CONNECTION OF POLITICS AND MORALS.

POLITICAL inquiry may be distributed under two heads: first, what are the regulations which will conduce to the well-being of man in society; and, secondly, what is the authority which is competent to prescribe regulations.

The regulations to which the conduct of men living in society ought to be conformed, may be considered in two ways: first, those moral laws which are enjoined upon us by the dictates of enlightened reason; and, secondly, those principles à deviation from which the interest of the community may be supposed to render it proper to repress

Morality is that system of conduct which is determined by a consideration of the greatest general good: he is entitled to the highest moral approbation, whose conduct is, in the greatest number of instances, or in the most momentous instances, governed by views of benevolence, and made subservient to . public utility. In like manner the only regulations which any political authority can be justly entitled to inforce, are such as are the best adapted to public utility. Consequently just political regulations are nothing more than a certain select part of moral law. The supreme power in a state ought not, in the strictest sense, to require anything of its members, that an understanding sufficiently enlightened would not prescribe without such interference.

These considerations seem to lead to the detection of a mistake which has been very generally committed by political writers of our own country. They have for the most part confined their researches to the question of What is a just political authority or the most eligible form of government, consigning to others the delineation of right principles of conduct and equitable regulations. But there appears to be something preposterous in this mode of proceeding. A well constituted government is only the means for inforcing suitable regulations. One form of government is preferable to another in exact proportion to the security it affords, that nothing shall be done in the name of the community, which is not conducive to the welfare of the whole. The question therefore, What it is which is thus conducive, is upon every account entitled to the first place in our disquisitions.

One of the ill consequences which have resulted from this distorted view of the science of politics, is a notion very generally entertained, that a community or society of men has a right to lay down whatever rules it may think proper for its own observance. This will presently be proved to be an erroneous position. It may be prudent in an individual to submit in some cases to the usurpation of a majority; it may be unavoidable in a community to proceed upon the imperfect and erroneous views they shall chance to entertain: but this is a misfortune entailed upon us by the nature of government, and not a matter of right.

A second ill consequence that has arisen from this proceeding, is that, politics having been thus violently separated from morality, government itself has no longer been compared with its true criterion. Instead of inquiring what species of government was most conducive to the public welfare, an unprofitable disquisition has been instituted respecting the probable origin of government; and its different forms have been estimated not by the consequences with which they were pregnant, but the source from which they sprung. Hence men have been prompted to look back to the folly of their ancestors, rather than forward to the benefits derivable from the improvement of human knowledge. Hence, in investigating their rights, they have recurred less to the great principles of morality, than to the records and charters of a barbarous age. As if men were not entitled to all the benefits of the social state, till they could prove their inheriting them from some bequest of their distant progenitors. As if men were not as justifiable and meritorious, in planting liberty in a soil in which it had never existed, as in restoring it where it could be proved only to have suffered a temporary suspension.

The reasons here assigned strongly tend to evince the necessity of estab

lishing the genuine principles of society, before we enter upon the direct consideration of government. It may be proper in this place to state the fundamental distinction which exists between these topics of inquiry. Men associated at first for the sake of mutual assistance. They did not foresee that any restraint would be necessary, to regulate the conduct of individual members of the society, towards each other, or towards the whole. The necessity of restraint grew out of the errors and perverseness of a few. An acute writer (Paine) has expressed this idea with peculiar felicity. "Society and government," says he, "are different in themselves, and have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. Society is in every state a blessing; government even in its best state but a necessary evil."-Godwin's Political Justice.

NOXIOUS GASOMETERS.

IN a country containing much waste land, a certain man, pretending that the amount of population exceeded the available means of subsistence, wrote a book to reccommend the poisoning of all but a limited number of the children of the poor. If that man's motives were humane, if he were actuated by a desire to diminish the count of suffering, his humanity must have been most wretchedly short-sighted not to perceive that it is a more humane and a juster thing to effect a cure, than to apply any palliatives; to remove the cause of misery than to attempt to destroy a part of the consequence. A healthy and consistent humanity is clearer-visioned. But, if his motive were a dread of the privileges of his own caste being invaded by the robbed and stinted poor, if his desire were to preserve the luxuries of the rich at the expense of the first rights of humanity, though he veil his depravity under the cloak of "abridging the miseries" of his victims- -The execrations of society have been poured out upon him: and most justly, if the fire of Wrath, for the purifying of Evil, may be spared to scorch the compelled evil-doer. He needs no outward branding.

