Golden rules of social philosophy

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Preface

This volume is the production of a practical man, who has acquired many of the truths and principles which it exhibits by his personal experience, others by his intercourse with men of appropriate intelligence, and many by prolonged meditation on the subjects of which he has ventured to treat.

Though many of his topics are so familiar and so operative on men's fortunes and happiness, that it might be expected ingenuity had exhausted itself in analyzing and discussing them, yet their very homeliness seems to have been a cause of neglect, and the exposition, at least of most of the subjects, is now attempted for the first time.

They presented no crowns to literary

a2

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ambition, no materials for poetry, no regions for new discovery ; they appertained in no respect to the researches of the closet ; and they were for the most part too familiar and too useful to be engrafted on learned and fashionable education. Hence the Author undertook a task in which he has throughout been called upon to think for himself, and has been able to draw little or nothing from the stores or suggestions of others; while his plan compelled him to adventure opinions on many subjects in which the passions and interests of mankind are intensely involved.

To render such a work really useful, — to tell the truth, and the whole truth, — required fearless honesty ; and, to tell nothing but the truth, much anxious discrimination. In regard to the former quality, he would, if he thought his work sufficiently important, re-act the part of Lycurgus, and seal his doctrines by self-devotion ; and in regard to the latter, if

PREFACE. XI

he has erred, his mistakes have not sprung from corruption, from love of antithesis or novelty, or from any sentiment tending to create despair or discontent ; for he is not a man of a gloomy spirit, but at the same time is in earnest ; and he conceives that men would always be better, if they were wiser, and that, when they err, it is either from miscalculation or from ignorance.

Some of the articles in this volume have been for many years before the public, as those on Magistrates, Sheriffs, Electors, Jurors, and Parish Priests ; others are partly new or newly arranged and amalgamated ; while about half the volume has been expressly written to confer completeness on the design. Of the Golden Rules for Electors and Jurymen, perhaps half a million of copies have in sundry forms, and at various periods, been distributed, and it may be hoped, with useful effect. The others have had a more limited circulation ; but, as each addresses

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a distinct class, few persons possess more than that which applies to the duties of their own station.

As time and much public approbation have conferred character on these, the Author has no solicitude in laying them in this new form before the world. It would gratify him if he could believe that he has succeeded equally well in the new articles. That addressed to Sovereigns must necessarily be useless to reigning princes, who will conceive that they at least know their duties, as well as one who has viewed courts chiefly at a distance, and under all the disguises of long-studied systems. His maxims are, therefore, those of a subject, who knows better what a king ought to do, than what he is able to do. In this sense, however, the sentiments of a Subject may not be unuseful, while, as part of the education of princes, such a condensation of duties and principles cannot fail to be beneficial.

PREFACE, Xlli

Legislators and Journalists are classes who, if not so powerful and so much flattered as reigning princes, are nevertheless powerful enough to be intractable in regard to instruction, and too wise in their own opinions to conceive they require any. Yet, in regard to the former, the younger members may be wrought upon ; and, to the latter, if they cannot reform themselves, an honest exposure of their foibles and vices will render them less mischievous to an enlightened public.

The least tractable class whom the Author has presumed to address, are the Philosophers, — those flexible patients of their reason,— those votaries of truth, — those dispassionate examples of human wisdom ! They are so thoroughly satisfied with the systems which were constructed in the twilights of knowledge by venerated personages, and sustained by venerable institutions, that the Author frankly confesses he considers the pages

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dedicated to them as utterly useless ; except, indeed, it be with those who have not publicly taught errors, who have not written books in error, who do not profess errors, who consider authority as inferior to reason, and who, of the rising generation, happily are indifferent either to truth or falsehood, but will instinctively prefer the former.

