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of an unbounded plain, and sooner, I believe, than of any limited portion of space, whatever its dimensions may be. There is a calm delight, a dolcé riposo, in viewing the smooth-shaven verdure of a bowling green as long as it is near. You must learn from repetition that those properties are inseparable from the idea of a flat surface, and that flat and tiresome are synonymous. The works of nature, which command admiration at once, and never lose it, are compounded of grand inequalities.'

[Junius's Celebrated Letter to the King.] To the Printer of the Public Advertiser.-19th December 1769. SIR-When the complaints of a brave and powerful people are observed to increase in proportion to the wrongs they have suffered; when, instead of sinking into submission, they are roused to resistance, the time will soon arrive at which every inferior consideration must yield to the security of the sovereign, and to the general safety of the state. There is a moment of difficulty and danger, at which flattery and falsehood can no longer deceive, and simplicity itself can no longer be misled. Let us suppose it arrived. Let us suppose a gracious well-intentioned prince made sensible at last of the great duty he owes to his people, and of his own disgraceful situation; that he looks round him for assistance, and asks for no advice but how to gratify the wishes and secure the happiness of his subjects. In these circumstances, it may be matter of curious speculation to consider, if an honest man were permitted to approach a king, in what terms he would address himself to his sovereign. Let it be imagined, no matter how improbable, that the first prejudice against his character is removed; that the ceremonious difficulties of an audience are surmounted; that he feels himself animated by the purest and most honourable affection to his king and country; and that the great person whom he addresses has spirit enough to bid him speak freely, and understanding enough to listen to him with attention. Unacquainted with the vain impertinence of forms, he would deliver his sentiments with dignity and firmness, but not without respect :

Sir-It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of every reproach and distress which has attended your government, that you should never have been acquainted with the language of truth till you heard it in the complaints of your people. It is not, however, too late to correct the error of your education. We are still inclined to make an indulgent allowance for the pernicious lessons you received in your youth, and to form the most sanguine hopes from the natural benevolence of your disposition. We are far from thinking you capable of a direct deliberate purpose to invade those original rights of your subjects on which all their civil and political liberties depend. Had it been possible for us to entertain a suspicion so dishonourable to your character, we should long since have adopted a style of remonstrance very distant from the humility of complaint. The doctrine inculcated by our laws, that the king can do no wrong,' is admitted without reluctance. We separate the amiable good-natured prince from the folly and treachery of his servants, and the private virtues of the man from the vices of his government. Were it not for this just distinction, I know not whether your majesty's condition, or that of the English nation, would deserve most to be lamented. I would prepare your mind for a favourable reception of truth, by removing every painful offensive idea of personal reproach. Your subjects, sir, wish for nothing but that, as they are reasonable and affectionate enough to separate your person from your government, so you, in your turn, would distinguish between the conduct which becomes the permanent dignity of a king, and

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that which serves only to promote the temporary interest and miserable ambition of a minister.

You ascended the throne with a declared (and, I doubt not, a sincere) resolution of giving universal satisfaction to your subjects. You found them pleased with the novelty of a young prince, whose countenance promised even more than his words, and loyal to you not only from principle but passion. It was not a cold profession of allegiance to the first magistrate, but a partial, animated attachment to a favourite prince, the native of their country. They did not wait to examine your conduct, nor to be determined by experience, but gave you a generous credit for the future blessings of your reign, and paid you in advance the dearest tribute of their affections. Such, sir, was once the disposition of a people who now surround your throne with reproaches and complaints. Do justice to yourself. Banish from your mind those unworthy opinions with which some interested persons have laboured to possess you. Distrust the men who tell you that the English are naturally light and inconstant; that they complain without a cause. Withdraw your confidence equally from all parties; from ministers, favourites, and relations; and let there be one moment in your life in which you have consulted your own understanding.

