6 "plated, the more excellent it appears. It is not, brave countrymen, a 45. On the military branch of our constitution we have been thus diffuse, because it is a branch of that Constitution; and although unhappily too little understood, yet it is as essential to our liberties as legislative representation self; and because such is the nature and magnitude of the arduous contest in which we are engaged, and such also our obvious danger from an unbalanced standing army, it is selfevident that, whether the Emperor of France or the King of England shall prevail, in either case it is on a complete restoration of our only proper militia that the very existence of the constitution, the rights and liberties of our country now depend: For, if we desire not to become a province of France,-if we mean not to expiate in chains the offences we committed against her at Cressy, at Poicliers, at Agincourt, in India, in Canada, and on the Ocean, and to undergo indignities from French insolence, such as conquered nation never endured; -if we disdain to sink below a state of the first rank; if not, on one hand, disposed to drag on a hopeless, ruinous, interminable war, nor, on the other hand, prepared to purchase peace by putting "our signa"ture to the death-warrant of our national independence, and of all "those personal rights and liberties which have so long exalted us "above the herd of nations ;"* if such, we say, be our English feelings, it is fit we recollected that the arm abroad strikes with most force, when the heart at home is in best health; and that the sure 33 33 Pasley's Milit. Policy and Institutions of Brit. Emp. 99. foundations of our proper " military policy"-a military policy superior to that of ancient Rome-is only to be found in the military branch of our constitution, the natural and proper militia of our country. 46. When a regular army is required for service abroad, how in nature can it be so rapidly and so cheaply recruited, how so easily increased to any necessary magnitude, as in an armed nation of a truly martial character? And how is the existence of a great standing army to be reconciled with the jealous securities of liberty, but by the existence of a natural and proper militia ten times as numerous as that army, and ever, by the fidelity of parliaments and ministers, preserved " in full vigour and energy?" Here is the solution of that problem in politics, that has filled the head of the philosopher with prophetic visions of slavery, and the heart of the desponding patriot with the deepest anxiety. Here the simple truth, which seen, felt and understood, might have reduced many a bulky volume of argumentation to a few self-evident propositions! Restore but our genuine, our proper militia, and, from that moment, the standing army, now viewed with a just dread, as an engine of despotism-as, in the judgment of the philosophic Hume, that " mortal distemper in the British Constitution, of which it must inevitably perish," will become not only perfectly in-noxious, but a beneficent means of peace, a source of glory, and an affectionate brother of the proper militia, repaying its contributions of strength by precious gifts for preserving tactics and discipline, and for exciting that lofty martial spirit, by which nations assert and preserve their rights and liberties! 47. When we, reviewing the contest, the speeches and the writings of the latter half of the seventeenth century, as well as what occurred at and after the Revolution on the subject of the Militia, even down to the year 1780, perceive how very obscurely it was comprehended or explained by any one of the great men who during that very long period were the ornaments of our nation, how shall we bestow due admiration on the genius of Sir William Jones, who, from the ruins and rubbish of the decayed fabric, so luminously ascertained its principles, and so clearly explained its nature, in his precious gem of constitutional learning, "An Inquiry into the Legal Mode of suppressing Riots." 48. Our "military policy" raised on its right basis, the Nation, being impregnable at home, and therefore potent abroad, England would disdain to receive the law of humiliation from any nation on earth; much less a nation less free than herself, a nation which at this moment cannot, but by stealth, send a ship to sea without her per mission. 49. Had this, when Spain first sought her aid, been the attitude of England, had the condition of her drawing a sword in the cause been the restoration to the people of a liberty like her own, and had her undivided energies been concentrated in the Peninsula in support of Spanish enthusiasm, not a French soldier had by this time breathed Iberian air and thus an important outwork of external war to these islands, had been freed from a sad prospect of subjugation by France; the fame of Napoleon would have received an incurable wound, and the excrescent members of his empire been encouraged to throw oft his yoke. PART III. Over-much Statute-making. Warnings of Providence. Magna Charta and Bill of Rights. Despotism. Free Government and Military Government. Annual Election. Constellation of Great Men. Rights declared, but not established. The Nation's Duty. 50. Ere we proceed to the immediate consideration of the civil branch of our constitution, LEGISLATIVE REPRESENTATION, which in effect includes within itself all else of civil polity, and it is to be hoped will ever in a pre-eminent manner protect trial by Jury as inherent in, coeval with, and inseparable from, the constitution, it may be expedient to offer a few preliminary observations. 51. Although from the nature of things, the executive Magistrate of a great nation must be in the exercise of an incessant vigilance, for which he is furnished with a thousand eyes; as well as in the habit of an incessant activity, for which he is provided with a thousand hands; yet so different from his are the functions of a legislature, that its wis dom and beneficence are perhaps most conspicuous, when it least interferes with the business of executive government. 