Chapter XX: Preface (19)

This passage has been well answered by Mr. Cobbett in one word, ‘Parson’;—the most expressive apostrophe that ever was made; and it might be answered as effectually by another word, which I shall omit. When Mr. Malthus asserts, that the poor man and his family have been doomed to starve by the laws of nature, which are the laws of God, he means by the laws of God and nature, the physical and necessary inability of the earth to supply food for more than a certain number of human beings; but if he means that the wants of the poor arise from the impossibility of procuring food for them, while the rich roll in abundance, or, we will say, maintain their dogs and horses, &c. out of their ostentatious superfluities, he asserts what he knows not to be true. Mr. Malthus wishes to confound the necessary limits of the produce of the earth with the arbitrary and artificial distribution of that produce according to the institutions of society, or the caprice of individuals, the laws of God and nature with the laws of man. And what proves the fallacy is, that the laws of man in the present case actually afford the relief, which he would wilfully deny; he proposes to repeal those laws, and then to tell the poor man impudently, that ‘the laws of God and nature have doomed him and his family to starve, for disobeying their repeated admonitions,’ stuck on the church-door for the last twelve months! ’Tis much.

I have in a separate work made the following remarks on the above proposal, which are a little cavalier, not too cavalier;—a little contemptuous, not too contemptuous; a little gross, but not too gross for the subject.—

‘I am not sorry that I am at length come to this passage. It will I hope decide the reader’s opinion of the benevolence, wisdom, piety, candour, and disinterested simplicity of Mr. Malthus’s mind. Any comments that I might make upon it to strengthen this impression must be faint and feeble. I give up the task of doing justice to the moral beauties that pervade every line of it, in despair. There are some instances of an heroical contempt for the narrow prejudices of the world, of a perfect refinement from the vulgar feelings of human nature, that must only suffer by a comparison with any thing else.

I shall not myself be so uncandid as not to confess, that I think the poor laws bad things; and that it would be well, if they could be got rid of, consistently with humanity and justice. This I do not think they could in the present state of things, and other circumstances remaining as they are. The reason why I object to Mr. Malthus’s plan is, that it does not go to the root of the evil, or attack it in its principle, but its effects. He confounds the cause with the effect. The wide spreading tyranny, dependence, indolence, and unhappiness, of which Mr. Malthus is so sensible, are not occasioned by the increase of the poor-rates, but these are the natural consequence of that increasing tyranny, dependence, indolence, and unhappiness occasioned by other causes.