As the work has, throughout, sprung from the mind of the author, so he has freely asserted his own opinions, whether they accord or not with the predilections of the age. In speculations of this nature, he respects no authority, in regard to truth, but his own convictions. If these are erroneous, he shall be happy to see them corrected, and be forward in entering into explanations with liberal enquirers. He has no affection for any opinions for their own sake. He has no fear of censure, for this depends chiefly on the re-action of the prejudices, interests, and passions, of those who inflict it ; and

PREFACE. XV

he has little to hope from praise, because this tardy and silent energy is generally overwhelmed by the boisterous clamours of those who think their wisdom is best displayed by the severity and dogmatism of their animadversions.

The sole object of the Author has been to be useful ; and he is content with the feeling, that he has attempted to be so. He has anxiously inculcated all the charities of life, and all the virtues of sound morals, or atleast what he considers to be such; he has endeavoured to make men wiser and happier, and has even extended his code of sympathy to the brute creation. Without co-operation, his labours would be useless : he hopes, therefore, that they will be duly appreciated by the wise and benevolent ; and, as to the rest, he is utterly and inflexibly indifferent.

[n addressing so many interests, the author is aware that he appears to throw down the gauntlet of defiance to many prejudices,— may be considered as wantonly assailing much self-love,— and be in danger

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of drawing upon himself the rage of nests of buzzing, though perfectly harmless, critics. For these possible results he is sorry, because he courts the tranquillity of retirement, and abhors controversy ; but he should have compromised his character, and failed in the object of his work, if he had been influenced by any considerations besides his devotion to truth, and his respect for the sound intelligence of the age in which he writes.

If, perchance, any individual should see, as in a mirror, the portrait of his own foibles, vices, or deformities, he must consider the paragraph as performing the mere optical powers of a mirror ; for, throughout the work, the Author has not written at any individual, and has strictly avoided any allusion to contemporary personages; his work being, as he presumes, addressed to human nature in the abstract, and of all ages and countries.

Pretensions to infallibility would be inconsistent with the principles and feelings 2

PREFACE. XVII

of the Author. As he affectsno power of the kind, he will be highly gratified at receiving, or at seeing in print, any free and candid animadversions on any of the multifarious doctrines in his book; and will assiduously avail himself of them, if it should, in his time, arrive at a second edition. In that respect, a modern author, bound in the fetters of a large edition, does not possess the advantages of the ancient writers, who, while every copy was an edition, had it in their power to correct from day to day, and, thereby, to reduce their language and reasonings to that degree of mathematical precision which is their resulting characteristic. To be useful, an author must be respected ; and, to be respected, he must be as perfect as possible ; and the Author of the present work confesses that he has an ambition to be useful, — and that such ambition has been the stimulus of his exertions ; while, in the quality of perfection, he defers to others, and expects no homage beyond the

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small share which self-love may think proper to concede.

Writers of adages and maxims too generally sacrifice truth to antitheses, and to mere graces of composition. The present writer affects no more than to state what is true, in a plain way. His sole ambition is to be understood ; and his points and graces lie entirely in the force with which he has endeavoured to impress his readers, in regard to truths of which he himself felt a thorough conviction. He has deferred to no prejudices, for he respects none ; and if he had done so, his book would but have added to the useless lumber of libraries. He has assailed many prejudices, but not all: this would be a task which would have appalled Hercules himself, for they are almost as numerous as men's ideas ; and books in general, at least successful books, do but flatter, foster, and sustain them. He has, however, assailed enow to draw on himself the hostility of their

PREFACE. XIX

friends ; but, accustomed to think for himself, and having imposed a task on himself, he has scorned to compromise with fraud and falsehood. His labour will only be lost, if it fail to confer on many men more just and accurate modes of thinking on many important subjects, — if it do not uproot many mischievous prejudices, which retard the improvement of society, — and if it do not in some degree arrest the triumph of some of those primitive systems by which mankind, in spite of their alleged civilization, continue to be deluded. Nevertheless he is not a cynic, — for it will be seen, that he is no niggard of praise wherever it is due; that he has extolled virtue in every form in which it can gladden the heart ; and that he has exalted all that is true, wherever and in whatever it serves to honour the understanding.