When you affectedly renounced the name of Englishman, believe me, sir, you were persuaded to pay a very ill-judged compliment to one part of your subjects at the expense of another. While the natives of Scotland are not in actual rebellion, they are undoubtedly entitled to protection; nor do I mean to condemn the policy of giving some encouragement to the novelty of their affection for the house of Hanover. I am ready to hope for everything from their new-born zeal, and from the future steadiness of their allegiance. But hitherto they have no claim to your favour. To honour them with a determined predilection and confidence, in exclusion of your English subjects-who placed your family, and in spite of treachery and rebellion, have supported it, upon the throne is a mistake too gross for even the unsuspecting generosity of youth. In this error we see a capital violation of the most obvious rules of policy and prudence. We trace it, however, to an original bias in your education, and are ready to allow for your inexperience.

To the same early influence we attribute it, that you have descended to take a share not only in the narrow views and interests of particular persons, but in the fatal malignity of their passions. At your accession to the throne the whole system of government was altered; not from wisdom or deliberation, but because it had been adopted by your predecessor. A little personal motive of pique and resentment was sufficient to remove the ablest servants of the crown; but it is not in this country, sir, that such men can be dishonoured by the frowns of a king. They were dismissed, but could not be disgraced.

Without entering into a minuter discussion of the merits of the peace, we may observe, in the imprudent hurry with which the first overtures from France were accepted, in the conduct of the negotiation, and terms of the treaty, the strongest marks of that precipitate spirit of concession with which a certain part of your subjects have been at all times ready to purchase a peace with the natural enemies of this country. On your part we are satisfied that everything was honourable and sincere; and if England was sold to France, we doubt not that your majesty was equally betrayed. The conditions of the peace were matter of grief and surprise to your subjects, but not the immediate cause of their present discontent.

Hitherto, sir, you had been sacrificed to the preju dices and passions of others. With what firmness will you bear the mention of your own?

A man not very honourably distinguished in the

and your majesty need not doubt that the catastrophe will do no dishonour to the conduct of the piece.

world commences a formal attack upon your favourite; considering nothing but how he might best expose his person and principles to detestation, and the national The circumstances to which you are reduced will character of his countrymen to contempt. The natives not admit of a compromise with the English nation. of that country, sir, are as much distinguished by a Undecisive qualifying measures will disgrace your peculiar character, as by your majesty's favour. Like government still more than open violence; and withanother chosen people, they have been conducted into out satisfying the people, will excite their contempt. the land of plenty, where they find themselves effec- They have too much understanding and spirit to tually marked and divided from mankind. There is accept of an indirect satisfaction for a direct injury. hardly a period at which the most irregular character Nothing less than a repeal as formal as the resolution* may not be redeemed; the mistakes of one sex find itself, can heal the wound which has been given to a retreat in patriotism; those of the other in devo- the constitution; nor will anything less be accepted. tion. Mr Wilkes brought with him into politics the I can readily believe that there is an influence suffisame liberal sentiments by which his private conduct cient to recall that pernicious vote. The House of had been directed; and seemed to think, that as there Commons undoubtedly consider their duty to the are few excesses in which an English gentleman may crown as paramount to all other obligations. To us not be permitted to indulge, the same latitude was they are indebted for only an accidental existence, allowed him in the choice of his political principles, and have justly transferred their gratitude from their and in the spirit of maintaining them. I mean to parents to their benefactors; from those who gave state, not entirely to defend, his conduct. In the them birth to the minister from whose benevolence earnestness of his zeal, he suffered some unwarrant- they derive the comforts and pleasures of their poliable insinuations to escape him. He said more than tical life; who has taken the tenderest care of their moderate men would justify, but not enough to entitle infancy, and relieves their necessities without offendhim to the honour of your majesty's personal resent- ing their delicacy. But if it were possible for their ment. The rays of royal indignation collected upon integrity to be degraded to a condition so vile and him, served only to illumine, and could not consume. abject, that, compared with it, the present estimation Animated by the favour of the people on one side, they stand in is a state of honour and respect, conand heated by persecution on the other, his views sider, sir, in what manner you will afterwards proceed. and sentiments changed with his situation. Hardly Can you conceive that the people of this country will serious at first, he is now an enthusiast. The coldest long submit to be governed by so flexible a House of bodies warm with opposition; the hardest sparkle in Commons? It is not in the nature of human society collision. There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics that any form of governinent in such circumstances as well as religion. By persuading others, we convince can long be preserved. In ours, the general contempt ourselves; the passions are engaged, and create a of the people is as fatal as their detestation. Such, maternal affection in the mind, which forces us to I am persuaded, would be the necessary effect of any love the cause for which we suffer. Is this a conten-base concession made by the present House of Comtion worthy of a king? Are you not sensible how mons; and, as a qualifying measure would not be much the meanness of the cause gives an air of ridi- accepted, it remains for you to decide whether you cule to the serious difficulties into which you have will, at any hazard, support a set of men who have been betrayed? The destruction of one man has been reduced you to this unhappy dilemma, or whether now for many years the sole object of your govern- you will gratify the united wishes of the whole people ment; and if there can be anything still more dis- of England by dissolving the parliament. graceful, we have seen for such an object the utmost Taking it for granted, as I do very sincerely, that influence of the executive power, and every ministerial you have personally no design against the constituartifice, exerted without success. Nor can you ever tion, nor any view inconsistent with the good of your succeed, unless he should be imprudent enough to subjects, I think you cannot hesitate long upon the forfeit the protection of those laws to which you owe choice which it equally concerns your interest and your crown; or unless your ministers should persuade your honour to adopt. On one side, you hazard the you to make it a question of force alone, and try the affections of all your English subjects; you relinquish whole strength of government in opposition to the every hope of repose to yourself, and you endanger people. The lessons he has received from experience the establishment of your family for ever. will probably guard him from such excess of folly; you venture for no object whatever, or for such an and in your majesty's virtues we find an unquestion-object as it would be an affront to you to name. Men able assurance that no illegal violence will be attempted.