Mr. Malthus desires his readers to look at the enormous proportion in which the poor-rates have increased within the last ten years. But have they increased in any greater proportion than the other taxes, which rendered them necessary, and, which I think, were employed for much more mischievous purposes? I would ask, what have the poor got by their encroachments for the last ten years? Do they work less hard? Are they better fed? Do they marry oftener, and with better prospects? Are they grown pampered and insolent? Have they changed places with the rich? Have they been cunning enough, by means of the poor-laws, to draw off all their wealth and superfluities from the men of property? Have they got so much as a quarter of an hour’s leisure, a farthing candle, or a cheese-paring more than they had? Has not the price of provisions risen enormously? Has not the price of labour almost stood still? Have not the government and the rich had their way in every thing? Have they not gratified their ambition, their pride, their obstinacy, their ruinous extravagance? Have they not squandered the resources of the country as they pleased? Have they not heaped up wealth on themselves, and their dependents? Have they not multiplied sinecures, places, and pensions? Have they not doubled the salaries of those that existed before? Has there been any want of new creations of peers, who would thus be impelled to beget heirs to their titles and estates, and saddle the younger branches of their rising families, by means of their new influence, on the country at large? Has there been any want of contracts, of loans, of monopolies of corn, of a good understanding between the rich and the powerful to assist one another, and to fleece the poor? Have the poor prospered? Have the rich declined? What then have they to complain of? What ground is there for the apprehension, that wealth is secretly changing hands, and that the whole property of the country will shortly be absorbed in the poor’s fund? Do not the poor create their own fund? Is not the necessity for such a fund first occasioned by the unequal weight with which the rich press upon the poor; and has not the increase of that fund in the last ten years been occasioned by the additional exorbitant demands, which have been made upon the poor and industrious, which, without some assistance from the public, they could not possibly have answered? Whatever is the increase in the nominal amount of the poor’s fund, will not the rich always be able ultimately to throw the burthen of it on the poor themselves? But Mr. Malthus is a man of general principles. He cares little about these circumstantial details, and petty objections. He takes higher ground. He deduces all his conclusions, by an infallible logic, from the laws of God and nature. When our Essayist shall prove to me, that by these paper bullets of the brain, by his ratios of the increase of food, and the increase of mankind, he has prevented one additional tax, or taken off one oppressive duty, that he has made a single rich man retrench one article at his table: that he has made him keep a dog or a horse the less, or part with a single vice, arguing from a mathematical admeasurement of the size of the earth, and the number of inhabitants it can contain, he shall have my perfect leave to disclaim the right of the poor to subsistence, and to tie them down by severe penalties to their good behaviour, on the same profound principles. But why does Mr. Malthus practise his demonstrations on the poor only? Why are they to have a perfect system of rights and duties prescribed to them? I do not see why they alone should be put to live on these metaphysical board-wages, why they should be forced to submit to a course of _abstraction_; or why it should be meat and drink to them, more than to others, to do the will of God. Mr. Malthus’s gospel is preached only to the poor!—Even if I approved of our author’s plan, I should object to the principle on which it is founded. The parson of the parish, when a poor man comes to be married—No, not so fast. The author does not say, whether the lecture he proposes is to be read to the poor only, or to all ranks of people. Would it not sound oddly, if when the squire, who is himself worth a hundred thousand pounds, is going to be married to the rector’s daughter, who is to have fifty, the curate should read them a formal lecture on their obligation to maintain their own children and not turn them on the parish? Would it be necessary to go through the form of the address, when an amorous couple of eighty presented themselves at the altar? If the admonition were left to the parson’s own discretion, what affronts would he not subject himself to, from his neglect of old maids, and superannuated widows, and from his applying himself familiarly to the little shopkeeper, or thriving mechanic? Well, then, let us suppose that a very poor hard-working man comes to be married, and that the clergyman can take the liberty with him: he is to warn him first against fornication, and in the next place against matrimony. These are the two greatest sins which a poor man can commit, who can neither be supposed to keep his wife, nor his girl. Mr. Malthus, however, does not think them equal: for he objects strongly to a country fellow’s marrying a girl whom he has debauched, or, as the phrase is, making an honest woman of her, as aggravating the crime; because, by this means, the parish will probably have three or four children to maintain instead of one. However, as it seems rather too late to give advice to a man who is actually come to be married, it is most natural to suppose that he would marry the young woman in spite of the lecture. Here then he errs in the face of a precise warning, and should be left to the punishment of _nature_, the punishment of severe want. When he begins to feel the consequences of his error, all parish assistance is to be rigidly denied him, and the interests of humanity imperiously require that all other assistance should be withheld from him, or most sparingly administered. In the meantime, to reconcile him to this treatment, and let him see that he has nobody to complain of but himself, the parson of the parish comes to him with the certificate of his marriage, and a copy of the warning he had given him at the time, by which he is taught to know that the laws of nature, which are the laws of God, had doomed him and his family to starve for disobeying their repeated admonitions; that he had no claim of right to the smallest portion of food beyond what his labour would actually purchase; and that he ought to kiss the feet and lick the dust off the shoes of him, who gave him a reprieve from the just sentence which the laws of God and nature had passed upon him. To make this clear to him, it would be necessary to put the Essay on Population into his hands, to instruct him in the nature of a geometrical and arithmetical series, in the necessary limits to population from the size of the earth; and here would come in Mr. Malthus’s plan of education for the poor, writing, arithmetic, the use of the globes, &c. for the purpose of proving to them the necessity of their being starved. It cannot be supposed that the poor man (what with his poverty and what with being priest-ridden) should be able to resist this body of evidence, he would open his eyes to his error, and “would submit to the sufferings that were absolutely irremediable, with the fortitude of a man, and the resignation of a Christian.” He and his family might then be sent round the parish in a starving condition, accompanied by the constables and _quondam_ overseers of the poor, to see that no person, blind to “the interests of humanity,” practised upon them the abominable deception of attempting to relieve their remediless sufferings; and by the parson of the parish, to point out to the spectators the inevitable consequences of sinning against the laws of God and man. By celebrating a number of these _Auto da fes_ yearly in every parish, the greatest publicity would be given to the principle of population, “the strict line of duty would be pointed out to every man,” enforced by the most powerful sanctions; justice and humanity would flourish, they would be understood to signify that the poor have no right to live by their labour, and that the feelings of compassion and benevolence are best shewn by denying them charity; the poor would no longer be dependent on the rich, the rich could no longer wish to reduce the poor into a more complete subjection to their will, all causes of contention, of jealousy, and of irritation would have ceased between them, the struggle would be over, each class would fulfil the task assigned by heaven; the rich would oppress the poor without remorse, the poor would submit to oppression with a pious gratitude and resignation; the greatest harmony would prevail between the government and the people; there would be no longer any seditions, tumults, complaints, petitions, partisans of liberty, or tools of power; no grumbling, no repining, no discontented men of talents proposing reforms, and frivolous remedies, but we should all have the same gaiety and lightness of heart, and the same happy spirit of resignation that a man feels when he is seized with the plague, who thinks no more of the physician, but knows that his disorder is without cure. The best-laid schemes are subject, however, to unlucky reverses. Some such seem to lie in the way of that pleasing Euthanasia, and contented submission to the grinding law of necessity, projected by Mr. Malthus. We might never reach the philosophic temper of the inhabitants of modern Greece and Turkey in this respect. Many little things might happen to interrupt our progress, if we were put into ever so fair a train. For instance, the men might perhaps be talked over by the parson, and their understandings being convinced by the geometrical and arithmetical ratios, or at least so far puzzled, that they would have nothing to say for themselves, they might prepare to submit to their fate with a tolerable grace. But I am afraid that the women might prove refractory. They never will hearken to reason, and are much more governed by their feelings than by calculations. While the husband was instructing his wife in the principles of population, she might probably answer that “she did not see why her children should starve, when the squire’s lady or the parson’s lady kept half a dozen lap-dogs, and that it was but the other day, that being at the hall, or the parsonage-house, she heard Miss declare that not one of the brood that were just littered should be drowned—It was _so inhuman_ to kill the poor little things—Surely the children of the poor are as good as puppy-dogs! Was it not a week ago that the rector had a new pack of terriers sent down, and did I not hear the squire swear a tremendous oath, that he would have Mr. Such-a-one’s fine hunter, if it cost him a hundred guineas? Half that sum would save us from ruin.”—After this curtain-lecture, I conceive that the husband might begin to doubt the force of the demonstrations he had read and heard, and the next time his clerical monitor came, might pluck up courage to question the matter with him; and as we of the male sex, though dull of apprehension, are not slow at taking a hint, and can draw tough inferences from it, it is not impossible but the parson might be _gravelled_. In consequence of these accidents happening more than once, it would be buzzed about that the laws of God and nature, on which so many families had been doomed to starve, were not so clear as had been pretended. This would soon get wind amongst the mob: and at the next grand procession of the Penitents of famine, headed by Mr. Malthus in person, some discontented man of talents, who could not bear the distresses of others with the fortitude of a man and the resignation of a Christian, might undertake to question Mr. Malthus, whether the laws of nature or of God, to which he had piously sacrificed so many victims, signified any thing more than the limited extent of the earth, and the natural impossibility of providing for more than a limited number of human beings; and whether those laws could be justly put in force, to the very letter, while the actual produce of the earth, by being better husbanded, or more equally distributed, or given to men and not to beasts, might maintain in comfort double the number that actually existed, and who, not daring to demand a _fair_ proportion of the produce of their labour, humbly crave charity, and are refused out of regard to the interests of justice and humanity. Our philosopher, at this critical juncture not being able to bring into the compass of a few words all the history, metaphysics, morality, and divinity, or all the intricacies, subtleties, and callous equivocations contained in his quarto volume, might hesitate and be confounded—his own feelings and prejudices might add to his perplexity—his interrogator might persist in his question—the mob might become impatient for an answer, and not finding one to their minds, might proceed to extremities. Our unfortunate Essayist (who by that time would have become a bishop) might be ordered to the lamp-post, and his book committed to the flames,—I tremble to think of what would follow:—the poor-laws would be again renewed, and the poor no longer doomed to starve by the laws of God and nature! Some such, I apprehend, might be the consequences of attempting to enforce the abolition of the poor-laws, the extinction of private charity, and of instructing the poor in their metaphysical rights.’

