appears to us inconsistent with the divine benevolence. The principle of population is an evil it is true, but certainly by no means an irremediable one: and he who can reconcile the benevolence of God with the existence of war, pestilence, famine, poverty, and crime might be able, one would think, to reconcile it also with the principle of population. But if we admit, as we must do, that in the present ^fcondition^f of our knowledge the existence of these evils under an all-wise and benevolent ruler is a mystery which we cannot explain; let us at any rate allow as much to the principle of population as we do to war, pestilence and famine and not^g conclude that it does not exist, because there is a difficulty in explaining it which it only shares with all the other evils which afflict humanity.

So much for the religious objection; and with respect to the word unnatural, I should be inclined to reverse the proposition of the gentleman who made use of the word, and instead of saying that it is unnatural and therefore cannot be true, I should say that it is true and therefore cannot be unnatural.

If the gentleman says that the principle is repulsive to his feelings, I answer, that this is the first time I ever heard that feeling is the test of truth; that a proposition is true or false, according as we happen to like or dislike it, and that there can be no such things as unpleasant truths.

9.

Population: Reply to Thirlwall

1825

the gentleman who opened the debate¹ having been unavoidably absent upon the two last adjourned discussions, and feeling himself incapable of replying to arguments which he has not heard, has requested me to take upon myself a task, which he has only the alternative of imperfectly performing, or of declining altogether. I regret the more deeply that unfortunate necessity which has thrown the business of reply upon one so very ill qualified for it as I am, because the difficulties of that business, difficulties at all times so great, have been rendered unusually so at present by the unrivalled talents of one, at least, of the gentlemen by whom the contrary side of the question has been maintained.² That gentleman, Sir, might fairly have expected that the person who should be selected to attempt the arduous task of effacing the impression which he has made, should be, not perhaps his equal, for that would be too much to expect, but that he should at least approach to an equality—he might have expected that his opponents, if they could not have found an antagonist worthy to contend with him, would at least have selected the most worthy whom they could find, and not, as they have done, the most unworthy. But to whatever degree I may regret that the task should have fallen on me; on me, unfortunately, it has fallen, and though I am unable of my utter incapacity to perform it as it ought to be performed,—though I well know how little I can do; that little which I can do shall be done.³

^aI have observed with no small satisfaction on this and the last evening, that some of the most intelligent members of this society, have not denied, or rather have tacitly acknowledged, the principle of population, and have made it their chief object to prove that this principle is not in any respect at variance with the doctrines on which Mr. Owen’s system is founded. To what extent this opinion is correct, and to what extent it is incorrect, I shall have other opportunities of attempting to shew. In the mean time these gentlemen will excuse me if I confine myself to the question which is more immediately before the society,—whether the principle of population be true or false.^a Several of the speakers have maintained that it is false.

The most eloquent of these were the gentleman who closed the debate on the second evening, and the gentleman who closed the debate on the third evening.⁴ I have mentioned these gentlemen together, because it is against what they have advanced that the few remarks which I have to submit will chiefly be directed; but I owe an apology to one of the gentlemen, for confounding under the same name an eloquence of pomp, and glare, and tinsel, and frippery, and meretricious ornament, with an eloquence which, in plain, but powerful language, addresses itself to the understanding; for confounding one who treats his audience like children, to be dazzled by a gaudy brilliancy of colouring, with one who treats them like men, and I may add, like women, of judgment and sense,—for confounding a dealer in tropes and figures with a dealer in facts and arguments, even though the facts be irrelevant, and the arguments sophistical. I am sure that I meant no disrespect by the comparison, and I can with perfect sincerity assure the two gentlemen concerned, that I know how to estimate them both at their just value.

Before I reply to what has been said on the merits of the question, it is necessary that I should take some notice of what has been said about the question itself: because advantage has been taken of an inaccuracy in the wording of the question, to stigmatize all which has been said on one side of it as irrelevant. The tendency, it was said, of population to increase faster than the means of subsistence, (if indeed there be any such tendency) must be a law of nature: and it was pronounced to be a gross absurdity to say, that in so far as human misery is referable to social causes, it is referable, not to a social, but to a natural cause. When a question is framed, as this was, upon the spur of the moment, it is exceedingly difficult to preserve strict accuracy in the language, and I doubt not that it will be in the recollection of many who are now present, that the resolution was originally worded in a still more objectionable manner than it now is. The framer of the resolution when he entered the room, was not aware that he would be called upon to propose a question: he had no time to consult with his friends, no time even to consult with his own thoughts, but was compelled to write down the resolution in the first terms which occurred to him, with all those inaccuracies which at the moment were unavoidable, but which five minutes’ notice would have prevented. It does not however follow because the wording of the question was inaccurate, that all which has been said upon it is irrelevant, and perhaps we did not the less speak to the question in dispute because we did not speak to the question as it stood upon the paper. Had I been consulted, I should most likely have proposed to word the resolution as follows: That the condition of the great mass of mankind can be permanently improved by no other means than by limiting their numbers. The evils which may or may not have already arisen from excess of population, I should have put entirely out of the question. I should have said nothing of social causes, and the cavils for which this word has given room would never have been raised or would have been seen at once to be irrelevant. The word however, although it may have been superfluous, was not altogether without a meaning; nor was it introduced solely for the purpose of rounding a sentence. The meaning which the proposer of the question evidently intended to express, was that whatever quantity of human misery may be referable to social causes, a still greater quantity of misery is referable to the principle of population and that the evils occasioned by the principle of population are of such a nature as no social arrangement however perfect, can cure.

In my former speech,⁵ I advanced two propositions: that population has a tendency to increase in a uniform ratio; and that subsistence, after a certain point, can only be made to increase, in a constantly decreasing ratio. If these propositions be made out, it inevitably follows that after a certain point, any farther increase of population must be detrimental. I took it for granted that the first of these propositions,—the tendency of population to increase, would not be disputed. I have rarely, if ever, heard it disputed. The other proposition I have often heard disputed. I have often heard it maintained, that with whatever rapidity population may increase, subsistence can be made to increase as fast. It was therefore to the refutation of this, the most common objection, that my arguments were chiefly directed: and in the attainment of this object I have had more success than I anticipated.⁶

^bAlmost all the gentlemen who have spoken on the other side, have tacitly abandoned this fallacy. One gentleman⁷ indeed did come forward with something like it, though he did not seem to be altogether conscious what he was saying. The opinion of this gentleman seemed to be, that we should trust to the chapter of accidents. Some island might be thrown up from the bottom of the sea. Some great agricultural improvement might be introduced, which should effect as great a revolution in the present modes of cultivation, as was created by the introduction of the plough. I think Mr. Owen somewhere says, that the time may come when instead of growing corn, we might be able to make it—in which there might be no limit to population except the want of elbowroom:⁸ and the gentleman seems to think that something of this kind may possibly happen: to which I answer, possibly it may. The sky may fall, and we may catch larks, but I should have a mean opinion of the prudence of him who should trust to a contingency of this kind for his supper. I certainly am not disposed to deny that an island may rise fom the sea but without being very sceptical I think I may be permitted to doubt whether it is quite sure to do so—and we might chance to find ourselves in rather an unpleasant predicament, if we were to people the island before we had it, and if after that it were never to come at all. It will be quite time enough to people the island when we have got it. In the mean time, there is no occasion for our starving ourselves, by having a greater population than we can maintain. To live beyond the means which we have, in consideration of those which the gentleman thinks we may possibly have, at some distant period, as it would be bad policy in a circle or a triangle, so I am apt to think it could not be very good policy in a parallelogram.^9b

I consider then the first¹⁰ of my two propositions as made out. I have heard, however, to my surprise, a denial of the other proposition, the tendency of population to increase, from the lips of both the gentlemen to whom I am principally replying. I consider it a great triumph, Sir, to have driven these gentlemen to this, which in my opinion is precisely the most untenable ground upon which their doctrines can possibly be put. I hope without much difficulty to make manifest to all who are now present, that this my opinion is well founded.

In the first place, we were treated with an argument drawn from the depths of natural philosophy. There is a necessary limit, we were told, to the increase of population, because there is only a certain quantity of life in the universe. As this is a mere assumption; as no proof was offered, and as we were not even told where the proof is to be found; as the gentleman who advanced it,¹¹ rested it on his sole authority; I might be permitted to dismiss it at once. No one can be required to argue against a bare assertion: if I shew that it is a bare assertion, I have surely done all that can be required. We were assured indeed with great confidence, that it was a genuine deduction from all that was known of chemistry and of natural philosophy. Of these sciences the gentleman did not profess to know much; in which respect, his modesty did him injustice: since he appears to have dived into the arcana of nature with a boldness and success little short of miraculous: and whether by long and patient enquiry, or by the mere force of his own natural genius I cannot say, but he seems to have solved the great problem which has engrossed the attention of chemists and physiologists for centuries. We know, Sir, that philosophers, almost from the very beginning of philosophy, have been engaged in the attempt to determine what life is, and whether there be really such a thing as a vital principle at all. But this gentleman has untied the Gordian knot; he is not only perfectly familiar with that principle of life which has hitherto remained imperceptible to all eyes save his own, but he can measure it by the foot and by the yard—he can weigh it by the pound and by the ounce: he knows exactly how much of it exists in the universe; and no doubt, if properly solicited, he could inform us of its precise colour, its shape, and its dimensions. The gentleman however seems to be scarcely aware of the originality of his views. He referred us to the writings of chemists and of natural philosophers. I do not know the extent of the gentleman’s reading in chemistry and natural philosophy, and as I have not the gift of divination, I cannot be supposed to know who those philosophers are, by whose authority he wishes, though it is scarcely necessary, to corroborate his own. But I too have paid some attention to chemistry and natural philosophy. I do not indeed lay claim to so much knowledge as the gentleman possesses. I have stuck to experiment—I have not meddled with mysteries—Nature has told me none of her secrets. But I have read, and I trust not altogether without profit. I cannot say however that in the course of my reading I ever met with this magnificent discovery; it was reserved for the genius and penetration of Mr. Gale Jones. So new and so important a truth ought not to be lost to the world. It ought not to be confined within the walls of the Cooperative Society. I trust that we shall shortly see it at full length, in the next volume of the Philosophical Transactions. As however a philosopher who with so much profundity combines so much modesty will doubtless not be offended at a well meant suggestion, even though it should proceed from one whose head is not yet even partially silvered over with years, I have a piece of friendly advice to offer, which in the event of his determining to give the public the benefit of his discoveries, he may not find altogether undeserving of his attention. It is one part of the business of the man of science to make assertions, but it is another part, more alien perhaps to the fire of genius, but not for that reason the less necessary, to prove them. As great philosophers as this gentleman, to an exposition of the great truths which they have discovered, have not disdained to join a succinct statement of the evidence, on which those discoveries are founded. When Sir H. Davy, by means of the voltaic battery, had decomposed the alkalis and earths,¹² and made those other glorious discoveries which have raised him to the very highest rank among experimental philosophers, he did not say to the world, These things are so, believe me for I have studied chemistry and natural philosophy: No, Sir, he minutely described in the scientific journals all the circumstances of the experiment, that others might have an opportunity of verifying the truth of his discoveries: he opened his laboratory to the world, that all might see the wonders which he performed, and the means by which he performed them—he suffered not his pupils to take any thing upon his authority; he placed the proofs before them, and bid them doubt if they could. Perhaps it would not have greatly impaired the splendour of this gentleman’s discovery, if he had condescended in this respect to have imitated his great precursor; and if he could not exhibit the proofs before our eyes, to have told us at least where they were to be found.

As an admirer of moral courage, and a lover of free discussion, I should be the last person to blame the gentleman for the honesty and manliness with which he avowed his disbelief of one of the great doctrines of Christianity, the doctrine of the creation; but I confess I was a little astonished to find that he who knows so little of one being, because of that being experience teaches us nothing, should yet know so much of another being called the principle of life, of which, he must surely acknowledge, that she teaches us as little. I confess it did strike me as somewhat surprising, that the same person should be so sceptical on the one hand and so dogmatical on the other. But this is only one of innumerable instances to prove that it is among the rarest of all human achievements to know when and where to doubt. It is an easy matter, Sir, to doubt, but a very difficult matter to doubt well; and there are a hundred persons who doubt much, for one who doubts when he ought and only when he ought. We have good speakers, Sir, and good thinkers, and good reasoners; but a good doubter may as yet be truly pronounced to be rara avis in, etc.¹³

The other gentleman to whom I am replying¹⁴ took a different line of argument. He did not deny—he did not profess to meddle with the power of population to increase: but he denied that it had increased; and he repeated after the second speaker of the same evening,¹⁵ that to ascribe evil to a mere tendency, which has never had any practical operation, is little better than absolute nonsense. This is plausible in appearance, Sir, but in appearance only, for it is founded on ignorance of the manner in which the increase of population is practically kept down. The tendency of population to increase may not be the less a cause of unspeakable misery, although the actual increase may have fallen far, very far, short of the tendency. In order to know how far the tendency to increase has been a cause of misery, it is not sufficient to know what has been the actual increase: it must be known by what cause the actual increase has been restrained. It is of little avail to say that population has not doubled itself in 25 years, if it has only been prevented from doubling itself by poverty and misery—that population has been kept down is very little to the purpose, if it has been kept down by starvation and disease. The gentleman must know that early deaths are as sure a check to population as limitation of births, and unless he can deny that early deaths with the diseases which lead to them are an evil, I submit it for his consideration whether the tendency of population to increase may not be a cause of abundant misery, even though that tendency should not make itself visible in the population returns, even though the population should not actually have increased.

But is it true, that population has not increased? In this country and many others, the increase is so manifest that even he cannot deny it: but forsooth in Greece and Asia, it has diminished. I can barely conceive a mind so constituted as to consider this as a refutation of the principle of population: but I for my part shall be satisfied, if he will admit that in any one country, population has increased. I will take America, or Ireland: in the one it is ascertained that population has doubled in less than 25 years; in the other that it has increased, in a century and a half, from less than two millions to more than seven. On these premises I think I may venture to assume that population in other countries has at least the physical power of increasing at the same rate. I am not aware of any difference in the fecundity of the female of the human species in different countries. In warm climates, I believe, child-bearing begins earlier, and terminates earlier: but if there be any difference in the duration, it is a difference of too trifling a nature to occasion any material inaccuracy in the conclusion. But if the physical power of increase be the same, the difference can only be in the causes which counteract it; and these causes are poverty, and prudence.¹⁶ In the countries to which the gentleman has referred us, we happen to know that poverty is the cause to which the extraordinary decay of the population is to be ascribed; poverty—grievous and deplorable poverty—occasioned by the most execrable government which ever cursed human kind. Does not the gentleman know that in those countries neither person nor property enjoys an hour’s security? That he who goes to bed a rich man knows not that he may not rise from it a beggar, perhaps a slave? Let him consider that under this yoke those countries have groaned for ages, and ask himself whether it is wonderful that such countries should be depopulated? That in such a state of things children are not born, or are born only to die? True, there was a time when those countries were populous, but why? because there was a time when those countries were free.

A lame argument may occasionally be helped out by a great name, and apparently with this view Mr. Cobbett’s name has been brought forward. But if the gentleman was obliged to bring forward a name instead of a reason, I think at least it should not have been Mr. Cobbett’s name. That Mr. Cobbett is an able writer I do not deny: but it does not follow that a man’s opinion is good for any thing because he has abilities;—it is also necessary that he should have a little knowledge, and a little principle. It is necessary, first that it should be quite certain that he is speaking his real sentiments, and secondly, that there should be at least some reason to believe that he knows what he is talking about. It is one of the peculiar characteristics of Mr. Cobbett that he pronounces with equal confidence upon the things which he knows, and upon the things which he does not know; and he seems indeed to fancy that he obtains that knowledge by inspiration, which in others is the fruit of years spent in painful study. I can attach little weight to the authority of a man who has professed in turns all opinions which suited the accidental purpose of the moment—who affirms one thing one day, and something diametrically opposite the next, but always with the same confidence in himself, and contempt of all who question his assertions—of a man who on almost every subject, has been found on all sides except the right and who has tried all varieties of opinion except common sense, and all kinds of morality, except common honesty.

But Mr. Cobbett, it seems, is of opinion that the population has not increased, and why? because the churches are empty.¹⁷ I have some difficulty in tracing any connection between the premises and the conclusion. Mr. Cobbett perhaps thinks that wherever there are churches there must at some time or other have been people to fill them. I think I might fairly dispute even this proposition. Mr. Cobbett says, and says truly, that in some parishes there are not to be found twenty people in the church, and yet I will consent to be judged by Mr. Cobbett himself, if in these parishes there had hitherto been no church, and a church had now to be built for these 20 people, whether it would be built on a scale one inch smaller than it is at present. The real truth I take to be, that the country was divided into parishes, much more according to extent of space than amount of population. It was necessary that every parishioner should be within a moderate distance of the parish church, and there was of course a church in every parish, whether there were people to fill it or not. But suppose that when the churches were built there were people to fill them, it surely does not follow that there were more. In those days, every body went to church. In these degenerate days the churches are not half full, and yet I do not remember that I ever saw a parish church which would hold part of the inhabitants, if they were assembled together. We are to remember that those who go to church, do not all of them go at the same hour—that a great many people go to the dissenting parson—and a great many go to no parson at all.

It cannot well be expected, nor, after what I have said, is it necessary, that I should follow the gentleman through his special pleading with regard to Ireland, China and America. I have shewn as I think the fallacy of the arguments by which he has attempted to prove that population has not increased; and having done so much, I may safely stop. I do not feel myself called upon to do more. And having now, I hope, said enough to establish the existence of the evil, it is necessary that I should still say something on the remedy.

The gentleman to whom I have so often alluded is pleased to deride that expectation on which all our hopes of human improvement are founded, the expectation of a gradual increase of prudence, among the people. To expect so much philosophy from the bulk of mankind is in his opinion altogether visionary: as if it required much philosophy to avoid leaping into a gulph when it is gaping before us. I would not willingly renounce these hopes, visionary as the gentleman may deem them. I expect more from the diffusion of knowledge—more from the extension of education—I was going to say more than the honourable gentleman, but we must remember that he too expects no trifle from education. Let us reflect what it is which he expects from education, and what it is which I expect. I limit my expectations within a very moderate compass. I merely expect that when mankind are taught to know their own interest, they will follow it. He expects that through the influence of education, they may be made to love their neighbours better than themselves. The gentleman has at the same time two contrary theories—the one, that education can do nothing, the other that it can do every thing: both theories may be false, but both cannot be true. If he holds fast to the opinion that education may bring men to a state in which the public affections shall uniformly and universally predominate over the love of indolence and of pleasure, there is little difficulty in determining which of us expects most from education, the gentleman or myself. If mine be a chimerical expectation, what are we to think of his? If he denies that it is in the power of education to direct our self-love, and affirms that it is in the power of education to overcome it, I can only infer that he who has so keen an eye for the inconsistencies of others, is as blind as a mole to his own.

To return to the alleged improbability of an increase of prudence among the people. In human affairs, the criterion of probability is experience. As the state of society which I contemplate has never yet had existence, it cannot be in my power to quote particular experience in justification of my expectations; but we have experience of the general course of human affairs, and this experience, as far as it goes, is all in my favour. Experience proves¹⁸ and proves fully, that men do follow their interest more steadily, in proportion as they know better what it is. It is easy to say that those who have most knowledge do not always act the most wisely—but the gentleman I presume, will scarcely on that account affirm that it is not the tendency of knowledge, to make men act wisely. Nor have I ever yet heard of any other recipe of making them wise except by giving them knowledge, uncertain as that method may be. But we are not here under the necessity of contenting ourselves with experience of this general kind. If we are to believe the gentleman, moral restraint is impracticable—if we look around us, every thing convinces us of its practicability. That prudence—that moral restraint which in his opinion requires philosophy such as few among mankind can ever be expected to attain, is actually practised to a greater or less extent in every country with which I am acquainted except Ireland—that ill-fated island I believe is the only country in the world where the two sexes begin to propagate their kind as soon as nature enables them to do so without the slightest thought of the future—and it is therefore the only country where the mass of the people are reduced to the smallest pittance which is sufficient to sustain life. I would not be understood to mean that prudential habits prevail in any European country to the extent which is desirable. One thing however experience has fully established; that in proportion as the people are better instructed, in that very proportion prudential habits prevail. If then prudential habits have hitherto increased in a direct ratio with the increase of knowledge, perhaps I shall not be far wrong in supposing that they will continue to do so. Let us only observe what is passing before our eyes. In this room I will suppose that there are 50 bachelors—and when I look at the numbers around me I cannot suppose that there are fewer—I will venture to say that of these 50 there are at least 40 who would willingly marry, and are only restrained from doing so by prudential motives. When such is the power of prudence, even in the imperfect degree in which it at present prevails, perhaps in contemplating the possibility of strengthening it to a degree which may eventually bring about all the good that we desire, I am not far exceeding the bounds of a just and reasonable expectation. To those, Sir, who can read the signs of the times,¹⁹ there are even now indications that this process is going on. It may perhaps be gratifying to the honourable gentleman, for though it does not square with one of his theories, yet at the same time and for that very reason it is in strict accordance with the other, that I have some reason to know that prudential habits are rapidly gaining ground in some of the most populous of our manufacturing districts; that a knowledge that the wages of labour depend upon the number of the labourers is rapidly spreading itself in these districts, and the increase of prudence, which that knowledge cannot fail to engender, may in time be productive of the happiest effects.

So much for the charge of indulging in chimerical expectations.

I have still one word of a personal nature to submit to you. It must be a strong motive which can induce me in an assembly of this sort to speak of myself, but there are occasions in which it is necessary, and this appears to me to be one of them. The gentleman has accused me of not having exhibited what in his opinion is a proper quantity of feeling—and he thinks that if I had mixed up a greater portion of feeling in my speech, I should have greatly improved the quality of the composition. If the gentleman means, Sir, that the matter of my speech does not derive that aid which it might do from the impressiveness of the manner; that my delivery is not sufficiently warm and sufficiently animated—that the tones of my voice are not sufficiently vehement and sufficiently energetic—in short that I do not speak well—this may be true enough—and the remark shall meet with that attention which any criticisms from such a master of eloquence deserve. But if he means that in the substance of what I have said there be any indications of a want of feeling, I dare him to the proof. The question which I shall presently propose for the succeeding discussion,²⁰ is one which will give me an opportunity of entering into considerable detail with regard to the state of society which we contemplate as desirable, and of proving to you perhaps for the first time the benevolent and philanthropic tendency of those opinions which in your mind are perhaps connected with no ideas but those of unfeeling cruelty or heartless indifference. Time does not permit me to enter into such a detail at present. In the mean time however there is one observation which I will not restrain myself from uttering: That I look with great suspicion upon people who are constantly for introducing feeling every where but in its proper place—that I have indeed heard, as the gentleman supposes, that appeals to feeling are out of place in a philosophical enquiry where the object is to instruct and not to persuade: that I have heard, and believe that feeling ought to be subordinate to reason, and not supreme over her, and that the province of feeling commences where that of reason ends. Feeling has to do with our actions, reason with our opinions; it is by our reason that we find out what it is our duty to do; it is our feelings which supply us with motives to act upon it when found. Let these two operations be kept as they always ought to be kept, separate, and let feeling no more encroach upon the province of reason, than reason upon the province of feeling. The gentleman has quoted Plato,²¹ he must be well aware that this maxim holds a distinguished place in the ethical system of that great philosopher; of which system in truth it is the very foundation; but I do not adopt it because it is the language of Plato but because it is the language of truth. When gentlemen talk of introducing feeling into a question which ought surely to be decided by arguments, and not by feelings, I am somewhat at a loss to understand what it is that they mean. Do they mean that feeling ought to supersede reason entirely? and if not entirely to what extent? Do they mean that we ought to arrive by feeling at the very same conclusions at which we should arrive by reason? or that we ought to arrive at different conclusions? In the first case their appeal to feeling is unnecessary: in the second, it is fraught with mischief and absurdity. Let feeling be kept strictly to its proper function, that of stimulating our exertions in that course which reason points out. But in the mean time I must protest against any verdict which may be pronounced against the moral part of my character merely from an observation of the intellectual, and I must beg gentlemen not to suppose that I am destitute of feeling for no reason perhaps but because my feelings are under better regulation than theirs. No, Sir: if I am to be condemned for want of feeling, I will have a fair trial—I will be tried in the proper province of feeling—I will be tried in action—and if I am found inferior to any of Mr. Owen’s disciples or to Mr. Owen himself, in the steady and laborious pursuit of the best of ends by what my reason tells me to be the best of means, let me be shaken contemptuously from the balance in which I shall have been weighed and found wanting,²² and let Mr. Owen and his disciples trample upon me as they will.

I might say more of myself if I had not already taken up much more of your time on that subject than is warranted by its importance. I have only now to state that in the loose and inaccurate way in which the Resolution is worded, it is not the intention of the proposer to press it to a division.

10.

Cooperation: First Speech

1825

the side of the question which I mean to espouse being unfortunately very far from popular in this society, I should feel considerable apprehension in addressing you, did I not know that this society consists of persons, who having thrown off the yoke of authority, venture to think for themselves, and who therefore cannot fail to be indulgent to others who mean to claim the same privilege. They whose opinions are founded upon reflection are always ready to give a fair hearing to others. It is only the slaves of authority, who are anxious to stifle discussion; those who are unable to give a reason for the opinions which they hold, and who are therefore aware that their only chance of success consists in silencing opposition.

I should be extremely sorry, if any thing that I may say this evening were to be interpreted in a sense disrespectful to any of those whose doctrines I take the liberty of opposing. For those of them who honor me with their acquaintance I have the highest possible respect. Of Mr. Robert Owen in particular, I can join my testimony.¹

11.

Cooperation: Intended Speech

1825

at the last meeting of this Society the opinions which I hold were assailed with a variety of epithets, expressive of hatred and contempt. I shall not follow this example: I shall not call Mr. Owen’s theory a spurious theory nor shall I say that it ought to be torn into tatters and scattered to the winds. But I shall endeavour to shew that it is founded on mistaken views of human nature and of the course of human affairs; and that the end which its supporters have at heart, the greatest happiness of the greatest number,¹ would not be attained, but frustrated, by the adoption of the means which they so warmly recommend.

Before I submit to this Society, my view of the subject, I deem it proper to offer some few remarks on the principles, which were so ably put forward by a gentleman² on the last evening, as the basis on which the system of Mr. Owen is founded.

The first of these principles is, that labour is the only source of wealth:³ that the wealth of a country is wholly produced by labour, and that all other classes are supported out of the produce of labour. From this it was inferred, that the burden of poor-rates is wholly borne by the labourer, that all other classes are living at the labourer’s expense, are receiving a portion of that which of right belongs to him, and which they either extort from him by force, or which at least they owe to his charity and forbearance.

In answer to this, it was observed on the preceding evening that wealth is indeed the produce of labour, but not of unassisted labour: and if other classes enjoy a portion of the produce of labour, it is not without giving some sort of an equivalent in return. It is of very little use to tell the labourer that it is he, and not the capitalist, who is the producer of wealth, when the labourer knows well that if the capitalist deserts him, he must starve. Turn out a labourer or if you please a score of labourers into an untilled field, of whatever fertility, even the finest soil in the world—and without the aid of the capitalist, what can they produce? Nothing; absolutely nothing. It is not then labour alone, which produces the national wealth, but labour assisted by tools, assisted by seed, or materials, and supported by a previous supply of accumulated food. It is the capitalist who supplies all these; and is not the capitalist entitled to some remuneration for this assistance? Is it not the interest of the labourers themselves, that he should be remunerated for it? Can it be expected that he would afford this assistance, if he were not remunerated?

These things having been stated on the preceding evening, the gentlemen on the other side brought forward in reply, an argument which they seemed to think a complete coup de grâce to their opponents, and which, judging from the applause with which it was received appeared so to most of the persons present. This capital, said they, these tools, this seed or material, and this accumulated food, was itself the produce of labour. Well; so it was: and what then? Why, then it all belonged to the labourer, and consequently it was not the capitalist who afforded the capital, it was the labourer who produced it, and the capitalist took it from him, and now demands a remuneration for allowing him to make use of that which is of right his own. This was the argument. I hope I have stated it fairly; if not, I request that some gentleman will correct me.

Well, then, I proceed to point out the fallacy. The food, tools, seed, and material, in one word the capital, is the produce of labour, sure enough, but of what labour? They were not produced by the labourers who consume them. They are the accumulated product of the labour of the capitalists themselves, or of their ancestors, and they are wholly made up of the savings from that labour. This may appear to many who hear it, paradoxical, but I am entitled to be heard while I shew on what foundation it rests.⁴

The journeyman weaver, the journeyman cotton spinner, the agricultural labourer, and so forth, cannot say of the tools which they use, I made them; they cannot say of the seed which they sow, or of the material which they work up, I produced them; of the food which they eat, I raised it from the ground. As individuals, therefore, it will be allowed that they could not produce any thing, that they could not live, in fact, unless the capitalists consented to cooperate with them in the work of production. But then you will say, If they did not produce this food, tools, etc., other labourers did. Very true; but how? Not unaided, not by themselves; but with the assistance of other capitalists. Thus we find that capital, although produced by labour, was not produced by the unaided labour of any of the present generation, the present capital was produced by the present labourers aided by a former capital: this former capital was produced by former labourers, aided by a capital of a still older date, and so on: All these capitals must have been paid for, or they would not have been had: The labourers are under the necessity of foregoing a part of what they produce, in order to obtain that assistance, without which they could not have produced any thing: and how far must we mount up in order to arrive at the period, when the whole produce belonged to the labourer? Why, to the origin of the first capital. Before there was any capital except the spontaneous produce of the earth, the labourer was the owner of all that he produced. Let us see then how capital originated, let us see who the first capitalist was. Let us see how the other labourers were persuaded to let him rob them of the fruits of their industry, that he might live in idleness at their expense. They seem to have been easily duped by this cunning fellow, to have been nicely taken in—No, Sir, this will not do. The first capitalist was the man who laboured harder than his neighbours—the man who worked when others were idle, or who saved when others spent. This was the origin of capital. The first capital was produced by labour, but it was by the labour of the capitalist: and it is to the capitalist, and to him alone that it of right belonged.

The error lies in considering the labourer and the capitalist as men of a different genus: like a man and a beast. It is true that at this advanced stage of society, the same man is rarely a labourer and a capitalist; but all capitalists were originally labourers, or descendants of labourers, and all capital is the saving from the produce of their industry.

The transformation of labourers into capitalists frequently takes place even at the present day. A journeyman saves a small sum from his wages, and sets up as a master: he begins in a small way; his business gradually extends, and he becomes at length perhaps the richest man in the country and if he does not, his son or his grandson may. Look at Sir Robert Peel?⁵ Is not that his history? And all capital was originally produced in the same way.

Two men produce the same quantity of food; one man squanders it all in idleness, the other man goes on producing more and adding to his stock. Thus one man obtains a great deal more than he has immediate occasion for, and another man is starving. Well, the provident man says to the spendthrift, You are a strong man, and have the physical power of producing a great deal; but you are unable to work, because you have squandered that food which ought to have maintained you while you were working: I have food; come, and work for me: I will feed you; and you will give me, all that you produce. Would you prevent him from making this offer to his distressed fellow labourer? Would you prevent the other from accepting it? Then you see the consequence: the one starves; the other being unable to purchase the labour of others, has no resource but his own labour, he is compelled to labour equally hard, whether he saves or no, and of course he does not save.

Or I will alter the case. A labourer by the exertion of his ingenuity invents an implement: a spade we shall suppose. With great time and labour he makes this spade; and then says to his neighbours, Instead of working for yourselves, come and work for me: With this spade, you will be able to produce twice or three times what you can produce without it. You will not indeed be suffered to retain the whole of what you produce, but that portion which you will retain, exceeds the whole of what you are now able to produce without the spade. The other labourers consider the matter; they consider how much time and labour it will cost them to make spades for themselves. And if they find that it will cost them more time than the food which they possess will last, they accept the proposal; and the inventor gets the reward of his ingenuity.

What then is the reason why there is a class of capitalists, and a class of labourers? It is because one man has worked harder, or squandered less, or had more skill, or more ingenuity, or a smaller family, than another; and has thus acquired the means of paying others to work for him, and because he has been permitted, at his death, to leave the products of his industry to his children and those other persons whom he holds most dear. The labourer therefore does not support the capitalist any more than the capitalist supports the labourer. The capitalist has nothing but what he or his ancestors have actually produced by their labour, together with that which others have voluntarily given them as a remuneration for the use of what they produced. The fortune even of a Baring has no other source.⁶ Mr. Baring’s father or grandfather or some of his ancestors produced a part by the sweat of their brow; and in order to obtain the use of this part, the labourers were willing to give to Mr. Baring a part of what they produced, but what they could not have produced without his aid.

Having thus, as I think, shewn how utterly untenable are the doctrines of my opponents, I shall endeavour to expound my own. And as the spurious school of political economy has been charged with caring for nothing but the accumulation of wealth, I will tell you, Sir, what are my principles. They are these. That the working people being the majority of the whole population, the interests of all the other classes are of no importance compared with theirs. So far from thinking that they are too well off I think that they never can be too well paid: that they never can have too many comforts and enjoyments: and if it were necessary I would willingly suffer every other person in the community to starve, rather than that they should be inadequately provided with the necessaries of life.

It is then an enquiry of no trifling importance, what the remuneration of the labourer depends upon. In the present state of society, every one here will agree with me that it depends upon competition. By competition, I mean, the competition on the one hand, of capitalists to get labourers, and on the other hand, of labourers to get employment. Wages will be high or low, according to which of these competitions is the greatest. When there is a greater number of labourers, compared with capital, wages are low: when there is not a great number of labourers, compared with capital, wages are high. I need not go, I presume, into the proof of this proposition, which is indeed self evident.

This then being admitted, I say, that it is the tendency of population to increase faster than capital; that consequently wages have a constant tendency to fall; and therefore that every plan for ameliorating the condition of the people, which is not founded upon a regulation of their numbers, is futile and visionary.

It is acknowledged by my opponents that the working classes are in all countries very inadequately provided with the means of subsistence. Well, then, I ask, how this could possibly be the case, if population had not always increased so fast as to overtake the most rapid accumulation of capital? If capital on the contrary had increased faster than population, wages would have been very high, and the labourers very well off. Why is the fact so strikingly, so notoriously otherwise?

These gentlemen will probably tell us, that the cause of low wages is the unequal distribution of wealth, which gives so much to the other classes of society, and therefore leaves so little to the labourers. And that if wealth were better distributed, there would be enough for all.

Let us suppose, then, that wealth were distributed in the best possible manner. I ask, would private property have any existence under that system? I ask the question, because I wish to be informed, what distribution of wealth these gentlemen would have. I pause for an answer.

The gentleman has judged rightly. If private property had existence; if the man who produced most, were suffered to have most, or if he who saves instead of spending, were suffered to have an exclusive right to that which he saves, there would in a few years be the same inequality of property which is now so loudly complained of; we should soon see those who have not working for those who have; wages would again be regulated by competition, and the same cause which produces low wages now, would produce low wages then.

Observe, then, these gentlemen renounce private property. With most people, this would be considered a complete reductio ad absurdum. Let us grant to them, however, the distribution of wealth which they wish for. Let us place them in Mr. Robert Owen’s communities, and see what will happen.

I will grant for the sake of argument that they would all be very well off at first, though I might fairly dispute even this proposition⁷

12.

Cooperation: Closing Speech

1825

were i to reply successively to all the objections which have been advanced by different gentlemen in the course of the discussion, I should count too much both upon my own powers, and upon the patience of an auditory already wearied by so long a debate. It therefore gives me some satisfaction to observe, that those whom I cannot now stop to refute, have said, for the most part, nothing which was worth refuting, and that those of our adversaries who from their abilities have the strongest claim to be fairly met, are precisely those who have made us the greatest concessions. If there be any person in this room who has listened attentively, I will not say to our arguments, but to those of the Goliath of our antagonists,¹ and who still persists in ascribing all the evils, or even the principal evils of society, to competition,—I may be pardoned for supposing that my reasonings can have little effect in altering a conviction, which has been proof against those of Mr. Thompson. I cannot however lose this opportunity of expressing my gratification on finding that there is one person in this Society who does not see in us the advocates of vice and misery, nor imagines that we must be the enemies of human improvement, because we differ from this Society, with regard to the means by which human improvement is to be attained. We are not the defenders of those evils which Mr. Thompson so feelingly deplored. We are not the advocates of the degradation of the working classes. We are not the advocates of negro slavery; nor does Mr. Thompson himself lament more deeply than we, that miserable thraldom in which the weaker half of our species are held, by the tyranny of the stronger, aided and encouraged by their own abject and slavish submission.² But there is no question, I believe, in this room, about these evils: let Mr. Thompson condemn them as strongly as he will: he cannot condemn them so strongly that we shall not go along with him. Unless therefore it can be shewn that these evils are necessarily inherent in a system of individual competition, (which Mr. Thompson himself has acknowledged they are not) I shall take the liberty to dismiss them entirely from my consideration as totally irrelevant to the question.

It seems to be allowed by the most intelligent members of the Society, that a very great degree of happiness is attainable, under a system of competition: That it is possible to attain a good government under a system of competition,—that it is possible to obtain good laws, and a good administration of them; and lastly, that it is possible, under a system of competition, to give to the whole human race, a high degree of intellectual and moral education. It is also allowed, that under a system of free competition, combined with good laws, government and education, and with a due regulation of the numbers of the people, every labourer would enjoy the whole produce of his labour, with the exception of what he might voluntarily give up, to obtain a greater good: And this is the happiness which, by the admission of our opponents, is compatible with individual competition. On the other hand, it was asserted in my opening speech,³ and has not been denied, that the principle of cooperation, considered merely in itself, and unconnected with those other great changes to which I have alluded, would not afford an adequate remedy to one of the great evils which at present afflict the human race. By the principle of cooperation, I mean the community of property; the fundamental principle of Mr. Owen’s plan,⁴ and the only principle of that plan, to which I do not assent. The Cooperative system might, and according to its supporters would facilitate the attainment of good education, of good laws, and of good government, and likewise the regulating of population: but yet, the Cooperative system is not the same thing with good government, good education, good laws, nor a regulated population, and whatever may be the effect of these, is not the effect of the Cooperative system, farther than as the Cooperative system may render these things themselves, more easy of attainment. The Cooperative system would not take off the taxes; it would not take off the tithe; arrangements for education may be combined with it, but it is not itself education. All which the Cooperative system of itself can do, is to add to what the labourers already possess, the profits of stock and the rent of land. Now I proved in my opening speech, on data the correctness of which cannot be and has not been called in question, that rent and profits, which in the present state of society, being collected into large masses, make a vivid impression upon the imagination, and appear to be much greater than they are, do not really exceed one tenth of the produce; and if divided among those who already possess, with the exception of taxes, the whole of the other nine tenths, would hardly suffice to make a perceptible addition to their comforts, even if every man were to work as many hours a day as he does now, which it is not the intention of the promoter of the scheme that he should.

All idea therefore of that great and immediate addition which we were at first told was to be made to the comforts of every person, by going to live in a community, seems now, among the more intelligent members of the Society to be given up, and they rest their case chiefly upon the greater facilities which, in their opinion, the Cooperative system affords to the attainment of good education and government and to the regulating of population, and also upon the greater happiness which, according to their ideas, it would afford the means of enjoying, when good education and good government shall have been attained, and the population regulated.

It is to the last of these topics that I shall in the first instance advert. Mr. Thompson has favoured us with an enumeration of the evils which he considers to be inherent in every system of competition. I know not whether it will be expected that I should go over the whole list, and drive him successively from every position which he has taken up: but if I should not completely answer the whole of his arguments, I hope it will not for that reason be supposed, that I am shirking or evading any. An opinion, however erroneous, is much sooner stated than refuted. To point out inconveniences, a superficial glance is commonly sufficient. To lay open the mechanism by which those inconveniences may be remedied, or in their turn rendered instrumental to the production of a greater good, not only more labour, but much more time is requisite. And yet, Sir, if in addition to all the other things which I have to do, I were to bestow on the examination of Mr. Thompson’s propositions only as much time as he occupied in stating them, I leave you to judge when I should have done. I say this by way of apology for the imperfect state in which my arguments will be presented to you, but I hope still that I shall be able to give to those of Mr. Thompson’s propositions which most require it, a full and satisfactory reply.

He told us first that competition is incompatible with the full operation of the principle of benevolence. His manner of proving this was a remarkable specimen of the general mode of arguing which these gentlemen adopt. He seemed to think that the principle of benevolence is discarded whenever any other principle is brought to its assistance. The object, said he, of competition, is and must always be, exclusively the pursuit of wealth. He will not allow that there can be competition for any other purpose. And even your physician, horrible to relate! when he administers a medicine, or attends the sickbed of a patient, thinks more of the one, two, or three guineas which he is going to pocket, than of the honest fame which he may earn, or the service which he may render to a suffering fellow creature. There cannot be two stronger objections to a proposition, than first, that it is not true, and secondly that if true, it is nothing to the purpose. Both these objections seem to me peculiarly applicable to the proposition before us. With regard to its truth, I will appeal to an authority which Mr. Thompson cannot well dispute, since it is no other than his own. It is one of the accidents to which a long speaker is liable, that before he has got to the end of his speech, he occasionally forgets the beginning and blurts out the direct contrary of that which he had previously maintained with all imaginable emphasis, and with the fullest confidence. Thus in the early part of Mr. Thompson’s speech, it suited his theory, that there should not be competition for any thing except for wealth. Towards the close of his speech, when he came to treat of the supposed tendency of competition to occasion wars, it suited his theory that there should be competition for a great many other things besides wealth; because we know well that as every commercial country is interested in the prosperity of its neighbours, competition for wealth between two countries cannot exist. Competition, therefore, by his own admission is not confined to wealth: the truth is, that there may be competition for every thing—for good as well as ill: for fame and reputation, for the pleasures of beneficence, as well as for the pleasures of wealth. But suppose that as Mr. Thompson says, competition had for its object exclusively the pursuit of wealth. Eating my dinner has for its object exclusively the satisfaction of my appetite: yet is eating my dinner inconsistent with the practice of benevolence? Must we either renounce our virtues or our meals? I confess I never heard that the smallest eaters were observed to have the greatest share of benevolence, nor do I feel at all sure that it would add much to the benevolence of mankind, though they should unanimously determine to keep a perpetual fast.

Another of the evils which were declared inherent in competition is the difficulty of apportioning the supply to the demand. The producers, it is true, are sometimes at a great distance from the consumers and are forced to undergo the labour of production, while it still remains in some degree uncertain whether purchasers will be found to take off the supply. To me, however, it appears that these things always regulate themselves, and that if a commodity is produced at a great distance from the place where it is to be consumed, it is only because it is conducive to the purposes of human enjoyment, that every thing should be produced in that place which possesses the greatest natural facilities for its production. The evil is not an evil inherent in competition; it is an evil inherent in commerce, and unless commerce is to be proscribed, both individuals and communities must take the evil with the good. At present, Essex, from the fertility of its soil, supplies a great part of England with corn: the Welsh mountains, the downs of Sussex and Wiltshire, supply the best sheep, and other places the best wool: Northumberland supplies coals to the whole of England. Cornwall and Derbyshire supply tin and lead almost to the whole world. Would this be no longer the case under the Cooperative system? Would the inhabitants of London be compelled to dig for coals in Blackheath? If not, the producers must still be widely separated from the consumers. Of course, they would sometimes find that they had produced more than was wanted, and then they would lose something: but sometimes also they would find that they had produced less than was wanted, and then they would gain as much as they had lost before.

Some of the evils enumerated by Mr. Thompson, I am sure he must have placed inadvertently among the evils of competition. He spoke of wars, and of government loans, as the necessary consequences of competition: as if it was fair that competition should be charged with being the cause of those evils which are the effect of bad government. He also enumerated among the evils of competition, the liability of every individual to casualties, but he was also kind enough to inform us of a sufficient remedy—the practice of insurance.

I shall touch slightly on the next objection, the injury which the labourers sustain from the competition of machinery. After what was said by Mr. Ellis⁵ on a former evening, it will not be necessary for me to do more. The effect of machinery may be, to lower wages for a time; the effect of machinery always is, to raise them ultimately. By increasing the produce, it always and necessarily increases the demand for labour. When the spinning jenny was introduced there can be no doubt that it threw a number of cotton spinners out of employment—but look at its ultimate effects—where one cotton spinner found employment before the invention, there is now employment for thousands. The competition of machinery, therefore is to be dreaded by the workmen, only when from excessive population their wages are so low, that a slight depression brings inevitable starvation. If the market was understocked with labour, and wages were high, all would find employment with a very slight reduction. Where wages are low, they cannot bear the slightest diminution—where they are high, the labourers can easily submit to a temporary and trifling decrease for the sake of the great increase which is sure to follow.

If there is one argument on which the gentlemen of this Society lay greater stress than upon any other, it is the tendency of competition to make every man the rival, and consequently, the enemy of every other man. If therefore I can shew that their grand argument is good for nothing, absolutely for nothing whatever, it will probably be admitted that I have done a great deal towards discrediting all the others: Among the labourers who are the great mass of mankind, there would be no rivalry whatever, if population were properly regulated, for there would be employment enough for all much more than all could do: and it cannot be said of the labouring man that he is like the dog in the manger, who envied others the possession of that which could be of no use to himself. Among merchants and other capitalists there would undoubtedly be under the best system of competition a slight degree of rivalry. But it is proper that the gentlemen of the Cooperative Society should know, that there are two sides to the question. Under the Cooperative system, would there be trade, would there be interchange of commodities, or would there not? If not you are reduced almost to primitive barbarism. But if one Community trades, and exchanges its commodities with other communities, there would still be competition—and if competition must of necessity be a cause of rivalry, there would still be rivalry—it would only change its course—man indeed would be no longer the rival of man, but one body of men—one community would be the rival of another community. Mr. Thompson, to whose candour we are indebted for some of the most important admissions which ever were made by one antagonist in argument to another, has acknowledged that there would be competition among communities—but observed that such competition would produce but little rivalry because, said he, no one would depend upon it for subsistence—every one would be able to gain an easy subsistence by his labour. In these views I fully concur. I agree with Mr. Thompson that where every one can gain an easy subsistence by his labour, competition would very rarely produce such rivalry as could be a cause of mutual hostility. But I humbly submit that the benefit of this admission is not confined to Mr. Thompson. I too claim a part of it for my side of the question. Mr. Thompson says, Under his system, every one could gain an easy subsistence by his labour, and therefore there would not be rivalry. Well: under my system every one would gain an easy subsistence by his labour, therefore under my system also there would not be rivalry. And now I appeal to any candid hearer, whether there ever was a more complete discomfiture than has been sustained by this unfortunate doctrine, that competition is a cause of mutual hostility among mankind.

