Page images
PDF
EPUB

lock, and barrel, will bear a close resemblance to what is ultimately produced."-Duncan's Travels, II. 335, 336.

In the Excursion there is a list of the American navy, which, in conjunction with the navy of France, will one day or another, we fear, settle the Catholic question in a way not quite agreeable to the Earl of Liverpool for the time being, nor very creditable to the wisdom of those ancestors of whom we hear, and from whom we suffer so much. The regulations of the American navy seem to be admirable. The states are making great exertions to increase this navy; and since the capture of so many English ships, it has become the favourite science of the people at large. Their flotillas on the lakes completely defeated ours during the last war.

twice sent over for a supply of Germans, as they admit no Americans, of any intercourse with whom they are very jealous. Harmonites dress and live plainly. It is a part of their creed that they should do so. Rapp, however, and the head men have no such particular creed for themselves, and indulge in wine, beer, grocery, and other irreligious diet. Rapp is both governor and priest,-preaches to them in church, and directs all their proceedings in their working hours. In short, Rapp seems to have made use of the religious propensities of mankind, to persuade one or two thousand fools to dedicate their lives to his service; and if they do not get tired, and fling their prophet into a horse-pond, they will in all probability disperse as soon as he dies.

Unitarians are increasing very fast in the United States, not being kept down by charges from bishops and archdeacons, their natural enemies.

The author of the Excursion remarks upon the total absence of all games in America. No cricket, foot-ball, nor leap-frog-all seems solid and profitable.

Fanaticism of every description seems to rage and flourish in America, which has no establishment, in about the same degree which it does here under the nose of an established church; they have their prophets and prophetesses, their preaching encampments, female preachers, and every variety of noise, "One thing that I could not help remarking folly, and nonsense, like ourselves. Among with regard to the Americans in general, is the the most singular of these fanatics, are the total want of all those games and sports that Harmonites. Rapp, their founder, was a dis- obtained for our country the appellation of senter from the Lutheran church, and there-Merry England.' Although children usually fore, of course, the Lutheran clergy of Stut- transmit stories and sports from one generagard (near to which he lived) began to put Mr. tion to another, and although many of our nurRapp in white sheets, to prove him guilty of sery games and tales are supposed to have theft, parricide, treason, and all the usual crimes been imported into England in the vessels of of which men dissenting from established Hengist and Horsa, yet our brethren in the churches are so often guilty, and delicate United States seem entirely to have forgotten hints were given respecting fagots! Stutgard the childish amusements of our common anabounds with underwood and clergy; and-cestors. In America I never saw even the away went Mr. Rapp to the United States, and, with a great multitude of followers, settled about twenty-four miles from our countryman, Mr. Birkbeck. His people have here built a large town, and planted a vineyard, where they make very agreeable wine. They carry on also a very extensive system of husbandry, and are the masters of many flocks and herds. They have a distillery, brewery, tannery, make hats, shoes, cotton and woollen cloth, and

every thing necessary to the comfort of life. Every one belongs to some particular trade. But in bad weather, when there is danger of losing their crops, Rapp blows a horn, and calls them all together. Over every trade there is a head man, who receives the money and gives a receipt, signed by Rapp, to whom all the money collected is transmitted. When any of these workmen wants a hat or a coat, Rapp signs him an order for the garment, for which he goes to the store, and is fitted. They have one large store where these manufactures are deposited. This store is much resorted to by the neighbourhood, on account of the goodness and cheapness of the articles. They have built an excellent house for their founder, Rapp, as it might have been predicted they would have done. The Harmonites profess equality, community of goods, and celibacy; for the men and women (let Mr. Malthus hear this) live separately, and are not allowed the slightest intercourse. In order to keep up their numbers, they have once or

schoolboys playing at any game whatsoever.
Cricket, foot-ball, quoits, &c., appear to be
utterly unknown; and I believe that if an
American were to see grown-up men playing
at cricket, he would express as much astonish-
ment as the Italians did when some English-
Cascina at Florence.
men played at this finest of all games, in the
Indeed, that joyous
spirit which, in our country, animates not only
childhood, but also maturer age, can rarely or
never be seen among the inhabitants of the
United States."-Excursion, pp. 502, 503.

