Bevis. O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in handicraftsmen.
Holland. The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons.
Bevis. Nay more, the King’s council are no good workmen.
Holland. True, and yet it is said—labour in thy vocation; which is as much as to say, let the magistrates be labouring men, and therefore should WE be magistrates.”
We may observe a vast similarity of policy between John Cade himself and Tom Paine. Says Paine, “Down with your lords and commons, and kings and bishops, destroy them all: pull down your universities, and cathedrals, and corporations; down, down with them all!” Cade had long before anticipated the same exhortations. “Go, (says he,) and set London-bridge on fire; and, if you can, burn down the tower too.—Go, some, and pull down the Savoy; others to the Inns of Court; down with them all.—Burn all the records of the realms; my mouth shall be the Parliament of England, and hence-forward all things shall be in common.”
The arguments of Tom Paine were totally inapplicable, not only to this, but to any existing society. The proposed experiment could not be tried but among savages; and among them equality could not long be preserved. The strong, the courageous, active, and enterprising, would have the means of subsistence, accommodation, and security, in a greater degree, than the feeble, the timid, the inert, and indolent. This absurdity easily escaped detection by the class of readers among whom the work was most studiously circulated. When John Cade proposed that the conduit should run with claret for the first year after his subversion of the existing government, John Holland and George Bevis were not struck with the impossibility of the proposal being put in execution, but delighted with the idea that they might now drink wine, and be as great as lords. “Be brave then,” says Cade, “for your captain is brave, and vows REFORMATION. There shall be, in England, seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hoop’d pot shall have two hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small-beer! All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And when I am king, as king I will be—(All. God save your majesty!)—there shall be no money; ALL shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them ALL in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.” Cade’s admirers were, no doubt, delighted at the thought of having meat, drink, and raiment, at free cost, and in their joy forgot to enquire how Cade was to have means of so extensive beneficence. As Paine, as well as Cade, vowed reformation, every one’s fancy framed reforms in what particularly concerned himself: the journeyman shoe-maker found that hitherto his wages were in proportion to his work; through Tom Paine he expected great wages with very small work. The amateurs of gin and whisky expected, that through Tom Paine the revenue would be abolished, and they would have their favourite beverage at less cost. The division of property, too, many of them expected would not only lessen their work, and increase their favourite enjoyments, but enable them to live and revel without working at all. In short, weakness, and ignorance of understanding, vanity, pride, love of idleness, and luxury, and the hope of plunder, concurred with the active and incessant endeavours of democratic underlings, in rendering so extravagant, impudent, absurd, and mischievous, a publication palatable among numbers of the lower ranks. Discontent, malignant hatred of a government in which they themselves were not promoted according to their fancied merits, made others encourage the writings and principles of Paine, however much they might have despised his illiterature and sophistry. But not the ignorant only, writers of respectable talents and erudition declared the ravings and vagaries of Paine to be the invincible energy of truth and sense, to combine history and philosophy. Such especially was the opinion of the Analytical reviewers, who had great influence among numerous classes of British subjects; and the following contrast between Burke and Paine exhibits the prominent features of the sentiments and opinions which in the last ten years of the eighteenth century had such a powerful effect on the literature of our country. “Each of them interests our feelings, but in a different manner; elegant and declamatory, Mr. Burke seduces us along by the charms of his eloquence: plain, but forcible, Mr. Paine carries us away with him by the invincible energy of truth and sense. Fanciful and excursive, Mr. Burke delights the imagination by the beauty of his metaphors, and the splendour of his ornaments; while his opponent holds our judgment captive by the native vigour of his arguments, the originality of his sentiments, and the pointedness of his remarks. Mr. Burke is the polished and playful courtier, who dances in his chains; Mr. Paine is the stern republican, who exults in his liberty, and treats with equal freedom the monarch and the peasant. In a word, without subscribing implicitly to every principle which our author advances, we cannot in justice withhold this testimony to the work before us, that it is one of the most curious, original, and interesting publications, which the singular vicissitudes of modern politics have produced. Independent of its value as a polemical work, it is truly excellent and useful in an historical view. In it the springs and sources of the French revolution are traced with the acuteness and perspicacity of a Tacitus; his information bears its authority upon the face of it, and almost convinces by the weight of its internal evidence.” Such notions disseminated among great numbers that were totally incapable of judging, produced very general