Of all men a king is least qualified to penetrate these recesses, and discover merit in its hiding place. Encumbered with forms, he cannot mix at large in the society of his species. He is too much engrossed with the semblance of business, or a succession of amusements, to have leisure for such observations, as should afford a just estimate of men's characters. In reality, the task is too mighty for any individual, and the benefit can only be secured through the mode of election.
Other disadvantages, attendant on this prerogative of choosing his own ministers, it is needless to enumerate. If enough have not been already said, to explain the character of a monarch, as growing out of the functions with which he is invested, a laboured OP LIMITED MONARCHY. 37 repetition in tliis place, woTild be both tedious and useless. If there be any dependence to be placed upon the operation of moral causes, a king will, in almost every instance, be found among the most undiscriminating, the most deceived, the least informed, and the least heroically disinterested of mankind.
Such then is the genuine and imcontrovertible scene of a mixed monarchy. An individual placed at the summit of the edifice, the centre and the fountain of honour, and Avho is neutral, or must seem neutral, in the current transactions of his goverment. This is the first lesson of honour, virtue, and truth, -which mixed monarchy reads to its subjects. Next to the king, come his ad- ministration, and the tribe of courtiers; men driven by a fatal necessity, to be corrupt, intriguing, and venal; selected for their trust by the most ignorant and ill-formed inhabitant of the realm; made solely accountable for measures of -which they cannot solely be the authors; threatened, if dishonest, with the vengeance of an injured people; and, if honest, with the surer vengeance of their sovereign's displeasure. The rest of the nation, the subjects at large Was ever name so fraught with degradation and meanness as this of subjects? I am, it seems, by the very place of my birth, become a subject. A subject I know I ought to be, to the laws of justice; a subject I know I am, to the circumstances and emergencies under which I am placed. But to be the subject of an individual, of a being with the same form, and the same im- perfections as myself; how much must the human mind be degraded, how much must its grandeur and independence be emasculated, before I can learn to think of this with patience, with indilference, nay, as some men do, with pride and exulta- tion? Such is the idol that monarchy worships, in lieu of the divinity of truth, and the sacred obligation of public good. It is of little consequence whether we vow fidelity to the king and the nation, or to the nation and the king, so long as the king intrudes himself to tarnish and undermine the true simplicity, the altar of virtue.
Are mere names beneath our notice, and will they produce no sinister influence upon the mind? May we bend the knee before the shrine of vanity and folly without injury? Far otherwise- Mind had its beginning in sensation, and it depends upon words and symbols for the progress of its associations. The truly good man must not only have a heart resolved, but a front erect. We cannot practise abjection, hypocrisy, and meanness, without be- coming degraded in other men's eyes and in our own. We can- not "bow the head in the temple of Rimmon," witliout in some degree apostatising from the divinity of truth. He that calls a king a man, will perpetually hear from his own mouth the lesson, that he is unfit for the trust reposed in him: he that calls him by any sublimer appellation, is hastening fast into the gross- est and most dangerous errors.
But perhaps " mankind are so weak and imbecile, that it is in 38 OF A PRESIDENT AVITII REGAL POWERS.
vain to expect, from the change of their institutions, the improve- ment of their character." Who made them weak and imbecile? Previously to human institutions and human society, they had certainly none of this defect. Man, considered in himself, is merely a being capable of impression, a recipient of perceptions. What is there in this abstract charactci", that precludes him from advancement? We have a faint discovery in individuals at pre- sent, of what our nature is capable: why should individuals be fit for so much, and the species for nothing? Is there any- thing in the structure of the globe, that forbids us to be virtuous? If not, if nearly all our impressions of right and vsTong flow from our intercourse with each other, why may not that intercourse be susceptible of modification and amendment? It is the most cowardly of all systems, that would represent the discovery of truth as useless, and teach us that, when discovered, it is our wisdom to leave the mass of our species in error.
There is, in reality, little room for scepticism respecting the omnipotence of truth. Trutli is the pebble in the lake; and, however slowly, in the present case, the circles succeed each other, they will infallibly go on, till they overspread the surface. No order of mankind will for ever remain ignorant of the princi- ples of justice, equality, and public good. No sooner will they understand them, than they will perceive the coincidence of virtue and public good with private interest: nor will any erroneous establishment be able effectually to support itself against general opinion. In this contest sophistry will vanish, and mischievous institutions sink quietly into neglect. Truth will bring down all her forces, mankind will be her army, and oppression, injustice, monarchy, and vice, will tumble into a common ruin.