But if all the evils attributed by these gentlemen to Competition were as real and substantial as they are shadowy and chimerical, it is not by these alone that the question is to be decided. Though one side of the question were apparently made out to demonstration, it is not by looking only to one side of the question that truth is to be attained. The question is not whether a state of Competition is exempt from evil, for we know that evil is mixed up in every human lot; but whether Competition or Cooperation on the whole affords the best chance for human happiness: and it is not by a review of the evils of the Competitive system that this great question can be decided, but by a fair comparison of the evils of the Competitive and the evils of the Cooperative system.

If I were to deal with Cooperation as Mr. Thompson and the other gentlemen of this Society have dealt with Competition—if I were to display and make the most of every petty inconvenience which does or may under any circumstances flow from it, I might easily make the catalogue appear as long as I pleased. As however I do not consider this mode of treating the question to be quite fair, and as moreover it is not every one who has either the physical power or the inclination to speak for two hours, I shall content myself with recapitulating four of the principal disadvantages to which the Cooperative system appears to me to be liable.

I object, then, to the Cooperative system,

First, because it prevents the powers of production which the society possesses, from being called into full activity. It must be obvious that if at present, when a man’s whole happiness and even his very existence depends upon his labour, and when his reward is in the exact proportion of his industry, there are yet so many who are idle, it would be far worse when his subsistence would be nearly independent of his labour—when he could live upon the labour of others, when his reward would be equally great, whether he worked much or little, where he could gain nothing by industry, attention and skill, and lose nothing by any degree, except the greatest and most unusual excess of idleness, inattention and stupidity. In such a state, the less any man individually worked, the more bitterly he would inveigh against all others for not working enough, and the community would be a scene of perpetual bickering among those who, idle themselves, would never fail to discover that their neighbours were still more so. It is assumed, however, that all this would be counteracted by public opinion—I say assumed because, although all experience is against it,—although there is not one of these Cooperative gentlemen who in walking from Charing Cross to Temple Bar with a silk handkerchief in his pocket, would trust to public opinion to keep it there,—yet nothing has been said to reconcile this startling assertion with probability, nothing to gloss over its utter inconsistency with all that is known of human nature, except merely that from the nature of the communities people would live together—as if we had never seen such a thing as a town or a village. In justice to the Cooperative Society, I am bound to suppose, that it would not trust to public opinion alone—that there would be a graduated scale of punishments, from something trifling, to expulsion from the society. In this manner, you might, it is true, compel them to work, but how? You substitute punishment for reward. For the cheering and stimulating impulse of hope, you substitute the degrading and chilling influence of fear. You would have none of that labour which is sweetened by the consciousness that every moment of it adds something to the enjoyment of the labourer. Your labourer would not labour that he might produce, and producing might enjoy—he would labour that he might not be driven from the common table of the community—that the society might not reject him from its bosom. His labour would be like that of the slave, submitted to only because he dares not to disobey, and quitted eagerly at the first excuse, or opportunity for evasion. It is not easy to calculate how great a deduction would be made from the sum of human happiness by this one circumstance. After all, the power of punishment is limited. The utmost that you could wring from him is the performance of a prescribed task—a task which must be rated much below the capabilities even of the weakest and most unskilful member of the community. It might be possible that by a vigilant supervision,—the performance—the careless, indolent, and imperfect performance—of such a task might be extorted from the unwilling labourer. Beyond this there are a few whom no circumstances can cause to slacken in the pursuit of great and commanding excellence. These might labour; they would labour alone.

It will be said perhaps that this would only be true if they are ill educated and that it is your intention that they should be well educated: to which I reply, My argument does not suppose that they are ill educated, it only supposes, that they love themselves better than they love the community of which they are members. If you say that you have a plan of education by which they will be made to love the public better than themselves, I have no objection whatever to your trying, though I should be very much surprised if you were to succeed: but thus much is clear, If it be possible to make men thus perfectly benevolent, it can then be of no consequence what are their social arrangements, for they will be perfectly happy under all—or if there be any difference, it will be in favour of that system which leaves the greatest possible freedom of action. The best possible form of government under such circumstances would be anarchy.

I object, secondly, to the Cooperative system, because it affords no sufficient security for the good management of the concern. I have shewn in what manner the love of ease would operate upon the individual members of the community. The managers of the concern, whether it be managed by the whole or by delegates from the whole, would be as fond of their ease, as the individual of his. Nothing more is necessary to render inevitable all the evils which the worst possible management can entail. It is a well known proverb, that what is every body’s business is nobody’s. Witness the most enlarged experience in the case of Joint Stock Companies. Mr. Thompson rather injudiciously quoted these institutions as a partial exemplification which modern times have introduced, of the cooperative principle. He could not have hit upon a more unfavourable specimen of the principle, since there is no experience more universal than that which proves, that the affairs of a Joint Stock Company are always ill managed. Except when the business to be performed is one of mere routine, or where, as in the case of Assurance Companies, the guarantee of numbers is requisite, or where a larger capital is required than it is usually in the power of individuals to command, there never yet was a Joint Stock Company which stood its ground for any length of time against individual competition.

I object, thirdly, to the Cooperative system, because in its very nature it is a system of universal regulation. I am not one of those, who set up liberty as an idol to be worshipped, and I am even willing to go farther than most people in regulating and controlling when there is a special advantage to be obtained by regulation and control. I presume, however, no one will deny that there is a pleasure in enjoying perfect freedom of action; that to be controlled, even if it be for our good, is in itself far from pleasant, and that other things being alike, it is infinitely better to attain a given end by leaving people to themselves than to attain the same end by controlling them. It is delightful to man to be an independent being. The savage of the forest would be the happiest of men, could he reconcile the comforts of civilized life with the preservation of his independence. This indeed is impossible—he must sacrifice a part—but this sacrifice is an evil, and can only be submitted to, for the sake of a greater good. So conformable is this to the general sentiments of mankind that benevolent enthusiasts, in their plans for new modelling society, have hitherto erred in giving too much freedom of action; their day dreams have been dreams of perfect liberty. It was reserved for the nineteenth century to produce a new sect of benevolent enthusiasts, whose day dreams have been dreams of perfect slavery. If it be true of men, as Mr. Thompson says of women, that they are not the less slaves, because they are well fed and clothed,⁶ I have Mr. Thompson’s authority for saying, that it does not follow, that control is not an evil though it may be exercised for no purpose but for the good of those who are controlled. In order to shew that control is an evil, it is only necessary to shew that it is control—and this surely is an objection which it requires very strong reasons, on the contrary side, to overrule.

Lastly, I object to the Cooperative system on account of the expense of the outfit which, on the shewing of its supporters themselves, would amount, in buildings alone, for Great Britain and Ireland, to upwards of 900 millions sterling. Even this, it may be thought, is not too great a sacrifice for the happiness of eighteen millions of human beings. Assuredly not—but when there is a sacrifice to be made, it becomes us to look round, and see in what manner that sacrifice may be made most effective to the end: and to hesitate before we adopt a plan, which requires to be sunk at the beginning a sum much more than sufficient to give the best possible education to every inhabitant of the United Kingdom.⁷

It now appearing that it is not possible to obtain under the Cooperative system more happiness than is compatible with individual Competition it remains to consider the other plea of its supporters—that it enables the same end to be attained in a shorter time.

If it were true as Mr. Thompson says that under the Competitive system you cannot raise the condition of any until you raise the condition of all, there would be some foundation for this plea. But this is a mistake. It is true that if wages were high in England, and low in Ireland, and you suffered the Irish to come into England, they would prevent the English labourers from deriving any benefit from their prudence. But the remedy is plain—keep the Irish out—I do not see any thing in this proposal which can startle a member of the Cooperative Society. You would keep all intruders out of your communities—You have only to suppose all England covered with communities; foreigners would then be kept out as a matter of course, unless in such numbers as the communities might find it advantageous to admit. Why then should you object to our doing what you would yourselves do without hesitation? But you will perhaps tell me that if the labourers do not come to the capital, the capital will go to the labourers. This would be true if it necessarily followed, because the labourers in any country are ill off, that the profits of stock are high, but experience shews that in those countries where the people multiply without restraint, it is necessary for their food to cultivate such bad land that the profits are reduced just as low as they are any where else, and the landlord alone derives any benefit from the degraded state of the bulk of the population. In what country are wages higher than in America? If it were true that capital moves from the countries where wages are high to the countries where they are low,—we should find it moving from America to all other parts of the world, instead of which it moves from all parts of the world to America.

The supporters of the Cooperative system tell us, that they have the advantage over us in this respect, that they make happy as many as they can get hold of without waiting till prudential habits are become general. One thing, however, seems to have escaped them, that in proportion as they make some happy, they aggravate the misery of the remainder. The condition of the labourers depends upon the ratio between population and capital: if therefore it be necessary for the establishment of a community to take more from the capital of the country than you do from the population you deteriorate the condition of the great mass of the people. Now this is exactly what you must do. Two hundred thousand pounds are said to be required for the establishment of a community. This capital previously afforded annual subsistence to at least ten thousand labouring men and their wives, and families. Unless therefore you can take all these into your community you will inevitably throw a part of them upon the wide world. I believe it does not enter into your plans to admit more than 2000 persons into a single community. You must at once see, therefore, that you would absorb all the capital in the country, long before you had provided for one third part of the labourers, and when Great Britain at length should be covered with communities, two thirds of the population would find themselves left out—they would be forced into the sea, if they had not previously died of starvation, or raised a rebellion, and subverted the establishments of that system which may justly be denominated a plan for making one portion of the community happy, at the expense of the remainder.

It is clear therefore that until the people shall first have raised their wages by limiting their numbers, it is impossible for the Cooperative system to have more than an experimental existence: and the question is, whether a few experimental communities would sufficiently secure the happiness of the very few persons who could possibly take advantage of them. Provided then, that you could supply motives to work—provided that you could supply securities for the good management of the concern; and provided you could be sure of placing at the head of every one of your Communities a number of enlightened men by whose means you could secure for your inhabitants a good education and without whom the chances are that they would have a very bad one—Provided, I say, that you could do all this, I grant that you would secure to the inhabitants of the community a very great degree of happiness. But I cannot grant that the question turns upon these considerations alone, and I cannot think that it would prove much in favour of the Cooperative system, although you should be able to prove that by the aid of enormous funds, and with the zealous assistance of a large number of individuals, you could produce more happiness than we can produce without any assistance and without any funds—or that it were granted to us to have under our direction for the good of humanity a sum equal to that which must be squandered on the buildings alone of one single community—By the employment of such a sum partly in education and partly in working upon the press, I would undertake in twenty years to effect a reform in the government of my country—to effect a reform in its laws—to effect a reform in its Church establishment—and to possess the whole of its population with a knowledge of the means by which they might keep the market constantly understocked with labour, and have the power of regulating their wages as they pleased. I cannot but wonder that persons so benevolent as the promoters of the Cooperative system undoubtedly are, should think of converting to the exclusive and the very precarious advantage of a few, funds which are sufficient to secure the greatest happiness to the whole—and still more am I surprised that coming forward with such a proposition they should call themselves and fancy themselves the friends of universal equality.

I should be sorry if it were thought that I am an enemy to Mr. Owen’s system. I am an enemy to no system which has for its object the amelioration of mankind. Destitute as it appears to me of all the securities which are necessary for the right working of the social machine, I cannot but consider it to be a hazardous experiment—yet hazardous though it be, if that chance, such as it is, were the only chance for human nature; if there were not another and a far surer foundation for our hopes, no childish dread of that which is new, merely because it is new, no selfish anxiety to keep others miserable only that I myself might by comparison appear more happy, should restrain me from devoting my whole life to the pursuit of that one only chance—So long as the slightest glimmering of hope remained, there is no exertion, no sacrifice which I would spare rather than renounce those cheering anticipations of the indefinite improvement of mankind which I have cherished from my cradle, and which it is probable I shall carry to my grave. But this is neither the only nor the best chance—we are not yet forced upon such drastic remedies. There is a principle in man, far more constant and far more universal than his love for his fellows—I mean his love for himself: and without excluding the former principle, I rest my hopes chiefly on the latter. Let self-interest be or be not a principle which it is possible to eradicate from the bosom not of one man only but of all: no one at least will deny that it is a powerful principle—in the present state of things almost an all-powerful one; and if so it is surely not very wise to court opposition from it, when you might have it on your side. Let things be so arranged that the interest of every individual shall exactly accord with the interest of the whole—thus much it is in the power of laws and institutions to effect; and, this done, let every individual be so educated, as to know his own interest—Thus by the simultaneous action of a vast number of agents, every one drawing in the direction of his own happiness, the happiness of the whole will be attained. But the Cooperative system—look at it on its best side—I can regard it only in the light in which I should consider a man who with prodigious labour and at the peril of his neck should employ himself in attempting to scale a twenty-foot wall, when by casting his eyes about him he would have seen a wicket gate through which he might have effected his passage without danger or difficulty.

As this is probably the last time that I shall open my lips in this Society, I am anxious, before I sit down, to express my acknowledgments for the kind, indulgent and courteous manner with which the members of the Society have listened to the expression of opinions, which must at first have appeared repulsive to their minds, and which many of them, I am certain, at first believed to be the opinions of none but the lukewarm friends or concealed enemies of mankind. None of them I am persuaded at this moment continue to think so. I am sure that we part in kindness—I am sure that we all of us think better of one another than when we began—and if this were the only good effect which the discussion produced—if it had not, as I hope it has, added to our stock of knowledge, the time it has occupied could not in any view be considered to be time thrown away. You will continue to labour in your vocation; we shall labour in ours, and though we differ in the means, we all have in view the same great end, the improvement of the human race. For myself, I shall always recur with pleasure to the thought that I may in some small degree have contributed to set right in your estimation a science which does not deserve the obloquy which you have too readily cast upon it: and to prove to you that in the bosoms even of political economists there may burn as pure a flame of benevolence as even the torch of Mr. Owen can have kindled in yours.

13.

Cooperation: Notes

1825

allegation. Competition is the cause of the distress which is diffused over all classes.

Answer.

1. Deny that there is general distress. Only labourers.

2. The produce is divided into wages profits and rent.

Competition does not lower rent.

Competition does not lower profits, 1. by making people sell cheap. 2. by making people produce little. Competition only equalizes profits.

Competition does lower wages. But there is another competition tending to raise them. Narrow the former competition and wages would be high.

3. Shew what would take place if population were diminished. That profits would be little more than high wages. That rent would be little or none, and that little might be appropriated. 1. expenses of general govt. 2. all local expenses, roads, bridges, canals, etc. 3. education. 4. if necessary distributed among the labourers themselves.

4. Labourers equally rich with American labourers, and far happier.

5. What could Mr. Owen’s system do more? Cooperative production? Equal distribution? Household saving?

6. Could they do it without limiting the population? Shew that they could not.

7. Shew the purgatory to be gone through. Effect of taking away the motive to work.

8. Mr. Owen’s system of education.¹ Shew what is its improbability, regard it as a hazardous experiment.

9. Shew that the same system of education could be adopted now. E.g. infant schools, and if adopted that it would give us all that we could have by Owen’s system and more: the pleasures and virtues of individual freedom of action. If then Owen’s system brings men more speedily to this state, let us have it, and when brought let the comm. dissolve.

10. Shew that it cannot. Impr. in education why necessarily progressive: Protract the evils to be gone through.

11. The end sooner attained without Owen’s system, because education would not have to struggle with self-interest.

12. Recapitulation and Conclusion.

14.

Influence of the Aristocracy

9 DECEMBER, 1825

the society has been informed of the unlucky circumstance in consequence of which I am so unexpectedly called upon to open the question: a circumstance which I regret the more, as it is not a question which, if I had any option, I should have chosen to open, or perhaps even to speak upon. But it was necessary that some body should undertake the office; and as no other person has presented himself, I shall endeavour to discharge it as well as I can, without losing time in idle apologies; satisfied that however badly I may speak no apology would make me speak one jot better.

In appointing this question to be discussed by the Society at so early a period of its existence, the late Committee has taken no bad method of trying the good sense and good feeling of the Society. As there is no question of greater importance, so there is none on which different persons differ more widely in their opinions: and the interest which so many persons feel in the question individually, in addition to the general interest which is common to every member of the community, has given to the discussions on this subject a character of bitter hostility, which it is deeply to be regretted that a sincere difference of opinion on any question should excite. It is for the members of this Society to shew, by the mode in which they carry on the debate that they are capable of discussing the most important interests of their country, without departing from that calmness of temper which is alone suitable to him whose sole aim is truth: that they can abstain from any unnecessary introduction of topics calculated to rouse animosities, and from vague and unmeaning vituperation of those whose sentiments are opposed to theirs; and that every member is charitable enough to suppose it possible that his own side of the question does not possess an entire monopoly of sincerity and good intentions. For my own part, although I feel that confidence in the soundness of my opinions, which is natural to one who has maturely considered them, I am perfectly ready to abjure them, if they can be proved to be erroneous; and I beg of any gentleman who may be inclined to treat me and my opinions with severity, to consider that I have no interest in being in the wrong; and that therefore, if I am so, it is probably because I cannot help it, and not because I am in love with error, or indifferent to truth.

In the observations which I have to offer I shall endeavour to set the example of confining myself strictly within the limits of the question: and with that view I wish it to be distinctly understood, that, when I speak of the influence of the aristocracy, I do not mean any kind of influence, but that kind of influence alone, which is mentioned in the question. I shall not touch upon the moral influence of the members of the aristocracy as individuals; not only because I think it extraneous to the question, but also because it would be idle to enquire whether that be good or bad in general, which is in no two individual instances the same; which varies with the innumerable varieties of individual character, with the innumerable varieties of individual pursuits, and with a hundred other ever varying elements, none of them capable of being comprehended in one general expression: I shall therefore leave this subject, first however taking the opportunity, as my subsequent remarks may seem to bear hard upon the aristocracy, of testifying thus much in their favour: that I think, in the matter of private character, they have not always had justice done them; and that exception has been taken, a little too readily, to the nature of some of their habitual occupations. Thus I have repeatedly heard it advanced as matter of reproach against that respectable class of society the country gentlemen, that some of them betray a stronger attachment to the innocent amusement of foxhunting, than is consistent with the ideas which some persons entertain of perfect wisdom. But I hold these strictures to be extremely illiberal: for I declare on my conscience that I never heard of any person taking to foxhunting as an occupation, who appeared to me to be fit for any other: and if the case be so, they are surely deserving of commendation rather than of blame, in having selected for themselves the only employment, to which the wisdom of their Creator had adapted them. An employment, too, so admirably fitted to keep their constitutions in repair,—and themselves out of mischief: for I am persuaded that the whole Society will agree with me in the opinion, that it is much better they should torment foxes, than men; and that hunting is a far more proper pastime for such persons, than judging or legislating.

To confine ourselves, then, to the topic which is particularly under discussion, I shall endeavour to shew, that the influence of the aristocracy in the government is not only no benefit, but a positive evil. That there should be a class of rich men, I care not how rich, if they become so no otherwise than by the natural operation of the laws of property, is clearly not an evil. That this class should form a society of their own, and should observe certain conventional forms in their intercourse with one another; that they should be distinguished from one another by titles, or any other artificial distinctions of a merely honorary kind—all this, as it hurts no one, no one is entitled to object to: and a class of persons thus circumstanced may call themselves an aristocracy, or any word that is most agreeable to them: I do not quarrel with a name. What I do object to, and very strongly, is, that any such body should possess a monopoly of political power: or if the word monopoly be too strong, I will say a predominance. So long as they are satisfied with pursuing their own happiness in whatever way pleases them best, without interfering with that of other persons, so long I have no quarrel with them; I complain of them only when they seek for power, power to oppress others.

I do not think it necessary, for the purpose of the present debate, to enter very deeply into the science of politics, or to lay down any new or alarming general principle. If indeed I were to speak my entire sentiments upon the subject I should say, that I do not think it desirable that an aristocracy, as such, should possess any political power, or, in the words of the question, exercise any influence in the government, beyond that to which their personal qualifications may entitle them: but to narrow the discussion I will waive this point, and will concede that good government is promoted by endowing the aristocracy with some portion of political power. I know not what quantity some gentlemen may deem sufficient: but I presume all will allow that there ought to be some limit to the quantity; and this is the only principle to which I shall demand their assent. I lay down no other postulate—I ask for no other admission at their hands: I shall be satisfied if they will only grant that the power of the aristocracy ought to have a limit. This admission however I do require: it is the foundation of my whole argument: and I shall not be contented with a mere verbal assent: they must have a full and distinct apprehension of the whole extent of the admission: they must be prepared to follow it out even to its remotest consequences: their assent must be given, not to the words alone, but to the sense; they must imbibe the whole spirit and scope of the principle: they must not only confess it with their lips, but they must feel it in their hearts.

There is no more common error among unthinking persons than to imagine, that whatever is good in a certain quantity must be good in any quantity: and the admirers of aristocratic rule, who are in general very little alive to any political evils except those which emanate from a seditious rabble, are apt to imagine, or to talk as if they imagined, that we never could by possibility have enough of so very good a thing. No doubt, they would be ready enough to say, that a pure aristocracy, which is generally on these occasions called an oligarchy, is not exactly a good thing: that is to say, that although it is not quite so bad as a pure monarchy, and a fortiori not so bad as that monster which is not to be thought of without trembling, a pure democracy, yet there is not very much to be said in its praise. That oligarchy is one of the three simple, and therefore bad, forms of government, is a proposition which people are accustomed to repeat (as they are accustomed to repeat so many other things) because they have heard it when at school: But all those associations of badness, which are connected in their minds with the Greek word oligarchy, depart when that hard word is banished and the more courtly term aristocracy substituted in its place: Under this change of denomination, what had been so loudly reprobated is as loudly applauded, and though oligarchy is no better than it should be, aristocracy is every thing that heart can desire. If there be any persons of this sort in the room, it may be of use to point out to them what are the consequences of giving too much power to an aristocracy.

The materials of which a government is composed, are not Gods, nor angels, but men. Now rather an extensive observation of the conduct of men in all ages has shewn that, extraordinary instances of heroism excepted, which of course are not to be reckoned upon, their actions are pretty constantly governed by their interests: insomuch that if you know what it is a man’s interest to do, you can make a pretty good guess at what he will do. Now as men in power do not cease to be men, by being in power, the same rules, which govern the conduct of other men, govern theirs likewise: and therefore, when the interest of those who are placed under them, clashes, as it is very apt to do, with their own, it is not difficult to see which must give way to the other.

A few examples will shew in what a variety of ways the interest of a ruling few is liable to be in opposition to the interest of the subject many.

It is the interest of the many that the taxes should be as light as possible: because it is the many who pay them: of the few, that they should be as heavy as possible: because it is the few who receive them.

It is the interest of the few that they and theirs should receive as much money, and render in return for it as little service, as possible: and with this view, it is their interest to create the greatest possible number of useless offices, in order that the pretence of service may be rewarded with the reality of salary. It never can be the interest of the many that any service should be paid for, which is not given; or given, which is not required.

It is the interest of the few that all public situations should be held by their sons and nephews, however unfit, to the exclusion of John Brown or Tom Smith or any such vulgar person who has no other recommendation than his fitness. It is the interest of the many that the best qualified person should in all cases be preferred, whatever breed he may come of.

It is the interest of the few to keep up an enormous army and navy, for the twofold purpose of making incomes for sons and nephews, and forging chains for the many. It is the interest of the many that neither army nor navy should exceed the lowest scale consistent with security.

It is the interest of the few, to be engaged in continual wars: and this for more reasons than one: 1st, for the glory of the thing, 2ndly for the power it gives them, 3rdly as an excuse for increasing the army and navy, and making more incomes for sons and nephews; and lastly, because in time of war, people think so much of doing harm to others that they have no leisure to think of doing good to themselves: from which cause a period of war is a period of security for political abuses of all sorts, sizes, and denominations. As for the many, it is scarcely ever their interest to engage in a war; and never in any that is called a just and necessary one: by which, so far as my observation goes, is always meant, a war that has for its object something either contemptibly silly or detestably wicked: the honours of the flag, the balance of power, or to prevent the establishment of free institutions in foreign countries.

It is the interest of the few to assume to themselves, in the character of justices of peace, unlimited power of vexing and annoying the many. It is the interest of the many that no such power should be exercised over them by any persons.

Lastly, for although there is no end to the subject, it is necessary that there should be an end to my enumeration; it is the interest of the few to enact corn laws in order to raise their rents, game laws to protect their amusements, and vagrant laws to punish those who, being guilty of poverty, obtrude the spectacle of their misery upon the delicate senses of the few.¹ Now it is not, nor can be, the interest of the many, that any one of all these things should be done.

Of course I do not pretend that this picture of misgovernment has ever been realized in any civilized country. I have only been speaking of what is possible, not of what is real: and few will deny that even in the present state of the human mind in Europe, an aristocracy might do all this without endangering its existence. But if we look not to what any aristocracy is now, or is ever likely to be again, but to what it has a constant tendency to become, and would actually be at this moment in every country where it exists, were it not restrained by its fears; if in short we view the sinister interest² of the ruling body in its fullest extent and endeavour to conceive the effects of a perfectly unchecked aristocracy, the picture is far more deplorable still.

It is the interest of an aristocracy to extract from the people in all ways, the greatest possible quantity of money, and the greatest possible quantity of power. When they have got this money and power it is of course their interest to keep it: which they have no chance of doing but by preventing the people from finding out that it is their interest to take it away. Two modes of action present themselves as conducive to this end: the one, calculated to operate upon the understanding of the people, the other to operate upon their will. Upon their understanding by debasing it down to the lowest stage of debasement by means of bad education, the fruits of which are, bad morals, bad religion, and almost every thing that is bad under the sun. Upon their will, by inspiring them with the greatest possible degree of terror, which is only to be done by the greatest possible degree of cruelty. A despotic aristocracy, therefore, would be exactly what a despotic monarchy, in its worst shape, is: with this difference, that a despotic monarch, being one man, may be a man of extraordinary virtue; but it would be worse than idle to expect extraordinary virtue from a body of men, a whole class, an aristocracy.

If it be proved that any set of men, placed in the situation of an aristocracy, and having power to oppress and misgovern, will oppress and misgovern, I presume an exception is not to be made of the British aristocracy. They are not, I take it for granted, cast in a different mould from the rest of their species, nor is their conduct governed by a different set of principles from those which govern the conduct of other aristocracies. I do not say that they are worse than other men: they may for aught I know be better, but still they are men. I must deprecate, therefore, all arguments in defence of the political power of the aristocracy, which are founded upon the bright examples of individual virtue in their number. There are, in what are called the higher classes, many excellent men, men whose influence as individuals I should be extremely sorry to see diminished; but though they were every one of them so many Cato’s and Fabricius’s,³ I should still think it possible that they might have too much power. I would not give absolute power even to one man, because he was virtuous; unless I meant to corrupt and destroy his virtue: yet it would be ten times more reasonable to give absolute power to one man, because he is virtuous, than to a body of men because some of them are so. Individuals have been known to make great sacrifices of their private interest to the good of their country: but bodies of men, never. When the glory of doing right and the shame of doing wrong are to be shared among so many that the share of each man is a trifle, no principle remains of sufficient strength to counteract the united force of the two great springs of human action, the love of money and the love of power. I say no principle; for as to their morality, that is regularly pressed into the service of their interest. When a set of men are numerous enough to keep one another in countenance, and high enough to be above the necessity of regarding any body’s opinion but their own, they generally find little difficulty in manufacturing a morality for their own private use: of which homemade morality the fundamental principle is, that they are of such unspeakable importance to the whole community, that the community ought to be but too happy in suffering them to take, at its expense, as much money and power as they have a mind to: and this morality they preach to the people, aye! and believe it themselves, and teach it to their children; for it is wonderful how easy a matter it is to believe that to be right which we know to be pleasant.

I have now got through one half of my argument—and have shewn what sort of a thing an unchecked aristocracy is, or would be, I should rather say, for no aristocracy is, was, or ever will be totally unchecked. The worst government is under some restraint; the fear of rebellion is always something; and there is no government over which that fear has not some influence. This check, which exists under the most odious tyrannies upon the face of the earth, is not, nor ever would be wanting in this country. It is even more of a check in this country than elsewhere, because the British is a more determined and a better instructed people than most, and therefore, when it does rebel, more likely to rebel with success. While this is the case, and long may it continue so, we must be better governed than other nations had we a Nero, or a Muley Ismael,⁴ for our absolute sovereign.

With the exception of this check, which exists alike under the best governments and under the worst, I am prepared to maintain that the power of the British aristocracy is totally unchecked.

For if it be checked, it is clear that there must be something to check it; and this something, let us see what it is. According to the fashionable doctrine about the British Constitution,⁵ there are two checks, two counterpoises; the influence of the Crown, and the influence of the people. Let us examine these checks one after the other: and we will begin with the last, because it is the most to the purpose.

If the people have any influence in the government of this country, the seat of that influence must be the House of Commons; for that is always said to be the democratic branch of our Constitution, being supposed to be chosen by the people. One thing, however, I take it for granted few will deny: that, in order to form a counterpoise to the power of the aristocracy, or to be itself any thing but an aristocracy, it is necessary not only that it should be supposed to be chosen by the people, but moreover that it should actually be chosen by them. Now when I look to things, which in general are of more importance than the names which they are called by, I find that there are not more than four or five members of the House of Commons, of whom it can be said with any colour of truth that they are chosen by the people. A majority of that House, including the members for the greater part of the counties, and for all the smaller towns, except those which are called rotten burghs, are chosen by about 180 families, most of them great landed proprietors. The remainder of the county members are chosen by the smaller landholders, and the rotten burghs, which in my opinion are the least bad part of the system, are disposed of by purchase and sale, to those who can afford to pay for them, the electors selling their consciences once in seven years or oftener, at so much per conscience. About 99 therefore out of every 100 members hold their seats either at their own pleasure, or at the pleasure of a lord or country gentleman, or at the pleasure of several lords or country gentlemen: they are either themselves a part of the aristocracy, or they are the tenants at will, the mere servants of the aristocracy: and to talk of them as a counterpoise to the power of the aristocracy in the state is much the same sort of absurdity as if Mr. Canning’s butler and footman were said to be a counterpoise to him in the family.

Now, if I were acquainted with any arithmetical process by which 1 could be proved to be greater than 99, or of any rhetoric by which the hundredth man in an assembly could persuade the other ninety nine to act as he pleased, and not as they pleased, I might admit that the influence which the people enjoy in the House of Commons, by means of the five or six members whom they elect, is a sufficient counterpoise to the influence of the aristocracy: always supposing that those five or six members were not, by reason of the long duration of parliaments, rendered very nearly as independent of their constituents as those members who never had any constituents at all. But until some such wonder working process be made known to me, I hope to be pardoned for adhering to the opposite opinion.

As for the other supposed check, the influence of the Crown, it is but the influence of the aristocracy in disguise. The King indeed is not responsible to Parliament, but his ministers are; and he can do nothing without ministers. Can any ministry stand against a hostile Parliament? No one now ever imagines that they can. By offending the Parliament, a ministry incurs the risk of impeachment—that however is a trifle—but at any rate the loss of their places—which is no trifle. Now although, by means of what I believe are called the Treasury burghs, they can put a certain number of members into Parliament, they cannot put many;⁶ so that their influence over the Parliament is in reality very small: and instead of being, what they are so often represented to be, the masters of the Parliament, they are in reality its slaves bound hand and foot and under an utter impossibility of acting otherwise than according to the will of Parliament, that is, of its constituents the Aristocracy. The power of the King is therefore subordinate to that of the Aristocracy, and cannot be exercised except in subservience to them. What then is the King? A mere officer of the Aristocracy: environed indeed by external splendour, because his splendour is their splendour, but in reality nothing more than a carver, who is permitted by them to carve the wealth and power which they have jointly extracted from the people giving a piece to one, and a piece to another, and the large pieces to whomsoever he likes best. It is strongly the interest of the aristocracy to have a carver. If they did not entrust the division of the precious matter to some fixed individual,—if the whole were left to be settled by a general scramble, the disputes and tumults and civil wars that would ensue would be troublesome. This the aristocracy know; and they prefer to take their chance of getting what they can from the carver: while those who are not served to their liking rail at those who are, and call themselves a Constitutional Opposition.

For these reasons, the supposed balance of the British Constitution appears to me to be a nonentity. For my part I never had much faith in these mathematical governments. The hopes and fears of men, the materials of which political power is made, do not admit of being cut out into equal parts, or measured out by a rule and a pair of compasses, with geometrical precision. Besides in the perpetual mutability of human affairs, the nicest equilibrium of powers would require to be readjusted before it had been established a twelvemonth. And after all—if the balance be not really, what to me it appears, visionary and chimerical: it still remains to be proved that it would be good. That a government compounded of the three simple forms must unite all their excellencies, surely is not self-evident. It is at least a possible case that it may unite all their defects. But it has usually been deemed sufficient to point to the British Constitution, and to beg the three following questions in relation to it: 1. that it is a balance, 2. that it is good, and 3. that it is good, because it is a balance: which three premisses being taken for granted, the conclusion, that a balance must be good, follows, it must be owned, quite easily and naturally.

If I have succeeded in proving that as far as depends upon institutions, the aristocracy of this country are possessed of unlimited power and that we are indebted to their fears alone, to their fears of popular resistance, for that share of good government which we enjoy, all that remains is to examine what this security amounts to: and we shall not fail to perceive, that it amounts to very little. Any resistance, short of a general rebellion, would expose the aristocracy to no material danger. But those great convulsions which overthrow established governments; those gigantic efforts of physical strength by which a people that has been sunk for ages in slavery shakes off its fetters and rids itself of bad rulers and bad institutions, are of rare occurrence and when they do occur, they are in general called forth by striking instances of individual oppression, by those crimes which awaken sympathy, and shake each man’s confidence in his own personal security. From such crimes it costs the aristocracy but little to abstain: and then, what has it to fear? The people may cry, but if they only cry, who will attend to their cries? In this country, fortunately, the fears of the aristocracy are out of all proportion to their danger. They tremble at the very thought of facing public opinion. All their actions prove how ill at ease they are when they fancy that public opinion is against them: yet as often as the temptation is tolerably strong, they do encounter it point blank: and their fears, on these occasions, make them only the more dogged in their resistance. Of this we have a striking exemplification in the pertinacity with which they cling to the Corn Laws and to the Game Laws. Public opinion is unanimous on these two questions, or it never was unanimous upon any thing: and to make the matter still more remarkable, there is not the same unanimity among the aristocracy: for these laws are as obnoxious to the manufacturing and commercial part of the aristocracy, as they are even to the people themselves. It is the landed interest alone which upholds them. From this we learn the plenitude of the power of the aristocracy, since even when they are divided, one portion is strong enough to maintain these laws against the other portion and the body of the people combined. The use they make of their power is also strikingly illustrated by these same laws: in the one case, they tax the people to the extent of several millions a year, for the disinterested purpose of putting a few hundred thousands of pounds, for it is positively no more, into their pockets; in the other case, the amusements of the aristocracy having to be protected, protection is afforded to them by establishing in every village a nursery of crime where persons are first made fit for the gallows and then sent to it, besides stocking the hulks and the plantations, which however as it is for the service of his Majesty is on that account the less to be regretted.

Having pointed out, as I conceive, the nature and magnitude of the evil, I think it best not to enter upon the controverted subject of the remedy. The discussion would take up much time; and the present question may be fully and satisfactorily answered without it. There is no one here, I imagine, who thinks that any government can be good, which is purely aristocratic, without any mixture of popular: Now it has been my endeavour to shew that our government is so: whoever, then, disapproves of a pure aristocracy must disapprove of ours, if I have made out my case. Everything turns upon the mere question of fact. I have endeavoured to make that question as plain as I could: if I have failed, I have no doubt that some gentleman will refute me: but if I have succeeded, I hope to induce the partizans of a mixed as well as those of a purely popular government, to join with me in negativing the question.

15.

Primogeniture

20 JANUARY, 1826

i do not intend, Sir, to trespass very long upon your patience. The merits of the question seem to be within a narrow compass. We have experienced this evening how obscure and intricate one of the simplest questions in ethics and legislation may be made. If we look at the subject of property with the eyes of commonsense, and without that kind of superstition which seems in this country to have stamped it as one of those subjects to which commonsense ought not to be applied, we shall see that there are two, and but two, great ends to be looked to by the legislator in regard to property; the greatest possible production and the best distribution. By establishing the laws of property, by securing to the possessor of it during his life, and to those to whom he chooses to give it at his death, the full and unmolested enjoyment of the advantages which it yields, the legislator gives encouragement to the production of wealth. This done his next consideration is what distribution conduces most to human happiness. This distribution it is his business to find out, and when found out, to encourage as far as is consistent with the other great object, the encouragement of production.

I suppose I may be permitted to assume that the distribution which conduces most to the general happiness is the distribution which the legislator ought to favour, not but that there are gentlemen in this room who would gladly dispute it, but because those gentlemen are probably not quite prepared to make answer to the question what other end it is the business of the legislator to look to.

Now the proposition on which I am content to rest my opposition to the law and custom of primogeniture is this; that the distribution of wealth which tends most to the general happiness is that which approximates the nearest to equality. If this proposition be true, it will follow as a consequence that the legislator ought to favour the equal distribution of wealth in every way not inconsistent with that security of property but for which there would be no wealth to distribute.

Everybody knows that the same sum of money is of much greater value to a poor man than to a rich one. Give £10 a year to the man who has but £10 a year, you double his income, and you nearly double his enjoyments. Add £10 more, you do not add to his enjoyments so much as you did by the first £10. The third £10 is less valuable than the second, and the fourth less valuable than the third. To the possessor of £1,000 a year the addition of £10 would be scarcely perceptible; to the possessor of £10,000 it would not be worth stooping for.

The richer a man is the less he is benefited by any further addition to his income. The man of £4,000 a year has four times the income of the man who has but £1,000; but does anybody suppose that he has four times the happiness?

Let us therefore put the case of a man who dies intestate leaving four sons and an estate of £4,000 a year. Divide it equally among the four sons, and whatever quantity of happiness a £1,000 a year are capable of yielding is produced four times over. Will it be pretended that the whole £4,000 in the hands of one of the brothers would produce anything like so great a sum of happiness? Where no undue power is annexed to the possessor of wealth, the difference in point of enjoyment between an income of £1,000 a year and an income of £4,000 is a trifle. That the eldest brother may add this trifle to his enjoyments, are the remaining three to be deprived of the whole of theirs? Not if the general happiness be the proper end of legislation. To produce inequality where without infringing any rights you might produce equality, to make one man rich where you might make four men comfortable, is bad economy; it is squandering the means of happiness, nor do you give the slightest additional stimulus to the production of wealth by thus vitiating its distribution.

It is probable that some gentlemen may not relish this pounds, shillings and pence mode of reasoning, this application of the rules of arithmetic to the computing of human feelings. They may think all such calculations very dull; I cannot help it. They will readily believe me when I declare that I should have been very glad if what I say had been at once amusing and useful. There are many persons I am aware whose zeal for truth is of that kind that they would rather at any time abandon the search than pursue it at the hazard of being tiresome. For my part I am very little accustomed to consider any means as dull which conduce to that great end. I cannot follow some of the speakers of this evening in their flights. I must go to work in my own way, and with my own instruments. With these instruments, such as they are, I have satisfied myself that equal distribution, failing special reasons to the contrary, is the one arrangement dictated by a regard for the general happiness. Nor is this principle any secret to ordinary persons on ordinary occasions.

A person who has ten loaves of bread to give away in charity, and ten persons starving at his door, never thinks of singling out one of the ten, giving him the whole, and leaving the other nine to perish. A father if he had a basket of oranges or sugarplums to bestow upon a family of five children would never imagine that he was best consulting the happiness of them all by giving the whole basket to one child and none to the other four. People in general are in the habit of thinking, or at least of saying, that when there is no difference in point of desert between two sons, to make any difference in favour between them is injustice. Under what limitations (if any) is this maxim to be taken true as applied to oranges, true as applied to sugarplums, but false as applied to estates?

“Oh, but,” say these gentlemen, “what would become of the large fortunes? Where would be our Devonshires, where our Fitzwilliams?¹ But for the law and custom of primogeniture all these princely fortunes would be broken down.” So they would, and it is this idea of breaking down a large estate which imposes upon men’s minds; their attention is wholly fixed upon the diminished grandeur of one branch of the family, and the immense number of moderate fortunes which would be cut out of these gigantic ones is entirely overlooked.

The existence of immense fortunes, if it be good at all, must be good either as an end or as a means. If there be any person in this room who says that it is good as an end, I cannot argue with one with whom I have no principles in common, and must content myself with putting it to the Society whether they are content to assume any such end or any other end than the general happiness. I do in my conscience believe that there are persons in the higher ranks of society who think that law and government exist for the sole purpose of securing them in the possession of great masses of property. In their language, however, they are in general more moderate, and instead of holding up the preservation of large fortunes as the end, they are satisfied with representing it as an absolutely necessary means for the furtherance of a certain undefinable and undescribable end termed the good order of society. What is meant by the good order of society I never could find anybody who could tell, but one may guess the end from the sort of means which they represent as essential to its attainment.

If we confine our attention to the mere enjoyments of wealth, I have already observed that the keeping together of large fortunes by no means tends to increase the sum of those enjoyments. It augments them in degree to nothing like the extent to which it narrows their diffusion. I certainly do not desire that there should be no rich men. I heartily wish that there were no other sort of men. I by no means agree with that tribe of moralists who would have us believe that great riches are an evil. But we ought to look at both sides of the question: if the law and custom of primogeniture make a few rich, it ought not to be forgotten that they make many poor. The contrary practice, the practice of equal distribution, would not be equally favourable to the maintenance of large fortunes. Few men would then possess large fortunes except those who had earned them. But if there were few large fortunes, there would be many moderate ones: where we now see one man with £20,000 a year we should perhaps see twenty men with £1,000 a year each.

But we have been told that there is another use in large fortunes which is to maintain an aristocracy, by which is meant a body of rich men possessing power, or as it is called influence, more or less over the great body of the people. The existence of such a body, we are given to understand, is of the greatest possible moment, and some gentlemen have been very eloquent on the subject of the evils which they conceive we should suffer were no such body in existence.

I agree with these gentlemen thus far. I think it highly desirable that persons possessed of property should exercise considerable influence over the body of the people. My reason is that they are the only class which has the means, that is to say the money and the time, to acquire that degree of knowledge which is necessary for qualifying them to take the lead in public affairs. To have the means, however, of acquiring knowledge avails a man very little unless he has an adequate motive. The man of £1,000 a year has a motive. The man of twenty times that amount has none: with such an instrument of power in his hands as £20,000 a year, what need has he of intellect? Why should he take trouble? What has he to gain by it? Where is his inducement? There are exceptions doubtless to this rule, but without wishing to push it to any extravagant extent I think it must be allowed me that out of equal numbers of persons born to £1,000 and of persons born to £20,000 a year, we might expect a priori that the proportion of intellectual and instructed men would be much the greatest in the former class, a conclusion which it is almost unnecessary to say experience amply confirms. And if we add to this that every large fortune would break down into several of that moderate extent which affords the greatest possible combination of the means and the motives for the acquisition of intellectual eminence, we shall see that under a system of equal distribution the possessors of property, whether they would have more influence or not, would at any rate deserve it more.

But if it be answered that the men of small fortunes, though abler and better educated, would not carry with them that weight of influence which it is of absolute necessity that the possessors of property should have, I beg leave to ask what sort of influence it is that is meant. Since it is not the influence of superior education and talent, is it the mere influence of a longer purse? Since it is not the influence which works by reasoning and persuasion, is it the influence which works by bribery and terror? If this be the sort of influence that is meant I must in candour acknowledge that under bad institutions it is among the attributes of large fortunes to carry this sort of influence along with them. At the same time I must be permitted to doubt whether this be a sort of influence which deserves much encouragement, or whether it be saying much in favour of primogeniture to say that a sort of power of which bribes and threats are the instrument owes its existence to that institution. Where such are the means I look with some suspicion upon the end. I know we are taught to believe that we are greatly indebted to the rich for being so kind as to bribe us and intimidate us for our good, to the end that having by these means acquired a complete command over our acts they may with paternal solicitude force us to pursue our own happiness which we should otherwise be in danger of losing sight of. To expect any other than this disinterested line of conduct from men who have a large stake in the country,² who are interested in keeping all establishments on their bottoms, and in maintaining the stability of the existing order of things; to expect anything but good from so efficient a drag chain so admirably fitted to obviate all danger of too rapid a movement on the part of the political machine would be jacobinism. A little election bribery and a little election terrorism are a small price to pay for so much stability.

It is certainly true that stability in a government is desirable, but it is first desirable that the government should be good. If it is not good, the more unstable it is, the better. If while you are making the government as stable as possible you at the same time take care that it shall be as bad as possible, here are two evils instead of one: and if it be the interest of the rich to make the government a bad one, it is small matter of congratulation that it is also their interest to keep it so.

But it is by no means true that men with large fortunes are for that reason interested in the stability of the existing order of things. If the existing order of things be of such a sort as to give to them all the power which they can possess or desire, i.e. power to dispose at their pleasure of all the rest of the community and of all that belongs to them, then indeed they have an interest in the stability of the existing order of things. But if their power falls short of this by one atom, they are interested in subverting the existing order of things the very moment that they think they have the least chance of succeeding in the attempt. That there should be a stable government therefore, which is so much better a thing than a good government, is their interest only so far forth as the government is bad.

There are then two kinds of influence, the one the source of all evil, the other of all good; the influence of will over will, and the influence of understanding over understanding. In regard to these two kinds of influences, what is the effect of the law and custom of primogeniture? Instead of a large number of moderate fortunes which would exercise the good sort of influence without the bad, it gives us a small number of large fortunes which exercise the bad sort of influence without the good. For a class of men who would be able to instruct, but who could not bribe or intimidate, it substitutes a class who are able to bribe, who are able to intimidate, but who simply because they can bribe and intimidate have never learned to instruct.

If it be good that men should be so raised above their fellowmen as to be almost wholly independent of the favourable or unfavourable sentiments which may be entertained towards them by those fellowmen; if it be good that great power should be entrusted to those who are the least capable of employing it well and who are under the strongest inducements to employ it ill; if the being born heir to a large fortune be talent and education, or if it be a better qualification for governing a state than talent and education; or if the possession of power independently of merit be an apt encouragement to the acquisition of merit, then it is good that there should be large fortunes, and that these large fortunes should be kept together by the law and custom of primogeniture. But if the reverse of all this be the case, and if besides this it be proved that moderate fortunes are more favourable to intellectual and moral excellence, and afford the enjoyments of wealth in a higher degree than those gigantic ones; then instead of the law and custom of primogeniture the law and custom of equal division ought to prevail.

16.

Catiline’s Conspiracy

28 FEBRUARY, 1826

it is a remark of condorcet, that he is a public benefactor, who questions the authority of received opinions: and this not only when the received opinions are wrong, but sometimes even when they are right.¹ If they are wrong, it is of course an advantage to get rid of an error: if they are right, it is still no small advantage, to believe upon evidence what we had hitherto believed upon trust.

