of that of Great Britain. Let us hope that he intends us an agreeable disappointment; if not, the sooner he emigrates back again, the better.
System-mongers are an unreasonable species of mortals: time, place, climate, nature itself, must give way. Ref 011 They must have the same government in every quarter of the globe; when perhaps there are not two countries which can possibly admit of the same form of government at the same time. A thousand hidden causes, a thousand circumstances and unforeseen events, conspire to the forming of a government. It is always done by little and little. When completed, it presents nothing like a system; nothing like a thing composed, and written in a book. Ref 012 It is curious to hear people cite the American Government as the summit of human perfection, while they decry the English; when it is absolutely nothing more than the Government which the Kings of England established here, with such little modifications as were necessary on account of the state of society and local circumstances. If, then, the Doctor is come here for a change of government and laws, he is the most disappointed of mortals. He will have the mortification to find in his “asylum” the same laws as those from which he has fled, the same upright manner of administering them, the same punishment of the oppressor, and the same protection of the oppressed. In the Courts of Justice he will every day see precedents quoted from the English lawbooks; and (which to him may appear wonderful) we may venture to predict, that it will be very long before they will be supplanted by the bloody records of the revolutionary tribunal.
Happiness being the end of all good government, that which produces the most is consequently the best; and comparison being the only method of determining the relative value of things, it is easy to see which is preferable, the tyranny which the French formerly enjoyed, or the liberty and equality they at present labour under. If the Doctor had come about a year sooner, he might have had the satisfaction of being not only an ear, but an eye witness also, of some of the blessed effects of this celebrated revolution. He might then have been regaled with that sight, so delectable to a modern philosopher; opulence reduced to misery.
The stale pretence, that the league against the French has been the cause of their inhuman conduct to each other, cannot, by the most perverse sophistry, be applied to the island of St. Domingo. That fine rich colony was ruined, its superb capital and villas reduced to ashes, one half of its inhabitants massacred, and the other half reduced to beggary, before an enemy ever appeared on the coast. No: it is that system of anarchy and blood that was celebrated at Birmingham, on the 14th of July 1791, that has been the cause of all this murder and devastation.
Nor let the Doctor pretend that this could not be foreseen. It was foreseen, and foretold too, from the very moment a part of the deputies to the States General were permitted to call themselves a National Assembly. In proof of this, I could mention a dozen publications that came out under his own eye; but I shall content myself with giving a short extract from a speech in the British Parliament, which is the more proper on this occasion, as it was delivered but a few weeks before the period of the riots.
“The Americans,” said Mr. Burke, “have what was essentially necessary for freedom: they have the phlegm of the good-tempered Englishmen—they were fitted for republicans by a republican education. Their revolution was not brought about by base and degenerate crimes; nor did they overturn a government for the purposes of anarchy; but they raised a republic, as nearly representing the British Government as it was possible. They did not run into the absurdity of France, and by seizing on the rights of man, declare that the nation was to govern the nation, and Prince Prettyman to govern Prince Prettyman. There are in Canada many of the ancient inhabitants; will it be proper to give them the French Constitution? In my opinion, there is not a single circumstance that recommends the adoption of any part of it, for the whole is abominably bad, the production of folly, not wisdom—of vice, not virtue; it contains nothing but extremes, as distant from each other as the poles—the parts are in eternal opposition to each other—it is founded on what is called the rights of man; but, to my conviction, it is founded on the wrongs of man; and I now hold in my hand, an example of its effects on the French colonies. Domingo, Guadaloupe, and the other French islands, were rich, happy, and growing in strength and consequence, in spite of the three last distressing wars, before they heard of the new doctrine of the rights of man; but these rights were no sooner arrived at the islands than any spectator would have imagined that Pandora’s box had been opened, and that hell had yawned out discord, murder, and every mischief; for anarchy, confusion, and bloodshed, raged every where; it was a general summons for
Black spirits and white,
Blue spirits and gray,
Mingle, mingle, mingle,
You that mingle may.”
“When the Assembly heard of these disorders, they ordered troops to quell them; but it proves that the troops have joined the insurgents, and murdered their commander. I look on the revolution with horror and detestation; it is a revolution of consummate folly, formed and maintained by every vice.”
But perhaps the Doctor’s intense studies, “his continual labours for the good of mankind,” might not leave him time to peruse the debates of Parliament; however, we may fairly presume, that he read the letters addressed to himself; and if so, he has read the following passage: “You think that a neighbouring nation is emancipated from tyranny, and that a company of Englishmen may laudably express their joy on the occasion. Were your premises true, I would allow your conclusion. But let us wait the event. Philosophers should not be too credulous, or form their determinations too rashly. It is very possible that all the magnificent schemes of your august diet in France may be succeeded by a ridiculous, a villanous, or a bloody catastrophe.”
Either he foresaw the consequences of the French revolution, or he did not foresee them: if he did not, he must confess that his penetration was far inferior to that of his antagonists, and even to that of the multitude of his countrymen; for they all foresaw them. If he did foresee them, he ought to blush at being called the “friend of human happiness;” for, to foresee such dreadful calamities, and to form a deliberate plan for bringing them upon his country, he must have a disposition truly diabolical. If he did not foresee them, he must have an understanding little superior to that of an idiot; if he did, he must have the heart of a Marat. Let him choose.
But it is pretty clear that he foresaw the consequences, or, at least, that he approves of them; for, as I have observed above, he sent his son into France, in the very midst of the massacres, to request the honour of becoming a French Citizen; and in his answers to the addressers at New York, he takes good care to express his disapprobation of the war pursued by his country (which he calls an infatuation), because its manifest tendency is to destroy that hydra, that system of anarchy which is the primary cause. Besides, is not his emigration itself a convincing proof that his opinion still remains the same? If he found himself mistaken, he would confess his error; at least tacitly, by a change of conduct. Has he done this? No: the French revolution is his system, and sooner than not see it established; I much question if he would not with pleasure see the massacre of all the human race.
Even suppose his intended plan of improvement had been the best in the world, instead of the worst, the people of England had certainly a right to reject it. He claims as an indubitable right, the right of thinking for others, and yet he will not permit the people of England to think for themselves. Paine says, “What a whole nation wills, it has a right to do.” Consequently, what a whole nation does not will, it has a right not to do. Rousseau says, “The majority of a people has a right to force the rest to be free:” but even the “insane Socrates of the National Assembly” has never, in all his absurd reveries, had the folly to pretend that a club of dissenting malcontents has a right to force a whole nation to be free. If the English choose to remain slaves, bigots, and idolaters, as the Doctor calls them, that was no business of his: he had nothing to do with them. He should have let them alone; and perhaps in due time, the abuses of their Government would have come to that “natural termination,” which he trusts, “will guard against future
