But to finish all that I intend to say on a subject which has tired me, and perhaps you; the Jacobites affirm that the indirect assistances which they desired, might have been obtained; and I confess that I am inexcusable if this fact be true. To prove it, they appeal to the little politicians of whom I have spoken so often. I affirm, on the contrary, that nothing could be obtained here to support the Scotch or to encourage the English. To prove the assertion, I appeal to the Ministers with whom I negotiated, and to the Regent himself, who, whatever language he may hold in private with other people, cannot controvert with me the truth of what I advance. He excluded me formerly, that he might the more easily avoid doing anything; and perhaps he has blamed me since, that he might excuse his doing nothing. All this may be true, and yet it will remain true that he would never have been prevailed upon to act directly against his interest in the only point of view which he has—I mean, the crown of France—and against the unanimous sense of all his Ministers. Suppose that in the time of the late Queen, when she had the peace in view, a party in France had implored her assistance, and had applied to Margery Fielding, to Israel, to my Lady Oglethorpe, to Dr. Battle, and Lieutenant-General Stewart, what success do you imagine such applications would have had? The Queen would have spoke them fair—she would speak otherwise to nobody; but do you imagine she would have made one step in their favour? Olive Trant, Magny, Mademoiselle Chaussery, a dirty Abbé Brigault, and Mr. Dillon, are characters very apposite to these. And what I suppose to have passed in England is not a whit more ridiculous than what really passed here.
I say nothing of the ships which the Jacobites pretend that they sent into Scotland three weeks or a month after the Pretender was returned. I believe they might have had my Lord Stair’s connivance then, as well as the Regent’s. I say nothing of the order which they pretend to have obtained, and which I never saw, for the stores that were seized at Havre to be delivered to Castel Blanco. I have already said enough on this head, and you cannot have failed to observe that this signal favour was never obtained by these people till the Marshal d’Huxelles had owned to me that nothing was to be expected from France, and that the only thing which I could do was to endeavour to bring the Pretender, the Earl of Mar, and the principal persons who were most exposed, off, neither he nor I imagining that any such would be left behind.
When I began to appear in the world, upon the advertisements which my friends gave me of the clamour that was raised against me, you will easily think I did not enter into so many particulars as I have done with you. I said even less than you have seen in those letters which Brinsden wrote into England in March and April was twelvemonth, and yet the clamour sank immediately. The people of consideration at this Court beat it down, and the Court of St. Germains grew so ashamed of it that the Queen thought fit to purge herself of having had any share in encouraging the discourses which were held against me, or having been so much as let into the secret of the measure which preceded them. The provocation was great, but I resolved to act without passion. I saw the advantage the Pretender and his council, who disposed of things better for me than I should have done for myself, had given me; but I saw likewise that I must improve this advantage with the utmost caution.
As I never imagined that he would treat me in the manner he did, nor that his Ministers could be weak enough to advise him to it, I had resolved, on his return from Scotland, to follow him till his residence should be fixed somewhere or other. After which, having served the Tories in this which I looked upon as their last struggle for power, and having continued to act in the Pretender’s affairs till the end of the term for which I embarked with him, I should have esteemed myself to be at liberty, and should in the civillest manner I was able have taken my leave of him. Had we parted thus, I should have remained in a very strange situation during the rest of my life; but I had examined myself thoroughly, I was determined, I was prepared.
On one side he would have thought that he had a sort of right on any future occasion to call me out of my retreat; the Tories would probably have thought the same thing: my resolution was taken to refuse them both, and I foresaw that both would condemn me. On the other side, the consideration of his keeping measures with me, joined to that of having once openly declared for him, would have created a point of honour by which I should have been tied down, not only from ever engaging against him, but also from making my peace at home. The Chevalier cut this gordian knot asunder at one blow. He broke the links of that chain which former engagements had fastened on me, and gave me a right to esteem myself as free from all obligations of keeping measures with him as I should have continued if I had never engaged in his interest. I took therefore, from that moment, the resolution of making my peace at home, and of employing all the unfortunate experience I had acquired abroad to undeceive my friends and to promote the union and the quiet of my country.
The Earl of Stair had received a full power to treat with me whilst I was engaged with the Pretender, as I have been since informed. He had done me the justice to believe me incapable to hearken, in such circumstances, to any proposals of that kind; and as much friendship as he had for me, as much as I had for him, we entertained not the least even indirect correspondence together during that whole time. Soon afterwards he employed a person to communicate to me the disposition of his Majesty to grant me my pardon, and his own desire to give me, on this occasion, all the proofs he could of his inclination in my favour. I embraced the offer, as it became me to do, with all possible sense of the King’s goodness, and of his lordship’s friendship. We met, we talked together, and he wrote to the Court on the subject. The turn which the Ministers gave to this matter was, to enter into a treaty to reverse my attainder, and to stipulate the conditions on which this act of grace should be granted me.
The notion of a treaty shocked me. I resolved never to be restored rather than go that way to work; and I opened myself without any reserve to Lord Stair. I told him that I looked on myself to be obliged in honour and in conscience to undeceive my friends in England, both as to the state of foreign affairs, as to the management of the Jacobite interest abroad, and as to the characters of persons—in every one of which points I knew them to be most grossly and most dangerously deluded; that the treatment I had received from the Pretender and his adherents would justify me to the world in doing this; that if I remained in exile all my life, he might be assured that I would never more have to do with the Jacobite cause; and that if I was restored, I should give it an effectual blow, in making that apology which the Pretender has put me under a necessity of making: that in doing this I flattered myself that I should contribute something to the establishment of the King’s Government, and to the union of his subjects; but that this was all the merit which I could promise to have; that if the Court believed these professions to be sincere, a treaty with me was unnecessary for them; and that if they did not believe them so, a treaty with them was dangerous for me; that I was determined in this whole transaction to make no one step which I would not own in the face of the world; that in other circumstances it might be sufficient to act honestly, but that in a case as extraordinary as mine it was necessary to act clearly, and to leave no room for the least doubtful construction.
The Earl of Stair, as well as Mr. Craggs, who arrived soon after in France, came into my sense. I have reason to believe that the King has approved it likewise upon their representations, since he has been pleased to give me the most gracious assurances of his favour. What the effect of all this may be in the next or in any other Session, I know not; but this is the foot on which I have put myself, and on which I stand at the moment I write to you. The Whigs may continue inveterate, and by consequence frustrate his Majesty’s good intentions towards me; the Tories may continue to rail at me, on the credit of such enemies as I have described to you in the course of this relation: neither the one nor the other shall make me swerve out of the path which I have traced to myself.
