5. CHAPTER V
OF COURTS AND MINISTERS
We shall be better enabled to judge of the dispositions with which information
is communicated, and measures are executed, in monarchical countries, if
we reflect upon another of the ill consequences attendant upon this species
of government, the existence and corruption of courts.
The character of this, as well as of every other human institution, arises
out of the circumstances with which it is surrounded. Ministers and favourites
are a sort of people who have a state prisoner in their custody, the whole
management of whose understanding and actions they can easily engross. This
they completely effect with a weak and credulous master, nor can the most
cautious and penetrating entirely elude their machinations. They unavoidably
desire to continue in the administration of his functions, whether it be
emolument, or the love of homage, or any more generous motive, by which they
are attached to it. But, the more they are confided in by the sovereign,
the greater will be the permanence of their situation; and, the more exclusive
is their possession of his ear, the more implicit will be his confidence.
The wisest of mortals are liable to error; the most-judicious projects are
open to specious and superficial objections; and it can rarely happen but
a minister will find his ease and security in excluding, as much as possible,
other and opposite advisers, whose acuteness and ingenuity are perhaps additionally
whetted by a desire to succeed to his office.
Ministers become a sort of miniature kings in their turn. Though they
have the greatest opportunity of observing the impotence and unmeaningness
of the character, they envy it. It is their trade perpetually to extol the
dignity and importance of the master they serve; and men cannot long anxiously
endeavour to convince others of the truth of any proposition without becoming
half convinced of it themselves. They feel themselves dependent for all that
they most ardently desire, upon this man's arbitrary will; but a sense of
inferiority is perhaps the never failing parent of emulation or envy. They
assimilate themselves therefore, of choice, to a man to whose circumstances
their own are considerably similar.
In reality the requisites without which monarchical government cannot
be preserved in existence are by no means sufficiently supplied by the mere
intervention of ministers. There must be the ministers of ministers, and
a long beadroll of subordination, descending by tedious and complicated steps.
Each of these lives on the smile of the minister, as he lives on the smile
of the sovereign. Each of these has his petty interests to manage, and his
empire to employ under the guise of servility. Each imitates the vices of
his superior, and exacts from others the adulation he is obliged to pay.
It has already appeared that a king is necessarily, and almost unavoidably,
a despot in his heart.[1] He has been used to hear those things only which
were adapted to give him pleasure; and it is with a grating and uneasy sensation
that he listens to communications of a different sort. He has been used to
unhesitating compliance; and it is with difficulty he can digest expostulation
and opposition. Of consequence the honest and virtuous character, whose principles
are clear and unshaken, is least qualified for his service; he must either
explain away the severity of his principles, or he must give place to a more
crafty and temporizing politician. The temporizing politician expects the
same pliability in others that he exhibits in himself, and the fault which
he can least forgive is an ill timed an inauspicious scrupulosity.
Expecting this compliance from all the coadjutors and instruments of his
designs, he soon comes to set it up as a standard by which to judge of the
merit of other men. He is deaf to every recommendation but that of a fitness
for the secret service of government, or a tendency to promote his interest,
and extend the sphere of his influence. The worst man, with this argument
in his favour, will seem worthy of encouragement; the best man, who has no
advocate but virtue to plead for him, will be treated with superciliousness
and neglect. The genuine criterion of human desert can scarcely indeed be
superseded and reversed. But it will appear to be reversed, and appearance
will produce many of the effects of reality. To obtain honour, it will be
thought necessary to pay a servile court to administration, to bear, with
unaltered patience, their contumely and scorn, to flatter their vices, and
render ourselves useful to their private gratification. To obtain honour,
it will be thought necessary, by assiduity and intrigue, to make ourselves
a party, to procure the recommendation of lords, and the good word of women
of pleasure, and clerks in office. To obtain honour, it will be thought necessary
to merit disgrace. The whole scene conflicts in hollowness, duplicity and
falsehood. The minister speaks fair to the man he despises, and the slave
pretends a generous attachment, while he thinks of nothing but his personal
interest. That these principles are interspersed, under the worst governments,
with occasional deviations into better, it would be folly to deny; that they
do not form the great prevailing features, wherever a court and a monarch
are to be found, it would be madness to assert.
