Strange as this dangerous confidence and supineness will appear to posterity, yet it was not altogether unaccountable; for as the inhabitants of the South and of the North of Great Britain had been accustomed to live together, for a great number of years before, in such perfect harmony and mutual affection, that it was no easy matter to distinguish the one from the other, either by their stature, complexion, language, dress, modes, education, manners, arts, sciences, religion, principles of morals, or of government; as the injuries and devastations of their former wars with each other, which, as well as I can remember, they equally and reciprocally suffered and offered, were mutually forgotten and forgiven, and had left little traces, but in history and on record; as they had shewn the same zeal for civil and religious liberty; had rushed foremost, and begun the first attack upon the common enemies to both; had enabled us, by engaging first as principals, and afterwards as confederates, to oppose their furious and dangerous invasions, to repel them as often as they were attempted, and finally to rout and discomfit them for ever; as they had lent us their assistance likewise, with the same alacrity, in raising that curious and wonderful fabric which we built on the ruins of the ancient structure; venerable and awful as the Capitol, and composed of more durable materials, which, in the course of many centuries, had by turns been often secretly undermined, treacherously betrayed, and openly and violently battered, and by turns, as often as we had opportunity or abilities, recovered and repaired. As it was reared with their hands, and cemented with their blood, as well as with our own, they were invited, by the advice of our counsellors, most renowned for their gravity, penetration, wisdom, and virtue, to all the advantages of its protection; but they had a Capitol of their own, which, although it was neither so splendid, nor so magnificent, nor so vast, yet they had that superstitious love and veneration for it which is common to all nations, and which nature, education, and habit, has deeply implanted in the hearts of all honest men and good citizens, and were unwilling to quit it. We knew by experience that they were powerful allies; we thought them faithful friends, and we had found on record, mortifying as it was to remember it, that as often as they had been provoked or insulted, they had been formidable and dangerous enemies. We plainly saw that it was our interest they should be united to us for ever; and all our political arts and resources were employed to convince them it was theirs too. At last, after large promises and assurances of honours, riches, and everlasting love; they were prevailed on, although reluctantly, to consent. The advantages we derived from this union, by the abilities and virtues of their statesmen, the valour, skill, thirst of glory, and spirit of enterprize of their sailors and soldiers; the genius, wit, taste, eloquence, and learning of their divines, philosophers, historians, poets, lawyers, physicians, &c., the inventions of their artists; the industry of their merchants, &c. had been, until lately, manifest to all men, and were freely acknowledged by all men, who possessed or pretended to candor and impartiality.
Men, indeed, conversant with history, knew well enough that the Goths, Vandals, Huns, Saracens, Turks, and Moors, had been invited to an alliance, in times of emergency and extreme danger; some of them by the Romans, others by the Spaniards, Italians, &c. that they, at first, fought for them, and defended them against their enemies; but turned, at last, their arms against the very people who had called them in, invaded their properties, usurped their governments, and finally destroyed their constitution. But they reflected at the same time that these people were not formed to live long together on any good terms of mutual friendship, and confidence, being neither born under the same climate, nor of the same colour, nor educated in the same principles of manners, morals, nor government, nor speaking the same language, nor worshipping the same god. There could not, therefore, be any stable principle of union in so heterogeneous a mixture: the interest of the one was to disband them like mercenaries, when the service was over; the policy of the other, to use the opportunity their arms had given them to remain where they were, and seize all they could get.