QUERIES RELATING TO THE ESSAY ON POPULATION

Query 1. Whether the real source of Mr. Malthus’s Essay is not to be found in a work published in the year 1761, entitled, ‘Various Prospects of Mankind,’ by a Scotchman of the name of Wallace? Or whether this writer has not both stated the principle of the disproportion between the unlimited power of increase in population, and the limited power of increase in the means of subsistence, which principle is the corner-stone of the Essay; and whether he has not drawn the very same inference from it that Mr. Malthus has done, viz. that vice and misery are necessary to keep population down to the level of the means of subsistence?

2. Whether the chapter in Wallace, written expressly to prove these two points (or in other words, to shew that the principle of population is necessarily incompatible with any great degree of improvement in government or morals) does not completely anticipate Mr. Malthus’s work, both in its principle and its conclusion?

3. Whether the idea of an arithmetical and geometrical series by which Mr. Malthus has been thought to have furnished the precise rule or _calculus_ of the disproportion between food and population, is not, strictly speaking, inapplicable to the subject; inasmuch as in new and lately occupied countries, the quantity of food may be made to increase nearly in the same proportion as population, and in all old and well cultivated countries must be stationary, or nearly so? Whether, therefore, this mode of viewing the subject has not tended as much to embarrass as to illustrate the question, and to divert the mind from the real source of the only necessary distinction between food and population, namely, the want of sufficient room for the former to grow in; a grain of corn, as long as it has room to increase and multiply, in fact propagating its species much faster even than a man?

4. Whether the argument borrowed from Wallace, and constituting the chief scope and tenor of the first edition of the Essay, which professed to overturn all schemes of human perfectibility and Utopian forms of government from the sole principle of population, does not involve a plain contradiction;—both these authors, first of all, supposing or taking for granted a state of society in which the most perfect order, wisdom, virtue, and happiness shall prevail, and then endeavouring to shew that all these advantages would only hasten their own ruin, and end in famine, confusion, and unexampled wretchedness, in consequence of taking away the only possible checks to population, _vice_ and _misery_? Whether this objection does not suppose mankind in a state of the most perfect reason, to be utterly blind to the consequences of the unrestrained indulgence of their appetites, and with the most perfect wisdom and virtue regulating all their actions, not to have the slightest command over their animal passions? There is nothing in any of the visionary schemes of human perfection so idle as this objection brought against them, which has no more to do with the reasonings of Godwin, Condorcet, &c. (against which Mr. Malthus’s first Essay was directed) than with the prophecies of the Millennium!