These are a few of the leading and prominent circumstances respecting America, mentioned in the various works before us: of which works we can recommend the Letters of Mr. Hudson, and the Excursion into Canada, as sensible, agreeable books, written in a very fair spirit.

America seems, on the whole, to be a country possessing vast advantages, and little inconveniences; they have a cheap government, and bad roads; they pay no tithes, and have stage-coaches without springs. They have no poor laws and no monopolies-but their inns are inconvenient, and travellers are teased with questions. They have no collections in the fine arts; but they have no lord-chancellor, and they can go to law without absolute ruin. They cannot make Latin verses, but they expend immense sums in the education of the poor. In all this the balance is prodigiously

in their favour: but then comes the great disgrace and danger of America-the existence of slavery, which, if not timously corrected, will one day entail (and ought to entail) a bloody servile war upon the Americanswhich will separate America into slave states and states disclaiming slavery, and which remains at present as the foulest blot in the moral character of that people. An high-spirited nation, who cannot endure the slightest act of foreign aggression, and who revolt at the very shadow of domestic tyranny-beat with cartwhips, and bind with chains, and murder for the merest trifles, wretched human beings who are of a more dusky colour than themselves;

and have recently admitted into their Union a new state, with the express permission of ingrafting this atrocious wickedness into their constitution! No one can admire the simple wisdom and manly firmness of the Americans more than we do, or more despise the pitiful propensity which exists among government runners to vent their small spite at their character; but on the subject of slavery, the conduct of America is, and has been, most reprehensible. It is impossible to speak of it with too much indignation and contempt; but for it, we should look forward with unqualified pleasure to such a land of freedom, and such a magnificent spectacle of human happiness.

BENTHAM ON FALLACIES.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1825.]

THERE are a vast number of absurd and mischievous fallacies, which pass readily in the world for sense and virtue, while in truth they tend only to fortify error and encourage crime. Mr. Bentham has enumerated the most conspicuous of these in the book before us.

[ocr errors]

Wisdom of Old Times.-This mischievous and' absurd fallacy springs from the grossest perversion of the meaning of words. Experience is certainly the mother of wisdom, and the old have, of course, a greater experience than the young; but the question is, who are the old? Whether it is necessary there should be a and who are the young? Of individuals living: middleman between the cultivator and pos- at the same period, the oldest has, of course, sessor, learned economists have doubted; but the greatest experience; but among generations neither gods, men, nor booksellers can doubt of men the reverse of this is true. Those who the necessity of a middleman between Mr. come first (our ancestors), are the young peoBentham and the public. Mr. Bentham is ple, and have the least experience. We have long; Mr. Bentham is occasionally involved added to their experience the experience of and obscure; Mr. Bentham invents new and many centuries; and, therefore, as far as expealarming expressions; Mr. Bentham loves di- rience goes, are wiser, and more capable of vision and subdivision-and he loves method forming an opinion than they were. The real itself, more than its consequences. Those feeling should be, not can we be so presump-. only, therefore, who know his originality, his tuous as to put our opinions in opposition to knowledge, his vigour, and his boldness, will those of our ancestors? but can such young, ig.. recur to the works themselves. The great norant, inexperienced persons as our ancestors mass of readers will not purchase improve- necessarily were, be expected to have underment at so dear a rate; but will choose rather to stood a subject as well as those who have seen become acquainted with Mr. Bentham through so much more, lived so much longer, and the medium of reviews-after that eminent enjoyed the experience of so many centuries? philosopher has been washed, trimmed, shaved, All this cant, then, about our ancestors is and forced into clean linen. One great use of merely an abuse of words, by transferring a review, indeed, is to make men wise in ten phrases true of contemporary men to succeedpages, who have no appetite for an hundred ing ages. Whereas (as we have before obpages; to condense nourishment, to work with served) of living men the oldest has, cæteris pulp and essence, and to guard the stomach paribus, the most experience; of generations,. from idle burden and unmeaning bulk. For the oldest has, cæteris paribus, the least expehalf a page, sometimes for a whole page, Mr. | rience. Our ancestors, up to the Conquest, Bentham writes with a power which few can were children in arms; chubby boys in the equal; and by selecting and omitting, an admi-time of Edward the First; striplings under rable style may be formed from the text. Using this liberty, we shall endeavour to give an account of Mr. Bentham's doctrines, for the most part in his own words. Wherever any expression is particularly happy, let it be considered to be Mr. Bentham's:-the dulness we take to ourselves.