impression. “Nobility, (it was said,) is an institution that could only be reconciled to a state of barbarism. It is a distinction equally impolitic and immoral, worthy of the times of ignorance and of rapine, which gave it birth; is a violation of the rights of that part of the nation that is deprived of it; and as equality becomes a stimulus towards distinction, so on the other hand this is the radical vice of a goverment, and the source of a variety of evils. It is impossible that there should be any uncommon instances of virtue in a state, when recompences belong exclusively to a certain class of society, and when it costs them no more to obtain these, than the trouble of being born. Amongst this list of privileged persons, virtues, talents, and genius, must of course be much less frequent than in the other classes, since without the possession of any of these qualities, they who belong to it are still honoured and rewarded. Those who profit by this absurd subversion of principles, and those who lose by this unjust distribution of favours, which seem to have grown into a right, cannot have any other than false, immoral, and pernicious ideas concerning merit. The clergy are a body which subsist by deception. The establishment of a predominant church is prejudicial to the peace and welfare of a country. Whoever has any knowledge of the human heart; whoever is convinced of the right every man has to think for himself, though there are many who renounce it; whoever has remarked the impression which a superstitious education makes upon mankind, how it weakens the understanding, fosters holy pride, and pious hatred; whoever attends to the great abuse, which many of those who call themselves ministers of the true church, frequently make of exclusive privileges, which the law confers upon them, will readily acknowledge, that it would be much better for the community, if every man were permitted, without interruption or controul, to follow the dictates of his own fancy, whatever these might be. The church wants reform, and they never will be brought to reform themselves, therefore the surest care for their defects is their subversion as a separate order. The destruction of the clergy is one necessary means for the perfection of society.—Monarchy is a most absurd institution, it is quite inconsistent with that equality that is both the right and the perfection of human nature. Why should any one man be superior to another?” Is it not very hard that one man should be six feet two inches high, with broad shoulders, and muscular limbs, when another is only five feet, with narrow shoulders, and puny limbs? It may be answered, God and nature have ordered it so, and have made great inequalities in all their works; but it is the business of philosophers to correct God and nature; and effectually to prevent civil and political inequalities, let there be none in nature. Buffon informs us, that five feet seven is the average height of adult Europeans: then get the bed of Procrustes, so only can you equalize stature; and the experiment would not be more impracticable than an attempt to equalize talents for government.
But a noted argument in favour of the destruction of established governments was, that complete democracy would be much cheaper than any mixed government which contained a portion of monarchy. If the chief perfection of society were cheapness, by living in hovels, feeding on roots, drinking water, the house and window tax might be saved, also the land and malt tax, and both ordinary and extraordinary imposts upon port-wine; but habit and civilization have produced a liking for accommodations that may be not absolutely necessary. In civil society we do not estimate smallness of cost as a supreme good, the same holds in political establishments. Institutions are not good merely for being low priced, their goodness depends upon the aggregate of secure and permanent benefit, which they admit. The great proof of the benefit of revolution as an expedient of economy, was the savings that the new order of things had produced from France. “In consequence of the revolution,” said the prophets of economy, “the people will have much less to pay, and republican France, for cheapness, is a model for the imitation of other countries. For all these reasons the nobility, hierarchy, and monarchy, ought to be entirely destroyed. But such subversion is only a partial establishment of equality; every species of separate right implies inequality, and therefore ought to be abolished. All things should be in common; the destruction of kings, lords, and bishops, is only a means leading to division of property, and unrestrained gratification of passions, as the great end:” But as in Britain there was a very strong attachment to the establishments of the country, of which the aggregate result was by experience demonstrated to be supremely beneficial by the votaries of revolution, the first and grand object to be compassed was, to render the people desirous of change; while therefore the more profound and designing sought to effect subversion of establishments, in order to erect new fabrics, that might be subject to their own command, they found most active instruments in enthusiastic partisans of indefinite innovation, and especially in literary associates, who readily joined in supporting theories which appeared to them well fitted to extend the sway of intellectual powers, and to attach power and pre-eminence to that species of talents which they conceived themselves to possess. Proceeding on the simple principle, that good was constituted by alteration, various writers, including some of considerable ingenuity, chiefly directed their attention to change, that is all the change which their literature could effect. Ingenuity, decorated