CHAP IX.
OF A PRESIDENT WITH REGAL POWERS.
Enumeration of powers — that of appointing to inferior offices — of par- doning offences— of convoking deliberative assemblies — of affixing a veto to their decrees. — Conclusion. — The title of king estimated. — Monarchical and aristocraticai systems, similarity of their effects.
Still monarchy it seems has one refuge left. " We will not," say some men, ''have an hereditary monarchy, we acknowledge that to be an enormous injustice. We are not contented with an elective monarchy, we are not contented with a limited one. We admit the ofiice however reduced, if the tenure be for life, to be an intolerable grievance. But why not have kings, as we have magistrates and legislative assemblies, renewable by frer OF A PRESIDENT WITH REGAL POWERS. 39 quent elections? We may tlien change the holder of tlie office as often as we please."
Let us not be seduced by a mere plausibility of phrase, nor em- ploy words mthout having reflected on their meaning. What are we to understand by Uie appellation, a king? If the office have any meaning, it seems reasonable that the man who holds it, should possess the privilege, either of appointing to certain employments at his own discretion, or of remitting the decrees of criminal justice, or of convoking and dismissing popular assem- blies, or of affixing and refusing his sanction to the decrees of those assemblies. Most of these privileges may claim a respectable authority, in the powers delegated to theu* president by the United States of America.
Let us however bring these ideas to the touchstone of reason. Nothing can appear more adventurous, than the reposing, unless in cases of absolute necessity, the decision of any affiiir of im- portance to the public, in the breast of one man. But this necessity will scarcely be alleged in any of the articles just enumerated. What advantage does one man possess, over a society or council of men, in any of these respects? The disad- vantages under which he labours are obvious. He is more easily corrupted, and more easily misled. He cannot possess so many advantages for obtaining accurate information. He is abundantly more liable to the attacks of passion and caprice, of unfounded antipathy to one man and partiality to another, of uncharitable censure or blind idolatry. He cannot be always upon his guard; there will be moments in which the most exemplary vigilance is liable to surprise. Meanwhile, we are placing the subject in much too favourable a light. We are supposing his intentions to be upright and just; but the contrary of this will be more fre- quently the truth. Where powers, beyond the capacity of human nature, are intrusted, vices, the disgrace of human nature, will be engendered. Add to this, that the same reasons, which prove that government, wherever it exists, should be directed by the sense of the people at large, equally prove that, wherever public officers are necessary, the sense of the whole, or of a body of men most nearly approaching in spirit to the whole, ought to decide on their pretensions.
These objections are applicable to the most innocent of the privileges above enumerated, that of appointing to the exercise of certain employments. The case will be still worse, if we con- sider the other privileges. We shall have occasion hereafter to examine the propriety of pardoning offences, considered inde- pendently of the persons in whom Uiat power is vested: but, in the mean time, can anything be more intolerable, than for an in- dividual to be authorised, without assigning a reason, or assigning a reason upon which no one is allowed to pronounce, to supersede the grave decisions of a court of justice, founded upon a careful and public examination of evidence? Can anything be more unjust, than for an individual to assume the function of informing 40 OP A PRESIDENT WITH REGAL POWERS, a nation, -when they are to deliberate, and when they are to cease from deliberation?
The remaining privilege is of too iniquitous a nature to be an object of much terror. It is not in the compass of credibility to conceive, that any people would remain quiet spectators, while the sense of one man was, openly and iindisguisedly, set against the sense of the national representative in frequent assembly, and suffered to overpower it. Two or three direct instances of the exer- cise of this negative, could not fail to annihilate it. Accordingly, wherever it is supposed to exist, we find it softened and nourished by the genial dew of pecuniary corruption; either rendered unnecessary beforehand, by a sinister application to the frailty of individual members, or disarmed and made palatable in the sequel, by a copious effusion of venal emollients. If it can in any case be endured, it must be in countries, where the degenerate representative no longer possesses the sympathy of the public, and the haughty president is made sacred, by the blood of an exalted ancestry which flows through his veins, or the holy oil which the representatives of the Most High have poured on his head. A common mortal, periodically selected by his fellow- citizens to watch over their interests, can never be supposed to possess this stupendous virtue.
