FOOTNOTES
[1] See Mr. Burke’s Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, pages 53, 54.
[2] “To follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress and a specific, sanction to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature. When it goes beyond this, its authority will be precarious, let its rights be what they will.” Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, p. 49.
[3] Ibid. p. 55. Thoughts on the causes of the present discontents, p. 67. “Government certainly, is an institution of divine authority; though its forms and the persons who administer it, all originate from the people.” It is probable that Mr. Burke means only that government is a divine institution, in the same sense in which any other expedient of human prudence for gaining protection against injury, may be called a Divine institution. All that we owe immediately to our own foresight and industry, must ultimately be ascribed to God the giver of all our powers, and the cause of all causes. It is in this sense that St. Paul in Rom. xiii. 1, 2. calls civil magistracy the ordinance of God, and says that there is no power but of God. If any one wants to be convinced of this, he should read the excellent bishop Hoadly’s Sermon entitled The Measures of Submission to the civil Magistrate, and the defences of it.
It is further probable, that when Mr. Burke asserts the omnipotence of Parliaments, or their competence to establish any oppressions (Letter, p. 46, 49) he means mere power abstracted from right, or the same sort of power and competence that trustees have to betray their trust, or that armed ruffians have to rob and murder. Nor should I doubt whether this is his meaning, were it not for the passage I have quoted from him in the last page, the latter part of which seems to imply, that a legislature may contradict its end, and yet retain its rights.—Some of the justest remarks on this subject may be found in the Earl of Abingdon’s thoughts on Mr. Burke’s letter, a pamphlet which (on account of the excellent public principles it maintains, and the spirit of liberty it breathes, as well as the rank of the writer) must give to every friend to the true interests of this country particular pleasure.
In p. 46, Mr. Burke says, that “if there is one man in the world more zealous than another for the supremacy of parliament and the rights of this imperial crown, it is himself; though many may be more knowing in the extent and the foundation of these rights.” He adds, that “he has constantly declined such disquisitions, not being qualified for the chair of a professor in metaphysics, and not chusing to put the solid interests of the kingdom on speculative grounds.”—The less knowledge, the more zeal, is a maxim which experience has dreadfully verified in religion. But he that, in the present case, should apply this maxim to Mr. Burke, would, whatever he may say of himself, greatly injure him. Though he chuses to decry enquiries into the nature of liberty, there are, I am persuaded, few in the world whose zeal for it is more united to extensive knowledge and an exalted understanding.—He calls it, p. 55. “the vital spring and energy of a state, and a blessing of the first order.” He cannot, therefore, think that too much pains may be taken to UNDERSTAND it. He must know, that nothing but usurpation and error can suffer by enquiry and discussion.
Mr. Wilkes, in an excellent speech which he lately made in moving for the repeal of the declaratory law, observed, that this law was a compromise to which the great men, under whose administration it was passed, were forced in order to obtain the repeal of the Stamp-act. I think so highly of that administration and of the service it did the public, that I have little doubt of the truth of this observation. But, at the same time, I cannot help wishing Mr. Burke had given no reason for doubt by defending the principle of that act; a principle which, unquestionably, he and his friends would never have acted upon; but which others have since acted upon, with a violence which has brought us to the brink of ruin.
[4] In p. 19. he calls liberty “a freedom from all restraints except such as established law imposes for THE GOOD OF THE COMMUNITY.” But this addition can make no difference of any consequence, as long as it is not specified where the power is lodged of judging what laws are for the good of the community. In countries where the laws are the edicts of absolute princes, the end professed is always the good of the Community.
