were beginning to represent the democratic principle; and Price, Priestley, and Paine, all of them advocates of American independence, were all identified at a later period with the French application of the same theories of the indefeasible rights of man. 132. In America, indeed, as I have already said, both the English constitutional theory and the purely democratic theory were represented by able advocates. The doctrines popular with the party which still cling to English theories, though repudiating the English connection, are best expounded in the Federalist.' The series of papers bearing that name appeared in 1788, during the discussions which preceded the acceptance of the present constitution. The chief author was Alexander Hamilton, though a considerable number of articles were contributed by Madison, and a few by Jay. The 'Federalist' is a very remarkable example of the calm and logical discussion of an exciting political question, and is creditable, not only to the sagacity of the writers, but to the intelligence of the readers whom it influenced. Its design, however, does not include the discussion of first principles in politics. The writers are not proposing to build up a new order from its base, but simply to unite political bodies already existing into a more stable confederacy. They are mainly preoccupied with the necessity of conjuring down the unreasonable jealousy of their countrymen, who saw in their proposed President a George III. or a Cromwell. The popu lar cry about loss of liberties' was as loud in America as in the old country. Several gentlemen, we are told, in one of the State conventions called to ratify the constitution, mentioned, as a warning, the fate of those nations which have lost their liberty by lengthening the duration of their parliaments ; whereupon another member very sensibly asked what were those nations. He could remember none, and nobody was prepared with an instance. Of such platitudes and of references to the Amphictyonic league, and other commonplaces of political philosophers, there was, of course, an abundance. The Federalist' disposes of them with excellent sense, and with pithy appropiate argument. 133. In a book intended to recommend the greatest Elliot's Debates,' ii. 4. product of the constitution-mongering art in modern times, there is, of course, occasionally an undue reliance upon the power of paper regulations. The belief, for example, in the efficacy of the system of double election illustrates the illusion, natural to legislators, that the spirit in which laws are designed will determine the spirit in which they are worked. In a more general sense, the efficacy of the great social forces which determine the destiny of a nation is underestimated in comparison with the efficacy of mere external arrangements and legal compacts. Such weaknesses are natural in men who belong to the school of Montesquieu 2 and Delolme. But, on the whole, the Federalist' is a very remarkable instance of statesmanlike ability, in which a certain amount of pedantry and affectation may well be pardoned in consideration of the clearness with which the conditions of a great political crisis are appreciated. Hamilton, whose influence is most perceptible, was by far the ablest representative of what may be called the English theory of government in the United States; and took no inconsiderable share in carrying into execution the plan which he had so ably defended. But a full account of the Federalist' would belong rather to the history of American than of English speculation. Another writer, born, like Hamilton, a British subject, but, unlike Hamilton, brought up in England, and under popular English influences, demands a rather fuller consideration. 134. We have already encountered Paine as an assailant of the religious belief of the day. No ingenuity of hero-worship can represent him as an altogether edifying phenomenon. Indeed, he is commonly made to serve the purpose of a scarecrow in religious tracts. One of his biographers describes his first interview with the old reprobate after his final flight to America. Paine appeared shabbily dressed, with a beard of a week's growth, and a 'face well carbuncled, fiery as the setting sun.' Sitting over a table loaded with beer, brandy, 'Federalist,' No. 68. 2 See e.g. Nos. 43 and 47, in which Montesquieu's authority is specially invoked. See .g. remarks in No. 51 on the advantage of dividing the legislature into branches. Hamilton's share is variously estimated at from forty-eight to over sixty of the eighty-five papers. Jay wrote four or five, Madison the remainder. and a beefsteak, he repeated the introduction of his reply to Watson; a process which occupied half an hour, and was performed with perfect clearness, in spite of the speaker's intoxication. The details of his habits during the few remaining years of his life are simply disgusting; he was constantly drunk, filthy beyond all powers of decent expression, brutal to the woman he had seduced from her husband, constantly engaged in the meanest squabbles, and, in short, as disreputable an old wretch as was at that time to be found in New York. Two or three well-meaning persons tried to extort some sort of confession from the dying infidel; but he died in a state of surly adherence to his principles. The wretched carcase, about which he seems to have felt some anxiety, was buried in his farm; and there rested till the bones were dug up by Cobbett, with the intention, which signally failed, of converting them into relics for the admiration of his fellowbelievers. 