06 - Letter 6
LETTER VI TO THE CITIZEN
331. Having now given my Advice to the YOUTH, the grown-up MAN, the LOVER, the HUSBAND and the FATHER, I shall, in this concluding Number, tender my Advice to the CITIZEN, in which capacity every man has rights to enjoy and duties to perform, and these too of importance not inferior to those which belong to him, or are imposed upon him, as son, parent, husband or father. The word citizen is not, in its application, confined to the mere inhabitants of cities: it means, a member of a civil society, or community; and, in order to have a clear comprehension of man’s rights and duties in this capacity, we must take a look at the origin of civil communities.
332. Time was when the inhabitants of this island, for instance, laid claim to all things in it, without the words owner or property being known. God had given to all the people all the land and all the trees, and every thing else, just as he has given the burrows and the grass to the rabbits, and the bushes and the berries to the birds; and each man had the good things of this world in a greater or less degree in proportion to his skill, his strength and his valour. This is what is called living under the LAW OF NATURE; that is to say, the law of self-preservation and self-enjoyment, without any restraint imposed by a regard for the good of our neighbours.
333. In process of time, no matter from what cause, men made amongst themselves a compact, or an agreement, to divide the land and its products in such manner that each should have a share to his own exclusive use, and that each man should be protected in the exclusive enjoyment of his share by the united power of the rest; and, in order to ensure the due and certain application of this united power, the whole of the people agreed to be bound by regulations, called LAWS. Thus arose civil society; thus arose property; thus arose the words mine and thine. One man became possessed of more good things than another, because he was more industrious, more skilful, more careful, or more frugal: so that LABOUR, of one sort or another, was the BASIS of all property.
334. In what manner civil societies proceeded in providing for the making of laws and for the enforcing of them; the various ways in which they took measures to protect the weak against the strong; how they have gone to work to secure wealth against the attacks of poverty; these are subjects that it would require volumes to detail; but these truths are written on the heart of man: that all men are, by nature, equal; that civil society can never have arisen from any motive other than that of the benefit of the whole; that, whenever civil society makes the greater part of the people worse off than they were under the Law of Nature, the civil compact is, in conscience, dissolved, and all the rights of nature return; that, in civil society, the rights and the duties go hand in hand, and that, when the former are taken away, the latter cease to exist.
335. Now, then, in order to act well our part, as citizens, or members of the community, we ought clearly to understand what our rights are; for, on our enjoyment of these depend our duties, rights going before duties, as value received goes before payment. I know well, that just the contrary of this is taught in our political schools, where we are told, that our first duty is to obey the laws; and it is not many years ago, that HORSLEY, Bishop of Rochester, told us, that the people had nothing to do with the laws but to obey them. The truth is, however, that the citizen’s first duty is to maintain his rights, as it is the purchaser’s first duty to receive the thing for which he has contracted.
336. Our rights in society are numerous; the right of enjoying life and property; the right of exerting our physical and mental powers in an innocent manner; but, the great right of all, and without which there is, in fact, no right, is, the right of taking a part in the making of the laws by which we are governed. This right is founded in that law of Nature spoken of above; it springs out of the very principle of civil society; for what compact, what agreement, what common assent, can possibly be imagined by which men would give up all the rights of nature, all the free enjoyment of their bodies and their minds, in order to subject themselves to rules and laws, in the making of which they should have nothing to say, and which should be enforced upon them without their assent? The great right, therefore, of every man, the right of rights, is the right of having a share in the making of the laws, to which the good of the whole makes it his duty to submit.
337. With regard to the means of enabling every man to enjoy this share, they have been different, in different countries, and, in the same countries, at different times. Generally it has been, and in great communities it must be, by the choosing of a few to speak and act in behalf of the many: and, as there will hardly ever be perfect unanimity amongst men assembled for any purpose whatever, where fact and argument are to decide the question, the decision is left to the majority, the compact being that the decision of the majority shall be that of the whole. Minors are excluded from this right, because the law considers them as infants, because it makes the parent answerable for civil damages committed by them, and because of their legal incapacity to make any compact. Women are excluded because husbands are answerable in law for their wives, as to their civil damages, and because the very nature of their sex makes the exercise of this right incompatible with the harmony and happiness of society. Men stained with indelible crimes are excluded, because they have forfeited their right by violating the laws, to which their assent has been given. Insane persons are excluded, because they are dead in the eye of the law, because the law demands no duty at their hands, because they cannot violate the law, because the law cannot affect them; and, therefore, they ought to have no hand in making it.