[blocks in formation]

Elizabeth; men in the reign of Queen Anne; and we only are the white-bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have treasured up, and are pre pared to profit by, all the experience which human life can supply. We are not disputing with our ancestors the palm of talent, in which they may or may not be our superiors, but the palm of experience, in which it is utterly impossible they can be our superiors. And yet, whenever the chancellor comes forward to protect some abuse, or to oppose some plan which has the increase of human happiness for its

object, his first appeal is always to the wisdom | proportion of what little instruction the age

of our ancestors; and he himself, and many noble lords who vote with him, are, to this hour, persuaded that all alterations and amendments on their devices are an unblushing controversy between youthful temerity and mature experience and so, in truth, they are-only that much-loved magistrate mistakes the young for the old, and the old for the young-and is guilty of that very sin against experience which he attributes to the lovers of innovation.

afforded: in the House of Lords, among the laity it might even then be a question whether, without exception, their lordships were all of them able so much as to read. But even supposing them all in the fullest possession of that useful and political science being the science in question, what instruction on the subject could they meet with at that time of day?

"On no one branch of legislation was any book extant from which, with regard to the circumstances of the then present times, any useful instruction could be derived: distributive law, penal law, international law, political economy, so far from existing as sciences, had scarcely obtained a name : in all those departments, under the head of quid faciendum, a mere blank : the whole literature of the age consisted of a meager chronicle or two, containing short memorandums of the usual occurrences of war and peace, battles, sieges, executions, revels, deaths, births, processions, ceremonies, and other external events; but with scarce a speech or an

We cannot of course be supposed to maintain that our ancestors wanted wisdom, or that they were necessarily mistaken in their institutions, because their means of information were more limited than ours. But we do confidently maintain that when we find it expedient to change any thing which our ancestors have enacted, we are the experienced persons, and not they. The quantity of talent is always varying in any great nation. To say that we are more or less able than our ancestors, is an assertion that requires to be explained. All the able men of all ages, who have ever lived in England, probably possessed, if taken alto-incident that could enter into the composition gether, more intellect than all the able men now in England can boast of. But if authority must be resorted to rather than reason, the question is, What was the wisdom of that single age which enacted the law, compared with the wisdom of the age which proposes to alter it? What are the eminent men of one and the other period? If you say that our ancestors were wiser than us, mention your date and year. If the splendour of names is equal, are the circumstances the same? If the circumstances are the same, we have a superiority of experience, of which the difference between the two periods is the measure. It is necessary to insist upon this; for upon sacks of wool, and on benches forensic, sit grave men, and agricolous persons in the Commons, crying out "Ancestors, Ancestors! hodie non! Saxons, Danes, save us! Fiddlefrig, help us! Howel, Ethelwolf, protect us."-Any cover for nonsense -any veil for trash-any pretext for repelling the innovations of conscience and of duty!