5. Whether, in order to give some colour of plausibility to his argument, and to prove that the highest conceivable degree of wisdom and virtue could be of no avail in keeping down the principle of population, Mr. Malthus did not at first set out with representing this principle, to wit, the impulse to propagate the species, as a law of the same order and cogency as that of satisfying the cravings of hunger; so that reason having no power over it, vice and misery must be the necessary consequences, and only possible checks to population?

6. Whether this original view of the subject did not unavoidably lead to the most extravagant conclusions, not only by representing the total removal of all vice and misery as the greatest evil that could happen to the world, but (what is of more consequence than this speculative paradox) by throwing a suspicion and a stigma on all subordinate improvements or plans of reform, as so many clauses or sections of the same general principle? Whether the quantity of vice and misery necessary to keep population down to the level of the means of subsistence, being left quite undetermined by the author, the old barriers between vice and virtue, good and evil, were not broken down, and a perfect latitude of choice allowed between forms of government and modes of society, according to the temper of the times, or the taste of individuals; only that vice and misery being always the _safe side_, the presumption would naturally be in favour of the most barbarous, ignorant, enslaved, and profligate? Whether the stumbling-block thus thrown in the way of those who aimed at any amendment in social institutions, does not obviously account for the alarm and opposition which Mr. Malthus’s work excited on the one hand, and for the cordiality and triumph with which it was hailed on the other?

7. Whether this view of the question, which is all in which the Essay differs fundamentally from the received and less startling notions on the subject, is not palpably, and by the author’s subsequent confession, false, sophistical, and unfounded?

8. Whether the additional principle of _moral restraint_, inserted in the second and following editions of the Essay as one effectual, and as the only desirable means of checking population, does not at once overturn all the paradoxical conclusions of the author respecting the state of man in society, and whether nearly all these conclusions do not still stand in Mr. Malthus’s work as they originally stood, as false in fact as they are inconsistent in reasoning? Whether, indeed, it was likely, that Mr. Malthus would give up the sweeping conclusions of his first Essay, the fruits of his industry and the pledges of his success, without great reluctance; or in such a manner as not to leave the general plan of his work full of contradictions and almost unintelligible?

9. Whether, for example, in treating of the durability of a perfect form of government, Mr. Malthus has not ‘sicklied over the subject with the same pale and jaundiced cast of thought,’ by supposing vice and misery to be the only effectual checks to population; and in his tenacity on this his old and favourite doctrine, whether he has not formally challenged his opponents to point out any other, ‘except indeed’ (he adds, recollecting himself) ‘moral restraint,’ which however he considers as of no effect at all?

10. Whether, consistently with this verbal acknowledgment and virtual rejection of the influence of moral causes, the general tendency of Mr. M.’s system is not to represent the actual state of man in society as nothing better than a blind struggle between vice, misery, and the principle of population, the effects of which are just as mechanical as the ebbing and flowing of the tide, and to bury all other principles, all knowledge, or virtue, or liberty, under a heap of misapplied facts?

11. Whether, instead of accounting for the different degrees of happiness, plenty, populousness, &c. in different countries, or in the same country at different periods, from good or bad government, from the vicissitudes of manners, civilization, and knowledge, according to the common prejudice, Mr. Malthus does not expressly and repeatedly declare that political institutions are but as the dust in the balance compared with the inevitable consequences of the principle of population; and whether he does not treat with the utmost contempt all those, who not being in the secret of ‘the grinding law of necessity,’ had before his time superficially concluded that moral, political, religious, and other positive causes were of considerable weight in determining the happiness or misery of mankind? It were to be wished that the author, instead of tampering with his subject, and alternately holding out concessions, and then recalling them, had made one bold and honest effort to get rid of the bewildering effects of his original system, by affording his readers some clue to determine, both in what manner and to what extent other causes, independent of the principle of population, actually combine with that principle (no longer pretended to be absolute and uncontroulable) to vary the face of nature and society, under the same general law, and had not left this most important _desideratum_ in his work, to be apocryphally supplied by the ingenuity and zeal of his apologists?

12. Whether Mr. Malthus does not uniformly discourage every plan for extending the limits of population, and consequently the sphere of human enjoyment, either by cultivating new tracts of soil, or improving the old ones, by repeating on all occasions the same stale, senseless objection, that, _after all_, the principle of population will press as much as ever on the means of subsistence; or in other words, that though the means of subsistence and comfort will be increased, there will be a proportionable increase in the number of those who are to partake of it? Or whether Mr. Malthus’s panic fear on this subject has not subsided into an equally unphilosophical indifference?

13. Whether the principle of moral restraint, formerly recognized in Mr. Malthus’s latter writings, and in reality turning all his paradoxes into mere impertinence, does not remain a dead letter, which he never calls into action, except for the single purpose of torturing the poor under pretence of reforming their morals?

14. Whether the avowed basis of the author’s system on the poor-laws, is not the following:—that by the laws of God and nature, the rich have a right to starve the poor whenever they (the poor) cannot maintain themselves; and whether the deliberate sophistry by which this right is attempted to be made out, is not as gross an insult on the understanding as on the feelings of the public? Or whether this reasoning does not consist in a trite truism and a wilful contradiction; the truism being, that whenever the earth cannot maintain all its inhabitants, that then, by the laws of God and nature, or the physical constitution of things, some of them must perish; and the contradiction being, that the right of the rich to withhold a morsel of bread from the poor, while they themselves roll in abundance, is a law of God and nature, founded on the same physical necessity or absolute deficiency in the means of subsistence?

