VI.—To the Citizen
Having now given my advice to the youth, the man, the lover, the husband, and the father, I shall tender it to the citizen. To act well our part as citizens we ought clearly to understand what our rights are; for on our enjoyment of these depend our duties, rights going before duties, as value received goes before payments. The great right of all is the right of taking a part in the making of the laws by which we are governed.
It is the duty of every man to defend his country against an enemy, a duty imposed by the law of nature as well as by that of civil society. Yet how are you to maintain that this is the duty of every man if you deny to some men the enjoyment of a share in making the laws? The poor man has a body and a soul as well as the rich man; like the latter, he has parents, wife, and children; a bullet or a sword is as deadly to him as to the rich man; yet, notwithstanding this equality, he is to risk all, and, if he escape, he is still to be denied an equality of rights! Why are the poor to risk their lives? To uphold the laws and to protect property—property of which they are said to possess none? What! compel men to come forth and risk their lives for the protection of property, and then in the same breath tell them that they are not allowed to share in the making of the laws, because, and only because, they have no property!
Here, young man of sense and of spirit, here is the point on which you are to take your stand. There are always men enough to plead the cause of the rich, and to echo the woes of the fallen great; but be it your part to show compassion for those who labour, and to maintain their rights.
If the right to have a share in making the laws were merely a feather, if it were a fanciful thing, if it were only a speculative theory, if it were but an abstract principle, it might be considered as of little importance. But it is none of these; it is a practical matter. Who lets another man put his hand into his purse when he pleases? It is the first duty of every man to do all in his power to maintain this right of self-government where it exists, and to restore it where it has been lost. Men are in such a case labouring, not for the present day only, but for ages to come. If life should not allow them time to see their endeavours crowned, their children will see it.
[DANIEL DEFOE]
A Journal of the Plague Year
"A Journal of the Plague Year" appeared in 1722. In its second edition it received the title of "A History of the Plague." This book was suggested by the public anxiety caused by a fearful visitation of the plague at Marseilles in the two preceding years. As an account of the epidemic in London, it has all the vividness of Defoe's fiction, while it is acknowledged to be historically accurate. (Defoe biography, see Vol. III, p. 26.)