After the greater part of this volume had been printed, the Author discovered that Isocrates, in an epistle to Nicocles,

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King of Cyprus, had composed adages for kings ; and, in another epistle, adages for subjects. He was so much struck with the coincidence of plan, that he prepared translations, and intended to annex them as an appendix, hoping at once to add to the value of the volume, and to shew the differences with which a Greek and an Englishman treated the same subjects at the distance of two thousand years. The circumstances, however, which are alluded to in the postscript, led him at once to close his work ; but, if the spirit of his observations should gratify the public, he may be induced at some future period to print a second volume, containing other articles of his own in the same method of composition, with these articles of Isocrates, and some others highly curious, though neglected.

If the circumstances noticed in the postscript to this work had occurred before this volume had been written, and almost printed, it never would have had

PREFACE. XXI

existence, for the Author as well as the people of England will probably have other cares than those of speculations in philosophy and morals ; and the luxuries of life and literature must, for many years, yield in Britain to the wants of the hour, and the warfare of self-interest.

In the anticipations of the Author, the Sun of England's glory has set upon this generation. Whether ministers of more public spirit, and of more refined sympathy with the wants of the nation, can raise it again, is a question which time only can solve. Every conclusion of experience is adverse to the supposition. Credit is suspicion asleep, and suspicion has been so aroused, that it can scarcely be lulled again in regard to the same parties and the same country. A nation, like an individual, or like a woman, cannot lose its character and afterwards re-enjoy it. We may exist like cattle on the soil, but never again in the same mutual confidence and

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credit; and, by consequence, in equal plenitude of wealth and power.

Let the parliament, the king, and the people, adjust this question with that minister who, in the hour of public phrenzy and despair, taunted the people in their distresses by ascribing to them sanative effects, and quoting the common-place adage, that "the evil would cure itself."

It may be so, it may cure itself, but woe to the generation on which the cure is performed . It cannot be an age either of philosophy^ literature, or speculation ; but it will be in an iron age, in which the worst passions will triumph over virtue ; and in which struggles for wisdom will be lost in personal contests for bread and existence.

Contents

, Page

Golden Rules for Sovereign Princes . 1

2. — t0 render Men honest, respectable, and happy «... 38

3. for Members of the British Legislation «.... 177

4. — of Civil Liberty . . , 107

5. in favour of Religious Liberty . 117 to be remembered in the Study of

Nature and Metaphysical Philosophy . . 130

7. for Electors . . . .172 f °r discriminating Truth in Human

Enquiries lg9

! relative to Political and Social

Economy 221

10.

"~ ' for Magistrates . . . 244

XXIV.

CONTENTS.

Golden Rules for Sheriffs

„ — . . for Jurymen

. 13. _. for Grand Jurymen

14. for Journalists .

for Bankers for Young Shopkeepers for Parish Priests

18. . for Instructors of Youth

19.

The Author's Reasons for not Eating Animal Food

21.

Postscript to Golden Rules for Bankers

Page

347: 357

ERRATA.

Page 319, Art. VI. for " return," reed " returns."

Page 360, line 3 from bottom, for "which," read "while."

Vie Binder is requested to insert the fight pages E* in their proper place-.

GOLDEN RULES

OF

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY.

GOLDEN RULES FOR SOVEREIGN PRINCES.

I

Sovereign Princes should never forget that their office is created and upheld for the general benefit of the community, and that every Sovereign exists as such solely for the advantage of the nation. They must not imagine that the people exist for the sake of sovereigns, and to add to their power and splendour; but should remember that kings are appointed for the public good, and that they are themselves mere instruments of public convenience.

^ SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY.

II

A sovereign should attach no personal importance to the circumstance of his happening to be the head of the state ; for every cone must have an apex, every sphere a centre, and every society some head — a necessity, of which the sovereign is the creature and patient, not the creator and cause.

in.