"So long as they keep to vague generalitiesso long as the two objects of comparison are each of them taken in the lump-wise ancestors in one lump, ignorant and foolish mob of modern times in the other-the weakness of the fallacy may escape detection. But let them assign for the period of superior wisdom any determinate period whatsoever, not only will the groundlessness of the notion be apparent (class being compared with class in that period and the present one), but, unless the antecedent period be, comparatively speaking, a very modern one, so wide will be the disparity, and to such an amount in favour of modern times, that, in comparison of the lowest class of the people in modern times (always supposing them proficients in the art of reading, and their proficiency employed in the reading of newspapers), the very highest and best informed class of these wise ancestors will turn out to be grossly ignorant.

"Take, for example, any year in the reign of Henry the Eighth, from 1509 to 1546. At that time the House of Lords would probably have been in possession of by far the larger

of any such work as a history of the human mind-with scarce an attempt at investigation into causes, characters, or the state of the people at large. Even when at last, little by little, a scrap or two of political instruction came to be obtainable, the proportion of error and mischievous doctrine mixed up with it was so great, that whether a blank unfilled might not have been less prejudicial than a blank thus filled, may reasonably be matter of doubt.

"If we come down to the reign of James the First, we shall find that Solomon of his time eminently eloquent as well as learned, not only among crowned but among uncrowned heads, marking out for prohibition and punishment the practices of devils and witches, and without any the slightest objection on the part of the great characters of that day in their high situations, consigning men to death and torment for the misfortune of not being so well acquainted as he was with the composition of the Godhead.

"Under the name of exorcism, the Catholic liturgy contains a form of procedure for driving out devils;—even with the help of this instrument, the operation cannot be performed with the desired success, but by an operator qualified by holy orders for the working of this as well as so many other wonders. In our days and in our country the same object is attained, and beyond comparison more effectually, by so cheap an instrument as a common newspaper: before this talisman, not only devils but ghosts, vampires, witches, and all their kindred tribes, are driven out of the land, never to return again! The touch of the holy water is not so intolerable to them as the bare smell of printers' ink."-(pp. 74—77.)

Fallacy of irrevocable Laws.-A law, says Mr. Bentham, (no matter to what effect,) is proposed to a legislative assembly, who are called upon to reject it, upon the single ground, that by those who in some former period exercised the same power, a regulation was made, having for its object to preclude for ever, or to the end of an unexpired period, all succeed

ing legislators from enacting a law to any such effect as that now proposed.

Now it appears quite evident that, at every period of time, every legislature must be endowed with all those powers which the exigency of the times may require: and any attempt to infringe on this power is inadmissible and absurd. The sovereign power, at any one period, can only form a blind guess at the measures which may be necessary for any future period: but by this principle of immutable laws, the government is transferred from those who are necessarily the best judges of what they want, to others who can know little or nothing about the matter. The thirteenth century decides for the fourteenth. The fourteenth makes laws for the fifteenth. The fifteenth hermetically seals up the sixteenth, which tyrannizes over the seventeenth, which again tells the eighteenth how it is to act, under circumstances which cannot be foreseen, and how it is to conduct itself in exigencies which no human wit can anticipate.

"Men who have a century more of experience to ground their judgments on, surrender their intellect to men who had a century less experience, and who, unless that deficiency constitutes a claim, have no claim to preference. If the prior gentlemen were, in respect of intellectual qualification, ever so much superior to the subsequent generation-if it understood so much better than the subsequent generation itself the interest of that subsequent generation could it have been in an equal degree anxious to promote that interest, and consequently equally attentive to those facts with which, though in order to form a judgment it ought to have been, it is impossible that it should have been acquainted? In a word, will its love for that subsequent generation be quite so great as that same generation's love for itself?

"Not even here, after a moment's deliberate reflection, will the assertion be in the affirmative. And yet it is their prodigious anxiety for the welfare of their posterity that produces the propensity of these sages to tie up the hands of this same posterity for evermore-to act as guardians to its perpetual and incurable weakness, and take its conduct for ever out of its own hands.