But even the rich man has risen from the couch of his accustomed apathy. There is some shame yet where his heart should be; and earnestly he deprecates our condemnation. He "did not write the Book of Murder;" he is "no advocate for infanticide: let the poor live, and increase and multiply" -the number of his slaves. Out upon the hypocrites, whether they be poorlaw commissioners or not, who, so pitifully disclaiming all participation in the devising or practice of this new method of murder, are yet the supporters of Establishments founded and endowed and conserved to fill the common air of this free country with a more noxious poison, whose unnumbered victims drag on a long life of disease and torture, dying "so slowly that none call it murder"! Which is the fouler crime-to destroy an infant; or to flog a man to death to the sound of martial music, to murder men by thousands on a battle-field, to bind tens of thousands of families to the unresting wheel of misery? Which is the greater wrong to deprive a mother of her children; or to doom those children to a life of agonizing toil, to the horrors of prostitution, and, having so disposed of them for the service of the better classes, to separate the parents, to sunder those whom God hath joined, and bury them, bowed with their long servitude, and heart-broken, while the breath is yet in them, in divided graves-as a punishment for being crushed by the ruling Evil? Alas, for the lesser enormity! O God! how monstrous are our hateful deeds, when the less offences are of such fearful deformity!

But, has not the State a right to dispose of the lives of its members?" The State-Do you mean a tyrant Faction? A Faction has no right to the life, the labour, or the obedience of even one member of the community. What, if the increase of the people should outrun the means of subsistence ?"

66

Wait till there is some token of the coming of that time. The soil is not yet exhausted. There are yet many acres of waste. Before we shall deem it necessary to murder the children of the poor, or even to tell their parents that there is "no place for them," we shall advise the throwing open of noble castles, that the houseless may have shelter; and the ploughing up of noble parks, to grow corn for the labouring and destitute. THIS WAS THE POORLAW PROMULGATED BY CHRIST. Noble and gentle CHRISTIANS! what think you of our advising?

And when the scarceness of crime shall permit the earth to be filled, the enlightened race will be aware of better remedies than either infanticide, or adult-murder, which men call War.-Gracchus.

UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.

From a Speech delivered in the National Assembly of France, on the 11th of August, 1791, by Maximilian Robespierre.

How

"But," say you, "the people!-persons who have nothing to lose!" unjust and false in the eyes of truth is this language of delirious pride! The persons you speak of must, to give meaning to your words, be persons living or subsisting in society without any means of living and subsisting. For if they do possess such means, they cannot, methinks, be said to have nothing to lose or to preserve. Yes, the coarse garments that cover my body, the humble habitation in which I purchase the right of living in retirement and peace, the modest income with which I maintain my wife and children-all that, I own, is not lands, castles, equipages-all that is called nothing, perhaps, for luxury and opulence, but it is something for humanity; it is a sacred property- -as sacred, unquestionably, as the superb domains of opulence. What say I?-my liberty, my life, the right of obtaining surety for myself and those who are dear to me, the right of repelling oppression, that of freely exercising all the faculties of my mind and heart-all these blessings, so sweet, so cherished, the purest, the most benignant that nature has allotted to man-are not these alike confided, as your own, to the guardianship of the laws? And you tell me that I have no interest in those laws! and you wish to despoil me of the share, to which I have the same claim as yourselves, in the administration of the commonwealth, and that for the sole reason that you are richer than I! Ah! if the equilibrium be at all destroyed, is it not in favour of the least easy citizens the balance ought to incline? Are not the laws, is not public authority established with a view to protect weakness against injustice and oppression? Is it not, therefore, outraging all social principles, to place such authority exclusively in the hands of the rich?

But the rich, the men of power, have reasoned otherwise. By a strange abuse of words, they have restricted to certain objects the general idea of property; they have styled themselves the only proprietors; they have pretended that proprietors alone are worthy of the name of citizen; they have named their own particular interest the general interest; and, to assure the success of that pretension, they have seized possession of all social power.

But what, after all, is this rare merit of paying a marc of silver, or the like tax, to which you annex such lofty prerogatives? If you carry to the public treasury a larger contribution than mine, is it not because society has procured you greater pecuniary advantages? And if we would follow out this idea, what is the source of this extreme inequality of fortunes which amasses all riches in a small number of hands? Is it not bad laws, bad governments-in short, all the vices of corrupted societies? Then, why should the victims of those abuses be punished for their misfortunes by the loss of