I have now led you through the several stages which I proposed at first; and I should do wrong to your good understanding, as well as to our mutual friendship, if I suspected that you could hold any other language to me than that which Dolabella uses to Cicero: “Satisfactum est jam a te vel officio vel familiaritati; satisfactum etiam partibus.” The King, who pardons me, might complain of me; the Whigs might declaim against me; my family might reproach me for the little regard which I have shown to my own and to their interests; but where is the crime I have been guilty of towards my party and towards my friends? In what part of my conduct will the Tories find an excuse for the treatment which they have given me? As Tories such as they were when I left England, I defy them to find any. But here lies the sore, and, tender as it is, I must lay it open. Those amongst them who rail at me now are changed from what they were, or from what they professed themselves to be, when we lived and acted together. They were Tories then; they are Jacobites now. Their objections to the course of my conduct whilst I was in the Pretender’s interest are the pretence; the true reason of their anger is, that I renounce the Pretender for my life. When you were first driven into this interest, I may appeal to you for the notion which the party had. You thought of restoring him by the strength of the Tories, and of opposing a Tory king to a Whig king. You took him up as the instrument of your revenge and of your ambition. You looked on him as your creature, and never once doubted of making what terms you pleased with him. This is so true that the same language is still held to the catechumens in Jacobitism. Were the contrary to be avowed even now, the party in England would soon diminish. I engaged on this principle when your orders sent me to Commercy, and I never acted on any other. This ought to have been part of my merit towards the Tories; and it would have been so if they had continued in the same dispositions. But they are changed, and this very thing is become my crime. Instead of making the Pretender their tool, they are his. Instead of having in view to restore him on their own terms, they are labouring to do it without any terms; that is, to speak properly, they are ready to receive him on his. Be not deceived: there is not a man on this side of the water who acts in any other manner. The Church of England Jacobite and the Irish Papist seem in every respect to have the same cause. Those on your side of the water who correspond with these are to be comprehended in the same class; and from hence it is that the clamour raised against me has been kept up with so much industry, and is redoubled on the least appearance of my return home, and of my being in a situation to justify myself.
You have seen already what reasons the Pretender, and the several sorts of people who compose his party here, had to get rid of me, and to cover me to the utmost of their power with infamy. Their views were as short in this case as they are in all others. They did not see at first that this conduct would not only give me a right, but put me under a necessity of keeping no farther measures with them, and of laying the whole mystery of their iniquity open. As soon as they discovered this, they took the only course which was left them—that of poisoning the minds of the Tories, and of creating such prejudices against me whilst I remained in a condition of not speaking for myself, as will they hope prevent the effect of whatever I may say when I am in a condition of pleading my own cause. The bare apprehension that I shall show the world that I have been guilty of no crime renders me criminal among these men; and they hold themselves ready, being unable to reply either in point of fact or in point of reason, to drown my voice in the confusion of their clamour.
The only crimes I am guilty of, I own. I own the crime of having been for the Pretender in a very different manner from those with whom I acted. I served him as faithfully, I served him as well as they; but I served him on a different principle. I own the crime of having renounced him, and of being resolved never to have to do with him as long as I live. I own the crime of being determined sooner or later, as soon as I can, to clear myself of all the unjust aspersions which have been cast upon me; to undeceive by my experience as many as I can of those Tories who may have been drawn into error; and to contribute, if ever I return home, as far as I am able, to promote the national good of Britain without any other regard. These crimes do not, I hope, by this time appear to you to be of a very black dye. You may come, perhaps, to think them virtues, when you have read and considered what remains to be said; for before I conclude, it is necessary that I open one matter to you which I could not weave in sooner without breaking too much the thread of my narration. In this place, unmingled with anything else, it will have, as it deserves to have, your whole attention.
Whoever composed that curious piece of false fact, false argument, false English, and false eloquence, the letter from Avignon, says that I was not thought the most proper person to speak about religion. I confess I should be of his mind, and should include his patrons in my case, if the practice of it was to be recommended; for surely it is unpardonable impudence to impose by precept what we do not teach by example. I should be of the same mind, if the nature of religion was to be explained, if its mysteries were to be fathomed, and if this great truth was to be established—that the Church of England has the advantage over all other Churches in purity of doctrine, and in wisdom of discipline. But nothing of this kind was necessary. This would have been the task of reverend and learned divines. We of the laity had nothing more to do than to lay in our claim that we could never submit to be governed by a Prince who was not of the religion of our country. Such a declaration could hardly have failed of some effect towards opening the eyes and disposing the mind even of the Pretender. At least, in justice to ourselves, and in justice to our party, we who were here ought to have made it; and the influence of it on the Pretender ought to have become the rule of our subsequent conduct.
In thinking in this manner I think no otherwise now than I have always thought; and I cannot forget, nor you neither, what passed when, a little before the death of the Queen, letters were conveyed from the Chevalier to several persons—to myself among others. In the letter to me the article of religion was so awkwardly handled that he made the principal motive of the confidence we ought to have in him to consist in his firm resolution to adhere to Popery. The effect which this epistle had on me was the same which it had on those Tories to whom I communicated it at that time; it made us resolve to have nothing to do with him.
Some time after this I was assured by several, and I make no doubt but others have been so too, that the Chevalier at the bottom was not a bigot; that whilst he remained abroad and could expect no succour, either present or future, from any Princes but those of the Roman Catholic Communion, it was prudent, whatever he might think, to make no demonstration of a design to change; but that his temper was such, and he was already so disposed, that we might depend on his compliance with what should be desired of him if ever he came amongst us, and was taken from under the wing of the Queen his mother. To strengthen this opinion of his character, it was said that he had sent for Mr. Leslie over; that he allowed him to celebrate the Church of England service in his family; and that he had promised to hear what this divine should represent on the subject of religion to him. When I came abroad, the same things, and much more, were at first insinuated to me; and I began to let them make impression upon me, notwithstanding what I had seen under his hand. I would willingly flatter myself that this impression disposed me to incline to Jacobitism rather than allow that the inclination to Jacobitism disposed me easily to believe what, upon that principle, I had so much reason to wish might be true. Which was the cause, and which the effect, I cannot well determine: perhaps they did mutually occasion each other. Thus much is certain—that I was far from weighing this matter as I ought to have done when the solicitation of my friends and the persecution of my enemies precipitated me into engagements with the Pretender.
I was willing to take it for granted that since you were as ready to declare as I believed you at that time, you must have had entire satisfaction on the article of religion. I was soon undeceived; this string had never been touched. My own observation, and the unanimous report of all those who from his infancy have approached the Pretender’s person, soon taught me how difficult it is to come to terms with him on this head, and how unsafe to embark without them.
His religion is not founded on the love of virtue and the detestation of vice; on a sense of that obedience which is due to the will of the Supreme Being, and a sense of those obligations which creatures formed to live in a mutual dependence on one another lie under. The spring of his whole conduct is fear. Fear of the horns of the devil and of the flames of hell. He has been taught to believe that nothing but a blind submission to the Church of Rome and a strict adherence to all the terms of that communion can save him from these dangers. He has all the superstition of a Capuchin, but I found on him no tincture of the religion of a prince. Do not imagine that I loose the reins to my imagination, or that I write what my resentments dictate: I tell you simply my opinion. I have heard the same description of his character made by those who know him best, and I conversed with very few among the Roman Catholics themselves who did not think him too much a Papist.