There is one feature above all others which has never escaped the most
superficial delineator of the manners of a court; I mean the profound dissimulation
which is there cultivated. The minister has, in the first place, to deceive
the sovereign, continually to pretend to feel whatever his master feels,
to ingratiate himself by an uniform insincerity, and to make a show of the
most unreserved affection and attachment. His next duty, is to cheat his
dependents and the candidates for office; to keep them in a perpetual fever
of desire and expectation. Recollect the scene of a ministerial levee. To
judge by the external appearance, we should suppose this to be the chosen
seat of disinterested kindness. All that is erect and decisive in man is
shamelessly surrendered. No professions of submission can be so base, no
forms of adulation so extravagant, but that they are eagerly practised by
these voluntary prostitutes. Yet it is notorious that, in this scene above
all others, hatred has fixed its dwelling; jealousy rankles in every breast;
and the most of its personages would rejoice in the opportunity of ruining
each other for ever. Here it is that promises, protestations and oaths are
so wantonly multiplied as almost to have lost their meaning. There is scarcely
a man so weak as, when he has received a court promise, not to tremble, lest
it should be found as false and unsubstantial by him, as it has proved to
so many others.
At length, by the constant practice of dissimulation, the true courtier
comes to be unable to distinguish, among his own sentiments, the pretended
from the real. He arrives at such proficiency in his art as to have neither
passions nor attachments. Personal kindness, and all consideration for the
merit of others, are swallowed up in a narrow and sordid ambition; not that
generous ambition for the esteem of mankind, which reflects a sort of splendour
upon vice itself, but an ambition of selfish gratification and illiberal
intrigue. Such a man has bid a long farewell to every moral restraint, and
thinks his purposes cheaply promoted by the sacrifice of honour, sincerity
and justice. His chief study and greatest boast are to be impenetrable; that
no man shall be able to discover what he designs; that, though you discourse
with him for ever, he shall constantly elude your detection. Consummate in
his art, he will often practise it without excuse or necessity. Thus history
records her instances of the profuse kindness and endearment with which monarchs
have treated those they had already resolved to destroy. A gratuitous pride
seems to have been placed in exhibiting the last refinement of profligacy
and deceit. Ministers of this character are the mortal enemies of virtue
in others. A cabal of such courtiers is in the utmost degree deadly. They
destroy by secret ways that give no warning, and leave no trace. If they
have to do with a blunt, just man who knows no disguise, or a generous spirit
that scorns to practise dissimulation and artifice, they mark him their certain
victim. No good or liberal character can escape their machinations; and the
immorality of the court, which throws into shade all other wickedness, spreads
its contagion through the land, and emasculates the sentiments of the most
populous nation.
A fundamental disadvantage in monarchical government is that it renders
things of the most essential importance, subject, through successive gradations,
to the caprice of individuals. The suffrage of a body of electors will always
bear a resemblance, more or less remote, to the public sentiment. The suffrage
of an individual will depend upon caprice, personal convenience or pecuniary
corruption. If the king be himself inaccessible to injustice, if the minister
disdain a bribe, yet the fundamental evil remains, that kings and ministers,
fallible themselves, must, upon a thousand occasions, depend upon the recommendation
of others. Who will answer for these, through all their classes, officers
of state, and deputies of office, humble friends, and officious valets, wives
and daughters, concubines and confessors?