nonsense and absurdity, the fine spun theories of Joel and Anne, Croft and German literature, powerfully contributed to the deviation of very inferior writers, from common sense and experience. In the literary, as in other classes, a very great number judged and acted not from original conviction and determination, but from example; and many were merely driven round in Tom Paine’s political mill, without any comprehension of the tendency and effects of the labours in which they were employed. They declaimed against the usurpation of establishments, merely because others did so before them. These pretended investigators of human right, and explainers of human happiness, considered the Rights of Man, merely because the consideration was fashionable; and if the doctrines of the Pope’s supremacy had been in vogue, would have been the ardent partizans of a Guise, a Lorrain, and an Alva, and would have praised the massacres of August 24th, 1572, as readily as of August 10th, 1792. In literature, indeed, aristocracy is very prevalent; there are chieftains, and there are numerous tribes of retainers, whose intellectual nourishment is derived from some lord paramount. At this time, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Priestley, were the liege lords of many literary vassals, while Paine and others acted as the trumpeters to collect the powers, and summon them to the charge. The vassals did not enquire into the justice of the cause, they deemed it their chief glory to swell the muster-roll of their commanding officer. Hence there was such a number of combatants on the side of the innovating champions. The leaders of subversion attacked the bulwarks and defenders of our political fortress, because they wished to lay it prostrate; the followers, because their commanders prompted and encouraged their efforts. Helvetius, or Price, fought for victory, their humble coadjutors for Helvetius, or for Price—Principes pro victoria pugnant; comites pro principe. In the same way it was in the reign of Anne, and George I. some eminent writers took to poetry and criticism, and many scores took to poetry and criticism after them, and humbly tried to ape their betters, as waiting-maids and milliners, footmen or hair dressers, endeavouring to imitate the deportment of ladies or of gentlemen, and would have you suppose them to be persons of fashion. Lord Bacon has observed, that as people that have no substance of their own, and are unable or unwilling to labour, must either beg or steal from somebody else, so must those who undertake to deliver judgment, or write books without a knowledge of the subject; and if persons do steal, they will certainly try to lay their hands on the goods that may be most readily disposed of among the receivers of their stolen commodities. Tom Paine stole many of his materials from the French writers, and some from their able co-operators in England; but Tom was really so dexterous a manufacturer, that he made his political pieces have the appearance of originals. But most of his successors merely copied and repeated his sayings. Whitfield hitting the temper of the times, framed a new theory of religion, which found many votaries: Whitfield had genius, but a hundred speakers and writers retailed his commodities from tabernacles, joint-stools, cart-sheds, or written sermons, pamphlets, or exhortations. So were the new theories of politics, which originated in misemployed genius, bandied about among speakers and writers of no genius; and as a transmogrified coal-heaver, or a vender of quack medicines, might retail from his chapel the doctrines of Whitfield, and bring in, as a proof of providence, a pair of breeches instead of a leg of mutton[6]; so a blacksmith could leave his anvil for his political pulpit, and vend the quack medicines of Tom Paine.
But though revolutionary politics diffused themselves over great numbers of the ignorant votaries of literature, they extended to many others of a very contrary description, and efforts of talents and erudition were wasted in supporting extravagant paradoxes, pernicious principles, and wild theories, that could have informed and instructed mankind by valuable reasonings and inculcations; and our hero had occasion to see the effect of the Turgot theory of the perfectibility of man fully exemplified. The English champion of this doctrine was St. Leon, a writer of very considerable ingenuity, who, with the œconomique philosophy of the French school, undertook to join some of the metaphysical tenets of David Hume, as they were interpreted by St. Leon himself, especially his opinions on the foundations of morality; and whereas Mr. Hume has asserted, that the qualities and actions which the mind approves as virtuous, are those which are found either agreeable or useful to society, St. Leon asserted, that in every individual action the merit depends on its being performed by the agent, with a view to the aggregate benefit of all sentient beings, or, as he phrases it, what is best upon the whole. On this best upon the whole, together with the perfectibility of man, he constituted a very singular system that he delivered to the world, in a book which made a very extensive impression on minds predisposed for boundless innovation. Our hero was at great pains to make himself master of a production in which the establishment of the most extravagant nonsense was the end, for compassing which, acuteness and ingenuity were the means, and he was at a loss whether most to wonder at the folly of the propositions which were to be demonstrated, or the skill and ability of the intermediations; and he could not help thinking that St. Leon richly deserved to rank with the ancient Pyrrho, with the modern Hobbes, Spinosa, Mandeville, or any