Nothing gave me from the beginning so much uneasiness as the consideration of this part of his character, and of the little care which had been taken to correct it. A true turn had not been given to the first steps which were made with him. The Tories who engaged afterwards, threw themselves, as it were, at his head. He had been suffered to think that the party in England wanted him as much as he wanted them. There was no room to hope for much compliance on the head of religion when he was in these sentiments, and when he thought the Tories too far advanced to have it in their power to retreat; and little dependence was at any time to be placed on the promises of a man capable of thinking his damnation attached to the observance, and his salvation to the breach, of these very promises. Something, however, was to be done, and I thought that the least which could be done was to deal plainly with him, and to show him the impossibility of governing our nation by any other expedient than by complying with that which would be expected from him as to his religion. This was thought too much by the Duke of Ormond and Mr. Leslie; although the duke could be no more ignorant than the minister how ill the latter had been used, how far the Chevalier had been from keeping the word which he had given, and on the faith of which Mr. Leslie had come over to him. They both knew that he not only refused to hear himself, but that he sheltered the ignorance of his priests, or the badness of his cause, or both, behind his authority, and absolutely forbade all discourse concerning religion. The duke seemed convinced that it would be time enough to talk of religion to him when he should be restored, or, at soonest, when he should be landed in England; that the influence under which he had lived being at a distance, the reasonableness of what we might propose, joined to the apparent necessity which would then stare him in the face, could not fail to produce all the effects which we could desire.
To me this whole reasoning appeared fallacious. Our business was not to make him change appearances on this side of the water, but to prepare him to give those which would be necessary on the other; and there was no room to hope that if we could gain nothing on his prejudices here, we should be able to overcome them in Britain. I would have argued just as the Duke of Ormond and Leslie if I had been a Papist; and I saw well enough that some people about him, for in a great dearth of ability there was cunning to be met with, affected nothing more than to keep off all discourse of religion. To my apprehension it was exceeding plain that we should find, if we were once in England, the necessity of going forward at any rate with him much greater than he would find that of complying with us. I thought it an unpardonable fault to have taken a formal engagement with him, when no previous satisfaction had been obtained on a point at least as essential to our civil as to our religious rights; to the peace of the State as to the prosperity of the Church; and I looked on this fault to be aggravated by every day’s delay. Our silence was unfair both to the Chevalier and to our friends in England. He was induced by it to believe that they would exact far less from him than we knew they expected, and they were confirmed in an opinion of his docility, which we knew to be void of all foundation. The pretence of removing that influence under which he had lived was frivolous, and should never have been urged to me, who saw plainly that, according to the measures pursued by the very persons who urged it, he must be environed in England by the same people that surrounded him here; and that the Court of St. James’s would be constituted, if ever he was restored, in the same manner as that of St. Germains was.
When the draft of a declaration and other papers which were to be dispersed in Great Britain came to be settled, it appeared that my apprehension and distrust were but too well founded. The Pretender took exception against several passages, and particularly against those wherein a direct promise of securing the Churches of England and Ireland was made. He was told, he said, that he could not in conscience make such a promise, and, the debate being kept up a little while, he asked me with some warmth why the Tories were so desirous to have him if they expected those things from him which his religion did not allow. I left these drafts, by his order, with him, that he might consider and amend them. I cannot say that he sent them to the Queen to be corrected by her confessor and the rest of her council, but I firmly believe it. Sure I am that he took time sufficient to do this before he sent them from Bar, where he then was, to Paris, whither I was returned. When they were digested in such a manner as satisfied his casuists he made them be printed, and my name was put to the declaration, as if the original had been signed by me. I had hitherto submitted my opinion to the judgment of others, but on this occasion I took advice from myself. I declared to him that I would not suffer my name to be at the bottom of this paper. All the copies which came to my hands I burnt, and another was printed off without any countersigning.
The whole tenor of the amendments was one continued instance of the grossest bigotry, and the most material passages were turned with all the Jesuitical prevarication imaginable. As much as it was his interest at that time to cultivate the respect which many of the Tories really had for the memory of the late Queen, and which many others affected as a farther mark of their opposition to the Court and to the Whig party; as much as it was his interest to weave the honour of her name into his cause, and to render her, even after her death, a party to the dispute, he could not be prevailed upon to give her that character which her enemies allowed her, nor to make use of those expressions, in speaking of her, which, by the general manner of their application, are come to be little more than terms of respect and words of form proper in the style of public acts. For instance:—
She was called in the original draft “his sister of glorious and blessed memory.” In that which he published, the epithet of “blessed” was left out. Her eminent justice and her exemplary piety were occasionally mentioned; in lieu of which he substituted a flat, and, in this case, an invidious expression, “her inclinations to justice.”
Not content with declaring her neither just nor pious in this world he did little less than declare her damned in the other, according to the charitable principles of the Church of Rome.
“When it pleased Almighty God to take her to Himself,” was the expression used in speaking of the death of the Queen. This he erased, and instead thereof inserted these words: “When it pleased Almighty God to put a period to her life.”
He graciously allowed the Universities to be nurseries of loyalty; but did not think that it became him to style them “nurseries of religion.”
Since his father passes already for a saint, and since reports are encouraged of miracles which they suppose to be wrought at his tomb, he might have allowed his grandfather to pass for a martyr; but he struck out of the draft these words, “that blessed martyr who died for his people,” which were applied to King Charles I., and would say nothing more of him than that “he fell a sacrifice to rebellion.”
In the clause which related to the Churches of England and Ireland there was a plain and direct promise inserted of “effectual provision for their security, and for their re-establishment in all those rights which belong to them.” This clause was not suffered to stand, but another was formed, wherein all mention of the Church of Ireland was omitted, and nothing was promised to the Church of England but the security, and “re-establishment of all those rights, privileges, immunities, and possessions which belong to her,” and wherein he had already promised by his declaration of the 20th of July, to secure and “protect all her members.”
I need make no comment on a proceeding so easy to be understood. The drift of these evasions, and of this affected obscurity, is obvious enough—at least, it will appear so by the observations which remain to be made.
He was so afraid of admitting any words which might be construed into a promise of his consenting to those things which should be found necessary for the present or future security of our constitution, that in a paragraph where he was made to say that he thought himself obliged to be solicitous for the prosperity of the Church of England, the word prosperity was expunged, and we were left by this mental reservation to guess what he was solicitous for. It could not be for her prosperity: that he had expunged. It must therefore be for her destruction, which in his language would have been styled her conversion.
Another remarkable proof of the same kind is to be found towards the conclusion of the declaration. After having spoken of the peace and flourishing estate of the kingdom, he was made to express his readiness to concert with the two Houses such further measures as should be thought necessary for securing the same to future generations. The design of this paragraph you see. He and his council saw it too, and therefore the word “securing” was laid aside, and the word “leaving” was inserted in lieu of it.
One would imagine that a declaration corrected in this manner might have been suffered to go abroad without any farther precaution. But these papers had been penned by Protestants; and who could answer that there might not be still ground sufficient from the tenor of them to insist on everything necessary for the security of that religion? The declaration of the 20th of July had been penned by a priest of the Scotch college, and the expressions had been measured so as to suit perfectly with the conduct which the Chevalier intended to hold; so as to leave room to distinguish him, upon future occasions, with the help of a little pious sophistry, out of all the engagements which he seemed to take in it. This orthodox paper was therefore to accompany the heretical paper into the world, and no promise of moment was to stand in the latter, unless qualified by a reference to the former. Thus the Church was to be secured in the rights, etc., which belong to her. How? No otherwise than according to the declaration of the month of July. And what does that promise? Security and protection to the members of this Church in the enjoyment of their property. I make no doubt but Bellarmine, if he had been the Chevalier’s confessor, would have passed this paragraph thus amended. No engagement whatever taken in favour of the Church of Ireland, and a happy distinction found between securing that of England, and protecting her members. Many a useful project for the destruction of heretics, and for accumulating power and riches to the See of Rome, has been established on a more slender foundation.
