“The science of government being, therefore, so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, however, sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.”
“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade . . . or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties.
It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature.
It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place.”
“To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon [i.e., family, local community] we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ [seed] as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.”
The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable from awareness of oppression; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands; the brave and bold from the love of honourable danger in a generous cause; but, with or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good.
Can I now congratulate the same nation on its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract is one of the blessings of mankind that I am seriously to congratulate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? If a murderous highwayman escapes from prison, am I to congratulate him on the recovery of his natural rights? . . . .
Better to be despised for undue anxiety than ruined by undue confidence.
They have found their punishment in their success:
- laws overturned;
- tribunals subverted;
- industry without vigour;
- commerce expiring;
- taxes unpaid, yet the people impoverished;
- a church pillaged, and a state not relieved;
- civil and military anarchy made the constitution of the kingdom;
- everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, with national bankruptcy as the consequence.
They are disabled rather than qualified for whatever depends on the knowledge of mankind, on experience in mixed affairs, on a comprehensive, connected view of the various, complicated, external and internal interests that go to the formation of that multifarious thing called a state.
But ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread’. In such a state of unlimited power for undefinable purposes, the evil of a moral and almost physical unfittingness of the man to the function must be the greatest we can conceive to happen in the management of human affairs.
The occupation of a hairdresser or of a working candle-maker can’t be a matter of honour to anyone—not to mention a number of other more servile employments. Such descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression if the likes of them, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but actually you are at war with nature. . ..
Woe to the country that would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues—civil, military, or religious—that are given to grace and service, and condemn to obscurity everything formed to spread lustre and glory around a state. Woe also to the country that goes to the opposite extreme and considers a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation as a preferable title to command. Everything ought to be open, but not equally, to every man. No rotation or appointment by lot or system of taking turns can be generally good in a government that has a wide range of things to do, because they have no tendency—direct or indirect—to select the man with a view to the duty or adjust the duty to fit the man. I don’t hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power ought not to be made too easy, or too much a matter of course. If rare merit is the rarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through some sort of testing period. The temple of honour ought to be seated on a high hill. If it is to be opened through virtue, let it be remembered that virtue is never tested except by some difficulty and some struggle.
They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have built and placed underground a mine that will blow up in one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have ‘the rights of men’. Against these there can be no prescription against these no agreement is binding; these admit of no taming and no compromise; anything withheld from their full demand is mere fraud and injustice. Against these ‘rights of men’ of theirs let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and mildness of its administration.
The objections of these theorists are as valid against an old and beneficent government (if its forms don’t square with their theories) as against the most violent tyranny or the latest usurpation.
Тhe restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit of countless modifications, they can’t be settled through any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them on that basis. The moment you take anything from the full rights of men—the right of each to govern himself, and not allow any artificial, positive limitation on those rights— from that moment the whole organisation of government depends on convenience.
That is what makes the constitution of a state and the proper distribution of its powers a matter involving the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human needs, and of the things that help or obstruct the various ends that are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. . ..
What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question concerns how to procure and administer them. In that deliberation I shall always advise calling in the aid of the farmer and the physician rather than the professor of metaphysics.
But power of one kind or another will survive the shock in which manners and opinions perish; and it will find other and worse means for its support. The usurpation that destroyed ancient principles in order to subvert ancient institutions will hold power by devices similar to those by which it has acquired it.
You may have made a revolution, but not a reformation. You may have subverted monarchy, but not recovered freedom.
Never wholly separate in your mind the merits of any political question, from the men who are concerned in it. You will be told, that if a measure is good, what have you to do with the character and views of those who bring it forward. But designing men never separate their plans from their interests; and, if you assist them in their schemes, you will find the pretended good, in the end, thrown aside or perverted, and the interested object alone compassed, and that, perhaps, through your means. The power of bad men is no indifferent thing.
