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SHARPE-BARCLAY-FELL-ELLWOOD.

[ESSAY II. bearance, persist in their purposes of death :-when he has done this he will have adduced an argument in favour of taking their lives which will not, indeed, be conclusive, but which will approach nearer to conclusiveness than any that has yet been adduced.

Of the consequences of forbearance, even in the case of personal attack, there are some examples. Archbishop Sharpe was assaulted by a footpad on the highway, who presented a pistol and demanded his money. The archbishop spoke to the robber in the language of a fellow-man and of a Christian. The man was really in distress, and the prelate gave him such money as he had, and promised that if he would call at the palace, he would make up the amount to fifty pounds. This was the sum of which the robber had said he stood in the utmost need. The man called and received the money. About a year and a half afterward, this man again came to the palace and brought back the same sum. He said that his circumstances had become improved, and that, through the "astonishing goodness" of the archbishop, he had become "the most penitent, the most grateful, and the happiest of his species."-Let the reader consider how different the archbishop's feelings were, from what they would have been if, by his hand, this man had been cut off.*

The

Barclay, the apologist, was attacked by a highwayman. He substi tuted for the ordinary modes of resistance a calm expostulation. felon dropped his presented pistol, and offered no further violence. A Leonard Fell was similarly attacked, and from him the robber took both his money and his horse, and then threatened to blow out his brains. Fell solemnly spoke to the man on the wickedness of his life. The robber was astonished: he had expected, perhaps, curses, or perhaps a dagger. He declared he would not keep either the horse or the money, and returned both. "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head."-The tenor of the short narrative that follows is somewhat different. Ellwood, who is known to the literary world as the suggester to Milton of Paradise Regained, was attending his father in his coach. Two men waylaid them in the dark and stopped the carriage. Young Ellwood got out, and on going up to the nearest, the ruffian raised a heavy club, "when," says Ellwood, "I whipped out my rapier and made a pass upon him. I could not have failed running him through up to the hilt," but the sudden appearance of the bright blade terrified the man so that he stepped aside, avoided the thrust, and both he and the other fled. "At that time," proceeds Ellwood, "and for a good while after, I had no regret upon my mind for what I had done." This was while he was young, and when the forbearing principles of Christianity had little influence upon him. But afterward, when this influence became powerful, "a sort of horror," he says, "seized on me when I considered how near I had been to the staining of my hands with human blood. And whensoever afterward I went that way, and indeed as often since as the matter has come into my remembrance, my soul has blessed Him who preserved and withheld me from shedding man's blood."

That those over whom, as over Ellwood, the influence of Christianity is imperfect and weak, should think themselves at liberty upon such occasions to take the lives of their fellow-men, needs to be no subject of

See Lond. Chron. Aug. 12, 1785. See also Life of Granville Sharpe, Esq. p. 13. † Select Anecdotes, &c. by John Barclay. Ellwood's Life.

CHAP. 17.]

EFFECTS OF FORBEARANCE.

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wonder. Christianity, if we would rightly estimate its obligations, must be felt in the heart. They in whose hearts it is not felt, or felt but little, cannot be expected perfectly to know what its obligations are. I know not therefore that more appropriate advice can be given to him who contends for the lawfulness of taking another man's life in order to save his own, than that he would first inquire whether the influence of religion is dominant in his mind. If it is not, let him suspend his decision until he has attained to the fulness of the stature of a Christian man. Then, as he will be of that number who do the will of Heaven, he may hope to "know, of this doctrine, whether it be of God."

END OF THE SECOND ESSAY.

ESSAY III.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

PRIN LES OF POLITICAL TRUTH, AND OF POLITICAL RECTITUDE.

THE fundamental principles which are deducible from the law of nature and from Christianity, respecting political affairs, appear to be these:

1. Political Power is rightly possessed only when it is possessed by consent of the community :

2. It is rightly exercised only when it subserves the welfare of the community;

3. And only when it subserves this purpose by means which the moral law permits.

I.

"POLITICAL POWER IS RIGHTLY POSSESSED ONLY WHEN IT IS POSSESSED BY CONSENT OF THE COMMUNITY."

Perfect liberty is desirable if it were consistent with the greatest degree of happiness. But it is not. Men find that by giving up a part of their liberty, they are more happy than by retaining, or attempting to retain, the whole. Government, whatever be its form, is the agent by which the inexpedient portion of individual liberty is taken away. Men institute government for their own advantage, and because they find they are more happy with it than without it. This is the sole reason, in principle, how little soever it be adverted to in practice. Governors therefore are the officers of the public, in the proper sense of the word: not the slaves of the public; for if they do not incline to conform to the public will, they are at liberty, like other officers, to give up their office. They are servants in the same manner, and for the same purpose, as a solicitor is the servant of his client, and the physician of his patient. These are employed by the patient or the client voluntarily for his own advantage, and for nothing else. A nation (not an individual, but a nation) is under no other obligation to obedience than that which arises from the conviction that obedience is good for itself:-or rather, in more proper language, a nation is under no obligation to obedience at all. Obedience is voluntary. If they do not think it proper to obey, that is, if they are not

CHAP. 1.]

GOVERNORS ARE OFFICERS OF THE PUBLIC.

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satisfied with their officers,-they are at liberty to discontinue their obedience, and to appoint other officers instead.