Princes should not mistake the deference which is paid to them by the servile habits of mankind, and by the ambitious desire of obtaining their favour, for any proof that the homage is created by any sense of real inferiority in those who display it, or any actual animal superiority in the sovereign ; but should consider all such deference as arising from the desire to please, in the hope of profiting by the royal power and favour.

IV

Every sovereign holds his station under the laws, customs, and constitution, of the country ; and these he is, therefore, bound to respect and protect : and they should govern the king in the policy of his government, as much as the meanest of the people in the subjection of their conduct.

The attention of princes should be chiefly directed to the welfare and happiness of those classes of their subjects who are least able to take care of themselves : a king of the nobility and gentry is sovereign but of a centum of his subjects ; while the nobility and gentry are best able to take care of themselves, and, in fact, demand less of the guardianship of the sovereign than the industrious and labouring classes.

VI

To know the condition of his people, and to enable him to protect poverty against the oppressions of abused power and wealth, every sovereign should, as a sacred duty, receive and peruse the petitions and representations of the meanest of his subjects ; but, if the reception of them is personally inconvenient, then every palace-gate should be provided with a letter-box, of which the sovereign ought to keep a master-key ; and letters and petitions should be freely put into it, by all who seek redress from the power, information, and influence, of the sovereign.

VII

The character of a sovereign is determined by that of his ministers; these, therefore, ought to be selected according to their ability, and promoted according to their industry, fidelity, and integrity. The sovereign who, from any consideration, continues an unworthy minister in office, ceases to be duly considerate either of the benefit of his people or of the honour of his throne.

VIII

It is the business of the sovereign to assign the duties of his ministers ; to take care that they embrace every interest of his subjects ; to distribute them in such manner that no one may have too much to perform ; and, by classing the petitions and complaints of his subjects, to determine which service of the state is inefficiently or properly performed.

IX

A sovereign should constantly recollect, that it is the sole obiect of his ministers to enrich

SOVEREIGN PRINCES. O

themselves, and aggrandize their families and connexions; and that these ulterior objects are the stimulants of all their exertions, however varied or specious; — for no minister is integrated with the state, like the sovereign ; and, though the love of power and temporary notoriety may stimulate one in ten, and the ambition of doing good one in a thousand, yet the primary and the governing motive is the means of personal gratification, afforded by increase of wealth and social rank.

x.

A sovereign should be aware that the necessary and desirable immutability of laws is always at variance with the temporary advantages sought by men in office, and all subordinate agents of power; while it also thwarts their passions, and limits their display of authority. The sovereign may himself be just, amiable, and yielding to the spirit and forms of the law, but not so his numerous delegates, who may display every variety of bad as well as good character : it behoves him, therefore, to watch these agents, and apply to them, as a test, the re-action which their conduct produces among his subjects ; for oppression begets

O SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY.

resistance, and these, in society, are like action and re-action in nature. Nevertheless, there may be refractory subjects, the pest of worthy magistracy; but,, whenever any contest arises, the sovereign should beware of the false colourings by which men in office, from the highest to the lowest, sustain one another; and he should be alive to the conviction, that some mal-administration, to be corrected by his prompt exertion, may be as likely to be the cause of disaffection, as the ungovernable spirit of a subject.

XL

As ministers have not, like sovereigns, a permanent, hereditary, and transmitted, family interest in the state, the chief security of the people against their rapacity and abuse of power is the vigilance of the sovereign, his systematic reception of the complaints of the people, and his inflexibility in discarding the unworthy from his employment and confidence ; for the sovereign who is indifferent to the conduct of his ministers, delivers over his people, under the bonds of law and the duties of allegiance, to the temporary domination of selfish ministers, and deprives them of that

SOVEREIGN PRINCES.

safeguard which they possess in the sovereign's independence of all motives beyond the love of his subjects and the glory of his name and reign.

XII.