All this

of sense will examine your conduct with suspicion; while those who are incapable of comprehending to what degree they are injured, afflict you with clamours equally insolent and unmeaning. Supposing it possible that no fatal struggle should ensue, you determine at once to be unhappy, without the hope of a compensation either from interest or ambition. If an English king be hated or despised, he must be unhappy; and this, perhaps, is the only political truth which he ought to be convinced of without experiment. But if the English people should no longer confine their resentment to a submissive representation of their wrongs; if, following the glorious example of their ancestors, they should no longer appeal to the creature of the constitution, but to that high Being who gave them the rights of humanity, whose gifts it were sacrilege to surrender, let me ask you, sir, upon what part of your subjects would you rely for assistance?

Far from suspecting you of so horrible a design, we would attribute the continued violation of the laws, and even this last enormous attack upon the vital principles of the constitution, to an ill-advised unworthy personal resentment. From one false step you have been betrayed into another; and as the cause was unworthy of you, your ministers were determined that the prudence of the execution should correspond with the wisdom and dignity of the design. They have reduced you to the necessity of choosing out of a variety of difficulties; to a situation so unhappy, that you can neither do wrong without ruin, nor right without affliction. These worthy servants have undoubtedly given you many singular proofs of their abilities. Not contented with making Mr Wilkes a man of importance, they have judiciously transferred the question from the rights and interests of one man, to the most important rights and interests of the people; and forced your subjects, from wishing well to the cause of an individual, to unite with him in their own. Let them proceed as they have begun, election.

The people of Ireland have been uniformly plun*Of the House of Commons, on the subject of the Middlesex

dered and oppressed. In return, they give you every day fresh marks of their resentment. They despise the miserable governor you have sent them, because he is the creature of Lord Bute; nor is it from any natural confusion in their ideas that they are so ready to confound the original of a king with the disgraceful representation of him.