Some few politicians, nevertheless, there were among us (the very politicians I have so justly extolled) of deeper penetration and more enlarged views, who scrupled not to give shrewd hints, that the alliance between England and Scotland teemed with the same mischief; but these insinuations were supposed to be the effects of private interest, or of a malignant disposition; or, at the best, the mere pleasantries of idle wags. Nor indeed (if what has been said of the North Britons be admitted) ought it to pass for matter of wonder that what we emphatically call the Union, should appear to vulgar eyes totally different from the alliance between the people of whom I have been speaking. It was, therefore, the prevailing and common opinion, that an Englishman might, with equal reason, be jealous of a man born in another country or city, or of his next door neighbour, or of his brother, as of a Scotchman. Now no man can be found so foolish as to own such a jealousy, how much soever he may feel it; all men being agreed to allow, that there cannot be a surer mark of a shallow understanding, and a wicked temper; yet it sometimes happens in private families, that the elder son, either from the vanity or overweening fondness which people feel for their first productions, or from novelty, or the ambition of transmitting to posterity their names, titles, and possessions, is dandled and cockered in his infancy, pampered in his childhood, flattered in his follies, and indulged in his vices; during his youth exempted from the drudgery of reading and study, from the labours and anxieties of trade, and from the fatigues and dangers of war; secured from want by the liberality of his parents, and from all solicitude about the future, but for the speedy removal of one only obstacle to the accomplishment of all his wishes; carefully trained, indeed, to those noble principles which create authority and distinction in the great scenes of pleasure and idleness; but instructed in no other. The fate of his younger brother is frequently very different: if he be fed, cloathed, and taught, it is all he has a right to expect; he must be flogged to his books; his passions, follies, and vices, must be perpetually controuled, that they may not obstruct his fortune in the world; and he must be, after all this, compelled to some profession, art, or business, to keep him from starving, when his parents cannot or will not contribute any longer to his support. Now if he should chance, in the course of such an education, to learn the habits of temperance, frugality, and industry, and qualify himself, after the hard labour of many years, for the employment or profession of a divine, a statesman, a lawyer, a physician, an artist, a merchant, &c. one would naturally suppose that his elder brother would rejoice in his success; and being himself totally ignorant and incapable of all these matters, would court his assistance, as often as his business, his pleasures, his affairs, his health, his own preservation, or the safety and interest of his country required. Something of this sort does now-and-then happen, I believe, among the numerous families in Great Britain; and although there are not wanting even multitudes of elder brothers, of the highest distinction and eminence in every acquisition, accomplishment, talent, and virtue, yet they have not been found so abundant as to answer all the exigencies either of private or public life; recourse, therefore, must be had to somebody: by this means the younger brothers came to be employed occasionally; sometimes the elder and the younger were employed indiscriminately; but the preference was commonly shewn to the elder, according to that prevailing alacrity with which most men fly to the aid of the rich and the powerful.
This, as far as I have been able to discover, was supposed to be pretty much the case with the South and the North Britons, until of late.
When his present majesty (the first of our kings born in this country since the Union) succeeded to the throne, he was most graciously pleased to assure his subjects, that, among many other peculiar felicities of his reign, he gloried in the name of Briton. The name of Briton was impartial, general, and comprehensive in its meaning, and most equitable in its intention. The prudent and wise application of it, on that great occasion, was acknowledged by all men (and all good men united in their hopes) that the time was now come when all distinctions, excepting the eternal distinctions of vice and virtue, would be buried in oblivion; when every honest man, and every good citizen, should be intitled to his majesty’s protection; and if his talents happened to be useful to the state, to his royal favour and bounty. No prince had ever ascended the throne of these kingdoms so universally beloved and revered. His dominions every where resounded with mutual congratulations, with the praises of so excellent a monarch; and