6. CHAPTER VI
OF SUBJECTS
Let us proceed to consider the moral effects which the institution of
monarchical government is calculated to produce upon the inhabitants of the
countries in which it flourishes. And here it must be laid down as a first
principle that monarchy is founded in imposture. It is false that kings are
entitled to the eminence they obtain. They possess no intrinsic superiority
over their subjects. The line of distinction that is drawn is the offspring
of pretence, an indirect means employed for effecting certain purposes, and
not the language of truth. It tramples upon the genuine nature of things,
and depends for its support upon this argument, 'that, were it not for impositions
of a similar nature, mankind would be miserable'.
Secondly, it is false that kings can discharge the functions of royalty.
They pretend to superintend the affairs of millions, and they are necessarily
unacquainted with these affairs. The senses of kings are constructed like
those of other men: they can neither see nor hear what is transacted in their
absence. They pretend to administer the affairs of millions, and they possess
no such supernatural powers, as should enable them to act at a distance.
They are nothing of what they would persuade us to believe them. The king
is often ignorant of that of which half the inhabitants of his dominions
are informed. His prerogatives are administered by others, and the lowest
clerk in office is frequently, to this and that individual, more effectually
the sovereign than the king himself He is wholly unacquainted with what is
solemnly transacted in his name.
To conduct this imposture with success, it is necessary to bring over
to its party our eyes and our ears. Accordingly kings are always exhibited
with all the splendour of ornament, attendance and equipage. They live amidst
a sumptuousness of expense; and this, not merely to gratify their appetites
but as a necessary instrument of policy. The most fatal opinion that could
lay hold upon the minds of their subjects is that kings are but men. Accordingly,
they are carefully withdrawn from the profaneness of vulgar inspection; and,
when they are shown to the public, it is with every artifice that may dazzle
our sense, and mislead our judgement.
The imposture does not stop with our eyes, but address itself to our ears.
Hence the inflated style of regal formality. The name of the king everywhere
obtrudes itself upon us. It would seem as if everything in the country, the
lands, the houses, the furniture, and the inhabitants, were his property.
Our estates are the king's dominions. Our bodies and minds are his subjects.
Our representatives are his parliament. Our courts of law are his deputies.
All magistrates, throughout the realm, are the king's officers. His name
occupies the foremost place in all statutes and decrees. He is the prosecutor
of every criminal. He is 'Our Sovereign Lord the King'. Were it possible
that he should die, 'the fountain of our blood, the means by which we live',
would be gone: every political function would be suspended. It is therefore
one of the fundamental principles of monarchical government that 'the king
cannot die'. Our moral principles accommodate themselves to our veracity:
and, accordingly, the sum of our political duties (the most important of
all duties) is loyalty; to be true and faithful to the king; to honour a
man whom, it may be. we ought to despise; and to obey; that is, to convert
our shame into our pride, and to be ostentatious of the surrender of our
own understandings. The morality of adults in this situation is copied from
the basest part of the morality sometimes taught to children; and the perfection
of virtue is placed in blind compliance and unconditional submission.
What must be the effects of this machine upon the moral principles of
mankind? Undoubtedly we cannot trifle with the principles of morality and
truth with impunity. However gravely the imposture may be carried on, it
is impossible but that the real state of the case should be strongly suspected.
Man in a state of society, if undebauched by falsehoods like these, which
confound the nature of right and wrong, is not ignorant of what it is in
which merits consists. He knows that one man is not superior to another,
except so far as he is wiser or better. Accordingly these are the distinctions
to which he aspires for himself. These are the qualities he honours and applauds
in another, and which therefore the feelings of each man instigate his neighbours
to acquire. But what a revolution is introduced among these original and
undebauched sentiments by the arbitrary distinctions which monarchy engenders?
We still retain in our minds the standard of merit: but it daily grows more
feeble and powerless; we are persuaded to think that it is of no real use
in the transactions of the world, and presently lay it aside as Utopian and
visionary.
Nor is this the whole of the injurious consequences produced by the hyperbolical
pretensions of monarchy. There is a simplicity in truth that refuses alliance
with this impudent mysticism. No man is entirely ignorant of the nature of
man. He will not indeed be incredulous to a degree of energy and rectitude
that may exceed the standard of his preconceived ideas. But for one man to
pretend to think and act for a nation of his fellows is so preposterous as
to set credibility at defiance. Is he persuaded that the imposition is salutary?
He willingly assumes the right of introducing similar falsehoods into his
private affairs. He becomes convinced that veneration for truth is to be
classed among our errors and prejudices, and that, so far from being, as
it pretends to be, in all cases salutary, it would lead, if ingenuously practised,
to the destruction of mankind.
