'Beggars and bastards by his new creation 55 `The instant popularity of the satire was astonishingly great. Besides the nine editions of which De Foe himself received the profit, upwards of twelve editions were pirated, printed, and sold, in defiance of his interdict. More than eighty thousand copies, we are told, were thus disposed of in the streets alone. But it is more important to have to remark, that it destroyed the cant against which it was directed. "Nothing was more frequent in our mouths before that, nothing so universally blushed for and laughed at since. Whereas, before, you had it in the best writers, and in the most florid speeches, before the most august assemblies, upon the most solemn occasions, "-now, without a blush or a laugh, you never heard it named. It may be doubted if this great King had ever so deeply felt a service. His opportunities were few. De Foe has recorded how he was sent for to the palace, on the special occasion of his book; with what kindness he was received; "how employed; and how, above his capacity of deserving, rewarded." His free access to William's cabinet never ceased from this time. There are statements, throughout his writings, of the many points of public policy he had been permitted frankly to discuss with the sovereign. On the agitated questions of the partition-treaties, he was many times consulted; and there was one grand theme, nobly characteristic of the minds of both, often recurred to in these interviews. It was the Union of Scotland with England. "It shall be done," said William; "but not yet." Other things more nearly and closely pressed him then. The rapid growth and march of the Revolution might be aptly measured by the incidents and disputes of the last year of his reign. They turned solely on the power claimed by the Lower House of legislature. In several ably-written pamphlets, and particularly in a Letter distinguished for its plain and nervous diction, and in which the grounds of popular representation were so happily condensed and clearly stated, that it has been a text-book of political disputants from the expulsion of Walpole and of Wilkes to the days of the Reform Bill,* * This remarkable pamphlet in Defence of Popular Rights, may be briefly described as a demonstration of the predominance of the Original over the Delegated authority, and remains still, as it was when first written, the most able, plain, and courageous exposition in our language, of the doctrine on which our own and all free political constitutions rest. Its argument proceeds from four general propositions, which are worked out with masterly 1702.1 RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE. 57 57 -De Foe impugned the full extent of the claim on the ground of a non-representation of the people; but a power had lately arisen within that House itself indicative of the changed relations of the government of England, wiser in effect than the wisdom of Somers, more cunning than the cunning of Sunderland. "The power and clearness. The first is, That all government is contrived and instituted by the consent and for the mutual benefit and protection of the governed. The second, That its constituent members-whether King, Lords, or Commons—if they invert the great end of their institution, cease to be, and surrender their power to the source from which it proceeded. The third, That no collective or representative body of men whatsoever, in matters of politics or religion, have been infallible. And the fourth, That reason is the test and touchstone of laws, which cease to be binding, and become void, when contradictory to reason. Of which propositions the close and inseparable interdependence is shown, by exhibiting the respective relations and obligations of the various authorities of the State to each other and to their supreme head; it being the grand purpose of the argument to demonstrate the sole safety and efficacy of the latter in the final resort. "For, notwithstanding all the beauty of our constitution, and the exact symmetry of its parts, about which some have been so very eloquent, this noble, well-contrived system has been overwhelmed, the government has been inverted, the people's liberties have been trampled on, and parliaments have been rendered useless and insignificaut. And what has restored us? The last resort has been to the People. Vox Dei has been found there, not in the representatives, but in their original, the represented." And let no man dread such last resort, wisely adds De Foe. For what say the practical results of history as to the unvarying political tendencies of the English People? The 66 Tories," said the latter to William, "are better speakers than the Whigs in the House of Commons." It had arisen into a peculiar art—this art of oratory—there. Confessedly one of the most influential of its members was he whom the last three Parliaments of William elected for their Speaker; yet no man would have genius of this nation has always appeared to tend to a limited monarchy; and having had, in the late Revolution, a full and uninterrupted liberty to cast themselves into what form of government they pleased, there was not discovered the least inclination in any party to a commonwealth, though the treatment they met with from their last two kings had all in it that could be to put them out of love with monarchy. A commonwealth can never be introduced but by such invasions of right as must make our constituted government impracticable. The reason is, because men never willingly change for the worse; and the people of England enjoy more freedom in our regal, than any people in the world can do in a popular government." But were it otherwise, not the less must this thorough Englishman uphold the superiority of the original power. Before there was such a thing as a Constitution, there must have been a People; and, as the end to which authority is delegated can never be other than the public good, upon the unquestioned assertion of all men's right to the government of themselves must also rest the most absolute and express confirmation that such delegated authority can receive. Addressing the King, he says, "It is not the least extraordinary attribute of your majesty's character, that, as you are king of your people, so you are the people's king; a title, as it is the most glorious, so it is the most indisputable in the world. Your majesty, among all the blessings of your reign, has restored this as the best of all our enjoyments-the full liberty of original right; and your majesty knows too well the nature of govern 1702.1 ROBERT HARLEY. 59 listened patiently for five minutes to Robert Harley, any where but in the House of Commons. There, he was supreme. The country gentlemen voted for him, though they remembered that his family went to a meeting-house. The younger members put forth their most able and graceful representative to honour him, ment to think it at all the less honourable, or the more precarious, for being devolved from, and centred in, the consent of your people." To the Lords, he conceded their place as an independent branch of the constitution, and then tells them: "The rest of the freeholders have originally a right to sit there with you; but, being too numerous a body, they have long since agreed, that whenever the king thinks fit to advise with his people, they will choose a certain few out of their great body to meet together with your Lordships. Here is the original of parliaments; and, when thrones become vacant, to this original all power of course returns, as was the case at the Revolution." To the House of Commons, finally, as the representatives of the collected body of the people, De Foe turns, and with his very striking address to them may be closed this imperfect sketch of a very important and powerful political tract: "To you they have trusted, jointly with the King and the Lords, the power of making laws, raising taxes, and impeaching criminals; but it is in the name of all the Commons of England, whose representatives you are. All this is not said to lessen your authority, which cannot be the interest of any English freeholder: but if you are dissolved, for you are not immortal; or if you are deceived, for you are not infallible, it was never supposed, till very lately, that all power dies with you. You may die, but the people remain; you may be dissolved, and all immediate right may cease; power may have its intervals, and crowns their interregnum; but original power endures to the same eternity as the world endures." |