[5] “The laws against Papists have been extremely severe. New dangers may arise; and if at any time ANOTHER DENOMINATION of men should be equally dangerous to our civil interests, it would be justifiable to lay them under similar restraints.” Page 17.—In another part of this sermon the great men in opposition (some of the first in the kingdom in respect of rank, ability, and virtue) are described as a body of men void of principle, who, without regarding the relation in which they stand to the community, have entered into a league for advancing their private interest, and “who are held together by the same bond that keeps together the lowest and wickedest combinations.”—Was there ever such a censure delivered from a pulpit? What wonder is it that the Dissenters should come in for a share in his Grace’s abuse?—Their political principles, he says, are growing dangerous.—On what does he ground this insinuation? He is mistaken if he imagines that they are all such delinquents as the author of the following tracts, or that they think universally as he does of the war with America. On this subject they are, like other bodies of men in the kingdom, of different opinions.—But I will tell him in what they agree.—They agree in detesting the doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance. They are all Whigs, enemies to arbitrary power, and firmly attached to those principles of civil and religious liberty which produced the glorious Revolution and the Hanoverian succession.—Such principles are the nation’s best defence; and Protestant Dissenters have hitherto reckoned it their glory to be distinguished by zeal for them, and an adherence to them. Once these principles were approved by men in power. No good can be expected, if they are now reckoned dangerous.
[6] That is, the missionaries of the society in America.—The charter of the society declares the end of its incorporation to be “propagating the gospel in foreign parts, and making provision for the worship of God in those plantations which wanted the administration of God’s word and sacraments, and were abandoned to atheism and infidelity.” The chief business, on the contrary, of the society has been to provide for the support of episcopalianism in the northern colonies, and particularly New-England, where the sacraments are more regularly administered, and the people less abandoned to infidelity, than perhaps in any country under heaven. The missionaries employed and paid by the society for this purpose, have generally been clergymen of the highest principles in church and state. America, having been for some time very hostile to men of such principles, most of them have been obliged to take refuge in this country; and here they have, I am afraid, been too successful in propagating their own resentments, in misleading our rulers, and widening the breach which has produced the present war.
[7] I am sorry to mention one exception to the fact here intimated. The new constitution for Pensilvania (in other respects wise and liberal) is dishonoured by a religious test. It requires an acknowledgment of the divine inspiration of the Old and New Testament, as a condition of being admitted to a seat in the House of Representatives; directing however, at the same time, that no other religious test shall for ever hereafter be required of any civil officer.—This has been, probably, an accommodation to the prejudices of some of the narrower sects in the province, to which the more liberal part have for the present thought fit to yield; and, therefore, it may be expected that it will not be of long continuance.
Religious tests and subscriptions in general, and all establishments of particular systems of faith, with civil emoluments annexed, do inconceivable mischief, by turning religion into a trade, by engendering strife and persecution, by forming hypocrites, by obstructing the progress of truth, and fettering and perverting the human mind; nor will the world ever grow much wiser, or better, or happier, till, by the abolition of them, truth can gain fair play, and reason free scope for exertion. The Archbishop, page 11, speaks of christianity as “insufficient to rely on its own energies; and of the assistances which it is the business of civil authority to provide for gospel truths.”—A worse slander was never thrown on gospel truths. Christianity disdains such assistances as the corrupted governments of this world are capable of giving it. Politicians and statesmen know little of it. Their enmity has sometimes done it good; but their friendship, by supporting corruptions carrying its name, has been almost fatal to it.
[8] In 1742, after the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole.
[9] Sir Francis Bacon was the second Attorney-General who sat in the House of Commons; but, to prevent its being drawn into a precedent, the House would not admit him, till they had made an order, that no Attorney-General should for the future be allowed to sit and vote in that House.—In conformity to this order, whenever afterwards a member was appointed Attorney-General, his place was vacated, and a new writ issued. This continued to be the practice till the year 1670, when Sir Heneage Finch (afterwards Earl of Nottingham) being appointed Attorney-General, he was allowed by connivance to preserve his seat, which connivance has been continued ever since.—I give these facts not from any enquiry or knowledge of my own, but from the authority of a friend, who is perhaps better informed than any person in the kingdom on every subject of this kind.