Again, if kings were exhibited simply as they are in themselves to the
inspection of mankind, the 'salutary prejudice', as it has been called,[1]
which teaches us to venerate them would speedily be extinct: it has therefore
been found necessary to surround them with luxury and expense. Thus luxury
and expense are made the standard Of honour, and of consequence the topics
of anxiety and envy. However fatal this sentiment may be to the morality
and happiness of mankind, it is one of those illusions which monarchical
government is eager to cherish. In reality, the first principle of virtuous
feeling, as has been elsewhere said,[2] is the love of independence. He
that would be just must, before all things, estimate the objects about him
at their true value. But the principle in regal states has been to think
your father the wisest of men, because he is your father,[3] and your king
the foremost of his species because he is a king. The standard of intellectual
merit is no longer the man, but his title. To be drawn in a coach of state
by eight milk-white horses is the highest of all human claims to our veneration.
The same principle inevitably runs through every order of the state, and
men desire wealth under a monarchical government for the same reason that,
under other circumstances, they would have desired virtue.
Let us suppose an individual who by severe labour earns a scanty subsistence,
to become, by accident or curiosity, a spectator of the pomp of a royal progress.
Is it possible that he should not mentally apostrophize this elevated mortal,
and ask, 'What has made thee to differ from me?' If no such sentiment pass
through his mind, it is a proof that the corrupt institutions of society
have already divested him of all sense of justice. The more simple and direct
is his character, the more certainly will these sentiments occur. What answer
shall we return to his enquiry? That the well being of society requires men
to be treated otherwise than according to their intrinsic merit? Whether
he be satisfied with this answer or no, will he not aspire to possess that
(which in this instance is wealth) to which the policy of mankind has annexed
such high distinction? Is it not indispensable that, before he believes in
the rectitude of this institution, his original feelings of right and wrong
should be wholly reversed? If it be indispensable, then let the advocate
of the monarchical system ingenuously declare that, according to that system,
the interest of society, in the first instance, requires the subversion of
all principles of moral truth and justice.
With this view let us again recollect the maxim adopted in monarchical
countries, 'that the king never dies'. Thus, with true oriental extravagance,
we salute this imbecile mortal, 'O king, live for ever I' Why do we this?
Because upon his existence the existence of the state depends. In his name
the courts of law are opened. If his political capacity be suspended for
a moment, the centre to which all public business is linked is destroyed.
In such countries everything is uniform: the ceremony is all, and the substance
nothing. In the, riots in the year 1780, the mace of the house of lords was
proposed to be sent into the passages, by the terror of its appearance to
quiet the confusion but it was observed that, if the mace should be rudely
detained by the rioters, the whole would be thrown into anarchy. Business
would be at a stand; their insignia, and, with their insignia, their legislative
and deliberative functions would be gone. Who can expect firmness and energy
in a country where everything is made to depend, not upon justice, public
interest and reason, but upon a piece of gilded wood? What conscious dignity
and virtue can there be among a people who, if deprived of the imaginary
guidance of one vulgar mortal, are taught to believe that their faculties
are benumbed, and all their joints unstrung?
Lastly, one of the most essential ingredients in a virtuous character
is undaunted firmness; and nothing can more powerfully tend to destroy this
principle than the spirit of a monarchical government. The first lesson of
virtue is, Fear no man; the first lesson of such a constitution is, Fear
the king. The true interest of man requires the annihilation of factitious
and imaginary distinctions; it is inseparable from monarchy to support and
render them more palpable than ever. He that cannot speak to the proudest
despot with a consciousness that he is a man speaking to a man, and a determination
to yield him no superiority to which his inherent qualifications do not entitle
him, is wholly incapable of an illustrious virtue. How many such men are
bred within the pale of monarchy? How long would monarchy maintain its ground
in a nation of such men? Surely it would be wisdom in society, instead of
conjuring up a thousand phantoms to seduce us into error, instead of surrounding
us with a thousand fears to deprive us of energy, to 'remove every obstacle
to our progress, and smooth the path of improvement.
Virtue was never yet held in much honour and esteem in a monarchical country.