52. In much statute-making there is a symptom of something unsound, a levity and officiousness not congenial with the sobriety and dignity of grave and upright legislation; but implying an unacquaintance with the constitution, a superficialness in the principles of law, and indeed something even less to be respected. At present we shall allude only to three material points, namely, Defence, Enclosures, and Elections. Instead of some half dozen of statutes which on all these subjects were, perhaps, as many as were required, the statute book is loaded with some thousands of Acts of Parliament, 38 39 53. Ought not our law, which its professors tell us is "the perfec→ tion of reason," but which they make the essence of wrangling, generally to provide for adjusting disputes between man and man, and for the satisfactory administration of justice under the superintendence of a legislature looking to principles, without incessant statute-making, as though we were a mere colony of adventurers got together in a new settlement, and had not yet had time for the work of jurisprudence? Can we look on any thing so strange and inconvenient, without perceiving that in the legislature itself there must be some glaring defect. 54. It was the observation of a philosopher, that "miserable is "the condition of that nation in which the law is a science;"* what then must be the condition of England where the law is a congeries of mountainous magnitude, and the lawyers in number are equal to a large army where each separate branch of the law, of which there are many, is in itself an intricate science, and no one of its professors presumptuous enough to pretend that he can grasp a knowledge of the whole ! To this chaos, of which an abridgment of its unwritten part alone could scarcely be contained in a hundred folio volumes, we have already seen added in the present reign alone more than seven thousand public statutes exclusive of nearly five thousand for private purposes, while every succeeding year adds its hundreds. 55. In this boundless wilderness, this ite labyrinth of law, its paths overgrown with thorns and briers, vex the spirit and tear the flesh, abounding also with treacherous pitfalls of entire destruction, grow up endless perplexities and innumerable oppressions, deadening the sentiment of affection to the state, and alienating the mind from a government which cannot protect, and under which justice is the most costly of all commodities. 56. And when such a mass of complicated evil is but a super-addition to a violation of fundamentals, which enables evil rulers to tear up by the roots all national liberty, must not such a condition of a political community be pregnant, either with convulsion or dissolution; unless, the constitution being naturally vigorous, it lead to one of those critical recoveries, by which life is not merely preserved, but health restored and confirmed. 57. "The history of this Country," says the late Earl of Liverpool, " abounds with more of these critical periods than that of any other ; " and it is to the proper use our ancestors made of them, that our go"vernment has long been advancing by various steps towards perfec"tion; they withstood the repeated attempts both of papal innovation "and regal oppression; and though their struggles frequently pro"duced violent fevers in the state, yet the constitution always came "forth in more perfect health, and some new security was obtained "for our freedom."* 58. Were indeed our constitution without an antiquity, to excite a 38 Beccaria. 39 Lord Hawkesb. Discourse. sort of religious veneration and piety towards it; were it obviously defective in its material form and institutions, so that it could be despised; or were it but little endeared to the people by its nature and spirit; it doubtless would under all its disadvantages be at this moment in imminent danger of a final subversion, or rather past a possibility of recovery. But reflecting on the realities of our case, and that this nation has the best capacities for grandeur and happiness of any on the face "of the earth," ought we not to consider our present danger in being surrounded on all sides by threatening rocks and shoals, as the call of Providence to an effort for our deliverance! As the call that is to bring all hands on deck, to aid in saving the vessel, by carefully and skilfully navigating her through the right, and only, channel for our extrication, whereby we may recover the safe course of national vernment! go 59. But if, while all the other European Nations originally of the same stock with ourselves, sooner or later lost their liberties, while those of England alone were preserved by critical reforms, particularly at Runnimead and the Revolution, it may be asked why, after a Magna Charta, a Bill of Rights became necessary? As well as why, after a Bill of Rights, we are now again as much as ever in need of a critical reform? 60. To both these questions we answer, that although each of those critical reforms did good service, and paved the way for better things; yet neither of them had stamina for duration; because neither of them was RADICAL. Although each in a manly tone declared the people's rights and liberties, and this spirit produced for awhile beneficial effects; yet on neither occasion was there on the two cardinal points of free government, a proper militia and legislative representation, any thing whatever actually DONE. Our Saxon and proper militia, the only one that ever deserved the name, was NOT "restored to full vigour and "energy;" a free Parliament with annual election was NOT established: the nation consequently was not put in possession of its rights and liberties, with the means of self defence either military or civil. How, then, are we to wonder at the present condition of our country? The wonder rather is, that it had not been completely ruined in half the time that has elapsed since the Revolution. That it has required more than a century to bring it so near destruction, we must attribute to the inherent vigour of the constitution, mutilated as it was, to the love of liberty in the English character, to the remembrance of Runnimead, of Whitehall, and the Revolution, and to the awe in which tyranny has stood of the good sense and courage of the nation. 61. After each of the two critical reforms we have mentioned, despotism, scotched only, but not slain, lay quiet for a short season; but, as the alarms and resentments which had excited to patriot exer 40 40 Mr. Pitt's Speech, 7 May, 1782. |