The same spirit reigns through the whole. Civil and religious rights are no otherwise to be confirmed than in conformity to the declaration of July; nay, the general pardon is restrained and limited to the terms prescribed therein.
This is the account which I judged too important to be omitted, and which I chose to give you all together. I shall surely be justified at present in concluding that the Tories are grossly deluded in their opinion of this Prince’s character, or else that they sacrifice all which ought to be esteemed precious and sacred among men to their passions. In both these cases I remain still a Tory, and am true to the party. In the first, I endeavour to undeceive you by an experience purchased at my expense and for your sakes: in the second, I endeavour to prevail on you to revert to that principle from which we have deviated. You never intended, whilst I lived amongst you, the ruin of your country; and yet every step which you now make towards the restoration you are so fond of, is a step towards this ruin. No man of sense, well informed, can ever go into measures for it, unless he thinks himself and his country in such desperate circumstances that nothing is left them but to choose of two ruins that which they like best.
The exile of the royal family, under Cromwell’s usurpation, was the principal cause of all those misfortunes in which Britain has been involved, as well as of many of those which have happened to the rest of Europe, during more than half a century.
The two brothers, Charles and James, became then infected with Popery to such degrees as their different characters admitted of. Charles had parts, and his good understanding served as an antidote to repel the poison. James, the simplest man of his time, drank off the whole chalice. The poison met in his composition with all the fear, all the credulity, and all the obstinacy of temper proper to increase its virulence and to strengthen its effect. The first had always a wrong bias upon him; he connived at the establishment, and indirectly contributed to the growth, of that power which afterwards disturbed the peace and threatened the liberty of Europe so often; but he went no further out of the way. The opposition of his Parliaments and his own reflections stopped him here. The Prince and the people were, indeed, mutually jealous of one another, from whence much present disorder flowed, and the foundation of future evils was laid; but his good and his bad principles combating still together, he maintained, during a reign of more than twenty years, in some tolerable degree, the authority of the Crown and the flourishing estate of the nation. The last, drunk with superstitious and even enthusiastic zeal, ran headlong into his own ruin whilst he endeavoured to precipitate ours. His Parliament and his people did all they could to save themselves by winning him. But all was vain; he had no principle on which they could take hold. Even his good qualities worked against them, and his love of his country went halves with his bigotry. How he succeeded we have heard from our fathers. The revolution of 1688 saved the nation and ruined the King.
Now the Pretender’s education has rendered him infinitely less fit than his uncle—and at least as unfit as his father—to be King of Great Britain. Add to this that there is no resource in his understanding. Men of the best sense find it hard to overcome religious prejudices, which are of all the strongest; but he is a slave to the weakest. The rod hangs like the sword of Damocles over his head, and he trembles before his mother and his priest. What, in the name of God, can any member of the Church of England promise himself from such a character? Are we by another revolution to return into the same state from which we were delivered by the first? Let us take example from the Roman Catholics, who act very reasonably in refusing to submit to a Protestant Prince. Henry IV. had at least as good a title to the crown of France as the Pretender has to ours. His religion alone stood in his way, and he had never been King if he had not removed that obstacle. Shall we submit to a Popish Prince, who will no more imitate Henry IV. in changing his religion than he will imitate those shining qualities which rendered him the honestest gentleman, the bravest captain, and the greatest prince of his age? Allow me to give a loose to my pen for a moment on this subject. General benevolence and universal charity seem to be established in the Gospel as the distinguishing badges of Christianity. How it happens I cannot tell; but so it is, that in all ages of the Church the professors of Christianity seem to have been animated by a quite contrary spirit. Whilst they were thinly scattered over the world, tolerated in some places, but established nowhere, their zeal often consumed their charity. Paganism, at that time the religion by law established, was insulted by many of them; the ceremonies were disturbed, the altars thrown down. As soon as, by the favour of Constantine, their numbers were increased, and the reins of government were put into their hands, they began to employ the secular arm, not only against different religions, but against different sects which arose in their own religion. A man may boldly affirm that more blood has been shed in the disputes between Christian and Christian than has ever been drawn from the whole body of them in the persecutions of the heathen emperors and in the conquests of the Mahometan princes. From these they have received quarter, but never from one another. The Christian religion is actually tolerated among the Mahometans, and the domes of churches and mosques arise in the same city. But it will be hard to find an example where one sect of Christians has tolerated another which it was in their power to extirpate. They have gone farther in these later ages; what was practised formerly has been taught since. Persecution has been reduced into system, and the disciples of the meek and humble Jesus have avowed a tyranny which the most barbarous conquerors never claimed. The wicked subtilty of casuists has established breach of faith with those who differ from us as a duty in opposition to faith, and murder itself has been made one of the means of salvation. I know very well that the Reformed Churches have been far from going those cruel lengths which are authorised by the doctrine as well as example of that of Rome, though Calvin put a flaming sword on the title of a French edition of his Institute, with this motto, “Je ne suis point venu mettre la paix, mais l’epée;” but I know likewise that the difference lies in the means and not in the aim of their policy. The Church of England, the most humane of all of them, would root out every other religion if it was in her power. She would not hang and burn; her measures would be milder, and therefore, perhaps, more effectual.
Since, then, there is this inveterate rancour among Christians, can anything be more absurd than for those of one persuasion to trust the supreme power, or any part of it, to those of another? Particularly must it not be reputed madness in those of our religion to trust themselves in the hands of Roman Catholics? Must it not be reputed impudence in a Roman Catholic to expect that we should? he who looks upon us as heretics, as men in rebellion against a lawful—nay, a divine—authority, and whom it is, therefore, meritorious by all sorts of ways to reduce to obedience? There are many, I know, amongst them who think more generously, and whose morals are not corrupted by that which is called religion; but this is the spirit of the priesthood, in whose scale that scrap of a parable, “Compel them to come in,” which they apply as they please, outweighs the whole Decalogue. This will be the spirit of every man who is bigot enough to be under their direction; and so much is sufficient for my present purpose.
During your last Session of Parliament it was expected that the Whigs would attempt to repeal the Occasional Bill. The same jealousy continues; there is, perhaps, foundation for it. Give me leave to ask you upon what principle we argued for making this law, and upon what principle you must argue against the repeal of it. I have mentioned the principle in the beginning of this discourse. No man ought to be trusted with any share of power under a Government who must, to act consistently with himself, endeavour the destruction of that very Government. Shall this proposition pass for true when it is applied to keep a Presbyterian from being mayor of a corporation, and shall it become false when it is applied to keep a Papist from being king? The proposition is equally true in both cases; but the argument drawn from it is just so much stronger in the latter than in the former case, as the mischiefs which may result from the power and influence of a king are greater than those which can be wrought by a magistrate of the lowest order. This seems to my apprehension to be argumentum ad hominem, and I do not see by what happy distinction a Jacobite Tory could elude the force of it.