338. But, with these exceptions, where is the ground whereon to maintain that any man ought to be deprived of this right, which he derives directly from the law of Nature, and which springs, as I said before, out of the same source with civil society itself? Am I told, that property ought to confer this right? Property sprang from labour, and not labour from property; so that if there were to be a distinction here, it ought to give the preference to labour. All men are equal by nature; nobody denies that they all ought to be equal in the eye of the law; but, how are they to be thus equal, if the law begin by suffering some to enjoy this right and refusing the enjoyment to others? It is the duty of every man to defend his country against an enemy, a duty imposed by the law of Nature as well as by that of civil society, and without the recognition of this duty, there could exist no independent nation and no civil society. Yet, how are you to maintain that this is the duty of every man, if you deny to some men the enjoyment of a share in making the laws? Upon what principle are you to contend for equality here, while you deny its existence as to the right of sharing in the making of the laws? The poor man has a body and a soul as well as the rich man; like the latter, he has parents, wife and children; a bullet or a sword is as deadly to him as to the rich man; there are hearts to ache and tears to flow for him as well as for the squire or the lord or the loan-monger: yet, notwithstanding this equality, he is to risk all, and, if he escape, he is still to be denied an equality of rights! If, in such a state of things, the artisan or labourer, when called out to fight in defence of his country, were to answer: ’Why should I risk my life? I have no possession but my labour; no enemy will take that from me; you, the rich, possess all the land and all its products; you make what laws you please without my participation or assent; you punish me at your pleasure; you say that my want of property excludes me from the right of having a share in the making of the laws; you say that the property that I have in my labour is nothing worth; on what ground, then, do you call on me to risk my life?’ If, in such a case, such questions were put, the answer is very difficult to be imagined.
339. In cases of civil commotion the matter comes still more home to us. On what ground is the rich man to call the artisan from his shop or the labourer from the field to join the sheriff’s possé or the militia, if he refuse to the labourer and artisan the right of sharing in the making of the laws? Why are they to risk their lives here? To uphold the laws, and to protect property. What! laws, in the making of, or assenting to, which they have been allowed to have no share? Property, of which they are said to possess none? What! compel men to come forth and risk their lives for the protection of property; and then, in the same breath, tell them, that they are not allowed to share in the making of the laws, because, and ONLY BECAUSE, they have no property! Not because they have committed any crime; not because they are idle or profligate; not because they are vicious in any way; out solely because they have no property; and yet, at the same time, compel them to come forth and risk their lives for the protection of property!
340. But, the PAUPERS? Ought they to share in the making of the laws? And why not? What is a pauper; what is one of the men to whom this degrading appellation is applied? A very poor man; a man who is, from some cause or other, unable to supply himself with food and raiment without aid from the parish-rates. And, is that circumstance alone to deprive him of his right, a right of which he stands more in need than any other man? Perhaps he has, for many years of his life, contributed directly to those rates; and ten thousand to one he has, by his labour, contributed to them indirectly. The aid which, under such circumstances, he receives, is his right; he receives it not as an alms: he is no mendicant; he begs not; he comes to receive that which the law of the country awards him in lieu of the larger portion assigned him by the law of Nature. Pray mark that, and let it be deeply engraven on your memory. The audacious and merciless MALTHUS (a parson of the church establishment) recommended, some years ago, the passing of a law to put an end to the giving of parish relief, though he recommended no law to put an end to the enormous taxes paid by poor people. In his book he said, that the poor should be left to the law of Nature, which, in case of their having nothing to buy food with, doomed them to starve. They would ask nothing better than to be left to the law of Nature; that law which knows nothing about buying food or any thing else; that law which bids the hungry and the naked take food and raiment wherever they find it best and nearest at hand; that law which awards all possessions to the strongest; that law the operations of which would clear out the London meat-markets and the drapers’ and jewellers’ shops in about half an hour: to this law the parson wished the parliament to leave the poorest of the working people; but, if the parliament had done it, it would have been quickly seen, that this law was far from ’dooming them to be starved.’
