litical evils exist, to ameliorate a system of polity, which though it produces much happiness, may still, by reformations, as far as these are practicable, be capable of producing more. Our first patriotic duty of this general kind, is the duty of obedience. Why is it that we term obedience a duty,-what circumstances are there, in the nature of a system of government, by which, under certain limitations, it has a claim to our submission, merely because it already exists, and has long existed? The answer to this question was, for a long time, even in our own land, a very simple one,-that power established, was established by God, and that disobedience to the individual whom he had established to exercise this power, would be a rebellion against right divine. Who first taught souls enslav'd and realms undone, And gods of conquerors, slaves of subjects made.* The argument, for the right divine of established power, which is in logic, little better than any other argument for the right divine of any thing that exists-whether good or evil merely as existing, for the prevalent system of manners, virtuous or vicious, -or even, as has been truly said, for the right divine of a widespread fever, or any other pestilence, is as wretched in its moral consequences, as it is ridiculous in logic; and it is painful to peruse the writings on the subject, which at one period-and that not a very distant one-were so prevalent, and, in some cases, were the works of authors whom we are accustomed to venerate, not merely as philosophers, but as men, who have given undoubt ed proofs of the most benevolent interest in the human race. Berkeley, the author of the Theory of Vision,-Berkeley, the generous possessor of "every virtue under heaven," is the same Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. III. 241-249. Berkeley who endeavours to demonstrate to us, that it is as much our duty to submit to the most ferocious tyrant, as to submit to the supreme benevolence of God,-or rather, that to obey such a tyrant is to obey Supreme Benevolence. That God, the equal God of all mankind, has not formed us to be the slaves of any individual, and in furnishing our minds with so many principles, that insure our progress in less important sciences, has not abandoned us, in the most important of all, to the selfishness of a power, which may prefer the present misery of its own despotic sway to all that can be offered for its reformation,because the reformation would abridge an authority which it is more convenient for the possessor of it, to exercise with no limit but that of will, I surely need not now attempt to prove to you. On the right divine of authority, whatever vague allusions to it we may sometimes find in courtly flatterers of the day, we have no writers now who require to be confuted. There is, indeed, one species of right divine which established authority does possess,-its tendency to the peace of those who submit to it, and consequently, in that respect to their happiness, which, as the object of our Creator, has the sanction of divine will. But it possesses this right divine, only as tending to public happiness, it is secondary only, not primary; and when the public happiness, instead of being, upon the whole, promoted by obedience, would, upon the whole, when every consequence, indirect as well as direct, is taken into account, be promoted, by shaking off that power which is inconsistent with its great object,remonstrance, even rebellion itself,-if that name can justly be given, in such circumstances of dreadful necessity, to the expres sion of the public will,-has as truly its right divine, as established authority, even in its best state, could be said to have it, when, as exercised with happier tenderness, it was productive of that good, in which alone the divinity of its right is to be found. We have no need, then, of all those fictions to which political writers, in periods in which the true source of political obligation was less distinctly perceived, were obliged to have recourse, in asserting the rights of the governed, as paramount to the claims of mere possession, in the tyrannical governor. We have no need to speak of original compacts, of those who obey with those who command, understood as prior to the existing forms of social in stitutions, and the violation of which, by one party, might be considered as a warrant to the other party for resuming the original rights, of which they had consented, through their ancestors, to divest themselves. Such compacts never existed, and could not, independently of the good that might flow from them, be of obligation on the new individuals, who form the present race of mankind, though they had truly taken place at some remote period. The only reason for which we could conceive it necessary for men at present, to pay the obedience which another number of men, at any other period, paid to a certain number of their fellow-creatures, who lived in their time, is, that a failure in this obedience, of the propriety of which the existing generation are equally capable of judging, or better capable, if political knowledge have made the slightest progress,-would seem to be injurious to the society in which they live; and, if this reason be valid, it is valid without the necessity of the compact supposed. It is our duty to obey, because mankind-at least that large part of mankind which we term our country,-would suffer, upon the whole, if we were not to obey. This is the powerful hold which even imperfect governments possess on the obedience of the wise and good; and the stronger holds which they may seem to have, by corruption, or by mere usage of unreflecting veneration, on the profligate and the ignorant, is truly not half so strong. The profligate supporter of a system, for which he cares only as it ministers to his vices, may see, perhaps, some more tempting promise of wealth and power, in a rebellion against that very authority, the slightest attempt to ameliorate which, he has been accustomed to represent as a species of treason. The ignorant, who fall on their knees to-day, merely because something is passing which is very magnificent, and before which other knees are bent, or bending, may, to-morrow, when other arms are lifted in tumultuous rebellion, join their arms to the tumult and the dreadful fury of the day. It is only in the bosom of the wise and good, as I have said, that any security of obedience is to be found. He who is worthy of those honourable names-who is wise to consult for the public weal, which his goodness wishes, has no object but the happiness of the community; and though he may see imperfections in government which tend to lessen this happiness, he yet knows how much is to be hoped from the calm influence of diffu sive knowledge, and how very little is to be hoped from the exercise of force,-which would be opposed not by mere force of arms, but by the force of as many bad passions as could be summoned to resist it; and which would too often, also, be obliged to call to its own aid passions, as little worthy of the sacred cause in which they might be engaged, as the very passions that were opposed to him. He weighs good with good, evil with evil;— and the oppression must, indeed, be severe, and the prospect of relief from it by other means be truly gloomy, before he will lift his voice to call his fellow citizens to arm against their fellowcitizens. "The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end, and resistance must begin, is," as Mr Burke truly says, "faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act, or a single event, which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged, indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy, to those whom nature has qualified to administer, in extremities, this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion, to a distempered state. Times, and occasions, and provocations, will teach their own lessons. The wise, will determine from the gravity of the case,-the irritable, from sensibility to oppression-the highminded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands-the brave and bold, from the love of honourable danger in a generous cause ;-but, with or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good.' A revolution, indeed, even in such circumstances, as this eloquent writer well says, should be, and will be, the last resource of the thinking and good. But, though it will be the last resource, it still is a resource-a resource in those miserable circumstances, in which times, and occasions, and provocations, teach their terrible lessons. When the rare imperious cases do occur, in which the patriotism that before made obedience a duty, allows it no more, to him who feels that he has now another duty to perform; -when he sees, with sorrow, that a cause which is good in itself, will demand the use of means from which, with any other motives, * Burke's Works, Vol. V. p. 73. 8vo. Lond. 1803. he would have shrunk with abhorrence, he will lift his voice sadly, indeed, but still loudly-he will lift his arm with reluctance, but, when it is lifted, he will wield it with all the force which the thought of the happiness of the world, as perhaps dependent on it, can give to its original vigour ;-he has made that calculation in which his own happiness, and his own life, have scarcely been counted as elements. If he survive and prevail, therefore, though in anticipating the prosperity which he has in part produced, he may sometimes look back on the past with melancholy, he cannot look back on it with regret;—and, if he fall, he will think only of the aid which his life might have given to that general happiness which he sought,-not of his life itself, as an object of regard, or even as a thing which it would have been possible for him to preserve. |