It may be said, and it has been urged to me, that if the Chevalier was restored, the knowledge of his character would be our security; “habet fœnum in cornu;” there would be no pretence for trusting him, and by consequence it would be easy to put such restrictions on the exercise of the regal power as might hinder him from invading or sapping our religion and liberty. But this I utterly deny. Experience has shown us how ready men are to court power and profit, and who can determine how far either the Tories or the Whigs would comply, in order to secure to themselves the enjoyment of all the places in the kingdom? Suppose, however, that a majority of true Israelites should be found, whom no temptation could oblige to bow the knee to Baal; in order to preserve the Government on one hand must they not destroy it on the other? The necessary restrictions would in this case be so many and so important as to leave hardly the shadow of a monarchy if he submitted to them; and if he did not submit to them, these patriots would have no resource left but in rebellion. Thus, therefore, the affair would turn if the Pretender was restored. We might, most probably, lose our religion and liberty by the bigotry of the Prince and the corruption of the people. We should have no chance of preserving them but by an entire change of the whole frame of our Government or by another revolution. What reasonable man would voluntarily reduce himself to the necessity of making an option among such melancholy alternatives?
The best which could be hoped for, were the Chevalier on the throne, would be that a thread of favourable accidents, improved by the wisdom and virtue of Parliament, might keep off the evil day during his reign. But still the fatal cause would be established; it would be entailed upon us, and every man would be apprised that sooner or later the fatal effect must follow. Consider a little what a condition we should be in, both with respect to our foreign interest and our domestic quiet, whilst the reprieve lasted, whilst the Chevalier or his successors made no direct attack upon the constitution.
As to the first, it is true, indeed, that princes and States are friends or foes to one another according as the motives of ambition drive them. These are the first principles of union and division amongst them. The Protestant Powers of Europe have joined, in our days, to support and aggrandise the House of Austria, as they did in the days of our forefathers to defeat her designs and to reduce her power; and the most Christian King of France has more than once joined his councils, and his arms too, with the councils and arms of the most Mahometan Emperor of Constantinople. But still there is, and there must continue, as long as the influence of the Papal authority subsists in Europe, another general, permanent, and invariable division of interests. The powers of earth, like those of heaven, have two distinct motions. Each of them rolls in his own political orb, but each of them is hurried at the same time round the great vortex of his religion. If this general notion be just, apply it to the present case. Whilst a Roman Catholic holds the rudder, how can we expect to be steered in our proper course? His political interest will certainly incline him to direct our first motion right, but his mistaken religious interest will render him incapable of doing it steadily.
As to the last, our domestic quiet; even whilst the Chevalier and those of his race concealed their game, we should remain in the most unhappy state which human nature is subject to, a state of doubt and suspense. Our preservation would depend on making him the object of our eternal jealousy, who, to render himself and his people happy, ought to be that of our entire confidence.
Whilst the Pretender and his successors forbore to attack the religion and liberty of the nation, we should remain in the condition of those people who labour under a broken constitution, or who carry about them some chronical distemper. They feel a little pain at every moment; or a certain uneasiness, which is sometimes less tolerable than pain, hangs continually on them, and they languish in the constant expectation of dying perhaps in the severest torture.
But if the fear of hell should dissipate all other fears in the Pretender’s mind, and carry him, which is frequently the effect of that passion, to the most desperate undertakings; if among his successors a man bold enough to make the attempt should arise, the condition of the British nation would be still more deplorable. The attempt succeeding, we should fall into tyranny; for a change of religion could never be brought about by consent; and the same force that would be sufficient to enslave our consciences, would be sufficient for all the other purposes of arbitrary power. The attempt failing, we should fall into anarchy; for there is no medium when disputes between a prince and his people are arrived at a certain point; he must either be submitted to or deposed.
I have now laid before you even more than I intended to have said when I took my pen, and I am persuaded that if these papers ever come to your hands, they will enable you to cast up the account between party and me. Till the time of the Queen’s death it stands, I believe, even between us. The Tories distinguished me by their approbation and by the credit which I had amongst them, and I endeavoured to distinguish myself in their service, under the immediate weight of great discouragement and with the not very distant prospect of great danger. Since that time the account is not so even, and I dare appeal to any impartial person whether my side in it be that of the debtor. As to the opinion of mankind in general, and the judgment which posterity will pass on these matters, I am under no great concern. “Suum cuique decus posteritas rependit.”
Dear Sir,—Since you have begun, at my request, the work which I have wished long that you would undertake, it is but reasonable that I submit to the task you impose upon me. The mere compliance with anything you desire, is a pleasure to me. On the present occasion, however, this compliance is a little interested; and that I may not assume more merit with you than I really have, I will own that in performing this act of friendship—for such you are willing to esteem it—the purity of my motive is corrupted by some regard to my private utility. In short, I suspect you to be guilty of a very friendly fraud, and to mean my service whilst you seem to mean your own.
In leading me to discourse, as you have done often, and in pressing me to write, as you do now, on certain subjects, you may propose to draw me back to those trains of thought which are, above all others, worthy to employ the human mind: and I thank you for it. They have been often interrupted by the business and dissipations of the world, but they were never so more grievously to me, nor less usefully to the public, than since royal seduction prevailed on me to abandon the quiet and leisure of the retreat I had chosen abroad, and to neglect the example of Rutilius, for I might have imitated him in this at least, who fled further from his country when he was invited home.
You have begun your ethic epistles in a masterly manner. You have copied no other writer, nor will you, I think, be copied by any one. It is with genius as it is with beauty; there are a thousand pretty things that charm alike; but superior genius, like superior beauty, has always something particular, something that belongs to itself alone. It is always distinguishable, not only from those who have no claim to excellence, but even from those who excel, when any such there are.
I am pleased, you may be sure, to find your satire turn, in the very beginning of these epistles, against the principal cause—for such you know that I think it—of all the errors, all the contradictions, and all the disputes which have arisen among those who impose themselves on their fellow-creatures for great masters, and almost sole proprietors of a gift of God which is common to the whole species. This gift is reason; a faculty, or rather an aggregate of faculties, that is bestowed in different degrees; and not in the highest, certainly, on those who make the highest pretensions to it. Let your satire chastise, and, if it be possible, humble that pride, which is the fruitful parent of their vain curiosity and bold presumption; which renders them dogmatical in the midst of ignorance, and often sceptical in the midst of knowledge. The man who is puffed up with this philosophical pride, whether divine or theist, or atheist, deserves no more to be respected than one of those trifling creatures who are conscious of little else than their animality, and who stop as far short of the attainable perfections of their nature as the other attempts to go beyond them. You will discover as many silly affections, as much foppery and futility, as much inconsistency and low artifice in one as in the other. I never met the mad woman at Brentford decked out in old and new rags, and nice and fantastical in the manner of wearing them, without reflecting on many of the profound scholars and sublime philosophers of our own and of former ages.
