Thus agreeable to custom and reason, notwithstanding all objections, real or imaginary, thus consistent with the practice of former times, and thus consequential to the original principles of government, is that decision, by which so much violence of discontent has been excited, which has been so dolorously bewailed, and so outrageously resented.
Let us, however, not be seduced to put too much confidence in justice or in truth: they have often been found inactive in their own defence, and give more confidence than help to their friends and their advocates. It may, perhaps, be prudent to make one momentary concession to falsehood, by supposing the vote in Mr. Lutterel’s favour to be wrong.
All wrong ought to be rectified. If Mr. Wilkes is deprived of a lawful seat, both he and his electors have reason to complain; but it will not be easily found, why, among the innumerable wrongs of which a great part of mankind are hourly complaining, the whole care of the publick should be transferred to Mr. Wilkes and the freeholders of Middlesex, who might all sink into nonexistence, without any other effect, than that there would be room made for a new rabble, and a new retailer of sedition and obscenity. The cause of our country would suffer little; the rabble, whencesoever they come, will be always patriots, and always supporters of the bill of rights.
The house of commons decides the disputes arising from elections. Was it ever supposed, that in all cases their decisions were right? Every man, whose lawful election is defeated, is equally wronged with Mr. Wilkes, and his constituents feel their disappointment, with no less anguish than the freeholders of Middlesex. These decisions have often been apparently partial, and, sometimes, tyrannically oppressive. A majority has been given to a favourite candidate, by expunging votes which had always been allowed, and which, therefore, had the authority by which all votes are given, that of custom uninterrupted. When the commons determine who shall be constituents, they may, with some propriety, be said to make law, because those determinations have, hitherto, for the sake of quiet, been adopted by succeeding parliaments. A vote, therefore, of the house, when it operates as a law, is to individuals a law only temporary, but to communities perpetual.
Yet, though all this has been done, and though, at every new parliament, much of this is expected to be done again, it has never produced, in any former time, such an alarming crisis. We have found, by experience, that though a squire has given ale and venison in vain, and a borough has been compelled to see its dearest interest in the hands of him whom it did not trust, yet the general state of the nation has continued the same. The sun has risen, and the corn has grown, and, whatever talk has been of the danger of property, yet he that ploughed the field commonly reaped it; and he that built a house was master of the door; the vexation excited by injustice suffered, or supposed to be suffered, by any private man, or single community, was local and temporary, it neither spread far, nor lasted long.
The nation looked on with little care, because there did not seem to be much danger. The consequence of small irregularities was not felt, and we had not yet learned to be terrified by very distant enemies.
But quiet and security are now at an end. Our vigilance is quickened, and our comprehension is enlarged. We not only see events in their causes, but before their causes; we hear the thunder while the sky is clear, and see the mine sprung before it is dug. Political wisdom has, by the force of English genius, been improved, at last, not only to political intuition, but to political prescience.
But it cannot, I am afraid, be said, that as we are grown wise, we are made happy. It is said of those who have the wonderful power called second sight, that they seldom see any thing but evil: political second sight has the same effect; we hear of nothing but of an alarming crisis, of violated rights, and expiring liberties. The morning rises upon new wrongs, and the dreamer passes the night in imaginary shackles.
The sphere of anxiety is now enlarged; he that hitherto cared only for himself, now cares for the publick; for he has learned, that the happiness of individuals is comprised in the prosperity of the whole; and that his country never suffers, but he suffers with it, however it happens that he feels no pain.
Fired with this fever of epidemick patriotism, the tailor slips his thimble, the draper drops his yard, and the blacksmith lays down his hammer; they meet at an honest ale-house, consider the state of the nation, read or hear the last petition, lament the miseries of the time, are alarmed at the dreadful crisis, and subscribe to the support of the bill of rights.
It sometimes, indeed, happens, that an intruder, of more benevolence than prudence, attempts to disperse their cloud of dejection, and ease their hearts by seasonable consolation. He tells them, that though the government cannot be too diligently watched, it may be too hastily accused; and that, though private judgment is every man’s right, yet we cannot judge of what we do not know; that we feel at present no evils which government can alleviate, and that the publick business is committed to men, who have as much right to confidence as their adversaries; that the freeholders of Middlesex, if they could not choose Mr. Wilkes, might have chosen any other man, and that “he trusts we have within the realm, five hundred as good as he;” that even if this, which has happened to Middlesex, had happened to every other county, that one man should be made incapable of being elected, it could produce no great change in the parliament, nor much contract the power of election; that, what has been done is, probably, right; and that if it be wrong, it is of little consequence, since a like case cannot easily occur; that expulsions are very rare, and if they should, by unbounded insolence of faction, become more frequent, the electors may easily provide a second choice.
All this he may say, but not half of this will be heard; his opponents will stun him and themselves with a confused sound of pensions and places, venality and corruption, oppression and invasion, slavery and ruin.
Outcries, like these, uttered by malignity, and echoed by folly; general accusations of indeterminate wickedness; and obscure hints of impossible designs, dispersed among those that do not know their meaning, by those that know them to be false, have disposed part of the nation, though but a small part, to pester the court with ridiculous petitions.