It is supposed by many that the existence of permanent hereditary distinction
is necessary to the maintenance of order, among beings so imperfect as the
human species. But it is allowed by all that permanent hereditary distinction
is a fiction of policy, not an ordinance of immutable truth. Wherever it
exists, the human mind, so far as relates to political society, is prevented
from settling upon its true foundation. There is a constant struggle between
the genuine sentiments of the understanding, which tell us that all this
is an imposition, and the imperious voice of government, which bids us, Reverence
and obey. In this unequal contest, alarm and apprehension will perpetually
haunt the minds of those who exercise usurped power. In this artificial state
of man, powerful engines must be employed to prevent him from rising to his
true level. It is the business of the governors to persuade the governed
that it is their interest to be slaves. They have no other means by which
to create this fictitious interest but those which they derive from the perverted
understandings, and burdened property, of the public, to be returned in titles,
ribands and bribes. Hence that system of universal corruption without which
monarchy could not exist.
It has sometimes been supposed that corruption is particularly incident
to a mixed government. 'In such a government the people possess a portion
of freedom; privilege finds its place as well as prerogative; a certain sturdiness
of manner, and consciousness of independence, are the natives of these countries.
The country-gentleman will not abjure the dictates of his judgement without
a valuable consideration. There is here more than one road to success; popular
favour is as sure a means of advancement as courtly patronage. In despotic
countries the people may be driven like sheep: however unfortunate is their
condition, they know no other, and they submit to it as an inevitable calamity.
Their characteristic feature is a torpid dullness, in which all the energies
of man are forgotten. But, in a country calling itself free, the minds of
the inhabitants are in a perturbed and restless state, and extraordinary
means must be employed to calm their vehemence.' It has sometimes happened
to men whose hearts have been pervaded with the love of virtue, of which
pecuniary prostitution is the most odious corruption, to prefer, while they
have contemplated this picture, an acknowledged despotism to a state of specious
and imperfect liberty.
But the picture is not accurate. As much of it as relates to a mixed government
must be acknowledged to be true. But the features of despotism are too favourably
touched. Whether privilege be conceded by the forms of the constitution or
no, a whole nation cannot be kept ignorant of its force. No people were ever
yet so sunk in stupidity as to imagine one man, because he bore the appellation
of a king, literally equal to a million. In a whole nation, as monarchical
nations at least must be expected to be constituted, there will be nobility
and yeomanry, rich and poor. There will be persons who, by their situation,
their wealth, or their talents, form a middle rank between the monarch and
the vulgar, and who, by their confederacies and their intrigues, can hold
the throne in awe. These men must be bought or defied. There is no disposition
that clings so close to despotism as incessant terror and alarm. What else
gave birth to the armies of spies, and the numerous state prisons, under
the old government of France? The eye of the tyrant is never dosed. How numerous
are the precautions and jealousies that these terrors dictate? No man can
go out or come into the country, but he is watched. The press must issue
no productions that have not the imprimatur of government. All coffee houses,
and places of public resort, are objects of attention. Twenty people cannot
be collected together, unless for the purposes of superstition, but it is
immediately suspected that they may be conferring about their rights. Is
it to be supposed that, where the means of jealousy are employed, the means
of corruption will be forgotten? Were it so indeed, the case would not be
much improved. No picture can be more disgustful, no state of mankind more
depressing, than that in which a whole nation is held in obedience by the
mere operation of fear, in which all that is most eminent among them, and
that should give example to the rest, is prevented, under the severest penalties,
from expressing its real sentiments, and, by necessary consequence, from
forming any sentiments that are worthy to be expressed. But, in reality,
fear was never the only instrument employed for these purposes. No tyrant
was ever so unsocial as to have no confederates in his guilt. This monstrous
edifice will always be found supported by all the various instruments for
perverting the human character, severity, menaces, blandishments, professions
and bribes. To this it is, in a great degree, owing that monarchy is so costly
an establishment. It is the business of the despot to distribute his lottery
of seduction into as many prizes as possible. Among the consequences of a
pecuniary polity these are to be reckoned the foremost that every man is
supposed to have his price, and that, the corruption being managed in an
underhand manner, many a man who appears a patriot may be really a hireling;
by which means virtue itself is brought into discredit, is either regarded
as mere folly and romance, or observed with doubt and suspicion, as the cloak
of vices, which are only the more humiliating the more they are concealed.