others who misemployed brilliant talents, in framing absurd or mischievous hypotheses. Powers which a refined state of society only could have produced, were by St. Leon exerted in recommending the rudest barbarity and incivilization. Metaphysical acuteness, and concatenated argumentation, were exercised in controverting truths, which the grossest stupidity can perceive to be undeniable, while profound wisdom regards them as the foundation of society. Polished elegance of composition attempted to effect the restoration of chaotic ignorance, chaste purity of language recommended the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, the calmness of philosophical disquisition inculcated the destruction of peace and of order, in the overthrow of property and of law; the ardent pursuer of the happiness of mankind sought to destroy the tendered endearments and best affections of the human heart. The votary of benevolence endeavoured to destroy the sentiments and actions which conduce most powerfully to the well-being of the human race. Man he asserted to be perfectible; and professed to stimulate him to the attainment of that perfection which he affirmed to be in his power; but instead of affording new motives to intellectual and moral improvement, he inculcated a system that would have degraded him to the level of beasts. To complete the downfal of human nature from that reason and conscience by which it has been distinguished from the brute creation, he projected to annihilate religion. Lest the fine-spun deductions of abused logic should be unsuccessful in conveying doctrines so absurd, and practices so destructive, the powers of fancy are super-added to render them picturesque and impressive. Subtle sophistry alone could hardly establish the inutility of criminal justice, but an affecting fable setting forth the punishment of innocence, and the escape of guilt, strongly interests the feelings; and the emotions of the heart are mistaken for the conclusions of the head. A fictitious tale of an individual case is so skilfully managed, as, to many, to appear a fair and general exhibition of penal law, and its operation. Virtuous sensibility is excited against the necessary muniments of property, and the correctives of crimes. Such was the mis-application of great literary powers, that sprung from the boundless love of innovation. Speculative men have often, in theory, supported principles inconsistent with the common sense of mankind, and the well-being of society, without reducing their speculations to practice! A reader of these singular works must have reprobated doctrines that tended, if admitted, to destroy our respect for marriage, property, promises; our conviction of the immortality of the soul; the ties of natural affection, gratitude, friendship; every cement of civil and social duty; to overturn monarchy, laws, government, and every political institution. But it might have been supposed that the author merely advanced paradoxes for the sake of displaying ingenuity; that he himself was convinced, as much as any other, endowed with reason must be, of the total incompatibility of such ravings with any thing that could actually exist. But he followed his speculation by a practical model, and exhibited as a pattern of perfection a real character, who, according to his account, systematically deviated from the chief virtues of her sex. This singular example of female perfection, whom the writer exhorted her sex throughout the world to imitate, was a concubine. But of her various qualifications, a few specimens may serve—First we have her chastity; Miss resorted to France, and became a kept-mistress; this, according to her panegyrist, was a species of connection for which her heart secretly panted, and which had the effect of diffusing an immediate tranquillity and cheerfulness over her manners. The beneficial consequences accruing to this exemplary lady from concubinage did not always last. Her keeper forsook her; she followed him to England. Afterwards she lived on a similar footing with her encomiast himself, who in a few words exhibits the practical conduct which his lessons inculcated, “We did not marry. It is difficult to recommend any thing to indiscriminate adoption, contrary to the established rules and prejudices of mankind; but certainly nothing can be so ridiculous upon the face of it, or so contrary to the genuine march of sentiments, as to require the overflowing of the soul to wait upon a ceremony; and that which, wherever delicacy and imagination exist, is of all things most sacredly private, to blow a trumpet before it, and to record the moment when it arrived at its climax.” When recording her excursion to England, her orator gives us a sample of her patriotism. “England was a country for which she expressed a repugnance that almost amounted to horror.” To her moral and political virtues, he adds the account of her religious attainments. “She had received few lessons of religion in her youth, and her religion was almost entirely of her own creation. She could not recollect the time when she had believed the doctrine of future punishments.” As she advanced in philosophy, her attendance on public worship became less and less constant, and was soon wholly discontinued. Her disregard for the ordinances of piety, drew from her champion the following reflection:—“I believe it may be admitted as a maxim, that no person of a well-furnished mind, that has shaken off the implicit subjection of youth, and is not the zealous partizan of a sect, can bring himself to conform to the public and regular routine of sermons and prayers.” Such doctrines and lessons made a very deep impression on the inferior votaries of literature. The ingenuity of the author rendered absurdity plausible