But, while a constant jealousy should be exerted, by a good sovereign, to prevent his ministers from taking advantage of his subjects' necessary submission to power, the sovereign ought to stimulate virtuous anc faithful service, by honouring and liberally rewarding merit in his ministers and servants ; though he should never lose sight of the importance of making accurate discriminations, — for honours are merely titular, and cease to be received and regarded as such, if the unworthy are confounded with the worthy in their distribution, and if they are not reserved and bestowed only on unequivocal virtue and acknowledged merit.

XIII.

As the office of a king is active and executive, and the wisdom and justice of every neasure depends on discriminations founded on truth, and not on the sophistry and misrepresentation by which the ears of Princes are commonly abused, so every wise sovereign, who is duly anxious about his own reputation and that of his throne, should, on personal questions, submit any case of difficulty separately to half a- dozen persons of sound judgment, and be guided by their opinions, formally given in writing. Collective opinions of councils are deceptive, owing to the influence of individuals, to the effect of specious and often shallow eloquence, and to the reserve by which the whole truth is too frequently qualified by good manners, habitual deference, and personal delicacy.

xiv.

The sovereign who, from indolence or fear, permits one class of his subjects to oppress another, or any party to assume the authority of the state, and monopolize its power and patronage, is unworthy of his dignity, and compromises his name, character, and station. The territorial interests should not be preferred to the commercial, nor the commercial to the territorial ; masters should not be encouraged to oppress their workmen and servants; the rich should not be allowed to oppress the poor; and parties, who profess a superabundance of obsequious loyalty, should not be preferred in public employments to those who are too independent to be either obsequious or dishonest.

xv.

Every politic sovereign should occasionally visit the distant portions of his empire, receive the petitions of his people on the spot, and enquire into and rectify all abuses and errors in the administration of the local governments : and other parts, or distant colonies, which he does not examine in person, should be visited by trusty commissioners, within every seven years, with authority to enquire and report relative to mal-administration, errors of policy, oppressive operation of laws, and other subjects of dissatisfaction in the people.

XVI.

Every considerate sovereign should special ly enquire into the provisions for abject and helpless poverty, and the condition of sufferers under the law, — who, in gaols and other receptacles, are deserted by all, and left to the discretion of such inferior officers as are often destitute of feeling and sympathy; for

b2 which purpose, he should, once in three or seven years, appoint commissioners of benevolent men to visit the poor-houses and gaols of his kingdom, and report on cases of particular objects, and on abuses of management.

XVII.

In the selection of representatives of his own authority, a wise sovereign should be specially cautious that they are men of virtuous and benevolent character; and this observation applies particularly to all expounders of the law, as judges and presiding officers in courts of law,— and to all executors of the law, as sheriffs, and magistrates generally : wisdom itself in such persons will not, in practical effects on the people, atone for sternness of temper, — nor any other qualities, for the want of integrity and benevolence.

XVIII.

As it is the glorious prerogative of sovereigns to be able to ameliorate the operation of the laws, and as laws are made for extreme cases of turpitude, and the highest punishment assigned for specific crimes, so the sovereign should apply his feelings of personal

SOVEREIGN PRINCES, II

compassion to all crimes committed under circumstances which admit of excuse or palliation ; and bearing in mind that, as the state has done its duty in assigning the punishment and effecting the conviction, so the mitigation is an affair of personal feeling in the sovereign, with which the opinion of no minister, or third party, ought, on any pretence, to be allowed to interfere.

XIX.

If a sovereign derive his power from hereditary title, and has been educated in his station, he is too often as utterly ignorant of the social relations of man to man, and of the passions and wants of the population over whom he is placed, as a blind man of colours, or a Chinese of Europeans, or a European of Japanese: as soon as he arrives at years of discretion, it should, therefore, be his sedulous care to divest his mind of the false impressions arising from viewing society through a distorted medium, and from an unfavourable position ; and he should study human nature on its own general level, either by means of books which treat of the details of men's pursuits, or by travelling and mingling with society incognito.

XX.