The distance of the colonies would make it impossible for them to take an active concern in your affairs, even if they were as well affected to your government as they once pretended to be to your person. They were ready enough to distinguish between you and your ministers. They complained of an act of the legislature, but traced the origin of it no higher than to the servants of the crown; they pleased themselves with the hope that their sovereign, if not favourable to their cause, at least was impartial. The decisive personal part you took against them has effectually banished that first distinction from their minds. They consider you as united with your servants against America; and know how to distinguish the sovereign and a venal parliament on one side, from the real sentiments of the English people on the other. Looking forward to independence, they might possibly receive you for their king; but if ever you retire to America, be assured they will give you such a covenant to digest, as the presbytery of Scotland would have been ashamed to offer to Charles II. They left their native land in search of freedom, and found it in a desert. Divided as they are into a thousand forms of polity and religion, there is one point in which they all agree; they equally detest the pageantry of a king, and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop.

It is not, then, from the alienated affections of Ireland or America that you can reasonably look for assistance: still less from the people of England, who are actually contending for their rights, and in this great question are parties against you. You are not, however, destitute of every appearance of support; you have all the Jacobites, non-jurors, Roman Catholics, and Tories of this country; and all Scotland, without exception. Considering from what family you are descended, the choice of your friends has been singularly directed; and truly, sir, if you had not lost the Whig interest of England, I should admire your dexterity in turning the hearts of your enemies. Is it possible for you to place any confidence in men who, before they are faithful to you, must renounce every opinion, and betray every principle, both in church and state, which they inherit from their ancestors, and are confirmed in by their education; whose numbers are so inconsiderable, that they have long since been obliged to give up the principles and language which distinguish them as a party, and to fight under the banners of their enemies? Their zeal begins with hypocrisy, and must conclude in treachery. At first they deceive; at last they betray.

As to the Scotch, I must suppose your heart and understanding so biased from your earliest infancy in their favour, that nothing less than your own misfortunes can undeceive you. You will not accept of the uniform experience of your ancestors; and when once a man is determined to believe, the very absurdity of the doctrine confirms him in his faith. A bigoted understanding can draw a proof of attachment to the house of Hanover from a notorious zeal for the

* In the king's speech of 8th November 1768, it was declared 'that the spirit of faction had broken out afresh in some of the colonies, and in one of them proceeded to acts of violence

and resistance to the execution of the laws; that Boston was in a state of disobedience to all law and government, and had proceeded to measures subversive of the constitution, and attended with circumstances that manifested a disposition to throw off their dependence on Great Britain.'

Let

house of Stuart; and find an earnest of future loyalty in former rebellions. Appearances are, however, in their favour; so strongly, indeed, that one would think they had forgotten that you are their lawful king, and had mistaken you for a pretender to the crown. it be admitted, then, that the Scotch are as sincere in their present professions, as if you were in reality not an Englishman, but a Briton of the north; you would not be the first prince of their native country against whom they have rebelled, nor the first whom they have basely betrayed. Have you forgotten, sir, or has your favourite concealed from you, that part of our history when the unhappy Charles (and he, too, had private virtues) fled from the open avowed indignation of his English subjects, and surrendered himself at discretion to the good faith of his own countrymen? Without looking for support in their affections as subjects, he applied only to their honour as gentlemen for protection. They received him, as they would your majesty, with bows, and smiles, and falsehood; and kept him till they had settled their bargain with the English parliament; then basely sold their native king to the vengeance of his enemies. This, sir, was not the act of a few traitors, but the deliberate treachery of a Scotch parliament, representing the nation. A wise prince might draw from it two lessons of equal utility to himself: on one side he might learn to dread the undisguised resentment of a generous people who dare openly assert their rights, and who in a just cause are ready to meet their sovereign in the field; on the other side he would be taught to apprehend something far more formidablea fawning treachery, against which no prudence can guard, no courage can defend. The insidious smile upon the cheek would warn him of the canker in the heart.