in his theories, and poison palatable in his inculcations. The perfectibility of man to be consummated by a political justice, which should overthrow religion, government, property, marriage, good faith, patriotism, and all the relative duties of society, was rung in an infinite number of changes. The spirit of St. Leon was diffused through books, and pamphlets, and periodical publications. It met us at the theatre, or popt on us in the form of novels. Catching as it went the follies of its various bearers, it babbled in spouting clubs, howled from the tribune, or by its importunate prattle disturbed the tranquillity of private companies. So pernicious it is to common sense, reason, truth, virtue, order, and religion, when men of genius and learning employ their pens in spreading nonsense, absurdity, and falsehood; vice, disorder, and irreligion. If a writer of this sort were to take a cool and dispassionate view of the talents he has received, and the acts which he has done, the amount might probably be, nature has bestowed on him a mind competent to the acquisition of valuable and deep knowledge. Instruction and assiduity operating on these gifts of nature, have enabled him to communicate his conceptions, thoughts, and discoveries, agreeably, forcibly, and impressively. What has he done? He exhorted men and women to avoid the first link of a rational community, marriage, and to mingle with promiscuous intercourse, according to temporary impulse, and after the fashion of beasts. Respecting their offspring, the next gem of civil society, he exhorted them to descend below beasts, which have a care for their young. He instigated parents to disregard their children, and children their parents; he carried his proscription of natural affection through the relation of brother and sister. Lest this attempt to prevent the formation of a family, and so to arrest society in its first stage, should prove unsuccessful, he attacked it in more advanced progress, and endeavoured to destroy faith between man and man, to proscribe adherence to promises, to annihilate property, one of the great cements of society, and to banish religion, the grand security of human happiness. His practical lessons teach, that the restraints on unmarried women are not conducive to the welfare of society; that chastity is not a virtue, and concubinage a vice; that women are not likely to be better members of society, domestic, civil, and political, for being continent than prostitutes. He set up an immoral and impious model for the sex, and if all women were to follow the example of his heroine, universal profligacy and irreligion would ensue. As far, therefore, as the literary authority and power of these writings reach, they tend to increase debauchery and impiety. He has written a metaphysical work, of which the theoretical propositions are chimerical, absurd, and totally irreconcileable to human nature, as known to us by experience and induction, the only guides to just intellectual and moral speculation; and the practical doctrines, inculcated by precept and example, lead to the most unwise and immoral conduct, and to consequences that would unhinge all domestic, social, civil, political, and religious society. Such will a fair and impartial review of his literary efforts present to St. Leon the use and improvement of his talents and acquirements. That he intended such consequences, I by no means assert. I think it probable he did not. I should rather impute his work to an understanding so perverted by a favourite hypothesis, as to be unable, however acute and ingenious on other subjects, to distinguish truth whenever that hypothesis was concerned. We have no reason to suppose that St. Leon, who is in private life said not to be unamiable, would be guilty of such gratuitous wickedness, as to be intentionally a strenuous promoter of the most destructive profligacy. But whatever his intentions may have been, the tendency is the same.
Equally absurd is the physical as the moral and political philosophy of the singular St. Leon. What opinion can we entertain of a man who seriously thinks that, at some future period, the necessity of sleep to an animal may cease, who has even asserted that death may be postponed at pleasure; who maintains that inanimate nature may move without any animate cause, and even move to certain definite and beneficial purposes; that a plough may till the ground without any direction from men, and aid from horses, or any other animals; who, by confounding the qualities and operations of matter and mind, would afford pretexts for an inference, that the universe may exist and be directed in its present system and order without the guidance of an intelligent cause; who has employed his ingenuity in endeavouring to establish atheism. Whatever may be St. Leon’s private habits of life, however temperate in pleasurable indulgence, or fair and equitable in his transactions of business, his doctrines tend to disseminate profligacy and iniquity; and as his works are read in a much wider circle than his conduct is seen or known, the mischief of his precepts and exhortations is infinitely greater than the benefit of his example and practice. The author of the “Political Justice,” and the biographical vindication of concubinage, from his agreeable and persuasive manner, has spread a great quantity of poison, against which feeble is the antidote to be found in the private life and conversation of St. Leon.
That singular theorist no doubt possesses genius; subtle indeed rather than solid and vigorous, fanciful and refining without being profound. Such a man generally steers out of the walk of common sense and views, both the natural and moral world, through some other medium than plain observation and experience.