You may expect some contradiction and some obloquy on the part of these men, though you will have less to apprehend from their malice and resentment than a writer in prose on the same subjects would have. You will be safer in the generalities of poetry; and I know your precaution enough to know that you will screen yourself in them against any direct charge of heterodoxy. But the great clamour of all will be raised when you descend lower, and let your Muse loose among the herd of mankind. Then will those powers of dulness whom you have ridiculed into immortality be called forth in one united phalanx against you. But why do I talk of what may happen? You have experienced lately something more than I prognosticate. Fools and knaves should be modest at least; they should ask quarter of men of sense and virtue: and so they do till they grow up to a majority, till a similitude of character assures them of the protection of the great. But then vice and folly such as prevail in our country, corrupt our manners, deform even social life, and contribute to make us ridiculous as well as miserable, will claim respect for the sake of the vicious and the foolish. It will be then no longer sufficient to spare persons; for to draw even characters of imagination must become criminal when the application of them to those of highest rank and greatest power cannot fail to be made. You began to laugh at the ridiculous taste or the no taste in gardening and building of some men who are at great expense in both. What a clamour was raised instantly! The name of Timon was applied to a noble person with double malice, to make him ridiculous, and you, who lived in friendship with him, odious. By the authority that employed itself to encourage this clamour, and by the industry used to spread and support it, one would have thought that you had directed your satire in that epistle to political subjects, and had inveighed against those who impoverish, dishonour, and sell their country, instead of making yourself inoffensively merry at the expense of men who ruin none but themselves, and render none but themselves ridiculous. What will the clamour be, and how will the same authority foment it, when you proceed to lash, in other instances, our want of elegance even in luxury, and our wild profusion, the source of insatiable rapacity, and almost universal venality? My mind forebodes that the time will come—and who knows how near it may be?—when other powers than those of Grub Street may be drawn forth against you, and when vice and folly may be avowedly sheltered behind a power instituted for better and contrary purposes—for the punishment of one, and for the reformation of both.
But, however this may be, pursue your task undauntedly, and whilst so many others convert the noblest employments of human society into sordid trades, let the generous Muse resume her ancient dignity, re-assert her ancient prerogative, and instruct and reform, as well as amuse the world. Let her give a new turn to the thoughts of men, raise new affections in their minds, and determine in another and better manner the passions of their hearts. Poets, they say, were the first philosophers and divines in every country, and in ours, perhaps, the first institutions of religion and civil policy were owing to our bards. Their task might be hard, their merit was certainly great. But if they were to rise now from the dead they would find the second task, if I mistake not, much harder than the first, and confess it more easy to deal with ignorance than with error. When societies are once established and Governments formed, men flatter themselves that they proceed in cultivating the first rudiments of civility, policy, religion, and learning. But they do not observe that the private interests of many, the prejudices, affections, and passions of all, have a large share in the work, and often the largest. These put a sort of bias on the mind, which makes it decline from the straight course; and the further these supposed improvements are carried, the greater this declination grows, till men lose sight of primitive and real nature, and have no other guide but custom, a second and a false nature. The author of one is divine wisdom; of the other, human imagination; and yet whenever the second stands in opposition to the first, as it does most frequently, the second prevails. From hence it happens that the most civilised nations are often guilty of injustice and cruelty which the least civilised would abhor, and that many of the most absurd opinions and doctrines which have been imposed in the Dark Ages of ignorance continue to be the opinions and doctrines of ages enlightened by philosophy and learning. “If I was a philosopher,” says Montaigne, “I would naturalise art instead of artilising Nature.” The expression is odd, but the sense is good, and what he recommends would be done if the reasons that have been given did not stand in the way; if the self-interest of some men, the madness of others, and the universal pride of the human heart did not determine them to prefer error to truth and authority to reason.
Whilst your Muse is employed to lash the vicious into repentance, or to laugh the fools of the age into shame, and whilst she rises sometimes to the noblest subjects of philosophical meditation, I shall throw upon paper, for your satisfaction and for my own, some part at least of what I have thought and said formerly on the last of these subjects, as well as the reflections that they may suggest to me further in writing on them. The strange situation I am in, and the melancholy state of public affairs, take up much of my time; divide, or even dissipate, my thoughts; and, which is worse, drag the mind down by perpetual interruptions from a philosophical tone or temper to the drudgery of private and public business. The last lies nearest my heart; and since I am once more engaged in the service of my country, disarmed, gagged, and almost bound as I am, I will not abandon it as long as the integrity and perseverance of those who are under none of these disadvantages, and with whom I now co-operate, make it reasonable for me to act the same part. Further than this no shadow of duty obliges me to go. Plato ceased to act for the Commonwealth when he ceased to persuade, and Solon laid down his arms before the public magazine when Pisistratus grew too strong to be opposed any longer with hopes of success.
Though my situation and my engagements are sufficiently known to you, I choose to mention them on this occasion lest you should expect from me anything more than I find myself able to perform whilst I am in them. It has been said by many that they wanted time to make their discourses shorter; and if this be a good excuse, as I think it may be often, I lay in my claim to it. You must neither expect in what I am about to write to you that brevity which might be expected in letters or essays, nor that exactness of method, nor that fulness of the several parts which they affect to observe who presume to write philosophical treatises. The merit of brevity is relative to the manner and style in which any subject is treated, as well as to the nature of it; for the same subject may be sometimes treated very differently, and yet very properly, in both these respects. Should the poet make syllogisms in verse, or pursue a long process of reasoning in the didactic style, he would be sure to tire his reader on the whole, like Lucretius, though he reasoned better than the Roman, and put into some parts of his work the same poetical fire. He may write, as you have begun to do, on philosophical subjects, but he must write in his own character. He must contract, he may shadow, he has a right to omit whatever will not be cast in the poetic mould; and when he cannot instruct, he may hope to please. But the philosopher has no such privileges. He may contract sometimes, he must never shadow. He must be limited by his matter, lest he should grow whimsical, and by the parts of it which he understands best, lest he should grow obscure. But these parts he must develop fully, and he has no right to omit anything that may serve the purpose of truth, whether it please or not. As it would be disingenuous to sacrifice truth to popularity, so it is trifling to appeal to the reason and experience of mankind, as every philosophical writer does, or must be understood to do, and then to talk, like Plato and his ancient and modern disciples, to the imagination only. There is no need, however, to banish eloquence out of philosophy, and truth and reason are no enemies to the purity nor to the ornaments of language. But as the want of an exact determination of ideas and of an exact precision in the use of words is inexcusable in a philosopher, he must preserve them, even at the expense of style. In short, it seems to me that the business of the philosopher is to dilate, if I may borrow this word from Tully, to press, to prove, to convince; and that of the poet to hint, to touch his subject with short and spirited strokes, to warm the affections, and to speak to the heart.
Though I seem to prepare an apology for prolixity even in writing essays, I will endeavour not to be tedious, and this endeavour may succeed the better perhaps by declining any over-strict observation of method. There are certain points of that which I esteem the first philosophy whereof I shall never lose sight, but this will be very consistent with a sort of epistolary licence. To digress and to ramble are different things, and he who knows the country through which he travels may venture out of the highroad, because he is sure of finding his way back to it again. Thus the several matters that may arise even accidentally before me will have some share in guiding my pen.
I dare not promise that the sections or members of these essays will bear that nice proportion to one another and to the whole which a severe critic would require. All I dare promise you is that my thoughts, in what order soever they flow, shall be communicated to you just as they pass through my mind, just as they use to be when we converse together on these or any other subjects when we saunter alone, or, as we have often done with good Arbuthnot and the jocose Dean of St. Patrick’s, among the multiplied scenes of your little garden. That theatre is large enough for my ambition. I dare not pretend to instruct mankind, and I am not humble enough to write to the public for any other purpose. I mean by writing on such subjects as I intend here, to make some trial of my progress in search of the most important truths, and to make this trial before a friend in whom I think I may confide. These epistolary essays, therefore, will be written with as little regard to form and with as little reserve as I used to show in the conversations which have given occasion to them, when I maintained the same opinions and insisted on the same reasons in defence of them.
