In those days, if they were threatened with no invasion from abroad, nor with popery nor arbitrary power at home; if magna charta, the declaration of rights, habeas corpus, and other fundamental laws of the realm, remained unrepealed in full force and exertion, they never gave themselves any farther concern about the public, but minded what they called their own affairs such as their respective trades, arts, callings, professions, thereby to be enabled to feed, clothe, and lodge themselves and their families, and provide for their children. If they could contrive to live in peace and plenty at home, and pass among their customers, their neighbours, and their friends, for honest, industrious, good-humoured folks, they thought themselves at liberty to employ their leisure-hours in what studies they pleased, and looked no further. They had no notion of political refinements, of those delicate and nicer sensations we feel for the public. It never entered into their heads to be perpetually making earnest and anxious enquiries about the state of the nation; if the body politic was, upon the whole, sound and in good health, they were no more alarmed at every little complaint, than at a slight cold, or an accidental head-ach. They had not indeed the same opportunities of hearing complaints: the book of knowledge fair, was but half open to them; the sources of information and instruction were then neither so frequent nor so abundant; every remote corner of the kingdom was not, as it happily is now, plentifully supplied with political, pure, refreshing streams, flowing without intermission, during the whole year, to the great delight and emolument of the whole kingdom. Neither were they rich enough to join in large voluntary contribution for the feeding, clothing, and support of such a numerous body of sturdy penmen as are now in constant pay. Those trusty guardians of our liberties, oraculous as the priestess of Apollo; jealous as Argus of the fair privileges committed to their care; watchful of our golden treasures as the green dragons of the Hesperides; faithful and fierce as the bellua centiceps of Pluto; alarming as the sacred birds that saved the Capitol; zealously attached to our service; equally vigilant in times of security as in danger, in peace as in the midst of war; ready at a moment’s warning, on every alarm, to attack or defend; intrepidly sacrificing to the public every consideration that the timidity of other men calls dear to mankind; like well-disciplined troops, scorning to loiter away their time in rusty idleness, daily exercising their arms, performing all their marches and counter-marches, evolutions, and firings, with the same skill and alertness as if the enemy were upon them.
These advantages were unknown to our ancestors, and were reserved, among many other peculiar blessings, for their posterity. Not that genius, wit, and learning, appear to have been scarce commodities in those days; but they laid on their owner’s hands, for want of purchasers. When the Daily Advertiser, the St. James’s Evening-Post, and the Gentleman’s Magazine, were as much as they could afford to buy, many thousand hands were lying idle for want of employers, and many a strenuous and faithful subject, amply qualified, both from his talents and his virtues, for the service of his country, was shut out from the higher employments which nature had formed him for; confined, for mere want of bread, to the narrow sphere of a shop-board or a counter, or condemned perhaps for life to the sordid drudgery of some laborious handicraft trade.
The times are now changed; merit is no longer in danger of pining in obscurity; the high road to wealth and fame is open to all their votaries; whether a political writer be inspired by the genuine spirit of patriotism, inflamed with a fervent zeal for the honour of his king and his country; whether he aspires to high dignities, places, pensions, or reversions; or whether he be a simple candidate for food and raiment, it is his own misfortune or fault, not the public’s, if he fails: for it is notorious to every man of common observation, that the arts and sciences, the children of genius and learning, thrive and increase in proportion to the increase of our manufactures, trade, and commerce; which enable a rich, indulgent, and munificent public to cherish, support, and honour them. The immense wealth acquired by these means within these few years, and scattered with generous profusion over the whole kingdom, is not more remarkable, nor more amazing, than the rapid progress which the arts of painting, sculpture, building, gardening, music, engraving, &c. have made in the same period. Our artists begin already to rival and surpass the most celebrated artists of Europe, and bid fair to confer on their country as much honour and renown, as those in the ages of Leo X. and Lewis XIV. did on France and Italy.
Hitherto, however, they have not reached that lofty summit; being rather subordinate arts, the arts of elegance and ornament, than of real and intrinsic use: they are neither held in such general estimation, nor so liberally rewarded; and are therefore not cultivated with the same zeal and assiduity, as others of more immediate benefit and importance to society.
Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, &c.
Tu regere imperio populos Romane memento.
Hæ tibi erunt artes,——
was an ingenious compliment paid by Virgil to his countrymen; a grave, serious, sober, virtuous people, like ourselves, devoted to the great interests of their country, absorbed in public affairs, and preferring the study of government, or the art of politics, to all other arts whatever: to this art they were indebted for their prudence, generosity, fortitude, and magnanimity; for their excellent laws and institutions; for their admirable skill in negociations; for the treaties they made, the victories they gained, and for their conquests, in almost every corner of the known world; for all which they are so deservedly celebrated and renowned. Part of the Roman, and even part of the Grecian art of politics, happily escaped the injuries of time and accident, and continued, for many hundred years, the constant theme, admiration, and example of all writers on politics; but as we lament the irreparable loss of the greater part of the productions of those wise and venerable ancients in philosophy, history, poetry, &c. so we must despair of recovering the most valuable part of their writings on the art of politics. The Anticatones of Cæsar; the Acta Diurna, which Cicero expressly mentions to have read daily, with great delight and instruction, as containing, Senatus consulta, edicta, fabulæ, rumores, &c. and ten thousand writings of the same kind, are all lost in one common ruin; and of all these daily Papers and Pamphlets, not one, that I know of, is remaining, to discover to us the stupendous genius and art with which they must have been composed, to produce the astonishing effects they manifestly appear to have done, especially in the latter times of these republics; such as, by a sort of magic, to fascinate the understandings and passions of the people, to wield at their pleasure that unwieldy body the multitude; to compel them, as it were, to choose or to dismiss what ministers the authors of them thought proper; to enact or to repeal what laws they pleased; to provoke them to war, or cajole them into peace; in short, to persuade them that Scipio was a knave and a traitor, Aristides a common cheat, Cato a coward, and Socrates a sodomite and an impostor; whereas all the historians, biographers, philosophers, and poets of those countries, agree in representing them as the justest, the greatest, and the wisest men of the times in which they lived, or indeed in the times that succeeded. It is manifest, likewise, that the very people themselves had, for many years together, possessed the same opinion of them; that they were universally beloved, honoured, and revered, until they were dismissed or had resigned, and that after their executions or deaths, they were as universally and sincerely lamented.