the breasts of all his subjects were filled with the most exulting hopes of a long and glorious reign. These halcyon days were soon succeeded by a furious tempest, that had well nigh overwhelmed us (in the very bosom of repose and tranquillity)! A most execrable and horrid plot was said to be discovered (which had been long formed) concealed with the same secrecy, and designed to have been executed with more universal and fatal effect, than the famous gunpowder plot. Much pains has been taken to get at the bottom of this plot; but no exact information, at least that I know of, has yet been obtained of it, or of the conspirators. Some pronounced it a democratical plot, others affirmed it to be an aristocratical plot; some pretended it was a tory plot, others protested it was a whiggish plot; many offered large betts that they would prove it to be a jacobite plot, some archly squinted at it as a popish plot; but the true and zealous friends of their country swore by G—d it was a Scottish plot: there were, indeed, a few, who insinuated that it was no plot at all; but as these latter were known to be inveterate enemies to all such names and denominations, they were of course supposed to bear no good-will to their countrymen; there not being more than one in a thousand of them who does not call himself by one or other of these names: so that their opinion was almost universally treated with the contempt and scorn it deserved. The opinion that it was a Scottish plot I think, prevailed very generally in that part of Great Britain called England, and in Berwick upon Tweed. Then it began gradually to be doubted, then to be wholly disbelieved, for even a considerable time: happily it is now at this very day revived; and, by the fervent zeal and marvellous skill of those faithful guardians of our liberties, whom I have formerly spoken of, the eyes of all men are at length opened, and nobody is found so mad as to doubt it. For notwithstanding all I have said, and said most innocently, of our brethren of Scotland (an appellation we fondly gave them in times of our great distress) for the truth of which I beg leave to appeal to the honour and consciences of all my countrymen, who have ever happened to see them, converse with them, employ them, serve with them, in the navy or the army; hear them in the pulpit, at the bar, or in either houses of parliament; observe their buildings, engravings, and other arts; or read their productions; yet no true lovers of liberty can be too circumspect nor too vigilantly on their guard against the danger even of possibilities; it being an established maxim among all politicians of free countries, that Credulity is the mother of Danger, as she is the daughter of Stupidity and Ignorance, and has been the total ruin of many nations: for proof of which they produce examples from the histories of all countries; such as the secret machinations of many the most illustrious patricians and wealthiest plebeians against the constitution of Rome, in the times of Marius, Sylla, Catiline, Pompey, and Cæsar, which, by the credulity of the people, lurked for a long while undiscovered and unsuspected, until it burst forth on a sudden in open and violent attacks, and ended in the total ruin of it; yet all these were Romans. The same wicked designs were said to have been formed, not long since, by the Jesuits in France and Portugal, and to have been almost ripe for execution; but were happily discovered before it was too late, and prevented; yet these Jesuits were all Frenchmen or Portuguese. Neither are there wanting examples of this sort, even in the history of our own country, in the reigns of Charles I., Charles II. and James II. The greater part of the nobility, gentry, divines, and lawyers, were detected in a conspiracy against the lives and properties of their fellow-subjects, and the religion and liberty of this kingdom was dragged to the very brink of destruction; yet these conspirators appear, to the best of my remembrance of the histories of those times, to have been all, with the exception of a few Scotchmen, Englishmen. These undeniable facts are sufficient to warn us against the fatal consequences of credulity, and the danger of trusting to the outward appearances I have been describing, however fair. Let us not, therefore, shut our ears to the cries of the streets, nor turn away our eyes from the lamentations of the news-papers. Let us not be cozened by the arts of crafty and designing men, who maliciously and falsely represent them as the counterfeit tears, the groans and wailings of hired mourners; the snarling, roaring, and howling, of ravenous faction; or the hooting, cackling, and braying, of a wayward and deluded mob: they are the generous and noble calls of liberty; the genuine voice of the venerable and sacred multitude, neither provoked by private resentment, nor bribed by promises, nor awed by fear, nor urged by hunger, nor sold for gain.
