It is plain that the mind of this POLITICAL preacher was at the time big with some extraordinary design; and it is very probable that the thoughts of his audience, who understood him better than I do, did all along run before him in his reflection, and in the whole train of consequences to which it led. Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had lived in a free country; and it was an error I cherished, because it gave me a greater liking to the country I lived in. I was indeed aware, that a jealous, ever-waking vigilance, to guard the treasure of our liberty, not only from invasion, but from decay and corruption, was our best wisdom, and our first duty. However, I considered that treasure rather as a possession to be secured, than as a prize to be contended for. I did not discern how the present time came to be so very favourable to all EXERTIONS in the cause of freedom. The present time differs from any other only by the circumstance of what is doing in France. If the example of that nation is to have an influence on this, I can easily conceive why some of their proceedings which have an unpleasant aspect, and are not quite reconcilable to humanity, generosity, good faith, and justice, are palliated with so much milky good-nature towards the actors, and born with so much heroic fortitude towards the sufferers. It is certainly not prudent to discredit the authority of an example we mean to follow. But allowing this, we are led to a very natural question:—What is that cause of liberty, and what are those exertions in its favour, to which the example of France is so singularly auspicious? Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with all the laws, all the tribunals, and all the ancient corporations of the kingdom? Is every land-mark of the country to be done away in favour of a geometrical and arithmetical constitution? Is the House of Lords to be voted useless? Is episcopacy to be abolished? Are the church lands to be sold to Jews and jobbers; or given to bribe new-invented municipal republics into a participation in sacrilege? Are all the taxes to be voted grievances, and the revenue reduced to a patriotic contribution, or patriotic presents? Are silver shoe-buckles to be substituted in the place of the land-tax and the malt-tax, for the support of the naval strength of this kingdom? Are all orders, ranks, and distinctions to be confounded, that out of universal anarchy, joined to national bankruptcy, three or four thousand democracies should be formed into eighty-three, and that they may all, by some sort of unknown attractive power, be organized into one? For this great end is the army to be seduced from its discipline and its fidelity, first by every kind of debauchery, and then by the terrible precedent of a donative in the increase of pay? Are the curates to be secluded from their bishops, by holding out to them the delusive hope of a dole out of the spoils of their own order? Are the citizens of London to be drawn from their allegiance by feeding them at the expense of their fellow-subjects? Is a compulsory paper currency to be substituted in the place of the legal coin of this kingdom? Is what remains of the plundered stock of public revenue to be employed in the wild project of maintaining two armies to watch over and to fight with each other? If these are the ends and means of the Revolution Society, I admit they are well assorted; and France may furnish them for both with precedents in point. I see that your example is held out to shame us. I know that we are supposed a dull, sluggish race, rendered passive by finding our situation tolerable, and prevented by a mediocrity of freedom from ever attaining to its full perfection. Your leaders in France began by affecting to admire, almost to adore, the British constitution; but, as they advanced, they came to look upon it with a sovereign contempt. The friends of your National Assembly amongst us have full as mean an opinion of what was formerly thought the glory of their country. The Revolution Society has discovered that the English nation is not free. They are convinced that the inequality in our representation is a"defect in our constitution SO GROSS AND PALPABLE, as to make it excellent chiefly in FORM and THEORY." (Discourse on the Love of our Country, 3rd edition page 39.) That a representation in the legislature of a kingdom is not only the basis of all constitutional liberty in it, but of "ALL LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT; that without it a GOVERNMENT is nothing but a USURPATION;"—that "when the representation is PARTIAL, the kingdom possesses liberty only PARTIALLY; and if extremely partial it gives only a SEMBLANCE; and if not only extremely partial, but corruptly chosen, it becomes a NUISANCE." Dr. Price considers this inadequacy of representation as our FUNDAMENTAL GRIEVANCE; and though, as to the corruption of this semblance of representation, he hopes it is not yet arrived to its full perfection of depravity, he fears that "nothing will be done towards gaining for us this ESSENTIAL BLESSING, until some GREAT ABUSE OF POWER again provokes our resentment, or some GREAT CALAMITY again alarms our fears, or perhaps till the acquisition of a PURE AND EQUAL REPRESENTATION BY OTHER COUNTRIES, whilst we are MOCKED with the SHADOW, kindles our shame." To this he subjoins a note in these words. "A representation chosen chiefly by the treasury, and a FEW thousands of the DREGS of the people, who are generally paid for their votes."
You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists, who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them the depositories of all power. It would require a long discourse to point out to you the many fallacies that lurk in the generality and equivocal nature of the terms "inadequate representation." I shall only say here, in justice to that old-fashioned constitution, under which we have long prospered, that our representation has been found perfectly adequate to all the purposes for which a representation of the people can be desired or devised. I defy the enemies of our constitution to show the contrary. To detail the particulars in which it is found so well to promote its ends, would demand a treatise on our practical constitution. I state here the doctrine of the revolutionists, only that you and others may see, what an opinion these gentlemen entertain of the constitution of their country, and why they seem to think that some great abuse of power, or some great calamity, as giving a chance for the blessing of a constitution according to their ideas, would be much palliated to their feelings; you see WHY THEY are so much enamoured of your fair and equal representation, which being once obtained, the same effects might follow. You see they consider our House of Commons as only "a semblance," "a form," "a theory," "a shadow," "a mockery," perhaps "a nuisance."