15. Whether the commentators on the Essay have not fallen into the same unwarrantable mode of reasoning, by confounding the real funds for the maintenance of labour, _i.e._ the actual produce of the soil, with the scanty pittance allowed out of it for the maintenance of the labourer (after the demands of luxury and idleness are satisfied) by the positive, varying laws of every country, or by the caprice of individuals?

16. Whether these two things are not fundamentally distinct in themselves, and ought not to be kept so, in a question of such importance, as the right of the rich to starve the poor by system?

17. Whether Mr. Malthus has not been too much disposed to consider the rich as a sort of Gods upon earth, who were merely employed in distributing the goods of nature and fortune among the poor, who themselves neither ate nor drank, ‘neither married nor were given in marriage,’ and consequently were altogether unconcerned in the limited extent of the means of subsistence, and the unlimited increase of population?

18. Lastly, whether the whole of the reverend author’s management of the principle of population and of the necessity of moral restraint, does not seem to have been copied from the prudent Friar’s advice in Chaucer?

‘Beware therefore with lordes for to play,
Singeth Placebo:—
To a poor man men should his vices tell,
But not to a lord, though he should go to hell.’

END OF POLITICAL ESSAYS

ADVERTISEMENT AND BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTES
FROM
THE ELOQUENCE OF THE BRITISH SENATE

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

This work was published in two 8vo volumes in 1807 with the following title-page: ‘The Eloquence of the British Senate; or, Select Specimens from the Speeches of the most Distinguished Parliamentary Speakers. From the beginning of the Reign of Charles I. to the Present Time. With Notes, Biographical, Critical, and Explanatory. Two Volumes. London: Printed for Thomas Ostell, No. 3, Ave Maria Lane, Ludgate St. 1807.’ In the following year the work appeared with another title-page, which contains the same title, and proceeds ‘By William Hazlitt. In Two Volumes. London: Printed for J. Murray, Fleet-Street, and J. Harding, St. James’s-Street, London; and A. Constable and Co., Edinburgh. 1808.’

ADVERTISEMENT

This collection took its rise from a wish which the compiler had sometimes felt, in hearing the praises of the celebrated orators of former times, to know what figure they would have made by the side of those of our own times, with whose productions we are better acquainted. For instance, in reading Burke, I should have been glad to have had the speeches of Lord Chatham at hand, to compare them; and I have had the same curiosity to know, whether Walpole had any thing like the dexterity and plausibility of Pitt. As there are probably other readers, who may have felt the same kind of curiosity, I thought I could not employ my time better than in attempting to gratify it. Besides, it is no more than a piece of justice due to the _mighty dead_. It is but right we should know what we owe to them, and how far we have improved upon, or fallen short of them. Who could not give almost any thing to have seen Garrick, and Betterton, and Quin? Our politicians are almost as short-lived a race as our players, ‘who strut and fret an hour upon the stage, and then are heard no more.’ The event, and the hero of the moment, engross all our attention, and in the _vastness_ of our present views, we entirely overlook the past. Those celebrated men of the last age, the Walpoles, the Pulteneys, the Pelhams, the Harleys, the Townshends, and the Norths, who filled the columns of the newspapers with their speeches, and every pot-house with their fame, who were the mouthpieces of their party, nothing but perpetual smoke and bounce, incessant volley without let or intermission, who were the wisdom of the wise, and the strength of the strong, whose praises were inscribed on every window-shutter or brick-wall, or floated through the busy air, upborne by the shouts and huzzas of a giddy multitude,—all of them are now silent and forgotten; all that remains of them is consigned to oblivion in the musty records of Parliament, or lives only in the shadow of a name. I wished therefore to bring them on the stage once more, and drag them out of that obscurity, from which it is now impossible to redeem their _fellow-actors_. I was uneasy till I had made the monumental pile of octavos and folios, ‘wherein I saw them quietly inurned, open its ponderous and marble jaws,’ and ‘set the imprisoned wranglers free again.’ It is possible that some of that numerous race of orators, who have sprung up within the last ten years, to whom I should certainly have first paid my compliments, may not be satisfied with the space allotted them in these volumes. But I cannot help it. My object was to revive what was forgotten, and embody what was permanent; and not to echo the loquacious babblings of these accomplished persons, who, if all their words were written in a book, the world would not contain them. Besides, living speakers may, and are in the habit of printing their own speeches. Or even if this were not the case, there is no danger, while they have breath and lungs left, that they will ever suffer the public to be at a loss for daily specimens of their polished eloquence and profound wisdom.