It might seem strange to a man not well acquainted with the world, and in particular with the philosophical and theological tribe, that so much precaution should be necessary in the communication of our thoughts on any subject of the first philosophy, which is of common concern to the whole race of mankind, and wherein no one can have, according to nature and truth, any separate interest. Yet so it is. The separate interests we cannot have by God’s institutions, are created by those of man; and there is no subject on which men deal more unfairly with one another than this. There are separate interests, to mention them in general only, of prejudice and of profession. By the first, men set out in the search of truth under the conduct of error, and work up their heated imaginations often to such a delirium that the more genius, and the more learning they have, the madder they grow. By the second, they are sworn, as it were, to follow all their lives the authority of some particular school, to which “tanquam scopulo, adhærescunt;” for the condition of their engagement is to defend certain doctrines, and even mere forms of speech, without examination, or to examine only in order to defend them. By both, they become philosophers as men became Christians in the primitive Church, or as they determined themselves about disputed doctrines; for says Hilarius, writing to St. Austin, “Your holiness knows that the greatest part of the faithful embrace, or refuse to embrace, a doctrine for no reason but the impression which the name and authority of some body or other makes on them.” What now can a man who seeks truth for the sake of truth, and is indifferent where he finds it, expect from any communication of his thoughts to such men as these? He will be much deceived if he expects anything better than imposition or altercation.
Few men have, I believe, consulted others, both the living and the dead, with less presumption, and in a greater spirit of docility, than I have done: and the more I have consulted, the less have I found of that inward conviction on which a mind that is not absolutely implicit can rest. I thought for a time that this must be my fault. I distrusted myself, not my teachers—men of the greatest name, ancient and modern. But I found at last that it was safer to trust myself than them, and to proceed by the light of my own understanding than to wander after these ignes fatui of philosophy. If I am able therefore to tell you easily, and at the same time so clearly and distinctly as to be easily understood, and so strongly as not to be easily refuted, how I have thought for myself, I shall be persuaded that I have thought enough on these subjects. If I am not able to do this, it will be evident that I have not thought on them enough. I must review my opinions, discover and correct my errors.
I have said that the subjects I mean, and which will be the principal objects of these essays, are those of the first philosophy; and it is fit, therefore, that I should explain what I understand by the first philosophy. Do not imagine that I understand what has passed commonly under that name—metaphysical pneumatics, for instance, or ontology. The first are conversant about imaginary substances, such as may and may not exist. That there is a God we can demonstrate; and although we know nothing of His manner of being, yet we acknowledge Him to be immaterial, because a thousand absurdities, and such as imply the strongest contradiction, result from the supposition that the Supreme Being is a system of matter. But of any other spirits we neither have nor can have any knowledge: and no man will be inquisitive about spiritual physiognomy, nor go about to inquire, I believe, at this time, as Evodius inquired of St. Austin, whether our immaterial part, the soul, does not remain united, when it forsakes this gross terrestrial body, to some ethereal body more subtile and more fine; which was one of the Pythagorean and Platonic whimsies: nor be under any concern to know, if this be not the case of the dead, how souls can be distinguished after their separation—that of Dives, for example, from that of Lazarus. The second—that is, ontology—treats most scientifically of being abstracted from all being (“de ente quatenus ens”). It came in fashion whilst Aristotle was in fashion, and has been spun into an immense web out of scholastic brains. But it should be, and I think it is already, left to the acute disciples of Leibnitz, who dug for gold in the ordure of the schools, and to other German wits. Let them darken by tedious definitions what is too plain to need any; or let them employ their vocabulary of barbarous terms to propagate an unintelligible jargon, which is supposed to express such abstractions as they cannot make, and according to which, however, they presume often to control the particular and most evident truths of experimental knowledge. Such reputed science deserves no rank in philosophy, not the last, and much less the first.
I desire you not to imagine neither that I understand by the first philosophy even such a science as my Lord Bacon describes—a science of general observations and axioms, such as do not belong properly to any particular part of science, but are common to many, “and of an higher stage,” as he expresses himself. He complains that philosophers have not gone up to the “spring-head,” which would be of “general and excellent use for the disclosing of Nature and the abridgment of art,” though they “draw now and then a bucket of water out of the well for some particular use.” I respect—no man more—this great authority; but I respect no authority enough to subscribe on the faith of it, to that which appears to me fantastical, as if it were real. Now this spring-head of science is purely fantastical, and the figure conveys a false notion to the mind, as figures employed licentiously are apt to do. The great author himself calls these axioms, which are to constitute his first philosophy, observations. Such they are properly; for there are some uniform principles, or uniform impressions of the same nature, to be observed in very different subjects, “una eademque naturæ vestigia aut signacula diversis materiis et subjectis impressa.” These observations, therefore, when they are sufficiently verified and well established, may be properly applied in discourse, or writing, from one subject to another. But I apprehend that when they are so applied, they serve rather to illustrate a proposition than to disclose Nature, or to abridge art. They may have a better foundation than similitudes and comparisons more loosely and more superficially made. They may compare realities, not appearances; things that Nature has made alike, not things that seem only to have some relation of this kind in our imaginations. But still they are comparisons of things distinct and independent. They do not lead us to things, but things that are lead us to make them. He who possesses two sciences, and the same will be often true of arts, may find in certain respects a similitude between them because he possesses both. If he did not possess both, he would be led by neither to the acquisition of the other. Such observations are effects, not means of knowledge; and, therefore, to suppose that any collection of them can constitute a science of an “higher stage,” from whence we may reason à priori down to particulars, is, I presume, to suppose something very groundless, and very useless at best, to the advancement of knowledge. A pretended science of this kind must be barren of knowledge, and may be fruitful of error, as the Persian magic was, if it proceeded on the faint analogy that may be discovered between physics and politics, and deduced the rules of civil government from what the professors of it observed of the operations and works of Nature in the material world. The very specimen of their magic which my Lord Bacon has given would be sufficient to justify what is here objected to his doctrine.
Let us conclude this head by mentioning two examples among others which he brings to explain the better what he means by his first philosophy. The first is this axiom, “If to unequals you add equals, all will be unequal.” This, he says, is an axiom of justice as well as of mathematics; and he asks whether there is not a true coincidence between commutative and distributive justice, and arithmetical and geometrical proportion. But I would ask in my turn whether the certainty that any arithmetician or geometrician has of the arithmetical or geometrical truth will lead him to discover this coincidence. I ask whether the most profound lawyer who never heard perhaps this axiom would be led to it by his notions of commutative and distributive justice. Certainly not. He who is well skilled in arithmetic or geometry, and in jurisprudence, may observe perhaps this uniformity of natural principle or impression because he is so skilled, though, to say the truth, it be not very obvious; but he will not have derived his knowledge of it from any spring-head of a first philosophy, from any science of an “higher stage” than arithmetic, geometry, and jurisprudence.
