CHAPTER II. Clubs in England-Dr Price-Memorable description of the THE clamour of the time, as it has been renewed among ourselves, was that the great quality for representation was personal talent. The wild plea for change in the Legislature was,-why is sluggish property to place a merely honest senator in that seat which should be filled only by distinguished ability? Why keep the doors of Parliament shut to the free circulation of that intellect which comes up so perpetually renewed, from the open expanse of the public mind? The answer is obvious. Let both be represented. But, let us hear the words of wisdom again from the true oracle, "As ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is inert and timid, it can never be safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the representation. It must be represented, too, in great masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected. The characte ristic essence of property is, to be unequal. The great masses, therefore, which excite envy and tempt rapacity must be put out of the possibility of danger. Then they form a natural rampart about the lesser properties in all their gradations. The same quantity of property divided among many, has not the same operation. Its defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. The plunder of the few would indeed give but a share inconceivably small in the distribution to the many. But the many are not capable of making this calculation, and those who lead them to rapine never intend this distribution. The The power of perpetuating our property in our families, is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction which attends hereditary possession, are, as most concerned in it, the natural securities for this transmission. With us the House of Peers is formed upon this principle. It is wholly composed of hereditary property and hereditary distinction, and made, therefore, the third of the Legislature, and, in the last event, the sole judge of all property in all its subdivisions." The Clubs in England had insolently "congratulated" the country on this period, as auspicious for remaking the Constitution. "What," says he, indig nantly; "is that course of liberty, and what are those exertions in its favour, to which the example of France is so singularly auspicious? Is every land-mark of the country to be done away in favour of a geometrical and arithmetical Constitution? Is the House of Lords to be voted useless? Is Episcopacy to be abolished? Are the Church-lands to be sold to Jews and jobbers, or given to bribe new invented municipal republics into a participation in sacrilege? Are all the taxes to be voted grievances, and the revenue reduced to a patriotic contribution? Are the Curates to be seduced from their Bishops, by holding out to them the delusive hope of a dole out of the spoils of their own order? Are the citizens of London to be drawn from their allegiance, by feeding them at the expense of their fellow-subjects? Is a compulsory paper currency to be substituted in place of the legal coin of the kingdom? Is what remains of the plundered stock of public revenue to be employed in the wild project of maintaining two armies to watch over and to fight with each other?" The "Rights of Man" were already the watchword of insurrection. Burke devotes himself to an enquiry into the real rights of man. The heads of this masterly dissertation can alone be given here; but the whole is worthy of being inscribed in whatever temple a grateful posterity shall yet erect to the wisdom that saved their fathers from ruin. "Far am I from denying in theory, full as far as any heart is from denying in practice, the real rights of man. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right; it is an institution of beneficence, and law itself is only beneficence They have a acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule. They have a right to do justice. right to the fruits of their own industry. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself, and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society can do in his favour. In this partnership all men have equal rights, but not to equal things. He who has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he who has five hundred pounds; but he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock. As to the share of power which each individual ought to have in the management of the State, that I must deny to be among the rights of man. It is a thing to be settled by convention. "If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. Every sort of legislature are its creatures. One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is, that no man can be judge in his own cause. By this, man abdicates all right to be his own governor. He, in a great measure, abandons even the right of self-defence, the first law of nature. Man cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and a civil state together. That he may obtain general justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is, in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole. "Government is not made in virtue of natural rights. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires that in the body and mass, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can be done only by a power out of themselves, and not subject to that will and those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense, the restraints on man, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. "The moment you abate any thing from the full right of man, each to govern himself, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and its necessities. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. "The science of constructing a Commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is not to be taught à priori. The science of government being therefore so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, being a matter which requires experience, and |