"If it be right that the conduct of the 19th century should be determined not by its own judgment, but by that of the 18th, it will be equally right that the conduct of the 20th century should be determined, not by its own judgment, but by that of the 19th. And if the same principle were still pursued, what at length would be the consequence?-that in process of time the practice of legislation would be at an end. The conduct and fate of all men would be determined by those who neither knew nor cared any thing about the matter; and the aggregate body of the living would remain for ever in subjection to an inexorable tyranny, exercised as it were by the aggregate body of the dead."-(pp. 84-86.)

The despotism, as Mr. Bentham well observes, of Nero or Caligula, would be more

tolerable than an irrevocable law. The despot, through fear or favour, or in a lucid interval, might relent; but how are the Parliament, who made the Scotch Union, for example, to be awakened from that dust in which they repose-the jobber and the patriot, the speaker and the doorkeeper, the silent voters and the men of rich allusions-Cannings and cultivators, Barings and Beggars-making irrevocable laws for men who toss their remains about with spades, and use the relics of these legislators to give breadth to brocoli, and to aid the vernal eruption of asparagus?

If the law is good, it will support itself; if bad, it should not be supported by the irrevocable theory, which is never resorted to but as the veil of abuses. All living men must possess the supreme power over their own happiness at every particular period. To suppose that there is any thing which a whole nation cannot do, which they deem to be essential to their happiness, and that they cannot do it, because another generation, long ago dead and gone, said it must not be done, is mere nonsense. While you are captain of the vessel, do what you please; but the moment you quit the ship, I become as omnipotent as you. You may leave me as much advice as you please, but you cannot leave me commands; though, in fact, this is the only meaning which can be applied to what are called irrevocable laws. It appeared to the legislature for the time being to be of immense importance to make such and such a law. Great good was gained, or great evil avoided by enacting it. Pause before you alter an institution which has been deemed to be of so much importance. This is prudence and common sense; the rest is the exaggeration of fools, or the artifice of knaves, who eat up fools. What endless nonsense has been talked of our navigation laws! What wealth has been sacrificed to either before they were repealed! How impossible it appeared to Noodledom to repeal them! They were considered of the irrevocable class—a kind of law over which the dead only were omnipotent, and the living had no power. Frost, it is true, cannot be put off by act of Parliament, nor can spring be accelerated by any majority of both houses. It is, however, quite a mistake to suppose that any alteration of any of the articles of union is as much out of the jurisdiction of Parliament as these meteorological changes. In every year, and every day of that year, living men have a right to make their own laws, and manage their own affairs; to break through the tyranny of the ante-spirants-the people who breathed before them, and to do what they please for themselves. Such supreme power cannot, indeed, be well exercised by the people at large; it must be exercised therefore by the delegates, or Parliament whom the people choose; and such Parliament, disregarding the superstitious reverence for irrevocable laws, can have no other criterion of wrong and right than that of public utility.

When a law is considered as immutable, and the immutable law happens at the same time to be too foolish and mischievous to be endured, instead of being repealed, it is clan

destinely evaded, or openly violated; and thus | Queen Anne's time upon the government of the authority of all law is weakened. 1825-a certain art of potting and preserving Where a nation has been ancestorially a kingdom, in one shape, attitude and flavourbound by foolish and improvident treaties, and in this way it is that an institution appears ample notice must be given of their termina- like old Ladies' Sweetmeats and made Wines tion. Where the state has made ill-advised | —Apricot Jam 1822-Currant Wine 1819grants, or rash bargains with individuals, it is necessary to grant proper compensation. The most difficult case, certainly, is that of the union of nations, where a smaller number of the weaker nation is admitted into the larger senate of the greater nation, and will be overpowered if the question comes to a vote; but the lesser nation must run this risk: it is not probable that any violation of articles will take place, till they are absolutely called for by extreme necessity. But let the danger be what it may, no danger is so great, no supposition so foolish, as to consider any human law as irrevocable. The shifting attitude of human affairs would often render such a condition an intolerable evil to all parties. The absurd jealousy of our countrymen at the union secured heritable jurisdiction to the owners; nine-and-thirty years afterwards they were abolished, in the very teeth of the act of union, and to the evident promotion of the public good.