341. Trusting that it is unnecessary for me to express a hope, that barbarous thoughts like those of Malthus and his tribe will never be entertained by any young man who has read the previous Numbers of this work, let me return to my very, very poor man, and ask, whether it be consistent with justice, with humanity, with reason, to deprive a man of the most precious of his political rights, because, and only because, he has been, in a pecuniary way, singularly unfortunate? The Scripture says, ’Despise not the poor, because he is poor;’ that is to say, despise him not on account of his poverty. Why, then, deprive him of his right; why put him out of the pale of the law, on account of his poverty? There are some men, to be sure, who are reduced to poverty by their vices, by idleness, by gaming, by drinking, by squandering; but, the far greater part by bodily ailments, by misfortunes to the effects of which all men may, without any fault, and even without any folly, be exposed: and, is there a man on earth so cruelly unjust as to wish to add to the sufferings of such persons by stripping them of their political rights? How many thousands of industrious and virtuous men have, within these few years, been brought down from a state of competence to that of pauperism! And, is it just to strip such men of their rights, merely because they are thus brought down? When I was at ELY, last spring, there were in that neighbourhood, three paupers cracking stones on the roads, who had all three been, not only rate-payers, but overseers of the poor, within seven years of the day when I was there. Is there any man so barbarous as to say, that these men ought, merely on account of their misfortunes, to be deprived of their political rights? Their right to receive relief is as perfect as any right of property; and, would you, merely because they claim this right, strip them of another right? To say no more of the injustice and the cruelty, is there reason, is there common sense in this? What! if a farmer or tradesman be, by flood or by fire, so totally ruined as to be compelled, surrounded by his family, to resort to the parish-book, would you break the last heart-string of such a man by making him feel the degrading loss of his political rights?
342. Here, young man of sense and of spirit; here is the point on which you are to take your stand. There are always men enough to plead the cause of the rich; enough and enough to echo the woes of the fallen great; but, be it your part to show compassion for those who labour, and to maintain their rights. Poverty is not a crime, and, though it sometimes arises from faults, it is not, even in that case, to be visited by punishment beyond that which it brings with itself. Remember, that poverty is decreed by the very nature of man. The Scripture says, that ’the poor shall never cease from out of the land;’ that is to say, that there shall always be some very poor people. This is inevitable from the very nature of things. It is necessary to the existence of mankind, that a very large portion of every people should live by manual labour; and, as such labour is pain, more or less, and as no living creature likes pain, it must be, that the far greater part of labouring people will endure only just as much of this pain as is absolutely necessary to the supply of their daily wants. Experience says that this has always been, and reason and nature tell us, that this must always be. Therefore, when ailments, when losses, when untoward circumstances of any sort, stop or diminish the daily supply, want comes; and every just government will provide, from the general stock, the means to satisfy this want.
343. Nor is the deepest poverty without its useful effects in society. To the practice of the virtues of abstinence, sobriety, care, frugality, industry, and even honesty and amiable manners and acquirement of talent, the two great motives are, to get upwards in riches or fame, and to avoid going downwards to poverty, the last of which is the most powerful of the two. It is, therefore, not with contempt, but with compassion, that we should look on those, whose state is one of the decrees of nature, from whose sad example we profit, and to whom, in return, we ought to make compensation by every indulgent and kind act in our power, and particularly by a defence of their rights. To those who labour, we, who labour not with our hands, owe all that we eat, drink and wear; all that shades us by day and that shelters us by night; all the means of enjoying health and pleasure; and, therefore, if we possess talent for the task, we are ungrateful or cowardly, or both, if we omit any effort within our power to prevent them from being slaves; and, disguise the matter how we may, a slave, a real slave, every man is, who has no share in making the laws which he is compelled to obey.
