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Bolingbroke, intended by the writer as a reductio ad absurdum of the anarchical principles-so Burke considered them to be— in which the friends of Bolingbroke anticipated the revolutionary school. It is, indeed, very remarkable that Burke's first efforts were directed against the very thinkers who were the objects of his dying protest; and that he detected the dangerous tendencies of doctrines which were to shake the whole world in his old age, whilst they had yet found no distinct utterance, and he was but a youthful adventurer. The argument put into the mouth of Bolingbroke is substantially that all government is bad, because resting upon arbitrary convention. War, tyranny, and corruption are caused by our revolt from the 'state of nature.' Politics, like religious dogma, should be constructed by pure a priori reasoning, instead of conforming to the teaching of experience. Some bigots and enthusiasts cherish the 'absurd and blasphemous notion that popular prejudices should not be disturbed for fear of the consequences. If, after showing all the evils due to those prejudices, you still 'plead the necessity of political institutions, weak and wicked as they are, I can argue with equal, perhaps superior, force concerning the necessity of artificial religion.' If we would have perfect liberty, we must renounce the visions of theologians and the cunning schemes of politicians. The argument-remarkable for the skill with which the reasoning of an opponent is simulated, whilst his principles are covertly attacked 3-may be easily inverted, so as to give Burke's true meaning. He wishes to expose the mischievous and anarchical tendencies of abstract metaphysical speculation. He desires to point out that, whatever be the evils inherent in government, any government is better than none; and that the substitution of abstract speculation for experimental observation can only lead to anarchy. The excessive value which Burke attached to prejudice as prejudice, and the rightful value which he attached to methods resting on experience, are as manifest as in his later writings. The Vindication' contains the germ of the more fully de2 Ib. i. 79, ib.

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Burke, i. 13, 'Natural Society.'

It is a curious illustration of the fidelity with which Burke represents the revolutionary arguments that Godwin, in his 'Political Justice,' declared that Burke has proved in good earnest what he professes to prove ironically ('Political Justice,' i. 13, note).

veloped doctrine of the 'Reflections,' or of the 'Letters on a Regicide Peace.' The principles thus early grasped guided him throughout his life, and are the backbone of his speculations on English, American, Indian, and French politics.

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98. His aversion to abstract reasoning upon politics colours every page of his theoretical discussions. He is never tired of dilating upon this text. 'I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions,' he says, when speaking of the colonial troubles; I hate the very sound of them.' The discussion of abstract rights is 'the great Serbonian bog, 'twixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, where armies whole have sunk.' 'One sure symptom of an ill-conducted State,' he says, in the same connection, 'is the propensity of the people to resort to' theories. No constitution can be called good or bad in itself. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.' Even in the heat of his onslaught upon French revolutionists, he admits that there may be situations in which the purely democratic form will become necessary.' Therefore, any absolute system must be erroneous and mischievous. The men who drew the Petition of Right under Charles I. were as familiar with theories about the right of man as Price and Sieyes; but they preferred to appeal to hereditary obligation. The doctrine that sovereignty originated from the people is a mere empty speculation, when in its proper sphere, and, therefore, asserts 'a position not denied, nor worth denying, or assenting to;' and the whole social contract theory is 'at best a confusion of judicial with civil principles.'7

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99. When the metaphysical basis of political rights is thus summarily cleared away, the question occurs, what other foundation is to be laid? Passages may be found in Burke's writings where language is used superficially, resembling that of his antagonists. He speaks of the 'natural rights of mankind' as 'sacred things,' and even says that all power is 'a derogation from the natural equality of mankind at large,'

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and, therefore, to be used for their benefit.

Elsewhere men have a natural right to the fruits of their industry, though not to a share of political power. Or, again, 'equity' is ranked with 'utility,' as the sole foundations of law, and equity 'grows out of the great rule of equality, which is founded upon our common nature, and which Philo, with propriety and beauty, calls the mother of justice.' The truth of Christianity itself, he infers, is 'not so clear as this proposition, that all men, at least the majority of men in the society, ought to enjoy the common advantages of it.' 3 These transient deviations into the quasi-metaphysical language, when more closely examined, are easily intelligible. The natural equality of mankind, in Burke's mouth, is simply an expression of the axiom which must necessarily lie at the base of all utilitarian, as well as of all metaphysical, systems. He is protesting against the right of a minority to govern Ireland or India exclusively for its own interest; and to assert the rights of man in this sense is simply to lay down the principle acknowledged by all theorists, and equally evident on all methods of reasoning; that the happiness of the governed, and not the happiness of any particular class, is the legitimate end of government. As soon as the abstract theorist proceeds a step further, and would use his doctrine of equity,' or of 'natural rights,' to override the teaching of experience, he parts company with Burke.