If there be as much merit in propounding a paradox in history, as Condorcet says there is in propounding a paradox in philosophy,² my honourable friend³ the opener of the debate may lay claim to a considerable share of our approbation. He is certainly entitled to whatever praise may be due to those who impugn the reigning opinion: and thus much may be conceded to him; that we are in general too apt to give implicit credence to everything which is asserted by historians, particularly by classical historians: in as much as we have not only read it in print, but what is still more conclusive, we have read it at school. Till within a short period, no one seems to have suspected, that ancient historians had their passions; that ancient historians had their prejudices; that the evidence which they had before them was not always of the best kind, nor their powers of weighing evidence, always of the highest order: in short, we are only now beginning to conceive it possible, that a historian who wrote in Greek or Latin, could be a deceiver or deceived. We are really indebted, therefore, to any one, who by boldly setting himself up against the authority of nineteen centuries, raises doubts, and provokes enquiry.

I know not whether my honourable friend really entertains the opinion in defence of which he has displayed so much ingenuity and research; or whether he has any other purpose than by exemplifying the uncertainty which hangs over the best established historical facts, to shake that unbounded confidence which we are so prone to repose in whatever has been handed down to us under the name of history, and send us back to reperuse our books and reconsider our old opinions. If this be his purpose, he has chosen his subject well, and the Society will I am sure agree with me that the subject has not lost any thing, by his manner of treating it.

To me, who, in history as in most other things, look chiefly to that which is practical, which bears upon the present situation of the human race, for which alone I concern myself, questions of this sort, I confess, are not very interesting. It is criminal in wives to murder their husbands, whether Mary Queen of Scots murdered her husband or no;⁴ and in forming a resolution to be an honest man, I shall not wait till I have ascertained whether Catiline was a rascal. If therefore my honourable friend had done no more than throw doubts upon the reality of the criminal actions imputed to Catiline, I should have suffered his speech to produce what effect it might upon the Society, and left it for other gentlemen to answer it if they could. But he has done more than deny those actions; he has attempted to justify them: and it is for this reason that I intend to oppose him. History, which resembles a novel in so many other respects, resembles it also in this, that it matters little whether the actions which the historian or the novelist relates ever really happened or not, but it matters very much that the moral judgment which we form of those actions should be correct. It is of very little consequence whether Catiline was a rascal, but it is of very great consequence that every rascal should be treated as such, whether in the situation of Catiline or in any other; and consequently, that a man who did what Catiline is acknowledged to have done, should be estimated as he deserves. Without therefore touching upon those actions in the private life of Catiline, the evidence of which may appear questionable, I shall confine myself to the consideration of that one of his actions which can neither be denied nor explained away: his conspiracy.

My honourable friend has contributed to our instruction and entertainment by a dissertation on the vices of the aristocratic government of Rome. It is not my wish to extenuate those vices; I do not fall short of my honourable friend in my contempt of those shallow and superficial politicians who see no despotism but where they see a single despot; who imagine that a government with popular forms must be a popular government, and who when they have played off one turbulent faction against another, imagine that they have secured liberty. I trust, Sir, that without being numbered among such persons, I may be permitted to see more points for consideration in this question, than my honourable friend seems to have been aware of. I must acknowledge indeed that his argument is recommended, if not by its conclusiveness, at least by its beautiful simplicity: The Roman government was not the best government conceivable: ergo, it was lawful to subvert it at any time, by any means, and to substitute any other government in the place of it. I must confess myself dull enough not to feel the force of this reasoning; and sufficiently bigotted to certain notions of morality, to think that civil war is a tremendous evil, and not to be hazarded but when the prospective good preponderates over the immediate evil: and that the existence of abuses is no pretext for a revolution unless it be the object of that revolution to remedy them.

There is one question which does seem to me to deserve more consideration than my honourable friend has apparently thought necessary to bestow upon it: and this is, what were Catiline’s designs? The existing government was bad, we will grant: but would Catiline have established a better? This to say the least my honourable friend has not proved. He appears to have reckoned upon finding in us a disposition to believe any thing in behalf of the unfortunate, and to have thought that our imaginations could not harbour the idea of two parties cutting each other’s throats, and neither of them in the right. I grant that in reading the pages of history, which are so often the annals of human misery and human guilt, it is with difficulty that the lover of virtue can force himself to believe that all was equally black. It is painful to dwell on the dull detail of crime after crime, and see nothing to love, nothing to admire, but every thing to execrate. The imagination must have something to sympathize with: and what it cannot find in the successful, it seeks in the unsuccessful party. They at least were no tyrants: they have not shocked us by their proscriptions and their confiscations: in our abhorrence of the crimes which were perpetrated against them, we forget those which they sought to perpetrate, we think only of the suffering of men who were more sinned against than sinning;⁵ and vainly flatter ourselves that those virtues which we see but too clearly were not found in the victors, would have been found in the vanquished if they had prevailed. I might perhaps condemn this illusion of the imagination, if I myself could boast of being free from it: but I still read the stories of Cato and Brutus⁶ with the same intense interest as if I had not known them to have been among the most selfish of mankind; and I bestow on an ideal Cato and Brutus that love and admiration which I feel that the real Cato and Brutus did not deserve. I would gladly if I could, regard Catiline too in the light of a persecuted patriot, a hero and a martyr: but my principles compel me to pass the severest condemnation upon a man who would subvert an established government without substituting a better, and plunge his country into the horrors of a civil war, for no nobler purpose than the gratification of his own rapacity, or his own selfish ambition.

If Catiline had succeeded, he would have had his choice of three things. He might have retained the old constitution, placing his own party in power, that like Marius or Sylla he might have glutted himself and his followers with the blood and riches of the opposite party:⁷ or secondly, he might have established a military despotism, or thirdly and lastly a good government. Let us examine into the comparative probability of these three suppositions, beginning with the last.

I am ready to give Catiline all the advantage of the plea that what we know of him comes to us solely from his enemies: but when we make all the deductions, which this circumstance requires, from the value of their testimony, or even were we to reject that testimony altogether, the utmost that we could conclude would be, that there is no evidence against him. The absence of evidence against him is not evidence in his favour: thought it were not proved that his designs were bad, this is no proof that they were good. My honourable friend will not probably carry his disbelief in history so far as to contend that we ought always to believe the contrary of what historians tell us, and to infer at once that Catiline was an honest man, because Sallust says he was a profligate.⁸ Now I ask, Is the thing itself so intrinsically probable, that we should believe it without evidence? Is disinterested patriotism so very common a thing, a quality of such vulgar, such every day occurrence, that we should ascribe it without proof to a man of whose moral character the very best that can be said is that we know nothing about it? My honourable friend must have a very good opinion of mankind. He has surely lived in some country where moral virtues are like blackberries, and patriots grow upon every bush. It is not so I fear in London: I am sure it was not so in Rome: and till I have some better evidence of Catiline’s honesty, than his own word and my honourable friend’s, I will at the risk of sacrificing my own character for charity and liberality, consider him as a knave.

But if, on the one hand, my honourable friend may with reason require of us to make the due abatement from the degree of credit due to Catiline’s enemies because they were his enemies he should on the other hand reflect that this abatement does not amount to a total rejection of their testimony, and that even a man’s enemies do not load him with accusations which every man has it in his power to contradict. At the hazard then of incurring the contempt of my honourable friend, I will say, that little as we know of Catiline, and that little only from his enemies, we know enough to pronounce with some confidence that he was every thing which a political reformer should not be. I see no reason to doubt that he was a needy adventurer, reduced to penury by what to avoid the sarcasms of my honourable friend I will call by no worse name than extravagance: that when he had squandered his fortune, he still retained the habits which that fortune had engendered, and though without the means of satisfying his natural wants, was still tormented by artificial wants which it required a large fortune to supply: that he was deeply in debt, that he had no honest means of livelihood, and that he had gathered round him a multitude of men whose wants like his own were pressing and their fortunes spent. Now there are many instances in history of conspiracies in which such men have been the leaders: they are indeed the stuff of which conspirators are made: but I do not think there is one instance of a conspiracy led by such persons, which has had any righteous purpose or which has turned out well. A man who has been ruined by his vices is not a man to reform the government of his country. A political reformer should be a man who can resist temptation—who can command his passions—who looks to distant and durable enjoyments rather than to those which are immediate and transitory and who can toil half his life thankless and unrewarded, undervalued and perhaps abhorred by the majority of mankind with nothing to support him but the cheering consciousness that his labours and his sacrifices will one day be appreciated. Can we expect this from a man who, reckless of the consequences, is a slave to the pursuit of immediate gratifications, neglecting all others? No: it is a fatal error to imagine that public virtue and private vices are ever allied, or that he who has sacrificed fame, fortune and liberty to his ungovernable passions, will have more regard for the happiness of his fellow citizens than he has had for his own. It is too much to suppose that he who is an enemy to himself, will be a friend to the rest of mankind, or that he whom prudence cannot restrain from vicious indulgence will be restrained from it by forbearance towards others or by love of his country.

I conclude therefore, that if Catiline had succeeded, he would either after a series of massacres and proscriptions, have ended by leaving the government as it was before, or he would have established a military despotism. I am sure there is no one here who would have attempted to justify him, had he adopted the former alternative. But as my honourable friend appears to have some hankering after a military despotism, and to think that it would have been at least an improvement upon the Roman aristocracy, I must not dismiss this part of the subject without observation.

I am no very vehement admirer of an aristocratic government: and the Roman aristocracy had its full share of the vices to which that form of government is liable. But an aristocracy, be it ever so bad, if composed of a considerable number of members, seldom or never reduces the human mind so completely to the level of the brutes, as a military despotism. An aristocracy—at least a numerous aristocracy—has more points in common with the people: it has at least an interest in establishing a regular government, and letting its subjects know all the evil which they are liable to suffer at its hands. It is the interest of an aristocracy that personal security should be inviolable; for their own persons may one day be in danger. It is the interest of an aristocracy that there should be protection to property: for the time may come when their property may stand in need of it. In short though an aristocracy might and would have the will to oppress in at least as great a degree as a monarch, it would in general oppress by means of the laws, rather than against them. Now a government of law is always preferable to a government of arbitrary will. However oppressive the laws might be, they might at any rate be known. Though the law might take from us nine tenths of the produce of our industry, it would be something to know, that the remaining tenth would be secure. I can hardly imagine any laws so bad, to which I would not rather be subject than to the caprice of a man: whose ever varying will could never for an instant be known—who would punish me today for executing his yesterday’s commands,—who would load me today with riches and honours and send me to the scaffold tomorrow. I would rather if I must choose, be habitually overtaxed, than live in constant fear that the whole of my property might be taken from me at a moment’s warning by the fiat of a despot. I would rather have every action controlled—every movement chained up by restrictive laws which iniquitous as they might be would not destroy my security, since I should only have to obey them and be safe: than lead a life of incessant anxiety lest by some of my acts I should unwittingly infringe against a will which had never been made known to me, and violate prohibitions which had never existed any where but in the royal bosom. Nor is this utter insecurity, this constant sense of alarm, confined to those who are sufficiently conspicuous to attract the notice of the despot, and sufficiently wealthy to excite his cupidity or his jealousy. If the great body of the people is not the prey of the despot, it is the prey of his subordinate instruments: petty tyrants, whom experience has proved to be the worst of tyrants and who are but the more likely to be tyrants because they themselves are slaves. My honourable friend has expatiated on the tyranny which the proconsuls exercised over the provinces, because having but a year to reign they made haste to plunder as much as they conveniently could in that short time. But if this be true, what may we not expect from the agent of a despot, who has no security that his power will continue so long? History affords some remarkable examples in point; and I am inclined to think that the government of a Turkish Pacha would form but a disadvantageous contrast even with that of a Roman proconsul.

But what contributes most of all to sink the minds of the unhappy subjects of a despotism into the lowest state of brutality and degradation of which human nature is susceptible, is that merit, instead of being the road to distinction, is more dangerous to its possessor than even wealth: that every quality which adorns a man is dreaded and persecuted, while the only qualities which recommend to favour are those of a sycophant and a slave. From this general corruption, an extensive aristocracy is exempt. There it is not by the arts of fawning and flattering and cringing and pandering and backbiting and slandering, that men raise themselves to the head of the state: there are no court intrigues, no favorites, no royal mistresses: the meanest of vices, those of a courtier, are unknown. Talents and intellect are in honour, because these are the qualities which are really serviceable, and because, where the possessors of power are too numerous to be acted upon by private favour, the qualities that are really serviceable, are the qualities that are preferred. And at Rome, where the lowest citizen, if a man of talent, was not excluded by his birth from those public situations which are the proper reward of talent, the human mind could not become utterly degraded. Where the great prizes fell to a Marius or a Cicero, Marius’s and Cicero’s would not be wanting. Under a despotism such men, if they had ever arisen, would have been crushed in the beginning of their career. It has been remarked that nothing contributed so much to the unequalled grandeur of the Roman state as the succession of great men who ruled its councils and commanded its armies for century after century.⁹ And to what cause is it to be ascribed that a state which from so small a beginning had raised itself to so much grandeur not suddenly and by the individual talents of one great captain but gradually through a succession of ages and by a succession of statesmen and warriors, should first have stopt short, then fallen gradually into decay, until with the whole civilization of the world at its beck, it was unable to defend its own existence against a few hordes of savages? Could this have happened under a government under which merit was rewarded—under which it was even tolerated—but it has been truly said by a historian whose authority indeed does not go for much with my honourable friend, Regibus boni quam mali suspectiones sunt, semperque his aliena virtus formidolosa est.¹⁰

Bad then as the Roman aristocracy was (and I neither palliate nor deny its badness) he who had sought to subvert it with the intention of erecting a military despotism on its ruins, is not entitled to plead the end, in justification of the means, and it is not any ordinary end which would justify such means. Though it would be too much to say that civil war is the worst of evils, since the evil of misgovernment is worse; there is scarcely an imaginable horror which is not included in it. Rapine and murder on the largest scale and in the most aggravated form, are but a specimen. There are occasions, it is indeed true, when humanity itself commands us to risk even these evils to effect a greater good. But though the friend of mankind may despise the pusillanimity or execrate the hypocrisy of those who would persuade us to endure the perpetual evils of tyranny rather than expose ourselves to the temporary hazards of a political convulsion; it does not become him to give a handle to the eternal enemies of all reforms from the greatest to the least for accusing him of insensibility to the tremendous evils by which such convulsions are but too often accompanied. An indifference to those evils is precisely what those who do not wish to see the people happy are in the constant habit of charging upon those who do; and it is of the highest importance that the language and conduct of the friends of freedom should be such as to give no colour to so serious an accusation. Let them acknowledge that the man who like Catiline produces these evils for his own selfish purposes, and with no intention of effecting a permanent improvement, is a most atrocious criminal: but let them add that there is a degree of guilt still more atrocious than his: it is the guilt of those who by upholding bad institutions when the spirit of the age imperatively calls for reform, expose their country to the same calamities for purposes equally selfish, and if the extent of the evil sought to be produced be the test of wickedness, still more detestably wicked.

17.

The Universities [1]

7 APRIL, 1826

the system of education at our Universities has been so ably criticised by former speakers that I should perhaps better consult my credit as well as my ease if I were to remain this evening a silent listener. Among the many topics, however, which the question embraces there is one which has not received in this debate that measure of attention which is its due. Although the deficiencies of the University scheme of education have been exposed with no unsparing hand, the examination has almost entirely confined itself to effects; it has not extended itself to causes. We have been left without any explanation of the extraordinary fact that while in other countries public education has generally been on a level with the actual state of the human mind, has grown with its growth and expanded with its expansion, in this country it has remained far behind, and instead of going hand in hand with civilisation has not even condescended to follow. It will perhaps be found that if our institutions of education have not answered the purposes of education it was because they never had those purposes in view, and that this great public trust has been ill-executed for the same reason for which public trusts in general are so ill-executed, because it has been confided to persons who have no interest in executing it well.

Our Universities may be regarded for all practical purposes as ecclesiastical establishments, and education in so far as it depends upon those institutions may be considered as being in the hands of the clergy. To this circumstance more than to any other I am inclined to attribute the defectiveness of our University education considered as a means to those ends which I have been accustomed to consider as the ends of education. Without professing (for I do not feel) any hostility to the established clergy, nor insinuating that their conduct is different from what that of any other men would be in their situation, it appears to me that there are circumstances in that situation which render them peculiarly unfit to have the direction of the national education in their hands.

The most important quality of the human intellect is its progressiveness, its tendency to improvement. That there is such a tendency in man is certain. It is this which constitutes his superiority among animated beings. If mankind were to be judged merely by what they are and not by what they are capable of becoming, we should not perhaps have so much reason to be proud of the comparison with a well-educated horse or dog as we are fond of imagining. It is evident then that one of the grand objects of a really good education would be to promote to the utmost this spirit of progression, to inspire an ardent desire of improvement, and that a mode of education which does not encourage this disposition is radically defective, much more if it does anything to check it. It is also evident that if there be a body of men who have made a solemn renunciation of the attribute of progressiveness for themselves they are not likely to exert themselves with much spirit for the promotion of that attribute in others. This, however, is what every clergyman does by entering into the established church. As far as regards religious opinions he engages to remain stationary, to preserve the purity of the established faith against any modification, whether for the better or for the worse, and experience has shown that he who has taken a resolution to remain inaccessible to conviction on this most important of all subjects generally becomes so on all others. Now a body of men who do not improve are necessarily the bitter enemies of all who do.

That my meaning may not be mistaken I will observe that the hostility to improvement which I have imputed to the clergy does not by any means belong to them as clergy; it arises merely from their incorporation. A clergyman, that is to say a teacher of religion, is not as such necessarily an enemy to improvement more than any other teacher, and it would be extremely unfair and unjust to bring such an accusation against him. But any teacher of any science would be an enemy to improvement if he had made a vow never to improve, if he had bound himself never to yield to conviction, never to adopt any new discoveries to which the progress of the human mind might give birth, but to continue always teaching the same doctrines to the end of his days. I only ask that what would be true of any other sort of teachers may be supposed true of the clergy. Their business, the business for which they are paid, is not to make the human mind advance but so far as religious opinions are concerned to keep it where it is.

If there were a corporate body of physicians, or a corporate body of engineers paid by the state, rewarded with honours and wealth, on this condition, that they should always teach a certain set of doctrines in physic or mechanics, it cannot be doubted that such a body would be interested in preventing improvement. Happily this is not the case. Neither the physician nor the engineer is bound down to a particular set of opinions in their respective sciences; the clergyman is. Wherever there is a hierarchy, wherever there is such a thing as church government, adherence to certain tenets is the condition on which he holds both his emoluments and his power. If there be not only a hierarchy but a hierarchy connected with the ruling powers in the state, it becomes the interest of its members to uphold certain political as well as religious opinions, and to uphold them whether they are right or wrong.

Now I might say that it would be a considerable stretch of arrogance in mankind to suppose that they had already reached the pinnacle of knowledge either in religion or politics; that it is highly probable that there is still room for improvement in both, and that if our old opinions on these subjects were thoroughly investigated the investigation might not terminate favourably to them all. If this be the case it is easy to see how strong would be the interest of the established clergy in resisting improvement, since the effect of improvement would be to leave them behind and deprive them of a part of their consideration. I shall not however choose to rest my case upon any argument which implies that it is possible for an established opinion to be wrong. I will suppose that every teacher of the established religion, and every political doctrine which the church, as connected with the government, is interested in inculcating will stand the test of the most rigorous examination. It is not the less true that in the progress of human improvement every one of these opinions comes to be questioned. The good of mankind requires that it should be so. The very idea of progressiveness implies the questioning of all established opinions. The human intellect is only in its right state when everything that is believed is believed on evidence. This supposes enquiry. The interest of the established clergy requires that the established opinions should be believed, but it does not require that they should be believed upon evidence. Now our experience of human nature justifies us in affirming that whatever is done by a body of men is done in the way which promises to give least trouble. The least troublesome way of making people believe is to make them believe upon trust, and not upon evidence. If the minds of men could be brought into such a state that they would believe all established opinions merely because they were established, the end would be attained in the easiest possible way. That love of ease therefore which is the characteristic of an established clergy is of itself sufficient to make them enemies to all enquiry, to improvement, to progression.

It is now evident what are the habits of mind which if an established clergy are entrusted with the business of education they are sure to inculcate. The grand desideratum is to produce a confirmed habit of taking opinions upon trust; in other words, of believing without evidence, of blindly acquiescing in all reigning opinions and regarding it as impious to call for the proof of them. For this purpose it is necessary to divert the attention of the pupils from all studies calculated to strengthen their intellects or render them capable of thinking for themselves. It will therefore be a grand object to provide them with other occupation, occupation of such a kind that while they are doing nothing useful they may flatter themselves that they are doing something. The exercises upon which they will be put will not be such as shall accustom the mind to weigh evidence, or shall infuse any originality or vigour of thought, or soundness of judgment. They will either be mere exercises of memory or will be directed towards the acquiring of a sort of acuteness and dexterity about trifles, that the most active minds may still find something to engage them which shall neither shake their faith in any established opinion nor turn their attention to any one subject which is of importance to mankind.

That the whole scope of the Cambridge and Oxford education conforms as nearly to these ends as the occasional infirmity of human purposes will allow remains to be shown. It will not be a difficult task.

The only things which are taught at our Universities, except divinity, are classics and mathematics. At Oxford indeed ethics and rhetoric are studied in Aristotle,¹ with a very little of the school logic, which by the way they learn in Aldrich,² one of the worst books of logic extant. In classics, besides the technicalities of the language, all that they do is to get up certain authors, that is, to learn very accurately what these authors have said so as to be able to answer any questions. They are never once called upon to exercise their judgment either upon the matter or manner of a work; they are merely taught to say it as they would say their catechism. And this is the way in which Aristotle’s Ethics and Rhetoric are learned. As for mathematics, it is a great mistake to suppose that it is learned at Cambridge. If a man chooses to learn it, Cambridge will reward him. But the quantity of mathematics which it is necessary to know in order to obtain a degree is no more than what a boy of fourteen of ordinary capacity may easily learn in six months. And even the mathematical attainments to which the honours of that University, from the senior wranglership downwards, are appropriated are very little more than exercises of memory. One man laboriously crams his head with the demonstrations and calculations which another has invented, and when he has done this his attainments stop. His greatest stretch of intellect is to be dexterous in the application of certain technical rules. He can repeat the same process over and over with fresh materials; so can a journeyman carpenter; and in going over the same series of operations in problem after problem he need know no more of the general principles of his science than the journeyman carpenter need know of his. As for discoveries, everybody knows whether or not it is from the senior wranglers that they come. I believe in point of fact there is scarcely an instance of a senior wrangler who has contributed anything worth speaking of to the improvement of his own science. The men who during the last century have improved the science of mathematics have been the Eulers, the Lagranges and the Laplaces. From the time of Newton downwards our mathematical reputation has been declining, and the few men who have prevented it from sinking into utter contempt have almost without exception been educated in Scotland.³

It may however be thought that in studying the classics even as they are studied at our Universities, it is difficult not to imbibe some liberality of sentiment and some valuable information. So one would think, and if our Universities had not existed it would probably to this day have remained a problem whether it was possible for great bodies of young men to study the classics in such a manner as not to derive one particle of advantage from them. Our Universities however have so nearly succeeded in this attempt that the possibility of the thing is now placed beyond the reach of doubt. So far indeed as regards Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Ethics it must be confessed that although nobody is required, or even encouraged, to read them with any profit, there is nothing to hinder him from doing so if he be so disposed; and so far as this goes Oxford is one degree above the zero of Cambridge. Of Plato there are, I suspect, very few persons at either place who have ever heard: certain it is that he is never read, which as he is a highly instructive author is not at all surprising. As for the orators, I believe there have been a few instances of late years at Oxford in which an undergraduate has chosen to be examined in Demosthenes. Whether or not Cicero is read I am not informed. Remain the poets and the historians. Of these the poets, being the least useful, are the most cultivated, and as the dramatists are hardly of any use at all it may easily be conceived with what ardour they are studied. The historical works, particularly those of the Greek historians, possessing in themselves some natural aptitude for being useful, the end would not have been attained if pains had not been taken to neutralise whatever useful impressions those writings might, if left to themselves, have been calculated to produce. For this end a happy resource presented itself. An English antidote to the Greek poison—Mitford’s History of Greece⁴ —a work in which, together with everything that is slavish in principle, everything that is false in fact with regard to the history of Greece, is unremittingly inculcated; a work the reputation of which is a national disgrace, a standing proof of our utter ignorance of Greek literature, since we have given credit for accuracy and research to a man whose research has never extended beyond the common circle of authors, and who if making any assertion that suits his purpose were accuracy, would possess that attribute in an unrivalled degree. I am informed that this work is one of those which are most frequently put into the hands of the younger members of the University by the older as a corrective to the mistakes into which they would be liable to fall if left to interpret the Greek historians by the mere light of unassisted human reason.

It is true that at Oxford an undergraduate may choose the authors in whose works he will stand an examination. True, but by the time he thinks of taking his degree he has breathed the University air long enough to know what sort of attainments are there prized. He knows that at Oxford a scholar means a man who is familiar with Aeschylus and Euripedes,⁵ and that even a little of these authors will bring him nearer to a degree than a great deal of many more instructive writers. Meanwhile he is told, and perhaps believes as a speculative truth, that he is at liberty to choose his authors, while he looks round and sees that those above him who have gone through the University with most éclat have been chiefly eminent for their proficiency in choruses, and that the crack men who are quoted as the great ornaments of the University in this line are the men who have put their names in the title page of a Greek play. It is indeed a remarkable fact, and strikingly illustrative of the nature of what our Universities cultivate and call Greek literature, that those who have amended the text or furnished critical annotations on the philosophers, the orators, and even the historians, or who have done anything towards helping us to understand them, have almost every man of them been Germans. But then we have the Hecuba and the Agamemnon, and the Prometheus Vinctus,⁶ and we fancy that we have found out the metre of some of the Choruses in Sophocles,⁷ and for this we are indebted to our Universities. We are unrivalled in these attainments, and so jealous am I of our national fame that I sincerely hope we may ever continue so.

Such is the mode of education at our Universities. Whether it is well adapted to the ends of education it is for the Society to judge. History presents us with one other example of an ecclesistical corporation which has had the education of a great nation in its hands: I mean the Jesuits. The mode of education under the Jesuits very much resembled that of our Universities. They taught a little mathematics, a little of the school logic, a little of belles lettres, and some Greek and Latin: the poetry of these languages was what they chiefly cultivated, and the reason is given in an admirable passage of a celebrated work, the Lettres Juives.⁸ They knew that a man might read the ancient poets all his life and not have one idea the more, nor the capacity of acquiring one; but the minds which had been strengthened by the study of the orators and philosophers were likely to push their enquiries into subjects with which it suited the Jesuits much better that they should not meddle.

18.

The Universities [2]

7 APRIL, 1826

as i have not, like some of the gentlemen who preceded me, the advantage of a practical acquaintance with the system pursued at our Universities, I shall not enter into those minute details which I do not know, and which perhaps if known would conduce but little to a correct estimation of the general effect of the system. Happily this is not one of those questions of which no one but an eye-witness is qualified to be a judge. The system of our Universities must be very good indeed if we are obliged to look close in order to find the blemishes; and I will add, it must be very bad indeed if in defending it against attack its partisans can only say that certain of its minutiae are as good as could reasonably be expected.

In enquiring whether our Universities are or are not conducive to the ends of education we are trying them, I must observe, by a very hard test, and perhaps not altogether a fair one. It is fair to presume that the Universities are supported and eulogized, and that young men are sent there for some end, and it is possible that this end may be an extremely good one; and indeed I have no doubt of it as those institutions are the objects of such unceasing eulogy to loyal and pious persons, who to be sure can aim at no other than loyal and pious ends. But it is nevertheless possible that these ends may not be the ends of education after all, and that our Universities, though they may be something better than places of education, may not be places of education. But whether they are places of education or no, they are at any rate places where something is taught, or professed to be taught; and some, though I believe but a small proportion of the young men who are annually sent there, are sent in order that they may learn, or seem to learn. In common parlance, to have received a good education means to have been at one or other University. If to have been at the University be the end of education there is no doubt but that by going to the University that end may be most effectually attained. It is probable however that in the sense attached to the word education by the opener of this question,¹ a young man would not be considered to have received a good education unless he had learned something though it were but to leap a five-barred gate. The question is, therefore, whether those who go to our Universities learn anything, and what they learn.

The only things which our Universities profess to teach are divinity, classics and mathematics. I lay this down broadly without fear of contradiction. The honourable opener has given us, it is true, a long list of lectures: he should rather have said lectureships. Lectureships there unquestionably are; lectures in many cases there are not: but suppose there were, what then, since nobody is obliged to attend them, obliged nor even encouraged, since if a man knew everything which these lectures or any other lectures in the world could teach him they would not give him so much as a Junior Optime² nor even bring him the tenth part of a step nearer to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The lectures then may be divided into two classes, lectures delivered and lectures not delivered. Those which are not delivered of course are not attended: those which are delivered anybody may attend if he choose, nobody unless he choose: that is to say, he can find instruction if he wants it, which is exactly what he could do anywhere else, with this difference, that in London or any other considerable place he would probably find much better lecturers and much better lectures.

Divinity, classics and mathematics may therefore be considered to be the substance of University education, as they are certainly the only studies that are either exacted or encouraged. Of these three I shall confine myself to the two last. The theological branch I do not propose to meddle with. It is sufficient for me that it has the approbation of the Church of England which is the only proper judge in these matters, and which must be presumed infallible, at least in its own sphere. The system moreover of theological instruction at our Universities is all bottomed upon the Thirty-nine Articles,³ a subject on which I should be extremely sorry to observe any scepticism, as I am informed that society would be in danger of dissolution if there were only thirty-eight, or if any one of the thirty-nine were altered from what it now is. Theology, however, is only for the clergy; at least it is only the clergy who are expected to study it. The remainder of the young men who receive what is called their education at Oxford or Cambridge, that is to say the future lawyers, physicians, surgeons, merchants, engineers, army and navy officers, and idlers, are fitted for their several occupations by the study of Greek, Latin and mathematics. It has been found out after some centuries that medicine, law, commerce, are not to be learned either in Euclid or Euripides, and that anybody who has anything to do, if he wants to learn how to do it, must begin his apprenticeship after he leaves college. There are therefore only two pleas set up for our University education; one is that however ill-calculated to be of use to those who have anything to do, it is extremely well-adapted to the wants of those who have not, and who are therefore called the higher classes. The other is that although it does not give to professional men the sort of knowledge which is peculiarly requisite for their several professions, it gives them a sort of knowledge which is of great use in forming their understandings, in purifying their taste and qualifying them to acquire any knowledge and pursue any studies with success.

In this last proposition I so far agree as to think that a certain knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages and of mathematics forms an important part of a liberal education, but not, in my opinion, the most important part; and I also maintain that the culture of these branches of knowledge, if exclusive and if carried to the length to which they are carried at our Universities, has a tendency much rather to pervert the understanding than to improve it.

I will begin with mathematics, and allowing that Euclid’s Elements, with something of algebra and enough of the properties of curve lines to understand the more common of their practical applications, should form part of every good education. I think it will be allowed that here is no more than may be acquired by any boy of ordinary capacity by the age of fourteen. If we suppose, as we reasonably may, that his time has been profitably spent up to that age, the question is whether a young man who is to pursue any profession, or even a young man of no profession who does not mean to devote his life to the cultivation of the mathematical sciences, can derive any advantage from pushing these studies farther commensurate to the labour that it will cost. Practical utility the higher branches of mathematics have none, unless in so far as they may lead to new discoveries in physical science, and these are made by the philosopher who devotes his life to such pursuits, not by the man who learns mathematics as a branch of general education.

We are told, indeed very frequently, that mathematics teach men to reason; and truly they do, but it is to reason on mathematics and nothing more. The truth is that mathematical evidence and moral evidence are so entirely distinct from one another that they are to be judged of by rules altogether different, and the man who is most familiar with the one may be a mere child in the other. Nor is this less the case with physical science. Both in the moral sciences and in the physical errors arise from two causes, incorrect observation and ambiguities of language. To neither of these errors is the mathematician less liable than the common man. He has not learned to observe, for his science is not a science of observation. He has not acquired the faculty of detecting ambiguities of language since all his terms being exactly defined that faculty has never been called into exercise. It is not however his only disadvantage that his mathematics have not been to him a logic, that sort of logic which is of use in common affairs. He is not simply on a level with the ordinary man, he is below him. When he might have been acquiring the knowledge that he needs he has been acquiring that which he needs not. That time and labour which might have made him a reasoner have been spent in making him a mathematician, and while he has been studying x’s and y’s, others have been studying names and things; they have been learning to observe by observing and to reason well by examining bad reasons as well as good. When it is said, however, that the young men either at Cambridge or elsewhere learn to reason by learning mathematics we are to understand, I suppose, that this is when mathematics are so learned as to bring the reasoning faculty into play. Now this is certainly not the case at Cambridge. It is universally known that the mathematical attainments to which the honours of that University, from the senior wranglership downwards, are directed, are very little more than exercises of memory. One man laboriously gets up the demonstrations and calculations which another has invented, and when he has done this his attainments stop. His greatest stretch of intellect is to be dexterous in the application of certain technical rules. He can do the same process over and over with fresh materials; so can a journeyman carpenter; and in repeating in problem after problem the same series of operations he need know no more of the general principles of his science than the journeyman carpenter need know of his. A man utterly ignorant of mathematics would be as likely to make a new discovery in that science as a senior wrangler who is but a senior wrangler: and I believe in point of fact there is scarcely an instance of a senior wrangler who has contributed anything worth speaking of to the improvement of his own science. The men who during the last century have improved mathematics have been the Euler’s, the Lagrange’s and the Laplace’s. In our own country the few men who have raised us to the little position of mathematical fame which we enjoy have, since the time of Newton, almost without exception been educated in Scotland.⁴

But after all, if the utility of the higher branches of mathematics as a branch of education, and the excellence of the mode in which they are taught at Cambridge were ever so unquestionable, how much of mathematics is really learned at that University, learned I do not mean by the few who take honours, but by the many who take their degree of B.A. and their degree of A.M. and go forth to the world stamped with the mark of Alma Mater’s approbation as men who have learned all which she thinks it necessary that a well-educated man should know? I put the question plainly; do the majority of these men know anything of mathematics beyond what they can cram in the last month or six weeks of the three and a quarter years which they have passed in making believe to learn mathematics at Cambridge? Let any advocate of the University of Cambridge as an institution of education answer this question if he can, and let him not cavil at a quadratic equation more or less, but let him at once answer whether a boy at ten would not richly deserve the birch if after six months real, not sham, teaching, he did not know more of mathematics than an average bachelor of arts.

19.

The British Constitution [1]

19 MAY [?], 1826

i cannot agree, Sir, in the objection which has been urged by my honourable friend¹ against the wording of the question. I think it tolerably well worded, and of all possible faults those with which, in my opinion it is least chargeable are those which he has imputed to it. The proposer² distinctly prepared us, by the wording of his resolution, for what we afterwards learned from his speech, that he intended to defend the practice of the Constitution, and not its theory, and though he admitted that the Constitution is not, what it pretends to be, he maintained what is more to the purpose, that it is better than it pretends to be. For my part, I care as little about the theory of the Constitution as he does. I care not by what machinery my pocket is picked: picked or not picked is the essential point, all the rest is of small moment. If we are well governed, I agree with the honourable opener,³ that it does not matter one iota how we came so. All I complain of is, that we are not well governed; and that from the manner in which the House of Commons is constituted, it is absolutely impossible we ever should be. With this exception, I am happy to acknowledge myself a perfect disciple of the honourable opener.

Confining myself then to our practical Constitution, I originally intended to have given a few practical specimens of that practical thing: and to have shewn by a few striking examples, how regularly, the interest of the many is sacrificed to the interest of the few. But this exposure has already been made, by my honourable friend who spoke third:⁴ and though it would be easy to double his list of grievances, and to colour the picture still more highly than he has done, I chuse rather to expose the futility of the excuses which are set up for keeping things as they are,⁵ than seek any farther to aggravate the apparent magnitude of the evils attempted to be excused.

But before I examine the arguments of honourable gentlemen, I must take notice of what is sometimes more difficult to be answered than arguments, I mean vague accusations. Not that I think so meanly of the understandings of those whom I am addressing, as to suppose that there is one of them who thinks it at all material to the question, whether those members of the Society who oppose it are or are not republicans, or whatever other names of ill omen the pure love of truth may have induced any honourable gentleman to affix to them; but because I really feel for the terrors which these words excite in certain minds, and as I do not like to see a human creature suffering, I will tell the honourable gentleman the extent of my republicanism. The form of government which I seek; and with which I will be satisfied, is that which will secure, at the smallest expense, an identity of interest between the governed and the governors. This identity of interest does not now exist. The reason is, that an immense majority of the House of Commons who are the real governors, are chosen by a narrow oligarchy. The proof of this fact I took a former opportunity of stating.⁶ Nobody then denied it; nobody denies it now. To any person who is capable of putting two ideas together, it is unnecessary to say that a House of Commons which is in complete dependance upon persons who have a sinister interest⁷ will act in subservience to that sinister interest, when they dare. The question is, how to compose a House of Commons which shall not be in subservience to any sinister interest. This question has been answered, by a noble Lord, a member of this Society, in his late speech to the Electors of Northumberland.⁸ As long as the House of Commons has a sinister interest of its own, or is dependant on persons who have, bad government is certain. Good government can only be secured, by making it dependant upon persons who have no sinister interest: and the only persons who have no sinister interest are the people. Dependance upon the people, therefore, is the only security. Let the House of Commons be dependant upon the people, and I am satisfied.

If I be asked, whether with such a House of Commons there would be a king, I answer that I neither know nor care. The difference between the words King and President, or between a hereditary first magistrate and an elective one is hardly worth disputing about. I do not think the quantity of power which the king now possesses, as king, sufficiently great to be any obstacle to good government: and as for the expense, I have little doubt that a competent person might be found to perform all the duties of king for so very moderate a remuneration, that to an otherwise cheap government it would be hardly worth saving. Or if any difficulty were felt in the matter, Mr. Maelzel has an automaton,⁹ which I make no doubt he might be induced to part with at a reasonable price, which might hold levees and drawing rooms for the benefit of trade, and execute either in person or by commission all the other functions of sovereignty.

I shall now examine the principal arguments which have been urged by the supporters of our practical Constitution in this Society. They may be distinguished into two classes; those which are relevant and those which are irrelevant: in other words, those which have something, though but little to do with the question, and those which have nothing to do with it at all. The former are drawn from the actual composition of the House of Commons and I will enumerate them presently. The latter belong to that class of arguments which would apply with as much propriety to any other measure, as to parliamentary reform. And these I shall begin with. I omit those arguments which seem to have a more immediate reference to persons than to things, such as the accusation of being enemies to institutions, of being theorists, and so on, and I shall merely touch upon the assertion that we have flourished and are flourishing under the Constitution and in short that we are well as we are.

Now as to former times, I cannot pretend to speak. I do not know whether our grandfathers were well as they were, or what sort of persons those may have been who flourished under our Constitution a hundred years ago. But I know very well what sort of persons flourish under it now. The ministers flourish—they have plenty of money, patronage, and power. The country gentlemen also flourish: since they have not only plenty of money of their own, but a considerable quantity of that of other people, which they have contrived to appropriate to themselves, as the legislators of the country, by means of the Corn Laws. Nor have I any objection to concede to the honourable opener that the higher ranks of lawyers and clergy are well as they are, since fees continue to flow in and tithes to be paid as usual: and as for the lower ranks, the vulgar herd of both professions, they hope to be well, which is nearly the same thing as if they were well. It cannot be denied therefore that some of us have flourished, whatever may be said of the rest. But I would suggest that there are perhaps some others who may have claims on our attention, and that among these it is just possible there may be some who are not quite so well. The tax-payers for instance do not always see the blessings of taxation in so clear a light as the receivers, and the 5 or 6000£ which are wrung from the poverty stricken million to pay some noble lord for doing nothing who is not fit for doing any thing, may be less pleasant in the giving than it is in the receiving.¹⁰ It may be, too, that the old man who has pined in poverty all his days while the vultures of the Court of Chancery have been preying upon the estate which his father inherited when an infant, might wish that the country were a little less prosperous and that he had bread to eat: and he who has been ruined by a lawsuit which he has gained with costs may wish his money out of the pockets of the Lord Chancellor and his imps. The peasant too, who has been torn from his family and sent to herd with felons in a gaol, for breaking a twig of the value of two pence, or treading on a partridge’s egg,¹¹ may peradventure be less satisfied than his game eating persecutor with the order of things under which the latter tenders his services gratis to imprison the former. When England, Sir, is called a free country, a slight mistake is made of a part for the whole: we are free as Sparta was free: the Helots are overlooked.

If, Sir, I could overlook the whole of our peasantry, and all who are unhappy enough to need any service at the hands of what are denominated courts of justice, I might admit that we are on the whole subject to less oppression than any other nation in Europe. But that this is owing to the nature of our Constitution is not only a theory, but, I will take leave to say, a theory which has not been proved.

This may serve to shew what gentlemen mean, when they condemn theory. Every general principle which they do not like they call a theory: and when they have called it a theory, we, it is to be understood, are to reject it without examination. Now the sort of theories which I condemn are those which are founded upon an insufficient number of facts. I condemn the person who, on a subject that supposes a knowledge of 100 facts, should generalize on ten or twelve. I condemn still more the person who generalizes on five or six: and the theorists who generalize on four, three, or two facts respectively, must be considered to be characterized by the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees of imbecillity. But what shall we say of him who generalizes on one—who takes a single instance for the foundation of a theory? who on a single coincidence grounds a general rule? Surely he is the king of theorizers. Surely if any body is a visionary speculatist, he is. That man is the honourable opener.

This country has a peculiar Constitution, it has also a great many other peculiar things. This country has prospered in a peculiar manner, ergo, its prosperity is owing to its Constitution, and to nothing else. Is this theorizing? Is the honourable gentleman a theorist? Or is that appellation to be confined to those who theorize on evidence, reserving the praise of practical wisdom for him who theorizes without evidence?

I too have a theory, and it is this: that the commercial prosperity of London is owing to the Monument by which it is overlooked. As no powerful person has any interest in upholding this theory, it will I doubt not be called a theory. Of the two theories, however, this is considerably the more plausible: for if the Monument has not done much good I do not think that it has done any harm, nor is it at all probable that our commercial prosperity would have been greater, if the Monument had been built in a different shape, or of different materials. But there are persons who think that with a Constitution of different shape and of different materials, we should have been more prosperous.

I do not however charge the honourable gentleman merely with theorizing on insufficient evidence, but with overlooking part of the evidence which exists. Though our specific experience of the British Constitution is confined to a small portion of the globe, it is not altogether so scanty as the honourable gentleman would seem to make it; and although for reasons best known to himself, he has thought proper to theorize upon one fact, the circumstances of the case happily afforded two. Of the British isles, the only part of the empire which can be said to be under the British Constitution; of these isles, though Great Britain is one, Ireland, let me inform the honourable gentleman is another. It has sometimes been disputed whether the evils of anarchy or those of despotism be the worst: but I never heard it disputed that the two together are a greater evil than either of them singly: From one half to the whole of Ireland has been suffering under the two together, ever since it was admitted to the blessings of the British Constitution.¹² With all that insecurity of person and property which had been supposed peculiar to a state of anarchy, is combined a degree of arbitrary power in the functionaries of government which has scarcely been exceeded under the most absolute monarchy. Yet Ireland is in full enjoyment of our excellent Constitution, and not only of that but of an excellent system of law, enforced by an excellent unpaid magistracy, all combined to uphold an excellent established Protestant reformed church,¹³ and an excellent landed aristocracy. I wonder why, having so many excellent things in common with us, she should not be equally flourishing? Perhaps it is because we have a better people: a more civilized, a more instructed, and a more moral people; or perhaps it is to the greater awe which this people inspires, that we are to look for the cause of our comparative exemption from gross misgovernment. But if you wish to see the British Constitution in its unadulterated state, read the Evidence before the Irish Committees, and see how Ireland is governed.¹⁴

It sometimes happens, Sir, that nobody cries stop thief, stop thief, louder than the thief himself. It will now perhaps be admitted that the theorist himself was the first and loudest to cry stop theory, stop theory.

I will do the honourable gentlemen opposite the justice to admit that they have not confined themselves to such trashy arguments as this. They have advanced others and much more plausible ones. But they have not stated them very distinctly or explicitly or in a manner which indicated much confidence in them. They have mixed up their propositions with their proofs, and one of their propositions with another, and have skipped backwards and forwards from one part of the subject to another without dwelling long enough upon any one to give us time to scrutinize it accurately. As my object is not to confound them but to go to the bottom of the question, I will do for the honourable gentlemen what they have failed to do for themselves. I will attempt to separate their different arguments from one another, and state them, fairly and distinctly one by one. It will then appear that their cause is not so desperate as one would be led to suppose from their manner of defending it: and the honourable opener may learn that even when he is in the wrong, a little logic will do him no harm.

It is alleged, then, first, that if the right men get into the House of Commons, it is of very little consequence how they come there: and that the right men do get into the House of Commons, since it would be difficult to shew how a body of men could be composed which should comprise a greater quantity of talent and education. This is the first argument.

The second is, that to form a representative assembly, it is not necessary that the representatives should be chosen upon any uniform plan: it is sufficient if every interest has its representatives in the house: the landed interest, the mercantile interest, the army, the navy, professional men, and so on. The great body of the people, it is said, should have its representatives also, but these need not amount to more than a small portion of the whole. It is contended that this state of things is realized in our practical Constitution, and it is added that there is not a shade of opinion, not a variety of political sentiment, which does not find advocates in the House of Commons, which is quite sufficient for the ends of good government. This is by far the most plausible argument which they have urged.

The third argument, and the last which I shall notice, is this: that our government is a government of mutual check: that the people appoint some members of parliament, the king and aristocracy others: that the people by means of the members whom they elect, have just as much power as they ought to have, that is, enough to keep the king and the aristocracy in check, while the king and aristocracy have also power enough to keep the people in check, and prevent the country from being brought to ruin, as it infallibly would be if the people had the full control of the government. And hereupon we were entertained with a multitude of accusations against the people, none of them it is true very specific, which I shall for the present represent by the monosyllables fools and knaves, as being the only words comprehensive enough to include them all.

There are the three arguments. There was a fourth, which is hardly worth noticing: I mean, the division of the House of Commons into two parties, which was treated as a conclusive proof that the supposed conspiracy against the people did not exist. Surely nobody can be deluded by this appearance. It is nothing new that two dogs should fight, they always do wherever there is a bone. Even a band of robbers always splits into parties, except when they are under the iron yoke of a single leader: and I had an opportunity of shewing on a former occasion¹⁵ that the aristocracy has divided itself under the action of the same interests which divide the robbers and the dogs. They too have a bone to pick: they too have booty to divide: and the quarrel is to settle who shall have the picking of the bone, the largest share of the spoil, and the division of the rest.

