of things each man has a right, if he pleases, to
remain an individual. Any number of individuals,
who can agree upon it, have an undoubted right
to form themselves into a state apart, and wholly
p 3 independent.
APPEAL FROM THE NEW
independent. If any of these is forced into the
fellowship of another, this is conquest and not com-
pact. On every principle, which supposes society
to be in virtue of a free covenant, this compulsive
incorporation must be null and void.
As a people can have no right to a corporate ca-
pacity without universal consent, so neither have
they a right to hold exclusively any lands in the
name and title of a corporation. On the scheme
of the present rulers in our neighbouring country,
regenerated as they are, they have no more right
to the territory called France than I have. I have
a right to pitch my tent in any unoccupied place I
can find for it ; and I may apply to my own main-
tenance any part of their unoccupied soil. I may
purchase the house or vineyard of any individual
proprietor who refuses his consent (and most pro-
prietors have, as far as they dared, refused it) to
the new incorporation. I stand in his independent
place. Who are these insolent men calling them-
selves the French nation, that would monopolize
this fair domain of nature ? Is it because they speak
a certain jargon ? Is it their mode of chattering, to
me unintelligible, that forms their title to my land ?
Who are they who claim by prescription and de-
scent from certain gangs of banditti called Franks,
and Burgundians, and Visigoths, of whom I may
have never heard, and ninety-nine out of an hun-
dred of themselves certainly never have heard ;
whilst
TO THE OLD WHIGS. 215
whilst at the very time they tell me, that prescrip-
tion and long possession form no title to property ?
Who are they that presume to assert that the land
which I purchased of the individual, a natural per-
son, and not a fiction of state, belongs to them,
who in the very capacity in which they make their
claim can exist only as an imaginary being, and in
virtue of the very prescription which they reject
and disown ? This mode of arguing might be push-
ed into all the detail, so as to leave no sort of doubt,
that on their principles, and on the sort of footing
on which they have thought proper to place them-
selves, the crowd of men, on the one side of the
channel, who have the impudence to call them-
selves a people, can never be the lawful, exclusive
possessors of the soil. By what they call reasoning
without prejudice, they leave not one stone upon
another in the fabrick of human society. They
subvert all the authority which they hold, as well
as all that which they have destroyed.
As in the abstract, it is perfectly clear, that, out
of a state of civil society, majority and minority
are relations which can have no existence ; and that,
in civil seciety, its own specifick conventions in
each corporation determine what it is that consti-
tutes the people, so as to make their act the signi-
fication of the general will : to come to particu-
lars, it is equally clear, that neither in France nor
in England has the original, or any subsequent
p 4. compact
216 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
compact of the state, expressed or implied, consti-
tuted a majority of men, told by the head, to be
the acting people of their several communities. And
I see as little of policy or utility, as there is of right,
in laying down a principle that a majority of men
told by the head are to be considered as the people,
and that as such their will is to be law. What po-
licy can there be found in arrangements made in
defiance of every political principle ? To enable
men to act with the weight and character of a
people, and to answer the ends for which they are
incorporated into that capacity, we must suppose
them (by means immediate or consequential) to be
in that state of habitual social discipline, in which
the wiser, the more expert, and the more opulent
conduct, and by conducting enlighten and protect
the weaker, the less knowing, and the less provid-
ed with the goods of fortune. When the multi-
tude are not under this discipline, they can scarcely
be said to be in civil society. Give once a certain
constitution of things, which produces a variety of
conditions and circumstances in a state, and there
is in nature and reason a principle which, for their
own benefit, postpones, not the interest but the
judgment, of those who are numero plures, to those
who are virtute et honore majores. Numbers in a
state (supposing, which is not the case in France,
that a state does exist) are always of consideration
but they are not the whole consideration. It is
in
TO THE OLD WHIGS. 217
in things more serious than a play, that it may be
truly said satis est equitem mihi plaudere.