That which is thus true as a universal proposition is asserted with respect to this country by the present king:-"The powers and prerogatives of the crown are vested there as a trust for the benefit of the people; and they are sacred only as they are necessary to the preservation of that poise and balance of the constitution which experience has proved to be the best security of the liberty of the subject."*

It is incidental to the office of the first public servants, that they should exercise authority over those by whom they are selected; and hence, probably, it has happened that the terms "public officer," "public servant," have excited such strange controversies in the world. Men have not maintained sufficient discrimination of ideas. Seeing that governors are great and authoritative, a man imagines it cannot be proper to say they are servants. Seeing that it is necessary and right that individuals should obey, he cannot entertain the notion that they are the servants of those whom they govern. The truth is, that governors are not the servants of individuals but of the community. They are the masters of individuals, the servants of the public; and if this simple distinction had been sufficiently borne in mind, much perhaps of the vehement contention upon these matters had been avoided.

But the idea of being a servant of the public is quite consistent with the idea of exercising authority over them. The common language of a patient is founded upon similar grounds. He sends for a physician: -the physician comes at his desire,-is paid for his services, and then the patient says, I am ordered to adopt a regimen, I am ordered to Italy; and he obeys, not because he may not refuse to obey if he chooses, but because he confides in the judgment of the physician, and thinks that it is more to his benefit to be guided by the physician's judgment than by his own. But it will be said, the physician cannot enforce his orders upon the patient against his will: neither I answer can the governor enforce his upon the public against theirs. No doubt governors do sometimes so enforce them. What they do, however, and what they rightfully do, are separate considerations, and our business is only with the latter.

Grotius argues that sovereign power may be possessed by governors, so that it shall not rightfully belong to the community. He says, "From the Jewish as well as the Roman law it appears, that any one might engage himself in private servitude to whom he pleased. Now if an individual may do so, why may not a whole people, for the benefit of better government and more certain protection, completely transfer their sovereign rights to one or more persons without reserving any portion to themselves?"-I answer, No individual may do this: and, if he might, it would not serve the doctrine in the case of nations.-It never can be right for a man to resign the absolute direction of his conduct to another, because he must then do actions good or bad as that other might command, -he must lie, or rob, or assassinate; and of this common sense would pronounce the impropriety, if the moral law did not. And if you say a man ought not so to resign himself to another, then I answer, he does not transfer sovereign power but retains it himself,-which, in truth, ends .he argument.

Letter when Prince of Wales, to Wm. Pitt. Gifford's Life of Pitt, vol. ii. + Rights of War and Peace, b. 1, c. 3, s. 8.

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THE PEOPLE HOLD

[ESSAY III. But if the doctrine were sound for the individual, it is unsound for a community. What is meant by the "transfer of their sovereign rights by a whole people?" Is every man, woman, and child in the country formally to sign the transfer? If not, how shall a whole people transfer it? At any rate, if they did, their resignation could not bind their children or successors. Besides, there is the same objection to this transfer of the sovereign power on the part of a nation as on the part of an individual. The thing is absurd in reason, and criminal in morals.

Grotius illustrates his argument by "that authority to which a woman submits when she gives herself to her husband." But she does not submit to sovereign authority. He says again, "some powers are conferred for the sake of the governor, as the right of a master over a slave." But such powers are never justly conferred.

After all, these arguments do but establish, in reality, the fundamental position. They assume that a people can resign the sovereign power; which is the same thing as to acknowledge that they rightfully possess it. Grotius himself says, "A state is a perfect body of freemen, united together in order to enjoy common rights and advantages."*

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It gives some anxiety to the mind of the writer, lest the reader should identify his principles with those of many who have asserted the "sovereignty of the people." This doctrine has been insisted upon by persons who have mingled with it, or deduced from it, principles which the writer not merely rejects, but abhors. A doctrine is not unsound because it has been advocated or perverted by bad men; and it is neither rational nor honest to reprobate a truth because it has been viciously associated. Gifford, in his Life of Pitt, complains of Fox, who by "a strange perversion of terms and a confusion of intellect that would have disgraced even a schoolboy, called his sovereign the servant of the people. This," says Gifford, was a servile imitation of the French regicides, and a direct encouragement to all the theoretical reveries of all the disaffected in England." This is the species of association which I would deprecate: French regicides taught the doctrine, and disaffected theorists taught it. I am sorry that a truth should be so connected; but it is not the less a truth. The "confusion of intellect" of which Gifford speaks probably subsisted more in the writer than in Fox,-for reasons which the reader has just seen, and because the biographer had probably confounded the doctrine with the conduct of some who supported it. The reader should practise a little of the power of abstraction, and detach accidental associations from truth itself..

In reality, it cannot be asserted that the people do not rightfully possess the supreme power, without asserting that governors may do what they will, and be as tyrannical as they will. Who may prevent them? The people? Then the people hold the sovereign power.

Many political constitutions have existed in which the governor was held to be absolutely the supreme power. The antiquity of such constitutions, or the regular succession of the existing governor, does not make his pretensions to this power just, because the principles on which it is ascertained that the people are supreme, are antecedent to all questions of usage and superior to them. No injustice, therefore, is done,nothing wrong is done,-in diminishing or taking away the power of an absolute monarch, notwithstanding the regularity of his pretensions to it.

* Rights of War and Peace.