If there be any truth in these reasonings, it inevitably follows that there are no important functions of general superintendence, which can justly be delegated to a single individual. If the office of a president be necessarj', either in a deliberate assembly, or an administrative council, supposing such a council to exist, his em- ployment will have relation to the order of their proceedings, and by no means consist in the arbitrary preferring and carrying into effect, his private decision. A king, if unvarying usage can give meaning to a word, describes a man, upon whose single discretion some part of the public interest is made to depend. What use can there be for such a man in an unperverted and well ordered state? With respect to its internal affairs, certainly none. How far the office can be of advantage, in our transactions with foreign governments, we shall hereafter have occasion to decide.
Let us beware, by an unjustifiable perversion of terms, of con- founding the common understanding of mankind. A king is the well known and standing appellation for an office, which, if there be any truth in the arguments of the preceding chapters, has been the bane and the grave of human virtue. Why endeavour to purify and exorcise what is entitled only to execration? Why not suffer the term to be as well understood, and as cordially de- tested, as the once honourable appellation of tyrant afterwards was among the Greeks? Why not suffer it to rest a perpetual monument of the folly, the cowardice, and misery of our species?
In proceeding, from the examination of monarchical, to that of ajistocratical government, it is impossible not to remark, that there are several disadvantages common to both. One of these is OP A PRESIDENT WITH REGAL POWERS. 41 liic creation of a separate interest. The Lenefit of the governed is made to lie on one side, and the benefit of the governors on the other. It is to no purpose to say that individual interest, accu- rately imderstood, will always be found to coincide with general, if it appear in practice, that the opinions and errors of mankind, are perpetually separating them, and placing them in opposition to each other. The more the governors are fixed in a sphere distinct and distant from the governed, the more will this error be cherished. Theory, in order to produce an adequate effect upon the mind, should be favoured, not counteracted, by practice. What principle in human nature is more universally confessed, than self-love, that is, than a propensity to think individually of a private interest, to discriminate and divide objects, which the laws of the universe have indissolubly united? None, unless it be the esprit de corps, tlie tendency of bodies of men to aggran- dise themselves, a spirit, which, though less ardent than self-love, is still more vigilant, and not exposed to the accidents of sleep, indisposition, and mortality. Thus it appears that, of all impulses to a narrow, self-interested conduct, those afforded by monarchy and aristocracy are the greatest.
Nor must we be too hasty and undistinguishing in applying the principle, that individual interest, accurately understood, will al- ways be found to coincide with general. Relatively to individuals, considered as men, it is, for the most part, certainly true; rela- tively to individuals, considered as lords and kings, it is false. The man will perhaps be served, by the sacrifice of all his little peculium to the public interest, but the king will be annihilated. The first sacrifice that justice demands, at the hand of monarchy and aristocracy, is that of their immunities and prerogatives. Public interest dictates the unlimited dissemination of truth, and the impartial administration of justice. Kings and lords subsist only under favour of error and oppression. They will therefore resist the progress of knowledge and illumination; the moment the deceit is dispelled, their occupation is gone.
In thus concluding however, we are taking for granted, that aristocracy will be found an arbitrary and pernicious institution, as monarchy has already appeared to be. It is time that we should enquire in what degree this is actually the case.
42 OF HEREDITARY DISTINCTION.
CHAP. X.
OF HEREDITAKY DISTINCTION.
Birth considered as a physical cause — as a moral cause. — Education of the great. — Recapitulation.
A PRINCIPLE deeply interwoven with both monarchy and aristo- cracy in their most flourishing state, but most deeply with the latter, is that of hereditary pre-eminence. No principle can present a deeper insult upon reason and justice. Examine the new-born son of a peer, and of a mechanic. Has nature desig- nated in different lineaments their future fortune? Is one of them born with callous hands and an ungainly form? Can you trace in the other the early promise of genius and understanding, of virtue and honour? We have been told indeed " that nature will break out,"* and that *• The eaglet of a valiant nest will quickly tower Up to the region of his sire;"* and the tale was once believed. But mankind will not soon again be persuaded, that the birthright of one lineage of human creatures is beauty and virtue, and of another, dulness, grossness, and deformity.