There were some other objects to be attended to in making this collection, as well as the style of different speakers. I wished to make it a history, as far as I could, of the progress of the language, of the state of parties at different periods, of the most interesting debates, and in short, an abridged parliamentary history for the time. It was necessary that it should serve as a common-place book of all the principal topics, of the _pros_ and _cons_ of the different questions, that may be brought into dispute. If, however, this work has the effect which I intend it to have, it will rather serve to put a stop to that vice of _much speaking_, which is the fashion of the present day, by shewing our forward disputants how little new is to be said on any of these questions, than offer a temptation to their vanity to enrich themselves out of the spoils of others. I have also endeavoured to gratify the reader’s curiosity, by sometimes giving the speeches of men who were not celebrated for their eloquence, but for other things; as Cromwell, for example. If, therefore, any one expects to find nothing but eloquent speeches in these volumes, he will certainly be disappointed. A very small volume indeed, would contain all the recorded eloquence of both houses of parliament.

As to the notes and criticisms, which accompany the speeches, I am aware that they are too long and frequent for a work of this nature. If, however, the reader should not be of opinion that ‘the things themselves are neither new nor rare,’ he is at liberty to apply the next line of the satire to them,—he may naturally enough wonder, ‘how the devil they got there.’ The characters of Chatham, Burke, Fox, and Pitt, are those which are the most laboured. As to the first of these, I am not so certain. It was written in the heat of the first impression which his speeches made upon me: and perhaps the first impression is a fair test of the effect they must produce on those who heard them.—But farther I will not be answerable for it. As to the opinions I have expressed of the three last speakers, they are at least my settled opinions, and I believe I shall not easily change them. In the selections from Burke, I have followed the advice of friends in giving a whole speech, whereas I ought to have given only extracts.

For the bias which may sometimes appear in this work, I shall only apologize by referring the impartial reader to the different characters of Fox and Burke. These will, I think, shew, that whatever my prejudices may be, I am not much disposed to be blinded by them.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTES

KING CHARLES I.—Came to the crown in 1625, and was beheaded in 1648. The following is his speech from the throne on meeting his first parliament. It contains nothing very remarkable, but may serve as a specimen of the stile that was in use at the time. The chief subject of the speech is the war with Spain, in which the country was then engaged. There is also an allusion to the plague, which at that time prevailed in London.

SIR EDWARD COKE, (_Lord Chief Justice, and author of the Institutes_,) was born in 1550, and died in 1634. He was removed from his office in 1616, and first joined the popular side in parliament in 1621. There is the same quaintness and pithiness in the other speeches which are given of this celebrated lawyer, that will be found in the following one. It is a little remarkable, that almost all the abuses of expenditure, and heads of œconomical reform, which were the objects of Mr. Burke’s famous bill, are here distinctly enumerated.

SIR ROBERT COTTON, (_the famous Antiquary_,) was born in 1570, and died 1631. He was made a baronet by James I. and was one of the opposition party in the time of his successor. The speech which follows was occasioned by some offence taken by the court at the severe reflections cast upon the duke of Buckingham in the house of commons. It is, as one might expect, learned, full of facts and authorities, containing matters which no doubt were thought to be of great weight and moment.

GEORGE VILLIERS, (_Created Duke of Buckingham by James I._,) was born 1592, and was assassinated by Felton in 1628. It is said that he had originally but an indifferent education. Perhaps it was owing to this that there is more ease and vivacity, and less pedantry, in the stile of his speeches, than in those of most of his contemporaries. We can hardly account for it from his having been privately tutored by king James the First. The subject of the following speech was the war with Spain, and recovery of the Palatinate.

DR. JOHN WILLIAMS, (_Keeper of the Great Seal_, _Bishop of Lincoln_, _and afterwards Archbishop of York_,) was born in Caernarvonshire in Wales in 1582, and died in 1650. He preached James the First’s funeral sermon, in which he compared him to king Solomon. How well he was qualified for this courtly task may be seen by the following specimen.

The following speech I have thought worth preserving, as it pretty clearly shews the relation which at this time was understood to subsist, and the tone that prevailed, between the king and his parliament.

SIR HENEAGE FINCH was recorder of London. I have given his speech on being appointed speaker, as a curious instance of the flowery stile then in vogue. It is full of far-fetched thoughts, and fulsome compliments.

JOHN SELDEN, (_The well-known Author of Table-Talk, and other works of great learning_,) was born in 1584, and died in 1654. He was member at different times for Great Bedwin, in Wiltshire, and Lancashire, and through his whole life a strenuous oppositionist.

SIR DUDLEY DIGGES, born in 1583, was made master of the rolls in 1636, and died in 1639. I have already given one or two specimens of the pompous stile; but as the following extract soars to a still sublimer pitch, I could not resolve to omit it. After a slight introduction to the charge brought forward against the duke of Buckingham, his titles were formally enumerated, and then Sir Dudley Digges proceeded.

MR. JOHN PYM, one of the great leaders of the republican party, was member for Tavistock. He died in 1643. The subject of the speech is the charge against the duke of Buckingham, of which he was one of the managers. It certainly contains a great deal of good sense, strongly expressed.

MR. WANDESFORD.—This long and closely reasoned speech about a posset-drink, and sticking-plaister, applied by the duke of Buckingham to James I. a little before his death, is a proof of the gravity with which our ancestors could treat the meanest subjects, when they were connected with serious consequences.

