frage can not exist; but if not to universal suffrage, there can exist no natural right to suffrage at all. In whatever way he would obviate this objection, he must admit expedience founded on experience and particular circumstances, which will vary in every different nation, and in the same nation at different times, as the maxim of all legislation and the ground of all legislative power. For his universal principles, as far as they are principles and universal, necessarily suppose uniform and perfect subjects, which are to be found in the ideas of pure geometry and, I trust, in the realities of heaven, but never, never, in creatures of flesh and blood.

ESSAY V.

ON THE ERRORS OF PARTY SPIRIT: OR EXTREMES MEET.

And it was no wonder if some good and innocent men, especially such as he (Lightfoot) who was generally more concerned about what was done in Judea many centuries ago, than what was transacted in his own time in his own country-it is no wonder if some such were for a while borne away to the approval of opinions which they, after more sedate reflection, disowned. Yet his innocency from any self-interest or design, together with his learning, secured him from the extravagances of demagogues, the people's oracles.-Lightfoot's Works, Publisher's Preface to the Reader.

I HAVE never seen Major Cartwright, much less enjoy the honor of his acquaintance; but I know enough of his character, from the testimony of others and from his own writings, to respect his talents, and revere the purity of his motives. I am fully persuaded that there are few better men, few more fervent or disinterested adherents of their country or the laws of their country, of whatsoever things are lovely, of whatsoever things are honorable. It would give me great pain should I be supposed to have introduced, disrespectfully, a name, which from my early youth I never heard mentioned without a feeling of affectionate admiration. I have indeed quoted from this venerable patriot, as from the most respectable English advocate for the theory, which derives the rights of government, and the duties of obedience to it, exclusively from principles of pure

reason.

It was of consequence to my cause that I should not be thought to have been waging war against a straw image of my own setting up, or even against a foreign idol that had neither worshipers nor advocates in our own country; and it was not less my object to keep my discussion aloof from those passions, which more unpopular names might have excited. I therefore introduced the name of Cartwright, as I had previously done that of Luther, in order to give every fair advantage to a theory, which I thought it of importance to confute; and as an instance that though the system might be made tempting to the vulgar, yet that, taken unmixed and entire, it was chiefly fascinating for lofty and imaginative spirits, who mistook their own virtues and powers for the average character of men in general.

Neither by fair statements nor by fair reasoning should I ever give offence to Major Cartwright himself, nor to his judicious friends. If I am in danger of offending them, it must arise from one or other of two causes; either that I have falsely represented his principles, or his motives and the tendency of his writings. In the book from which I quoted, "The People's Barrier against undue Influence" (the only one of Major Cartwright's which I possess), I am conscious that there are six foundations stated of constitutional government. Therefore, it may be urged, the author can not be justly classed with those who deduce our social rights and correlative duties exclusively from principles of pure reason, or unavoidable conclusions from such. My answer is ready. Of these six foundations three are but different words for one and the same, namely, the law of reason, the law of God, and first principles: and the three that remain can not be taken as indifferent, inasmuch as they are afterwards affirmed to be of no validity except as far as they are evidently deduced from the former; that is, from the principles implanted by God in the universal reason of man. These three latter foundations are, the general customs of the realm, particular customs, and acts of Parliament. It might be supposed that the author had not used his terms in the precise and single sense in which they are defined in my former essay; and that self-evident principles may be meant to include the dictates of manifest expedience, the inductions of the understanding as well as the prescripts of the pure reason. But no; Major Cartwright has guarded against the possibility of this interpretation, and has expressed himself

as decisively, and with as much warmth, against founding gov ernments on grounds of expedience, as I have done against founding morality on the same. Euclid himself could not have defined his words more sternly within the limits of pure science; for instance, see the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th primary rules :—' A principle is a manifest and simple proposition comprehending a certain truth. Principles are the proof of every thing: but are not susceptible of external proof, being self-evident. If one principle be violated, all are shaken. Against him, who denies principles, all dispute is useless, and reason unintelligible, or disallowed, so far as he denies them. The laws of nature are immutable.'-Neither could Rousseau himself, nor his predecessors, the Fifth-monarchy men, have more nakedly or emphatically identified the foundations of government in the concrete with those of religion and morality in the abstract: see Major Cartwright's primary rules from 31 to 39, and from 44 to 83. In these it is affirmed ;-that the legislative rights of every citizen are inherent in his nature; that, being natural rights, they must be equal in all men; that a natural right is that right which a citizen claims as being a man, and that it hath no other foundation but his personality or reason; that property can neither increase nor modify any legislative right; that every one man shall have one vote however poor, and for any one man, however rich, to have more than one vote, is against natural justice, and an evil measure; that it is better for a nation to endure all adversities, than to assent to one evil measure; that to be free is to be governed by laws, to which we have ourselves assented, either in person or by representative, for whose election we have actually voted: that all not having a right of suffrage are slaves, and that a vast majority of the people of Great Britain are slaves! To prove the total coincidence of Major Cart wright's theory with that which I have stated, and I trust confuted, in the preceding essay, it only remains for me to prove, that the former, equally with the latter, confounds the sufficiency of the conscience to make every person a moral and amenable being, with the sufficiency of judgment and experience requisite to the exercise of political right. A single quotation will place this out of all doubt, which from its length I shall insert in a note.*