Without wasting more time on this argument, I will attempt to answer the three others, as shortly as possible, for I have much to say.

We are told that there is talent and education in the House of Commons. And of what use to the people are talent and education which are sure to be directed against them? It is not customary for a player at cards to congratulate himself upon the trump card in his adversary’s hand. A man of talent in parliament is a trump card in your adversary’s hand, and your adversary is the borough holder, or if such be the case, the county aristocracy, whose nominee he is, and whose game he is put there to play. Talent, indeed, in such a situation there will be plenty: but what sort of talent? Not that of taking an enlarged and comprehensive view of the bearing of public measures upon the happiness of the bulk of his countrymen, for the bulk of his countrymen are nothing to him, nor to his master the parliament maker: he is not sent there to serve them and were he to serve them he would be sent there no more. Occasionally, indeed, this sort of talent is accidentally met with in the House of Commons and how is it treated? It is called theory—abstraction—metaphysics—and the other cant words by which the many who do not think are in the habit of expressing their contempt for the few who do. The talent which abounds in the House of Commons is the talent of the advocate—the talent of making out a case—of misstating a question, of making little things appear great ones, and a part of the subject appear to be the whole, of taking the greatest possible advantage of the oversights of an unskilful opponent, of battering down with a tremendous logical artillery some inconsiderable outwork of his argument, and persuading your audience that you have driven him from the stronghold. All the branches, in short, of the much cultivated and richly rewarded art of misrepresentation, are carried to the highest pitch of perfection in the House of Commons. And this, with the art of rounding a sentence and balancing a period, of confounding your adversary by irony and sarcasm, of disguising the flaw in an argument with the varnish of rhetoric, and dressing out assumptions in the tinsel and frippery of the harlot eloquence, till the gaudiness without conceals the rottenness within—this constitutes the sort of talent in which I am ready to admit the House of Commons abounds. As for education, truth constrains me to admit that most of the members have been taught, some time in their lives, to make nonsense verses, though it must be said for their credit that they are in general wise enough to forget that sublime art before they take their seats.

The second argument, about the representation of interests, comes next to be considered.

That the House of Commons represents all interests, is in one sense true: but as it is not true in the sense in which it is meant to be understood, whenever this argument is used an imposture is practised by the common instrument of imposture, an ambiguous term.

They tell us and truly that interests are represented, but they do not tell us, which interests. Every man and every set of men have two sets of interests which are not only different but incompatible: one interest which is common to them with the rest of the community, the other which is not only not the same with the general interest but opposed to it. An example may make this clear. A sinecurist, being a payer of taxes, has an interest that the taxes should be no greater than the real purposes of good government require, and thus far his interest corresponds with the general interest. But inasmuch as a necessary condition of this state of things would be the abolition of his sinecure, he has also a separate interest, opposed to the general interest. A country gentleman, as a consumer of bread, has an interest in cheap corn, but as a receiver of rent, he has an interest in dear corn, thus he too has his separate interest and his share of the general interest. A lawyer, again in common with the rest of the community, is liable to be under the necessity of seeking redress at the hands of a court of justice, and he has therefore an interest, in common with the rest of the community, in having a cheap and expeditious form of judicial procedure. But in as much as such a form of procedure, if introduced, would dry up most of the sources from whence lawyers’ profit is drawn, he has also a separate and sinister interest which impels him to resist any such innovation to the utmost of his power.

Now the assertion that the House of Commons represents interests, is true in this sense, that it represents the separate and sinister interests of an immense number of classes: so much so indeed that there is hardly ever a job proposed for the benefit of any set of persons at the expense of the community which does not find in that assembly a large number of supporters. Sir, this is precisely what the reformers acknowledge and complain of. According to their notions, the House of Commons ought to represent only one interest—the general interest—the joint interest of all classes, not the separate interests of any.

As for the assertion that every shade of opinion finds an able advocate in the House of Commons, this would be very well if the House of Commons were a debating Society; I should be sorry if this Society were constituted as I think a legislative assembly should be. No doubt, if every member consulted the public interest exclusively, the debates would be much duller than they now are, and many shades of opinion which now find many advocates, might possibly not find one. But the House of Commons is something more than an arena for discussion: it is a legislative assembly: and it is amusing to be told that such an assembly is well constituted because there is no measure so bad as not to find somebody to support it, as if security for their distinguishing the good from the bad, and adopting the good, were nothing; it is plain that it is every thing. If the best measures were always adopted, we need not care if there were nobody to advocate the bad ones. The best measures, we know, cannot from the nature of man, be always adopted; but they will at any rate stand a better chance of being adopted, by persons who have no sinister interest, than by persons who have: and it is on this ground that I place the question of parliamentary reform.

This brings me to the third argument of the defenders of our practical Constitution, the necessity of a check upon the people, who are supposed to be unfit to have a control over their own affairs. And because persons who have an interest in good government are apt nevertheless to govern ill, the remedy is to give power to persons who are interested in bad. The remedy, Sir, appears worse than the disease. The many can act wrong only from mistake—they cannot act wrong from design, because they have no sinister interest. The few have a sinister interest, and therefore act wrong from design. The idea of checking the many who may go wrong by giving power to the few who must go wrong, is a curious idea. The absurdity of supposing that the few can have power enough to check the many in doing wrong, without having enough to check them in doing right, is what I have not time fully to expose. It is evident however that if the few nominate part of the House of Commons and the many another part, the practical question is merely this, which part is the most numerous: for whoever commands the majority commands the government, and will exercise it for his own benefit as far as his fears of a popular insurrection will let him. Who it is that commands the majority, let the divisions on the Corn Laws tell.¹⁶

From the length to which my remarks have already extended, I have left myself but little time to comment on the assumptions which have been made against the people, and popular governments: yet assumptions of this nature are so much the ordinary weapons of the enemies of reform, that I cannot leave them altogether without reply. In the language of the corruptionists, one always hears the many, who have an interest in good government, represented as the enemies of good government, and the only persons who are spoken of as its friends are the few, who have an interest against it. There is a pretty large class of persons, who are always fearing evil to the many from the many, never from the few. We are always ready to believe what we fear, and if a man can but frighten us sufficiently, we are not nice about his proofs. This is a great advantage to an orator. It is very convenient to be believed upon our bare word. One of the advantages of being believed upon our word is, that we are not compelled to be prolix. Assertion without proof, takes up little time: misrepresentation is always beautifully brief. There are sentences in the speech of the honourable opener each containing half a dozen assumptions, each of which it would require a long train of reasoning or detail of facts to refute.

Thus when he talks of Athens or Rome, it would require a volume to prove that the Athenian government was the best government of its time: yet the fact was so. If honourable gentlemen who have such a horror of the Athenian democracy would take the trouble to read its history, not in Mitford, but in the authors whom Mitford quotes,¹⁷ they will find that of all the governments of antiquity that in which person and property were most secure was the Athenian democracy. Yet after all, if the Athenian democracy had been ever so bad, what would it prove? Merely that the people are not fit to act as a deliberative body, and manage the details of government with their own hands. But nobody says they are fit for any such purpose: it is only asserted that they are fit to chuse their governors not that they are fit to govern. Yet surely if so ill constituted a popular government—a government in which the people exercised a function for which it is on all hands acknowledged that they are radically unfit—was yet, as it unquestionably was, the best government of its time, the fact speaks volumes in favour of a well constituted popular government. And so we shall find it in every age. Every thing that there has been of good in any government has arisen from the share which the people have had in it. In every stage of society the governments in which the people have had most power have been the best governments which that stage of society has afforded. The Grecian and Roman governments are cases in point. As soon as the people ceased to have power the Grecian and Roman governments became the vilest governments in the world. The Italian republics, and the free cities in Germany, are an instance in one age; the United Provinces of Holland in another age. Our own government is an instance: it has become better and better just in proportion as the power of public opinion over it has become greater.

If those who are so much afraid of the people would tell us exactly what it is they are afraid of, we should perhaps know how to meet their fears. Are they afraid that the people would destroy property? then let them point out one instance, one single instance in which the people have shewn hostility to the general laws of property. Even amidst the excesses of the French revolution, with the exception of the property of the emigrés, no private property was touched. Do they say that the people are turbulent, and fond of change? when if there is a single fact to which history, and not history only but every day’s experience, bears uniform testimony, it is the rooted aversion of the people to change, and attachment to every thing that they have been accustomed to from their infancy. Robertson speaks of abhorrence of innovation and attachment to ancient forms, as strikingly characteristic of popular assemblies.¹⁸ Every Athenian orator whose speeches are preserved,¹⁹ laid particular stress in addressing the people upon the wisdom of their ancestors,²⁰ and the infinite superiority of every thing ancient, and particularly of ancient laws and institutions, topics insisted upon with an earnestness and frequency which leave no doubt that with the bulk of the people they were as popular as ever Lord Eldon could have desired.²¹ What is there to oppose to this mass of experience? The excesses of the Parisian mob, in the crisis of a revolution and the bloody irregular proceedings of the terrified Convention, when the knife was at their throats.

I do not find that those who think the people so bad act as if they had much desire to make them better. I do not find that they exert themselves very much to inform the people. We do not often find them establishing schools and colleges and circulating cheap and useful publications among the mass of the people. Sir, it is these things which are the test of sincerity. A man may doubtless be sincere in thinking the people, as yet, unfit to manage their own affairs, and may resist parliamentary reform from this motive. But if he be not foremost in every undertaking the object of which is to make them fit, he has some other motive for his resistance than the pure love of good government. Now everybody knows, that those from whom these accusations against the people chiefly proceed are the same who have opposed, and do oppose with an inveteracy and fury which has scarcely ever been paralleled, every thing that has ever been proposed for making the people fit to manage their own affairs: and whose avowed object is to keep the people in a state of intellect not superior to that of the beasts, on the express ground that if allowed to attain any higher degree of intellect it would be impossible to prevent them from being dissatisfied with existing institutions. They are to have bad institutions because they are unfit for good; and they are to be kept unfit lest they should desire better. One may fairly say, therefore, that if the people were not unfit, those who complain of their unfitness would have taken much trouble to little purpose.

For my part, I do not pretend to say, that those who profess to think the people incapable really think the contrary. But one cannot help picking up a few observations: and I observe that my Lord, though he is extremely ready to ease the public from the management of the public estate, yet when it comes to the management of his own, he invariably selects one of the people to manage it for him. Of course this is not because he considers such a person more competent than himself to the task, but because not being able to divide himself into two halves, and to serve the public and himself at the same time, he generously offers himself up a sacrifice to the public weal, and lets his private affairs go to ruin rather than confide the helm of the state, to hands less trustworthy than his own. I observe too—I do but throw it out as a casual remark—that although they always speak their real sentiments, those sentiments somehow always conform themselves to their interest. They can flatter as well as rail, when they have a point to gain. Twenty or thirty ragamuffins from the lowest ranks of the people, are the worthy, patriotic, and independent electors of a rotten burgh. When the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the intelligent and the stupid, are spoken of collectively, then it is that no expression of contempt is too strong.

Sir, it has been so much the practice of the powerful in all ages, to carry out the proverb, Give a dog a bad name and hang him, to begin by defaming those whom they seek to oppress; and the powerful have till lately been so exclusively in possession of all the organs of public sentiment, that a general opinion against the people, got up by such means, is very poor evidence against them. There is a passage in Machiavel, so much to the purpose, and so concisely and forcibly expressed, that I will even hazard the ridicule²² of quoting it in the original: “L’opinione contra aì Popoli nasce, perchè de’ Popoli ciascun dice male senza paura, è liberamente ancora mentre che regnano.”²³ The opinion against the people arises from this cause, that of the people every one may speak ill without danger, even where the people reign. Most true it is that where the people reign, they have never curtailed the liberty of speaking ill of themselves. At Athens Aristophanes was permitted to hold up the collective body of the people, in the character of Demos, to the most poignant ridicule on the stage, and with impunity.²⁴ In this country there are gagging bills,²⁵ and penalties enough for those who speak ill of the aristocracy, and places and pensions enough for those who speak ill of the people. While railing against the people is rewarded as it is, there will always be railers enough: but we must look not to what these railers assert, but to what they prove, and by that standard we must try not only their aims but themselves. To calumniate an individual, to cast imputations upon his character, unsupported by evidence, for the purpose of taking away his liberty, is a baseness which is in general estimated as it deserves. Every one is sensible of the injustice of condemning an individual without proof. And is there no injustice in condemning the great body of the people without proof? Is there no baseness in calumniating them, in casting imputations upon their character, unsupported by evidence, for the purpose of taking away their liberty? I leave it to honourable gentlemen on the other side, to²⁶ find an answer to this question as they can.

I have now said, not all that I have to say, but all that I have time for: and I know not how to excuse myself to the Society for the great portion of their time which I have taken up. I am grateful, Sir, for the patience with which they have heard me: the more so as I have spoken of persons and things in a manner which many of them are but little accustomed to, and which I cannot expect that all of them will approve. The occasion however was not of my seeking: we know from which party the question came: and when it did come, I thought it best to appear what I am, straightforward and uncompromising. It would have been easy for me no doubt, if I had been so minded, to have done better for myself, though I might have done worse for my cause. It would have been easy for me to have dealt in compromise, and trimming, and equivocation, to have talked a little on one side of the question, and then a little on the other. I might have conceded a point on this side and a point on that; I might have given up half of every important truth; I might have made one nice distinction after another, and offered to barter the whole inheritance of good government for a little more of the forms. I might have frittered and refined away every thing in parliamentary reform that is disagreeable to the ruling few, and have made an attack upon the Constitution which should almost have been taken for an apology. I might thus have had the satisfaction (if a satisfaction it could be deemed when thus purchased) of hearing every tongue sound the praises of my moderation and my candour: and I might have been pardoned even the odiousness of my opinions in favour of the lukewarmness with which I had defended them. But playing fast and loose with opinions is not to my taste; and it is an ill compliment to any one who professes to serve the people, to be praised by those who if he had served them effectually would have heaped curses on his name. If those who profit by abuses are sometimes willing to gain the spurious credit of an easy liberality by applauding those who have no objection to the existence of misgovernment but find fault with the colour of its cloak, they know their own interest too well to regard those who wage war against the monster misgovernment itself with any feeling but that of the most deadly hatred: but I had rather be in the latter class even at this price, than in the former.

I might, too, have followed the example of the honourable opener, and been the indiscriminate and unblushing eulogist of things as they are. I should not have despaired of acquitting myself tolerably well: to succeed in this line, transcendent talents are not necessary. It only requires a tolerable command over the two great instruments, assumption and abuse. Practice renders men singularly perfect in these things, and after a twelvemonth’s tuition under the honourable gentleman, I have little doubt that I should even have rivalled my master. But I leave these weapons to those who like them, or to those who can hope to be paid for them. I at least shall be acquitted of having any thing to gain by my opinions: unquestionably they are not the road either to preferment or to popularity. If we except men of knowledge and intellect, who are never numerous, these opinions are no favourites with any class except the lower; and to gain their favour would require habits and pursuits very different from mine. The reward I look to, and it is no small one, is of another kind—a kind which the honourable opener and his fellow labourers in the same vineyard will never know: it is the consciousness that these opinions are daily gaining ground; and that the time is approaching, though we who are now living may not see it, when every intelligent and disinterested Englishman shall be a radical reformer.

20.

The British Constitution [2]

19 MAY, 1826

by the word constitution, Sir, I understand, the institutions which exist for the purpose or with the supposed effect of affording securities for good government. The question, therefore, concerning the goodness of our Constitution, is the question whether, in so far as depends upon institutions, good government is practically attained. It will I think be allowed that as long as we suffer under any evil of which government is the cause, good government in the practical sense of the word is not attained. The first question, therefore, is, Do any evils exist; the second, are any of them to be imputed to our government.

To most persons it would appear very unnecessary to prove that evils of some sort or another do exist, and impossible to suppose the contrary opinion capable of being entertained by any rational being. So much language has however been held which if it has not this meaning has none at all, that I am compelled to regard even this point as not out of the reach of controversy. If we believe some gentlemen, England is a perfect Utopia. The happiness of the golden age was nothing to that we enjoy. Luxury pervades the upper classes, comfort and knowledge diffuse themselves among the middle, competence and contentment among the lower. We are great in war, honoured and powerful in peace, no man in his senses could hope for any thing better, and no honest man would. If this be true, it certainly puts an end to the question. If no evils exist, none, it is evident, can be occasioned by our practical Constitution. If we are already enjoying the whole of the happiness which we are to look for in this world, it is very obvious that we have nothing better to do than just to remain as we are. I must confess however that my aspirations do not stop short at that degree of felicity to which we have at present attained, and that rather a higher standard of competence and contentment than six shillings a week will afford, seems to me greatly to be desired for our agricultural population. Prosperity, Sir, is the test of good government, but the prosperity must first be proved.

We have flourished under the Constitution. Who has flourished under the Constitution? These gentlemen are apt to fall into the mistake, a very natural one I admit, of supposing that all the world has flourished because they have. Do they mean to allege that the great body of the people has flourished? But the people is not a word in their vocabulary. Instead of the people, they talk of the country: the wealth power and glory of the country: by which is to be understood the wealth power and glory of one man in a hundred, and the misery of the remaining 99. By this word country, they always mean the aristocracy. Whenever they talk of the prosperity of the country, it is the prosperity of the aristocracy that is meant. When they say country read aristocracy, and you will never be far from the truth. They tell you that the Constitution has worked well: you ask them particulars, and they answer that it has brought us a great deal of money and a great deal of glory: So much the better for those who have got it, I am sure we have got none: They may talk as they please about our being the richest nation in the world. The richest nation, in one sense of the word, we certainly are, but then it is like Mr. Alexander Baring and me: between us, we certainly have a very handsome fortune. But what illustrates more than any thing else the peculiar view which they take of national prosperity, is their talk about military and naval renown. They have particularly selected as a proof of good government exactly what I should have chosen as a specimen of bad. I have as little respect, Sir, for a fighting nation as I have for a fighting individual, and I am by no means anxious that my country should be considered the Tom Cribb of Europe.¹

They talk of the last war, and seem to think it highly honourable to our Constitution that having first got us into what they call an arduous struggle, it afterwards at the expense of many myriads of lives got us out again. But let me ask, what was gained by the last war, and who gained it? We knocked down one despot, and set up a score; this was their concern not ours. Then as to the substantial part of the gain, the money and glory. The generals and admirals and colonels and lieutenant colonels and all the rest of them got money, and most of them a little glory, some a great deal. The poor privates who took the disagreeable part of the business, and who were sent home when it was over to loiter about Chelsea hospital with one leg² or follow the plough with two, they got no glory; any more than those at home who paid the piper. The contractors who had the fingering of the loans got no glory, but they got what was much better, many millions of pounds sterling which made them very comfortable at our expense. Sir, I grudge nobody his glory, if he would pay for it himself. I have a great respect for Sir Arthur Wellesley, and ceteris paribus I would much rather that he should be, as he is, a hero and a duke, than not:³ but when I consider that every feather in his cap has cost the nation more than he and his whole lineage would fetch if they were sold for lumber, I own that I much regret the solid pudding which we threw away in order that he might obtain empty praise.

Those who have called in question the goodness of our Constitution never thought of denying that it was good for some persons. The British Constitution is the Constitution of the rich. It has made this country the paradise of the wealthy. It has annexed to wealth a greater share of political power, and a greater command over the minds of men, than were ever possessed by it elsewhere. It has given us rich merchants, and extensive landholders. It has given to those who have money already, great facilities for making it more. It has produced a fine breed of country gentlemen, and to support the breed, it has charged us with an additional 3d. on the quartern loaf. All this, Sir, is very fine, but I cannot help reflecting that the peasant of Languedoc eats his three meals of meat a day and cultivates his vineyard, he has cheap justice at his doors, he may go where he pleases, engage in any trade that he pleases, and tread upon as many partridge eggs as he pleases,⁴ and need not fear to find himself next day on the treadmill, a victim of the unpaid patriotism of a game-eating squire. We are a free country, Sir, but it is as Sparta was free: the Helots are overlooked.

Whenever the honourable opener⁵ sees so much as a scrap of good, he gives the credit of it to the Constitution. By this rule, we ought to impute to it our evils likewise. I might say that our manufacturers are starving by reason of the Constitution. I might say that our peasantry is the poorest in Europe, because our Constitution is the worst. I believe a greater number of individuals suffer capital punishment in this country than in all the rest of Europe put together, and I might thence infer that our Constitution is a complication of all the vices of all the Governments in Europe. But I do not think myself justified in reasoning unfairly because the honourable opener has set me the example. I impute to the Constitution no evils which do not naturally follow from the interests to which it has given birth. But when there is an obvious connexion between the evil suffered, and the interests of the governors, I think it reasonable to place the evil to the account of the Constitution, because it is the Constitution which suffers the interests of the governors to be paramount to those of the governed. Such is the case with those evils which were depicted in perhaps more unmeasured language than was necessary by my honourable friend opposite⁶ on a former evening and if I were to swell the list as I might do I should perhaps be betrayed into language still more intemperate than his. But as this part of our case has already been so well stated, I shall allow it to rest upon his statements and proceed to another.

I thought, Sir, that the question related to the practice of the Constitution, but the defenders of the Constitution have thought otherwise: they seem determined to prove à priori the goodness of the Constitution, finding themselves unable to prove it à posteriori: and they have been good enough to reveal to us their several theories of the Constitution, with the view as I suppose of convincing us that if we are not very well off, yet upon correct principles we ought to be. Now though I myself care very little by what machinery my pocket is picked, the beauty of the machinery has sometimes the effect of persuading people that their pocket is not picked when in fact it is: and it may therefore conduce somewhat to the understanding of the question if their theories be cleared away. The commonplace theories have all had their supporters in the Society. We are told by one, that our Constitution is a balance, by another that it is a representation of classes, by a third that it is an aristocratical republic, sufficiently checked by public opinion. To this I will add my theory, that it is an aristocratical republic, insufficiently checked by public opinion. If I seem to dismiss these theories in a summary manner, want of time must be my apology.

The class representation theory requires most words, as it is the most modern, and the most plausible. It has been very fully, though not very distinctly, stated this evening, and amounts to this, that if the landed interest, the mercantile interest, the army, the law, the manufacturing interest, and all the other great interests are represented, and the people represented, enough is done for good government, and that under our Constitution this is actually the case.

Now it seems to be forgotten in this view of the subject, that every one of these classes has two interests, its separate interest and its share of the general interest. That which ought to be represented is the latter. What really is represented is the former. Most true it is that the separate interests of a great number of classes are represented in the House of Commons: and so perfectly is the system adapted to ensure the predominance of these interests, that there is hardly any class of plunderers (pickpockets and highwaymen excepted) which has not a greater number of representatives in the House of Commons than the whole body of the plundered. The consequence is that there is hardly ever a job proposed for the benefit of any set of persons at the expense of the community, which does not find in that assembly somebody or other who is interested in supporting it; and as there is a natural alliance among jobs of every description, one interest plays into the hands of another, hodie mihi cras tibi is the word,⁷ and the upshot of it is, that taking the great jobs with the little ones there is not on the face of God’s earth such another jobbing assembly as the House of Commons. Sir, this is the very thing we complain of. The amount of misrule is not diminished by the multitude of the sharers. According to our notions, the House of Commons should represent only one interest—the general interest. As for those particular interests which are opposed to the general one, as nobody ought to attend to them, I suppose nobody need represent them.

Fable, Sir, as we are taught by the ancients, sometimes throws light upon truth. I will tell you a fable and you shall judge for yourself whether or not it is in point.⁸

Once upon a time there happened an insurrection among the beasts. The little beasts grew tired of being eaten by the great ones. The ^aswinish, goatish and sheepish^a multitude⁹ grew weary of the sway of the ^bintellectual and virtuous.^b They demanded to be governed by ^cjust and^c equal laws and as a security for ^dthese^d laws, to ^ebe subject to^e a representative government. The Lion, finding himself hard pressed, called together the aristocracy of the forest, and they jointly offered a rich reward to whoever could devise a scheme for extricating them from their embarrassment. The Fox offered himself, and his offer being accepted, went forth to the assembled multitude, and addressed them thus. “^fSurely my friends you would not deny to others the advantage which you seek to partake of yourselves. The only true representation is representation by classes.^f The tigrish interest should be represented, the wolfish interest should be represented, all the other ^ginterests^g should be represented, and the great body of the beasts should be represented. ^h My royal master has an objection to anarchy, but he is no enemy to a rational and well regulated Freedom: ⁱany other sort of representation he never will agree to, but a class representation he consents to grantⁱ .” The people, delighted to have got the name of a representation, quietly dispersed, and writs were issued to the different interests to ^jchuse^j their representatives. The tigers chose six tigers, the panthers six panthers, the ^khyaenas six hyaenas^k and the wolves six wolves. The remaining beasts, who were only allowed to chuse six, chose by common consent six dogs. The parliament was opened by a speech from the Lion, recommending unanimity. When this was concluded, the Jackal, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced the subject of the Civil List: and after a ^llong^l panegyric on the royal virtues, proposed a grant, for the support of those virtues, of ^m1,000^m sheep a year. The proposition was received with acclamations from the ministerial benches. The Tiger, ⁿhappening to be in theⁿ opposition, made an eloquent speech, in which he enlarged ^omuch^o upon the necessity of economy, inveighed ^pbitterly^p against the profusion of ministers, and ^qended by moving^q that His Majesty ^rmust^r be humbly requested to content himself with ^s999^s . The Dogs declared that as kings must eat, they had no objection to His ^tMajesty^t devouring as many dead sheep as he pleased; but ^usolemnly^u protested against his consuming any of their constituents alive. This remonstrance ^vhad its natural effect^v . The first impulse of the representatives of the aristocracy was to fall tooth and nail upon the representatives of the people. The Lion however representing that such conduct would be dishonourable, and the Fox that it might provoke a renewal of the insurrection, they abandoned the intention of worrying these demagogues, and contented themselves with always outvoting them. The sequel may be guessed. The Lion got his ^wthousand^w sheep; the Fox his pension of ^x100 ducks^x a year, ^yand^y the Panthers, Wolves, and the other members of the aristocracy got as many kids and lambs in a quiet way, as they could devour.^z

With this allegory, which is worth a thousand syllogisms, I shall dismiss the subject of the class representation.

The gentleman¹⁰ who first propounded to us the theory of the balance,¹¹ will forgive me for saying that he seems to have studied the Constitution chiefly in the writings of its panegyrists. The balance of King Lords and Commons I have met with in books, and it has a very pretty appearance upon paper: but even those who maintain that it existed once acknowledge that it has no existence now: the Commons, it is allowed, have complete possession of the Government, and the only balance now contended for, is a balance in the House of Commons itself. That there is such a balance, I do not deny, since a balance is still a balance, although the weights may be unequal. But if anybody maintains that the weights are equal, he should first find means of explaining away the fact, that the aristocracy alone commands twice as many members of parliament as the King and the people together. The parliament is just as effectual an instrument of the aristocracy, if they have a majority of the votes, as it would be if they had the whole. With the fact that the parliament is made by the aristocracy staring us in the face, it would be useless to enter into the speculative question whether the balance is possible, or whether if possible it would be good. Possible or not, at any rate it does not exist. If there be any counterpoise to the power of the Aristocracy, it cannot come from within the House of Commons, it must come from without.

With that class of the defenders of our Constitution, who consider public opinion as expressed by petitions, public meetings, and a free press, as the one and sufficient check, I am less widely at issue. The question between us is merely a question of degree. We both allow that the House of Commons requires a check, we both agree that public opinion is the proper check. They think that the check is sufficient if the public are allowed to speak freely, I think that it is not sufficient unless they are allowed to act as well as speak. Now I do not see how the question between us can be tried, except by looking about us and seeing what this free speaking has done. That it has done much I allow. It is probably the cause that we are not at this moment the slaves of a military despotism. But has it abolished the Corn Laws? Has it abolished the Game Laws? Did it prevent the Six Acts? Did it prevent the Manchester Massacre¹² —or did it prevent the House of Commons from approving of it? Has it cut down our civil, military, and naval establishments? Has it reformed the Magistracy, the Church, and the Law? It has been said by the gentleman who started this theory, that the laws of England are deserving of absolute condemnation. If this be true, what a satire is it upon the Constitution which he applauded! For my part, I do not think the laws of England deserving of absolute condemnation, but I think that they require many and great ameliorations; ameliorations which I am persuaded that none but a reformed parliament will have the courage, I will not say the inclination to make.

What is the influence of public opinion? Nothing at bottom, but the influence of fear. Of what consequence is it to a minister what the public say so long as they content themselves with saying? When it comes to blows it becomes a serious matter. I do not deny the influence of character, of the opinion of others, even independently of fear. The opinion of others is a powerful check upon every man, but then it must be the opinion of his own class. Experience has shewn that there is no action so wicked that even an honest man will not do, if he is borne out by the opinion of those with whom he habitually associates. Was there ever a more unpopular minister than Lord Castlereagh?¹³ Was there ever a minister who cared so little about it? The reason was that although he had the people against him, the predominant portion of the aristocracy was for him, and all his concern about public dissatisfaction was to keep it below the point of a general insurrection. Things are a little better now, because we accidentally have a ministry¹⁴ who knowing themselves to be no favourites with the bulk of the aristocracy, and feeling that to use a homely expression it is touch and go with their places, court the people as a sort of makeweight, though an inconsiderable one, to that portion of the aristocracy who are on their side. But should they be turned out and should we for our sins be visited with another Castlereagh, we shall be governed by the new one exactly as we were governed by the old, in spite of the public opinion check, the dread of insurrection, which it seems we have, and which the Turks have likewise. The Constitution of Turkey may be defined to be the fear of the bowstring: and the Constitution of Great Britain it seems according to this view of it, may be defined to be the fear of the guillotine. Let who will be satisfied with this check: I, for one, have a most decided objection to it.

I fear that my observations on the theories of the Constitution have been dull: but I must crave the indulgence of the Society for a short time longer. There is another subject which must not be altogether passed over. Gentlemen have not merely enlarged upon the goodness of our Constitution, they have expatiated upon the exceeding badness of every other. More especially a popular government has been the theme of their invectives, nor have they by any means spared the people themselves. This, Sir, is the way with them. If we believe some people, the many who are interested in good government are the determined enemies of good government, and the only persons who are its friends are the few, who are interested against it. They are always fearing evil to the many from the many, never from the few. Now I beg you to remark how many advantages these gentlemen have over me. We are always ready to believe what we fear. The orator who has the fears of his audience on his side, has only to awaken the emotion by a few frightful words, and persuasion follows of itself. Very different is the task of him who has the fears of his audience against him. Having to work conviction by means of evidence, in minds ill prepared to receive it, to have any chance of success he must heap proof upon proof—he must add argument to argument—his discourse lengthens into prolixity, he has wearied the patience of his audience before he has triumphed over their apprehensions, and to the misfortune of failing in his object, he adds that of being voted a bore. Sir, it is among the disadvantages of my present situation, that I am compelled to be prolix. Misrepresentation is always beautifully brief; refutation always tediously long. There are single sentences in the speech of the honourable opener, each containing half a score of assumptions, each assumption requiring a long detail of facts or train of reasoning to refute it.¹⁵

He asserts that the people are desirous of destroying property. I shall not enter into this question for I consider it to be irrelevant, but I cannot refrain from saying if the people desire to destroy property why do they not destroy it now? Have they not the physical power that they must always have? It must be then because they see that it is not their interest: and will they not see it still? It must be because you teach them not to meddle with it: and cannot you teach them so still?

The honourable gentleman endeavours to work upon our fears. So it is always with the political party of which the honourable gentleman seems to have constituted himself the representative in this Society. Is anything proposed to benefit the few at the expense of the many, they are bold enough. Is anything proposed to take away any of the power which the few have of injuring the many, then is the time for fear. Sir, I cannot have confidence in those whose fears always seem to me to lie in the wrong place. Nothing is so much to be feared as a habit of fearing whenever anything is proposed for the benefit of mankind. Fear, Sir, is a bad counsellor, and it is no great proof either of wisdom or of virtue to take counsel from nothing but fears when any good is to be done. But the honourable gentleman seems to be one of those who are always apprehending evil to the many from the many, never from the few. Such a man appears to me to be an object of very rational fear.¹⁶

Sir, I am no admirer of popular wisdom. The bulk of the people at least who have arrived at the age of manhood are stupid, obstinate and incurably ignorant. I would back Sir Edward Knatchbull¹⁷ for all those qualities against the most unlettered clown, and I am acquainted with a weaver who for talents and understanding would leave the first names in the House of Commons but little to be proud of. Nonsense verses, it is true, he cannot write, but if he is inferior to the country gentlemen in prosody and fox-hunting, in all useful attainments he far excels them. There are individuals in the higher class inferior to any in the lower, but the inferiority does not extend to the class. The elite of them all is in the House of Commons, and we see what stuff they are made of. If Hercules may be known ex pede, much more may he be known ex^acapite^a . An average carpenter has no ideas beyond the workshop, an average merchant has none beyond the counting-house, nor an average country gentleman beyond the dog kennel.

Sir, I am not partial to stupid, obstinate and incurably ignorant persons of any description. It is satisfactory to think that there are fewer of them now than formerly. It is satisfactory to think that knowledge and intelligence are making their way even to the lowest of the species, and that the time is coming, though I fear it is far distant, when even the Irish peasant and his landlord shall partake of the attributes of humanity. Until, however, this millenium shall arrive I fear we must resign ourselves to be governed by incapables of some sort: do what we may, our only choice is whether we will be governed by incapables who have an interest in good government, or incapables who have an interest in bad. Now I could point out more than one reason for chusing rather to be governed by the former sort of incapables than by the latter, by an incapable people than by an incapable aristocracy. One reason is that an incapable people are in general guided by the wisest persons among them; an incapable aristocracy never is. Nor is this wonderful. The people are in earnest about the interest of the people. What a man is really in earnest about, if it be not very difficult, he generally succeeds in. To chuse a good representative is not very difficult. The aristocracy are not in earnest about the interest of the people, and they therefore have no occasion to look for that wisdom by which the interest of the people may be served. It is enough for them if they can hire a man of talent to make out the best case he can for them and their abuses. Of any higher kind of talent than this they have no idea. It would be of no use to them if they had it. Not being wanted, it is not produced; and if it grows up among them by accident, it is not valued. The country gentlemen do not vote with Lord Milton and Mr. Whitmore, they vote with Sir Thomas Lethbridge and Mr. Holme Sumner.¹⁸

Another reason for preferring stupid, obstinate and ignorant persons who have not a sinister interest, to stupid, obstinate and ignorant persons who have, is that the former acting under the dictation of their interest will do as much good as their limited faculties will permit, the latter as much harm. And though it requires some capacity to do good, unfortunately it requires none to do mischief. The veriest reptile that ever crawled can consume as much of other people’s beef and bread, turbot and turtle soup, as Solomon or Sir Isaac Newton himself. The most drivelling dolt who can set a spring gun, or sign an order of commitment for a man who is poor enough to be deemed a vagrant, has talents sufficient to be the tyrant and the scourge of his neighbourhood. On the other hand the United States of America are a standing proof that under democratic ascendancy a country may be very well governed with a very small portion of talent. For all that I can learn of that country leads me to the conclusion that the first men in it are far inferior to men of the same relative superiority in this country. It requires but little talent to be honest, and the cases are few in politics in which plain honesty is not a sufficient guide. The man who aims steadily at the public good will rarely have much difficulty in attaining it. The fundamental principles of politics lie on the surface, and it requires no genius to apprehend them.

I have a third reason for preferring the government of the people, however stupid and ignorant they may be. I am persuaded that a stupid and ignorant people cannot be a happy one, and I am therefore desirous that they should be stupid and ignorant no longer. There is a natural tendency in the human mind to improve, and no government but the very worst can counteract this tendency altogether. But it is easily proved that under an aristocratic government the progress of the human mind must necessarily be slow.

It will not, I think, be disputed that those who acquire talent acquire it chiefly for the consideration which it brings. But talent cannot be acquired without trouble. Now it is with consideration as with most other things, the greater share of it a man can get without trouble, the less trouble will he be disposed to take in order to get more. Rank we know gives consideration. Property we know gives consideration; and when these two sources of consideration, rank and property, carry along with them the great source of consideration, political power, the consideration resulting is in general sufficient to take off the edge of any ordinary appetite. When a man can have as much consideration, without deserving it, as he could if he did, if his stupidity is no bar to his consideration, depend upon it he will cling to both with equal pertinacity. Now it is a fact, and a well-known one, that people who are not stupid are not apt to have much consideration for people who are. When the great body of the people emerge from stupidity their betters are obliged either to deserve consideration or to sacrifice it. The latter alternative is mortifying; the former troublesome. One might therefore predict without the gift of prophecy that if the man of rank or property observes in the people any tendency to improvement, the whole energies of his body and of whatever portion of mind he possesses, with whatever other bodies or minds he can set in motion, will all be exerted to keep the people stupid in order that he, on his side, may revel without disgrace in all the luxury of stupidity. So accordingly it has been, and is to this day, and every step which the people have gained in intelligence from one end of the world to the other has been gained in spite of the most strenuous resistance which the stupid part, that is the bulk of the aristocracy, could oppose.

Thus stands the case if the people are as bad as is represented. But the people are not so bad as is represented, and this piece of imposture is exactly upon a level with the rest. True, they are bigoted and prejudiced and stupid and ignorant enough. With all the pains that have been taken to make them so, it would be wonderful indeed if they were not. But their prejudices, as might be expected from the tuition which they have been under, are all of them on the contrary side to that which is asserted. They are prejudiced in favour of things as they are, not prejudiced against them. I deny that they have any of the mischievous propensities which are imputed to them. I deny that the people of this country, or any country, have or ever had a desire to take away property. If it be maintained that they had, let any one show me one instance, as much as one single instance, in which such a desire has been manifested by them. The gentleman¹⁹ who talked about the Agrarian law²⁰ only showed his utter unacquaintance with history. The Agrarian law had nothing to do with private property: it was a law for the resumption and division among the poorer citizens of the property, the usurped property, of the public, the conquered lands which by law ought to have been divided, and which by a flagrant violation both of property and of law the patricians had taken to themselves. It is remarkable too that even amid the horrors of the French Revolution, though blood was shed like water, property was untouched. Except the property of the emigrés, who almost to a man had emigrated in order to make war upon their country, not a rood of land, not a sixpence of private property was touched. So much for the hostility of the people to property. It is the same with the other charges against the people. They tell you that the people are jealous of rank and fortune, and I tell you that a blind confidence in men of rank and fortune has always been the chief failing of the people. Celebrated demagogues, from the Gracchi to Mirabeau,²¹ have almost always been men either of rank or fortune. In democratic Athens a rich man could commit excesses which even in aristocratic England would drive him from society. They tell you next that the people are prone to change and fond of throwing down one thing and setting up another. I deny the fact. It is contrary to the most extensive experience of human nature. In the crisis of a revolution the people may be prone to change, because having once begun they are hurried on and know not when to stop. But at all other times they are proverbially attached to old usages, however absurd, and to everything which existed when they were born. Dr. Robertson was aware of this. In his Charles V he speaks of attachment to ancient forms and aversion to innovation as being strikingly characteristic of popular assemblies.²² Dr. Robertson lived before the days of Pitt and Burke and Wyndham and the alarmists.²³ In his time people had not been frightened into dishonesty, and it was the fashion to speak the truth. Every Athenian orator whose speeches are preserved was accustomed in addressing the people to lay particular stress upon the wisdom of their ancestors,²⁴ and the excellence of their old laws and institutions; topics insisted upon with an earnestness and a frequency which leave no doubt that they were as popular as Lord Eldon himself could have desired.²⁵ Those who think the people fickle and inconstant have observed a mob and not the people. A mob is fickle, unsteady, inconstant. The people individually are not so. And a multitude, though it were composed of Newtons, must be a mob. There is not now time, nor is it necessary, to enquire into that principle of human nature in consequence of which men who individually seem so rooted in old habits that a tempest cannot shake them are blown about by every breath of wind when assembled together. But the fact is unquestionable. Let him who doubts it go among the people; let him see them, hear them, talk to them. Let him try to persuade the Surrey peasant who ploughs the sandy soil of the vale of Albury with three horses, that in Scotland they plough with two, and if he succeed in convincing him that to plough as his forefathers did is not a law of nature, an immovable part of the scheme of providence, ^b I will say he is a conjuror. The people capricious!

For my part I do not say that those who think the people incapable think themselves still more incapable. But one cannot help picking up a few observations, and when one does, there is no harm in stating them. I observe then that my Lord, though extremely ready to relieve the public from the management of the public estate, yet when it comes to managing his own he invariably selects one of the people to manage it for him. I do not pretend to say that it is because he considers such a person more competent to the task than himself: of course he must be aware that his own concerns, like those of the public, cannot fail of going to ruin in such hands. But he is a disinterested citizen and knows how vastly more important the public affairs are than his own, and how ill his abilities can be spared from the management of these; and he generously consents, even at some risk to himself, to leave his private affairs in the hands of the plebian while he condescends to look after those of the state. I have made another observation on these persons, which is that their sentiments seem to veer round with every turn of their interest. They can flatter when they have a point to gain, as they can rail when they have not. Twenty or thirty ragamuffins from the very dregs of the people are the worthy, patriotic and independent electors of a Cornish burgh. While praise is thus given to the worst of the people, the abuse and scorn are heaped upon the people collectively.

Sir, it has been so much the practice of the powerful in all ages to carry out the proverb “Give a dog a bad name and hang him,” and the powerful have till lately been so exclusively in possession of all the organs of public sentiment, that a general opinion against the people got up by such means is very bad evidence against them. There is a passage in Machiavel so much to the purpose that I will quote it, though quotations have become so ridiculous that I shall not venture upon the original. “The opinion against the people arises from this cause, that of them everyone may speak ill without danger, even where the people reign.”²⁶ Most true it is that where the people reign they have never curtailed the liberty of speaking ill of themselves. At Athens Aristophanes was permitted to hold up the collective body of the people, in the character of Demos, to the most poignant satire on the stage, and with impunity.²⁷ In this country there are gagging bills²⁸ and penalties severe enough for those who speak ill of the aristocracy, and places and pensions enough, God knows, for those who speak ill of the people. And the consequence is that men who have no other earthly merit daily make a merit of insulting the great body of the people; and there is not so drivelling an idiot with a good coat upon his back, though inferior in every valuable quality to the man who blacks his shoes, who does not think himself entitled to sneer at a working mechanic. There will be abundance of railers against the people where it is the fashion to rail, and where railers are so well paid. But we must learn to look, not to what these railers assert, but to what they prove.

21.

The Influence of Lawyers

30 MARCH, 1827?

i shall not imitate my honourable friend, the proposer of the question,¹ in his historical details, but shall state as briefly as possible some general considerations which induce me to concur in his opinion.

The range of the question includes three of the great interests of a country, its government, its morality, and its jurisprudence. That the influence of lawyers over the jurisprudence of a country cannot be beneficial seems too obvious to be denied. We cannot expect much aid in making good laws from those whose daily bread is derived from the defects of the laws. If the law were so clear and intelligible that its import could not be mistaken, and if the administration of justice were so cheap and expeditious that no one could benefit himself by contesting a just claim, lawyers must starve. This ideal perfection in a system of law may be attainable, or it may be unattainable; but every improvement in the law is an approach to it, and every improvement in the law so far forth as it is an improvement can scarcely fail to encroach upon the profits of lawyers. In our own system of jurisprudence it is now very generally admitted that the most flagrant abuses prevail: there is not one of these from which the lawyers as a class do not derive enormous profits. The uncertainty of the law is a source of endless litigation, and thereby of endless fees; the same uncertainty gives an extensive latitude of discretionary power to the judges who are a clan of lawyers, and whose stations most practising advocates hope one day to fill: the same uncertainty gives rise and support to that flourishing branch of our national industry, the opinion trade, or chamber practice, which means paying a lawyer for making the best guess he can from previous decisions which way a future judge will be most likely to decide. The needless and useless expenses of the administration of justice even in the courts of common law, and still more in the courts of equity, is made up of items almost the whole of which go to fill the pockets of some description of lawyers. The delay of the administration of justice conduces to their benefit by the numerous pretexts which it affords for additional expense. The complicated and yet awkward and inartificial manner in which the Statutes are worded, insomuch that while no mortal man can read them through, a lawyer can put any one in the way of evading them who will come up to his terms, likewise conduces greatly to the advantage of lawyers. The Statute Book swarms with bad laws, bad sometimes only because they are useless, but often because they are highly oppressive, which partly by the litigation which they occasion and partly by the absolute necessity of devising some means of evading them, are a mine of profit to lawyers. Not a word is spoken or written in the course of a suit at law for which some lawyer or another is not paid, and what is more, they are paid for a much greater number of words than are actually spoken or written; they are paid for pretending to speak or write something which is never spoken or written at all, as for example when counsel are ^afeed^a for pretending to make something which is called a motion of course, but which might with greater propriety be denominated a sham motion. Yet if anyone were to suggest that justice could possibly be administered without pretending to make these fictitious motions he would be denounced as a visionary, a theorist and a madman, if not a jacobin and a blasphemer.

