‘But, exclusive of his obstinacy, the rude, pot-companion loquacity of the fellow is highly offensive. He has no sense of inferiority. He stands as erect, and speaks with as little embarrassment, and as loudly as the best of us; nay, boldly asserts, that neither riches, rank, nor birth have any claim. I have offered to buy him a beard, if he would but turn heathen philosopher. I have several times indeed bestowed no small portion of ridicule upon him; but in vain. His retorts are always ready; and his intrepidity, in this kind of impertinence, is unexampled.
‘From some anecdotes which are told of him, I find he is not without personal courage: but he has no claim to chastisement from a gentleman. Petty insults he disregards; and has several times put me almost beyond my forbearance by his cool and cutting replies. His oratory is always ready; cut, dry, and fit for use; and d——d insolent oratory it frequently is.
‘The absurdity of his tenets, can only be equalled by the effrontery with which they are maintained. Among the most ridiculous of what he calls first principles is that of the equality of mankind. He is one of your levellers! Marry! His superior! Who is he? On what proud eminence can he be found? On some Welsh mountain, or the peak of Teneriffe? Certainly not in any of the nether regions! Dispute his prerogative who dare! He derives from Adam; what time the world was all “hail fellow well met!” The savage, the wild man of the woods, is his true liberty-boy; and the ourang-outang, his first cousin. A lord is a merry andrew, a duke a jack-pudding, and a king a tom-fool: his name is man!
‘Then, as to property, ’tis a tragic farce; ’tis his sovereign pleasure to eat nectarines, grow them who will. Another Alexander he; the world is all his own! Aye, and he will govern it as he best knows how. He will legislate, dictate, dogmatise, for who so infallible? Cannot Goliah crack a walnut?
‘As for arguments, it is but ask and have: a peck at a bidding, and a good double handful over. I own I thought I knew something; but no, I must to my horn-book. Then, for a simile, it is sacrilege; and must be kicked out of the high court of logic! Sarcasm too is an ignoramus, and cannot solve a problem; wit a pert puppy, who can only flash and bounce. The heavy walls of wisdom are not to be battered down with such popguns and pellets. He will waste you wind enough to set up twenty millers, in proving an apple is not an egg-shell; and that homo is Greek for a goose. Duns Scotus was a school-boy to him. I confess he has more than once dumb-founded me with his subtleties. But, pshaw! it is a mortal waste of words and time to bestow them on him.’—Vol. II.
With respect to Mr Holcroft’s principles as they are delivered in Anna St. Ives, I shall here attempt to give a short sketch of them, of the train of events in which they originated, and of the seductiveness of the prospects which they held out to a mind not perfectly callous to the interests of humanity. Even could it be shewn that they were disgraceful to his penetration, yet they were certainly honourable to his heart, and they were highly honourable to human nature. It is indeed a little singular, that those who have augured most highly of the powers of our nature, and have entertained the most sanguine hopes of the future virtue and happiness of man, should so often have been considered as the worst enemies of society. But it seems that our self-love is not so much flattered by the idea of the progress we might hereafter make, as offended by that of the little we have already made. Reformers imprudently compliment mankind on what they might become, at the expense of what they are.
Mr Holcroft was a purely speculative politician. He constantly deprecated force, rashness, tumult, and popular violence. He was a friend to political and moral improvement, but he wished it to be gradual, calm, and rational, because he believed no other could be effectual. All sanguinary measures, all party virulence, all provocation and invective he deplored: all that he wished was the free and dispassionate discussion of the great principles relating to human happiness, trusting to the power of reason to make itself heard, and not doubting but that the result would be favourable to freedom and virtue. He believed that truth had a natural superiority over error, if it could only be heard; that if once discovered, it must, being left to itself, soon spread and triumph; and that the art of printing would not only accelerate this effect, but would prevent those accidents, which had rendered the moral and intellectual progress of mankind hitherto so slow, irregular, and uncertain.
This opinion of the progress of truth, and its power to crush error, had been gaining ground in this country ever since the Reformation; the immense improvements in natural and mechanical knowledge within the last century had made it appear nearly impossible to limit the discoveries of art and science; as great a revolution (and it was generally supposed as great improvements) had taken place in the theory of the human mind in consequence of the publication of Mr Locke’s Essay; and men’s attention having been lately forcibly called to many of the evils and abuses existing in society, it seemed as if the present was the era of moral and political improvement, and that as bold discoveries and as large advances towards perfection would shortly be made in these, as had been already made in other subjects. That this inference was profound or just, I do not affirm: but it was natural, and strengthened not only by the hopes of the good, but by the sentiments of the most thinking men.
As far as any practical experiment had been tried, the result was not discouraging. Of two revolutions that had taken place, one, that of America, had succeeded, and a more free and equal government had been established without tumult, civil discord, animosity or bloodshed, except what had arisen from the interference of the mother country. The other Revolution, that of France, was but begun: but it had at this time displayed none of those alarming features which it afterwards discovered. Whether the difference of the result in the latter case was owing to the external situation of the country, which exposed it to the inroads of a band of despots; or to the manners of the people, which had been depraved by a long course of slavery, which while it made freedom the more desirable, rendered them the more incapable of it; whether, I say, the French Revolution might not have succeeded, had not every means been employed to destroy and crush the good that might have been expected from it, is a question not to be discussed here: but at the period of which I am speaking, I believe I may say there were few real friends of liberty who did not augur well of it. A tyranny, which all our most esteemed writers had been endeavouring for the last hundred years to render odious and contemptible to the English people, had been overthrown; and this was hailed by all those who had been taught to value the principles of liberty, or the welfare of nations, as an event auspicious to France and to the world. The emancipation of thirty millions of people (so I remember it was considered at the time) was a change for the better, as great as it was unexpected: the pillars of oppression and tyranny seemed to have been overthrown: man was about to shake off the fetters which had bound him in wretchedness and ignorance; and the blessings that were yet in store for him were unforeseen and incalculable. Hope smiled upon him, and pointed to futurity.
With these feelings, and with these encouragements from the state of the public mind, reasoning men began to inquire what would be the ruling principles of action in a state of society, as perfect as we can suppose, or the general diffusion of which would soonest lead to such a state of improvement. And the answer was found, not so much in any real novelties, or heretofore unheard-of paradoxes, as in the most pure and simple principles of morality, differing from the common and received ones, no otherwise than in the severity with which they are insisted on, and in their application to a state of things in which the same indulgences, precautions, and modifications of our higher and paramount obligations, which are at present inseparable from the imperfection of our nature, would no longer be necessary. The whole of the modern philosophy (as far as relates to moral conduct), is nothing more than a literal, rigid, unaccommodating, and systematic interpretation of the text, (which is itself pretty old and good authority) ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,’ without making any allowances for the weaknesses of mankind, or the degree to which this rule was practicable; and the answer to the question, ‘Who is our neighbour,’ is the same, both in the sacred records, and in the modern paraphrase, ‘He who most wants our assistance.’ I have mentioned this coincidence (I hope without offence), to shew that the shock occasioned by the extreme and naked manner of representing the doctrine of universal benevolence, did not, and could not, arise from the principle itself, but from the supposition that this comprehensive and sublime principle was of itself sufficient to regulate the actions of men, without the aid of those common affections, and mixed motives, which our habits, passions, and vices, had taught us to regard as the highest practicable point of virtue. If, however, it be granted, not only that it is in itself right and best, but that a period might come, in which it would be possible for men to be actuated by the sole principles of truth and justice, then it would seem to follow that the subordinate and auxiliary rules of action might be dispensed with, being superseded by the sense of higher and more important duties.