*But the equality' (observe, that Major Cartwright is here speaking of the natural right to universal suffrage, and consequently of the univer

Great stress, indeed, is laid on the authority of our ancient laws, both in this and the other works of our patriotic author; and whatever his system may be, it is impossible not to feel, that the author himself possesses the heart of a genuine Englishman. But still his system can neither be changed nor modified by these appeals for among the primary maxims, which form the groundwork of it, we are informed not only that law in the abstract is the perfection of reason; but that the law of God and the law of the land are all one! What! The statutes against witches; or those against papists, the abolition of which gave rise to the infamous riots in 1780! Or, in the author's own opinion, the statutes of disfranchisement and for making Parliaments septen

sal right of eligibility, as well as of election, independently of character or property)—the equality and dignity of human nature in all men, whether rich or poor, is placed in the highest point of view by St. Paul, when he reprehends the Corinthian believers for their litigations one with another, in the courts of law where unbelievers presided; and as an argument of the competency of all men to judge for themselves, he alludes to that elevation in the kingdom of heaven which is promised to every man who shall be virtuous, or in the language of that time, a saint. Do ye not know, says he, that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that ye shall judge the angels? How much more things that pertain to this life? If after such authorities, such manifestations of truth as these, any Christian through those prejudices, which are the effects of long habits of injustice and oppression, and teach us to despise the poor, shall still think it right to exclude that part of the commonalty, consisting of tradesmen, artificers, and laborers, or any of them from voting in elections of members to serve in Parliament, I must sincerely lament such a persuasion as a misfortune both to himself and his country. And if any man,—not having given himself the trouble to consider whether or not the Scripture be an authority, but who, nevertheless, is a friend to the rights of mankind—upon grounds of mere prudence, policy, or expediency, shall think it advisable to go against the whole current of our constitutional and law maxims, by which it is self-evident that every man, as being a man, is created free, born to freedom, and, without it, a thing, a slave, a beast; and shall contend for drawing a line of exclusion at freeholders of forty pounds a year, or forty shillings a year, or householders, or pot-boilers, so that all who are below that line shall not have a vote in the election of a legislative guardian,-which is taking from a citizen the power even of self-preservation, —such a man, I venture to say, is bolder than he who wrestled with the angel; for he wrestles with God himself, who established those principles in the eternal laws of nature, never to be violated by any of his creatures.' Pp. 23, 24.

nial-Nay! but (Principle 28) an unjust law is no law and (P. 22) against the law of reason neither prescription, statutę, nor custom, may prevail; and if any such be brought against it, they be not prescriptions, statutes, nor customs, but things void: and (P. 29) what the Parliament doth shall be holden for naught whensoever it shall enact that which is contrary to a natural right! I dare not suspect a grave writer of such egregious trifling, as to mean no more by these assertions, than that what is wrong is not right; and if more than this be meant, it must be that the subject is not bound to obey any act of Parliament, which according to his conviction entrenches on a principle of natural-right ; which natural rights are, as we have seen, not confined to the man in his individual capacity, but are made to confer universal legislative privileges on every subject of every state, and of the extent of which every man is competent to judge, who is competent to be the object of law at all, that is, every man who has not lost his reason.

In the statement of his principles, therefore, I have not misrepresented Major Cartwright. Have I then endeavored to connect public odium with his name, by arraigning his motives, or the tendency of his writings? The tendency of his writings in my inmost conscience I believe to be perfectly harmless, and I dare cite them in confirmation of the opinions which it was the object of my introductory essays to establish, and as an additional proof, that no good man communicating what he believes to be the truth for the sake of truth, and according to the rules of conscience, will be found to have acted injuriously to the peace or interests of society. The venerable state-moralist,-for this is his true character, and in this title is conveyed the whole error of his system, is incapable of aiding his arguments by the poignant condiment of personal slander, incapable of appealing to the envy of the multitude by bitter declamation against the follies and oppressions of the higher classes. He would shrink with horror from the thought of adding a false and unnatural influence to the cause of truth and justice, by details of present calamity or immediate suffering, fitted to excite the fury of the multitude, or by promises of turning the current of the public revenue into the channels* of

* I must remind the reader, that this essay was written in October, 1809. If Major Cartwright has ever since then acted in a different spirit, and tampered personally with the distresses, and consequent irritability of the