The reasoning faculties of an hereditary sovereign may be sufficiently developed by the incidents of the circle in which he moves ; but, as every animal power is improved by exercise, and the reasoning powers are perfected, like the muscular, by exertions of unremitting labour, which princes are not called upon to make, so every prince should habitually defer to the judgment of men of experience, whose faculties have been forced into exertion ; and should suspect, as base flatterers, all those who extol his own superior wisdom and preeminent vigour of intellect. Society may be compared to a wheel, the successive ranks in one, being, in numbers, like the progressive circles from the axle to the periphery ; the circumstance of position neither changes the material nor improves it, but, on the contrary the exertion, or action and re-action, of every part, is as the distance from the centre, — or, maintaining the analogy, the intellectual vigour of the several gradations (opportunities of information being alike) will generally be as the distance from the centre.

XXI.

The ordinary trappings of royalty were invented in barbarous ages, to impress the superstitions vulgar ; but, as knowledge spreads faster than improvements in means of personal ornament, so these lose their power of fascination ; and a sovereign in a brilliant dress, or expensive procession, rises no higher in the estimation of a civilized people than a dramatic hero in a stage pageant. In such displays, sovereigns should not excuse the indulgence of their personal vanity by the selfish sophistry that they thereby circulate their subjects' money; for those from whom it is taken, had it not to spare, and it would be likely to be used by them with quite as much advantage to the community as by the sovereign.

xxu.

Though the laws of God forbid man to shed man's blood, and charge us to commit no murder, yet the necessity of defending a country against foreign intrusion renders it justifiable to repel force by force, and, if necessary, to kill the assailants : hence, the usages of society have placed, in the hands of kings, the power of conducting the public defence ; and, for that particular purpose, have considered murders as no crime. This license to commit homicide extends, however, no further than to wars strictly of self-defence ; and it behoves a sovereign, who would not be considered as a lawless murderer, and as such be held in detestation by the wise and good, never to embark in wars of speculative or problematical origin, — wars of calculation or policy, depending on his fallible judgment, — or wars for purposes of expected aggrandisement, or increase of territory.

XXIII.

A sovereign should bear in mind that, as there is no glory in homicide, and that, as he himself consigns all wilful murderers to the public executioner, so he himself deserves a similar fate, and is even more ignominious, if, without some urgent cause which admits of no equivocation, he employs forces, entrusted to him solely for the public defence, against other nations, — by which his own subjects are compelled, by their allegiance, to commit murders, or submit to be murdered ; and he must never forget, that, in the estimation of wise men, his victories, in an unjust and groundless

contest, will be attended with no glory, — his soldiers and seamen be ranked as hired assassins, — and himself answerable for all the miseries, horrors, and murders, resulting from the pride, obstinacy, or passion, which misled him at the outset of the contest,

XXIV.

Sovereigns should bear in mind that, if the country which they govern is populous and powerful enough to defend itself, or respectable enough to form defensive alliances with other nations for the common security, no extension of territory is of any advantage to their own subjects; for subjects live in families, and are not severally affected by the number united under one sovereign ; and, therefore, any passion in favour of extended dominion is either a vice or weakness in the mind of the sovereign, or a crafty pretence of his ministers to add to their power, influence, and patronage.

xxv.

Sovereigns ought never to adopt the atrocious maxim — that the supposed goodness of the object to be achieved justifies any means of accomplishing it, — and that, having indefinite power in their control, they may lawfully exert it, without regard to mischief and misery, in the hope of accomplishing a design which they consider ultimately meritorious. This is the maxim of crime in every stage, from him who commits petty larceny, to the midnight murderer and hired assassin; and it has been the cause of most of the calamities of mankind, of all the atrocities of cabinets, and all the ignominy which covers the memory of so many sovereigns. That which cannot be accomplished by fair, just, and lawful, means, should never be attempted ; for the glory of success will be extinguished by the means, and the disgrace of possible failure will be indelible.