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100. His theory is admirably given in the 'Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.' The order in which we find ourselves is not, as the pseudo-Bolingbroke argues, a matter of arbitrary convention, nor is it to be condemned because it does not exhibit the mathematical symmetry of the a priori theorists. We may assume, he says, 'that the awful author of our being is the author of our place in the order of existence; and that, having disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactic, not according to our will, but according to his, he has, in and by that disposition, virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned to us. We have obligations to mankind at large, which are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact. They arise from the

1 Burke, v. 121, 'Reflections.'
2 Ib. ix. 351, 'Letter to Burgh.'

Ib. ix. 364, ib.

relations of man to man, and the relation of man to God, which relations are not matters of pact. On the contrary, the force of all the pacts which we enter into with any particular person, or number of persons, amongst mankind, depends upon these prior obligations,' and he proceeds to argue that the relations arising from marriage, from the filial relation, and from our membership of a given nature, have an inherent sanctity which we cannot abolish.

101. To appeal, then, to the natural right to equality of mankind, as declaring that the existing order should be made conducive to the interests of all, is a legitimate inference from the divine origin of society. To appeal to it in the sense of proposing to level existing distinctions, and disintegrate the divine order, is a palpable and most mischievous fallacy. If we ask how from these general principles we are to descend to those intermediate propositions which may guide us in particular cases, how we are to justify any given order of things from the sanctity of the social order in general, and to distinguish between the divine law and the human corruption, Burke would admit or assert that we must appeal to experience. He would further assert that as yet there is no science of politics, and that the doctrines hitherto discoverable are fitted only for the amusement of speculative men.2 Are we not, then, thrown back upon that chaotic 'jumble' of merely empirical speculation which is the necessary result of an absence of speculative principle? If metaphysics are a Serbonian bog, if observation presents us with facts too complex to be reducible to definite laws, if theology can only tell us that some order is sacred but cannot tell us what order is sacred, whence are we to turn for guidance? To say the plain truth, no definite logical answer was accessible in the time of Burke, or is even now accessible. Every political system must be more or less of the empirical kind, and we must trust in great measure to guesswork, instead of steering our course by compass and calculation. And yet some principles emerge; and there is an immense value in the conception of the political order as presented by Burke, even when it has as yet led to no definitely formulated conclusions. He indicates the true method, if he does not bring out final results.

1 Burke, vi. 206, 'Appeal.'

2 Ib. viii. 79, 'Regicide Peace.'

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102. One doctrine is specially characteristic. In one of his best pamphlets, the Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,' Burke notices the alarming symptom that

⚫ rank and office, and all the solemn plausibilities of the world, have lost their reverence and effect.' How was the prestige thus shaken to be restored? The sacred phrase which he habitually opposes to the rights of man is Prescription. Prescription,' he says, in a speech on Parliamentary reform in 1782, 'is the most solid of all titles, not only to property, but what is to secure that property, to government.'2 Prescription, he continues, is accompanied with another ground of authority in the constitution of the human mind, Presumption.'2 There is a presumption, that is, in favour of an established order; the nation is not a mere artificial aggregate of units; it has a corporate existence in time and space. The constitution is formed by the co-operation of ages and generations; and, far from being the product of conscious choice, is slowly elaborated by the play of innumerable social forces. It is a vestment which accommodates itself to the body.' The individual is foolish; the multitude blunders at every given moment; but 'the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it almost always acts right.' Thus, in a philosophical sense, Burke believes in the wisdom-the unconscious wisdom--of our ancestors. In the Reflections' he quotes, with approval, the phrase of a great French lawyer, that the doctrine of prescription is 'part of the law of nature.'4 Elsewhere he says that property must be founded on the solid rock of prescription; the soundest, the most general, and the most recognised title between man and man that is known in municipal or in public jurisprudence; a title in which, not arbitrary institutions, but the eternal order of things, gives judgment; a title which is not the creature, but the master, of positive law; a title which, though not fixed in its term, is rooted in its principle in the law of nature itself, and is indeed the original ground of all known property.'5 Religion itself rests upon prescription. All the chief religions of Europe, he tells us, stand upon one common bottom. The support that

1 Burke, ii. 220, Present Discontents.' * Ib. x. 96.

3 Ib. x. 97.

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Ib. v. 276, 'Reflections.'
Ib. ix. 419, 'To R. Burke.'

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