SIR DUDLEY CARLETON.—One may collect from the following speech of Sir Dudley Carleton’s that he was a great traveller, and a very well-meaning man. He was born 1573, and died 1631. Before his death he was created Viscount Dorchester.

MR. CRESKELD.—If the thoughts in the following introduction to an elaborate legal dissertation are conceits, they are nevertheless ingenious and poetical conceits.

ROBERT RICH, (_Created Earl of Warwick, and Lord Rich of Leeze, by James I._).—I have given the following speech on the right of the crown to imprison the subject without any reason shewn, for its good sense and logical acuteness.

FRANCIS ROUSE was a native of Cornwall. He represented Truro in the long parliament, was one of the lay members of the assembly of divines, and speaker of Barebone’s parliament, and died in 1659. His speech against a Dr. Manwaring, who had written a flaming monarchical sermon, is so remarkable for its fanatical absurdity, and the uncouthness of the stile, that it certainly deserves a place in this collection, as a curiosity.

SIR JOHN ELLIOTT.—The following is a noble instance of parliamentary eloquence; for the strength and closeness of the reasoning, for the clearness of the detail, for the earnestness of the stile, it is admirable: it in some places reminds one strongly of the clear, plain, convincing, irresistible appeals of Demosthenes to his hearers. There is no affectation of wit, no studied ornament, no display of fancied superiority; his whole heart and soul are in his subject, he is full of it; his mind seems as it were to surround and penetrate every part of it; nothing diverts him from his purpose, or interrupts the course of his reasoning for a moment. The force and connection of his ideas give vehemence to his expressions, and he convinces others, because he is thoroughly impressed with the truth of his own opinions. A certain political writer of the present day might be supposed to have borrowed his _dogged_ stile from this speaker.

SIR BENJAMIN RUDYARD was member for Wilton. That which is here given is by far the best speech of his extant. It might pass for the heads of one of Burke’s speeches, without the ornaments and without the elegance. It has all the good sense, and moral wisdom, only more plain and practical.

SIR ROBERT PHILIPS.—In this apparently unstudied address, we meet, for the first time, with real warmth and eloquence.

This gentleman was not one of those who make speeches out of mere parade and ostentation; he never spoke but when he was in earnest, nor indeed till he was in a downright passion.

EDMUND WALLER (_The celebrated Poet_,) was born in 1605, and died in 1687. He was member for St. Ives. At first he was hostile to the court; but he seems to have been very wavering and undecided in his political opinions, and changed his party very often, according to his whim or convenience. I do not think there is any thing in the following speech very excellent, either for the matter or manner of it.

It would be hard to deny that the following speech is a good one, when we know that it saved the author’s life. Indeed, nothing can be imagined better calculated to soothe the resentment of the house of commons, or flatter their pride, than the concluding part of this address. Not even one of his own amorous heroes could fawn and cringe, and swear and supplicate, and act a feigned submission, with more suppleness and dexterity, to avert the mortal displeasure of some proud and offended beauty, than Mr. Waller has here employed to appease the fury, and insinuate himself once more into the good graces of his political paramour, the house of commons. In this, however, he succeeded no farther than to receive his life at her hands; which it seems he had forfeited by conspiring to deliver up the city to the king.

LORD GEORGE DIGBY, (_Son of the first Earl of Bristol_,) was born in 1612, and died in 1676. He was member for Dorsetshire in the long parliament. He at first opposed the court, but afterwards joined the royal party, and was expelled.

SIR JOHN WRAY, (_Member for Lincolnshire_).—His speech is chiefly remarkable for the great simplicity of the stile, and as an instance of the manner in which an honest country gentleman, without much wit or eloquence, but with some pretensions to both, might be supposed to express himself at this period.

THOMAS WENTWORTH, (_Earl of Strafford_,) was a gentleman of an ancient family in Yorkshire, and created a peer by Charles I. He at first opposed the court with great virulence and ability; but afterwards became connected with it, and recommended some of the most obnoxious measures. After a bill of attainder was passed against him, at the instigation of the commons, the king refused for a long time to give his assent to it, till at last lord Strafford himself wrote to advise him to comply, which he did with great reluctance. He was beheaded 1641. Whatever were his faults, he was a man of a fine understanding, and an heroic spirit; and undoubtedly a great man. What follows is the conclusion of his last defence before the house of lords.

DR. JOSEPH HALL, (_Bishop of Exeter and afterwards of Norwich_,) was born in 1574, and died 1656. He suffered a good deal from the Puritans. He is celebrated, without much reason, for the fineness of his writings.

This speech has more feeling in it than the Bishop generally discovers. It shews that ‘passion makes men eloquent.’

BULSTRODE WHITLOCKE, (_Member for Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire_,) was born in 1605, and died in 1676. In 1653 he was sent ambassador to Sweden. He was a man of great learning, and he appears also to have possessed moderation and good sense. He was the author of the Memorials.

The following speech displays so much knowledge, and such deep research into the imperfect and obscure parts of English history, that though it is long, and from the nature of the subject somewhat uninteresting, I thought it right to let it stand, as a monument of legal learning in the 17th century. A country may be as different from itself, at different times, as one country is from another; and one object that I have chiefly had in view in this work, has been to select such examples as might serve to mark the successive changes that have taken place in the minds and characters of Englishmen within the last 200 years.

