Classic Political Philosophy for the Modern Man

by Andrew Lynn

  What, then, is the true sense of the clause in question, in relation to these two cases? What ought to be the conduct of a government that is neither monarchical nor Catholic, with reference to the respective manifestation of these two opinions?

  First, as to the opinion relative to the unlawfulness of a government not monarchical. The falsity or erroneousness which the members of such a government could not but attribute in their own minds to such an opinion is a consideration which, according to the spirit and intent of the provision in question, would not be sufficient to authorize their using penal or other coercive measures for the purpose of preventing the manifestation of them. At the same time, should such manifestation either have already had the effect of engaging individuals in any attempt to effect a violent subversion of the government by force, or appear to have produced a near probability of any such attempt—in such case, the engagement to permit the free manifestation of opinions in general, and of religious opinions in particular, is not to be understood to preclude the government from restraining the manifestation of the opinion in question, in every such way as it may deem likely to promote or facilitate any such attempt.

  Again, as to the opinion relative to the meritoriousness of certain processions. By the principal part of the provision, government stands precluded from prohibiting publications manifesting an opinion in favour of the obligatoriness or meritoriousness of such processions. By the spirit of the same engagement, they stand precluded from prohibiting the performance of such processions, unless a persuasion of a political inconvenience as resulting from such practice—a persuasion not grounded on any notions of their unlawfulness in a religious view—should come to be entertained: as if, for example, the multitude of the persons joining in the procession, or the crowd of persons flocking to observe them, should fill up the streets to such a degree, or for such a length of time, and at intervals recurring with such frequency, as to be productive of such a degree of obstruction to the free use of the streets for the purposes of business, as in the eye of government should constitute a body of inconvenience worth encountering by a prohibitive law.

  It would be a violation of the spirit of this part of the engagement, if the government—not by reason of any view it entertained of the political inconveniences of these processions (for example, as above) but for the purpose of giving an ascendency to religious opinions of an opposite nature (determined, for example, by a Protestant antipathy to Catholic processions)—were to make use of the real or pretended obstruction to the free use of the streets as a pretence for prohibiting such processions.

  These examples, while they serve to illustrate the ground and degree and limits of the liberty which it may seem proper, on the score of public tranquillity and peace, to leave to the manifestation of opinions of a religious nature, may serve, at the same time, to render apparent the absurdity and perilousness of every attempt on the part of the government for the time being to tie up the hands of succeeding governments in relation to this or any other spot in the field of legislation. Observe how nice, and incapable of being described beforehand by any particular marks, are the lines which mark the limits of right and wrong in this behalf—which separate the useful from the pernicious—the prudent course from the imprudent!—how dependent upon the temper of the times—upon the events and circumstances of the day!—with how fatal a certainty persecution and tyranny on the one hand, or revolt and civil war on the other, may follow from the slightest deviation from propriety in the drawing of such lines!—and what a curse to any country a legislator may be, who, with the purest intentions, should set about settling the business to all eternity by inflexible and adamantine rules, drawn from the sacred and inviolable and imprescriptible rights of man, and the primeval and everlasting laws of nature!

  Conclusion

  On the subject of the fundamental principles of government, we have seen what execrable trash the choicest talents of the French nation have produced.

  On the subject of chemistry, Europe has beheld with admiration, and adopted with unanimity and gratitude, the systematic views of the same nation, supported as they were by a series of decisive experiments and conclusive reasonings.

  Chemistry has commonly been reckoned, and not altogether without reason, among the most abstruse branches of science. In chemistry, we see how high they have soared above the sublimest knowledge of past times; in legislation, how deep they have sunk below the profoundest ignorance—how much inferior has the maturest design that could be furnished by the united powers of the whole nation proved in comparison of the wisdom and felicity of the chance-medley of the British constitution.

  Comparatively speaking, a select few applied themselves to the cultivation of chemistry—almost an infinity, in comparison, have applied themselves to the science of legislation.

  In the instance of chemistry, the study is acknowledged to come within the province of science: the science is acknowledged to be an abstruse and difficult one, and to require a long course of study on the part of those who have had the previous advantage of a liberal education; whilst the cultivation of it, in such manner as to make improvements in it, requires that a man should make it the great business of his life; and those who have made these improvements have thus applied themselves.

  In chemistry there is no room for passion to step in and to confound the understanding—to lead men into error, and to shut their eyes against knowledge: in legislation, the circumstances are opposite, and vastly different.

  What, then, shall we say of that system of government of which the professed object is to call upon the untaught and unlettered multitude (whose existence depends upon their devoting their whole time to the acquisition of the means of supporting it) to occupy themselves without ceasing upon all questions of government (legislation and administration included) without exception—important and trivial—the most general and the most particular, but more especially upon the most important and most general—that is, in other words, the most scientific—those that require the greatest measures of science to qualify a man for deciding upon, and in respect of which any want of science and skill are liable to be attended with the most fatal consequences?

  What should we have said if, with a view of collecting the surest grounds for the decision of any of the great questions of chemistry, the French Academy of Sciences (if its members had remained unmurdered) had referred such questions to the Primary Assemblies?