From the uses to which one part of the army has been too frequently applied, you have some reason to expect that there are no services they would refuse. Here, too, we trace the partiality of your understanding. You take the sense of the army from the conduct of the Guards, with the same justice with which you collect the sense of the people from the representations of the ministry. Your marching regiments, sir, will not make the Guards their example either as soldiers or subjects. They feel and resent, as they ought to do, that invariable undistinguishing favour with which the Guards are treated; while those gallant troops, by whom every hazardous, every laborious service is performed, are left to perish in garrisons abroad, or pine in quarters at home, neglected and forgotten. If they had no sense of the great original duty they owe their country, their resentment would operate like patriotism, and leave your cause to be defended by those on whom you have lavished the rewards and honours of their profession. The prætorian bands, enervated and debauched as they were, had still strength enough to awe the Roman populace; but when the distant legions took the alarm, they marched to Rome and gave away the empire.

On this side, then, whichever way you turn your eyes, you see nothing but perplexity and distress. You may determine to support the very ministry who have reduced your affairs to this deplorable situation; you may shelter yourself under the forms of a parliament, and set your people at defiance; but be assured, sir, that such a resolution would be as imprudent as it would be odious. If it did not immediately shake your establishment, it would rob you of your peace of mind for ever.

On the other, how different is the prospect! how easy, how safe and honourable is the path before you! The English nation declare they are grossly injured by their representatives, and solicit your majesty to exert your lawful prerogative, and give them an opportunity of recalling a trust which they find has been

scandalously abused. You are not to be told that the power of the House of Commons is not original; but delegated to them for the welfare of the people, from whom they received it. A question of right arises between the constituent and the representative body. By what authority shall it be decided? Will your majesty interfere in a question in which you have properly no immediate concern? It would be a step equally odious and unnecessary. Shall the lords be called upon to determine the rights and privileges of the commons? They cannot do it without a flagrant breach of the constitution. Or will you refer it to the judges! They have often told your ancestors that the law of parliament is above them. What party, then, remains, but to leave it to the people to determine for themselves? They alone are injured; and since there is no superior power to which the cause can be referred, they alone ought to determine. I do not mean to perplex you with a tedious argument upon a subject already so discussed, that inspiration could hardly throw a new light upon it. There are, however, two points of view in which it particularly imports your majesty to consider the late proceedings of the House of Commons. By depriving a subject of his birthright, they have attributed to their own vote an authority equal to an act of the whole legislature; and though, perhaps, not with the same motives, have strictly followed the example of the Long Parliament, which first declared the regal office useless, and soon after, with as little ceremony, dissolved the House of Lords. The same pretended power which robs an English subject of his birthright, may rob an English king of his crown. In another view, the resolution of the House of Commons, apparently not so dangerous to your majesty, is still more alarming to your people. Not contented with divesting one man of his right, they have arbitrarily conveyed that right to another. They have set aside a return as illegal, without daring to censure those officers who were particularly apprised of Mr Wilkes's incapacity (not only by the declaration of the house, but expressly by the writ directed to them), and who nevertheless returned him as duly elected. They have rejected the majority of votes, the only criterion by which our laws judge of the sense of the people; they have transferred the right of election from the collective to the representative body; and by these acts, taken separately or together, they have essentially altered the original constitution of the House of Commons. Versed as your majesty undoubtedly is in the English history, it cannot easily escape you how much it is your interest, as well as your duty, to prevent one of the three estates from encroaching upon the province of the other two, or assuming the authority of them all. When once they have departed from the great constitutional line by which all their proceedings should be directed, who will answer for their future moderation? or what assurance will they give you, that when they have trampled upon their equals, they will submit to a superior? Your majesty may learn hereafter how nearly the slave and the tyrant are

allied.

Some of your council, more candid than the rest, admit the abandoned profligacy of the present House of Commons, but oppose their dissolution upon an opinion (I confess not very unwarrantable) that their successors would be equally at the disposal of the treasury. I cannot persuade myself that the nation will have profited so little by experience. But if that opinion were well-founded, you might then gratify our wishes at an easy rate, and appease the present clamour against your government, without offering any material injury to the favourite cause of corruption.