It is the inclination and the interest of courtiers and kings to bring it
into disrepute; and they are but too successful in the attempt. Virtue is,
in their conception, arrogant, intrusive, unmanageable and stubborn. It is
an assumed outside, by which those who pretend to it, intend to gratify their
rude tempers, or their secret views. Within the circle of monarchy, virtue
is always regarded with dishonourable incredulity. The philosophical system,
which affirms self-love to be the first mover of all our actions, and the
falsity of human virtues, is the growth of these countries.[4] Why is it
that the language of integrity and public spirit is constantly regarded among
us as hypocrisy? It was not always thus. It was not till the usurpation of
Caesar, that books were written, by the tyrant and his partisans, to prove
that Cato was no better than a snarling pretender.[5]
There is a further consideration which has seldom been adverted to upon
this subject, but which seems to be of no inconsiderable importance. In our
definition of justice, it appeared that our debt to our fellow men extended
to all the efforts we could make for their welfare, and all the relief we
could supply to their necessities. Not a talent do we possess, not a moment
of time, not a shilling of property, for which we are not responsible at
the tribunal of the public, which we are not obliged to pay into the general
bank of common advantage. Of every one of these things there is an employment
which is best, and that best justice obliges us to select. But how extensive
is the consequence of this principle with respect to the luxuries and ostentation
of human life? How many of these luxuries are there that would stand the
test, and approve themselves, upon examination, to be the best objects upon
which our property could be employed? will it often come out to be true that
hundreds of individuals ought to be subjected to the severest and most incessant
labour, that one man may spend in idleness what would afford to the general
mass ease, leisure and consequently wisdom?
Whoever frequents the habitations of the luxurious will speedily be infected
with the vices of luxury. The ministers and attendants of a sovereign, accustomed
to the trappings of magnificence, will turn with disdain from the merit that
is obscured with the clouds of adversity. In vain may virtue plead, in vain
may talents solicit distinction, if poverty seem, to the fastidious sense
of the man in place, to envelop them, as it were, with its noisome effluvia.
The very lacquey knows how to repel unfortunate merit from the great man's
door.
Here then we are presented with the lesson which is, loudly and perpetually,
read through all the haunts of monarchy. Money is the great requisite, for
the want of which nothing can atone. Distinction, the homage and esteem of
mankind, are to be bought, not earned. The rich man need not trouble himself
to invite them, they come unbidden to his surly door. Rarely indeed does
it happen that there is any crime that gold cannot expiate, any baseness
and meanness of character that wealth cannot shroud in oblivion. Money therefore
is the only object worthy of your pursuit, and it is of little importance
by what sinister and unmanly means, so it be but obtained.
It is true that virtue and talents do not stand in need of the great man's
assistance, and might, if they did but know their worth, repay his scorn
with a just and enlightened pity. But, unfortunately, they are often ignorant
of their strength, and adopt the errors they see universally espoused. Were
it otherwise, they would indeed be happier, but the general manners would
perhaps remain the same. The general manners are fashioned by the form and
spirit of the national government; and if, in extraordinary cases, they cease
to yield to the mould, they speedily change the form to which they fail to
submit.
The evils indeed that arise out of avarice, an inordinate admiration of
wealth and an intemperate pursuit of it are so obvious that they have constituted
a perpetual topic of lamentation and complaint. The object in this place
is to consider how far they are extended and aggravated by a monarchical
government, that is, by a constitution the very essence of which is to accumulate
enormous wealth upon a single head, and to render the ostentation of splendour
the established instrument for securing honour and veneration. The object
is to consider in what degree the luxury of courts, the effeminate softness
of favourites, the system, never to be separated from the monarchical form,
of putting men's approbation and good word at a price, of individuals buying
the favour of government, and government buying the favour of individuals,
is injurious to the moral improvement of mankind. As long as the unvarying
practice of courts is cabal, and as long as the unvarying tendency of cabal
is to bear down talents, and discourage virtue, to recommend cunning in the
room of sincerity, a servile and supple disposition in preference to firmness
and inflexibility, a pliant and selfish morality as better than an ingenuous
one, and the study of the red book of promotion rather than the study of
the general welfare, so long will monarchy be the bitterest and most potent
of all the adversaries of the true interests of mankind.
[[1]]
Burke's Reflection.
[[3]]
'The persons whom you ought to love infinitely more than me are those
to whom you are indebted for your existence.' 'Their conduct ought to regulate
yours and be the standard of your sentiments.' 'The respect we owe to our
father and mother is a sort of worship, as the phrase filial piety implies.'
'Ce que vous devez aimer avant moi sans aucune comparaison, ce sont ceux
á qui vous devez la vie.' 'Leur conduite doit régler la vôtre
et fixer votre opinion.' 'Le respect que nous devons á notre pére
et a notre mére est un culte, comme l'exprime le mot piété
filiale.' Leçons d'une Gouvernante, Tome I.
[[4]]
Maximes par M. Le Duc de la Rochefoucault: De la Fausseté des
Vertus Humaines, par M. Esprit.
[[5]]
See Plutarch's Lives; Lives of Caesar and Cicero: Ciceronis Epistolae
ad Atticum, Lib. XII. Epist. xl, xli.