  If a collection of general propositions, put together with the design that seems to have given birth to this performance—propositions of the most general and extensive import, embracing the whole field of legislation—were capable of being so worded and put together as to be of use, it could only be on the condition of their being deduced in the way of abridgment from an already formed and existing assemblage of less general propositions, constituting the tenor of the body of the laws. But for these more general propositions to have been abstracted from that body of particular ones, that body must have been already in existence: the general and introductory part, though placed first, must have been constructed last—though first in the order of communication, it should have been last in the order of composition. For the framing of the propositions which were to be included, time, knowledge, genius, temper, patience, everything was wanting. Yet the system of propositions which were to include them it was determined to have at any rate. Of time, a small quantity indeed might be made to serve, upon the single and very simple condition of not bestowing a single thought upon the propositions which they were to include; and as to knowledge, genius, temper, and patience, the place of all these trivial requisites was abundantly supplied by effrontery and self-conceit. The business, instead of being performed in the way of abridgment, was performed in the way of anticipation—by a loose conjecture of what the particular propositions in question, were they to be found, might amount to.

  What I mean to attack is not the subject or citizen of this or that country—not this or that citizen—not citizen Sieyes or c
itizen anybody else, but all anti-legal rights of man, all declarations of such rights. What I mean to attack is not the execution of such a design in this or that instance, but the design itself.

  It is not that they have failed in their execution of the design by using the same word promiscuously in two or three senses—contradictory and incompatible senses—but in undertaking to execute a design which could not be executed at all without this abuse of words. Let a man distinguish the senses—let him allot, and allot invariably a separate word for each, and he will find it impossible to make up any such declaration at all, without running into such nonsense as must stop the hand even of the maddest of the mad.

  Ex uno, disce omnes—from this declaration of rights, learn what all other declarations of rights—of rights asserted as against government in general must ever be—the rights of anarchy—the order of chaos.

  It is right I should continue to possess the coat I have upon my back, and so on with regard to everything else I look upon as my property, at least till I choose to part with it.

  It is right I should be at liberty to do as I please—it would be better if I might be permitted to add, whether other people were pleased with what it pleased me to do or not. But as that is hopeless, I must be content with such a portion of liberty, though it is the least I can be content with, as consists in the liberty of doing as I please, subject to the exception of not doing harm to other people.

  It is right I should be secure against all sorts of harm.

  It is right I should be upon a par with everybody else—upon a par at least; and if I can contrive to get a peep over other people’s heads, where will be the harm in it?

  But if all this is right now, at what time was it ever otherwise? It is now naturally right, and at what future time will it be otherwise? It is then unalterably right for everlasting.

  As it is right I should possess all these blessings, I have a right to all of them.

  But if I have a right to the coat on my back, I have a right to knock any man down who attempts to take it from me.

  For the same reason, if I have a right to be secure against all sorts of harm, I have a right to knock any man down who attempts to harm me.

  For the same reason, if I have a right to do whatever I please, subject only to the exception of not doing harm to other people, it follows that, subject only to that exception, I have a right to knock any man down who attempts to prevent my doing anything that I please to do.

  For the same reason, if I have a right to be upon a par with everybody else in every respect, it follows that should any man take upon him to raise his house higher than mine, rather than it should continue so, I have a right to pull it down about his ears, and to knock him down if he attempt to hinder me.

  Thus easy, thus natural, under the guidance of the selfish and anti-social passions, thus insensible is the transition from the language of utility and peace to the language of mischief. Transition, did I say? What transition? From right to right? The propositions are identical—there is no transition in the case. Certainly, as far as words go, scarcely any: no more than if you were to trust your horse with a man for a week or so, and he were to return it blind and lame—it was your horse you trusted to him—it is your horse you have received again—what you had trusted to him, you have received.

  It is in England, rather than in France, that the discovery of the rights of man ought naturally to have taken its rise: it is we—we English, that have the better right to it. It is in the English language that the transition is more natural, than perhaps in most others: at any rate, more so than in the French. It is in English, and not in French, that we may change the sense without changing the word, and, like Don Quixote on the enchanted horse, travel as far as the moon, and farther, without ever getting off the saddle. One and the same word, right—right, that most enchanting of words—is sufficient for operating the fascination. The word is ours—that magic word, which, by its single unassisted powers, completes the fascination. In its adjective shape, it is as innocent as a dove: it breathes nothing but morality and peace. It is in this shape that, passing in at the heart, it gets possession of the understanding—it then assumes its substantive shape, and joining itself to a band of suitable associates, sets up the banner of insurrection, anarchy, and lawless violence.

  It is right that men should be as near upon a par with one another in every respect as they can be made consistently with general security: here we have it in its adjective form, synonymous with desirable, proper, becoming, consonant to general utility, and the like. I have a right to put myself upon a par with everybody in every respect: here we have it in its substantive sense, forming with the other words a phrase equivalent to this—wherever I find a man who will not let me put myself on a par with him in every respect, it is right, and proper, and becoming, that I should knock him down, if I have a mind to do so, and if that will not do, knock him on the head, and so forth.