[10] The following facts will shew, in some degree, how this change has been brought about.—For ten years ending Aug. 1, 1717 (a period comprehending in it a general war abroad; and the demise of the crown, the establishment of a new family, and an open rebellion at home) the money expended in secret services amounted only to 279,444l.—For TEN YEARS ending Feb. 11, 1742, it amounted to no less a sum than 1.384,600; of which 50,077l. was paid to printers of News-papers and writers for government; and a greater sum expended, in the last six weeks of these ten years, than had been spent in three years before Aug. 1710.—See the Report of the Committee appointed March 23, 1742, to enquire into the conduct of Robert Earl of Orford, printed in the Journals of the House of Commons, vol. 24, p. 295, 296, 300.—One passage, in this report, contains remarks, so much to my present purpose and so important, that I cannot help copying it.—“There are no laws particularly adapted to the case of a minister who clandestinely employs the money of the public, and the whole power and profitable employments that attend the collecting and disposing of it, against the people: And, by this profusion and criminal distribution of offices, in some measure justifies the expence that particular persons are obliged to be at, by making it necessary to the preservation of all that is valuable to a free nation. For in that case, the contest is plain and visible. It is, whether the Commons shall retain the third state in their own hands; while this whole dispute is carried on at the expence of the people, and, on the side of the minister, out of the money granted to support and secure the constitutional independence of the three branches of the legislature.—This method of corruption is as sure, and, therefore, as criminal a way of subverting the constitution as by an armed force. It is a crime, productive of a total destruction of the very being of this government; and is so high and unnatural, that nothing but the powers of parliament can reach it; and, as it never can meet with parliamentary animadversion but when it is unsuccessful, it must seek for its security in the extent and efficacy of the mischief it produces.” P. 395. The obstructions which this committee met with in their enquiry proved that the crime they here describe in such emphatical language, had even then obtained that very security, in the extent of the mischief it produced, which, they observe, it was under a necessity of seeking.
OBSERVATIONS
on the NATURE of
CIVIL LIBERTY,
the PRINCIPLES of
GOVERNMENT,
AND THE
JUSTICE and POLICY
OF THE
WAR with AMERICA.
Quis furor iste novus? quo nunc, quo tenditis⸺
Heu! miseri cives? non Hostem, inimicaque castra,
⸺ Vestras Spes uritis.
Virg.
By RICHARD PRICE, D. D. F. R. S.
THE EIGHTH EDITION,
With Corrections and Additions.
LONDON:
Printed for T. Cadell, in the Strand.
M.DCC.LXXVIII.
PREFACE
TO
The FIRST EDITION.
In the following Observations, I have taken that liberty of examining public measures, which, happily for this kingdom, every person in it enjoys. They contain the sentiments of a private and unconnected man; for which, should there be any thing wrong in them, he alone is answerable.
After all that has been written on the dispute with America, no reader can expect to be informed, in this publication, of much that he has not before known. Perhaps, however, he may find in it some new matter; and if he should, it will be chiefly in the Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, and the Policy of the War with America.
February 8th, 1776.
PREFACE
TO
The FIFTH EDITION.
The favourable reception which the following Tract has met with, makes me abundant amends for the abuse it has brought upon me. I should be ill employed were I to take much notice of this abuse: But there is one circumstance attending it, which I cannot help just mentioning.—The principles on which I have argued form the foundation of every state as far as it is free; and are the same with those taught by Mr. Locke, and all the writers on Civil Liberty who have been hitherto most admired in this country. But I find with concern, that our Governors chuse to decline trying by them their present measures: For, in a Pamphlet which has been circulated by government with great industry, these principles are pronounced to be “unnatural and wild, incompatible with practice, and the offspring of the distempered imagination of a man who is biassed by party, and who writes to deceive.”
I must take this opportunity to add, that I love quiet too well to think of entering into a controversy with any writers; particularly, NAMELESS ones. Conscious of good intentions, and unconnected with any party, I have endeavoured to plead the cause of general liberty and justice: And happy in knowing this, I shall, in silence, commit myself to that candour of the public of which I have had so much experience.
March 12th, 1776.