spectable, though with lamentable incapacity to understand the signs of the times, or to distinguish between narrowminded scruples and high-handed principle, he tried to play his part, and defended the decaying fortunes of kingly sanctity.

76. Alternately opposed to him and truckling to his wishes was the purely aristocratic party, upon which had descended the mantle of the revolutionary prophets of 1688. No more selfish and unprincipled clique ever clung to power in a great country. Its leaders had, indeed, a dumb sense of patriotism, regarding the honour of England as more or less involved in the maintenance of their own privileges. But factions, it is said, are like serpents, whose heads are propelled by their tails. And if the Duke of Bedford was the official representative of a great aristocratic connection, its animating spirit was best represented by such a man as Rigby, the embodiment of petty personal intrigue, drawn by a certain blind instinct to the side of oppression, but yet too profoundly cynical to be actively tyrannical.

77. Opposed to these two parties, though at times cooperating, were two sections of the Whigs, who had each a genuine political belief. Each of them possessed one leader of surpassing eminence, though the system seemed to be ingeniously contrived to neutralise the influence of great abilities. The Rockingham party seems to have comprised many men of amiable character, of personal purity, and of high intentions. But they were too weak, or too little skilful in the arts of intrigue, to impress a governing impulse upon the country. It never seems to have occurred to them more than to other aristocratic factions, that the claims of genius were for a moment to be compared to the claims of family. The English nation, which had a Burke and a Chatham amongst its statesmen, had, therefore, to be governed by a North, in humble submission to the gross stupidity of a George III. The most intelligent party thought that it had done ample homage to the man whose genius is their one great title to the respect of posterity, when it gave the chief office in the State to his pupil, Fox, and flung to him the crumbs of subordinate office. Burke, however, accepted his position without a murmur. There are, he says, 'two only securities for the

importance of the people; power arising from popularity, and power arising from connection.' The last source of power was represented by the Whig families, and Burke took a humble place in the ranks of one of the aristocratic 'rings' which then carried on the government.

78. 'Power arising from popularity' was, of course, represented by Chatham, the head of the last great party in the State. By the energy of his haughty will he stands out above all contemporary politicians. Scorning the wretched intrigues which passed for statesmanship amongst his rivals, he placed himself for a brief period at the head of the nation. For a moment England was ruled by its natural king, and had its reward in a blaze of military glory. During his later years, disease, the distrust of his rivals, or his own arrogance, kept Chatham for the most part in melancholy retirement. For another brief period he tried, but failed grievously, to weld together the jarring elements of party into a powerful administration. The popular will could only impose a Chatham upon the king and the aristocracy at a time of fierce excitement. In calmer periods, and when his powers were failing, the politicians were too strong for him. Chatham, as the representative of the popular favour, and by the natural turn of a vehement mind, intuitive rather discursive, and more eloquent than logical, was inclined towards the absolute dogmas of the revolutionary school. He was not, indeed, a believer in the rights of man in a revolutionary sense; for his ardent patriotism often took the form of almost melodramatic loyalty. But he judged the issues of the time by principles which easily assimilated with those of the revolutionists. Wilkes and the patriots of the City revered him as their natural head, though a head generally wrapped in clouds and darkness. Camden, his favourite lawyer, was the great judicial defender of popular rights. Shelburne, his lieutenant, was the patron of Priestley and Price; and it is not difficult to suppose that, under other circumstances, Chatham might have developed into a Mirabeau.

79. The logical division of sentiments which, as I have said, corresponds, though very roughly, to these party divisions may be briefly defined. George III., as the last representa

1 Burke's Works, ii. 239.

tive of some shadow of divine right, found his Abdiel in the last of the Tories, Johnson. The Bedfords and their like would probably have explained their constitutional theories, so far as they had any theories, in the language of the good 'balance of power' doctrinaires, Blackstone and Delolme. Burke was at once the ablest practical exponent, and incomparably the greatest theoretical exponent, of the doctrines of the more intelligent Whigs. The thinkers who sanctioned those more popular impulses of which Chatham was the great representative must be divided into two classes. Some of them belonged to the purely English or utilitarian school, of which Bentham became in later years the accepted prophet. Others were more influenced by the French theorists, and may be regarded as continuing more or less directly the impulse of Rousseau. I propose to consider the various phases of opinion in accordance with the scheme thus indicated.