But without dwelling upon the pecuniary advantages which lawyers derive from all the vices of the law, sufficient reason for their constant opposition to all improvement in it is to be found in that professional narrowness of mind which is a uniform effect of the exclusive study of one system. When a man is accustomed to see the ends of law and of civil society in some measure attained by one set of means, and has never bestowed a thought on any other, it is quite vain to attempt to persuade him that any other means can effect the same end effectually. A man who has never seen a thing done but in one way learns to consider that as the natural way, and every deviation from it as not only visionary and theoretical, but absurd. A man who has never heard of any language but his own thinks that the natural language, and regards all who talk any other as a sort of monster; like the man who on landing at Calais expressed his surprise that the children in the street should talk French, and another man I have heard of who never could comprehend how the French could be so foolish as to say pain instead of saying bread like a Christian. The Irish who had always been in the habit of tying the plough to the horse’s tail regarded the very idea of employing harness with horror. I heard lately of a solicitor who I think is a fit companion for the Irishman. On learning for the first time that in the Dutch law there was no distinction between real and personal property,² he expressed his utter astonishment and could not conceive how the people of Holland could possibly go on without it. Yet this man had the example of Bank stock before his eyes as an example with how little of technical forms the most valuable property might be secured; but he probably never thought of asking himself for a reason why a man’s title to a farm might not be secured by a set of formalities which were found sufficient to secure his title to the stock upon it. He thought that the classifications in Blackstone were classifications in the nature of things.³ All who have studied only one system, be it a system of philosophy, theology, or law, must feel more or less as this solicitor felt. Now the peculiar misfortune of our law is that to be even moderately versed in it requires the study of a whole life. It is but rarely therefore that an eminent lawyer has had time to extend his knowledge ^bfarther^b , or to render himself capable of forming a judgment on anything which is unlike his own system of technicalities.⁴ He does not inquire whether the diseases he meets cannot be cured, whether the objection cannot be obviated; to suggest means for obviating it with the least possible prejudice to the principle itself, all this requires a sort of wisdom which the advocate has not cultivated, and which he lies under no motive to cultivate. It is not his business to give arguments and objections their right value, but to make them appear either of the greatest value or of no value at all, according as they make in favour of his side of the cause or against it. There is a very happy expression of Locke which seems to me applicable to the subject under discussion, and which I will therefore take the liberty to mention. It is in one of his letters—I forget whether to Collins or Molyneux, or to what other of those whose names have been immortalised by the friendship which united them with that great man. “I am glad,” said he to this individual, “when my works fall into the hands of readers like you, for you seize the scope of my speculations without sticking in the incidence.”⁵ These few words seem to me to delineate with great force and exactness the habit of mind which peculiarly distinguishes the statesman and the philosopher. The man who can seize the scope of a speculation without sticking in the incidence is the only man whose opinion of it can be trusted, whether it be a favourable or an adverse opinion. The intellectual habits of a lawyer are the reverse of this; he can never seize the scope of a speculation, he is always sticking in the incidence. A mere inaccuracy of expression, a trifling error in any matter of detail, the employment of one inapposite illustration are sufficient in his mind to decide the rejection of the most valuable ideas. The merest petty cavil at some collateral and non-essential appendage of a doctrine or plan, a cavil which any man of common candour who was not a lawyer would be ashamed of, a lawyer urges in sober earnest and with an air of triumph as decisive of the whole question, for he never had occasion to ask himself what is essential and what not; his business was to make the most of all the arguments which could be found in favour of that side of the case to which considerations totally independent of its merits had previously determined him to attach himself. We may judge how far the influence of such men is likely to be useful in matters of government and general policy. That there is much information necessary to the statesman which few besides lawyers can give, I am far from disputing, nor do I deny that all their objections should be heard, provided that there are wiser men to weigh them. I only contend that however useful to the statesman in a subordinate capacity, they are not fit to be statesmen, or to be the guides of statesmen.⁶

^c The terms of the question direct our attention to the influence of the lawyers on the morality of the country as well as on its jurisprudence and on its government. And here, although I say it with fear and trembling, I cannot give a verdict much more favourable to the lawyers than on the two former heads. Without entering into a very minute enumeration of the modes in which a particular class may exercise an influence, beneficial or otherwise, upon public morals it will perhaps be allowed me in the gross that the utility of the influence which they exercise in respect of morality in some measure depends upon the degree in which their own conduct is marked by an habitual observance of its precepts. Now it must be allowed that the lawyers generally avoid very scrupulously all offences against morality by the perpetration of which they would incur any danger of the gallows. But a man who squares his conscience by the law ^dwould not be exacting;^d and if our standard of morality includes any of the more exalted virtues, it appears to me as difficult for a lawyer to practise them as it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven:⁷ there is no denying the possibility of both, but neither I am afraid is often realised. We hear lawyers continually talking of themselves as the guardians of justice, the defenders of innocence, and so forth, and they are right to put the best face upon the thing as people usually do when they are giving an account of themselves. It would not quite do to stand forward and say “I live by roguery.” But amid all this fine language one thing is always forgotten, that to every cause there are two sides, and that of these one only can be the right. At least one half therefore of a lawyer’s business is deception, and avowedly so. And even when they are on the right side of the cause it is not their business to consider what arguments are conclusive, but what will appear so; not what assertions are true, but what will answer their purpose. Even when a cause is good a lawyer has not done his duty by it unless he has given it all the gloss and varnish of which it is susceptible, disguised all its weak parts and heightened its strong ones by artificial colouring. Not one half only but three-fourths at least of his business is deception. Sir, it is not easy for a man who gets his bread by insincerity to remain entirely free from it in his other concerns; it is not easy for him one half of whose life is spent in making the worse appear the better cause,⁸ and the other half in making the good cause appear better than it is, to retain that simplicity and singleness of purpose, that passionate love of truth and abhorrence of artifice and deceit without which, in my estimation at least, there can be no perfect character. Supposing even the purity of his intentions to remain unimpaired, yet the habit of making falsehood plausible begets a coolness with regard to the interests of truth. The mind becomes pleased with itself for the ingenuity with which it has made the rightful cause appear the wrong, till ^eit at last^e learns to take pleasure in the exercise itself. And when they find, as they do by practice, that there is something plausible to be said in favour of the worst cause however unfounded, while no part of their daily occupation tends to strengthen those faculties of their minds which would enable them to distinguish falsehood from truth, they soon begin to fancy that they cannot be distinguished, that when we go beyond the immediate range of the senses one side of a question may always be made as plausible as another, and that truth is placed beyond the reach of the human faculties. This state of the intellectual part of their minds co-operating with the diminished sensibility of the moral part, they soon learn to be utterly indifferent what opinions they take up and advocate; and where their interest is not concerned they are determined by mere vanity and choose that side of a question which affords the greatest scope for their ingenuity in defending it, that is most commonly the wrong side. It is not very favourable to the higher moralities that their vocation brings them into close and constant contact with human nature in its most degraded shape, with everything that is mean and selfish and unfeeling and unprincipled in human conduct and in human character and disposition, while it very rarely brings them acquainted with the best and most exalted specimens of human nature. Generalizing, therefore, as almost all men do, and as lawyers are peculiarly prone to do upon their own confined experience, it is obvious that their situation is far from conducive to their forming that favourable opinion of human nature which universal experience shows to be a necessary foundation of all the active virtues. It is notorious that the doctrine of the universal selfishness of mankind finds the greatest proportion of its partisans among the lawyers, in which respect I will not say they judge from themselves, but will treat them more charitably and say that they judge from that portion of mankind with whom in their professional pursuits they are most peculiarly conversant.

Sir, I promised not to trouble you with many words, and I am afraid that I have already broken my promise. I will therefore preclude myself from any further violation of it by sitting down.

⁹ But it is not only on these subjects with which they are professionally conversant that the influence of lawyers is rather likely to mislead than to guide the legislator and the politician. There seems to be something in the exercise of their profession which renders them utterly incapable of taking a comprehensive view of any subject. The habits of an advocate are admirably calculated to render a man a dexterous controversialist wonderfully skilful in finding flaws, and starting objections, to any doctrine or to any plan which is advanced: to weigh the validity of an objection; to compare the difficulties on the one side with the difficulties on the other; to distinguish whether the objection affects the doctrine or plan in whole or only in part, in principle or only in detail, to consider whether the flaw¹⁰

¹¹ Malice must be proved—e.g. the case of murder. If a man adulterates wine, indict him.

Objects that I have made it a question of calculation—of probable good and probable evil.

Objects to the sort of reports—like the Herald.¹²

Hayward.¹³ —Ex parte, and prejudice the jury.

Witnesses should be obtained by the office advertising for them.

The guilty are warned—magistrate should have power of excluding.

Information does not aid in getting apprehension since apprehension generally by police officers. A—Who gets it?

No check if the magistrate can remove it at discretion.—A fallacy.

Let the public in to check the judge, then there will be witnesses to attest if he previously¹⁴

22.

The Use of History

1827

i come here, Sir, with my mind not fully made up on this interesting question: but as the balance of the evidence as far as I have examined it, seems to me to be on the side of my honourable friend the proposer of the question¹ and as, though I may perhaps hesitate to go the full length of the question on the paper, it is my decided opinion formed on mature consideration, that the importance of history as a source of political knowledge has been greatly overrated, I will briefly submit, if the Society will honour me with their patience, the reasons which have led me to embrace a sentiment so greatly at variance with the received opinions of the world. That common notions are on the other side, must be confessed; and though I may surprise some honourable gentlemen by the assertion, I do think it primâ facie evidence against any opinion that it is paradoxical. But it is a common fate of paradoxical opinions, to be thought much more paradoxical than they are: and I think it must have already appeared to any one who has attentively listened to the very luminous speech of the opener, that the opinion he maintains has more the appearance of a paradox than the reality.

Sir—we are not now assembled here to discuss, whether we ought to be guided by experience. No one has yet appeared in this Society to deny that we ought to judge of the future from the past. This remark is perhaps required, because several of the defenders of history appeared to be of opinion that their opponents were chargeable with some such doctrine—and it would seem that according to their ideas the world is divided into two portions, whereof the one, the larger, and therefore I need scarcely say the wiser are votaries of experience, while the rest are followers of theory. Sir, if honourable gentlemen will point out in the whole world a single individual who believes a theory for any reason except because he considers it to be founded upon experience, the justness of this classification may be admitted. No such theorist however can be pointed out, because none such exists. All mankind recognize experience as the sole guide of human affairs, the past as our sole criterion for judging of the future, and if there were to be found a man who thought otherwise which there is not even within the walls of Bedlam we have something better to do than to give ourselves the trouble of refuting him. But there is a right way of consulting experience, and there is a wrong way—And the question now is, which is the right way, and which is the wrong. Our opponents hold that the oracles of experience are written legibly in the page of history—we say that they are not, or, if they are, that like other oracles they are so ambiguous that they might be read to eternity and never understood. We may be wrong; but let us not be accused of despising the precepts of experience, when our whole aim is to discover the rightful interpretation of those precepts which are so much oftener talked of than understood.

All arts have their instruments, and their materials: The instruments and the materials of the art of the politician are the same: they are men. Whatever the politician seeks to effect, on men, and by means of men, it must be effected. Now as soon as this is stated, it appears self-evident, that the knowledge which is necessary to the statesman is knowledge of men: that the experience which he stands in need of, is experience of men: that he who knows mankind best, if he have integrity of purpose, is the best qualified to be a statesman, and that the volume which should be his guide is not the book of history but the book of human nature. I do not here allude to that intimate acquaintance with the darkest recesses of the human heart—that familiarity with the petty passions of petty minds, a familiarity scarcely to be acquired but by him whose own heart reflects to him the image of those secret workings which he seeks to penetrate—in short I mean not what is termed a knowledge of the world by those slaves of avarice and ambition to whom indeed no other world is known. Nor do I mean that nobler knowledge of human nature which consists in a knowledge of the outward signs by which the stronger passions display themselves and which gives to the dramatist all his power over our emotions and to poetry itself the greater part of its charm. But I mean, a knowledge of the causes, rules or influences which govern the actions of mankind, since the actions of mankind are what it is the business of the statesman to regulate, and of those other principles of human nature upon which depends the influence of the social arrangements over their happiness. These principles are far from being obscure or mysterious; they are such as a diligent study of our own minds, together with a careful observation of a few others, are adequate to disclose to us. For it is sufficient to him who designs laws and constitutions, to know well those things in which all mankind agree: though to him who is to administer them and therefore to accommodate his conduct to the peculiar dispositions of the men among whom he is thrown, a knowledge likewise of the varieties of human character is essentially necessary. But all this knowledge is the fruit of experience, and it remains to be seen whether what honourable gentlemen can get from history is more truly the result of experience than this, or safer in the application.

It is scarcely necessary to say that in history no one instance can be a rule for another. One instance might be a rule for another if all the circumstances were the same: but they never are the same. Even those circumstances which we know to exist are never in any two cases the same: and besides these there may be a hundred others which we do not dream of. It may be said that though all the circumstances be not the same, all the material circumstances may. But how can we ever know this? We see the results, only in the gross: We see that under particular laws the people are or seem contented and tranquil, that under particular systems of commercial policy the country seems prosperous, under particular systems of financial policy affluent. But do we see how many hidden causes have contributed to this result, or is there any one circumstance in the physical moral or political state of a nation which without other evidence than this we could boldly pronounce to be totally unconnected with it? The analogy which some honourable gentlemen have attempted to find between a historical fact and a chemical experiment is more plausible than well grounded. In a chemical experiment we can distinguish the cause of an effect from what are merely the surrounding circumstances, for we can alter the surrounding circumstances, and the effect is still produced. We know that the action of the air has nothing to do with the freezing of water, for water will freeze in vacuo. But can we try these experiments in the political world? Can we place a nation in vacuo, and try whether our frigerific mixtures will freeze it and dry it up? No, Sir, the great instrument by which we have penetrated the arcana of the physical world fails us in the political, at least when history is our guide. We cannot there combine and vary the circumstances as we will, we must rest content with the few and unsatisfactory experiments which nature has made. There was a time when our physical knowledge was thus bounded—when we studied outward nature too by mere observation without experiment, when without any artificial arrangement of circumstances we took things in the gross as the hand of nature had left them, and drew from the pages of natural history the whole of our natural philosophy. And what happened? Scarce one of the great laws of nature were ascertained and all mankind floated in the regions of fancy from one airy hypothesis to another, not interrogating nature but their own wild imaginations, adopting and believing as truth anything which would plausibly explain the phenomena which they beheld. So it was during a long succession of ages during which not one spark of true philosophy glimmered on the earth. Then men proceeded upon history. There is only one branch of physical science now in which from the impossibility of experiment we have nothing better than history to go upon, I mean geology: and accordingly there is scarcely one fact in it which is precisely ascertained. It would be a great concession were we to allow to any system of politics which has only history for its basis, as much certainty as is now possessed by geology.

I have thus briefly set forth the grounds of the opinion which I professed in the commencement—that the importance of history in a political point of view is inconsiderable. Weighty however as these reasons appear—and to me they do appear weighty, weightier than the Society at the first glance, will probably esteem them—notwithstanding these reasons, and notwithstanding all the other arguments which were so ably set forth by the opener of the debate, he nevertheless shall not have my vote. And the reason is that however much the political importance of history has been overrated it appears to me utterly impossible to overrate its moral importance.

It is history alone which preserves from oblivion the deeds of the great ones of the earth, of all those who have exercised a direct influence over the destinies of large masses of their fellow creatures. I need not say how vastly it imports those who are subject to these men, those whose happiness depends upon the deeds of these men, that their deeds should be good and not evil. All experience however bears testimony to the extreme difficulty of supplying motives sufficient to keep such men within the line of virtue—it is the grand problem of political science, a problem which not more than two or three nations in the world were ever pretended to have solved. What then would the difficulty be were it not for the consciousness which these men cannot escape from—the consciousness that they live if I may so speak in the presence of posterity? We do not live in so good a world, Sir, that any of the existing inducements to virtue can be spared, nor is the conduct of the rulers of mankind always so exemplary and pure, that we could do without any of the motives which might render it more so. Sir, whatever may be the other failings of statesmen and warriors, it cannot I think be justly complained that they are too patriotic, too disinterested, too just, too modest, too indifferent to pleasure, to power or to wealth. But if they cannot be accused of an immoderate share of virtue although they know that their good and bad actions will be recorded and remembered and that their vices will be detested or their virtues admired to the very latest posterity, what would be their conduct if this check were taken off, if as soon as they had ceased to live their deeds were to pass at once into utter oblivion? I may be told, Sir, that I over-estimate the effect of these motives on bad men. I may be told that such men are indifferent to posthumous fame, and that this delicate sensibility to the opinion of future ages is not to be found in men who can disregard those more palpable inducements to virtuous conduct which their own times afford. Sir, I can afford to concede this point though it is not without many deductions and modifications that I can concede it. I will give up the influence of posthumous fame upon bad men. Upon the good however its influence is not to be disputed. To them at least the esteem and veneration of an endless succession of ages does appear a prize worth struggling for. Short and scanty is the catalogue which history affords of human actions which were at once great and good, but of these were we to omit all such as would not have been done if the doers had not desired a reputation beyond the grave, the residue would be small indeed. Perhaps it is not possible for us—who live in an age where that which deserves moderate praise is generally certain of obtaining fully as much praise as it deserves, and few of whom can probably boast the unenviable distinction of being before our age, with the consequent fate of being persecuted, spurned and treated as ruffians or madmen for holding truths of which when the public mind has opened to receive them some quack of a future century will possibly go down to posterity as the discoverer—it is not for us I say to judge of the feelings of the great men of other times. Most of the men to whom human nature is most deeply indebted, were far above being influenced by the opinions of contemporaries who were unworthy of them. Their reward was prospective—it was sufficient for them to know that one day they would be appreciated, and their exertions were sufficiently stimulated by the proud anticipation of the feelings with which we now regard them. This hope it was which animated Bacon in the execution of his gigantic task—which sustained Galileo in the dungeons of the Inquisition and would have sustained him at the stake.²

But it is not only in this point of view that history renders services to morality which it would not be easy to compensate if history were to be annihilated. It is no trifling aid to all the better principles of our nature to be brought acquainted with those bright examples of sublime virtue joined to the rarest endowments of intellect which, though in small number and at long intervals, history affords, and which it can fall to the lot of few to know familiarly otherwise than in history. The world perhaps has not produced twelve men who have attained to that exalted degree of wisdom and virtue, of which I speak. Yet still it is unspeakably cheering to know that there have been such men. But for them, we should never have known of how high a degree of excellence our species is susceptible. But for them we should never have known how much we have to be proud of, how much to love, how much to admire. It matters not though the Swifts and Bolingbrokes³ and twenty other disappointed candidates for human grandeur, should vent their spleen in reviling human nature because it had not given them all which their ambition grasped at, and because it would not pardon their profligacy in favour of their talents. The ravings of a hundred such men will not disgust the philosopher with his species since it has produced a Turgot.⁴ That sublime character, whose whole soul was so strictly under the dominion of principle that he had not one wish which did not center in the happiness of mankind—for whose elevated, comprehensive and searching intellect no speculation was too vast, no details too minute, provided they did but conduce to his great and generous purposes—who called from a private station to the councils of his sovereign, sacrificed every personal object in order to free his countrymen from the oppressions under which they groaned, and who actually did more to free them from those oppressions during a few short months than they had ever before ventured even to wish for—who after bearing the bitter and undissembled hatred of the privileged classes and what is yet more difficult to bear, the clamours of a misguided people, rather than abandon those measures which he knew to be good for that people—resigned his office when he found those great objects unattainable, for the sake of which alone he had ever desired it, and who after beholding the ruin of his own prospects with unwet eye wept for the reimposition of the corvée—is it a trifle to know that such a man has been? But a small satisfaction to pay that reverence and adoration to his memory with which he was regarded while living by all that was great and good among his contemporaries? This man was hunted down by one of the most worthless aristocracies which ever existed, as a visionary and a theorist—those epithets by which presumptuous and besotted ignorance never fails to stigmatize all who are wiser than itself, and political profligacy all who are more honest—those epithets by which they who know nothing endeavour to make it appear that the mere fact of knowing something renders a man unfit to be a statesman, and by which those who hold that there ought to be no such thing as public virtue express their cool contempt for those honest fools who are so extremely ignorant as to suppose that there ought.

But I am wandering from my subject on which in truth I have little more to say. But I must repeat that the favorable estimate which cannot but be formed of a species to which such men belonged, is both an incentive to virtue and a source of happiness which no true moralist or philosopher will despise. Imagine who will, that mankind can be happy without thinking well of one another, or that all the excitement which can be afforded by purely selfish pursuits is sufficient to render a man happy who has no others. He who is just starting in his worldly career, and before whose enraptured sight visions of earthly grandeur and the applause of men are now for the first time floating, he may think that these things are sufficient for happiness. But it is he who has obtained these things, or he who even without having obtained them (and there are such men) has sickened of the pursuit, it is for him to feel that it is all hollow, and that it is necessary to the happiness of human beings to love human beings, and therefore necessary to think them deserving of love.

23.

The Coalition Ministry

29 JUNE, 1827

it appears to me that the time is not come for the decision of this question. The evidence is not yet before us. Until I know upon what principles or with what intentions the coalition was formed, I can neither approve nor condemn it.¹ Coalitions in themselves are neither good or bad. Their merit or demerit must wholly depend upon the mutual understanding which takes place among the parties concerned, regarding the line of conduct which is to be pursued by them thereafter: and as of this we can have no direct information whatever beyond what those individuals think fit to afford us, it is their subsequent conduct which must itself decide whether their personal animosities have been sacrificed to principle or to place.

In this view of the question I have the fortune, whether good or ill, to differ from all those gentlemen who have attacked the ministry in the last and present debates: as well those, with the general tenor of whose political opinions I coincide, as those, to whom I am diametrically opposed. They all of them appear disposed to form their judgment of the coalition, not from the future conduct of the parties, but from the past conduct: and their principle goes to this extravagant conclusion, that any two persons who have ever differed on any important question of public policy, can never honestly, at a subsequent period, become part of the same ministry. Against this proposition, and any other approaching to it, I must enter my entire and unqualified dissent. I contend, that there always ought to be, and that it would be greatly to be regretted if there were not, a certain difference of opinion in every ministry. Let any one consider, what the effect would be, if the contrary maxim were received as a rule of political morality, and if it were thought necessary that a ministry should consist of persons who were unanimous on all questions. It is a mistake to say, that such a ministry could not be formed; no doubt such a ministry could be formed; but of whom would it be composed? Among hacks who would not scruple to sell their opinions for place, or tools who being either too ignorant or too cowardly to think for themselves, pin their faith upon some idol, whether that idol be a sect, a party, or an individual, this perfect unanimity might be found. But men of knowledge and talent, men of stored and cultivated minds, who avail themselves of the aids afforded by the understandings of others without surrendering their own, men who inquire for themselves, observe for themselves and judge for themselves, such men cannot, like mere passive machines, be formed after a model. Such men will differ and must necessarily differ, and a ministry, be it what it may, must either be composed of persons who differ, or it cannot be composed of such men. The coincidence of opinion which ought to be required in a ministry is not absolute coincidence; it is sufficient if they coincide more nearly with one another than any part of them do with their common opponents. That this degree of coincidence really exists between Mr. Canning and his Whig colleagues, if it could be doubtful before, has been made as I conceive tolerably clear by the recent divisions on the Corn Laws, and the Dissenters’ Marriage Bill.²

Neither does it follow, as was asserted by an honourable friend of mine³ on the former evening, that the two parties who have coalesced have either of them sacrificed even the principles on which they differ. And here again I am at issue with the new opposition though not more so, I will take leave to say, than they themselves are at issue with their former professions. It is no new thing for two cabinet ministers to speak and vote on opposite sides of the same question. Neither Mr. Peel nor Mr. Canning, although colleagues in office, sacrificed their respective opinions on the Catholic claims, nor, I will venture to affirm, will Mr. Canning and Lord Lansdowne though colleagues in office, sacrifice their opinions on the Test Act.⁴ A gentleman⁵ who spoke on the last night justly observed, that this question must come on next year, and that neither the Whigs nor Mr. Canning can sacrifice the opinions they have expressed, and therefore, said he, how can the ministry hold together? I should rather ask, why should they not hold together? If they cannot agree, why should they not agree to differ? Any ministry may hold together, who prefer one another and whom the majority of the two Houses prefer to any other ministry which could be formed out of the existing materials; and it is right that it should be so. The question is really too plain to stand in need of any further argument. Without standing here as the advocate either of Mr. Canning or the Whigs, and certainly differing most widely in my political principles from either, I must say it seems to me quite ridiculous to suppose that the mere fact of their coalescing as they have done implies any sacrifice of principle on either side.

Whether there has been any sacrifice of principle or not is a question fairly open to discussion: a question, as I have already observed which their subsequent conduct must determine. And it appears to me that in this view no part of their subsequent conduct is immaterial. It is all evidence: evidence to shew, on what principles the government is hereafter to be conducted: and though the evidence is not yet complete, there is no harm in summing it up as far as it goes. ^aIn foreign policy, for example, Mr. Canning’s earlier history suggests that he may go to^a far greater lengths than even the most liberal of their measures. Will the present ministry imitate so noble an example? Will Mr. Canning and his friends maintain the integrity of these principles inviolate? I confess my fears. Three months ago I should have felt no doubt that they who had persevered so long would persevere still. Up to this junction they have with a stedfastness and constancy most unusual in public men, adhered to their principles, through good report and bad, in defiance of the most bitter hostility from a large majority of that section of the aristocracy which was then the predominant section, and with which they were politically allied.⁶ They have now, however, connected themselves with a party, which contains many men of talent, many accomplished men, many eloquent men, and a majority, as I believe, in respect to personal objects, pure in intention: but a party, however, whose leaders have this unfortunate infirmity, that they never in their lives ventured except in an unguarded moment, to express more than half a principle at a time—they never dared to utter a liberal or a generous sentiment without qualifying it with something base and servile—their speech of today always explains away the speech of yesterday—they now are by turns the servants of God and of Mammon,⁷ and now endeavour to be both at once. It was to be feared that when these two sets of men came together, the better of the two would catch the infection from the worse. And so it has been. Whether truckling be really infectious, or whether Mr. Canning and his friends are grown more afraid of the aristocracy because they see that the aristocracy is more afraid of them, I know not, but for some reason or another, their character is totally changed. When any bad principle—any aristocratic principle—any principle favourable to abuses had to be put forward, it has been uttered in a bold, unflinching uncompromising tone: but as for principles of an opposite cast, principles to which those personages owe all their reputation, and but for which they would not be at this moment in office, since the late junction they have never been mentioned but to be compromised. Lord Goderich, for example,—once the manly and straightforward Frederic Robinson,—was so overcome by those brutal attacks at which, directed as they were against the mildest and most inoffensive of men, every man of common feeling must have been indignant, but which he would have treated as they deserved by simply despising them—he felt these attacks so bitterly that he condescended to make the most humble and submissive apologies for being in the right—hastened to explain away his high and honourable principles—reduced free trade to a better sort of preventive service—a mere scheme for the suppression of smuggling—and in terms with which even Sir Thomas Lethbridge⁸ must have been satisfied, declared his abhorrence of theory, that is of thought—of the application of philosophy to politics—of all which distinguishes him and his colleagues from the vulgar orators and vulgar statesmen of this and of former days.⁹ Mr. Huskisson¹⁰ —but it will be better to begin at the beginning, and take a view of the conduct of the new ministry, from their accession to office.

Let me observe, then, once for all—if I should be less warm in my eulogiums on the present ministry, less indiscriminate in my panegyrics upon their wisdom and virtue, than some of their old and some of their new friends, it is by no means to be imputed to any dislike of the individuals, and still less to any insensibility to the services which they have already rendered. Those services would be inestimable, were it only that they are the first British ministers who have pronounced the words improvement, reform, liberality, philosophy. Indeed Mr. Canning may be convinced by the disapprobation with which the reformers now view some parts of his conduct, of the sincerity of the praise which they have bestowed on him heretofore. Most assuredly if that praise had emanated from the base motives to which it has been ascribed; if as has been more than insinuated by men utterly incapable of comprehending principles of action so greatly above their own level—they had attacked the Whigs because they were not in place, applauded the ministry because they were,—had such been their motives they would hardly have begun to qualify their applause from the time when the men whom they had applauded became all powerful, and ceased to flatter as soon as their flattery might possibly be profitable to themselves.

I would first advert to Mr. Canning’s nonsensical declaration upon the subject of Parliamentary Reform and the Test Act.¹¹ I call it nonsensical because I know no other term which will express its character so exactly. If Mr. Canning had said that his opinion on these subjects was unchanged, and that while it was so he should continue to act upon it as he had done previously,—however the fact might have been regretted its avowal could have excited no disapprobation in any reasonable mind. But to hear a man gravely pledge himself to be always of the same opinion—bind himself by a solemn promise that the arguments which convince him now, upon his honour shall convince him to his dying day—that what he thinks advisable now he will think advisable always howsoever circumstances may change, and although the evidence of the contrary should be as clear as day,—as he promises what it is not in his or any man’s power to perform, the promise is utterly ludicrous. I wish I could say that it were not also something worse than ludicrous. For although it is in no man’s power to resolve before hand that he will always be of the same way of thinking, it is in any man’s power to resolve to say he is of the same way of thinking, whether he is or is not. It is in any man’s power also to resolve to be disingenuous with himself—to resolve that he will never look at the evidence but on one side—that nothing but what makes on one side shall ever enter into his mind. But the man who can form such a resolution is in a state of mind than which one more immoral is not to be found in human nature. A resolution to be regardless of evidence implies on any subject, indifference to truth. But indifference to truth where the alternative of truth or falsehood involves that of justice or injustice, benevolence or cruelty, doing our duty or not doing it—causing the happiness or the misery of our country, is indifference to every human virtue. Parliamentary reform is a measure of which it is not criminal in any one to disapprove. But it is a measure which sincere men, virtuous men, aye and wise men, have approved of; and most certainly, if it is to be approved of, it is of such tremendous moment to the happiness and virtue of countless myriads, that hardly any human interest can compare with it in magnitude. And that this should be the question which a man chuses in order to resolve that he will never grow wiser—that because he, a fallible man, thinks that he is in the right, sooner than be convinced of the contrary he will practise every species of dishonesty upon himself—that on this subject his intellect shall be hood winked, his reason chained down—Sir, I can never believe that this was what Mr. Canning intended. The words must have been uttered in the warmth of the moment, and without due reflection on their import. Not that I would asser that such a declaration is viewed by general opinion in the light which it deserves. Indeed were we to take our notions of right from what we see and hear, we should suppose there was something heroic in swearing that if we were wrong, wrong we always will remain, and that a man who pledges himself to adhere right or wrong to the very opinions which correspond with his private interests, he is to be treated as if he had nobly immolated himself to the welfare of his country.

Mr. Canning has declared his hostility to the repeal of the Test Act. But what is become of those who called themselves the friends of that measure? Were they its friends only when the agitation of it might befriend them? The more I reflect upon the postponement of this question, the greater difficulty I find in attributing to it any creditable motive. What is the reason assigned? It would embarrass the government.¹² Gentlemen were not wont to be so scrupulous about embarrassing the government. If the repeal of the Test Act were like the Catholic question,—a measure there was any chance that the government would ever support,—it might be fairly said, Do not bring it on until the government can support it: but when the head of the government has positively declared his determination to oppose it, in what way, I would ask, would its discussion embarrass the government, unless exhibiting them in their true colours be the sort of embarrassment that is so earnestly deprecated? It could not be carried this year. But does any man in his senses suppose that it could be carried next year, or the year after? If it is not to be discussed until it can be immediately carried, it is abandoned indeed. There seems to be universally among public men a disposition to stave off discussion. They always seem to think that by a free discussion it is truth which suffers, and not error. They always chuse rather to put their trust in tricks and stratagems for the success of a good cause than the gradual effect of plain, open, manly and repeated discussion, upon the reason of the well intentioned and upon the prudence of the corrupt. This is a fatal weakness, but it is not a criminal one, and to this I am disposed to ascribe the temporary abandonment of the Dissenters. But if this be the motive, why not openly avow it? Why attempt to varnish it over by a flimsy, a hypocritical pretext? Why seek to ward off the too plausible charge of tergiversation by pretending that the Dissenters wished to postpone their claims, and that the postponement was to please them? I admit that the body of Dissenters did, at their meeting, yield a reluctant consent: but is it not known by whose persuasions, by whose earnest entreaties—by whose threats that consent was extorted? Is it any secret what distinguished member of the Whig party declared to them that if they insisted on pressing their claims at this moment he himself in the House of Commons would move the previous question;¹³ and what other member of parliament, though this latter far from being a distinguished one, cried out with the air of a man astonished to find himself so important a personage, that he would second it?¹⁴ Is it imagined that these things can be kept from the public? Do not at this moment a large body of the Dissenters believe themselves to have been sold—profligately bartered for place and power—sacrificed to appease those whom no sacrifice ever appeased, the Church and the Aristocracy.—I differ from them, as to the motives which they impute, and I am convinced that there is at present no deliberate purpose of sacrificing them—but yet I cannot but expect the Dissenters, if they expect to succeed, to trust to themselves, and not to men who have played fast and loose with every cause which they ever undertook.

In justice to the noble Lord who gave notice of the motion,¹⁵ I am bound to state the profound respect with which his plain and straight forward conduct has inspired me. It contrasts as strikingly with that of the men I have alluded to, as Dr. Lushington’s manly and honourable conduct on the Chancery question with that of Mr. Brougham¹⁶ —a man whom I would not willingly mention in any terms but those of praise—a man whose noble and disinterested services to the cause of education acquit him of all errors except errors of judgment, and should induce us the more readily to forgive his numerous failings, but not to overlook or disguise them. But I need add nothing to what has been said of the conduct of the Whigs both on this question, and on the Six Acts.¹⁷ On the latter question I must confess that their conduct in some degree surprised me. I was little prepared to expect from them any thing heroically disinterested, any very obstinate perseverance in the right after their hopes and their fears began to point to the wrong. But I did expect that the transition would have been more gradual. I did think that some little respect would have been shewn to public opinion, some little pains taken to smooth the downhill path that is trodden by reformed patriots whose exertions in the cause of liberty have at length earned the well-merited reward of a place. But no! they who had opposed the Act when the danger which it provided against was real, have turned round and supported it when that danger is universally allowed to be imaginary and when there is no longer the slightest pretext of its necessity. I thank them for it! This single fact will do more to open the eyes of the people of England than abstract truths though they were enforced by the eloquence of a Demosthenes. Believe me, the people will not be turned round at their pleasure. The people are generally in the main correct, in their judgment of public men, and it would be very imprudent to let them suppose that the premier can find Whigs to undertake any work which is too dirty for himself, even although it should be to support a ministry which will go along, as Mr. Brougham says with the spirit of the age,¹⁸ for which good end the Whigs are ready to run counter to that spirit every day of their lives.

The conduct of the Whigs on this question has been censured, often, and deservedly. But I have never heard Mr. Canning’s speech on the same occasion,¹⁹ properly commented upon. I am not disposed to scrutinize too closely all the acts of a ministry, which is compelled as the condition of its existence to secure a majority in two assemblies wholly independent of popular control. I can forgive so much, that I can almost forgive the screening of Lord Charles Somerset, though to my mind, there is scarcely a more humiliating spectacle than that of Mr. Wilmot Horton, benevolent and patriotic as we all know him, upright and sincere,—as we would so gladly believe him,—not only shielding from enquiry the conduct of that individual, who if he be not the most criminal is certainly the most ill used of men, but seeking a feeble protection for his client against the most serious charges by endeavouring to excite a prejudice against his accuser, and carping like a mere caviller against the time and manner of urging the accusations, instead of ascertaining that the accusations themselves are ill founded.²⁰ Sir, I can make so great allowances that I would not condemn even this very severely. But if they are compelled to do wrong, they are not compelled to defend by disingenuous artifices, the wrong which they do. I would ask Mr. Canning—if I were at this moment in his presence I would ask him whether it was worthy of his character—worthy of his talents—worthy of his candour in replying to Mr. Hume on the twopenny trash act, as it was formerly called, to affect to consider it as aimed against blasphemous publications—an act which as every child knows was enacted for the avowed purpose of putting down Cobbett²¹ —an act which when it was passed was expressly grounded upon the existing disaffection to government, and which included all publications touching upon Church or State or any subject connected with them. Does Mr. Canning presume so much upon our want of memory? Does he think that he can trifle with that to which he cannot but be conscious that he owes his present elevation—public opinion? Let him not presume too much upon his individual popularity; it will desert him as rapidly as his former unpopularity, when he ceases to deserve it. Let him not place his trust in newspaper praise—the hacks of the press always bow the knee to the idol in vogue. Does he imagine that the Times newspaper, for example, which now worships him as a God,²² would not turn and exhort the people to imbrue their hands in his blood if it thought that by so doing it would add 500 to its 15,000 subscribers?

But I must now pass to a still more painful subject. One week ago, the name of Mr. Huskisson stood higher with the nation for honesty and courage, combined with great talent, and the only really valuable knowledge, the knowledge of principles, than any living—I must almost say any minister. In the teeth of the most rancorous opposition, he had adhered nobly to his own course, had braved clamours, to which almost any other minister would have succumbed, and had braved them successfully. Even his enemies—and few men had more enemies, for few have so well deserved the enmity of the ignorant and the worthless—but the honest even among his enemies, while they disapproved of his principles, honoured the constancy with which he adhered to them. I use no rash expression when I say that the character of Mr. Huskisson did more to give dignity and respectability and public confidence to the ministry than any other single circumstance. And now—one short month after the most signal of triumphs over the strongest division of his opponents²³ —after having refuted every argument and disproved every fact which they alleged—he has covertly, by a clause in the new Customs Act,²⁴ conceded the whole of his principle together with much of its practical results to these vanquished and prostrate adversaries. Where were the Whigs then,—they who when credit was to be gained by it, claimed to themselves the merit which they had not, of originating these measures—where were they, that they did not resume their thunder when he who had usurped it had laid it down? We are apt, Sir, to suppose public men wiser than they are, and then to suppose them greater rogues than they are because we cannot otherwise explain how such wise men come to do such foolish things. But I cannot pay so poor a compliment to Mr. Huskisson’s understanding as to suppose him unaware of any inconsistency between his conduct now and on the reciprocity bill. No, it is truckling: it can be nothing but truckling, and all that is left to his previously enthusiastic admirers is to hope that although the instrument he is not the cause. But regarding it as the act of the entire ministry, I would ask is this the course which they intend to persevere in? Do they mean to undo when they have obtained power all the meritorious acts by which they gained it? They cannot be so blind to their real situation as to suppose that they were raised to their present elevation by any thing except public opinion, or that they will keep it one week longer than while public opinion strongly supports them. Do they suppose that they can ever be favourites with the aristocracy? Do they really imagine that they can ever outstrip their competitors in servility, or that men of genius can ever rival fools in self abasement? Do they think that the awkward sycophancy of men conscious of superiority, of men fit for and who have a taste for better things, men who detest the odious work, to whose whole nature it is alien, can ever equal that of creatures to whose base souls it is congenial, the hacks of office, the hirelings of power, who have not one idea that is not commonplace, one purpose that is not mean, and who swallow servility with greater gusto than their daily bread? No, to whatever degree these men may be so unhappy as to degrade themselves, the Church and the Aristocracy will still find others more degraded. Prostitution is not the game for them. It was no wisdom, not even worldly wisdom, to throw away the high reputation for principle, which they had acquired, and which it is not yet too late to retrieve. But it is not to be dissembled that a few more acts like this last will efface the distinction which the public has hitherto made between them and their opponents. They are in a difficult situation. The public already expected more from them than they could do, and had they even done all that was in their power, it would have been difficult to keep alive the enthusiasm which was at first excited by the change of ministry, but which their defeat on the Corn Bill alone retains in existence.²⁵ And if once the people cease to value them—if it once becomes a matter of indifference to the public whether they are ministers or not,—their reign is over. The hatred of the Tory aristocracy towards them is at this moment kept down only by their fears. Let those fears cease and their majority in parliament will not stand by them for a month, they will fall, and we shall see rushing into office, the rabble rout²⁶ of Tories headed by an apostate Whig.²⁷ The reign of dulness²⁸ will recommence: it will become the fashion, (as before the late change it was rapidly becoming) to affiche²⁹ ignorance, and boast of it as if it were a merit—every thing which savours of mind will again become an object of scorn and opprobrium—it will be criminal to possess any knowledge except the knowledge of routine, or to aim at any thing in public life except to make profit by pandering to the selfish and malignant passions of others—and diligently will that war be prosecuted which a noble personage has recently declared against the people in defence of the right and privilege of spoliation, and the other rights and privileges of his order.³⁰ When this would be the infallible consequence of the dissolution of the ministry, I need not say how earnestly I desire that it may continue. To ensure its continuance nothing is required but constancy. Let their actions be only worthy of their high character, and that country for which they have hazarded so much will most assuredly stand by them. The next session of parliament will finally decide their fate and ours: till then I must delay forming a deliberate opinion, and till then, therefore, I must decline voting upon the question before us.³¹

24.

The Present State of Literature

16 NOVEMBER, 1827

when i proposed this question, I considered rather what subject it might be useful to the Society to discuss, than what I myself was equal to—not to mention other deficiencies. Extent of my reading never adequate to so vast a question, and now after a lapse of six months I have entirely lost the train of thought which suggested it. Fortunately the duty of an opener rather to indicate the topics than to discuss them. Leave to others to institute an elaborate comparison between our old and our new writers, or between our own and those of any other country. Myself rather hint at the principal vices which appear to me to distinguish the literature of the day, and the circumstances peculiar to our own times by which those vices seem to me to have been generated.

The word literature has several acceptations: in its most confined sense it means poetry and novels, in its widest every written or spoken composition. Conformably to what I think the established usage, I shall use it in a sense intermediate between these two extremes, not confining it to works of imagination only, nor yet extending it to comprehend works of pure science and philosophy in which I confess we rank higher than at any former period. Include in literature all which can be denominated popular publications: all which address themselves to the general reader, whether they are intended for amusement only, or profess to contain discussions on political, moral, or, in the narrow sense of the word, literary subjects. In these compositions, we are to distinguish two things, the matter and the manner. The literature of any country may be properly said to have deteriorated, if its tendency, in regard to the opinions and sentiments which it inculcates, has grown worse, and if it is less distinguished than formerly by the beauties of composition and style. In both these respects I am inclined to think, that our literature has declined and is declining. In order to establish this, it is not necessary that I should deny that we possess at present writers of merit, perhaps equal in their respective lines to any who have preceded them. When we speak of the character of our literature, we do not mean that of particular writers, but the general spirit and quality of the mass: if this has degenerated, our literature has degenerated, and my case is made out.

Say little about poetry because nobody will contest. No one poet of the first rank, unless Wordsworth.¹ —he will probably never write any more—No new poets have arisen or seem likely to arise to succeed those who have gone off the stage or speedily will. I am not sure that I am able to assign any cause of our being thus left without poets, as it seems probable that we soon shall be, and to attempt it would lead me into a longer discussion than the Society would be disposed to listen to. I therefore leave the fact to speak for itself, and shall confine myself to our prose writers of whose degeneracy I feel myself more capable of divining the cause.

The influence of literature upon civilisation is a topic which has frequently been insisted upon, and certainly not oftener than its importance deserves. The influence of civilisation upon literature, though not less remarkable, has not perhaps received from philosophers all the attention which is its due. We all see how individuals (the writer) act upon masses (the reader); but it is not so obvious at first sight, to what a prodigious extent masses react upon individuals: and we ^aare perhaps too ready^a to ascribe the peculiar modes of thinking which are prevalent in every age, to its literary men, ^bnot^b considering that the majority of literary men take their colour from the age in which they live.

Every man is a man, long before he is a poet or a philosopher. Thousands of impressions are made upon the mind from without before it acquires the power of originating a single one from within. Every man, long before he begins to think or to write, has imbibed more or less of the opinions, the sentiments, the modes of thinking and acting, the habits and associations of that portion of mankind among whom his lot is cast. We all know the power of early impressions over the human mind and how often the direction which they give, decides the whole character, the whole life of the man. The greatest men of every age, generally bear a family likeness to their contemporaries: the most splendid monuments of genius which literature can boast of, bear almost universally in a greater or less degree the stamp of their age. But over the vast majority of literary men the spirit of their age² rules absolutely supreme, because they studiously endeavour to resemble it, and not only imitate but are apt to caricature its leading peculiarities.

It is the demand, in literature as in most other things, which calls forth the supply. Among mental as well as among physical endowments, that is most cultivated which is most admired. When the public bestowed so much of its admiration upon skill in cutting throats, that it had very little to spare for any thing else, all the ardent characters betook themselves to the trade of blood, and made it their pride to be distinguished chiefly by the warlike virtues. At other times, when the chief source of reputation was oratorical or poetical merit, every body who possessed, or thought he possessed genius, was an orator or a poet. There have always been men, who without much aiming at reputation, wrote chiefly to please themselves or to improve their readers. But the grand object of writers in general is success. The qualities most calculated to ensure success, constitute the sole idea they have of merit: they cultivate in their own minds a habit of being pleased with that which they find pleases those to whom they address themselves: their aim is to be read and admired, and the degree in which that aim is successful, is the test by which they try their own merits, and those of others. The weaker minds cannot resist the contagion of the common opinion or the common taste: and such of the stronger as prefer the honour and profit of pleasing others to the satisfaction of pleasing themselves, set the example to their numerous imitators of sailing with the stream.

Assuming therefore as an indisputable truth, that the writers of every age are for the most part what the readers make them, it becomes important to the present question to consider who formed the reading public formerly, and who compose it now.

The present age is very remarkably distinguished from all other ages by the number of persons who can read, and what is of more consequence by the number who do. Our working classes have learned to read, and our idle classes have learned to find pleasure in reading, and to devote a part of that time to it, which they formerly spent in amusements of a grosser kind. That human nature will be a gainer, and that in a high degree by this change, no one can be more firmly convinced than I am: but it will perhaps be found, that the benefit lies rather in the ultimate, than in the immediate effects. Reading is necessary; but no wise or even sensible man was ever made by reading alone. The proper use of reading is to be subservient to thinking. It is by those who read to think, that knowledge is advanced, prejudices dispelled, and the physical and moral condition of mankind is improved. I cannot however perceive that the general diffusion (so remarkable in our own day) of the taste for reading, has yet been accompanied by any marked increase in taste for the severer exercises of the intellect; that such will one day be its effect, may fairly be presumed; but it has not yet declared itself: and it is to the immense multiplication in the present day of those who read but do not think, that I should be disposed to ascribe what I view as the degeneracy of our literature.

In former days the literati and the learned formed a class apart: and few concerned themselves with literature and philosophy except those who had leisure and inclination to form their philosophical opinions by study and meditation, and to cultivate their literary taste by the assiduous perusal of the most approved models. Those whose sole occupation was pleasure, did not seek it in books, but in the gaieties of a court, or in field sports and debauchery. The public for which authors wrote was a small but, to a very considerable degree, an instructed public; and their suffrages were only to be gained by thinking to a certain extent profoundly and by writing well. The authors who were then in highest reputation are chiefly those to whom we now look back as the ablest thinkers and best writers of their time. No doubt there were many blockheads among the reading public in those days, as well as in our own, and the blockheads often egregiously misplaced their admiration, as blockheads are wont: but the applause of the blockheads was not then the object aimed at even by those who obtained it, and they did not constitute so large and so influential a class of readers, as to tempt any writer of talent to lay himself out for their admiration. If an author failed of obtaining the suffrages of men of knowledge and taste, it was for want of powers, not from the misapplication of them. The case is now altered. We live in a refined age, and there is a corresponding refinement in our amusements. It is now the height of mauvais ton to be drunk, neither is it any longer considered decorous among gentlemen, that the staple of their conversation should consist of bawdy. Reading has become one of the most approved and fashionable methods of killing time, and the number of persons who have skimmed the surface of literature is far greater than at any previous period of our history. Our writers therefore find that the greatest success is now to be obtained by writing for the many; and endeavouring all they can to bring themselves down to the level of the many, both in their matter and in the manner of expressing it.