If the great affairs of the world were uniform and consistent, the opinions of the people would, no doubt, have been suffered to remain so too; but they being, from their very nature, subject to perpetual change and fluctuation, the political writers of those days saw that it was their business and duty to adjust themselves to accidents and events, and to the times which they strived to reform; to have recourse, like Proteus, to every art, and to assume every imaginable shape. Now it is well known, that it was no uncommon thing among their countrymen, chearfully to sacrifice their own fortunes, or the fortunes of other men, their own or other people’s mothers, wives, children, friends, or acquaintances, nay, themselves, as often as the more important affairs of the state required it: thus, when it became indispensably necessary for the preservation of liberty and the constitution, or for the immediate salvation of their country, they very gravely persuaded and prevailed on the people to impeach Scipio and Aristides, to banish Cicero, to poison Socrates, dissolve the union they had so eagerly courted with Sparta or Arpinum, to curse the very memories of all those able and upright counsellors who had advised it, to revile and insult every Lacedemonian or Samnite that had been invited to their hospitality, and at length to drive them out of their houses, and out of their cities.
There are people who pretend, that the Clouds, a dramatic performance of Aristophanes, is a specimen of the art of writing of which I have been speaking. In my own opinion, however, whether considered as a mere comedy, or as a political composition, it is such a pert insipid piece of buffoonery, written so much in the true spirit of our Grub-street, that it could have no manner of chance to produce the effect it is supposed to have designed, and does not at all account for the problem, being, in every respect, much inferior to our own writings of that kind, the Nonjuror, and Beggar’s Opera. We know, in short, as little of their art of political writing as of their music; the rise, progress, and perfection of both seem to have been owing to the same causes.
In arbitrary and despotic governments, fear, as Montesquieu justly remarks, is the principal engine of government; there the sophi, or the grand seignior, or the dey, is the sole legislator; the only person who has studied the art of politics, being the only person who is called upon by his country to practise it. This sort of writing being principally applied to the great purposes of provoking or of appeasing the people; of awaking them, or laying them asleep; of blinding them, or restoring them to sight at pleasure, is wholly useless in a country where it is the sovereign’s business to command; the subjects duty to act, to suffer, and to obey.
But in the free governments of Greece and Rome, all ranks, degrees, and orders of men, patricians and plebeians, from the highest birth, alliance, and properties, down even to tinkers and coblers, were all either immediately or remotely perpetually employed, and at work upon the constitution; busily and anxiously examining into every part of it; repairing any breaches that might have been made in it by time or neglect; framing new laws, or repealing old ones; appointing ministers, statesmen, generals, admirals, &c. for all the various departments of peace and war; choosing faithful, eloquent, zealous tribunes, the great defenders of the liberties of the plebeians; voting for peace or for war, &c. By this means the arts of politics and music (of which latter I shall speak hereafter) became the immediate business, employment, and duty of every individual; as they both had been found, from long experience, indispensably necessary for the repose, security, and duration of the state. The constitution and the inhabitants of Great Britain in these present times, very much resemble those of which I have been speaking. The same instruments of government, therefore, are as necessary here as they were there; now as they were then: no encouragement, of course, has been wanting to these arts; and I cannot, upon this occasion, forbear to congratulate with my countrymen upon the happy progress that has been made in them, even within these very few years; more especially as our professors had no examples of such sort of writing before them for their imitation. It would be no difficult matter to produce an hundred proofs, both of their skill and their success. There are, for instance, few people, at this time of day, so infatuated as to doubt that it is to them we are indebted that this our native land, with all her revenues, dignities, honours, employments, posts, pensions, reversions, &c. was not seized, three or four years ago, by the violent hands of Scotchmen, who, according to the prophecy of a late holy prophet, had formed, like the Goths and Vandals, and other fierce and enterprizing people of the North, the bold design of a general emigration, had already (as it was currently reported) begun their flight, and were descried at a great distance (as appeared from many affidavits made at that time by men of known veracity) like a huge cloud extending from East to West, from North to South, hovering over the fair harvests of our lands and our labours, and ready to settle and devour them! As the task assigned to our guardian polemists, upon this occasion, was difficult and arduous, so the services they performed were signal and eminent. The Genius of England had been, at no time, more confident of repose, nor had ever fallen into a profounder sleep: it required the loud roarings and shrieks of a multitude to awaken him; and when at length he awoke, it called for the united efforts of argument, wit, eloquence, eager affirmation, positive assertion, repeated oaths, and imprecations, to make him listen for a moment to a report, which he treated most imprudently and unwarily with contempt and laughter. The greater part of his most faithful counsellors were unhappily under the same fatal delusion, and heard it with the same scorn and neglect.