abstinence from those articles which are taxed and yield a revenue so large that it supports a system of misgovernment) to compel our rulers, by a diminution of their means of undue influence to a regard to economy and a just administration? I know, indeed, that this doctrine is considered offensive; nor am I prepared to say with confidence that under the wide construction which has been given to the law against conspiracy, persons who were to combine to force such a change by abstaining from all exciseable articles might not be indicted for it as a conspiracy. It may, for aught that I know, be even indictable to unite and desist from using tea, tobacco and snuff to coerce the government into reform by a reduction of the revenue raised from those articles; but you are not sitting there to try an indictment for a conspiracy; and, therefore, though this passage may not be pleasing, I read it, without hesitation, because it leads to others, which I think demand your consideration and attention. “We must deny ourselves, he proceeds to say, those little luxuries in which we have long indulged. Why not? Who gains, and who loses by this denial? We do not rob ourselves, we only check our passions; and, in doing this, we strengthen both our bodies and our purses. I would appeal to those, who, for the last year, have had the courage and the virtue to abstain from the use of malt and spirituous liquors, foreign tea and coffee, tobacco, snuff, &c., whether they do not feel satisfaction from the change of habit; and whether they are not better in health and pocket, without the use of these things.” This, gentlemen, is a sermon on temperance, and I wish it were generally followed. I apprehend that this is not only innocent, but highly meritorious. For my own part I shall maintain the opinion (though ten thousand Mandevilles should write, and imagine they have proved
private vices public benefits) that it is infinitely more important and beneficial that the mass of the people should be temperate and healthy, though poor, than that an immense revenue should be collected from their addiction to sensual pleasures and vicious luxuries. I say vicious, because all moral writers concur in calling those sensualities vices, as free indulgence in them leads to a state of total dissipation of mind under which scarcely any profligacy seems a crime. The writer continues: “There are a variety of other things which are heavily excised, the use of which might be prudently dropped; and which are not essential either to the health or comfort of mankind. Speaking for myself, I can say, I do not recommend more than I practise; and that my food for the last year has consisted chiefly of milk and bread and raw native fruits. I have been fatter and stronger than in any former year of my life; and I feel as if I had obtained a new system by the change. My natural disposition is luxurious, and under a better system of government, or when this rational warfare was not called for, I should at all times live up to my income.” And here, gentlemen, I beg you to mark, that so unreserved, so much in earnest is the writer in his object, that he does not attempt even to conceal his own faults, and weakness. I ask, whether you have ever found men, who were acting and writing with duplicity and sinister intentions, reproach or expose themselves? But the writer of this paper practises no reserve; he conceals nothing, though the disclosure should be against himself, but
Pours out all himself as plain,
As dowright Shippen, or as old Montaigne.
He concludes this exhortation to temperance with this
sentence, “Shrink not then you male and female reformers from this virtuous mode of warfare; for to conquer our injurious habits and our enemy at the same time is a double conquest, to obtain which both man and woman and child can very properly assist.” I read this conclusion of the paragraph, gentlemen, and I beg your attention to it, because it makes it manifest that the change which the writer proposes to compass is a change by a moral operation through legal and peaceful means; and that he never dreamed of inculcating, as it is insinuated, any appeal to violence and arms.
I have now, gentlemen, concluded all the particular observations which I had to address you upon this paper; and having shown you that by the least liberal construction, no criminality of intention can be imputed to the author, how can I doubt of your acquittal? For it is your duty to construe the author’s words so as to give them an innocent meaning if they will bear it, and not come to a conclusion of guilt from them unless you shall be convinced that they will not possibly admit of any other than a criminal sense. That he had no criminal design, is apparent enough, even from the indicted passages; and by reading the context is put beyond the possibility of a doubt. There are many other passages as well as that, which I have read, which tend equally to the inference of the sincerity with which the whole paper was written, but which I will not consume your time in reading, as you will have the whole before you when you deliberate on your verdict, and they must themselves strike your attention.