It is notorious that half instructed persons can never appreciate the highest order of excellence either in thought or in composition. Of deep thought, no one can properly judge but those who think: Profound and original ideas can only be properly understood by him who will take the trouble to go through in his own mind the process of thought by which they were arrived at: and a book which gives the trouble of thought, is by those unused to think, speedily laid aside as incomprehensible and dull. In like manner, the beauties of the highest order in a literary composition are such as cannot be apprehended and felt without the exercise of the thinking faculty. I may instance the works of two of the most highly gifted minds which their respective nations have produced, Demosthenes, and Milton. Of these may indeed be affirmed what Quintilian has said with somewhat less justice of Cicero: Sciat etc.³ In neither of them is there any thing to captivate a vulgar mind: and if not overawed by their reputation, the dunces and coxcombs would unanimously agree in voting Demosthenes common place, and Milton a bore.

A literature therefore of which the chief aim is to be read and applauded by the half instructed many, is altogether precluded from the higher excellencies both of thought and of composition. To obtain the character of a sound or brilliant thinker, and a fine writer, among superficial people, it is a very different set of qualities which must be cultivated.

People are in general much better pleased with the man who persuades them that they have always been right, than with the man who tells them that they are wrong. No one except the very few with whom truth is a consideration paramount to all others, is pleased with any person for convincing him that he has been in error: and if to think is always, to most people, a labour too irksome to be borne, more especially will they turn a deaf ear to the man who bids them think when the consequence intended is their being disabused of their favourite opinions, opinions too, which they perhaps have an interest in sticking to. There remain two paths to reputation and success. One is, to advocate strenuously and if possible enthusiastically the reigning opinions, all, but especially those in which any influential part of the community has an interest: to heap insult and opprobrium on all who dissent from those opinions, and to keep those who profess them well supplied with reasons to make themselves and others still better satisfied with those opinions than before. Of the class of writers who pursue this plan, a class comprising the great bulk of our moral and political writers, the greatest living example is Dr. Southey.⁴ The other, for there is another mode of obtaining among half instructed persons, a reputation for talent, is by dealing in paradoxes. There are two ways of being a paradox monger. One is, by professing opinions, which were not likely to occur to any body. But a still better way, is by maintaining opinions so perfectly silly, that they are at once rejected by every body. The source of reputation in this case, besides the strangeness of the opinion, is the surprise which every one feels on finding that there is any thing plausible to be said in behalf of so very gross and palpable an absurdity. If a man shews any talent in the defence of it, he is accordingly set down as at least a very clever and ingenious person; and if he has managed well, and made choice of a paradox which flatters any of the passions or inclinations common to mankind, or to any influential class or party among mankind, he makes a crowd of proselytes and at once establishes his reputation as a profound and original thinker. Among those who in our own day have most distinguished themselves in this field, it would be unjust to refuse the first place to the celebrated Mr. Jeffrey or whoever else etc. who has shewn by his celebrated argument against the progressiveness of human nature,⁵ and by many other paradoxes besides, that he stands foremost among mankind in the art of saying something very plausible in a case so bad, that hardly any body besides himself would have fancied that any thing could be said for it at all.

So much for the matter of our modern writers: now as to their stile. It is sufficiently notorious that the kind of writing which is preferred by instructed and cultivated minds, is not that which pleases the half-instructed and pseudo-refined; and although whatever gives pleasure to any body is so far good, our standard of taste if we have one, must be founded on what it is incident to minds of the highest degree of cultivation to approve and admire. Now it has always been laid down by them as a rule, that the chief excellence of stile is to express the meaning exactly, and without any appearance of effort, to express it in short as a man of sense and education, filled with his subject and quite indifferent to display, might be supposed to express it spontaneously. Every one who has been accustomed in writing to make this unaffected simplicity his model, knows how prodigiously it transcends every other style in difficulty: he knows that really to write without effort, is by no means the way to appear without effort, and that when even a man of talent gives the reins to his imagination, and uses the first expressions which occur to him, what he writes will either be feeble and vapid in general with a brilliant passage now and then, or else such stuff as is in Blackwood’s Magazine.⁶ A practised writer knows the immense labour of the ars celandi artem:⁷ how much more art it requires to speak naturally than to speak affectedly; in what rude and inappropriate language a thought first suggests itself to the mind, and what pains are necessary to make the word suit the idea so exactly, that the one shall appear to have been immediately suggested by the other. It is when this attempt is most completely successful, that common readers are least capable of appreciating it. It is when a thought is very felicitously expressed, that every dunce who reads it thinks he could have expressed it as well. The vulgar taste in style is like the vulgar taste in most other things: every thing is admired in proportion as it deviates from nature; and therefore from what the dunce who pretends to judge of it, thinks would have occurred to himself. A ranting player, who tears a passion to rags, is generally more admired by persons unacquainted with the external indications of real passion than a chaste and natural actor, because in him the art is not perceived, his imitation of nature appears nature itself, and where they can perceive no difficulty they ascribe no merit. So in stile, a half cultivated taste is always caught by gaudy, affected, and meretricious ornament, contributing nothing either to the clearness of the idea or the vividness of the leading image; the effusion of a mind not in earnest; the play of an imagination occupied with every thing in the world except the subject. The writers whom the vulgar admire are those who deal in conceits with Mr. Moore,⁸ or commonplace metaphors with Mr. Jeffrey, or extravagant and farfetched metaphors with Mr. Hazlitt or the rev. Mr. Irving.⁹ And those who do not aim at this kind of stile become careless, and aim at no stile at all. We have at this time many tolerable writers, but scarcely one who has attained distinguished excellence in stile. I must except indeed Sir W. Scott,¹⁰ who in his peculiar department, description of external nature, is without a rival, though in descriptions of human emotions and passions Richardson far excels him.¹¹ But whom have we to compare, in wit and idiomatic English with Dr. South, in easy, quiet, unaffected humour with Addison and Goldsmith, in grave, Cervantes-like irony with Fielding, in nervous simplicity and poignant satire with Swift, in pathos though stained by much affectation with Sterne?¹² Whom have we who can equal Hume in graceful narrative, Bolingbroke in brilliant and animated declamation, Mandeville in copious, and appropriate though homely illustration,¹³ and which of our authors, can rank with Berkeley for the felicitous expression of abstruse thoughts, or can match, in exuberance of fancy corrected by the severest judgment, that wonderful master of figurative eloquence, Lord Bacon. I say nothing of what are commonly called our old writers, because my knowledge of them is not extensive, but the writers I have named are sufficient to exemplify the superiority, in point of mere writing, of other ages to our own.

It remains to mention one feature which particularly marks the literature of the present day, and which I think has contributed more than any other to its degradation: I mean the prevalence of periodical publications. This has operated unfavourably upon our literature in a variety of ways. In the first place periodical works are written, more exclusively than any others, for the day. They are therefore under still stronger inducements than other works, to chime in with the tastes of the day, and the prejudices of the day. All other writers though they cannot attain immediate, may hope for ultimate reputation and success by being above their age. Periodical writers must have immediate success, or none at all. I hate journals, says Göthe, somewhere, because they are the slaves of the day:¹⁴ and ample experience confirms the truth of the observation.

It has been said in favour of periodical publications, that they promote a taste for reading,¹⁵ and this praise they undoubtedly deserve: but it may be doubted whether they occasion the reading of much besides themselves. If they cause many to go on to books, who begin with newspapers and reviews, they also induce many to satisfy themselves with reviews who would otherwise have read books. And they contribute much to diminish the number of good books. Formerly a young writer appeared before the public under his own colours: if he made his way it was by having sufficient merit to gain a reputation of his own, and he was therefore anxious to make his productions as perfect as he was able before he suffered them to see the light. In this manner the taste for literary distinction, not being early or easily gratified, grew into a passion, became deeply rooted in his mind, and if he really possessed talent, rendered him probably for the whole of his life a distinguished literary character. But now every young writer who possesses the moderate degree of cleverness necessary to enable him to compose a readable article for a review, finds he can turn his small capital of intellect to so good an account by writing for periodicals, that it would be labour lost to wait till he had made that capital larger: especially as that accuracy of research, that depth of thought and that highly finished style, which are so essential to a work destined for posterity, would not only not contribute to his success, but would obstruct it, by taking up his time, and preventing him from composing rapidly. Writing anonymously, he is not afraid of compromising his reputation, and the first crude offspring of his brain, poured forth in a style which will always be good enough if it is grammatical and runs pretty smoothly, passes from hand to hand by virtue of the reputation of the review, and if it have any merit at all gains for the writer such a moderate portion of celebrity as generally appeases the first cravings of his appetite, and leaves him lukewarm about the attainment of a higher degree of distinction, and averse to the severe application which it would require. I cannot help ascribing partly to this cause, the very small number of good prose works which have been published for many years past, except indeed novels, a branch of literature which pays so well that there is always a sufficient motive for producing it.

¹⁶ [I ha]ve a still heavier charge against periodical literature. [It is t]his which has made literature a trade. Nothing else [could h]ave rendered the literary profession sufficiently [lucra]tive, to tempt men into it for the mere sake of pecu[nia]ry profit. We read in Pope and our other satirists of many dunces whose evil genius persuaded them to write, to the great grief of their relations, and injury of their worldly concerns; and who, from a real fondness for the occupation, preferred starving upon the scanty produce of their pen to earning a comfortable livelihood in any honest trade.¹⁷ But we do not find mention made by these authors of any, who chose authorship as an advantageous investment of their labour and capital in a commercial point of view, contracted for a stipulated quantity of eloquence and wit, to be delivered on a certain day, were inspired punctually by 12 o’clock in order to be in time for the printer’s boy at one, sold a burst of passion at so much per line, and gave way to a movement of virtuous indignation as per order received. That a literary man should receive a remuneration for his labour is no more than just, provided he writes in every respect as he would have done if he had no remuneration to expect. But whatever is a gainful occupation becomes the occupation of many who have nothing beyond the pecuniary gain in view. What is carried on as a trade, soon comes to be carried on upon mere trading principles of profit and loss. When literature is upon this footing, it is of all trades almost without exception the most degraded and vile, on account of the insincerity and hypocrisy with which it is necessarily connected. Written composition, like any other form of human discourse, is only endurable so far forth as the opinions and sentiments which it promulgates, are supposed to be the real opinions and genuine sentiments of the writer. The hack author who considers not what sentiments the subject ought to inspire, but only what are the sentiments which are expected of him, and who after having on due enquiry and examination settled to the satisfaction of his own mind which side of the question will be the marketable side, proceeds thereupon to brandish his mercenary thunders, and burst forth into the artificial transports of a bought enthusiasm; the occupation of a street walking prostitute is surely far more respectable. The present times have brought forth a plentiful harvest of this kind of handicrafts. It is fortunate indeed if scribes of this sort do nothing worse than this, in the way of their profession. There are literary¹⁸

25.

The Church

15 FEBRUARY, 1828

my honourable friend the proposer of the question¹ has observed in his speech, that it is difficult to speak against the church, because men will not listen to the evidence. The experience of the preceding evening has shewn that there is another difficulty, viz. that when they do listen to it, they are very much disposed to fritter it away. It would indeed be difficult to compose a speech on any subject that would stand the test which these gentlemen seemed disposed to apply to it. If you rest your case upon the universal principles of human nature, and shew that from the situation in which the Church of England is placed, certain actions are the natural consequences, this is called declamation and assumption, and you are asked for facts: when, in obedience to this demand, you bring forward facts, drawn from different periods of church history, these facts are exhibited singly, and you are triumphantly informed that each one, if there were only that one, might be a singular instance and was no proof of a general rule. If you allude to persecuting statutes enacted long ago, you are told that they were evidence of a spirit which no longer exists: if to shew that the spirit survives you observe that the laws still subsist even although it is not possible to execute them, you are told by way of reply that as the spirit is not strong enough to surmount an impossibility, no such spirit exists. If you cite a flagrant instance of direct persecution in what are considered by churchmen to be the best times of the church, you are told with much indignation that the church has changed. If you quote a modern instance, which fortunately happens to be universally known, they then at last stand at bay, drop all artifice and evasion, turn round upon the man who dares to condemn the persecution, and accuse him of sympathizing with the impious. And here, Sir, I cannot help blaming my honourable friend, not indeed for the warmth with which he repelled this accusation, for most assuredly if it was a charge to be repelled at all, it was a charge to be repelled warmly. But I blame him because the accusation, coming from the quarter it did and on the occasion on which it did, was one which he had reason to be proud of. I am thankful to the honourable gentleman for the term—I invite the honourable gentleman to apply it to me—I should blush to be that which the honourable gentleman would not call a friend of the impious.² I thank heaven that my heart is not so hardened by bigotry nor my understanding so perverted by lawyercraft but that I can sympathize with an oppressed man, whatever may be his religious opinions. The man, be he Christian or Atheist who endures torture and ignominy because he will not swerve from his convictions is to me a martyr, and I should detest myself if I could not venerate him as he deserves. What is it to me if Mr. Carlile is not a good reasoner?³ I never thought him a good reasoner: but he is what I respect infinitely more, he is a man of principle, and a man who will stand to his principles though he should stand alone, and though to be merely supposed to sympathize with him is tantamount to an accusation of impiety, shall I, because this man is not a good logician,—a man who is as ready to die at the stake for what he thinks the truth, as any clergyman of the Church of England can be ready for what he thinks the truth to conduct him thither,—shall I knowing how few such men there are and how much is due to those few when they arise, be deterred from expressing my disapprobation of their persecutors by a cry of impiety? Let the honourable gentleman keep such stuff for the House of Commons: there he will find in hundreds of bosoms a chord which will respond to that which vibrates in his own: but I much mistake the tone of feeling in this Society, if it contains one man, Tory or Churchman though he be, to whom such feelings as the honourable gentleman gave utterance to, on the preceding evening, are not entirely unknown.

With regard to the question in hand, it would certainly be a waste of words to discuss, whether or not the Church of England is a persecuting church, with a gentleman who thinks that to immure Mr. Carlile and about twenty of his coadjutors in dungeons for terms of two, three, and five years is not persecution.⁴ If a man squares his conscience by what the church does to him of course the church can never be in the wrong; and if the good old practice of burning heretics were revived, no doubt some persons would be still found who would maintain that even this was not persecution. But my honourable friend who spoke fourth on the preceding evening⁵ is not of this stamp, and to him a somewhat different answer is due. He had discretion enough to admit the iniquity of these persecutions but affirmed that they are not imputable to the clergy of the Church of England. I am glad, Sir, that this is the line of defence now resorted to by the more able advocates of the Church of England because, in the first place, it shews that in their opinion the time is now come when such proceedings as those which have taken place against Mr. Carlile no longer admit of being openly defended: but further, I rejoice to learn that these are the sentiments of my honourable friend, because as he seems on this occasion to exculpate the church, not because such proceedings are defensible, but because the church has no share in them, I am led to conclude that if it could be proved to his satisfaction that these persecutions are in any degree imputable to the church, he would no longer consider the church capable of being defended on this ground. Now I shall easily be able to adduce evidence, which will satisfy even my honourable friend’s scepticism on this point. I do not pretend that the church alone is to blame; there is enough of religious bigotry, God knows, both in other professions and in other sects, although the existence of a powerful body who are bound by interest to work up that baneful spirit, to the highest pitch cannot have much tendency to mitigate it, at least: But there is a good deal to be said in respect to the part which the Church of England has actually taken in the persecution. My honourable friend in speaking on this subject, has shewn (to parody an expression of Mr. Sheridan) a very pious ignorance on some topics:⁶ he has buried all transactions of this description, anterior to the late prosecution of the Rev. R. Taylor,⁷ in discreet oblivion. In that proceeding he says that Dissenters were the chief agents, and seems not to be aware that the prime mover in the affair, Mr. Alderman Atkins, is no Dissenter but a most orthodox highchurchman.⁸ Although, however, my honourable friend cannot carry his recollection any further back I can, and I can state for the benefit of his rather short memories, that more than one-half of the prosecutions of Mr. Carlile, his family and his coadjutors, were at the prosecution of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.⁹ Now although I give my honourable friend credit for a very considerable degree of ingenuity, I do not suppose him to possess so great a share of it as to be able to explain away the list of subscribers to that Society: a list comprising nearly as great a number of bishops, and dignitaries of the church as subscribed to that other creditable establishment, the Bridge Street Association,¹⁰ which last attempt to revive the execrable tyranny over political opinion, the good sense and virtue of this country crushed in the bud. As I have alluded to this final ebullition of feelings which, though as far as ever from being extinguished, no man now dares avow, I cannot help saying, that I find it difficult to decide which aspect of the affair tells most against the reverend subscribers; the odiousness of the design, or the contemptible imbecility of the execution. The whole funds of that Association sufficed only for, I believe, nine prosecutions—and these in every, or almost every instance, directed against mere accessories and not principals in what they pretended to call an offence. But the Association is gone, where all such Associations ought to go—gone, I should say for ever, were it not that clergymen, who according to the well known remark of Lord Clarendon, understand the least, and take the worst measure of human affairs, of all men who can read or write,¹¹ are likely enough to suffer themselves to be hoaxed out of a little more of their money by some cunning attorney, who if he can succeed in persuading them that his object in asking for it is to make use of it for the purpose of helping to degrade the human mind, can make himself sure of raising, among a large portion of them at least enough to make his own fortune by law expences, which is generally the purpose of the more prominent agents in such transactions.

But if this institution is now no more, the Vice Society still exists; and by this Society were most of the prosecutions against Carlile and his followers instituted. Here introduce the ^agloating^a .

^bMy honourable friend has told me that the clergy gloated over his sufferings: this was perhaps going a little too far since there are persons to be found, and very likely some of them may be subscribers to the Vice Society, who, as is reported on one occasion of Napoleon, can with maudlin sensibility weep for the evils they inflict .¹² This however is small consolation to the sufferer.^b The very fact, that such proceedings could emanate from a Society so named, is a pregnant proof of the spirit which prevails among its lay and clerical members. Suppression of opinions they term suppression of vice: the honest promulgation of doctrines different from what they consider right they have the audacity to term a vice, an act of immorality: I do not affect surprise at this; it is far better to say plainly that he who does not believe as they do, is ipso facto a vicious and profligate man, than to impute all manner of other vices to him, as they have almost invariably done. The common vice of partisans, that of heaping calumnies upon the head of an opponent, is one by which it is matter of common observation that priests of all religions whether from blind credulity or from a still worse principle have been distinguished beyond all other men. The clergy of the Church of England have not, it is true, come quite up to the mark of the Roman Catholic clergy in this respect, because they have never had so much power of making false statements uncontradicted; but they have carried the practice of defamation as far as it could with safety be carried, and have by their calumnies embittered the lives of men among the brightest ornaments of human nature.

If my honourable friend has made so lame a defence of the church on the subject of religious prosecutions, his coadjutor¹³ has made a still more feeble one on the subject of those badges of a more widely spreading spirit of persecution which exist on our statue book under the name of the Test and Corporation Acts.¹⁴ The honourable gentleman says that those Acts were not intended for the support of the church: the honourable gentleman is a good lawyer; but Blackstone was a better; and if the honourable gentleman is right, Blackstone is wrong; for Blackstone says expressly that these Acts exist for the support of the church.¹⁵ But, when I find the honourable gentleman ignorant of the tricks by which the Protestant Dissenters were persuaded not to oppose these Acts, under the pretence that they would not be enforced against them, tricks which are wittily typified by Arbuthnot under the emblem of Don Diego persuading Jack to hang himself, under pretence that Sir Roger would cut him down;¹⁶ when I likewise find the honourable gentleman ignorant, at least apparently so, of the too celebrated Act of Uniformity;¹⁷ when I find him equally ignorant of the equally celebrated statute termed the Occasional Conformity Act¹⁸ passed to keep out those who, although Dissenters, yet not considering the service of the Church of England to be profane or idolatrous, thought that they could conscientiously attend it occasionally and thereby escape the disabilities of the law—when I see all this and when I find him absolutely astonished that Hume should be considered a good witness against the church, a man who sold his conscience for them, a writer who violated every law of historical veracity in order to screen the church,¹⁹ —I am tempted to ask, under what High Church ^cparson^c , in what obscure corner of the kingdom remote from all access of books and converse of men, the honourable gentleman imbibed his knowledge of history. The battle of the church really is not to be thus fought—we all know how great allowances ought to be made for an extemporaneous effusion but it really is a fact, that some knowledge of the subject is necessary even to make a defender of the church; and until the honourable gentleman shall have acquired such knowledge or at least shall have it more under his command than he appeared to have on the former evening, it would be much wiser in him were he to leave the cause of the church in the hands of my honourable friend who so ably followed on the same side.²⁰

I have now concluded by far the greater part of what I intend to trouble the Society with on this evening. It was in fact only in order to support and vindicate my friend the proposer of the question, that I felt desirous of taking any part whatever in the discussion, since I do not consider the question to be one which admits of being discussed with much prospect of advantage in a debate, at least if the end in view be mutual persuasion. The difference between us is too deeply rooted, and is connected on both sides with too great a number of extensive and important principles, each of them far more than sufficient to form in itself the subject of an animated and protracted discussion. How, for instance, can we agree in our estimation of the church in respect of the support which it lends to the aristocratic institutions of this country, so long as there is one portion among us who disapprove of these institutions, and think that every support which they possess is one too many, while the remainder so far from thinking that any support should be taken away, are of opinion that those institutions require, and ought to have still stronger supports than they possess? Or how again can two of the ablest speakers on the last evening,²¹ agree in their estimate of Hume’s argument in favour of a church establishment, that it diminishes the activity of the clergy; when the one is a warm admirer and partaker of religious enthusiasm, and the other condemns it under the name of fanaticism? There is a great deal more involved in this question than can be stated in a debate, and I should despise the man who, having previously been of a different opinion, could be convinced in an evening by my honourable friend’s arguments or by mine. I believe it is perfectly well understood between my other honourable friend and me, that his opinion is the legitimate consequence of his principles, and my opinion of mine. I do not however think that a discussion of this sort is wholly useless. Though it does not enable us to compare our several views, it enables all of us to know what they are; which I cannot but consider as a point gained in favor of truth and fair dealing, since I think I have observed that much of the misrepresentation and misunderstanding which take place both in public and in private life, and very serious impediment to the fair and legitimate collision of opinion arises from real bonâ fide ignorance on one side, of the views and principles of the other. It is so important, that a perfect mutual understanding should exist on this point, that I think I shall be justified in occupying five minutes more of the Society’s time for that purpose. As my object is only that gentlemen should know the reasons, not that they should be convinced by them, five minutes will suffice for that purpose as well as an hour. My honourable friend has given us an able statement of his reasons, and I freely admit that several of them are deserving of grave consideration. I do not at present intend to contest those reasons; I have only to state my own; and I shall be satisfied with one grand one, but that indeed may be said in a certain sense to include all the rest. I am an enemy to church establishments because an established clergy must be enemies to the progressiveness of the human mind.

I hold, that it is of the nature of the human mind to be progressive. But stop: I must not forget that there are persons in this country, and for aught I know in this Society, to whom the march of intellect, which is another word for the progressiveness of the human mind, is a subject of laughter and derision. I know indeed that this feigned laughter is in reality a cloak for the most abject fear, and that it would be a most delightful relief to the minds of many of these laughers if they could really feel towards the march of intellect, all the contempt they express. Still, however, since there are such persons, I think it advisable not to use any expression at which they are likely to cavil. I hold then, that it is of the nature of the human mind to profit by experience. As the aggregate of our experience is every day increasing, this of itself has a tendency to render the species progressive: but besides this we become better qualified to profit by experience in proportion to the culture of our intellectual faculties, and of that culture there are two great instruments, education and discussion. I hold that wherever mankind have been qualified to profit by experience, by possessing even in a moderate degree, these two great instruments, they have, as the mass of experience has increased, constantly grown wiser and better; and that this progressive advancement has never been interrupted but when these two means of instruction have been prevented from existing by despotism as in the Roman empire, by anarchy as in feudal Europe, or by superstition and priestcraft as in Spain and Portugal. I further hold, that from the present state and future prospects of Great Britain, France, and North America, there is, humanly speaking, no probability that these causes of retrogression should ever again recur, and that from the increasing diffusion and growing power of the two great instruments, education and discussion, it is to be expected that the human mind in these countries will continue to advance, not only with an unretarded, but as it has done during the last twenty years, with a rapidly increasing pace.

Now it is to this great tendency of the human mind, and to education and discussion as the promoters of it, that in my view of the matter, an established clergy by a sort of moral necessity must be, and at any rate always is, the bitter enemy. When I say an established clergy I mean any clergy, which is paid on condition of teaching a particular creed, but more especially a clergy connected with the governing powers of the state, and bound by that connexion to the support of certain political tenets as well as religious ones.

If there were a corporate body of physicians or a corporate body of engineers, paid by the state, rewarded with honours and wealth, on condition that they should always teach a certain set of doctrines in physic or mechanics, it can scarcely be doubted that such a body would be interested in preventing all improvement in physic or mechanics, lest the public should get beyond their particular tenets, and having done so should cease to regard these their teachers with due veneration. Happily this is not the case. Neither the physician nor the engineer is bound down to a particular set of opinions in their respective sciences; the clergyman is. Wherever there is a hierarchy—wherever there is such a thing as church government, adherence to certain tenets is the condition on which he holds both his emoluments and his power. If there be not only a hierarchy but a hierarchy connected with the ruling powers in the state, it becomes the interest of its members to uphold the existing government with all the political and moral, as well as religious prejudices, which may conduce to their holding that government in veneration. It will perhaps be said, that these opinions are the right opinions. This may be true; but it likewise may be false. It would be a considerable stretch of arrogance in mankind to suppose that they had already attained the pinnacle of knowledge either in religion or politics; it is highly probable that there is still room for improvement in both: I am sure there is much need at least so long as our perfect government finds it very difficult to prevent half our population from dying of hunger and our perfect religion has not yet found the means of preventing our jails from being constantly full. I shall not however chuse to rest my case upon any argument which implies that it is possible for an established opinion to be wrong. I will suppose that our clergy teach no opinions but such as are right, either in religion or politics. It is not the less true that in the progress of human improvement, every one of these opinions comes to be questioned. The good of mankind requires that it should be so. The good of mankind requires that nothing should be believed until the question be first asked, what evidence there is for it. The very idea of progressiveness implies not indeed the rejection, but the questioning of all established opinions. The human intellect is then only in its right state when it has searched all things, in order that it may hold fast by that which is good. Now when this spirit of universal enquiry arises, it must extend to those two most important subjects: the experience of all ages warrants the assertion that when the human mind once begins to improve, men will discuss religion and politics and no force, which does not go the length of crushing the spirit of improvement altogether, can prevent it. In consequence of this discussion persons are sure to arise who dispute the established opinions. These persons are listened to, they are allowed at least a patient hearing. This the clergy will never voluntarily allow. It is of no use to say that the clergy may defend their opinions; so they may; and if the opinions be true, and be defended with as much ability as they are attacked, they will be defended successfully. But this would give an immensity of trouble. It is well known that richly endowed bodies are never very fond of trouble: it is allowed both by the friends and the enemies of opulent church establishments, that the love of ease is always their predominant infirmity. Besides the trouble there is moreover always a lurking apprehension, lest after all their endeavours to keep the people in the right path should not succeed, or if it should, people should no longer duly venerate their pastors for communicating to them truths which, as they had examined into the evidence, they would seem to owe to their own understandings alone. How much easier and how much safer would it be, if they could be prevented from enquiring at all—if they could be made to regard the very act of enquiry, nay the very thought of questioning an established opinion, as involving the deepest guilt. It is true that they will not then hold these opinions like rational creatures, but it is of no consequence to the clergy that they should hold them like rational beings, provided they only hold them strongly enough: and no opinions are held so strongly as those which we are taught that it is impious even to demand a reason for.

Such are the motives which induce an endowed clergy to be the enemies of discussion, and as discussion always accompanies improvement they are the enemies of improvement. In order to prevent discussion, they have not scrupled wherever they had the power to debase the human mind down to the level of the brutes. In all countries where they could get the civil power to side with them, that is in almost all the Catholic countries of Europe, they have succeeded in their nefarious purpose, and mankind are still grovelling at their feet. It is very idle to say that these are Catholic priests, and therefore not to be quoted against the Church of England. That the Catholic priests perpetrated these things is not owing to any peculiar perversity in the nature of the men, it is owing to their interests as priests, aided by a religion which gave them more power to effect their purposes, but did not give them a stronger motive. In England at the reformation it became the interest of the civil power to raise public feeling against the church, and the latter consequently had no longer much power either moral or political of effecting its ends, but as soon as, under Charles I,²² it found the civil power ready to renew the alliance, it recommenced its war against the progress of the human mind, and nearly succeeded in throwing us back to the condition of France and Spain. Fortunately the habit of free enquiry had in the preceding years been too strong to be checked, and we were saved by a revolution from the double consummation of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny. Though this grand conspiracy had failed the Church of England has never ceased its resistance²³ in the detail. Not one step has been made from persecution to religious liberty but in the teeth of their most strenuous opposition; never have they suffered one particle of discussion in religion and politics which it was in their power to prevent; not a step has been taken with their good will for the diffusion of education. I speak of them as a body. They have never originated any one plan for spreading or improving it—and whatever plans have been prepared by others, from the Lancastrian and Infant Schools up to the University of London²⁴ they have, as a body, most violently opposed except that in most of these instances when they at last found that the thing would go on in spite of their opposition, they have, as the next best thing to preventing the improvement altogether, attempted to keep it in their own hands for sectarian purposes. As people would read, they might read the Bible and the Prayerbook: but as for reading the Bible without the Prayerbook, No, no, that was not to be endured. Their only doubt was whether the persons who proposed it were Atheists, Deists or Dissenters. The word of God was not fit to be read, unless that of man was administered along with it: and their account of what God said, or what in their opinion he should have said, was to be forced down the throats of babes and sucklings²⁵ avowedly on the ground that unless a belief in it were firmly fixed in the mind at an age previous to that at which the reasoning faculty begins to operate, in all probability the habit would never establish itself at all. But I have exceeded the time which I allowed myself for stating the grounds of my disapprobation of the church. I have stated them sufficiently for purposes of information. It was not my object to state them for purposes of argument—Here therefore I shall stop.

26.

Perfectibility

2 MAY, 1828

mr. president, if I had much anxiety to save my credit as a wise and practical person, I should not venture to stand forth in defence of the progressiveness of the human mind. I know that among all that class of persons who consider themselves to be par excellence, the wise and the practical, it is esteemed a proof of consummate judgment, to despair of doing good. I know that it is thought essential to a man who has any knowledge of the world, to have an extremely bad opinion of it: and that whenever there are two ways of explaining any fact, wise and practical people always take that way which attributes most folly, or most immorality, to the mass of mankind. Sir, it is not for me to dispute the palm of practicality with these sage and cautious persons. Howsoever it may be with all other aberrations of the human intellect, there is one description of errors from which it would be uncandid to deny that they are wholly free, viz. all those which arise from immoderate benevolence, or ill regulated philanthropy. It behoves those who have discarded errors so pleasing, so encouraging, so ennobling to every virtuous mind, to be very certain that they have discarded them in favour of truth. Those who have stripped themselves so philosophically of every prejudice which acts as a stimulus to our duty, should be very sure that they have left no other prejudices of a more discreditable description behind. They may be assured that the errors of benevolence are by no means those from which human prosperity has most to apprehend, and however desirable it may be for the good of mankind that the love of virtue should never rise above temperate, we must be careful not to go on cooling it till it sinks to the freezing point. Sir, I do not feel my virtue to be of so warm and impetuous a character as to need any cooling, neither have I that confidence in my own judgment which would induce me to set up my opinion of truth in opposition to hopes and feelings which at least serve as a counteracting force against hopes and feelings far less pure, and I cannot but think far more pernicious. If we must err, at least let our errors not be on the side of selfishness; it is not that part, that element of the human constitution, which needs strengthening; there is not the slightest danger that it should ever be weaker than the good of human society requires.

But is it indeed an error to suppose mankind capable of great improvement? And is it really a mark of wisdom, to deride all grand schemes of human amelioration as visionary? I can assure honourable gentlemen that so far from being a proof of any wisdom it is what any fool can do as well as themselves, and I believe it is the fools principally, who have attached to that mode of proceeding the reputation of wisdom. For as I have observed that if there is a man in public or private life who is so impenetrably dull that reason and argument never make the slightest impression upon him, the dull people immediately set him down as a man of excellent judgment and strong sense, as if because men of talent and genius are sometimes deficient in judgment, it followed that it was only necessary to be without one spark of talent or genius in order to be a man of consummate judgment, because people are sometimes deceived by rash hopes in the same manner. I think I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage, and wisdom is supposed to consist not in seeing further than other people, but in not seeing so far. I mean no disrespect to some highly estimable persons, who are of a different opinion from myself on this question, but I am persuaded that a vast majority of those who laugh at the hopes of those who think that man can be raised to any higher rank as a moral and intellectual being, do so from a principle very different from wisdom or knowledge of the world. I believe that the great majority of those who speak of perfectibility as a dream do so because they feel that it is one which would afford them no pleasure if it were realised. I believe that they hold the progressiveness of the human mind to be chimerical, because they are conscious that they themselves are doing nothing to forward it and are anxious to believe that great work impossible, in which if it were possible they know it would be their duty to assist. I believe that there is something else which powerfully helps many persons to the same conclusion, a consciousness that they do not wish to get rid of their own imperfections, and a consequent unwillingness to believe it practicable that others should throw off theirs. I believe that if persons ignorant of the world sometimes miscalculate from expecting to find mankind wiser and better than they are, those persons who most affect to know the world are incessantly miscalculating the opposite way, and confidently reckoning upon a greater degree of knavery and folly among mankind than really exists. These last indeed differ from the others in not being so ready to correct their error, since the same utter incapacity of taking any generous and enlarged views which caused their mistake, prevents them from discovering it, and makes them impute those effects of the better part of man’s nature which they did not calculate upon, only to a different species of selfishness. I will even say, that so far from its being a mark of wisdom to despair of human improvement there is no more certain indication of narrow views and a limited understanding, and that the wisest men of all political and religious opinions, from Condorcet to Mr. Coleridge,¹ have been something nearly approaching to perfectibilians. Nay further, that the anti perfectibility doctrine, far from having the sanction of experience, is brought forward in opposition to one of the clearest cases of experience which human affairs present, and that by all just rules of induction we ought to conclude that an extremely high degree of moral and intellectual excellence may be made to prevail among mankind at large, since causes exist which have confessedly been found adequate to produce it in many particular instances.

In the little which I intend to say, I shall attempt little more than to expand and develope this last remark. There are others in this Society far more competent than myself to discuss in detail the past progress of the human mind, and the stages through which it is likely to pass in the road to further improvement. I leave it to them to point out how the difficulties are to be struggled with—it is enough for me if I can establish, on the ground of solid experience, that these difficulties may be overcome.

I shall confine myself in the first instance to the question of moral improvement. I shall not ask you, Sir, to expect among mankind any degree of moral excellence that is without parallel. My standard shall be one which we all know, which we all believe in, with which we are all familiar in our own experience. I suppose it will not be denied that there are and have been persons who have possessed a very high degree of virtue. Now here I take my stand: there have been such persons. I do not care how many; nor who they were. If I were to name any person, any historical character, to whom I think the designation applicable, without doubt that person might be cavilled at, and something raked up to throw a doubt upon his virtue, for it is difficult to adduce evidence on such a point that shall leave no possibility of cavil; but will those persons who say that this man or that man was not virtuous go farther and say that nobody was ever virtuous? I should think not. All they can say is that in the most virtuous there has been some frailty, some fault or weakness which has rendered even the best of them less than perfect. Certainly all this may be safely admitted. I shall not affirm that men in general can be made better than the best men whom the human race has hitherto produced.

Well then, here is a fact: there have been virtuous men: Now, what made them virtuous? I call upon the gentlemen on the other side to answer this question, for if it should turn out that those who are virtuous are so from causes which though they now act only upon a few, can be made to act upon all mankind, or the greater part, it is within the power of human exertion to make all or most men as virtuous as those are. I therefore challenge honourable gentlemen to say to what they attribute the superior moral excellence of some persons. If they do not answer, I will. It is to the original influence of good moral education, in their early years, and the insensible influence of the world, of society, of public opinion, upon their habits and associations in after life. Here then is specific experience. It is distinctly proved that these two forces, education and public opinion, when they are both of them brought fairly into play, and made to act in harmony with one another, are capable of producing high moral excellence. And yet the greater part of the arguments which have been advanced against us this evening are intended to prove that moral education and public opinion are not capable of producing these effects.

Why then have these causes not produced the same effects upon all, which they have upon some? Why but because they have not acted upon all. No pains have been taken with the moral education of mankind in general. The great business of moral education, to form virtuous habits of mind, is I may say entirely neglected: the child is indeed punished for certain immoral acts, but as for going to the root of the evil, and correcting the dispositions in which these acts originate, the thing is never thought of, or if it is thought of, nothing can be more ridiculously inefficacious than the means which are taken to effect it. And all this from sheer ignorance: for it is not that people do not set a sufficient value upon those habits of mind which lead to good habits of conduct; it is that they really do not know how such habits are generated, what they depend upon, and what mode of education favours or counteracts them. While that education which is called education is in this deplorable state, that insensible education which is not called education is still worse, for almost every where the great objects of ambition, those which ought to be the rewards of high intellectual and moral excellence, are the rewards either of wealth, as in this country, or of private favour, as in most others; and it is an established fact in the nature of man that whatever are the means by which the great recompenses of ambition are to be obtained, the person who possesses these means, and can therefore pretend to those recompenses, is the person who exercises influence over the public mind; he is the person whose favour is courted, whose actions are imitated, whose opinions are adopted, and the contagion of whose feelings is caught by the mass of mankind.

It is a very poor and ill divided public opinion, which can be formed out of an aggregate so ill composed. And yet that public opinion which is the result of so bad a moral education, is sufficient whenever it is combined with a better moral education to produce all the virtue which we see realized in some individuals of mankind as they now are.

It will of course be said that although good moral education and the operation of public opinion produce so much excellence in some persons, it does not follow that they can in all. I maintain on the contrary, that there is much less difficulty in producing it in all than there has been to produce it in some. Whatever of moral excellence now exists, has been produced in spite of a thousand obstacles: in spite of systems of education which if the names were altered and they were reported to us as existing in some far distant country would be considered incredible from the absolute fatuity, the utter abnegation of intellect which they exhibit; in spite of laws which in a hundred ways inflict evil upon one man for the benefit of another, and generate a spirit of domination and oppression on one side, of cringing and servility, mixed with bitter and vindictive resentment on the other; in spite of systems of judicial procedure which seem devised on purpose to give right and wrong an equal chance, and in which every possible encouragement is held out to the vice of insincerity—in spite of political institutions which in this at least, the most civilized country in the world, render wealth the only acquisition which is desired, poverty almost the only evil that is dreaded. All these evils might be remedied by the hand of God. If notwithstanding all these things the best moral education which the present circumstances of mankind admit of has produced, in those to whom it is given, so much excellence, what may not be expected if we remove these obstacles, and when they are taken away, give even as good a moral education to the greater portion of mankind—why not to all mankind: for moral excellence does not suppose a high order of intellectual cultivation, since it is often found in greatest perfection in the rudest minds.

With respect to such doctrines as have been advanced this evening on the other side, some of them I must confess have surprised me. We have been told that it is impossible to diminish the amount of vice, because vice arises from the passions, and it is impossible to vanquish the passions. Now, Sir, I demur to this, first, that it is taking a very narrow view of the principles of morals and the nature of the human mind to suppose that it is necessary for any good purpose to vanquish the passions. There is not one of the passions which by a well regulated education may not be converted into an auxiliary of the moral principle: there is not one of the passions which may not be as fully and much more permanently gratified, by a course of virtuous conduct than by vice. And if this be the case surely it would be the worst of policy even looking to moral excellence without regarding happiness in the least, to eradicate the passions, because it is they which furnish the active principle, the moving force; the passions are the spring, the moral principle only the regulator of human life.

But further, this very assertion that the passions cannot be vanquished may be taken as a specimen of the shallow philosophy of these gentlemen and their very superficial experience of mankind. They who profess to know human nature so well, seem to be very little aware what it is capable of. Have we not seen that men have lain for their whole lives upon beds of spikes; that they have stood all their lives upon the tops of pillars; that they have remained all their lives without stirring for one moment from a certain posture because they have willed it? Have they not swung by hooks drawn through their backs, and suffered themselves to be crushed by chariot wheels, and laid themselves voluntarily on funeral piles to be burned? Have not these things been done not by heroes and philosophers, but thousands and millions of common men, commonly educated? And then let gentlemen come and give us arguments which, if they prove any thing, prove the impossibility of all this. We could do none of these things: why? because we have never been accustomed to fix our imaginations on these things long enough for our first horror of them to wear off: but what caused these surprising achievements? It must have been either religion, conscience, or public opinion; gentlemen may choose, it shall be any one of the three: we have heard the force of each of the three separately explained away, and very plausible arguments adduced to prove that no one of them is strong enough to produce these effects. And yet the effects are produced. And let me ask these gentlemen the reason why? I will give up any two of the forces to them, if they grant me the third. If they ask, my own opinion is that all helped, but that the proximate motive had most influence, that derived from public opinion: and some honourable gentlemen who have sometimes wondered at hearing public opinion spoken of in this Society as the immense force that it is, may perhaps now see from these instances why it is so spoken of. (Introduce a passage from Combe.)²

But if such is the force of public opinion, what is wanting to produce that high state of general morality which we aspire to? Simply that public opinion should be well directed in respect of morality: that such a system of education should exist, as will give to the mass of mankind, not learning, but commonsense—practical judgment in ordinary affairs, and shall enable them to see that a thing is wrong when it is wrong, as shall make them despise humbug and see through casuistry and imposture, not to accept subterfuges and excuses for neglecting a duty, and not think the same thing laudable under a fine name and blamable under a vulgar one, for instance, not to think, like some persons in this room, that giving a man money, or money’s worth, for voting against his conviction, is criminal when called bribery, but laudable when called legitimate influence of property: to judge of men by the manner in which they act, not by the manner in which they talk; not to estimate a man’s moral excellence by the quantity of grimace which he exhibits in his own person, or by the quantity of hypocrisy which he exacts from his family and dependants; not to give men any credit for making great sacrifices at other people’s expense, or for being philanthropic at a distance and prudent at home; not to think that charity consists in making laws to take away bread from the poor, and subscribing a few pounds annually to some institution for giving it to them; and in short not to see a great many other nice distinctions which the refined and cultivated people of the present day are able to see, and very ready to act upon. And there is another thing that is requisite—to take men out of the sphere of the opinion of their separate and private coteries, and make them amenable to the general tribunal of the public at large—to leave no class possessed of power sufficient to protect one another in defying public opinion, and to manufacture a separate code of morality for their private guidance; and so to organize the political institutions of a country that no one could possess any power save what might be given to him by the favourable sentiments, not of any separate class with a separate interest, but of the people.

27.

Wordsworth and Byron

30 JANUARY, 1829

remark on the manner in which the debate has been conducted.¹

Persons who are not entitled to give an opinion on this question—viz. those who regard poetry as a mere elegant amusement, which is to give them a momentary pleasure, but to leave no permanent impression. Shew, that Poetry is an important branch of education. Education is 1. the education of the intellect. 2. that of the feelings. Folly of supposing that the first suffices without the last. Of the last, so far as influenced by literature, the great instrument is poetry. Why therefore if the end of poetry be so, should not he be considered the greatest poet who has best fulfilled this end? Not unreasonable to suppose that far from philosophy and poetry being unconnected, he ought to be called the greatest poet who is the greatest master of that branch of philosophy, which respects the education of the feelings, and has practised it most.

But waive this as being too little consonant to ordinary ideas and because the side I mean to espouse can be sufficiently vindicated without it. This the more necessary because at any rate I must call upon the Society to adopt what to many of them is a new mode of judging of the merits of a poet. In most persons criticism is not an affair of thought but of mere feeling: They read a writer and the one who moves them most they pronounce the greatest poet. Therefore as it is in the nature of different minds to be affected with any given emotion by different things, men scarcely ever agree in their criticisms, and men generally despise all poetry but that which is written for and addressed precisely to them. No doubt, the immediate purpose of all poetry is to move: and no doubt also, that the merit of a poet, his subject being given, is in proportion to the degree in which his means are well chosen for that end. What I desire is, that men would not take their emotion in the gross, and ascribe it to the poet, but would so far analyse it as to endeavour to find out for how much of it they are indebted to his genius, and how much to the previous state of their own minds. It is only thus that beauties, which depend upon the casual and transitory associations of a particular nation or a particular age, would be distinguished from those which derive their power to please, from the original constitution of human nature itself. Persons habituated to this exercise, would hesitate to treat as puerile and absurd, what other persons of minds equally cultivated with themselves admire, until they had first considered whether it was not possible that there might be some deficiency in their own minds which prevented them from being affected by poetry of a particular kind: and on the other hand, if on a close examination of that poetry which they most admired, they found that a great part of the effect it produced upon them was the effect of a not very enviable or creditable state of mind in themselves, they would perhaps find some reason for suspecting, that the very cause, which made them so admire, must make them incapable of feeling and appreciating the highest kind of poetry: for the highest kind of poetry, is that which is adapted to the highest state of mind: as a man of knowledge is superior to an ignorant one, a man of strong social affections to a malevolent one, a gentle and modest to a proud and scornful man, a man of regulated to a man of uncontrollable passions, a man of a joyful to one of a melancholy disposition, in the same proportion the poetry which delights the one is of a superior kind to that which is adapted to excite the emotions of the other.

By this test the superiority of Wordsworth obvious—but not fair to try by this test because not the usual sense of the words great poet which refer to the degree of power solely as the test of greatness without thinking of the kind. But Byron had advantages which make him appear to have more power than he has. 1. The prestiges of a story. Illustrate the immense effect of this—how it upheld Scott’s poems—upholds bad novels—believe the number of Byron’s admirers swelled immensely by those who think only of the story. 2. Next, the interest turns upon the more intense feelings—with which we more readily sympathize than with the calmer: and among these chiefly upon love—almost the only passion, not of the selfish kind, which the present arrangements of society allow to attain its natural growth. Proof of the effect of this—the poems from Giaour² to Parisina most admired from Marino Faliero³ downwards scarcely read. Wordsworth nearly precludes himself from these.

Criticize Roebuck’s method.

Now the test. Not to fetter myself by any arbitrary narrowing of the word poetry I shall make it include all it ever includes. They may be judged by the mode in which, 1. they describe objects. 2. feelings. 3. the felicitous expression of thoughts. This poetry, provided the thoughts are of a nature to excite emotions, or are made to do so by the manner in which they are expressed.

