now to be published. I fhall not introduce one obfervation or comment of my own. *«There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any defcription of men, or any generation of men, in any country, poffeffed of the right or the power of binding and controuling posterity to the end of time, or of commanding for ever how the world fhall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all fuch clauses, acts, or declarations, by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void." t "The vanity and prefumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and infolent of all tyrannies." "It is fomewhat extraordinary, that the offence, for which James II. was expelled, that of fetting up power by assumption, should be re-acted under another shape and form, by the parliament that expelled him." S "All therefore that can be said of the clauses of the act of fettlement is, that they are a formality of words, of as much import, as if those, who used them had addressed a congratulation to themselves, and in the ori * Vid. Rights of Man, p. 9. + Ibid. p. 9. Ibid. p. 14. Kk 2 ental ental stile of antiquity, had faid, O parliament, live for ever!" "It will confequently follow, that if the claufes themselves, fo far as they fet up an affumed, ufurped dominion over pofterity for ever, are unauthoritative, and in their nature null and void." + "When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can fcarcely avoid difguft at thofe, who are thus impofed upon." I "Can then Mr. Burke produce the Englifh conftitution? If he cannot, we may fairly conclude, that though it has been fo much talked about, no fuch thing as a constitution exists, or ever did exist, and consequently that the people have yet a conftitution to form." "The English government is one of thofe, which arofe out of a conquest, and not out of fociety, and confequently it arofe over the people; and though it has been much Rights of Man, p. 14: ‡ Ibid. P. 54. + Ibid. p. 51. modified modified from the opportunity of circumftances fince the time of William the Conqueror, the country has never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a constitution." *In England, game is made the property of thofe, at whofe expence it is not fed and with refpect to monopolies, the country is cut up into monopolies. Every chartered town is an ariftocratical monopoly in itself, and the qualification of electors proceeds out of those chartered monopolies. Is this freedom? Is this what Mr. Burke means by a conftitution ?" "In these chartered monopolies, a man coming from another part of the country is hunted from them, as if he were a foreign enemy. An Englishman is not free of his own country; every one of those places prefents a barrier in his way, and tells him he is not a freeman—that he has no rights." "Every thing in the English government appears to me the reverse of what it ought to be, and of what it is faid to be. The parliament, imperfectly and capriciously elected as it is, is nevertheless fuppofed to hold the national purfe in trust for the nation; but in the manner, in which an English parlia * Rights of Man, p. 58. + Ibid. Kk 3 ment ment is constructed, it is like a man being both mortgager and mortgagee; and in the case of mifapplication of truft, it is the criminal fitting in judgment upon himself.” "In England, the right of war and peace is faid to reside in a metaphor, shewn at the Tower for fixpence or a fhilling a-piece; fo are the lions; and it would be a step nearer to reason to say it refided in them; for any inanimate metaphor is no more than a hat or a cap." † "It t may with reafon be said, that in the manner the English nation is represented, it fignifies not where this right refides, whether in the crown or in the parliament. War is the common harvest of all thofe, who participate in the divifion and expenditure of public money in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditures. In reviewing the history of the English government, its wars and its taxes, a stander-by, not blinded by prejudice, nor warped by intereft, would declare, that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.' ✰ Rights of Man, p. 61. + Ibid. "The *«The portion of liberty enjoyed in England, is just enough to enslave a country by, more productively than by defpotifm; and that, as the real object of all defpotism is revenue, that a government fo formed obtains more than it could, either by direct defpotifm, or in a full ftate of freedom, and is therefore on the ground of interest opposed to both." Ariftocracy is a law against every law of nature, and nature herself calls for it's deftruction. Establish family justice, and aristocracy falls. By the ariftocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family of fix children, five are expofed. Ariftocracy has never but one child; the reft are begotten to be devoured; they are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the natural parent prepares the unnatural repaft." "There is an unnatural unfitness in an ariftocracy to be legiflators for a nation; their ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at the very fource; they begin life by trampling on all their younger brothers and fifters, and relations of every kind, and are taught and educated fo to do. With what ideas of juftice or honour can that man enter an houfe • Rights of Man, p. 62. + Ibid. p.69. |