Now, gentlemen, I cannot tell, how you feel, but I have no opinion more deeply impressed on my mind than that the prosecution of such political papers as this before you, as state libels, is perfectly unnecessary; and, so far
from doing good, is, if any mischief can be produced by such writings, mischievous. Prosecution excites the public regard, and a curiosity that will not rest till it is gratified, towards that which, under silent neglect, would hardly gain attention; if indeed, it did not drop quite dead-born from the press. But I deny wholly that any political writings, whatever their nature, have done or ever could do any harm to political society. Let those who advocate the contrary opinion show you a single instance of a state injured or destroyed by inflammatory political writings. The republic of Athens was not thrown down by libels: no—she perished for want of that widely diffused excitement to courage, and patriotism, and virtue, which a press perfectly free and unshackled can alone spread throughout a whole people. She was not ruined by anarchy into which she was thrown by seditious writings, but because, sunk in luxury and enervated by refinement, it was impossible to rouse the Athenians to the energy and ardour of facing and withstanding the enemy in the field. Rome too—as little was her gigantic power levelled with the dust by libels, but perished from the corruptions of the tyrannical government of the Emperors, which drained the nation of all its ancient virtue, and bred the slavery which produces an utter debasement of the mind (and which never could have been, if a free publication of political opinion had been suffered), and thus she fell an easy conquest and prey to the barbarians and Goths. Both these renowned states fell, because their governments and the people wanted the goad of a free press to excite them to that public spirit and virtue, without which no country is capable of political independence and liberty. How our ears have been dinned with the French revolution, and how often have we been gravely told, that it was caused by the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and
Helvetius. Ridiculous! I have read the history of those times and have read it very differently. I am forced to understand that the inextricable and utter embarrassment of the French finances, the selfish and insolent luxury of the nobles, the desperate wretchedness of the lower orders of the people, and the profligate licentiousness of the Court, were the causes and the only causes of that great event. If the finances of that country had been in order, the nobles moderate, the poor unoppressed, and any public spirit in the Government, Voltaire, and Helvetius, and Rousseau, might have racked their brains for thought, and written themselves blind, before they would have raised a single arm, or even excited a single voice to exclaim for change. A perfect freedom of the press would, indeed, have prevented the causes which roused the people to assert themselves; but the causes once in existence, all the writers in the world could not one moment have either retarded the revolution or accelerated it. It is not the representations of a political writer that can alter the nature of things. Whose ingenuity, and wit, and eloquence, will persuade me that I am cold when I am warm; that I am hungry when I am full; a slave when I am free; and miserable, when I feel myself happy? While such is my state, what writings would drive me into insurrection? And if the contrary is my condition, what stimulus could I want to free myself from it? What persuasions could possibly even delay my utmost efforts for a change? It is not by the prosecution of political libels that the stability of a government and domestic peace is ever secured. No; let the Government pursue its only end, the public good, and let every man, or at least a large majority, have more or less an interest in the preservation of the State, and then all the writers in the country, from the highest down
to the obscurest corners of Grub-Street, may wear their fingers to the roots of the nails with their pens, before they will work the slightest discontent in the public or change in the government. Nothing, gentlemen, is more common with writers and speakers, than to discourse of states by figures drawn from the government of a ship; and I will tell you what I once heard from a friend of mine who has served his country in our navy, and which at the time most forcibly struck my mind. “When I was stationed in the Mediterranean (he said, speaking of the occurrences of his professional experience) we made captures of the vessels of all countries except the Greeks, but we never captured them; for they were always vigilant, active, and brave. We never surprised them; if we chased them, they escaped us; and if we attempted to cut them from the shelter to which we had driven them, we were repulsed.” What created this difference? By the rules of navigation amongst the Greek islands, every man, from the captain down to the lowest cabin-boy, has, more or less, a share in the vessel. They watched, therefore,—they laboured and fought for their own interest and property. Let those who sit at the helm and govern us imitate this policy. Let them extend the elective franchise; let them restore us to a condition in which industry and skill may find employment and be secure in their gain. Give men an interest and ownership in the state, and it shall never be upset by libels; not a seditious or mutinous voice shall be heard; and what foreign enemy shall dare to lift a hand against us? But keep the people excluded from their share in the representation, and pressed down by taxation, and millions of prosecutions against libels will not save the country from sinking in ruin.