It is difficult accurately to decide, how much of the characters of men is produced, by causes that operated upon them in the period preceding their birth, and how much is the moral effect of education, in its extensive sense. Children certainly bring into the world with them a part of the character of their parents; nay, it is probable that the human race is meliorated, somewhat in the same way as the races of brutes, and that every generation, in a civilised state, is further removed, in its physical structure, from the savage and uncultivated man.
But these causes operate too uncertainly to afford any just basis of hereditary distinction. If a child resembles his father in many particulars, there are particulars, perhaps more numerous and important, in which he differs from him. The son of a poet is not a poet, tlie son of an orator is not an orator, nor the son of a good man a-saint; and yet, in this case, a whole volume of moral causes, is often brought to co-operate with the physical. This has been aptly illustrated, by a proposition, humorously suggest- ed,f for rendering the office of poet laureat hereditary. But, if the qualities and dispositions of the father were found descendible in the son, in a much greater degree than we have any reason to suppose, the character must be expected to wear out in a few generations, either by the mixture of breeds, or by, what there is great reason to suppose is still more pernicious, the want of mix- ture. The title made hereditary, will then remain, a brand upon • Tragedy of Douglas, Act ill. + Paine's Bights ofMan.
OF HEREDITARY DISTINCTION. 43 the degenerate successor. It is not satire, but a simple statement of fact, when we observe, that it is not easy to find a set of men in society, sunlc more below the ordinary standard of man in his constituent characteristics, than the body of the English, or any other peerage.
Let us proceed to enquire into the efficacy of high birth and nobility, considered as a moral cause.
The persuasion of its excellence in this respect, is an opinion probably as old as the institution of nobility itself. The ety- mology of the word expressing this particular form of government, may perhaps be considered as having a reference to this idea. It is called aristocracy, or the government of the best [apisoi]. In the writings of Cicero, and the speeches of the Roman senate, this order of men, is styled the " optimates," the " virtuous," the "liberal," and the "honest." It is asserted, and with some de- gree of justice, " that the multitude is an unruly beast, with no fixed sentiments of honour or principle, guided by sordid venality, or not less sordid appetite, envious, tyrannical, inconstant, and imjust." Hence they deduced as a consequence, "the necessity of maintaining an order of men of liberal education and elevated sentiments, who should either engross the government of the humbler and more numerous class incapable of governing them- selves, or at least should be placed as a rigid guard upon their excesses, with powers adequate to their correction and restraint." The greater part of these reasonings will fall under our examina- tion, when we consider the disadvantages of democracy.* So much as relates to the excellence of aristocracy it is necessary at present to discuss.
The whole proceeds upon a supposition that, " if nobility should not, as its hereditary constitution might seem to imply, be found originally superior to the ordinary rate of mortals, it is at least rendered eminently so by the power of education. Men, who grow up in unpolished ignorance and barbarism, and are chilled with the icy touch of poverty, must necessarily be exposed to a thousand sources of corruption, and cannot have that delicate sense of rectitude and honour, which literature and manly refine- ment are found to bestow. It is under the auspices of indulgence and ease, that civilisation is engendered. A nation must have surmomited the disadvantages of a first establishment, and have arrived at some degree of leisure and prosperity, before the love of letters can take root among them. It is in individuals, as in large bodies of men. A few exceptions will occur; but, ex- cluding these, it can scarcely be expected, that men, who are compelled in every day, by laborious manual eff"orts to provide for the necessities of the day, should arrive at great expansion of mind and comprehensiveness of tliinking."
In certain parts of this argument there is considerable truth. The sound moralist, will be the last man to deny the power and • Chap. XIV.
44 OF HEREDITAKY DISTINCTION.
importance of education. It is therefore necessary, either that a system should be discovered for securing leisure and prosperity to every member of the community; or that a certain influence and authority should be given to the liberal and the wise, over the illiterate and ignorant. Now, supposing, for the present, that the former of these measures is impossible, it may yet be reasonable to enquire whether aristocracy be the most judicious scheme for obtaining the latter. Some light may be collected on this subject, from what has already appeared respecting education under the head of monarchy.