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
There is nothing more memorable in history than the actions, fortunes, and character of this great man; whether we consider the grandeur of the plans he formed, the courage and wisdom with which they were executed, or the splendour of that success, which, adorning his youth, continued without the smallest reserve to support his age even to the last moments of his life. He lived above seventy years, and reigned within ten years as long as he lived: sixty over his dukedom, above twenty over England; both of which he acquired or kept by his own magnanimity, with hardly any other title than he derived from his arms; so that he might be reputed, in all respects, as happy as the highest ambition, the most fully gratified, can make a man. The silent inward satisfactions of domestic happiness he neither had nor sought. He had a body suited to the character of his mind, erect, firm, large, and active; whilst to be active was a praise; a countenance stern, and which became command. Magnificent in his living, reserved in his conversation, grave in his common deportment, but relaxing with a wise facetiousness, he knew how to relieve his mind and preserve his dignity; for he never forfeited by a personal acquaintance that esteem he had acquired by his great actions. Unlearned in books, he formed his understanding by the rigid discipline of a large and complicated experience. He knew men much, and therefore generally trusted them but little; but when he knew any man to be good, he reposed in him an entire confidence, which prevented his prudence from degenerating into a vice. He had vices in his composition, and great ones; but they were the vices of a great mind: ambition, the malady of every extensive genius; and avarice, the madness of the wise: one chiefly actuated his youth; the other governed his age. The vices of young and light minds, the joys of wine, and the pleasures of love, never reached his aspiring nature. The general run of men he looked on with contempt, and treated with cruelty when they opposed him. Nor was the rigour of his mind to be softened but with the appearance of extraordinary fortitude in his enemies, which, by a sympathy congenial to his own virtues, always excited his admiration, and insured his mercy. So that there were often seen in this one man, at the same time, the extremes of a savage cruelty, and a generosity, that does honour to human nature. Religion, too, seemed to have a great influence on his mind from policy, or from better motives; but his religion was displayed in the regularity with which he performed his duties, not in the submission he showed to its ministers, which was never more than what good government required. Yet his choice of a counsellor and favourite was not, according to the mode of the time, out of that order, and a choice that does honour to his memory. This was Lanfranc, a man of great learning for the times, and extraordinary piety. He owed his elevation to William; but, though always inviolably faithful, he never was the tool or flatterer of the power which raised him; and the greater freedom he showed, the higher he rose in the confidence of his master. By mixing with the concerns of state he did not lose his religion and conscience, or make them the covers or instruments of ambition; but tempering the fierce policy of a new power by the mild lights of religion, he became a blessing to the country in which he was promoted. The English owed to the virtue of this stranger, and the influence he had on the king, the little remains of liberty they continued to enjoy; and at last such a degree of his confidence, as in some sort counterbalanced the severities of the former part of his reign.
KING ALFRED.
When Alfred had once more reunited the kingdoms of his ancestors, he found the whole face of things in the most desperate condition; there was no observance of law and order; religion had no force; there was no honest industry; the most squalid poverty, and the grossest ignorance, had overspread the whole kingdom. Alfred at once enterprised the cure of all these evils. To remedy the disorders in the government, he revived, improved, and digested all the Saxon institutions; insomuch that he is generally honoured as the founder of our laws and constitution. (Historians, copying after one another, and examining little, have attributed to this monarch the institution of juries; an institution which certainly did never prevail amongst the Saxons. They have likewise attributed to him the distribution of England into shires, hundreds, and tithings, and of appointing officers over these divisions. But it is very obvious that the shires were never settled upon any regular plan, nor are they the result of any single design. But these reports, however ill imagined, are a strong proof of the high veneration in which this excellent prince has always been held; as it has been thought that the attributing these regulations to him would endear them to the nation. He probably settled them in such an order, and made such reformations in his government, that some of the institutions themselves, which he improved, have been attributed to him; and indeed there was one work of his, which serves to furnish us with a higher idea of the political capacity of that great man than any of these fictions. He made a general survey and register of all the property in the kingdom, who held it, and what it was distinctly; a vast work for an age of ignorance and time of confusion, which has been neglected in more civilized nations and settled times. It was called the "Roll of Winton," and served as a model of a work of the same kind made by William the Conqueror.) The shire he divided into hundreds; the hundreds into tithings; every freeman was obliged to be entered into some tithing, the members of which were mutually bound for each other for the preservation of the peace, and the avoiding theft and rapine. For securing the liberty of the subject, he introduced the method of giving bail, the most certain fence against the abuses of power. It has been observed, that the reigns of weak princes are times favourable to liberty; but the wisest and bravest of all the English princes is the father of their freedom. This great man was even jealous of the privileges of his subjects; and as his whole life was spent in protecting them, his last will breathes the same spirit, declaring, that he had left his people as free as their own thoughts. He not only collected with great care a complete body of laws, but he wrote comments on them for the instruction of his judges, who were in general by the misfortune of the time ignorant; and if he took care to correct their ignorance, he was rigorous towards their corruption. He inquired strictly into their conduct; he heard appeals in person; he held his Wittena-Gemotes, or parliaments, frequently, and kept every part of his government in health and vigour.