344. What is a slave? For, let us not be amused by a name; but look well into the matter. A slave is, in the first place, a man who has no property; and property means something that he has, and that nobody can take from him without his leave, or consent. Whatever man, no matter what he may call himself or any body else may call him, can have his money or his goods taken from him by force, by virtue of an order, or ordinance, or law, which he has had no hand in making, and to which he has not given his assent, has no property, and is merely a depositary of the goods of his master. A slave has no property in his labour; and any man who is compelled to give up the fruit of his labour to another, at the arbitrary will of that other, has no property in his labour, and is, therefore, a slave, whether the fruit of his labour be taken from him directly or indirectly. If it be said, that he gives up this fruit of his labour by his own will, and that it is not forced from him. I answer, To be sure he may avoid eating and drinking and may go naked; but, then he must die; and on this condition, and this condition only, can he refuse to give up the fruit of his labour; ’Die, wretch, or surrender as much of your income, or the fruit of your labour as your masters choose to take.’ This is, in fact, the language of the rulers to every man who is refused to have a share in the making of the laws to which he is forced to submit.
345. But, some one may say, slaves are private property, and may be bought and sold, out and out, like cattle. And, what is it to the slave, whether he be property of one or of many; or, what matters it to him, whether he pass from master to master by a sale for an indefinite term, or be let to hire by the year, month, or week? It is, in no case, the flesh and blood and bones that are sold, but the labour; and, if you actually sell the labour of man, is not that man a slave, though you sell it for only a short time at once? And, as to the principle, so ostentatiously displayed in the case of the black slave-trade, that ’man ought not to have a property in man,’ it is even an advantage to the slave to be private property, because the owner has then a clear and powerful interest in the preservation of his life, health and strength, and will, therefore, furnish him amply with the food and raiment necessary for these ends. Every one knows, that public property is never so well taken care of as private property; and this, too, on the maxim, that ’that which is every body’s business is nobody’s business.’ Every one knows that a rented farm is not so well kept in heart, as a farm in the hands of the owner. And as to punishments and restraints, what difference is there, whether these be inflicted and imposed by a private owner, or his overseer, or by the agents and overseers of a body of proprietors? In short, if you can cause a man to be imprisoned or whipped if he do not work enough to please you; if you can sell him by auction for a time limited; if you can forcibly separate him from his wife to prevent their having children; if you can shut him up in his dwelling place when you please, and for as long a time as you please; if you can force him to draw a cart or wagon like a beast of draught; if you can, when the humour seizes you, and at the suggestion of your mere fears, or whim, cause him to be shut up in a dungeon during your pleasure: if you can, at your pleasure, do these things to him, is it not to be impudently hypocritical to affect to call him a free-man? But, after all, these may all be wanting, and yet the man be a slave, if he be allowed to have no property; and, as I have shown, no property he can have, not even in that labour, which is not only property, but the basis of all other property, unless he have a share in making the laws to which he is compelled to submit.
346. It is said, that he may have this share virtually though not in form and name; for that his employers may have such share, and they will, as a matter of course, act for him. This doctrine, pushed home, would make the chief of the nation the sole maker of the laws; for, if the rich can thus act for the poor, why should not the chief act for the rich? This matter is very completely explained by the practice in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. There the maxim is, that every free man, with the exception of men stained with crime and men insane, has a right to have a voice in choosing those who make the laws. The number of Representatives sent to the Congress is, in each State, proportioned to the number of free people. But, as there are slaves in some of the States, these States have a certain portion of additional numbers on account of those slaves! Thus the slaves are represented by their owners, and this is real, practical, open and undisguised virtual representation! No doubt that white men may be represented in the same way; for the colour of the skin is nothing; but let them be called slaves, then; let it not be pretended that they are free men; let not the word liberty be polluted by being applied to their state; let it be openly and honestly avowed, as in America, that they are slaves; and then will come the question whether men ought to exist in such a state, or whether they ought to do every thing in their power to rescue themselves from it.
347. If the right to have a share in making the laws were merely a feather; if it were a fanciful thing; if it were only a speculative theory; if it were but an abstract principle; on any of these suppositions, it might be considered as of little importance. But it is none of these; it is a practical matter; the want of it not only is, but must of necessity be, felt by every man who lives under that want. If it were proposed to the shopkeepers in a town, that a rich man or two, living in the neighbourhood, should have power to send, whenever they pleased, and take away as much as they pleased of the money of the shopkeepers, and apply it to what uses they please; what an outcry the shopkeepers would make! And yet, what would this be more than taxes imposed on those who have no voice in choosing the persons who impose them? Who lets another man put his hand into his purse when he pleases? Who, that has the power to help himself, surrenders his goods or his money to the will of another? Has it not always been, and must it not always be, true, that, if your property be at the absolute disposal of others, your ruin is certain? And if this be, of necessity, the case amongst individuals and parts of the community, it must be the case with regard to the whole community.