A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest
in the state, or separable from it. It is an essen-
tial integrant part of any large body rightly con-
stituted. It is formed out of a class of legitimate
presumptions, which, taken as generalities, must be
admitted for actual truths. To be bred in a place
of estimation ; To see nothing low and sordid from
one's infancy; To be taught to respect one's self;
To be habituated to the censorial inspection of the
publick eye ; To look early to publick opinion ;
To stand upon such elevated ground as to be en-
abled to take a large view of the wide-spread and
infinitely diversified combinations of men and af-
fairs in a large society ; To have leisure to read, to
reflect, to converse ; To be enabled to draw the
court and attention of the wise and learned where-
ever they are to be found ; To be habituated in
armies to command and to obey ; To be taught to
despise danger in the pursuit of honour and duty ;
To be formed to the greatest degree of vigilance,
foresight, and circumspection, in a state of things
in which no fault is committed with impunity,
and the slightest mistakes draw on the most ruin-
ous consequences To be led to a guarded and
regulated conduct, from a sense that you are
considered as an instructor of your fellow-citizens
in their highest concerns, and that you act as a
reconciler
218 APPEAL FllOM THE NEW
reconciler between God and man To be em-
ployed as an administrator of law and justice, and
to be thereby amongst the first benefactors to
mankind To be a professor of high science, or
of liberal and ingenuous art To be amongst rich
traders, who from their success are presumed to
have sharp and vigorous understandings, and to
possess the virtues of diligence, order, constancy,
and regularity, and to have cultivated an habitual
regard to commutative justice These are the
circumstances of men, that form what I should
call a natural aristocracy, without which there is
no nation.
The state of civil society, which necessarily
generates this aristocracy, is a state of nature ; and
much more truly so than a savage and incoherent
mode of life. For man is by nature reasonable ;
and he is never perfectly in his natural state, but
when he is placed where reason may be best
cultivated, and most predominates. Art is man's
nature. We are as much, at least, in a state of
nature in formed manhood, as in immature and
helpless infancy. Men, qualified in the manner
I have just described, form in nature, as she
operates in the common modification of society,
the leading, guiding, and governing part. It is
the soul to the body, without which the man does
not exist. To give therefore no more importance,
in the social order, to such descriptions of men,
than
TO THE OLD WHIGS.
than that of so many units, is a horrible usurpa-
tion.
When great multitudes act together, under that
discipline of nature, I recognise the PEOPLE. I
acknowledge something that perhaps equals, and
ought always to guide the sovereignty of conven-
tion. In all things the voice of this grand chorus
of national harmony ought to have a mighty and
decisive influence. But when you disturb this
harmony ; when you break up this beautiful or-
der, this array of truth and nature, asr well as of
habit and prejudice ; when you separate the com-
mon sort of men from their proper chieftains so
as to form them into an adverse army, I no
longer know that venerable object called the people
in such a disbanded race of deserters and vaga-
bonds. For a while they may be terrible indeed ;
but in such a manner as wild beasts are terrible.
The mind owes to them no sort of submission.
They are, as they have always been reputed,
rebels. They may lawfully be fought with, and
brought under, whenever an advantage offers.
Those who attempt by outrage and violence to
deprive men of any advantage which they hold
under the laws, and to destroy the natural order
of life, proclaim war against them.
We have read in history of that furious insur-
rection of the common people in France called the
Jacquerie; for this is not the first time that the
people
220 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
people have been enlightened into treason, mur-
der, and rapine. Its object was to extirpate the
gentry. The Captal de Bucke, a famous soldier
of those days, dishonoured the name of a gentle-
man and of a man by taking, for their cruelties, a
cruel vengeance on these deluded wretches : it
was, however, his right and his duty to make war
upon them, and afterwards, in moderation, to
bring them to punishment for their rebellion ;
though in the sense of the French Revolution, and
of some of our clubs, they were the people ; and
were truly so, if you will call by that appellation
any majority of men told by the head.
At a time not very remote from the same period
(for these humours never have affected one of
the nations without some influence on the other)
happened several risings of the lower commons
in England. These insurgents were certainly the
majority of the inhabitants of the counties in
which they resided ; and Cade, Ket, and Straw,
at the head of their national guards, and fomented
by certain traitors of high rank, did no more than
exert, according to the doctrines of our and the
Parisian societies, the sovereign power inherent in
the majority.
We call the time of those events a dark age.