You have still an honourable part to act. The affections of your subjects may still be recovered.

But before you subdue their hearts, you must gain a noble victory over your own. Discard those little personal resentments which have too long directed your public conduct. Pardon this man* the remainder of his punishment; and if resentment still prevails, make it (what it should have been long since) an act not of mercy but of contempt. He will soon fall back into his natural station-a silent senator, and hardly supporting the weekly eloquence of a newspaper. The gentle breath of peace would leave him on the surface, neglected and unremoved; it is only the tempest that lifts him from his place.

Without consulting your minister, call together your whole council. Let it appear to the public that you can determine and act for yourself. Come forward to your people; lay aside the wretched formalities of a king, and speak to your subjects with the spirit of a man, and in the language of a gentleman. Tell them you have been fatally deceived: the acknowledgment will be no disgrace, but rather an honour, to your understanding. Tell them you are determined to remove every cause of complaint against your government; that you will give your confidence to no man that does not possess the confidence of your subjects; and leave it to themselves to determine, by their conduct at a future election, whether or not it be in reality the general sense of the nation, that their rights have been arbitrarily invaded by the present House of Commons, and the constitution betrayed. They will then do justice to their representatives and to themselves.

These sentiments, sir, and the style they are conveyed in, may be offensive, perhaps, because they are new to you. Accustomed to the language of courtiers, you measure their affections by the vehemence of their expressions; and when they only praise you indirectly, you admire their sincerity. But this is not a time to trifle with your fortune. They deceive you, sir, who tell you that you have many friends whose affections are founded upon a principle of personal attachment. The first foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are received, and may be returned. The fortune which made you a king, forbade you to have a friend; it is a law of nature, which cannot be violated with impunity. The mistaken prince who looks for friendship will find a favourite, and in that favourite the ruin of his affairs.

The people of England are loyal to the house of Hanover, not from a vain preference of one family to another, but from a conviction that the establishment of that family was necessary to the support of their civil and religious liberties. This, sir, is a principle of allegiance equally solid and rational; fit for Englishmen to adopt, and well worthy of your majesty's encouragement. We cannot long be deluded by nominal distinctions. The name of Stuart of itself is only contemptible: armed with the sovereign authority, their principles are formidable. The prince who imitates their conduct should be warned by their example; and while he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, should remember that as it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another.

DE LOLME.

The Constitution of England, or an Account of the English Government, by M. DE LOLME, was recommended by Junius as a performance deep, solid, and ingenious.' The author was a native of

Mr Wilkes, who was then under confinement in the king's bench, on a sentence of a fine of a thousand pounds, and twenty-two months' imprisonment (from the 18th of June 1768), for the publication of the North Briton No. 45, and the Essay on Woman.