1. Describing objects. Here observe that describing objects is not poetry except in so far as they are presented in some light or viewed in some manner which makes them excite different emotions from what a naked delineation would. Example—leaps the live thunder⁴ —and the stockdove broods.⁵

Immense superiority of Wordsworth. Extreme rarity of accurate description of nature. Pope’s false imagery. Contrasted with Coleridge—The amber clouds⁶ and Wordsworth orange sky.⁷ Immense number of such passages in Wordsworth. His description of yew trees—of nutting.⁸ Read the first two stanzas of his “Resolution and Independence,” and the three beginning “as a huge stone”⁹ giving the reason for omitting the others; reason why not quote the “Intimations of Immortality.”¹⁰ In Byron nothing of this sort worth remembering, scarcely one new image drawn from external nature, and his descriptions vague and unimpressive. Nearest approach in the Siege of Corinth¹¹ but a reminiscence of Christabel.¹² Then an entire genus of Wordsworth not known to Byron—that which adorns and renders interesting ordinary objects. The “Morning Exercise”—“The Kitten and Falling Leaves”¹³ —etc. which entitle him to rank next to Milton—Nothing of this sort in Byron and why.

2. Describing feelings. It is here that Byron will be supposed the superior; and here I must allow that he comes nearer to Wordsworth than in any thing else.

There are certain feelings which they both have aimed at describing, and others which may be considered peculiar to each.

What they have both described, are those feelings which are produced in ordinary persons, by causes which in the ordinary course of events, many persons are exposed to, not perhaps in the same degree, but in a sufficient degree to know perfectly what the feelings are, and to be able to recognize a just description of them. In this genre, both poets are so admirable, that it is difficult to pronounce which has displayed greatest power. The Prisoner of Chillon¹⁴ is certainly equal to the finest poem of the kind in the language: but Wordsworth has produced twenty poems, each for its length quite equal to it. Difference illustrated by Scott and Coleridge in their descriptions of nature. Wordsworth’s pathetic poems each comprise some very deep and delicate touch of nature. Byron’s touches separately of less value, but many of them very skilfully put together; producing a whole at once consistent and true. Difficult to state which the greatest merit. “The Mad Mother”—“The Female Vagrant”—“Complaint of an Indian Woman”—“The Last of the Flock”—“The Sailor’s Mother” (a very good instance)—the “Reverie of Poor Susan”—and “Adam of Tilsbury Vale.”¹⁵ —But Wordsworth has a much wider range—Byron paints merely painful feelings—Wordsworth in addition to this presents a greater number of delightful pictures of tranquil enjoyment than any poet perhaps who ever wrote. Read what he can make of so little a subject as the “Miller and two Dames”¹⁶ the people listening to a musician in the street¹⁷ —but above all the “Highland Girl”¹⁸ —the “Solitary Reaper”¹⁹ —etc. Byron only tumultuous pleasures—which can only be described in frenzy and have been so often.

Now as to the feelings peculiar to Byron. And here I must enter a little into what may be called the metaphysics of criticism.

Must be granted that those feelings which we describe from observation only, must necessarily be described superficially. There is no depth, no intensity, no force, in our descriptions of feelings, unless we have ourselves experienced the feelings we describe: But yet, to readers who have never experienced the feelings, a superficial description may appear sufficient: and an attempt at a profound one, but thoroughly false, may be taken for true and profound both. This is the secret of their admiring bad poetry and bad acting. Say Byron has described more—but it is like the “Lioness and the Fox.”²⁰

Three kinds of feelings which Byron has described: Wordsworth could—a very acute observer of character. Tumultuous passion, of love or hatred, as in the Giaour etc. Scorn of mankind and dissatisfaction with all human enjoyment, as in Childe Harold, Lara, Cain, and Don Juan.²¹ And in his dramas, all the passions and feelings of minds of a high order. The second set of feelings only I imagine him to have experienced, and therefore they are the only ones that he has shewn much power in delineating.

From what we know of Byron’s life we have no reason to suppose that he was ever in the Giaour state—we know he was in the Childe Harold very early. I believe the Giaour pictures are entirely from imagination. Whether they are true or not I say candidly I do not know—persuaded none of the Society do. In the South there may be such persons—none here. No man in the Society will pretend he ever was in the Giaour state—else he would have come to the same end as the Giaour. Burns’²² love poems represent the passion better as it is in this country. But I am sure it is very easy to paint all this from mere imagination—Easy to paint men of one idea. You leave out all other ideas and then you have only to exaggerate—which you may easily do—for we have all experienced enough of the same feelings to have some notion of what they are, and we have only to magnify them.

Next as to the personages in his dramas. Dramatic poetry the easiest of all and almost the only one in which men can be true to nature from mere observation—People are made to shew their feelings by what they speak. Now all who have ever experienced deep feelings of any kind, know that the least and most insignificant part, the part nearest the surface, is all which shews itself in talk—at the same time this part is that which most obviously appears to the observer.

There remains then, as the only feeling which Byron has painted with any depth, the feeling of dissatisfaction with life and all which is in it: which feeling he has painted in a great variety of forms—in one form and that a very weak and commonplace and uninteresting one in Childe Harold and Don Juan—that is obviously the form in which it existed in himself: the same feeling is delineated in three other different shapes and in all these instances very powerfully, in Lara, Manfred,²³ and Cain, in each of which he seems to have exceedingly skilfully fixed and embodied in a permanent character, feelings which had only passed through his own mind at certain times, but did not permanently exist in him, and it is upon these three works, in my opinion, that his claim must rest to the honor of having done what a poet cannot I think be called great unless he does, viz. to have enlarged our knowledge of human nature. And those only who are or have been in this unhappy state of mind can thoroughly sympathize in or understand these poems.

We next see what are the feelings which Wordsworth has described and Byron not.

Certain in the first place, that whatever he has described, he has felt. No poet in whom you have the same certainty. Every poem of Wordsworth almost, except his great one,²⁴ was written on the occasion of some thing or other which affected his feelings at the time, and gave him a desire to fix and recal these feelings by putting them into verse. Now he is a remarkable man and his feelings consequently of a remarkable kind: and people who only read one poem only having a single case of the feeling presented to them, cannot sympathize in it and think it mere affectation. But this is a disadvantage which every poet who has feelings that are not common ones, must labour under, viz. the necessity of in some measure educating his reader’s mind to make him susceptible of those feelings. For this reason no one can appreciate him who does not read his writings consecutively.

Objected to Wordsworth that he represents feelings as excited by objects which are not in themselves capable of exciting such feelings. Finds human sympathies everywhere every object speaks to him of man and of his duties. That they do not excite such feelings in all persons, and in very few in the same degree is true. I cannot say they always excite the same feelings in me. But he who should pronounce them unreal or unnatural on this account would prove himself to have a very contracted knowledge of the powers of the human mind. Wordsworth is a man of extremely meditative habits: and the habitual subjects of his meditations are two: 1. natural objects. 2. the feelings and duties of man: shew how by meditating on these two subjects and constantly as a poet illustrating the one by the other each becomes capable of exciting the other. If people tell me then of his exaggeration and mystification of this, his talking of holding communion with the great forms of nature, his finding a grandeur in the beatings of the heart²⁵ and so forth, I allow that this is nonsense but the introduction of this into the present question is charging Wordsworth the poet with the faults of Wordsworth the metaphysician. Shew the difference between describing feelings and being able to analyse them—the tendency of a man who by a long indulgence of particular trains of association, has connected certain feelings with things which excite no such feelings in other men, if he then attempts to explain is very likely to go into mysticism—to think that there is a natural connexion between those objects and those feelings, and as he knows there is not in the objects as they appear to the world, any thing to excite such feelings, he looks beyond them and conceives something spiritual and ideal in them which the mind’s eye only can see—witness the mysticism of devotion—communion with God etc.

What is bad then in Wordsworth’s account of his own peculiar feelings is not where he describes them, nor where he gives the history of them, but where he philosophizes over them and endeavours to account for them as in certain parts of the Excursion,²⁶ and some of the published passages of the Recluse.²⁷ He must be considered as having enlarged our knowledge of human nature by having described to us most powerfully and movingly a state of feeling which very few if any of us previously knew to exist. You may tell me that on my own shewing, as these feelings can only exist in the mind of a person of very peculiar habits—and scarcely in any but a poet—it is of very little importance and the knowledge of it conduces very little to human happiness. I allow that there is much of it which can hardly exist in the many, but there is much that can. I have learned from Wordsworth that it is possible by ^adwelling on certain ideas^a to keep up a constant freshness in the emotions which objects excite and which else they would cease to excite as we grew older—to connect cheerful and joyous states of mind with almost every object, to make every thing speak to us of our own enjoyments or those of other sentient beings, and to multiply ourselves as it were in the enjoyments of other creatures: to make the good parts of human nature afford us more pleasure than the bad parts afford us pain—and to rid ourselves entirely of all feelings of hatred or scorn for our fellow creatures. Immense importance of this state of mind—difficulty of painting it because no prototype. My own change since I thought life a perpetual struggle—how much more there is to aim at when we see that happiness may coexist with being stationary and does not require us to keep moving. This state of feeling to be looked to as an end, for I fear in the present state of society something stronger is required. Quote Wordsworth’s “Ode to Duty.”²⁸

This not the only state of feeling that Wordsworth has painted better than any one else. He has painted all the successive states of his own mind. 1. the mere animal delights received from the beauties of nature. 2. the decay of those feelings, and their being replaced by those others which have been described. Quote from his “Tintern Abbey”²⁹ and his “Intimations of Immortality.” He has also painted many other feelings but this will come better under the third head—because it is the peculiarity of Wordsworth that his feelings are excited by thoughts more than those of poets usually are—which is a test of the highest state of a mind.

3. Felicitous expression of thoughts which either are in themselves or are made by the expression, capable of exciting emotions.

What valuable thoughts are there in Byron? All negative and therefore will cease to be valuable. Wordsworth’s thoughts comprise a better and a more comprehensive morality than all other poets together—and alone of all poets he seems to be able to make moralizing interesting. Other moralists merely tell you what not to be: to avoid certain acts, or certain dispositions, and by way of directions as to what you are to be they tell you something vague, to turn your heart to God and so on. Wordsworth illustrates all the most important features of the happiest and most virtuous character and unfolds most recondite truths in morals and mental philosophy—while the poems in which he does this are by far the most delightful as mere poems that he ever wrote.

1. A philosopher’s scorn of scorn—the lines under a yew tree³⁰ —and the series of sonnets on scandal.³¹

2. The propriety of diffusing and not concentrating our sympathies—“Laodamia.”³²

3. The influence of certain acts in producing habits of benevolence and virtue—the “Cumberland Beggar.”³³

4. The poem beginning “We talked with open heart and tongue”³⁴ also “Michael.”³⁵

5. “A Poet’s Epitaph.”³⁶ “The Happy Warrior”³⁷ etc. “Ode to Duty.”

Under the head of common feelings defend Wordsworth from the charge of painting only the emotions of rustics with whom we cannot sympathize.

Answer. He has painted men.—abstracting from their education. Uncultivated—yes—but not morally only intellectually and not even intellectually, for they have no prejudices or vulgarities of thought and those other things which disgust us in uncultivated men. You may say rustics are not such—but they may be, and his object was to shew that. By chusing a virtuous character from a village, you do not imply that there are no vicious ones. He has painted vicious rustics: Most powerfully in “Peter Bell”³⁸ —also in “Andrew Jones,”³⁹ the “Two Thieves”⁴⁰ and sundry others. Not deceived by it—let him read Crabbe⁴¹ as an antidote.

Under the head of Wordsworth’s feelings:

That Wordsworth tends to make men quietists, to make them bear. This only a just charge, if men were to read nothing but Wordsworth. Allow that at present great struggles are necessary and that men who were nourished only with his poetry would be unnerved for such struggles. What then? Is a poet bound to do every thing? Allow that the habit of bearing those evils, which can be avoided, is a bad habit. But because there are some things which ought not to be borne, does it follow that there is no use even now, in learning to bear many evils even now which must be borne—hope the time will come when no evils but those arising from the necessary constitution of man and of external nature.

28.

Montesquieu

3 APRIL, 1829

before i commence, it is proper to explain to those who were not present at the last debate, the reasons which will induce me to occupy their attention with other topics and in another manner than what the terms of the question would suggest, or perhaps, in most cases, justify.

An honourable gentleman¹ who spoke towards the conclusion of the previous debate, and whose speech, I imagine, most of those who heard it will not easily forget, has thought proper to ground his defence of the merits of Montesquieu chiefly upon the demerits of those who have adopted a method of philosophizing opposite to that of Montesquieu in politics and legislation. Whether this be the proper basis to rest the discussion upon, is a question which will probably be answered differently by different persons: at all events I do not mean to contend that it is not, as it is my intention to imitate the honourable gentleman in making this, whether it be a branch of the subject or a digression from it, the principal topic of my speech. I am impelled to this by what, indeed, forms my only motive for troubling the Society at all on this question, and especially for undertaking the task, for which I feel myself wholly unfit, of opening the debate: I mean the desire of taking with as little delay as possible what appears to me the proper notice of the fierce attack which the honourable gentleman was pleased to make upon the principles and practice of those who think as I do on this question. The honourable gentleman was not content with stigmatizing their opinions as false. He ascribed to those opinions, all manner of demoralizing effects—there was no end to the expressions which he heaped, indicative of the odious or disagreeable habits of mind, which were connected with those opinions, and of which, as he told us, the character and lives of the persons who held them were a practical illustration. The persons of whom these things were alleged were generally all those the current of whose speculations on government and laws, runs in a different channel from that in which he tells us, Montesquieu’s did; but more particularly those, who profess the principles of Mr. Bentham. Sir, I do not profess to be a follower of Mr. Bentham: partly because no person, who thinks for himself, will ever call himself the follower of any one, and partly because I altogether dissent from many of the opinions which those, who are ignorant enough to fancy that there is a Benthamite sect, are also ignorant enough to suppose to be the opinions of that sect. And I believe, that of the far too great number of speeches which the indulgence of this Society has permitted me to make during this and the last two years, a majority would be found to have been made in opposition to some one or other of what are vulgarly considered to be the Benthamite doctrines. In those opinions of Mr. Bentham, however, which have been the object of the honourable gentleman’s invective as in most of the opinions really professed by that great man, I have the misfortune to agree; and I consequently feel myself a party concerned in the honourable gentleman’s denunciations, and as such, I do not feel disposed to sit down quietly under them. I am far from denying that among the countless aberrations of the human understanding it is possible that a person might think all which the honourable gentleman has said, and might think that it was his duty to say it. I take it however for granted that in resorting to this mode of controversy, the honourable gentleman did not reckon upon having the use of it entirely to himself. I conclude, that in dealing with his opponents after this fashion, he was alive to the possibility that those whom he attacked might one day come to the conclusion that the employment of this description of weapons on his part, justified a recourse to it on theirs. They have indeed hitherto remained tolerably passive under the animadversions which the honourable gentleman is in the habit of pouring forth against them, for various reasons, and among others probably because they did not consider it very dignified to evince an overanxiety to stand forth in defence of themselves on slight occasions. But they have entered into no compact with the honourable gentleman that he shall fight with daggers and they with foils: and they will probably think that it is now time for the honourable gentleman to be reminded that the censorial authority which he has assumed over us is one to which he has no title but by his own election of himself to that office. On the contrary I believe that the sense of the Society will go along with me when I say, that while we do justice to the honourable gentleman’s talents, and are ready to submit to any moderate pretensions which he may set up to authority among us on that ground we yet do not recognize in him any such vast and immeasurable superiority to ourselves, as should entitle him to pronounce dictatorially upon the moral tendency of our principles and of our minds. Above all, we do not discern in him that calmness of temperament, that impartiality in collecting and care in weighing evidence, that power of representing to himself the feelings and the ideas of other men, or that accurate knowledge of the systems and opinions that he condemns which are necessary for executing so high a judicial office faithfully.

I believe the honourable gentleman does not seek to conceal, that he once held the opinions, which he now so strongly censures. Now I by no means wish to insinuate, that these opinions, as they existed in his mind, may not have been attended with every absurd and every immoral consequence which he deduces from them. From the apparent incapacity of the honourable gentleman to rest any where but in extremes, that was probably the case. But I would beg the honourable gentleman to remember that if in his mind, these opinions were really as absurd and as immoral as he represents them, the case is far otherwise in ours; and that we do not think it absolutely necessary that we should be bound by his inferences from our opinions: nay more: that we think ourselves fully as well qualified to judge what are the legitimate consequences deduceable from our principles as he is, having probably considered them much more; and that we do not precisely see why our morality should be made responsible for the errors of his logic. It has probably never ^aentered into the mind of^a the honourable gentleman to reflect what a ^blarge^b assumption in favour of his own ^cdiscernment is involved in the assertion that^c any set of philosophical opinions ^d have a demoralizing tendency. For my part, ^e I do not profess to understand all the bearings of an opinion, better than those who hold the opinion, and who have therefore so much stronger an interest than I have in discovering to what conclusions it leads. I know that those immoral consequences which may appear to me to follow from an opinion, may not follow from it considered in itself, but only when combined with some other erroneous opinion of my own. I know that there is no principle whatever which being conjoined with a sufficient number of sufficiently important errors of fact will not lead to immoral consequences. I know, that no conclusion can ever follow from a single premise; that two at least are requisite, and that very probably those to whom I am opposed may not acknowledge that other premise which is necessary to make the immoral consequence follow; that very possibly it is one which no rational person would acknowledge; and so the whole scheme of imaginary immorality may be futile. But though there is so much assumption in pronouncing any opinions to be essentially attended with immoral consequences, there is no assumption at all in supposing that an individual may have afforded ample evidence, with what consequences they are attended in his mind. And I will tell the honourable gentleman that if we are to judge what his opinions lead to, or what would result from them in a mind of a more austere or supercillious disposition, by the effect they seem to have produced even on a mind so much the opposite of those bad qualities as his own, principles more calculated to make men bigots and fanatics, and amidst the greatest external contempt for sects, to foster a spirit of mere exclusive sectarianism, never were promulgated among men. The honourable gentleman may think this very extraordinary; but what is a bigot, or what is a sectarian, except a person who is incapable of being just to men or opinions out of a certain pale, and who is perpetually ascribing evil qualities to them without ground? I am well aware that we are not entitled to impute these consequences to the honourable gentleman’s opinions, which may be very true and very useful notwithstanding: and that all opinions have in themselves a certain tendency to sectarianism. But yet, it does appear to me that if there be any difference according to the nature of the opinion, that tendency must belong in rather a superior degree to those opinions, be they true or false, which elevate and swell men with the idea that they possess a superfine, a double-distilled virtue unknown to others, which teaches them, let us understand, not to detest the vices of other people but to despise their virtues as not being sufficiently lofty and refined. Enthusiasm we know is a powerful principle: And Vanity also is a powerful principle: but when Enthusiasm and Vanity are combined there is no limit to the lengths to which men are hurried, or to that injustice which they are capable of doing to other people.

I imagine that it will hardly be required of me by the Society that I should enter very particularly into the details of the honourable gentleman’s charges of immorality, but I shall advert to one of the most curious of them, not assuredly with any purpose of repelling it, but because it illustrates a little of the nature of the honourable gentleman’s own ideals of virtue, and renders it pretty easy to see what cause is likely hereafter to have the benefit of his support. He asserted with great emphasis that there is hardly any thing which has so corrupting an effect upon the mind as to be always looking with impatience and anxiety for some external change, and to be unquiet and uneasy because it does not happen. Now he cannot mean, that at no time, and in no place, and in no state of things is any external change necessary. I should suppose even the honourable gentleman’s ardent optimism, his fervent liberality, will not carry him thus far: and indeed it does appear to me that when people are without bread they are likely enough to imagine that they would be the better for some external change which should feed them, and that when men are in the dungeons of the Bastille or of the Inquisition it is not unreasonable to suppose that they would be benefitted by any external change which should have the effect of letting them out. We must therefore conclude that in the honourable gentleman’s opinion men may be suffering every extremity of misery for want of some external changes, but that nothing can be more degrading or more contrary to true virtue than to be rendered at all uneasy by the contemplation of this misery. It is not the man who causes the misery, upon whom the honourable gentleman’s wrath is poured forth: he is protected by the honourable gentleman’s reverence for whatever is hoary and venerable, and ancient of days, and there is nothing so ancient, nothing so hoary, and therefore I suppose nothing so venerable as sin: accordingly it is not the sin which calls forth the honourable gentleman’s indignation, but the avenger. If this is to be the upshot of the honourable gentleman’s supersublimated virtue, if it is to render men indifferent spectators of other men’s misfortunes—if by its influence they shall not suffer with those whom they see suffer, if the spectacle of men bowed down by tyranny or worn out by privation is to give them no uneasiness and to inspire them with no desire to behold the tyranny overthrown and the privations alleviated, then it is impossible to conceive any system of morals more admirably adapted to serve as a cover and an apology for the vilest of selfishness. This is at least a new view of the nature of virtue, which places those who have too much feeling for other people in the foremost rank of vice. It is most true that any more than ordinary sensibility to the evils of others, or any very impatient anxiety for the amendment of the world is sufficiently apt to sour the temper and embitter the existence of the disappointed philanthropist, and that those who have spent their lives in protecting the feeble and righting the wronged have commonly enough a thankless office: but it is something new to hear them openly stigmatized as immoral themselves and the causes of immorality in others. I shall not stop to enquire how far this is consistent with the doctrines of One whom the honourable gentleman professes to reverence, of Jesus Christ, nor whether it was under the influence of such opinions as these that Howard spent his life in effecting external changes in the prisons of Europe² and Hampden and Sidney met their death by endeavouring to effect them in the government of England.³ I shall bring the honourable gentleman to a less high standard by comparing him with himself. The time certainly was, nor is that time long gone by, when the honourable gentleman thought that great external changes were necessary. Does the Society remember the debate on the disfranchisement of Penryn?⁴ Does it remember the honourable gentleman’s memorable peroration in which he described to us one after another in sounding sentences and with the most emphatic delivery, the great and crying evils of the external order of things in this country, and closed each successive article of the long catalogue by contemptuously declaring, that as a cure for these evils, the government would disfranchise Penryn? Nay, even the miserable contrivance of a ballot box did not in those days seem to the honourable gentleman a security absolutely to be despised. Let me ask, then, was it precisely from the honourable gentleman that those who held these same opinions were to expect a strain of intemperate abuse, on the same topics precisely which are employed against them by the most vulgar hirelings of the Tory faction? Those who think that the social arrangements of this country contain much requiring amendment are well aware that they have to reckon upon the bitter and unscrupulous hostility of all who make the vulgar objects of a low selfishness the end of their lives, from the prime minister⁵ down to him who furnishes penny a line slanders to the Age newspaper.⁶ But how happens it that for some time past the only persons towards whom the honourable gentleman has seemed to feel with any bitterness are those who pursue the same ends with himself for different reasons? What means this coalition in which he whose head rises so far above the clouds that whatever he may perceive that is to us invisible of the pure resplendent aether beyond, his vision as respects the affairs of this world seems to be sufficiently dim and misty, is side by side and arm in arm with the reptiles who grovel upon the earth? Is it the alliance—unnatural as some may esteem it, but as it appears to me the most natural and legitimate alliance that ever existed, between the extreme of spirituality and the extreme of worldlinesss, a virtue of pure speculation being the only one which is compatible with the very furthest extremity of practical vice? Or is it because one whose forte⁷ lies in invective and declamation is in the long run almost always found on the side of vulgar antipathy, because it is on that side chiefly and almost entirely that invective or declamation tells? Or is it, as I fear it is, because the pure light of transcendentalism, which had only dawned upon him when he made his peroration on Penryn, having since illuminated his mind with its meridian splendour, he has now become convinced that those external changes which he formerly wished for are not necessary? If so, keenly as we must regret the loss of the honourable gentleman’s support to our cause, we perhaps ought to congratulate him in a worldly point of view, that he no longer holds any opinions which need at all stand in the way of his temporal advancement: that while his premises have been constantly receding farther and farther from vulgar apprehension, his conclusions, like the other pole of the needle, have all the time been veering round in the opposite direction, and that he now sees all practical questions with the same eyes as the persons who have nothing but the light of their own self-interest to guide them. It is true, that of the many points on which the honourable gentleman once differed from that description of persons, he still differs from them on one. He still thinks that Manchester and Leeds ought to be represented, that is to say the property and intelligence of those places, words which he habitually joins together, as if there were any connexion between the two; as if intelligence, and what he calls property, that is to say large property, were not much oftener found apart, than in combination. Now as I am sincerely desirous of the honourable gentleman’s worldly welfare, which even this solitary relic of his former radical opinions may materially impede, perhaps he will permit me to suggest to him that having proceeded thus far, he may just as well go one step farther. It has been again and again unanswerably urged by Mr. Canning that the property of Manchester and Leeds does not need representation;⁸ it is already virtually represented, a phrase which here at least involves no imposture. The men of property in Leeds are represented by the representatives of the men of property elsewhere between whose interest and theirs there is the most perfect identity. Have we not the men of greatest wealth in Leeds and Manchester already in Parliament for other places? Who ever heard that the interests of Manchester had been sacrificed to those of Liverpool, or that Manchester, meaning thereby the men of property in Manchester, had ever suffered in the most minute particular for want of a representative? All descriptions of property are abundantly, and more than abundantly represented in the legislature, they have not only full protection for themselves but a great deal of undue power over other people. It is the men of no property as they are called who are not represented: it is the body of the people who are the owners of the small masses of property which being nothing to their⁹ superiors, and supposed to be nothing to them and who are not represented either actually or virtually in the House of Commons, while all the interests most decidedly opposed to them are. But it is not this portion of the inhabitants of Manchester and Leeds, that the honourable gentleman would admit to the benefits of a representation. I trust therefore that on further reflexion he will see, that he and his Tory allies are now quarrelling about a trifle, and that it is a pity such good friends should be divided by a hair’s breadth and that he will be induced by what I have now said to review and alter this only survivor of his old opinions. He will then be fully qualified as a candidate for that bad eminence which Burke attained towards the end of his career when after having talked sense and virtue all his life to the powerful classes with as little effect as sense and virtue usually have upon the possessors of power, he all at once became their idol by furnishing them with a theory to their practice, with a philosophy to the measure of their inclinations by urging them for the love of virtue to do all manner of injury to those whom they hated for the sake of vice, by giving them fine new reasons why they ought to do those things to which they were already urged by every selfish and every malignant passion in their nature. Such is likely to be the fate of the honourable gentleman. He will never carry any person with him, but when he is attacking those whom his audience have far more substantial reasons than any he gives them, to dislike.¹⁰

With respect to the merits of Montesquieu, the honourable gentleman has told us very little about them. But it appeared that the historical school of jurists, of which he told us that Montesquieu was the founder,¹¹ stood very high in his estimation; not so much however for any thing which they did, but for something which they have not done: they did not fall into the error, which he says has been committed by Mr. Bentham, of imagining that there is a universal science of politics, applicable with certain modifications to all countries. They think on the contrary that every country ought to have its separate science of politics, founded on an attentive consideration of its history, and in which the conservation of all the principal institutions of that country and of all the habits and feelings of its people should be received as a fundamental axiom.

Now, Sir, these may be the honourable gentleman’s opinions but it is altogether a mistake to suppose that they were Montesquieu’s. Montesquieu did not undertake to treat of the science of politics or of legislation. It is only incidentally that we learn from his book any of his opinions on these subjects. Montesquieu’s book is essentially a treatise on a branch of the philosophy of history: he treated of l’esprit des lois;¹² i.e. the pervading principle of the laws of any country: his object was to enquire what are the circumstances which give to the whole body of the institutions of any country that peculiar character, which distinguishes them from the institutions of other countries. In doing this he of course had frequent occasion to shew not only why an institution had been established, but why it should be by adducing the reasons of expediency which had led to its establishment in different states: but what I wish to point out is that by the very nature of his design he was confined to the circumstances of difference in the situation of different nations, from which it by no means follows that he was insensible to the more numerous and far more important circumstances of agreement. Although his notions unquestionably were very often obscure and confused on various topics of what may be termed the metaphysics of law, I believe him to have been altogether guiltless of the absurdities to which the honourable gentleman, his defender, lays claim on his behalf. Doctrines which when we come to analyse them, amount to this, that there are no tendencies which are common to all mankind. For if there are any tendencies, common to all mankind and in particular if all the stronger tendencies of human nature are such, both those which require to be regulated and those whose agency you must employ to regulate them, it surely is not an irrational subject of enquiry, what are the laws and other social arrangements which would be desirable, if no other tendencies than these universal tendencies of human nature existed. And this, when ascertained, merely constitutes pro tanto a universal science of politics, although before we apply it to any particular nation we must also ascertain what are the tendencies peculiar to that nation, and correct the abstract principles of the science by the modifications which those tendencies introduce.

I was surprised at first to find that the honourable gentleman, professing to discuss the merits of two opposite schools of law, one of which was that of Mr. Bentham, should have adverted only to Mr. Bentham’s opinions on constitutional legislation, omitting his much more original and valuable labours in other branches of the field of law: but the fact is that if the honourable gentleman had not acted in that manner, he would not have found any thing to differ from Mr. Bentham upon. Nobody ever supposed that the detailed provisions of the civil and penal code were to be the same for any two countries, or for the same country at different periods of its history. What is universal in this branch of the science consists chiefly in what I have already termed the metaphysics of law, which belongs equally to all nations because it is in truth nothing more than the explication of the fundamental ideas which are involved in the very conception of a law, or a body of laws of whatever description. And this of which Montesquieu was absolutely ignorant, to which the Roman jurists made but a very distant approximation, and which by the way it would do the honourable gentleman no harm to study, is a branch of science which we owe entirely to Mr. Bentham and to those who have followed in his footsteps.

The honourable gentleman, however, confined his animadversions to Mr. Bentham’s opinions on constitutional law: of which he seems to have formed rather a curious idea. He says that a tribe of North American Indians is the exact type and representation of Mr. Bentham’s republic—for there we may see universal suffrage, daily parliaments, and the total absence of all such pernicious institutions as a church or an aristocracy, to which Mr. Bentham ascribes all the evils which exist. Now I really do not know, that the honourable gentleman in the days of his radicalism may not have had the egregious folly to think, that a good government might be constructed out of negatives: but of this he may perfectly assure himself that Mr. Bentham does not: that in Mr. Bentham’s estimation, there go some positive conditions to the making up of a good state of society as well as some negative ones, and that the negative conditions are only required in order to give to the positive conditions full effect. In order that the honourable gentleman may be enabled better to comprehend the nature of the blunder which he has been committing, I will beg him to suppose that he were a writer on medicine, of which I dare say that he knows a great deal more than he does of Mr. Bentham’s philosophy; and that in this character he had composed and given to the world a treatise on poisons: and suppose that having read this book, I were to walk up to the honourable gentleman, present him with a bag of sawdust and to say, “Look here. Behold the type, the beau idéal of your system of diet. Observe this sawdust: there is no arsenic in it, no verdigris, not one particle of corrosive sublimate is here, you are bound to give this to all your patients and make it their daily food.” Let the honourable gentleman consider what answer he would give to a person who should thus address him, and suppose himself answered in the same way.

With respect to universal suffrage and short parliaments which the honourable gentleman has most unaccountably found among a people who have no parliaments and no representative system at all, I will tell the honourable gentleman that he has himself done precisely what when it is done by any other person makes him so excessively indignant. He has taken the mere accidents of Mr. Bentham’s system, those very parts of it which Mr. Bentham himself would allow ought to vary with difference of circumstances, and has insisted upon judging of the whole system by those accidents, keeping its great and leading principle wholly out of view. Universal suffrage and annual parliaments, let me tell the honourable gentleman, are in Mr. Bentham’s apprehension nothing more than a particular set of means for giving effect to his system. The one great principle of Mr. Bentham’s system is, that that body which like the House of Commons in this country, holds substantially in its own hands the governing power, should be chosen by, and accountable to, some portion or other of the people whose interest is not materially different from that of the whole.¹³ Now this, I am ready to maintain in the face of the honourable gentleman, is a universal principle in politics, a principle which he may add if he pleases to the two other principles respecting slavery and Christianity, which he says are not inconsistent with any form of government which ought to exist. And Mr. Bentham, of whose pretended universal science of politics the honourable gentleman has such a horror, gives so moderate an extent to that science, that he does not require the honourable gentleman to do more than add a third universal proposition to the two which he has already conceded; for wherever this one principle is in operation, there is Mr. Bentham’s system: and in all the other parts of the social system the honourable gentleman is perfectly at liberty as far as Mr. Bentham is concerned, to determine himself by circumstances. Whether this principle is or is not in operation among the North American Indians I am not sufficiently conversant with that people to know. The honourable gentleman however might have found another people in North America, on the banks of the Ohio, and likewise a people on the other side of the British channel, in both of which, by various means, and among others by the miserable contrivance of a ballot box, this sole principle of Mr. Bentham’s system has been brought happily into operation; and either of which, I can assure the honourable gentleman is a much nearer approximation to the beau idéal of Mr. Bentham’s republic, than the example which he suggested to us. And I am perfectly willing that the merits of Mr. Bentham’s system should be tried by the effects with which it is attended in either of these cases, being persuaded, that these two nations considered as entire nations, are by many degrees the happiest and the most virtuous nations on the face of the earth: and that although the form of their government would not of itself have sufficed to make them so, yet if it had not been for the form of their government those other circumstances which have cooperated in producing the effect would many of them never have had existence, and such as did exist being entirely controlled and stripped of their beneficial effect might as well, for the happiness and virtue of the people, have likewise been nonexistent.

[a-a]L] TS understandings

[1 ]Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (1755), in Oeuvres complètes, 2nd ed., 25 vols. in 12 (Paris: Feret, 1826), Vol. I, pp. 239-392.

[b]TS (not) [parentheses added in ink, presumably to indicate an addition; not here accepted]

[2 ]Not identified.

[c-c]L] TS knowledge

[d-d]L] TS [corrected in ink from There]

[e-e]L] TS suit [transcriber’s error?]

[3 ]By followers of Edmund Burke (1729-97), who lauded “the wisdom of our ancestors” in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), in Works, 8 vols. (London: Dodsley, and Rivington, 1792-1827), Vol. I, p. 485. Mill would also have in mind the Benthamite rejection of the idea, made especially prominent the next year in Bentham’s The Book of Fallacies, ed. Peregrine Bingham (London: Hunt, 1824), pp. 69-81 (Chap. ii: “The Wisdom of Our Ancestors; a Chinese Argument”).

[f-f]L] TS is [transcriber’s error?]

[1 ]The greatest Greek orator (384-322 ).

[2 ]Prominently supported in Bentham’s greatest target, William Blackstone (1723-80), Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765-69), Vol. I, pp. 50-2. A similar sentiment is found in Burke, e.g., Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, in Works, Vol. I, p. 489, and An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), ibid., Vol. III, pp. 417 and 512-13.

[3 ]In the manuscript this sentence appears in a box in the right-hand margin.

[4 ]On 6 May, 1793, Charles Grey (1764-1845; later Earl Grey) presented a motion to refer to Committee a Petition from the Society of the Friends of the People for a Parliamentary Reform; see The Parliamentary History of England, ed. William Cobbett and John Wright, 36 vols. (London: Bagshaw, Longmans, 1806-20), Vol. XXX, cols. 789-99. The evidence that Mill refers to is alluded to by Grey in cols. 789 and 795, but after debate (ibid., cols. 799-925), the motion was negatived by a large majority, and so the figures are not in the record.

[5 ]Originally by the Irish statutes, 2 Elizabeth, cc. 1 and 2 (1560), and then by Sect. 5 of the Act of Union, 39 & 40 George III, c. 67 (1800).

[6 ]Burke, “Speech on a Motion Made in the House of Commons” (7 May, 1782), in Works, Vol. V, p. 397.

[7 ]This catchphrase of the Philosophic Radicals is found, e.g., in Bentham’s Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817), in Works, Vol. III, pp. 440 and 446.

[8 ]This term was apparently first used in English by William Hazlitt (1778-1830) in “The Drama. No. IV,” London Magazine (Apr. 1820), p. 433; Hazlitt had reviewed in 1816 Ernst Arndt’s Der Geist der Zeit, from which the term derives, and then used it as the title of a work in 1825. Mill later used “The Spirit of the Age” as title for a series in the Examiner in 1831; see CW, Vol. XXII, Nos. 73, 77, 82, 92, 97, 103, and 107.

[9 ]This clause [“and who . . . mine;”] written at the bottom of the page, is marked for insertion here.

[1 ]See No. 5.

[2 ]Not identified.

[3 ]Cf. No. 5, n4.

[4 ]The repressive “Six Acts,” 60 George III & I George IV, cc. 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 9 (all 1819), were passed by Parliament after the armed suppression on 16 August of the crowd at St. Peter’s Field, Manchester (usually referred to as “Peterloo”); the most recent of the Corn Laws was 3 George IV, c. 60 (1822); the Usury Law still in force was 12 Anne, second session, c. 16 (1713); the most recent of the Game Laws (which go back to 22 & 23 Charles II, c. 25 [1671]) was 57 George III, c. 90 (1817).

[5 ]For the debate of 27 February, 1824, on the behaviour towards Charles Flint, an attorney, of George Chetwynde (1783-1850), M.P. for Stafford (1820-26) and a magistrate, see PD, n.s., Vol. X, cols. 504-25.

[6 ]George Holme-Sumner (1760-1838), then M.P. for Surrey, Speech on Commitments by Magistrates (2 Mar., 1824), ibid., cols. 646-7, and Speech on Commitments and Convictions (27 May, 1824), ibid., Vol. XI, col. 908.

[7 ]Aristides (ca. 530-468 ), archon in Athens, 489/8 , known as “the Just,” the type of equitable judge; and George Jeffreys (1648-89), Lord Chief Justice in 1683, known as a “hanging judge,” prominent in the prosecutions for treason in the last years of Charles II’s reign.

[8 ]Not identified.

[9 ]See No. 5, n4.

[10 ]Samuel Romilly (1757-1818), a famous law reformer, was patronized by William Wyndham Grenville (1759-1834), Baron Grenville, and became M.P. for Queenborough; in 1812 Bernard Edward Howard (1765-1842), 12th Duke of Norfolk, brought him in for Arundel. Henry Peter Brougham (1788-1868) had been brought into the House for Camelford in 1810 through the influence of Henry Richard Vassal Fox (1773-1840), 3rd Baron Holland; in 1815 he was offered a seat for Winchelsea by William Harry Vane (1766-1842), 3rd Earl of Darlington.

[11 ]A common term for the Ottoman Sultans of Turkey.

[12 ]The “swinish multitude” became an ironic catchphrase of the Radicals following Burke’s use of the term in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), in Works, Vol. III, p. 114.

[13 ]Named for John Loudon McAdam (1756-1836), a Scottish inventor who devised a method of making all-weather roads from a thick, compressed layer of broken stones. His method was approved by a Committee of the House of Commons in 1823.

[14 ]By an unheaded decree of 20 June, 1790 (Gazette Nationale, ou Le Moniteur Universel, 21 June, p. 704).

[15 ]Cf. Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1845), An Inquiry Whether Crime and Misery Are Produced by Our Present System of Prison Discipline (London: Arch, 1818), p. 44.

[16 ]Cf. Proverbs, 29:8.

[17 ]E.g., Arnauld and Nicole, La logique, pp. 293-303 (Pt. III, Chap. ix); and Henry Aldrich (1647-1710), Artis logicae compendium (Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre, 1691), Sects. 6-7.

[18 ]Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), A Tale of a Tub (1704), in Works, ed. Walter Scott, 19 vols. (Edinburgh: Constable, 1814), Vol. XI, pp. 114-17.

[19 ]I Samuel, 17.

[20 ]Judges, 16:25-30.

[21 ]Not identified.

[22 ]Not identified.

[23 ]Not identified.

[24 ]That is, party caucuses limited the field by choosing candidates for election.

[25 ]The typescript reads “[combine]” presumably to indicate a gap or a doubtful reading.

[26 ]E.g., under 1 James I, c. 27 (1603).

[27 ]See the unheaded leader on the case of John Henry Franks (a Surrey labourer) in the Morning Chronicle, 3 Aug., 1824, pp. 2-3, to which Mill refers below, where these phrases are used. Penalties for taking or destroying eggs are found in Sect. 2 of 1 James I, c. 27 (1603); cf. No. 19, n11 below.

[28 ]Neither of these cases has been identified.

[29 ]Hazlitt, “The Spirits of the Age (No. III): The Late Mr. Horne Tooke,” New Monthly Magazine, X (Mar. 1824), 246, reports this remark by John Horne Tooke (1736-1812), the philologist and political radical.

[30 ]The speaker has not been identified.

[31 ]George Canning (1770-1827), then M.P. for Harwick, Foreign Secretary and leader of the House of Commons; for his opinion, see Corrected Report of the Speech of the Right Honourable George Canning, in the House of Commons, 25th April, 1822, on Lord John Russell’s Motion for a Reform of Parliament (London: Hatchard, 1822).

[32 ]Joseph Hume (1777-1855), M.P. for Montrose and a life-long friend of James Mill’s, was one of the best known Radicals in the House of Commons at this time.

[33 ]Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758-94) was seen as the main instigator of the Terror during the French Revolution.

[34 ]William Cobbett (1762-1835), the “Tory Radical” writer and publicist, was constantly in the public eye because of his repeated broadsides against the government. Henry Hunt, who had been imprisoned after Peterloo for sedition, was released in 1822, but had little influence thereafter.

[35 ]Initially established under Edward III to allow equity a role in the law, the Court developed an immense body of procedural rules that made judgments costly and slow.

[1 ]Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), 5th ed. with additions, 3 vols. (London: Murray, 1817).

[1 ]Possibly Charles Austin (1799-1874), who spoke first for the Utilitarian side (CW, Vol. I, p. 127).

[2 ]Robert Owen (1771-1858), Scottish reforming mill-owner, known to James Mill and Bentham, had promulgated his comprehensive views on cooperation in a number of works: see, e.g., Report to the County of Lanark, of a Plan for Relieving Public Distress, and Removing Discontent, by Giving Permanent, Productive Employment, to the Poor and Working Classes (Glasgow: Wardlaw and Cunningham; Edinburgh: Constable, et al.; London: Longman, et al., 1821).

[3 ]The uncancelled part of the manuscript ends here; the cancelled continuation (which also breaks off) is a draft of the next paragraphs of the speech.

[a-a]L further

[4 ]E.g., Report, p. 2; and cf. A New View of Society (1813), 2nd ed. (London: Longman, et al.; Edinburgh: Constable, and Oliphant; Glasgow: Smith, and Brash, 1816), p. 175.

[b-b]L] TS have [transcriber’s error?]

[5 ]Owen, Report, pp. 23-49.

[6 ]Possibly William Thompson (1775-1833), an Irish socialist and proponent of sexual equality, who was “the principal champion” on the Owenite side of the debate (CW, Vol. I, p. 129).

[7 ]Cf. Owen, Report, pp. 25-6.

[c-c]L] TS animals;

[d-d]L further

[e-e]L He

[f-f]L] TS [a gap left, presumably because transcriber could not read word]

[g]TS [a gap left here as for an unreadable word L [no gap]]]

[1 ]Charles Austin.

[2 ]Connop Thirlwall (1797-1875), had been, like Mill, a child prodigy, reading Greek fluently at four years of age, and composing prolifically at age seven. At this time he was a Chancery barrister, with a reputation for eloquence earned at Cambridge; later he became known as an historian and controversial Bishop of St. David’s. Mill says (Autobiography, CW, Vol. I, p. 129) Thirlwall was the most striking speaker in this debate, though their views were widely divergent. “His speech,” Mill notes, “was in answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered two sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since heard any one whom I placed above him.” In the Early Draft the passage continues: “I made an elaborate reply to him at the next meeting, but he was not there to hear it . . .” (ibid., p. 128).

[3 ]The manuscript here has “See (A)”; i.e., insert the passage so marked, written on f. 16r (indicated in the text by a-a).

[4 ]One of these was Thirlwall; the other, whose performance Mill deprecates, was John Gale Jones (1769-1838), the radical apothecary who had been active in the London Corresponding Society in the 1790s and as an ally of Henry Hunt in the late 1810s. Mill says in his Autobiography of this performance: “The well known Gale Jones, then an elderly man, made one of his florid speeches” (CW, Vol. I, p. 129).

[5 ]No. 8.

[6 ]The manuscript here has “B”; i.e., insert the passage so marked, written on ff. 14r and 13v (indicated in the text by b-b).

[7 ]Not identified.

[8 ]Cf. Owen, A New View, p. 175.

[9 ]For Owen’s use of “parallelogram” (justifying Mill’s little joke), see Report, pp. 27-8.

[10 ]In fact, the second.

[11 ]Jones (as is evident below).

[12 ]See Humphry Davy, “The Bakerian Lecture on Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, XCVII, Pt. 1 (1807), 1-56.

[13 ]Juvenal (ca. 60-140 ), Satire VI, in Juvenal and Persius (Latin and English), trans. G.G. Ramsay (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 96 (l. 165).

[14 ]Thirlwall.

[15 ]Not identified.

[16 ]Here in the manuscript there is an unexplained inked opening square bracket; there being no closing one, perhaps a new paragraph is intended.

[17 ]A common theme in Cobbett: see, e.g., “Rural Ride, through the North East Part of Sussex,” Cobbett’s Weekly Register, 6 Sept., 1823, cols. 625-6.

[18 ]The first manuscript ends here.

[19 ]Matthew, 16:3.

[20 ]Presumably on cooperation; see No. 10 below.

[21 ]Presumably such a passage on the proper relation between reason and emotion as that found in the Republic (Greek and English), trans. Paul Shorey, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946), Vol. I, p. 406 (IV, 441).

[22 ]Cf. Daniel, 5:27.

[1 ]The text ends at the bottom of the page.

[1 ]The utilitarian maxim, enunciated by Jeremy Bentham first in his Fragment on Government (1776), in Works, Vol. I, p. 227.

[2 ]Not identified.

[3 ]Owen, Report, p. 1.

[4 ]A vertical line through this and the previous sentence may signal cancellation.

[5 ]Robert Peel (1750-1830) inherited the fortune from calico-printing initiated by his father Robert in 1764 and increased by new industrial techniques. In turn the fortune came to the third Robert Peel (1788-1850), then Home Secretary.

[6 ]Alexander Baring (1774-1848), 1st Baron Ashburton, inherited the highly successful banking house established by his father Francis (1740-1810) in 1770. The family fortune was initiated by Francis’s father, John, who emigrated from Bremen and established a cloth manufactory near Exeter.

[7 ]The manuscript ends here in the middle of the page.

[1 ]William Thompson. For Goliath, see I Samuel, 17.

[2 ]Mill is alluding to Thompson’s Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain Them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery (London: Longman, et al., 1825).

[3 ]See a fragment of it in No. 10.

[4 ]See Owen, Report, pp. 50-1.

[5 ]William Ellis (1800-81), another close associate of Mill’s in these years, was an underwriter for the Indemnity Marine Insurance Company.

[6 ]Thompson, Appeal, p. 67.

[7 ]The part of the manuscript in the Mill-Taylor Collection ends here with cancelled words that run to the end of f. 12v: “It appears therefore to me conclusively established that the Cooperative system has no pretensions”; the concluding part, in Connecticut College, begins at the top of f. 13r.