348. Aye, and experience shows us that it always has been the case. The natural and inevitable consequences of a want of this right in the people have, in all countries, been taxes pressing the industrious and laborious to the earth; severe laws and standing armies to compel the people to submit to those taxes; wealth, luxury, and splendour, amongst those who make the laws and receive the taxes; poverty, misery, immorality and crime, amongst those who bear the burdens; and at last commotion, revolt, revenge, and rivers of blood. Such have always been, and such must always be, the consequences of a want of this right of all men to share in the making of the laws, a right, as I have before shown, derived immediately from the law of Nature, springing up out of the same source with civil society, and cherished in the heart of man by reason and by experience.
349. Well, then, this right being that, without the enjoyment of which there is, in reality, no right at all, how manifestly is it the first duty of every man to do all in his power to maintain this right where it exists, and to restore it where it has been lost? For observe, it must, at one time, have existed in every civil community, it being impossible that it could ever be excluded by any social compact; absolutely impossible, because it is contrary to the law of self-preservation to believe, that men would agree to give up the rights of nature without stipulating for some benefit. Before we can affect to believe that this right was not reserved, in such compact, as completely as the right to live was reserved, we must affect to believe, that millions of men, under no control but that of their own passions and desires, and having all the earth and its products at the command of their strength and skill, consented to be for ever, they and their posterity, the slaves of a few.
350. We cannot believe this, and therefore, without going back into history and precedents, we must believe, that, in whatever civil community this right does not exist, it has been lost, or rather, unjustly taken away. And then, having seen the terrible evils which always have arisen, and always must arise, from the want of it; being convinced that, where lost or taken away by force or fraud, it is our very first duty to do all in our power to restore it, the next consideration is, how one ought to act in the discharge of this most sacred duty; for sacred it is even as the duties of husband and father. For, besides the baseness of the thought of quietly submitting to be a slave oneself, we have here, besides our duty to the community, a duty to perform towards our children and our children’s children. We all acknowledge that it is our bounden duty to provide, as far as our power will go, for the competence, the health, and the good character of our children; but, is this duty superior to that of which I am now speaking? What is competence, what is health, if the possessor be a slave, and hold his possessions at the will of another, or others; as he must do if destitute of the right to a share in the making of the laws? What is competence, what is health, if both can, at any moment, be snatched away by the grasp or the dungeon of a master; and his master he is who makes the laws without his participation or assent? And, as to character, as to fair fame, when the white slave puts forward pretensions to those, let him no longer affect to commiserate the state of his sleek and fat brethren in Barbadoes and Jamaica; let him hasten to mix the hair with the wool, to blend the white with the black, and to lose the memory of his origin amidst a dingy generation.
351. Such, then, being the nature of the duty, how are we to go to work in the performance of it, and what are our means? With regard to these, so various are the circumstances, so endless the differences in the states of society, and so many are the cases when it would be madness to attempt that which it would be prudence to attempt in others, that no general rule can be given beyond this; that, the right and the duty being clear to our minds, the means that are surest and swiftest are the best. In every such case, however, the great and predominant desire ought to be not to employ any means beyond those of reason and persuasion, as long as the employment of these afford a ground for rational expectation of success. Men are, in such a case, labouring, not for the present day only, but for ages to come; and therefore they should not slacken in their exertions, because the grave may close upon them before the day of final triumph arrive. Amongst the virtues of the good Citizen are those of fortitude and patience; and, when he has to carry on his struggle against corruptions deep and widely-rooted, he is not to expect the baleful tree to come down at a single blow; he must patiently remove the earth that props and feeds it, and sever the accursed roots one by one.