Indeed we are too indulgent to our own profici-
ency. The Abbe" John Ball understood the rights
of man as well as the Abbe" Gregoire. That
reverend
TO THE OLD WHIGS. 221
reverend patriarch of sedition, and prototype of
our modern preachers, was of opinion with the Na-
tional Assembly, that all the evils which have fallen
upon men had been caused by an ignorance of
their " having been born and continued equal as
" to their rights." Had the populace been able
to repeat that profound maxim all would have
gone perfectly well with them. No tyranny, no
vexation, no oppression, no care, no sorrow, could
have existed in the world. This would have cured
them like a charm for the tooth-ach. But the
lowest wretches, in their most ignorant state, were
able at all times to talk such stuff ; and yet at all
times have they suffered many evils and many op-
pressions, both before and since the republication
by the National Assembly of this spell of healing
potency and virtue. The enlightened Dr. Ball,
when he wished to rekindle the lights and fires of
his audience on this point, chose for the text the
following couplet :
When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gjentleman ?
Of this sapient maxim, however, I do not give
him for the inventor. It seems to have been
handed down by tradition, and had certainly be-
come proverbial ; but whether then composed, or
only applied, thus much must be admitted, that
in learning, sense, energy, and comprehensiveness,
it
APPEAL FROM THE NEW
it is fully equal to all the modern dissertations on
the equality of mankind ; and it has one advan-
tage over them, that it is in rhyme*.
There
* It is no small loss to the world, that the whole of this
enlightened and philosophick sermon, preached to two hun-
dred thousand national guards assembled at Blackheath (a
number probably equal to the sublime and majestic Federa-
tion of the 14th of July, 1790, in the Champs de Mars) is not
preserved. A short abstract is, however, to be found in
Walsingham. I have added it here for the edification of the
modern whigs, who may possibly except this precious little
fragment from their general contempt of ancient learning.
Ut sud doctrini plures inficeret ad le Blackheth (ubi du-
centa millia hominum communium fuere simul congregata)
hujuscemodi sermonem est exorsus.
When Adam dalfe, and Eve span,
Who was than a gentleman ?
Continuansque sermonem inceptum nitebatur, per verba pro-
verbii quod pro themate sumpserat, introducere & probare,
ab initio omnes pares creatos a naturd, servitutem per injustam
oppressionem nequam hominum introductam contra Dei vo-
luntatem, quia si Deo placuisset servos creasse, utique in
principio mundi constituisset, quis servus, quisve dominus
futurus fuisset. Considerarent igitur jam tempus a Deo da-
tum eis, in quo (deposito servitutis jugo diutius) possent, si
Tellent, libertate diu concupitd gaudere. Quapropter mo-
nuit ut essent viri cordati, & amore boni patris familias exco-
lentis agrum suum & extirpantis ac resecantis noxia gramina
quac fruges solent opprimere, & ipsi in present! facere festi-
narent ; primo majores regni dominos occidendo ; deinde juri-
dicos, justioiarios fy juratores patria perimendo; postremo
quoscunque scirent in posterum communitati nocivos tol-
lerent
TO THE OLD WHIGS. 223
There is no doubt, but that this great teacher
of the rights of man decorated his discourse on
this valuable text, with lemmas, theorems, scholia,
corollaries,
lerent de terra sua : sic demum & pacem sibimet parerent &
securitatem in futurum, si sublatis majoribus esset inter eos
cequa libertas, eadem nobilitas, par dignatas, similisque potestas.
Here is displayed at once the whole of the grand arcanum
pretended to be found out by the National Assembly, for se-
curing future happiness, peace, and tranquillity. There seems
however to be some doubt whether this venerable protomartyr
of philosophy was inclined to carry his own declaration of the
rights of men more rigidly into practice than the National
Assembly themselves. He was, like them, only preaching
licentiousness to the populace to obtain power for himself
if we may believe what is subjoined by the historian.
Curaque haec & plura alia deliramenta [think of this old fool's
calling all the wise maxims of the French academy deliramenta]
praedicasset, commune vulgus cum tanto favore prosequitur,ut
acclamarent eum archiepiscopum futurum, & regni concellarium.