Education is much, but opulent education is of all its modes the least efficacious. The education of words is not to be des- pised, but the education of things is on no account to be dispensed with. The former is of admirable use in enforcing and developing the latter; but, when taken alone, it is pedantry and not learning, a body without a soul. Whatever may be the abstract perfection of which mind is capable, we seem at present frequently to need being excited, in the case of any uncommon effort, by motives that address themselves to the individual. But, so far as relates to these motives, the lower classes of mankind, had they sufficient leisure, have greatly the advantage. The plebeian must be the maker of his own fortune; the lord finds his already made. The plebeian must expect to find himself neglected and despised, in proportion as he is remiss in cultivating the objects of esteem; the lord will always be surrounded with sycophants and slaves. The lord therefore has no motive to industry and exertion; no stimulus to rouse him from the lethargic, "oblivious pool," out of which every human intellect originally rose. It must indeed be confessed, that truth does not need tlie alliance of circumstances, and that a man may arrive at the temple of fame, by other paths than those of misery and distress. But the lord does not content himself with discarding the stimulus of adversity; he goes further than this, and provides fruitful sources of effe- minacy and error. Man cannot offend with impunity against the great principle of universal good. He that monopolises to him- self luxuries and titles and wealth to the injury of the whole, becomes degraded from the rank of man; and, however he may be admired by the multitude, will be pitied by the wise, and not seldom be wearisome to himself. Hence it appears, that to elect men to the rank of nobility, is to elect them to a post of moral danger and a means of depravity; but that to constitute them hereditarily noble, is to preclude them, exclusively of a few extraordinary accidents, from all the causes that generate ability and virtue.
The reasonings here repeated upon the subject of hereditary distinction, are so obvious, that nothing can be a sti'onger instance of the power of prejudice instilled in early youth, than the fact of their having been, at any time, disputed or forgotten. From birth as a physical cause, it sufficiently appears that little funda- mental or regular can be expected: and, so far as relates to edu- MORAL EFFECTS OF ARISTOCRACY. 45 cation, it is practicable, in a certain degree, nor is it easy to set limits to that degree, to infuse emulation into a youthful mind; but wealth is the fatal blast that destroys the hopes of a future harvest. There was once indeed a gallant kind of virtue, that, by irresistibly seizing the senses, seemed to communicate extensively, to young men of birth, the mixed and equivocal accomplishments of chivalry; but, since the subjects of moral emulation have been turned, from personal prowess, to the energies of intellect, and especially since the field of that emulation has been more •widely opened to the species, the lists have been almost uniformly occupied by those, whose narrow circumstances have goaded them to ambition, or whose undebauched habits and situation in life, have rescued them from the poison of flattery and effeminate indulgence.
CHAPTER XI.
MOKAL EFFECTS OF ARISTOCRACY.
Nattire of aristocracy. — Importance of practical justice. — Species of injustice uhich aristocracy creates. — Estimate of the injury produced » —Examples.
The features of aristocratical institution are principally two; privilege, and an aggravated monopoly of wealth. The first of these is the essence of aristocracy; the second, that without which aristocracy can rarely be supported. They are both of them in direct opposition to all sound morality, and all generous independence of character.
Inequality of wealth is perhaps the necessary result of the insti- tution of property, in any state of progress at which the human mind has yet arrived; and cannot, till the character of the human species is essentially altered, be superseded, but by a despotic and positive interference, more injurious to the common welfare, than the inequality it attempted to remove. Inequality of wealth involves with it inequality of inheritance.
But the mischief of aristocracy is, that it inexpressibly aggra- vates and embitters an evil, which, in its mildest form, is deeply to be deplored. The first sentiment of an uncorrupted mind, when it enters upon the theatre of human life, is. Remove from me and my fellows all arbitrary- hindrances; let us start fail-; render all the advantages and honours of social institution acces- sible to every man, in proportion to his talents and exertions.
Is it true, as has often been pretended, that generous and ex- alted qualities are hereditary in particular lines of descent? They do not want the alliance of positive institution, to secure to them 46 MORAL EFFECTS OF ARISTOCRACY.
their proper ascendency, and enable them to command the respect of mankind. Is it false? Let it share the fate of expo- sure and detection with other impostures. If I conceived of a young person that he was destined, from his earliest infancy, to be a sublime poet, or a profound philosopher, should I conceive that the readiest road to the encouraging and fostering his talents, was, from the moment of his birth, to put a star upon his breast, to salute him with titles of honour, and to bestow upon him, independently of all exertion, those advantages which exertion usually proposes to itself as its ultimate object of pursuit? No; I should send him to the school of man, and oblige him to con- verse with his fellows upon terms of equality.