The progress of a petition is well known. An ejected placeman goes down to his county or his borough, tells his friends of his inability to serve them, and his constituents of the corruption of the government. His friends readily understand that he who can get nothing, will have nothing to give. They agree to proclaim a meeting; meat and drink are plentifully provided; a crowd is easily brought together, and those who think that they know the reason of their meeting, undertake to tell those who know it not; ale and clamour unite their powers; the crowd, condensed and heated, begins to ferment with the leaven of sedition: all see a thousand evils, though they cannot show them; and grow impatient for a remedy, though they know not what.
A speech is then made by the Cicero of the day; he says much, and suppresses more; and credit is equally given to what he tells, and what he conceals. The petition is read, and universally approved. Those who are sober enough to write, add their names, and the rest would sign it, if they could.
Every man goes home and tells his neighbour of the glories of the day; how he was consulted, and what he advised; how he was invited into the great room, where his lordship called him by his name; how he was caressed by sir Francis, sir Joseph, or sir George; how he eat turtle and venison, and drank unanimity to the three brothers.
The poor loiterer, whose shop had confined him, or whose wife had locked him up, hears the tale of luxury with envy, and, at last, inquires what was their petition. Of the petition nothing is remembered by the narrator, but that it spoke much of fears and apprehensions, and something very alarming, and that he is sure it is against the government; the other is convinced that it must be right, and wishes he had been there, for he loves wine and venison, and is resolved, as long as he lives, to be against the government.
The petition is then handed from town to town, and from house to house; and, w
herever it comes, the inhabitants flock together, that they may see that which must be sent to the king. Names are easily collected. One man signs, because he hates the papists; another, because he has vowed destruction to the tumpikes; one, because it will vex the parson; another, because he owes his landlord nothing; one, because he is rich; another, because he is poor; one, to show that he is not afraid; and another, to show that he can write.
The passage, however, is not always smooth. Those who collect contributions to sedition, sometimes apply to a man of higher rank and more enlightened mind, who, instead of lending them his name, calmly reproves them for being seducers of the people.
You who are here, says he, complaining of venality, are yourselves the agents of those who having estimated themselves at too high a price, are only angry that they are not bought. You are appealing from the parliament to the rabble, and inviting those who, scarcely, in the most common affairs, distinguish right from wrong, to judge of a question complicated with law written and unwritten, with the general principles of government, and the particular customs of the house of commons; you are showing them a grievance, so distant that they cannot see it, and so light that they cannot feel it; for how, but by unnecessary intelligence and artificial provocation, should the farmers and shopkeepers of Yorkshire and Cumberland know or care how Middlesex is represented? Instead of wandering thus round the county to exasperate the rage of party, and darken the suspicions of ignorance, it is the duty of men like you, who have leisure for inquiry, to lead back the people to their honest labour; to tell them, that submission is the duty of the ignorant, and content the virtue of the poor; that they have no skill in the art of government, nor any interest in the dissensions of the great; and when you meet with any, as some there are, whose understandings are capable of conviction, it will become you to allay this foaming ebullition, by showing them, that they have as much happiness as the condition of life will easily receive; and that a government, of which an erroneous or unjust representation of Middlesex is the greatest crime that interest can discover, or malice can upbraid, is government approaching nearer to perfection, than any that experience has known, or history related.
The drudges of sedition wish to change their ground; they hear him with sullen silence, feel conviction without repentance, and are confounded, but not abashed; they go forward to another door, and find a kinder reception from a man enraged against the government, because he has just been paying the tax upon his windows.
That a petition for a dissolution of the parliament will, at all times, have its favourers, may be easily imagined. The people, indeed, do not expect that one house of commons will be much honester or much wiser than another; they do not suppose that the taxes will be lightened; or, though they have been so often taught to hope it, that soap and candles will be cheaper; they expect no redress of grievances, for of no grievances, but taxes, do they complain; they wish not the extension of liberty, for they do not feel any restraint; about the security of privilege or property they are totally careless, for they see no property invaded, nor know, till they are told, that any privilege has suffered violation.
Least of all do they expect, that any future parliament will lessen its own powers, or communicate to the people that authority which it has once obtained.
Yet a new parliament is sufficiently desirable. The year of election is a year of jollity; and, what is still more delightful, a year of equality: the glutton now eats the delicacies for which he longed when he could not purchase them, and the drunkard has the pleasure of wine, without the cost: the drone lives awhile without work, and the shopkeeper, in the flow of money, raises his price: the mechanick, that trembled at the presence of sir Joseph, now bids him come again for an answer: and the poacher, whose gun has been seized, now finds an opportunity to reclaim it. Even the honest man is not displeased to see himself important, and willingly resumes, in two years, that power which he had resigned for seven. Few love their friends so well as not to desire superiority by unexpensive benefaction.
Yet, notwithstanding all these motives to compliance, the promoters of petitions have not been successful. Few could be persuaded to lament evils which they did not suffer, or to solicit for redress which they do not want. The petition has been, in some places, rejected; and, perhaps, in all but one, signed only by the meanest and grossest of the people.