135. And yet Paine, though even his earlier years were but too good a preparation for this miserable close, had in him the seeds of something like genius. Of his chief political writings the tract called 'Common Sense,' published in January 1776, had, as was thought at the time, very great influence in producing the Declaration of Independence; and the Rights of Man,' published in 1791, in answer to Burke's 'Reflections,' had an enormous sale. The attack upon the established creed in politics showed, in fact, the same qualities as his attack upon the established creed in religion. He was confronted, indeed, in his later writings by an opponent of incomparably greater power than the orthodox theologians who shrieked at the blasphemies of the 'Age of Reason.' But though Burke moves in an intellectual sphere altogether superior to that in which Paine was able to rise, and though the richness of Burke's speculative power is as superior to Paine's meagre philosophy as his style is superior in the am 'Cheetham's 'Life of Paine,' Preface. Paine says, in the Preface to the second part of the Rights of Man,' that between 40,000 and 50,000 copies of the first part had been sold. Cheetham says (Biog. p. 63) that probably more than 100,000 were published; the remainder, I suppose, being circulated by the revolutionary committees. The printer of the first part offered him successively 100, 500, and 1,000 guineas for the copy of the second part (see 'State Trials,' xxii. 403). plitude of its rhetoric, it is not to be denied that Paine's plainspeaking is more fitted to reach popular passions, and even that he has certain advantages in point of argument. Paine's doctrine may be given in two words. Kings, like priests, are cheats and impostors. The dawn of the Age of Reason' implies the disappearance of loyalty from politics as of superstition from religion. Democracy corresponds in the one sphere to Deism in the other. It is the teaching of pure unsophisticated nature, and the new gospel is the effectual counterblast to all the nonsense with which statesmen have for their own base purposes imposed upon the people whom they enslaved. These doctrines are laid down as absolutely and unhesitatingly as the axioms of a geometer; and Paine is, in all sincerity, incapable of understanding that there can be any other side to the question. 136. Paine's doctrine may thus be described as the reverse of Burke's. Both writers would admit that the old social order rested upon prescription; but, whilst in Burke's eyes this implied the sanctity of prescription, Paine inferred that prescription, being simply irrational prejudice, the old social order should be swept away. There are, he says, two modes of government in the world-government by election, and government by hereditary succession. Now an hereditary governor is as great an absurdity as an hereditary mathematician or poet-laureate. The representative system admits of government by the wisest; whilst the hereditary allows of government by the stupidest. The last proposition seemed clear enough in the days of George III. The privileges of an aristocracy are as irrational as the privileges of kings. Burke's catalogue of the constituted authorities whom we are to revere and obey is interpreted by Paine to mean that the duty of man is a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to another;'3 whereas it consists simply in obeying God, and doing to his neighbour as he would be done by. The checks and balances of the British Constitution are a juggle for evading responsibility and enabling corruption to work the machine. A claim to rule by prescription, indeed, means a claim to be irresponsible, and, as Paine's Political Works, p. 152. 2 Ib. p. 100. • Ib. p. 85. Ib. pp. 7 and 153. Paine pretty forcibly remarks, a body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought to be trusted by nobody. Monarchy is therefore a mere 'bubble and court artifice to procure money,' 2 whilst the 'representative system is always parallel with the order and immutable laws of nature, and meets the reason of man in every part.3 137. The doctrines thus vigorously laid down have become tolerably threadbare, and every scribbler can expose their fallacy. One difficulty is unconsciously indicated by Paine. He accuses Burke of taking up a 'contemptible opinion of mankind' and considering them as 'a herd of beings that must be governed by fraud, effigy, and show.'4 Burke did indeed perceive the truth which underlies the maxim that most men are fools. The assumption that the age of reason was approaching involved the erroneous opinion that men are reasonable creatures; and that a system, constructed on abstract principles of reason, would be worked in a reasonable spirit. It need hardly be pointed out how far that assumption was from being justifiable. But, meanwhile the man who believed in his race, though the belief was extravagant, had an advantage over the more temperate observer, which could only be neutralised by the bitter teachings of experience. Paine fully believed, or appeared to believe, in the speedy advent of the millennium. His vanity, it is true, was interested in the assumption. The American Revolution, he thought, had brought about the grand explosion, and the foundation of the American Constitution had given the first example of a government founded on purely reasonable principles. Now the pamphlet Common Sense' had led to the Revolution, and therefore Paine had fired the match which blew into ruin the whole existing structure of irrational despotism. Still the belief was probably not the less genuine, though thus associated with an excessive estimate of personal merits, and Paine is at times eloquent in expressing the anticipations of universal peace and fraternity destined to such speedy disappointment. His retort upon Burke's sentimentalism about chivalry and Marie Antoinette is not without dignity. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is not affected by ♪ Ib. p. 192. Paine, p. 100. 2 Ib. p. 191. 3 Ib. p. 190. |