I have read almost every Pamphlet and Paper that has been published within these five years on political subjects, with equal delight and astonishment at the deep and comprehensive judgment, wit, spirit, and humour, with which many of them are manifestly written; and I congratulate with my countrymen, on the rapid progress we are making in this art. Their erudition I have not mentioned, it having been discovered to be of no use at all in the knowledge or exercise of this art. It is an observation of the great lord Bacon, that a man will never get to the end of his journey, if he happens to mistake the way, and go the wrong road; which he has clearly proved in his immortal treatises, Novum Organum, and De Augmentis Scientiarum. Now, men had been taught to believe, until very lately, before the discovery of a direct road, and a short cut, that the composition of a professed politician required as many and as great a variety of ingredients, as Cicero’s orator, or the knight-errant of Don Quixote: accordingly the great baron Montesquieu confesseth, That after the hardy study and drudgery of twenty-five years, by day and by night, consumed in the production of two small volumes; he believed them, on mature revisal, unworthy of the public; in a fit of despair dashed them against the wall; and had not the wall, as he affirms, returned them, they would never have been heard of. Since this discovery was made, which I shall explain hereafter, it has been found out, to the saving of much labour, that the study of ancient and modern history, laws, treaties, political systems, &c. is mere loss of time, and downright pedantry. There are very few of our modern politicians to be seen now adays, bestrewed with learned dust, like Pope’s politician; or smelling of the lamp, like Demosthenes; or lean, like Cassius, with constant meditation; or pale and blind with poring over Tacitus, Aristotle, Plato, Montesquieu, Harrington, Sidney, or Locke. They have heard that these books contain nothing more than a parcel of crude maxims, or the idle dreams of unpractised pedants and schoolmen; declamations on liberty, which any man in this country may learn at his leisure, in the first company he chances to meet, over a dish of coffee, or over a bottle; general arguments in behalf of the rights of mankind, which, according to Cicero, every man is taught by instinct; Est igitur hæc judices non scripta, sed nata lex, quam non didicimus, accipimus, legimus; verùm ex naturâ ipsâ, arripuimus, hausimus, expressimus; and the visions of vain projectors, stuffed with ridiculous notions, and impracticable doctrines; such as that it may not be altogether safe nor proper for the whole body of a great nation, any more than for any private person, to eat or drink, or sleep, or dress, or sing, or dance, or game too much: that it is possible, even for a maritime power, to carry on too much trade: that drunkenness, adultery, bribing, and perjury, at elections, are not very commendable practices: that even annual parliaments, nevertheless, may be more eligible than septennial ones, especially as many of its members may happen to learn as much of the business of the senate at the end of six months as at the conclusion of seven years: that a standing army, in time of peace, may be dangerous to liberty, unless it should be voted by the legislative power, although the officers who composed it were forty times more valiant than the rest of their fellow-subjects, and just as honest and virtuous as ninety-nine in a hundred of them; tamen miserrimum est posse si velit: that a militia cannot well be too numerous, even though the consumption of silk, or velvet, or lace, or ribbands, or trinkets, should be thereby considerably diminished, and even though it should be necessary to discipline it on the seventh day of every week: that it may be possible in the nature of things for large fleets to transport armies an hundred miles, and land them safely within sixty miles of a great, unwarlike, and defenceless capital: that the king, even of a free people, may be legally and constitutionally possessed of certain instruments, engines, and powers, of unfailing efficacy, in times of general depravity; by means of which, if he chance, instead of being the friend and father of his people, to be wicked, an usurper, and a tyrant, he may gain over, to any purpose he pleases, the souls and bodies of three-fourths of them: that a free people, not clearly discerning the reciprocal duties of protection and obedience, and prone to confound the frenzy of sedition with the modesty of true liberty, may, peradventure, tumultuously and violently obstruct the execution of the known laws of the land, madly insult, in the public streets, a prince devoted to their happiness, threaten to blow out the brains of his friends and servants, and attempt to overawe the senate, in the very midst of their public deliberations: that some care should be taken to prevent such enormities from creeping into a free state: in short, as there never had been any man, according to the unanimous opinion of all divines and philosophers, who had ever written on virtue, so perfectly good, but he might still be made somewhat better; so all these politicians agreed, that no constitution was ever so nicely and exactly framed, but it might possibly admit some addition or amendment; turpiterque desperatur quicquid fieri potest. Such (with many other wild projects and strange fancies of the like sort) were the whimsical contents of these famous writings, that had once made so much noise in the world. They are now universally neglected and exploded; they may cry aloud, but no man