Since this expedient, now invented or revived, to distress the government, and equally practicable, at all times, by all who shall be excluded from power and from profit, has produced so little effect, let us consider the opposition as no longer formidable. The great engine has recoiled upon them. They thought, that the terms, they sent, were terms of weight, which would have amazed all, and stumbled many; but the consternation is now over, and their foes stand upright, as before.
With great propriety and dignity the king has, in his speech, neglected or forgotten them. He might easily know, that what was presented, as the sense of the people, is the sense only of the profligate and dissolute; and, that whatever parliament should be convened, the same petitioners would be ready, for the same reason, to request its dissolution.
As we once had a rebellion of the clowns, we have now an opposition of the pedlers. The quiet of the nation has been, for years, disturbed by a faction, against which all factions ought to conspire; for its original principle is the desire of leveling; it is only animated, under the name of zeal, by the natural malignity of the mean against the great.
When, in the confusion which the English invasions produced in France, the villains, imagining that they had found the golden hour of emancipation, took arms in their hands, the knights of both nations considered the cause as common, and suspending the general hostility, united to chastise them.
The whole conduct of this despicable faction is distinguished by plebeian grossness, and savage indecency. To misrepresent the actions and the principles of their enemies is common to all parties; but the insolence of invective, and brutality of reproach, which have lately prevailed, are peculiar to this.
An infallible characteristick of meanness is cruelty. This is the only faction, that has shouted at the condemnation of a criminal, and that, when his innocence procured his pardon, has clamoured for his blood.
All other parties, however enraged at each other, have agreed to treat the throne with decency; but these low-born railers have attacked not only the authority, but the character of their sovereign, and have endeavoured, surely without effect, to alienate the affections of the people from the only king, who, for almost a century, has much appeared to desire, or much endeavoured to deserve them. They have insulted him with rudeness, and with menaces, which were never excited by the gloomy sullenness of William, even when half the nation denied him their allegiance; nor by the dangerous bigotry of James, unless, when he was finally driven from his palace; and with which scarcely the open hostilities of rebellion ventured to vilify the unhappy Charles, even in the remarks on the cabinet of Naseby.
It is surely not unreasonable to hope, that the nation will consult its dignity, if not its safety, and disdain to be protected or enslaved by the declaimers, or the plotters of a city tavern. Had Rome fallen by the Catilinarian conspiracy, she might have consoled her fate by the greatness of her destroyers; but what would have alleviated the disgrace of England, had her government been changed by Tiler or by Ket?
One part of the nation has never before contended with the other, but for some weighty and apparent interest. If the means were violent, the end was great. The civil war was fought for what each army called, and believed, the best religion and the best government. The struggle in the reign of Anne, was to exclude or restore an exile king. We are now disputing, with almost equal animosity, whether Middlesex shall be represented, or not, by a criminal from a gaol.
The only comfort left, in such degeneracy, is, that a lower state can be no longer possible.
In this contemptuous censure, I mean not to include every single man. In all lead, says the chymist, there
is silver; and in all copper there is gold. But mingled masses are justly denominated by the greater quantity, and when the precious particles are not worth extraction, a faction and a pig must be melted down together to the forms and offices that chance allots them:
“Fiunt urceoli, pelves, sartago, patellæ.”
A few weeks will now show, whether the government can be shaken by empty noise, and whether the faction, which depends upon its influence, has not deceived, alike, the publick and itself. That it should have continued till now, is sufficiently shameful. None can, indeed, wonder that it has been supported by the sectaries, the natural fomenters of sedition, and confederates of the rabble, of whose religion little now remains but hatred of establishments, and who are angry to find separation now only tolerated, which was once rewarded; but every honest man must lament, that it has been regarded with frigid neutrality by the tories, who, being long accustomed to signalize their principles by opposition to the court, do not yet consider, that they have, at last, a king, who knows not the name of party, and who wishes to be the common father of all his people.
As a man inebriated only by vapours soon recovers in the open air; a nation discontented to madness, without any adequate cause, will return to its wits and its allegiance, when a little pause has cooled it to reflection. Nothing, therefore, is necessary, at this alarming crisis, but to consider the alarm as false. To make concessions is to encourage encroachment. Let the court despise the faction, and the disappointed people will soon deride it.
THOUGHTS ON THE LATE TRANSACTIONS RESPECTING FALKLAND’S ISLANDS
The following thoughts were published in 1771 from materials offered to the author by the ministry. His description of the miseries of war is most eloquently persuasive, and his invectives against the opposition, and their mysterious champion, abound with the most forcible and poignant satire. In a letter to Mr. Langton, from Johnson, we find that lord North stopped the sale, before many copies had been dispersed. Johnson avowed to his friend, that he did not distinctly know the reason of the minister’s conduct; but, in all probability, it was dictated by a dread of the effects of unqualified asperity, and, accordingly, in the second edition, many of the more violent expressions were softened down or expunged. It has been thought, by some, that Johnson rated the value of the Falkland Islands to England too low.
Complete Works of Samuel Johnson Page 169