  The French language is fortunate enough not to possess this mischievous abundance. But a Frenchman will not be kept back from his purpose by a want of words: the want of an adjective composed of the same letters as the substantive right is no loss to him. Is, has been, ought to be, shall be, can—all are put for one another—all are pressed into the service—all made to answer the same purposes. By this inebriating compound, we have seen all the elements of the understanding confounded, every fibre of the heart inflamed, the lips prepared for every folly, and the hand for every crime.

  Our right to this precious discovery, such as it is, of the rights of man, must, I repeat it, have been prior to that of the French. It has been seen how peculiarly rich we are in materials for making it. Right, the substantive right, is the child of law: from real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from laws of nature, fancied and invented by poets, rhetoricians, and dealers in moral and intellectual poisons, come imaginary rights, a bastard brood of monsters, ‘gorgons and chimæras dire’. And thus it is that from legal rights, the offspring of law, and friends of peace, come anti-legal rights, the mortal enemies of law, the subverters of government, and the assassins of security.

  Will this antidote to French poisons have its effect? Will this preservative for the understanding and the heart against the fascination of sounds find lips to take it? This, in point of speedy or immediate efficacy at least, is almost too much to hope for. Alas! How dependent are opinions upon sound! Who shall break the chains which bind them together? By what force shall the associations between words and ideas be dissolved—associations coeval with the cradle—associations to which every book and every conversation give increased strength? By what authority shall this original vice in the structure of language be corrected? How shall a word which has taken root in the vitals of a language be expelled? By what means shall a word in continual use be deprived of half its signification? The language of plain strong sense is difficult to learn; the language of smooth nonsense is easy and familiar. The one requires a force of attention capable of stemming the tide of usage and example; the other requires nothing but to swim with it.

  It is for education to do what can be done; and in education is, though unhappily the slowest, the surest as well as earliest resource. The recognition of the nothingness of the laws of nature and the rights of man that have been grounded on them is a branch of knowledge of as much importance to an Englishman, though a negative one, as the most perfect acquaintance that can be formed with the existing laws of England.

  It must be so: Shakespeare, whose plays were filling English hearts with rapture, while the drama of France was not superior to that of Caffraria[1]—Shakespeare, who had a key to all the passions and all the stores of language, could never have let slip an instrument of delusion of such superior texture. No: it is not possible that the rights of man—the natural, pre-adamitical, ante-legal, and anti-legal rights of man—should have been unknown to, have been unemployed by Shakespeare. How could the Macbeths, the Jaffiers, the Iagos, do without them? They present a cloak for
every conspiracy—they hold out a mask for every crime—they are every villain’s armoury—every spendthrift’s treasury.

  But if the English were the first to bring the rights of man into the closet from the stage, it is to the stage and the closet that they have confined them. It was reserved for France—for France in her days of degradation and degeneration—in those days, in comparison of which the worst of her days of fancied tyranny were halcyon ones—to turn debates into tragedies, and the senate into a stage.

  The mask is now taken off, and the anarchist may be known by the language which he uses.

  He will be found asserting rights and acknowledging them at the same time not to be recognised by government. Using, instead of ought and ought not, the words is or is not—can or can not.

  In former times, in the times of Grotius and Puffendorf, these expressions were little more than improprieties in language, prejudicial to the growth of knowledge: at present, since the French Declaration of Rights has adopted them, and the French Revolution displayed their import by a practical comment, the use of them is already a moral crime, and not undeserving of being constituted a legal crime, as hostile to the public peace.

  * * *

  Territories along the southeast coast of Africa colonized by the Portuguese and British. ↵

  9

  Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

  introduction

  There is no more insightful analysis of the merits and demerits of democracy—and the equalist philosophies associated with democracy—than that of Alexis de Tocqueville.

  Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a French philosopher and statesman famous today for his Democracy in America (1835/1840), a monumental two-volume study of the influence of democracy in the United States on intellectual movements, opinions, customs, and political society. Born into an old and distinguished aristocratic family with roots going back to eleventh century Normandy, Tocqueville’s parents barely escaped the guillotine during the days of the Terror, and his great-grandfather, Lamoignon-Malesherbes, who had defended Louis XVI at trial, had been guillotined (along with his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren) in 1794. After attending the lyceé in Metz, Tocqueville went on to study law at Paris, after which he joined the government legal service before becoming a magistrate. In 1831, however, he obtained permission to study prison conditions in the United States, and, with his friend Gustave de Beaumont, he travelled to America over nine months in 1831 and 1832. Tocqueville recorded his reflections in Democracy in America. It was a great success: the first volume, which made him famous, was published in 1835, and the second volume, published five years later, led to his election to the Académie Française. In 1839, Tocqueville was elected to the National Assembly, where he sat on the centre-left, supporting the abolitionist movement and free trade. In 1849, he was made Minister of Foreign Affairs, but the mood soon turned against him, and his political career came to an end with the coup d’état of Louis Bonaparte in 1851. Tocqueville responded by retreating to his castle, the Château de Tocqueville, where he lived the life of a gentleman scholar until his death in 1859 of tuberculosis.