regardeth them. As lord Bacon was the first who shewed the right way to the study of natural philosophy, so Machiavel, a man of the most abundant invention, the most magnanimous resolution, and the most consummate abilities, was the first of all the moderns who discovered and pointed out the direct and short road to the art of political writing: and as the Whole Duty of Man was calculated for the service and benefit of private families, so Il Principe, that transcendant composition, that master-piece of the human genius, was designed, by its immortal author, for the instruction of royal families only, as the title of it implies, and consecrated to the use of kings and princes. It had no sooner made its appearance among them, than it was beheld with admiration, read with avidity, applied with success, and became the standing rule of politics among all the potentates of Europe, even among the kings of Great Britain, until the Revolution; at which time, by means of certain innovations, and the introduction of some new-fangled opinions, it lost all credit with them, and has never recovered it to this day; nevertheless, as every man in this kingdom is intitled to some share in the government of it, it becomes his duty likewise to inform himself in what manner it may be best governed; and in researches of this kind, these golden rules, which the king had overlooked, or neglected, or despised, his subjects happily discovered, adopted, and practised. That this discovery has been made, is plain to every body who has read the Prince of Machiavel, and the writings of our modern politicians. Many a man too may remember how much he was surprized at the novelty of a book, which, with the most mortifying scorn, contradicted every opinion and principle that he had imbibed from his mother, or had been taught by his father, or his schoolmaster; the avowed design of it being to prove, that dissimulation, hypocrisy, fraud, lying, cruelty, treachery, assassination, and massacres, were not only commodious and expedient, on certain occasions, but that they were moral, political, and positive duties: that all men who did not believe in these unerring rules, were either fools, or madmen; and that all nations who had not, or did not, put them in constant practice, had been, or must be, infallibly undone. He did not, indeed, expressly include slander and defamation by name; conceiving, probably, that they were fully comprehended under the articles of lying and assassination, and that it was a mere matter of indifference, to ninety-nine men in an hundred, whether you plundered them of the characters of honest men, and good citizens, or knocked out their brains. Happily for this deluded nation, we have now among us many disciples of this renowned politician, of considerable eminence and proficiency: to their united and zealous efforts for the common weal, we are indebted (perhaps before it is too late) for many useful and salutary discoveries; such as that ********, under all the fair appearances of candor and humanity; the sacred semblance of unblemished truth, justice, and mercy; the specious disguise of the most unambitious and unaffected love of all his fellow-creatures, concealed the dark and dangerous designs of a Tiberius: that *****, who had been called from retirement and the study of philosophy to the instruction of his ****, and who had cajoled all that knew him into an obstinate belief that he was a nobleman of distinguished honour and virtue, an accomplished scholar, a munificent patron of learning and the arts, an upright counsellor, an eloquent senator, and an able statesman, was at the bottom a knave, a dunce, a traitor, a bashaw, a Gaveston, a Wolsey, a Buckingham, a Sejanus: that *****, who had passed almost universally for a patrician of a most amiable, unreserved, and generous nature, beloved by his friends and his equals, for his noble and ingenuous manners; as courteous and affable to his inferiors, as if his high birth and fortune had not given him a right of prescription to insult them; of great humanity, kindness, and beneficence; a citizen warmly attached to the interests of his country; a statesman who had executed, during half a century, the highest employments of government with zeal and integrity; had sat in the councils, and joined in the suffrages of our patriot ministers, in the most illustrious period of our annals, and had spent his whole life in the uniform support of liberty; that this very patrician could hardly prove a single claim either to the virtues of social life, the merit of public services, the authority of experience, or even to the common privileges of age, and deserved to be treated as a very drunkard, a glutton, and an old woman: that ****, the arch-magician, who, by virtue of irresistible spells and incantations, and by the powers of certain wonderful and stupendous operations, unknown to all but himself, and the great magicians of ancient times, had palmed himself upon the universal people, not only of Great Britain, but of almost the whole globe, as the deliverer of his country, the colossus of the age; as a philosopher, statesman, and patriot of the first magnitude; possessing the genius, experience, eloquence, and consummate abilities of Pericles, and the virtues of Epaminondas; the decus imperii, the spes suprema senatus; was, after all, an impudent babbler, a profligate villain, a shameless turncoat, a pensioned hireling, a fawning minion, a common bully, a pernicious and treacherous counsellor, a prodigal squanderer of the blood and treasures of his fellow-subjects; in short, a madman, and the perdition of his country. These and many other