Court of Chancery 1427-Penal Laws against Catholics 1676. The difference is, that the ancient woman is a better judge of mouldy commodities than the illiberal part of his majesty's ministers. The potting lady goes sniffing about and admitting light and air to prevent the progress of decay; while to him of the woolsack, all seems doubly dear in proportion as it is antiquated, worthless, and unusable. It ought not to be in the power of the sovereign to tie up his own hands, much less the hands of his successors. If the sovereign is to oppose his own opinion to that of the two other branches of the legislature, and himself to decide what he considers to be for the benefit of the Protestant church, and what not, a king who has spent his whole life in the frivolous occupation of a court, may, by perversion of understanding, conceive measures most salutary to the church to be most pernicious; and persevering obstinately in his own error, may frustrate the wisdom of his Parliament, and perpetuate the most inconceivable folly! If Henry VIII. had argued in this manner, we should have had no reformation. If George III. had always argued in this manner, the Catholic code would never have been relaxed. And thus, a king, however incapable of forming an opinion upon serious subjects, has nothing to do but to pronounce the word conscience, and the whole power of the country is at his feet.

Can there be greater absurdity than to say that a man is acting contrary to his conscience who surrenders his opinion, upon any subject, to those who must understand the subject better than himself? I think my ward has a claim to the estate; but the best lawyers tell me he has none. I think my son capable of undergoing the fatigues of a military life; but the best physicians say he is much too weak. My Parliament say this measure will do the church no harm; but I think it very pernicious to the church. Am I acting contrary to my conscience because I apply much higher intellectual powers than my own to the investigation and protection of these high interests?

Continuity of a Law by Oath.-The sovereign of England at his coronation takes an oath to maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the gospel, and the Protestant religion as established by law, and to preserve to the bishops and clergy of this realm the rights and privileges which by law appertain to them, and to preserve inviolate the doctrine, discipline, worship, and government of the church. It has been suggested that by this oath the king stands precluded from granting those indulgences to the Irish Catholics, which are included in the bill for their emancipation. The true meaning of these provisions is of course to be decided, if doubtful, by the same legislative authority which enacted them. But a different notion, it seems, is now afloat. The king for the time being (we are putting an imaginary case) thinks, as an individual, that he is not maintaining the doctrine, discipline, and rights of the Church of England, if he grants any extension of civil rights to those who are not members of that church; that he is violating his oath by so doing. This oath, then, according to this reasoning, is the great palladium of the church. As long as it "According to the form in which it is conremains inviolate the church is safe. How, ceived, any such engagement is in effect either then, can any monarch who has taken it ever a check or a license-a license under the apconsent to repeal it? How can he, consistent-pearance of a check, and for that very reason ly with his oath for the preservation of the privileges of the church, contribute his part to throw down so strong a bulwark as he deems this oath to be? The oath, then, cannot be altered. It must remain under all circumstances of society the same. The king, who has taken it, is bound to continue it, and to refuse his sanction to any bill for its future alteration; because it prevents him, and, he must needs think, will prevent others from granting dangerous immunities to the enemies of the church.

Here, then, is an irrevocable law-a piece of absurd tyranny exercised by the rulers of

but the more efficiently operative.

"Chains to the man in power? Yes:-but only such as he figures with on the stage: to the spectators as imposing, to himself as light as possible. Modelled by the wearer to suit his own purposes, they serve to rattle, but not to restrain.

"Suppose a king of Great Britain and Ireland to have expressed his fixed determination, in the event of any proposed law being tendered to him for his assent, to refuse such assent, and this not on the persuasion that the law would not be 'for the utility of the subjects,' but that by his coronation oath he stands

« PreviousContinue »