[1 ]An Outline of the System of Education at New Lanark (Glasgow: Wardlaw and Cunningham, 1824), by Owen’s son, Robert Dale Owen (1801-77), gives the details of the system, founded on the belief that character is formed by circumstances, and directed towards associating in the child’s mind individual happiness and that of the community.

[1 ]The most recent of the Vagrancy Laws (which go back to the mediaeval period) were the temporary Consolidating Act, 3 George IV, c. 40 (1822), and 5 George IV, c. 83 (1824).

[2 ]For the phrase, see No. 5, n7.

[3 ]Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 ) and Gaius Luscinus Fabricius (fl. 282 ) were models of patrician integrity.

[4 ]Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus Nero (37-68 ), Roman Emperor, and Ismail Ibn Al-Sharif (1645-1727), Sultan of Morocco, were models of tyrannical despotism.

[5 ]For the authorities, see No. 5, n2.

[6 ]In a handful of port towns, naval centres, and dockyard towns, the economic weight of the Treasury or the Admiralty was sufficient to ensure government control of the representation.

[1 ]William George Spencer Cavendish (1790-1858), Duke of Devonshire, was known for his extensive collections and vast expenditures; he was to spend over £50,000 on a visit to Russia later in 1826. William Wentworth, Earl Fitzwilliam (1748-1833), who had inherited estates worth £40,000 per annum, kept a princely establishment, with famed stables.

[2 ]This commonly used phrase comes from William Windham (1750-1810), statesman, M.P. for various constituencies 1784-1810, Speech on the Defence of the Country (22 July, 1807), PD, 1st ser., Vol. 9, col. 897.

[1 ]Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743-94), Vie de Voltaire (1787), in Voltaire, Oeuvres, Vol. LXIV, p. 14.

[2 ]Ibid.

[3 ]John Arthur Roebuck (1801-79), then a student of law, and later a leading Radical politician, had come under Mill’s tutelage after his return to England from Canada in 1824. He was probably Mill’s closest associate at this time.

[4 ]Queen Mary (1542-87) married Henry Stuart (1545-67), Lord Darnley, in 1565. He associated with rebels, and was subject to a secret sentence of death when the house in which he was recuperating (perhaps from poison) was blown up; his strangled corpse was discovered in the grounds.

[5 ]William Shakespeare (1564-1616), King Lear, III, ii, 59; in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), p. 1275.

[6 ]Marcus Junius Brutus (ca. 78-42 ), assassin of Julius Caesar in 44 , committed suicide after his defeat at Philippi, where he had been fighting to maintain the republic.

[7 ]Gaius Marius (157-86 ) and Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 ), though rivals, served together in the Jugurthine war in Africa (107 ) and the war against the Cimbri and Teutones (104-101 ), during which their troops were noted for plunder. Sulla also amassed treasure in the war (87-83 ) against Mithradates. Marius served as Consul six times between 107 and 100 ; Sulla was Dictator of Rome from 82 to 80

[8 ]Sallust, “Bellum Catilinae,” in Sallust, Vol. I, pp. 8-10 (V).

[9 ]Montesquieu, Considérations, p. 3.

[10 ]Sallust, “Bellum Catilinae,” p. 12 (VII).

[1 ]The Nicomachean Ethics and The “Art” of Rhetoric, studied in Greek.

[2 ]See No. 6, n17.

[3 ]Mill presumably has in mind John Playfair (1748-1819), who was educated at St. Andrews and lectured at Edinburgh; Robert Simson (1687-1768), who was educated and lectured at Glasgow; Matthew Stewart (1717-85), who was educated at Glasgow and Edinburgh and lectured at the latter; and John West, who was educated and lectured at St. Andrews. Mill had studied works by them in his early years, indeed when he was “a boy of fourteen.”

[4 ]William Mitford (1744-1827), The History of Greece (1784-1818), 10 vols. (London: Cadell and Davies, 1818-20).

[5 ]The Greek playwright (ca. 485-407 ).

[6 ]Euripides’ Hecuba had been edited by Richard Porson (London: Wilkie, 1802); Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Prometheus Vinctus had both been edited by Charles James Blomfield (Cambridge: Typis Academicis, 1818 and 1810, respectively).

[7 ]The third of the great Greek tragedians (ca. 496-406 ). Mill may be referring to Edward Burton (1794-1836), An Introduction to the Metres of the Greek Tragedians (Oxford: Pearson, 1821), which reached a 3rd ed. in 1826.

[8 ]Jean Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’Argens (1704-71), Lettres juives, ou Correspondance philosophique historique et critique, entre un juif voyageur à Paris et ses correspondans en divers endroits (1736-37), new ed., 8 vols. (The Hague: Paupie, 1754), Vol. VII, pp. 181-2 (lettre cxciii).

[1 ]Octavius Greene, not otherwise identified, though possibly the author of The Pass of Bonholme and Other Verses (London: printed Cox, 1831).

[2 ]The third degree of honour in the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge, after the Wranglers and Senior Optimes.

[3 ]The articles of faith of the Church of England, found in the Book of Common Prayer.

[4 ]See No. 17, n3.

[1 ]Not identified.

[2 ]John Horatio Lloyd (1798-1884), a friend of Mill and of Henry Cole.

[3 ]William O’Brien, not otherwise identified.

[4 ]Not identified.

[5 ]A Radical catchphrase, probably deriving from William Godwin (1756-1836), Things As They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794).

[6 ]See the opening of No. 14 above.

[7 ]For the term, see No. 5, n7.

[8 ]Henry George Grey (1802-94), Lord Howick (later 3rd Earl Grey) was a candidate for Winchelsea (which he represented 1826-30); these views are found in the report of his speech of 11 April in “Newcastle Dinner to Lord Howick,” Examiner, 23 Apr., 1826, p. 258.

[9 ]Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (1772-1834), a German inventor, showman, and charlatan, exhibited “Turk,” a chess-playing automaton that in fact was operated by a man hidden within it.

[10 ]Cf. Acts, 20:35.

[11 ]Cf. No. 6, n27.

[12 ]Mill’s ironic references cover centuries of English rule over Ireland, but technically the British Constitution could be said to have included Ireland since the Act of Union, 39 & 40 George III, c. 67 (1800).

[13 ]For the statutes, see No. 5, n5.

[14 ]For the Minutes of Evidence and Reports of the Committees of the Commons and Lords inquiring into the recent disturbances in Ireland, see PP, 1825, Vols. VII-IX passim.

[15 ]See No. 14.

[16 ]PD, n.s., Vol. 15, cols. 370-1 (18 Apr., 1826), and col. 1004 (8 May, 1826), record the victories of the landed interest. For more detail, see No. 20, n18.

[17 ]Mitford’s main authorities are Aristotle, Thucydides (5th-century ), and Polybius (ca. 200-120 ).

[18 ]William Robertson (1721-93), The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V (1769), in Works, 6 vols. (London: Longman, et al., 1851), Vol. III, p. 379.

[19 ]See, e.g., Isocrates (436-338 ), To Demonicus, in Isocrates (Greek and English), trans. George Norlin, 3 vols. (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1928), Vol. I, pp. 4-35; Aeschines (ca. 390-338 ), Against Timarchus, in The Speeches of Aeschines (Greek and English), trans. Charles Darwin Adams (London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1919), pp. 8-9; and Demosthenes, De falsa legatione, in De corona and De falsa legatione (Greek and English), trans. C.A. and J.H. Vince (London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1926), pp. 420-6.

[20 ]For this term, see No. 4, n3.

[21 ]John Scott (1751-1838), 1st Earl Eldon, Lord Chancellor 1807-27 and leader of the Ultra-Tories, frequently dwelt on the popularity of following tradition: see, e.g., his speeches of 5 and 17 May, 1825, and 7 Mar., 1826, PD, n.s., Vol. 13, cols. 373-4 and 765, and Vol. 14, cols. 1156-7.

[22 ]The manuscript in the University of Hull ends here.

[23 ]Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (1531), in Opere istoriche e politiche, 4 vols. (Filadelphia: Nella stamperia delle Provincie Unite, 1818), p. 165 (Bk. I, Chap. lviii).

[24 ]Aristophanes (fl. 427-388 ), Greek satirical playwright, The Knights, in Aristophanes (Greek and English), trans. Benjamin Bickley Rogers, 3 vols. (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924), Vol. I, p. 194 (752-5).

[25 ]I.e., Acts preventing seditious meetings and assemblies, such as 57 George III, c. 19 (1817) and 60 George III & 1 George IV, c. 6 (1819).

[26 ]The University of Toronto manuscript, f. 1r, which ends here, has two vertical lines drawn through it, as for cancellation; the other sides are not cancelled.

[1 ]Tom Cribb (1781-1848) was a famed pugilist who kept a public house after retirement.

[2 ]The Chelsea Royal Hospital for invalid soldiers, initiated by Charles II, was opened in 1694.

[3 ]Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852), hero of the Napoleonic Wars, was created Duke of Wellington in 1814.

[4 ]For the sense of the allusion, see No. 6, n27.

[5 ]William O’Brien; see No. 19.

[6 ]Not identified.

[7 ]A proverb, sometimes used as an epitaph, perhaps deriving from a play of words on Ecclesiastes, 38:22.

[8 ]The following fable was later used by Mill as a footnote to his “Rationale of Representation” (1835); see CW, Vol. XVIII, pp. 44n-5n. It is a variation on “The Kingdom of the Lion,” in Aesop’s Fables, trans. Vernon Stanley Vernon Jones (London: Heinemann; New York: Doubleday, 1912), p. 145.

[a-a]35 goatish, sheepish, and swinish

[9 ]See No. 6, n12 for the allusion.

[b-b]35 ‘intellectual and virtuous’

[c-c]-35

[d-d]35 those

[e-e]35 have the protection of

[f-f]35 You demand a representative government: nothing can be more reasonable—absolute monarchy is my abhorrence. But you must be just in your turn. It is not numbers that ought to be represented, but interests.

[g-g]35 great interests of the country

[h]35 Would you, because you are the majority, allow no class to be represented except yourselves?

[i-i]35 if you forthwith submit, he grants you his gracious pardon and a class representation

[j-j]35 elect

[k-k]35 crocodiles six crocodiles,

[l-l]-35

[m-m]35 a million of

[n-n]35 who was at that time in

[o-o]-35

[p-p]-35

[q-q]35 moved

[r-r]-35

[s-s]35 half a million

[t-t]35 Majesty’s

[u-u]35 vehemently

[v-v]35 was received with a general howl

[w-w]35 million of

[x-x]35 a thousand geese

[y-y]-35

[z]35 Even the Dogs, finding resistance useless, solicited a share of the spoil; and when they were last heard of, they were gnawing the bones which the Lion had thrown to them from the relics of his royal table.

[10 ]Not identified.

[11 ]See No. 5, n2.

[12 ]See No. 6, n4.

[13 ]Robert Stewart (1769-1822), Lord Castlereagh, 2nd Marquis of Londonderry, leader of the House of Commons, was exceedingly unpopular as the main instrument of the repressive measures after the Napoleonic Wars, and as an instigator of the divorce proceedings against Queen Caroline in 1820; his demeanour was notoriously unresponsive and unfeeling.

[14 ]The Tory ministry, headed by Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770-1828), Lord Liverpool, had been in office since 1812. Some aristocrats disliked Canning, the leader of the House of Commons and Foreign Secretary, because they saw him as a political adventurer and inveterate intriguer, and because they were opposed to his liberal attitudes to Catholic emancipation and foreign policy.

[15 ]The manuscript ends here, at the bottom of the page. The next two paragraphs are from the second typescript.

[16 ]The second typescript ends here; the rest of the text is based on the third typescript.

[17 ]Edward Knatchbull (1781-1849), Tory M.P. for Kent 1819-30 and 1832-45, was an opponent of corn-law reform and a leader of the Protestant resistance to Catholic Emancipation.

[a-a]L] TS capet [transcriber’s error?]

[18 ]William Wolryche Whitmore (1787-1858), then M.P. for Bridgnorth, Speech on the State of the Corn Laws (18 Apr., 1826), PD, n.s., Vol. 15, cols. 318-35, had called for the relief of distress through a revision of the Corn Laws. He had been supported by Charles William Wentworth Fitzwilliam (Lord Milton, later 3rd Earl Fitzwilliam) (1786-1857), ibid., cols. 351-5. George Holme-Sumner, then M.P. for Surrey, had spoken against Whitmore and for “the landed gentlemen of England,” ibid., cols. 355-8. Thomas Buckler-Lethbridge (1778-1849), M.P. for Somerset 1806-12 and 1820-30, Speech on the Corn Laws (2 May, 1826), ibid., cols. 784-91, had specifically responded to Fitzwilliam’s remarks, on behalf of those whose interest in the land was “much deeper and dearer” than Fitzwilliam’s.

[19 ]Not identified.

[20 ]The first Agrarian Law in Rome, effected in 376 , limited anyone’s holding of public land confiscated from an enemy to 500 acres. The most important of the laws, instituted in 133 , was designed to counter the power of large landholders by enabling freemen to cultivate holdings, which were more equitably distributed by appointed commissioners.

[21 ]The brothers, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (163-133 ) and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (153-122 ) were both Tribunes of the plebeians who sought public favour by liberal reforms such as the Agrarian Laws; both died in revolts against the civil power. Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau (1749-91), popular and violent orator, attempted vainly to guide the French National Assembly when the Revolution began in 1789.

[22 ]For the reference, see No. 19, n18.

[23 ]William Pitt (1759-1806) was Prime Minister during the first years of the French wars; his government instituted legislation against supposed seditious and treasonous behaviour, especially of a republican kind. Edmund Burke and William Windham were allied in vehement opposition to the French Revolution and its British sympathizers.

[24 ]For references, see No. 4, n3, and No. 19, nn19 and 20.

[25 ]For references, see No. 19, n21.

[b]TS and [transcriber’s error?]

[26 ]For the reference, see No. 19, n23. The quotation marks are added in ink to the typescript; they appear in Archiv.

[27 ]For the reference, see No. 19, n24.

[28 ]For the references, see No. 19, n25.

[1 ]Not identified, though Laski says (without giving his evidence) in a headnote to his version that it was Thirlwall; Thirlwall was a member of the London Debating Society.

[a-a]L paid

[2 ]The unidentified solicitor had probably got his information from reports of Hugo de Groot (Grotius) (1583-1645), Inleiding tot de Hollandsche Rechts-geleerdheyd (1619-21), II, iii, 4-6, and v, 9-13; in The Jurisprudence of Holland, trans. R.W. Lee, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), Vol. I, pp. 82 and 96.

[3 ]E.g., as in the titles of the four Books that make up Blackstone’s Commentaries: “Of the Rights of Persons”; “Of the Rights of Things”; “Of Private Wrongs”; and “Of Public Wrongs.”

[b-b]L further

[4 ]The first typescript ends here; the following passage is found only in Economica.

[5 ]This passage from Locke’s letter of 21 March, 1704, to his young disciple, Anthony Collins (1676-1729) is in Works, Vol. X, p. 285. William Molyneux (1656-98), Irish scientist, was another friend and correspondent of Locke’s.

[6 ]The passage unique to Economica ends here; the following section is taken from the second typescript.

[c]L [no paragraph]

[d-d]L] TS [gap as for indecipherable words]

[7 ]Cf. Matthew, 19:24.

[8 ]The wording is from John Milton (1608-74), Paradise Lost (1667), in The Poetical Works (London: Tonson, 1695), p. 31 (II, 112); the idea is from Plato, Apology, in Euthyphro, The Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus (Greek and English), trans. H.N. Fowler (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914), p. 72 (18c). Mill’s own translation of Plato carries the Miltonic echo: see CW, Vol. XI, p. 153.

[e-e]L at last it

[9 ]The following are the manuscript fragments.

[10 ]The manuscript folio is torn here.

[11 ]The following manuscript notes were probably taken during the debate.

[12 ]I.e., like those in the popular Tory Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser (founded in 1780).

[13 ]Abraham Hayward (1801-84), a law student at the time, was a prominent Tory speaker in the London Debating Society, who developed a considerable animosity towards Mill.

[14 ]The manuscript folio is torn here.

[1 ]Not identified.

[2 ]Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was charged in 1633 by the Inquisition with having transgressed against a decree of 1616 forbidding him to teach Copernican doctrines. Under threat of torture he recanted his views, but in fact was incarcerated for only two days before being released to live out his days in seclusion.

[3 ]Henry Saint-John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Tory pamphleteer and statesman.

[4 ]Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, baron de l’Aulne (1727-81), economist and financial reformer who served as Comptroller-General for Louis XVI 1774-76.

[1 ]When the Tory Prime Minister, Robert Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool, had a stroke in February 1827, his place was taken on 12 April by George Canning, who had been Foreign Secretary and leader in the House of Commons. Several leading Tories, including Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, Robert Peel, and John Scott, Lord Eldon, refused to serve under Canning. Consequently, some Whigs agreed to support Canning in a coalition: they included Henry Peter Brougham (1788-1868); Henry Richard Vassall Fox (1773-1840), Baron Holland; Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice (1780-1863), Marquis of Lansdowne; and George Tierney (1761-1830). Lord John Russell (1792-1878) and John Charles Spencer (1782-1845), Lord Althorp, were also supportive of the coalition, but less enthusiastic.

[2 ]The Whigs cooperated with Canning in supporting “A Bill for Granting Duties of Customs on Corn,” 7 & 8 George IV (29 Mar., 1827), PP, 1826-27, I, 413-18, which was defeated in the Lords. Subsequently successfully amended with Whig support was a motion on corn laws that would have had the same liberal effects as the Bill (PD, n.s., Vol. 17, col. 1339). The Whig measure, “A Bill for Granting Relief to Certain Persons Dissenting from the Church of England, in Respect of the Mode of Celebrating Marriage,” 8 George IV (14 May, 1827), PP, 1826-27, II, 21-4, was supported by Canning on 19 June, 1827 (PD, n.s., Vol. 17, col. 1345), and passed the Commons, though it was not enacted.

[3 ]Not identified.

[4 ]The Test Acts, designed to ensure religious loyalty, were 25 Charles II, c. 2 (1672) and 30 Charles II, 2nd sess., c. 1 (1677 [1678]). For Canning’s view that they should not be tampered with, see his Speech on the New Administration (3 May, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol. 17, col. 541; Petty-Fitzmaurice’s long-standing opposition is seen in his Speech on the Roman Catholic Question (27 May, 1819), PD, 1st ser., Vol. 40, cols. 438-40.

[5 ]Not identified.

[a-a]L] manuscript, TS [hiatus: the manuscript text ends at the bottom of a page and resumes in mid-sentence on a torn folio]

[6 ]The text ends mid-page; the next folio, 4r, which is cancelled by two vertical inked lines, reads: “The Whigs never were this, and they may now plead their former demerits in exculpation of their present conduct. They did indeed prepare, under the prostituted name of Parliamentary reform, a scheme for giving more power to those who already have it almost all,—the landlords: but I confess that, like Mr. Canning, I prefer Gatton and Old Sarum. I prefer the members who are accountable to nobody, above those who are accountable to men who have an interest in misgovernment. I prefer the man who openly buys his seat above the man to whom it is given on condition of being misemployed; I prefer the man who may do exactly as he pleases, above the man who is allowed to do as he pleases only when he pleases wrong. bAs I therefore prefer Mr. Canning’s no reform above the mock reform of the Whigs, I cannot but applaud them if they have really changed from the one to the other.b But we are told that the Whigs have degraded themselves by a junction with Mr. Canning. So far am I from agreeing in this opinion, cthat I must say, if there be any degradation in the case, it is on the other side.c Mr. Canning and his friends will certainly never lose by a comparison with the Whigs. They have done far more for the people than the Whigs would have dared to do in their situation; and until this junction they have with a stedfastness and constancy most unusual in public men, adhered to their principles through good report and bad, in defiance of the most bitter hostility from a large majority of the predominant section of the aristocracy.” The final word is on f. 4v, with two cancelled false starts, and then the text resumes.

[7 ]Cf. Matthew, 6:24.

[8 ]For a bitter attack on the Coalition, see Buckler-Lethbridge’s Speech on the New Administration (11 May, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol. 17, cols. 745-51.

[9 ]The references are to such speeches by Frederick John Robinson, Lord Goderich (1782-1859), as those on 2 and 25 May, 1827, ibid., cols. 472-9 and 984-99. He was Secretary for War and the Colonies in Canning’s ministry.

[10 ]William Huskisson (1770-1830), then M.P. for Liverpool, with a strong reputation as a man of business, was President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy in Canning’s ministry.

[11 ]In his speech of 3 May, 1827, already alluded to, Canning had declared that he would always oppose both.

[12 ]Russell, in his Speech on the Test and Corporation Acts (7 June, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol. 17, col. 1146, used this phrase. A meeting of the Protestant Dissenters’ Committee for the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts on 28 May (referred to below) had urged him not to move a Repeal Bill on 7 June, as he had planned (ibid., 11 May, col. 744). See the leading article in The Times on the matter, 5 June, p. 2.

[13 ]A parliamentary device to forestall a vote on a substantive motion; the motion “that that Question be not now put,” if successful, terminates the debate.

[14 ]The reference is apparently to a meeting of the United Committee for the Repeal of Test and Corporation Acts, held at the King’s Head Tavern, on 28 May, 1827, which was very little reported. Edgar Taylor, however, in “Corporation and Test Acts,” Westminster Review, IX (Jan. 1828), says that (seemingly at this meeting) Henry Brougham “ventured, as we are informed, to threaten them with himself moving the previous question, if, contrary to his views of public politics, they dared to create disturbance by any impatience” (p. 20). The M.P. who cried out has not been identified.

[15 ]Lord John Russell; see n12 above.

[16 ]Stephen Lushington (1782-1873), ecclesiastical lawyer and D.C.L. (Oxford), then M.P. for Tregony, Speech on the Court of Chancery (22 May, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol.17, cols. 962-5; Brougham, ibid., cols. 965-73 (in which he seemed to repudiate his many strong attacks on Chancery).

[17 ]When Joseph Hume moved to repeal one of the Six Acts, 60 George III & I George IV, c. 9, concerning blasphemous and seditious libels, the motion was lost for want of Whig support, though the Whigs had been loud in their opposition to the passing of the Six Acts in 1819. For Hume’s speech of 31 May, 1827, see PD, n.s., vol. 17, cols. 1063-6; the division is recorded ibid., col. 1083.

[18 ]Cf. Brougham, Speech on Trade with India (15 May, 1827), ibid., col. 841. For the phrase, see No. 5, n8.

[19 ]Canning, Speech on the Publication of Libel (31 May, 1827), ibid., cols. 1077-81.

[20 ]The conduct of Charles Henry Somerset (1767-1831) as Governor of the Cape of Good Hope had been impugned in a memorial to parliament in July 1825 by a banished settler, Bishop Burnett (a retired Naval Lieutenant), and defended by Robert John Wilmot Horton (1784-1841), M.P. for Newcastle-under-Lyme, on 8 May, 1826, PD, n.s., Vol. 15, cols. 964-5.

[21 ]Cobbett’s Weekly Political Pamphlet, a twopenny version of his Political Register, had been labelled “twopenny trash” in a leading article in the ministerial Courier on 2 Jan., 1817, p. 2; Cobbett gleefully seized on the label (see, e.g., Political Register, 6 Jan., 1820, col. 575). 60 George III & I George IV, c. 9, was designed to control such publications.

[22 ]See, e.g., “New Ministry and Mr. Canning,” The Times, 4 Apr., 1827, p. 7, and 9 Apr., p. 2.

[23 ]The shipping interest had attacked Huskisson for modifying the Navigation Laws, for example by 6 George IV, c. 114 (1825), to which Mill refers below as the “reciprocity bill” (see also CW, Vol. VI, pp. 123-47); Huskisson defended himself, disproving their case that British shipping had declined, in his Speech on the Shipping Interest of the Country (7 May, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol. 17, cols. 619-62.

[24 ]“A Bill to Amend the Laws Relating to the Customs,” 7 & 8 George IV (8 June, 1827), PP, 1826-27, II, 371-84 (enacted as 7 & 8 George IV, c. 56 [1827]). An unnumbered clause on p. 375 of the Bill added thirteen to the list of products that could be imported from Europe only in British vessels or those of the nation of origin.

[25 ]An amendment against the principle of the Bill (see n2 above) having passed in the Lords on 12 June, the government decided not to proceed to third reading (PD, n.s., Vol. 17, cols. 1238, 1258).

[26 ]Cf. The Two Noble Kinsmen, III, v, 106; in The Riverside Shakespeare, p. 1661.

[27 ]Probably Richard Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville (1776-1839), Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, political leader of the Grenvillites, a faction formerly associated with the Whigs. Buckingham’s hunger for high office was proverbial in political circles.

[28 ]Mill is using terms employed by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) in The Dunciad (1728), in Works, ed. Joseph Warton, et al., new ed., 10 vols. (London: Priestley, and Hearne, 1822, 1825), Vol. V, passim.

[29 ]A pencilled interlineation, contemporary but probably not Mill’s, reads: “trumpet the praises”.

[30 ]James Edward Harris (1778-1841), Earl of Malmesbury, Speech on the Game Laws Amendment Bill (11 May, 1827), PD, n.s., Vol. 17, cols. 733-8.

[31 ]Here appears in pencil, in the same hand that supplied the other comment: “General Remarks—I have expressed to you before in conversation that although we do not differ much in the essentials of our opinions as to Canning and the present administration, that we differ in the quantums of praise which we ought to give to them—I should say—that the style and tone of your language in the preceeding [sic] pages when applied to Canning Huskisson, Robinson etc. leaves not enough of difference between them and the Hampdons [sic?] Turgots in past times or the Humes Ricardos and Benthams at present—And it appears to me that we have Evidence enough on which to form an opinion—and that you have given this evidence in your speech—Don’t you think that you have in some degree admitted the usual party plea of the alternative in the last two pages—

Otherwise I think the speech very well calculated for its purpose—”

[1 ]William Wordsworth (1770-1850), the poet most important to Mill’s views on poetry.

[a-a][interlined for uncancelled continue, which is underlined, probably to signal the alternative reading]

[b-b][interlined for uncancelled without, which is underlined, probably to signal the alternative reading]

[2 ]For the phrase, see No. 5, n8.

[3 ]Quintilian (b. ca. 33 ), Institutio oratoria (Latin and English), trans. H.E. Butler, 4 vols. (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1921), Vol. I, p. 66 (I, iv, 11).

[4 ]Robert Southey (1774-1843), the poet, made D.C.L. by Oxford in 1820.

[5 ]Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), the famed editor of the Edinburgh Review, in his “Madame de Staël—Sur la littérature,” Edinburgh Review, XXI (Feb. 1813), 10-24.

[6 ]Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, founded in 1817 as a Tory rival to the Whig Edinburgh Review, was known for its fanciful and pugnacious wit.

[7 ]This common phrase is thought to derive from Ovid (43 -17 ), Art of Love, II, 313, in Art of Love and Other Poems (Latin and English), trans. J.H. Mozley (London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1929), pp. 86-7.

[8 ]Thomas Moore (1779-1852) had satirized Mill’s Neo-Malthusianism; see Mill News Letter, VIII (Fall, 1972), 1 and 3.

[9 ]Edward Irving (1792-1834), the charismatic apocalyptic minister.

[10 ]Walter Scott (1771-1832), the Scottish poet and novelist, was one of Mill’s earliest enthusiasms (see CW, Vol. I, pp. 19-21).

[11 ]Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), the novelist.

[12 ]Robert South (1634-1716), divine, Oxford public orator; Joseph Addison (1672-1719), essayist; Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74), poet, dramatist, and novelist; Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), Spanish novelist; Henry Fielding (1707-54), novelist; and Laurence Sterne (1713-68), novelist.

[13 ]David Hume (1711-76), the philosopher, whose Tory History of England usually was scorned by Mill; Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1732), satirist.

[14 ]Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), “Zeit und Zeitung” (1815), in Werke, 55 vols. in 36 (Stuttgart and Tübingen: Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1828-33), Vol. II, p. 309.

[15 ]James Mill, “Periodical Literature: Edinburgh Review (Part I),” Westminster Review, I (Jan. 1824), 207. J.S. Mill did the research for this article, and wrote its continuation (CW, Vol. I, pp. 291-325).

[16 ]The corner of the folio being missing, the bracketed readings in the following three sentences are conjectural; they agree with those in the Adelphi (when the manuscript may have been intact), except that Adelphi reads “would have” rather than the more likely “could have”.

[17 ]For example, following Pope’s Dunciad, Edward Young (1683-1765) wrote on the theme in Two Epistles to Mr. Pope, Concerning the Authors of the Age (London: Gilliver, 1730); and, more recently, George Daniel (1789-1864) had published The Modern Dunciad (London: Redwell and Wilson, 1814).

[18 ]The manuscript ends at the bottom of the folio, and both the typescript and the version in the Adelphi end here.

[1 ]John Arthur Roebuck.

[2 ]The opponent alluded to may be John Sterling (1806-44), who reported on 6 March, 1828, to his friend R.C. Trench on the London Debating Society: “I was going to be stoned with stones at Cambridge for being an enemy to religion, and now I am ground to powder by a Mill in London for excessive piety” (Richard Chenevix Trench, Archbishop: Letters and Memorials, ed. Maria Trench, 2 vols. [London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, 1888], Vol. I, p. 7).

[3 ]Richard Carlile (1790-1843), the most notorious free-thinker of the time, had served six years (1819-25) in Dorchester gaol for publishing blasphemous and seditious libels. He also published Neo-Malthusian pamphlets, including the one Mill had been arrested for distributing.

[4 ]In prosecutions after Carlile’s own arrest, his wife Jane, his sister Mary Ann, and many of their shopmen were indicted and convicted.

[5 ]Not identified, though this speaker, rather than the one previously mentioned, might be Sterling.

[6 ]Cf. Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (1751-1816), “Speech on Summing up the Evidence on the Second, or Begum Charge” (3, 6, 10, and 13 June, 1788), in Speeches, 5 vols. (London: Martin, 1816), Vol. II, p. 64.

[7 ]Robert Taylor (1784-1844), a Churchman converted to Deism, had been sentenced to one year’s imprisonment on 7 February, 1828, for blaspheming in a sermon preached in Salters’ Hall on 24 October, 1827. He had become friends with Richard Carlile and, starting on 15 February, 1828, wrote a weekly letter to Carlile’s Lion, a sixpenny weekly founded to record Taylor’s trial.

[8 ]John Atkins (ca. 1760-1838), a Tory merchant tailor, had been alderman of Walbrook Ward since 1808.

[9 ]Founded in 1802, the Society concerned itself mainly with prosecuting obscene and blasphemous publications, although it also, through vigilante methods, attempted to control prostitution. It had aristocratic, religious, and, it was said, governmental support.

[10 ]Founded in 1821 and collapsing within the year, the Constitutional Association for Opposing the Progress of Disloyal and Seditious Principles, often satirized by radicals as the “Mock-Constitutional Association” or the “Bridge Street Gang,” also instituted prosecutions against libellous publications. It too had support from aristocrats and churchmen.

[11 ]Cf. Edward Hyde (1609-74), 1st Earl of Clarendon, The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 2 vols. in 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1759), Vol. I, p. 34.

[a-a]L record [the word is difficult to read; TS has a gap; L, TS put the whole sentence in parentheses]

[b-b][text from second typescript]

[12 ]Reported in Emmanuel Augustin Dieudonné Marin Joseph, comte de Las Cases (1766-1842), Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène. Journal of the Private Life and Conversation of the Emperor Napoleon at Saint Helena (1823), 8 pts. in 4 vols. (London: Colburn, 1823), Vol. III, p. 225 (19 Aug., 1816).

[13 ]Not identified.

[14 ]25 Charles II, c. 2 (1672); 30 Charles II, 2nd sess., c. 1 (1678); and 13 Charles II, 2nd sess., c. 1 (1661).

[15 ]Blackstone, Commentaries, Vol. IV, pp. 57-8.

[16 ]John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), The History of John Bull (1712), included in Jonathan Swift, Works, Vol. VI, pp. 233-407.

[17 ]Both 1 Elizabeth, c. 2 (1558), and 13 & 14 Charles II, c. 4 (1662), were “celebrated” Acts of Uniformity, though Mill is probably thinking of the latter, which modified the Book of Common Prayer and the forms of rituals and ceremonies.

[18 ]10 Anne, c. 2 (1711).

[19 ]For an example of screening the church, see David Hume, History of England (1756-62), 8 vols. (London: Cadell, et al., 1823), Vol. IV, p. 31. For Mill’s onslaught on Hume’s veracity as an historian, see CW, Vol. VI, pp. 3-58.

[c-c]L, TS power [the word is difficult to read]

[20 ]Not identified, although again Sterling is possibly intended.

[21 ]Not identified.

[22 ]1600-49; King from 1625 to 1649, when he was beheaded.

[23 ]There is a hiatus in the manuscript (TS agrees), with the text resuming on the next folio; we follow Laski in ignoring the apparent gap.

[24 ]Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838) towards the end of the eighteenth century developed a form of monitorial education, using the older children to educate the younger. Patronized by Whigs, especially Brougham, the Lancasterian Schools, adopted by the British and Foreign School Society, offered a Christian but non-sectarian education. Brougham, with Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, Marquis of Lansdowne, founded the Infant School Society in 1824: Samuel Wilderspin (ca. 1792-1866) was appointed superintendent, and several schools were established, again non-sectarian. The University of London (which opened in 1828) was explicitly founded on a non-religious basis, especially for those excluded by religious views from Oxford and Cambridge; its founders included the omni-active Brougham, and James Mill served on its Council.

[25 ]Cf. Psalms, 8:2.

[1 ]Condorcet, Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (Paris: Agasse, 1795); Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Second Lay Sermon [“Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters”] (1817), 2nd ed., in On the Constitution of Church and State, and Lay Sermons (London: Pickering, 1839), pp. 413-15.

[2 ]Possibly a reference to George Combe (1788-1858); see, e.g., “Love of Approbation.” A System of Phrenology, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Anderson; London: Longman, et al., 1825), pp. 165-73. The most likely passage for Mill to cite is on p. 168.

[1 ][First draft of the exordium:] Begin by remarks on the manner in which the debate has been conducted, and by reprehending any attempt to turn Wordsworth into ridicule: saying to the person who attempts it,

1. Whether he imagines that the tone of mind which is constantly on the search for the ridiculous and which in contemplating other human beings and their works takes delight in picking out whatever is capable of being food for scorn,—is the proper tone of mind for weighing great poets.

I must say that in a question between two poets, there is some presumption in favor of that poet whose advocates in laying his pretensions before me, endeavour to bring my mind into a state more capable of appreciating and feeling fine poetry—into a state, in short, a little more like that state to which poetry addresses itself.

In Roebuck’s speech last evening I found very much to admire. I admired all that part of it in which he addressed himself to the highest minds in the Society and to the highest part of those minds, but I cannot admire that part where he seemed disposed to carry the cause from a better to a worse tribunal which he must have been conscious would produce a greater effect on any mind, in proportion as that mind was farther removed from the highest class. For my part, I am perfectly willing to refer all my ideas on this subject to the verdict of those among my audience, and no doubt there are many, who are my equals or my superiors in intellectual and moral cultivation. But I cannot consent [page ripped] those the judges of it, whom I consider as my inferiors in both. My honourable friend must be aware that that contemptuous laugh with which some passages which he recited from Wordsworth were received could only proceed from that portion of the Society whose suffrages a mind like his would least desire to receive, that most of them probably were habitually and all of them at that moment quite as incapable of comprehending the real beauties of Byron, as of Wordsworth and that many passages from those parts of Wordsworth whom he has the sense, taste, feeling, and virtue to admire, would have been received with the very same laugh if they had been recited in the same manner.

Shew how he disguised the real beauties of the poem of the Daffodils. [“I wandered lonely as a cloud” (1807), in Poetical Works, 5 vols. (London: Longman, et al., 1827), Vol. II, pp. 77-8.] Also what Wordsworth meant by it. As to the other poems, shew that Wordsworth writes every thing in verse if it is fit to be written at all. Wonderful if he did not write some things which would be better in prose—but nothing ridiculous in it. They might have chosen some more apparently ridiculous. “Alice Fell” [in Poems, 2 vols. (London: Longman, et al., 1807), Vol. I, pp. 84-8; not in Poetical Works]—Compare it with Parisina. [George Gordon Noël Byron (1788-1824), Parisina, in The Siege of Corinth: A Poem. Parisina: A Poem (London: Murray, 1816), pp. 59-91.]

With respect to myself have one request to make. I shall say a great deal which many of them will think absurd, and which very possibly is absurd. When they are inclined to condemn me for any errors I may commit, ask them to consider in what a very imperfect state the science of criticism is—almost may be said to have commenced in this country with Wordsworth’s prefaces. [To the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), in Poetical Works, Vol. IV, pp. 357-89; to Poems, 2 vols. (London: Longman, et al., 1815), pp. vii-xlii (not in Poetical Works); and “Essay, Supplementary to the Preface” (1815), in Poetical Works, Vol. II, pp. 357-91.] Beg them to apply the rule I apply.

[2 ]Byron, The Giaour: A Fragment of a Turkish Tale (London: Murray, 1813).

[3 ]In Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice: An Historical Tragedy in Five Acts. The Prophecy of Dante, a Poem (London: Murray, 1821), pp. 1-208.

[4 ]Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, A Romaunt, in Four Cantos (1812-18), 2 vols. (London: Murray, 1819), Vol. II, p. 51 (III, 865).

[5 ]Wordsworth, “Resolution and Independence” (1807), in Poetical Works, Vol. II, p. 125.

[6 ]See Coleridge, “Lines on an Autumnal Evening” (1793), and “Lewti, or The Circassian Love Chaunt” (1794), in Poetical Works, 3 vols. (London: Pickering, 1828), Vol. I, p. 30 (l. 4), and p. 168 (l. 21).

[7 ]Wordsworth, “Influence of Natural Objects, in Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth” (1807), in Poetical Works, Vol. I, p. 43.

[8 ]“Yew Trees” (1815) and “Nutting” (1800), ibid., Vol. II, pp. 53-4 and 57-9.

[9 ]“Resolution and Independence,” p. 128.

[10 ]“Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (1807), in Poetical Works, Vol. IV, pp. 346-55.

[11 ]Byron, The Siege of Corinth, in The Siege of Corinth: A Poem. Parisina: A Poem, pp. 1-58.

[12 ]Coleridge, Christabel, in Christabel; Kubla Khan, a Vision; The Pains of Sleep (London: Murray, 1816), pp. 3-48.

[13 ]“A Morning Exercise” (1828) and “The Kitten and the Falling Leaves” (1807), in Poetical Works, Vol. I, pp. 315-17 and 349-54.

[14 ]Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems (London: Murray, 1816), pp. 3-22.

[15 ]Wordsworth, “Her eyes are wild, her head is bare” (1798), in Poetical Works, Vol. II, pp. 119-24; “The Female Vagrant” (1827), ibid., Vol. I, pp. 112-20; “Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman” (1798), ibid., pp. 184-7; “The Last of the Flock” (1798), ibid., pp. 188-93; “The Sailor’s Mother” (1807), ibid., pp. 201-2; “The Reverie of Poor Susan” (1800), ibid., Vol. II, p. 79; and “The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale” (1800), ibid., Vol. IV, pp. 308-12.

[16 ]“Stray Pleasures” (1807), ibid., Vol. II, pp. 30-2.

[17 ]“Power of Music” (1807), ibid., pp. 80-2.

[18 ]“To a Highland Girl” (1807), ibid., Vol. III, pp. 11-14.

[19 ]“The Solitary Reaper” (1807), ibid., pp. 19-20.

[20 ]Cf. “The Lioness and the Vixen,” in Aesop’s Fables, p. 91, of which the moral is that familiarity breeds contempt.

[21 ]Byron, Lara, a Tale (London: Murray, 1814); Cain, in Sardanapalus, a Tragedy. The Two Foscari, a Tragedy. Cain, a Mystery (London: Murray, 1821), pp. 330-439; and Don Juan, a Poem (1819-24), 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Kay, 1825).

[22 ]Robert Burns (1759-96), Works, new ed., 2 pts. (London: Tegg, et al., 1824).

[23 ]Byron, Manfred, a Dramatic Poem (London: Murray, 1817).

[24 ]I.e., The Excursion, Being a Portion of the Recluse (Poetical Works, Vol. V); only this part of Wordsworth’s “great work,” which was never completed, had yet appeared. Its first part, composed in 1805, was published in 1850 as The Prelude.

[25 ]“Influence of Natural Objects,” p. 41.

[26 ]See, e.g., pp. 104-6 (Bk. III).

[27 ]In the Preface to The Excursion, Poetical Works, Vol. V, pp. xii-xvi.

[a-a][interlined for uncancelled a proper regulation of the associations]

[28 ]1807; ibid., Vol. IV, pp. 293-8.

[29 ]“Lines, Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (1798), ibid., Vol. II, pp. 179-86.

[30 ]“Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree Which Stands near the Lake of Esthwaite,” in Lyrical Ballads (Bristol: Longman, 1798), pp. 59-62; not in Poetical Works.

[31 ]The series of four sonnets beginning with “Personal Talk,” Poetical Works, Vol. II, pp. 292-5.

[32 ]1815; ibid., pp. 111-18.

[33 ]“The Old Cumberland Beggar” (1800), ibid., Vol. IV, pp. 299-307.

[34 ]“The Fountain” (1800), ibid., pp. 230-3.

[35 ]“Michael, a Pastoral Poem” (1800), ibid., Vol. I, pp. 247-68.

[36 ]1800; ibid., pp. 203-6.

[37 ]“Character of the Happy Warrior” (1807), ibid., pp. 199-202.

[38 ]1819; ibid., Vol. II, pp. 187-251.

[39 ]In Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: Longman and Rees, 1800), Vol. II, pp. 89-91; not in Poetical Works.

[40 ]1800; in Poetical Works, Vol. IV, pp. 315-17.

[41 ]George Crabbe (1754-1832), poet of rural life.

[1 ]John Sterling.

[a-a]RV occurred to

[b-b]RV remarkable

[c-c]RV understanding he makes when he pronounces

[d]RV to

[e]RV I have reflected on it so much, that I never but with the greatest hesitation presume to pass such a judgment upon any set of philosophical opinions; for in the first place, I am very far from being fully convinced that any set whatever of opinions deserves it; on the contrary it appears to me that reflection of whatever sort on the foundations of morals, cannot fail in most cases to withdraw the mind at least in some slight degree from the vulgar objects of selfishness, and by associating the feeling of selfrespect with the practice of some description of moral duties, which in all systems of morals yet propounded embrace the main essentials of human life, to elevate the being at least a little above what he would have been, if he had never meditated on any theory of morals at all. Accordingly, there have been many systems, which professed in different ways to explain and analyse virtue some of which, no doubt, have been better and others worse, but in one point, I believe, they have all agreed: and this is that the lives of those who professed them, and who devoted any considerable portion of their lives to the study of them, have in the great majority of instances been pure, and their minds, in the scale of moral excellence, very considerably above the average of ordinary men. This is true alike of Stoics and of Epicureans, of the followers of Kant and of those of Locke.

But if I were ever so strongly persuaded that there were some systems of philosophy which were essentially demoralizing, I should be slow to assert this of any particular system. And this is, because I have not so vain a confidence in my own superior discernment, as to suppose that I understand all the bearings of an opinion better than those who [breaks off]

[2 ]John Howard (ca. 1726-90), the founder of prison reform.

[3 ]John Hampden (1594-1643), the famed opponent of Charles I’s demand for ship money, died in the battle of Chalgrove in 1643. Algernon Sidney (1622-83), another opponent of royal tyranny, was arrested for suspected involvement in the Rye House plot to assassinate Charles II and his brother James in 1683. Sidney was condemned on the basis of hearsay evidence and executed.

[4 ]Presumably the London Debating Society, in the spring of 1828, devoted a session, during which Sterling spoke, to this subject, consequent upon the introduction in parliament of “A Bill to Exclude the Borough of Penryn, in the County of Cornwall, from Sending Members to Serve in Parliament,” 9 George IV (20 Feb., 1828), PP, 1828, II, 87-106. The Bill, which was not enacted, provided that Manchester would get the two seats Penryn lost.

[5 ]Currently Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, but the reference is probably not intended to be specific.

[6 ]Founded in 1825 as a popular scandal sheet. (The typescript leaves a blank for the name of the newspaper, presumably judged illegible.)

[7 ]This word is left blank in the typescript, presumably judged illegible.

[8 ]See, e.g, Canning, Speech on Sir Francis Burdett’s Motion for a Reform of Parliament (2 June, 1818), PD, 1st ser., Vol. 38, cols. 1170-3, where he uses the words “virtually represented” (col. 1170).

[9 ]The manuscript in the Mill-Taylor Collection breaks off here; the manuscript fragment in the University of Toronto Library begins.

[10 ]The manuscript fragment in the University of Toronto Library ends here; the manuscript in the Mill-Taylor Collection resumes.

[11 ]Through his influential De l’esprit des loix, 2 vols. (Geneva: Barillot, [1748]).

[12 ]Laski read “l’esprit des lois” (which is ill-written) as “assigned duties”.

[13 ]See especially Bentham, Plan of Parliamentary Reform, passim.

[6 ]The text ends mid-page; the next folio, 4r, which is cancelled by two vertical inked lines, reads: “The Whigs never were this, and they may now plead their former demerits in exculpation of their present conduct. They did indeed prepare, under the prostituted name of Parliamentary reform, a scheme for giving more power to those who already have it almost all,—the landlords: but I confess that, like Mr. Canning, I prefer Gatton and Old Sarum. I prefer the members who are accountable to nobody, above those who are accountable to men who have an interest in misgovernment. I prefer the man who openly buys his seat above the man to whom it is given on condition of being misemployed; I prefer the man who may do exactly as he pleases, above the man who is allowed to do as he pleases only when he pleases wrong. bAs I therefore prefer Mr. Canning’s no reform above the mock reform of the Whigs, I cannot but applaud them if they have really changed from the one to the other.b But we are told that the Whigs have degraded themselves by a junction with Mr. Canning. So far am I from agreeing in this opinion, cthat I must say, if there be any degradation in the case, it is on the other side.c Mr. Canning and his friends will certainly never lose by a comparison with the Whigs. They have done far more for the people than the Whigs would have dared to do in their situation; and until this junction they have with a stedfastness and constancy most unusual in public men, adhered to their principles through good report and bad, in defiance of the most bitter hostility from a large majority of the predominant section of the aristocracy.” The final word is on f. 4v, with two cancelled false starts, and then the text resumes.

[bAs I therefore prefer Mr. Canning’s no reform above the mock reform of the Whigs, I cannot but applaud them if they have really changed from the one to the other.b][lightly cancelled in pencil in MS]

[cthat I must say, if there be any degradation in the case, it is on the other side.c][lightly cancelled in pencil in MS]