The second example is this axiom, “That the destruction of things is prevented by the reduction of them to their first principles.” This rule is said to hold in religion, in physics, and in politics; and Machiavel is quoted for having established it in the last of these. Now though this axiom be generally, it is not universally, true; and, to say nothing of physics, it will not be hard to produce, in contradiction to it, examples of religious and civil institutions that would have perished if they had been kept strictly to their first principles, and that have been supported by departing more or less from them. It may seem justly matter of wonder that the author of the “Advancement of Learning” should espouse this maxim in religion and politics, as well as physics, so absolutely, and that he should place it as an axiom of his first philosophy relatively to the three, since he could not do it without falling into the abuse he condemns so much in his “Organum Novum”—the abuse philosophers are guilty of when they suffer the mind to rise too fast, as it is apt to do, from particulars to remote and general axioms. That the author of the “Political Discourses” should fall into this abuse is not at all strange. The same abuse runs through all his writings, in which, among many wise and many wicked reflections and precepts, he establishes frequently general maxims or rules of conduct on a few particular examples, and sometimes on a single example. Upon the whole matter, one of these axioms communicates no knowledge but that which we must have before we can know the axiom, and the other may betray us into great error when we apply it to use and action. One is unprofitable, the other dangerous; and the philosophy which admits them as principles of general knowledge deserves ill to be reputed philosophy. It would have been just as useful, and much more safe, to admit into this receptacle of axioms those self-evident and necessary truths alone of which we have an immediate perception, since they are not confined to any special parts of science, but are common to several, or to all. Thus these profitable axioms, “What is, is,” “The whole is bigger than a part,” and divers others, might serve to enlarge the spring-head of a first philosophy, and be of excellent use in arguing ex prœcognitis et prœconcessis.
If you ask me now what I understand then by a first philosophy, my answer will be such as I suppose you already prepared to receive. I understand by a first philosophy, that which deserves the first place on account of the dignity and importance of its objects, natural theology or theism, and natural religion or ethics. If we consider the order of the sciences in their rise and progress, the first place belongs to natural philosophy, the mother of them all, or the trunk, the tree of knowledge, out of which, and in proportion to which, like so many branches, they all grow. These branches spread wide, and bear even fruits of different kinds. But the sap that made them shoot, and makes them flourish, rises from the root through the trunk, and their productions are varied according to the variety of strainers through which it flows. In plain terms, I speak not here of supernatural, or revealed science; and therefore I say that all science, if it be real, must rise from below, and from our own level. It cannot descend from above, nor from superior systems of being and knowledge. Truth of existence is truth of knowledge, and therefore reason searches after them in one of these scenes, where both are to be found together, and are within our reach; whilst imagination hopes fondly to find them in another, where both of them are to be found, but surely not by us. The notices we receive from without concerning the beings that surround us, and the inward consciousness we have of our own, are the foundations, and the true criterions too, of all the knowledge we acquire of body and of mind: and body and mind are objects alike of natural philosophy. We assume commonly that they are two distinct substances. Be it so. They are still united, and blended, as it were, together, in one human nature: and all natures, united or not, fall within the province of natural philosophy. On the hypothesis indeed that body and soul are two distinct substances, one of which subsists after the dissolution of the other, certain men, who have taken the whimsical title of metaphysicians, as if they had science beyond the bounds of Nature, or of Nature discoverable by others, have taken likewise to themselves the doctrine of mind; and have left that of body, under the name of physics, to a supposed inferior order of philosophers. But the right of these stands good; for all the knowledge that can be acquired about mind, or the unextended substance of the Cartesians, must be acquired, like that about body, or the extended substance, within the bounds of their province, and by the means they employ, particular experiments and observations. Nothing can be true of mind, any more than of body, that is repugnant to these; and an intellectual hypothesis which is not supported by the intellectual phenomena is at least as ridiculous as a corporeal hypothesis which is not supported by the corporeal phenomena.
If I have said thus much in this place concerning natural philosophy, it has not been without good reason. I consider theology and ethics as the first of sciences in pre-eminence of rank. But I consider the constant contemplation of Nature—by which I mean the whole system of God’s works as far as it lies open to us—as the common spring of all sciences, and even of these. What has been said agreeably to this notion seems to me evidently true; and yet metaphysical divines and philosophers proceed in direct contradiction to it, and have thereby, if I mistake not, bewildered themselves, and a great part of mankind, in such inextricable labyrinths of hypothetical reasoning, that few men can find their way back, and none can find it forward into the road of truth. To dwell long, and on some points always, in particular knowledge, tires the patience of these impetuous philosophers. They fly to generals. To consider attentively even the minutest phenomena of body and mind mortifies their pride. Rather than creep up slowly, à posteriori, to a little general knowledge, they soar at once as far and as high as imagination can carry them. From thence they descend again, armed with systems and arguments à priori; and, regardless how these agree or clash with the phenomena of Nature, they impose them on mankind.
It is this manner of philosophising, this preposterous method of beginning our search after truth out of the bounds of human knowledge, or of continuing it beyond them, that has corrupted natural theology and natural religion in all ages. They have been corrupted to such a degree that it is grown, and was so long since, as necessary to plead the cause of God, if I may use this expression after Seneca, against the divine as against the atheist; to assert his existence against the latter, to defend his attributes against the former, and to justify his providence against both. To both a sincere and humble theist might say very properly, “I make no difference between you on many occasions, because it is indifferent whether you deny or defame the Supreme Being.” Nay, Plutarch, though little orthodox in theology, was not in the wrong perhaps when he declared the last to be the worst.
In treating the subjects about which I shall write to you in these letters or essays, it will be therefore necessary to distinguish genuine and pure theism from the unnatural and profane mixtures of human imagination—what we can know of God from what we cannot know. This is the more necessary, too, because, whilst true and false notions about God and religion are blended together in our minds under one specious name of science, the false are more likely to make men doubt of the true, as it often happens, than to persuade men that they are true themselves. Now, in order to this purpose, nothing can be more effectual than to go to the root of error, of that primitive error which encourages our curiosity, sustains our pride, fortifies our prejudices, and gives pretence to delusion. This primitive error consists in the high opinion we are apt to entertain of the human mind, though it holds, in truth, a very low rank in the intellectual system. To cure this error we need only turn our eyes inward, and contemplate impartially what passes there from the infancy to the maturity of the mind. Thus it will not be difficult, and thus alone it is possible, to discover the true nature of human knowledge—how far it extends, how far it is real, and where and how it begins to be fantastical.
Such an inquiry, if it cannot check the presumption nor humble the pride of metaphysicians, may serve to undeceive others. Locke pursued it; he grounded all he taught on the phenomena of Nature; he appealed to the experience and conscious knowledge of every one, and rendered all he advanced intelligible. Leibnitz, one of the vainest and most chimerical men that ever got a name in philosophy, and who is often so unintelligible that no man ought to believe he understood himself, censured Locke as a superficial philosopher. What has happened? The philosophy of one has forced its way into general approbation, that of the other has carried no conviction and scarce any information to those who have misspent their time about it. To speak the truth, though it may seem a paradox, our knowledge on many subjects, and particularly on those which we intend here, must be superficial to be real. This is the condition of humanity. We are placed, as it were, in an intellectual twilight, where we discover but few things clearly, and none entirely, and yet see just enough to tempt us with the hope of making better and more discoveries. Thus flattered, men push their inquiries on, and may be properly enough compared to Ixion, who “imagined he had Juno in his arms whilst he embraced a cloud.”