Whether he would have taken these situations under these
names, or would have changed the whole nomenclature of the
state and church, to be understood in the sense of the revolu-
tion, is not so certain. It is probable that he would have
changed the names and kept the substance of power.
We find too, that they had in those days their society for
constitutional information, of which the reverend John Ball
was a conspicuous member, sometimes under his own name,
sometimes under the feigned name of John Schep. Besides
him it consisted (as Knyghton tell us) of persons who went by
the real or fictitious names of Jack Mylner, Tom Baker, Jack
Straw, Jack Trewman, Jack Carter, and probably of many
more. Some of the choicest flowers of the publications,
charitably
224> APPEAL FROM THE NEW
corollaries, and all the apparatus of science, which
was furnished in as great plenty and perfection
out of the dogmatick, and polemick magazines,
the
charitably written and circulated by them gratis, are upon re-
cord in Walsingham and Knyghton : and I am inclined to pre-
fer the pithy and sententious brevity of these bulletins of ancient
rebellion, before the loose and confused prolixity of the modern
advertisements of constitutional information. They contain
more good morality and less bad politicks ; they had much
more foundation in real oppression ; and they have the re-
commendation of being much better adapted to the capacities
of those for whose instruction they were intended. What-
ever laudable pains the teachers of the present day appear to
take, I cannot compliment them so far as to allow, that they
have succeeded in writing down to the level of their pupils,
the members of the sovereign, with half the ability of Jack
Carter and the reverend John Ball. That my readers may
judge for themselves, I shall give them one or two specimens.
The first is an address from the reverend John Ball, under
his nom de guerre of John Schep. I know not against what
particular " guyle in borough" the writer means to caution
the people ; it may have been only a general cry against
" rotten boroughs," which it was thought convenient then as
now to make the first pretext, and place at the head of the
list of grievances.
JOHN SCHEP.
John Schep sometime Seint Mary Priest of Yorke, and now
of Colchester,greeteth well John Namelesse,& John the Miller,
& John Carter, and biddeth th&m that they beware of guyle in bo-
rough, and stand together in God's name ; and biddeth Piers
Ploweman goe to his werk, and chastise well Hob the robber
[probably
TO THE OLD WHIGS.
the old horse-armoury of the schoolmen, among
whom the Rev. Dr. Ball was bred, as they can be
supplied from the new arsenal at Hackney. It
was,
[probably the king] and take with you John Trewman, and
all his fellows and no moe.
John the Miller hath yground smal, small, small ;
The King's Sonne of Heven shall pay for all.
Beware or ye be woe,
Know your frende fro your foe.
Have enough and say hoe :
And do wel and better, and flee sinne,
And seeke peace and holde you therein ;
& so biddeth John Trewman, & all his fellowes.
The reader has perceived, from the last lines of this curious
state paper, how well the National Assembly has copied its
union of the profession of universal peace, with the practice
of murder and confusion, and the blast of the trumpet of se-
dition in all nations. He will, in the following constitutional
paper, observe how well, in their enigmatical style, like the
Assembly and their abettors, the old philosophers, proscribe
all hereditary distinction, and bestow it only on virtue and
wisdom, according to their estimation of both. Yet these
people are supposed never to have heard of " the rights of
man !"
JACK MYLNER.
Jakke Mylner asketh help to turn his mylne aright.
He hath grounden smal, smal,
The King's Sone of Heven he shall pay for alle.
VOL. VI. Q Lokc
228 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
the coverings and trappings of fortune to recom-
mend them to the multitude c Nothing can be
more loathsome in their naked nature.
Aberrations like these, whether ancient or mo-
dern, unsuccessful or prosperous, are things of
passage. They furnish no argument for supposing
a multitude told by the head to be the people. Such
a multitude can have no sort of title to alter the
seat of power in the society, in which it ever
ought to be the obedient, and not the ruling or
presiding part. What power may belong to the
whole mass, in which mass, the natural aristocracy ',
or what by convention is appointed to represent
and strengthen it, acts in its proper place, with its
proper weight, and without being subjected to
violence, is a deeper question. But in that case,
and with that concurrence, I should have much
doubt whether any rash or desperate changes in
the state, such as we have seen in France, could
ever be effected.