discoveries of the same kind, equally new and important, are known and familiar to all men, who have studied the works of our modern politicians, and sufficiently evince the progress we have made in this art; yet it appears to be still far short of the perfection to which it was carried by the ancients, as I have already lamented; otherwise, with half the honest pains they have taken to accomplish it, the **** would have been d——d long ago; his friends and servants torn in pieces one after another, like the De Witts, and other betrayers of their country, and their names, like theirs, consigned to perpetual infamy. As our political writings unhappily have not yet reached that last perfection, neither has our music. To such as have never happened to read the works of Aristotle, Plato, Quinctilian, and others of the ancients, what I have to say about the latter art, may possibly appear somewhat extraordinary. It is, nevertheless, very certain, they all considered music not only as an important, but as an indispensable part of the qualifications of a politician; Non igitur, frustra, Plato civili viro, quem politicon vocant, necessariam musicen credidit, says Quinctilian. It was one of the fundamental laws of the republic of Arcadia, that every man should learn music until he was thirty years of age. Themistocles the Athenian was treated as a vain boaster, for pretending that he could make a great kingdom of a small one, without availing himself of its assistance. The rigid and austere lawgiver of Sparta carefully mingled it with the composition of his renowned government, used it on all occasions with incredible efficacy, and by this means preserved it from corruption, for seven hundred years. The wise Socrates studied it with uncommon assiduity and success: and Pythagoras boldly declared, that the great system of the universe was framed on its principles, and governed by its powers; in short, that it was all in all. Music, in their acceptation of the word, indeed, had somewhat of a more comprehensive meaning than it has at present; including not only stringed instruments, wind instruments, rope instruments, parchment instruments, bone and iron instruments, but poetry likewise, and many other sorts of harmony. Of this marvellous art we have hitherto but imperfect ideas. Shakespear just hints at it, and freely gives it as his opinion, that the man who knows it not, must be a traitor, a villain, and a murderer. Mr. Pope too conceived that the music of Mr. Handel had a remarkable influence over the passions and affections. Handel learned the little he knew of this art from the Romans, who, according to Quinctilian, surpassed all the nations of the world in their martial music, as much as they excelled them in their military achievements; Quid, autem aliud in nostris legionibus, cornua, ac tubæ faciunt? Quorum concentus, quanto est vehementior, tantum Romana in bellis gloria cæteris præstat. And at this day the Roman or Italian music, depraved, corrupted, and enervated as it is become in the course of two thousand years, has no inconsiderable power over the minds of our legislators, statesmen, and warriors. The force of it has been felt in France, a country not much renowned for this art. M. Voltaire insinuates, that a song in the time of Calvin, the burden of which was, O Moines, O Moines, &c. contributed more than any thing to the noble struggle a part of that country made, for forty years, in defence of their religious liberty. So well aware was our Edward I. of its universal power, that he could never assure himself of the perfect and lasting conquest of Wales, until he had murdered all the Welsh bards. If I mistake not, he attempted to do the same by the bards of Scotland: the immortal Ossian escaped him; and his music, calculated with the most consummate political art to inspire the breasts of all his countrymen with every passion, affection, sentiment, and principle of heroic virtue, that might make them happy at home, beloved and respected by their friends, and terrible to their enemies, the Norwegians, Irish, or English, was reserved until some great occasion should call it forth; and accordingly did not make its appearance until very lately. Something of the same kind was immediately attempted by our English bards, with the wise and benevolent intention of inspiring and instructing their countrymen; but not, I believe, with quite the same success. Some compositions, however, we have that are not without a considerable share of merit; among which there is, for instance, a well-known jig, I cannot name, that is observed to produce a very sensible effect upon our young men and women. Our sportsmen never cease to shout at, “With hounds, and with horn.” All men kindle at, “Britons strike home,” “Britannia rule the waves,” &c. Every man must have remarked the unusual loyalty which never fails to appear in the countenances of a whole audience at the excellent music of, “God save great George our king. Happy,” &c. Lullybylero, according to bishop Burnet, was sung by every man, woman, and child, throughout the whole kingdom, until the very person of every Irishman was contemptible and odious for near half a century. And I do not despair that some able and skilful bard may hereafter arise, truly penetrated and inspired by the patriot love we bear our country, and thoroughly inflamed with that manly and generous indignation we feel at the very name of a Scot, who, by means of a song or a ballad, may awaken the fury of an angry people, dissolve the union, and cut the throat of every North Briton in the kingdom.
THE END.
ERRATUM.
For capital, p. 21. l. 8. from the bottom, read Capitol.