352. Impatience here is a very bad sign. I do not like your patriots, who, because the tree does not give way at once, fall to blaming all about them, accuse their fellow-sufferers of cowardice, because they do not do that which they themselves dare not think of doing. Such conduct argues chagrin and disappointment; and these argue a selfish feeling: they argue, that there has been more of private ambition and gain at work than of public good. Such blamers, such general accusers, are always to be suspected. What does the real patriot want more than to feel conscious that he has done his duty towards his country; and that, if life should not allow him time to see his endeavours crowned with success, his children will see it? The impatient patriots are like the young men (mentioned in the beautiful fable of LA FONTAINE) who ridiculed the man of fourscore, who was planting an avenue of very small trees, which, they told him, that he never could expect to see as high as his head. ’Well,’ said he, ’and what of that? If their shade afford me no pleasure, it may afford pleasure to my children, and even to you; and, therefore, the planting of them gives me pleasure.’
353. It is the want of the noble disinterestedness, so beautifully expressed in this fable, that produces the impatient patriots. They wish very well to their country, because they want some of the good for themselves. Very natural that all men should wish to see the good arrive, and wish to share in it too; but, we must look on the dark side of nature to find the disposition to cast blame on the whole community because our wishes are not instantly accomplished, and especially to cast blame on others for not doing that which we ourselves dare not attempt. There is, however, a sort of patriot a great deal worse than this; he, who having failed himself, would see his country enslaved for ever, rather than see its deliverance achieved by others. His failure has, perhaps, arisen solely from his want of talent, or discretion; yet his selfish heart would wish his country sunk in everlasting degradation, lest his inefficiency for the task should be established by the success of others. A very hateful character, certainly, but, I am sorry to say, by no means rare. Envy, always associated with meanness of soul, always detestable, is never so detestable as when it shows itself here.
354. Be it your care, my young friend (and I tender you this as my parting advice), if you find this base and baleful passion, which the poet calls ’the eldest born of hell;’ if you find it creeping into your heart, be it your care to banish it at once and for ever; for, if once it nestle there, farewell to all the good which nature has enabled you to do, and to your peace into the bargain. It has pleased God to make an unequal distribution of talent, of industry, of perseverance, of a capacity to labour, of all the qualities that give men distinction. We have not been our own makers: it is no fault in you that nature has placed him above you, and, surely, it is no fault in him; and would you punish him on account, and only on account, of his pre-eminence! If you have read this book you will startle with horror at the thought: you will, as to public matters, act with zeal and with good humour, though the place you occupy be far removed from the first; you will support with the best of your abilities others, who, from whatever circumstance, may happen to take the lead; you will not suffer even the consciousness and the certainty of your own superior talents to urge you to do any thing which might by possibility be injurious to your country’s cause; you will be forbearing under the aggressions of ignorance, conceit, arrogance, and even the blackest of ingratitude superadded, if by resenting these you endanger the general good; and, above all things, you will have the justice to bear in mind, that that country which gave you birth, is, to the last hour of your capability, entitled to your exertions in her behalf, and that you ought not, by acts of commission or of omission, to visit upon her the wrongs which may have been inflicted on you by the envy and malice of individuals. Love of one’s native soil is a feeling which nature has implanted in the human breast, and that has always been peculiarly strong in the breasts of Englishmen. God has given us a country of which to be proud, and that freedom, greatness and renown, which were handed down to us by our wise and brave forefathers, bid us perish to the last man, rather than suffer the land of their graves to become a land of slavery, impotence and dishonour.
355. In the words with which I concluded my English Grammar, which I addressed to my son James, I conclude my advice to you. ’With English and French on your tongue and in your pen, you have a resource, not only greatly valuable in itself, but a resource that you can be deprived of by none of those changes and chances which deprive men of pecuniary possessions, and which, in some cases, make the purse-proud man of yesterday a crawling sycophant to-day. Health, without which life is not worth having, you will hardly fail to secure by early rising, exercise, sobriety, and abstemiousness as to food. Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives; and the length of life ought to be measured by the number and importance of our ideas, and not by the number of our days. Never, therefore, esteem men merely on account of their riches or their station. Respect goodness, find it where you may. Honour talent wherever you behold it unassociated with vice; but, honour it most when accompanied with exertion, and especially when exerted in the cause of truth and justice; and, above all things, hold it in honour, when it steps forward to protect defenceless innocence against the attacks of powerful guilt.’ These words, addressed to my own son, I now, in taking my leave, address to you. Be just, be industrious, be sober, and be happy; and the hope that these effects will, in some degree, have been caused by this little work, will add to the happiness of Your friend and humble servant,
WM. COBBETT.
Kensington, 25th Aug. 1830.