The distinctive character of the period of which we are now speaking was, I think, that men’s minds were stored with facts and images, almost to excess; there was a tenacity and firmness in them that kept fast hold of the impressions of things as they were first stamped upon the mind; and ‘their ideas seemed to lie like substances in the brain.’ Facts and feelings went hand in hand; the one naturally implied the other; and our ideas, not yet exorcised and squeezed and tortured out of their natural objects, into a subtle essence of pure intellect, did not fly about like ghosts without a body, tossed up and down, or upborne only by the ELEGANT FORMS of words, through the _vacuum_ of abstract reasoning, and sentimental refinement. The understanding was invigorated and nourished with its natural and proper food, the knowledge of things without it; and was not left, like an empty stomach, to prey upon itself, or starve on the meagre scraps of an artificial logic, or windy impertinence of ingenuity self-begotten. What a difference between the grave, clear, solid, laborious stile of the speech here given, and the crude metaphysics, false glitter, and trifling witticism of a modern legal oration! The truth is, that the affectation of philosophy and fine taste has spoiled every thing; and instead of the honest seriousness and simplicity of old English reasoning in law, in politics, in morality, in all the grave concerns of life, we have nothing left but a mixed species of bastard sophistry, got between ignorance and vanity, and generating nothing.

WILLIAM LENTHALL, (_An eminent Lawyer_, _and Speaker of the Long Parliament_,) was member for Woodstock. He was born 1591, and died 1662. This high-flown address to General Fairfax, is a model of the adulatory stile. Surely a great man does not stand in need of so much praise.

OLIVER CROMWELL, (_Member for Cambridge_, _born 1599_, _died 1658_).—I have given the following speeches of his, to shew that he was not so bad a speaker as is generally imagined. The world will never (if they can help it) allow one man more than one excellence; and if he possesses any one quality in the highest degree, they then, either to excite a foolish wonder, or to gratify a lurking vanity, endeavour to find out that he is as much below the rest of mankind in every thing else. Thus it has been the fashion to suppose, because Cromwell was a great general and statesman, that therefore he could not utter a sentence that was intelligible, or that had the least connection, or even common sense in it. But this is not the fact. His speeches, though not remarkable either for their elegance or clearness, are not remarkable for the contrary qualities. They are pithy and sententious; containing many examples of strong practical reason, (not indeed of that kind which is satisfied with itself, and supplies the place of action) but always closely linked, and serving as a prelude to action. His observations are those of a man who does not rely entirely on words, and has some other resource left him besides; but who is neither unwilling nor unable to employ them, when they are necessary to his purpose. If they do not convey any adequate idea of his great abilities, they contain nothing from which one might infer the contrary. They are just such speeches as a man must make with his hand upon his sword, and who appeals to that as the best decider of controversies. They are full of bustle and impatience, and always go directly to the point in debate, without preparation or circumlocution.

JOHN THURLOE, (_Author of the State Papers_, _and confidential Secretary to Cromwell_,) was born in 1616, and died in 1668. The following speech of his is interesting, as it shews the temper of the times; it is shrewd and vulgar enough.

RICHARD CROMWELL, succeeded his father in the Protectorate; but soon after, not being able to retain the government in his hands, he resigned, and went abroad. He died 1712. It is curious to have something of a man who, from the weakness either of his understanding or passions, tamely lost a kingdom which his father had gained.

CHARLES II. was born 1630, and died 1685. This prince is justly celebrated for his understanding and wit. There is, however, nothing remarkable in his speeches to parliament, of which the following is a very fair specimen.

EDWARD HYDE, (_Earl of Clarendon_, _and Lord Chancellor of England_,) was born in 1608, and died abroad in 1673. He was a steady adherent to the royal party, but in 1667 he was accused of treason, and obliged to withdraw secretly into France. He was a man of great abilities, and wrote the well-known history of the Rebellion. His daughter was married to James II.

GEORGE VILLIERS, (_Second Duke of Buckingham_,)—Born 1627, died 1688. He is famous for having written the satirical play of the Rehearsal. His speech at a grave conference between the lords and commons, to decide the limits of the judicial authority of the former, is very like what one might expect from him. He seems chiefly anxious to avoid the imputation of knowing or caring more about the matter than became a gentleman, and a wit; at the same time he talks very well about it.

LORD BRISTOL.—I have given the following Speech, because it discovers a quaint sort of familiar common sense.

HENEAGE FINCH, (_First Earl of Nottingham_, _Son of Sir Heneage Finch_,) was born 1621, and died 1682. He was member for Oxford, and in 1670 appointed attorney general, and afterwards lord keeper and lord chancellor. In this latter office he succeeded Lord Clarendon. He was rather an elegant speaker.

SIR LEOLINE JENKINS, (_An eminent Civilian and Statesman_,) was born in Glamorganshire, in 1623, and died 1685. He was one of the representatives of the University of Oxford, and principal of Jesus College.

LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL, (_Who is generally looked upon as one of the great martyrs of English liberty_,) was born 1641, and beheaded 1683, on the same charge of treason on which Algernon Sidney was also condemned to suffer death.