58

Geneva, who had studied the law. His work on the is productive of wealth, when employed in manuEnglish constitution was first published in Holland, factures and commerce, as well as when it is emin the French language. The English edition, en-ployed in the cultivation of land; he traced the larged and dedicated by the author to King George various means by which labour may be rendered III., appeared in 1775. De Lolme wrote several most effective; and gave a most admirable analysis slight political treatises, and expected to be patro- and exposition of the prodigious addition made to nised by the British government. In this he was its efficacy by its division among different individisappointed; and his circumstances were so reduced, duals and countries, and by the employment of that he was glad to accept of relief from the Literary accumulated wealth or capital in industrious unFund. He left England, and died in Switzerland in dertakings. He also showed, in opposition to the 1807, aged sixty-two. The praise of Junius has not commonly received opinions of the merchants, polibeen confirmed by the present generation, for De ticians, and statesmen of his time, that wealth does Lolme's work has fallen into neglect. He evinces not consist in the abundance of gold and silver, but considerable acuteness in tracing and pointing out in the abundance of the various necessaries, convethe distinguishing features of our constitution; but niences, and enjoyments of human life; that it is in his work is scarcely entitled to the appellation of every case sound policy to leave individuals to pur'solid;' his admiration is too excessive and undis- sue their own interest in their own way; that, in tinguishing to be always just. Of the ease and prosecuting branches of industry advantageous to spirit with which this foreigner wrote our language, themselves, they necessarily prosecute such as are we give one specimen, a correct remark on the free- at the same time advantageous to the public; and dom with which Englishmen complain of the acts of that every regulation intended to force industry into their government:-The agitation of the popular particular channels, or to determine the species of mind is not in England what it would be in other commercial intercourse to be carried on between states; it is not the symptom of a profound and different parts of the same country, or between disgeneral discontent, and the forerunner of violent tant and independent countries, is impolitic and commotions. Foreseen, regulated, even hoped for pernicious." Though correct in his fundamental several errors. He does not always reason correctly parts positions, Dr Smith has been shown to be guilty of from the principles he lays down; and some of his distinctions (as that between the different classes of society as productive and unproductive consumers) have been shown, by a more careful analysis and observation, to be unfounded. But these defects do not touch the substantial merits of the work, which produced,' says Mackintosh, an immediate, general, and irrevocable change in some of the most important parts of the legislation of all civilised states. In a few years it began to alter laws and treaties, and has made its way, throughout the convulsions of revolution and conquest, to a due ascendant over the minds of men, with far less than the average obstructions of prejudice and clamour, which choke the channels through which truth flows into practice.' In this work, as in his Moral Sentiments,' Dr Smith is copious and happy in his illustrations. The following account of the advantages of the division of labour is very finely written :-'Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day-labourer in a civilised and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of people, of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation. The woollen coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the materials from some of those workmen to others, who often live in a very distant part of the country? How much commerce and navigation in particular, how many ship-builders, sailors, sail-makers, rope-makers, must have been employed in order to bring together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the world? What a variety of labour, too, is necessary in order to produce the tools of the meanest of those workmen! To say nothing of such complicated *M'Culloch's Principles of Political Economy, p. 57.

by the constitution, this agitation ared duly is the
of the state, and is to be considered
beneficial vicissitude of the seasons. The govern-
ing power being dependent on the nation, is often
thwarted; but so long as it continues to deserve the
affection of the people, it can never be endangered.
Like a vigorous tree, which stretches its branches
far and wide, the slightest breath can put it in mo-
tion; but it acquires and exerts at every moment a
new degree of force, and resists the winds by the
strength and elasticity of its fibres and the depth of
its roots. In a word, whatever revolutions may at
times happen among the persons who conduct the
public affairs in England, they never occasion the
shortest interruption of the power of the laws, or
the smallest diminution of the security of indivi-
duals. A man who should have incurred the enmity
of the most powerful men in the state-what do I
say?-though he had, like another Vatinius, drawn
upon himself the united detestation of all parties,
might, under the protection of the laws, and by
keeping within the bounds required by them, con-
tinue to set both his enemies and the whole nation
at defiance.'

DR ADAM SMITH.

Dr ADAM SMITH's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, laid the foundations of the science of political economy. Some of its leading principles had been indicated by Hobbes and Locke; Hume in his essays had also stated some curious results respecting wealth and trade; and several French writers had made considerable advances towards the formation of a system. Smith, however, after a labour of ten years, produced a complete system of political economy; and the execution of his work evinces such indefatigable research, so much sagacity, learning, and information, derived from arts and manufactures, no less than from books, that the 'Wealth of Nations' must always be regarded as one of the greatest works in political philosophy which the world has produced. Its leading principles, as enumerated by its best and latest commentator, Mr M'Culloch, may be thus summed up: He showed that the only source of the opulence of nations is labour; that the natural wish to augment our fortunes and rise in the world is the cause of riches being accumulated. He demonstrated that labour

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