VII. THE TORIES.

So. The best interpreter of the lingering remnant of the divine right theories was silence. A mute but dogged resistance to all change was the natural policy of men in whom the spirit of absolute rule survived after its logical groundwork had dropped away. The sentiment, indeed, upon which George III. relied was still vigorous; the selfish factiousness of the aristocracy gave strength to the ruler who at least professed to represent the national will; a strength which afterwards received a great accession from the revolutionary panic. But it was dangerous to look too closely into the reason of the case. The monarchy obviously rested on a parliamentary title, and claims like those of the Stuarts were too gross an anachronism. The only doctrine applicable to the case was that of which Johnson was the natural exponent. Johnson was little fitted for abstract speculation. He was an embodiment of sturdy prejudice, or, in other words, of staunch beliefs which had survived their logical justification. The depth and massiveness of his character redeem his opinions from contempt. His loyalty was absolutely free from the taint of servility. The man who was so profoundly touched by the condescension of his sovereign in once talking to him

for half-an-hour was a moral giant beside the courtiers who enjoyed a backstairs intimacy. And the pamphlets by which Johnson showed his gratitude for his pension are, at least, sincere utterances of a thoroughly masculine nature. Their philosophy, indeed, if philosophy it must be called, is simple in the extreme. 'In sovereignty,' he says, 'there are no gradations. . . . There must in every society be some power or other from which there is no appeal, which admits no restrictions, which pervades the whole mass of the community, regulates and adjusts all subordination, enacts laws or repeals them, creates or annuls judicatures, extends or contracts privileges, exempts itself from question or control, and bounded only by physical necessity.'1 That is Johnson's whole political theory. Subordination, as he constantly asserts, is an essential condition of human happiness. The appeal to the rights of man was a piece of sickly sentimentalism. Rousseau ought to be transported. All Whiggism is detestable, because it implies simply the negation of all principles. The first Whig was the devil.'

81. In these and other more or less humorous utterances, Johnson gives his genuine creed. He felt rather than inferred on speculative grounds that no solid basis for government could be made out of social contracts and abstract rights, and all the flimsy apparatus of constitutional theory upon which the Whigs of his day habitually relied. The doctrines of Rousseau tended to sap the foundations of all order; and the best reply was to fasten a determined grasp upon whatever order remained amongst men, without asking awkward questions. The principle, indeed, which implicitly denied the responsibility of governors, because the advocates of responsibility were opposed to all government, might in practice lead to the defence of gross tyranny. But Johnson's views of life made him insensible to all such arguments. The flimsy patriotism of the day put forward pretexts contemptible to his strong common sense. In the civil wars we were fighting for a king and a religion; under Queen Anne there was an effort to upset a government; but the point over which noisy dema

'Johnson's Works, viii. 168, Taxation no Tyranny.' 2 Boswell, Feb. 15, 1766.

4 Ib. April 28, 1778.

Ib. July 6, 1763.

gogues were now fighting was, whether Middlesex should or should not be represented by a criminal from gaol.' The popular cry was the work of reckless demagogues upon an ignorant mass. Petitions meant nothing. One man signs because he hates the Papists; one because it will vex the parson; another because he owes his landlord nothing; one because he is rich; another because he is poor; one to show that he is not afraid; and another to show that he can write.' 2 The Americans, indeed, alleged some grievances; but what they really meant was, that they would only pay what taxes they pleased. They believed in the doctrine of the fanciful Montesquieu,' that 'in a free State, every man being a free agent, ought to be concerned in his own government.' That doctrine meant simply anarchy. The 'consent' of which theorists talked was anarchy passive.' Every man is 'born consenting to some system of government.' Anything more than this is the unmeaning clamour of the pedants of policy, the delirious dream of republican fanaticism.' If Americans still chose to complain, they must be satisfied with the answer that they had made their bargain and must stick to it. Their ancestors had chosen, for sufficient consideration, to leave a country where they could have a share in the government, and must take the consequences. If they complain that a tax is unprecedented, 'it may be easily answered that the longer they have been spared the better they can pay.' Meanwhile, American and English patriots alike might console themselves with the thought which Johnson expressed in his familiar addition to Goldsmith's 'Traveller' :

4

How small, of all that human hearts endure,

That part which kings or laws can cause or cure!

Though boroughs have changed hands, the general state of the nation has not suffered. The sun has risen, and the corn has grown, and whatever talk has been of the danger of property, yet he that ploughed the field has generally reaped it, and he that built a house was master of the door; the vexation excited by injustice suffered, or supposed to be

'Johnson's Works, viii. 94, The False Alarm.'

Ib. viii. 174. • Ib. viii. 189.