I have said, that in all political questions the
consequences of any assumed rights are of great
moment in deciding upon their validity. In this
point of view let us a little scrutinize the effects
of a right in the mere majority of the inhabitants
of any country of superseding and altering their
government at pleasure.
The sum total of every people is composed of
its units. Every individual must have a right to
originate
TO THE OLD WHIGS. 229
originate what afterwards is to become the act of
the majority. Whatever he may lawfully origi-
nate he may lawfully endeavour to accomplish.
He has a right therefore in his own particular to
break the ties and engagements which bind him
to the country in which he lives ; and he has a
right to make as many converts to his opinions,
and to obtain as many associates in his designs, as
he can procure : for how can you know the dis-
positions of the majority to destroy their govern-
ment, but by tampering with some part of the
body? You must begin by a secret conspiracy,
that you may end with a national confederation.
The mere pleasure of the beginning must be the
sole guide; since the mere pleasure of others must
be the sole ultimate sanction, as well as the sole
actuating principle in every part of the progress.
Thus, arbitrary will (the last corruption of ruling
power) step by step, poisons the heart of every
citizen. If the undertaker fails, he has the mis-
fortune of a rebel, but not the guilt. By such
doctrines, all love to our country, all 'pious vene-
ration and attachment to its laws and customs,
are obliterated from our minds ; and nothing can
result from this opinion, when grown into a
principle, and animated by discontent, ambition,
or enthusiasm, but a series of conspiracies and
seditions, sometimes ruinous to their authors,
always noxious to the state. No sense of duty can
Q 3 prevent
230 APPEAL FllOM THE NEW
prevent any man from being a leader or a fol-
lower in such enterprises. Nothing restrains the
tempter; nothing guards the tempted, Nor is
the new state, fabricated by such arts, safer than
the old. What can prevent the mere will of any
person, who hopes to unite the wills of others to
his own, from an attempt wholly to overturn it?
It wants nothing but a disposition to trouble the
established order, to give a title to the enter-
prise.
When you combine this principle of the right
to change a fixed and tolerable constitution of
things at pleasure, with the theory and practice
of the French Assembly, the political, civil, and
moral irregularity are if possible aggravated. The
Assembly have found another road, and a far more
commodious, to the destruction of an old govern-
ment, and the legitimate formation of a new one,
than through the previous will of the majority of
what they call the people. Get, say they, the
possession of power by any means you can into
your hands ; and then a subsequent consent (what
they call an address of adhesion') makes your au-
thority as much the act of the people as if they
had conferred upon you originally that kind and
degree of power, which, without their permission,
you had seized upon. This is to give a direct
sanction to fraud, hypocrisy, perjury, and the
breach of the most sacred trusts that can exist
between
TO THE OLD WHIGS.
between man and man. What can sound with such
horrid discordance in the moral ear, as this posi-
tion, That a delegate with limited powers may
break his sworn engagements to his constituent,
assume an authority, never committed to him, to
alter all things at his pleasure ; and then, if he
can persuade a large number of men to flatter him
in the power he has usurped, that he is absolved
in his own conscience, and ought to stand ac-
quitted in the eyes of mankind ? On this scheme
the maker of the experiment must begin with a
determined perjury. That point is certain. He
must take his chance for the expiatory addresses.
This is to make the success of villainy the standard
of innocence.
Without drawing on, therefore, very shocking
consequences, neither by previous consent, nor by
subsequent ratification of a mere reckoned majority,
can any set of men attempt to dissolve the state at
their pleasure. To apply this to our present sub-
ject. When the several orders, in their several
bailages, had met in the year 1789, such of them,
I mean, as had met peaceably and constitutionally,
to choose and to instruct their representatives, so
organized and so acting, (because they were or-
ganized and were acting according to the conven-
tions which made them a people) they were the
people of France. They had a legal and a natural
capacity to be considered as that people. But
Q 4 observe,
230 APPEAL FROM THE NEW
prevent any man from being a leader or a fol-
lower in such enterprises. Nothing restrains the
tempter; nothing guards the tempted* Nor is
the new state, fabricated by such arts, safer than
the old. What can prevent the mere will of any
person, who hopes to unite the wills of others to