Dissertation on First Principles of Government

There is no subject more interesting to every man than the subject of government. His security, be he rich or poor, and in a great measure his prosperity, are connected therewith ; it is therefore his interest as well as his duty to make himself acquainted with its principles, and what the practice ought to be. ¶

Every art and science, however imperfectly known at first, has been studied, improved, and brought to what we call perfection by the progressive labours of succeeding generations ; but the science of government has stood still. No improvement has been made in the principle and scarcely any in the practice till the American revolution began. In all the countries of Europe (except in France) the same forms and systems that were erected in the remote ages of ignorance still continue, and their antiquity is put in the place of principle ; it is forbidden to investigate their origin, or by what right they exist. If it be asked how has this happened, the answer is easy : they are established on a principle that is false, and they employ their power to prevent detection. ¶

Notwithstanding the mystery with which the science of government has been enveloped, for the purpose of enslaving, plundering, and imposing upon mankind, it is of all things the least mysterious and the most easy to be understood. The meanest capacity cannot be at a loss, if it begins its enquiries at the right point. Every art and science has some point, or alphabet, at which the study of that art or science begins, and by the assistance of which the progress is facilitated. The same method ought to be observed with respect to the science of government. ¶

Instead then of embarrassing the subject in the outset with the numerous subdivisions under which different forms of government have been classed, such as aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, &c. the better method will be to begin with what may be called primary divisions, or those under which all the several subdivisions will be comprehended. ¶

The primary divisions are but two : ¶

First, government by election and representation. ¶

Secondly, government by hereditary succession. ¶

All the several forms and systems of government, however numerous or diversified, class themselves under one or other of those primary divisions ; for either they are on the system of representation, or on that of hereditary succession. As to that equivocal thing called mixed government, such as the late government of Holland, and the present government of England, it does not make an exception to the general rule, because the parts separately considered are either representative or hereditary. ¶

Beginning then our enquiries at this point, we have first to examine into the nature of those two primary divisions. ¶

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If they are equally right in principle, it is mere matter of opinion which we prefer. If the one be demonstratively better than the other, that difference directs our choice ; but if one of them should be so absolutely false as not to have a right to existence, the matter settles itself at once ; because a negative proved on one thing, where two only are offered, and one must be accepted, amounts to an affirmative on the other. ¶

The revolutions that are now spreading themselves in the world have their origin in this state of the case, and the present war is a conflict between the representative system founded on the rights of the people, and the hereditary system founded in usurpation. As to what are called Monarchy, Royalty, and Aristocracy, they do not, either as things or as terms, sufficiently describe the hereditary system ; they are but secondary things or signs of the hereditary system, and which fall of themselves if that system has not a right to exist. Were there no such terms as Monarchy, Royalty, and Aristocracy, or were other terms substituted in their place, the hereditary system, if it continued, would not be altered thereby. It would be the same system under any other titulary name as it is now. ¶

The character therefore of the revolutions of the present day distinguishes itself most definitively by grounding itself on the system of representative government, in opposition to the hereditary. No other distinction reaches the whole of the principle. ¶

Having thus opened the case generally, I proceed, in the first place, to examine the hereditary system, because it has the priority in point of time. The representative system is the invention of the modern world ; and, that no doubt may arise as to my own opinion, I declare it before hand, which is, that there is not a problem in Euclid more mathematically true, than that hereditary government has not a right to exist. When therefore we take from any man the exercise of hereditary power, we take away that which he never had the right to possess, and which no law or custom could, or ever can, give him a title to. ¶

The arguments that have hitherto been employed against the hereditary system have been chiefly founded upon the absurdity of it, and its incompetency to the purpose of good government. Nothing can present to our judgment, or to our imagination, a figure of greater absurdity, than that of seeing the government of a nation fall, as it frequently does, into the hands of a lad necessarily destitute of experience, and often little better than a fool. It is an insult to every man of years, of character, and of talents, in a country. The moment we begin to reason upon the hereditary system, it falls into derision ; let but a single idea begin, and a thousand will soon follow. Insignificance, imbecility, childhood, dotage, want of moral character ; in fine, every defect serious or laughable unite to hold up the hereditary system as a figure of ridicule. Leaving, however, the ridiculousness of the thing to the reflections of the reader, I proceed to the more important part of the question, namely, whether such a system has a right to exist. ¶

To be satisfied of the right of a thing to exist, we must be satisfied that it had a right to begin. If it had not a right to begin, it has not a right to continue. By what right then did the hereditary system begin ? Let a man but ask himself this question, and he will find that he cannot satisfy himself with an answer. ¶

The right which any man or any family had to set itself up at first to govern a nation, and to establish itself hereditarily, was no other than the right which Robespierre had to do the same thing in France. If he had none, they had none. If they had any, he had as much ; for it is impossible to discover superiority of right in any family, by virtue of which hereditary government could begin. The Capets, the Guelphs, the Robespierres, the Marats, are all on the same standing as to the question of right. It belongs exclusively to none. ¶

It is one step towards liberty, to perceive that hereditary government could not begin as an exclusive right in any family. The next point will be, whether, having once begun, it could grow into a right by the influence of time. ¶

This would be supposing an absurdity; for either it is putting time in the place of principle, or making it superior to principle ; whereas time has no more connection with, or influence upon principle, than principle has upon time. The wrong which began a thousand years ago, is as much a wrong as if it began to-day ; and the right which originates to-day, is as much a right as if it had the sanction of a thousand years. Time with respect to principles is an eternal NOW : it has no operation upon them : it changes nothing of their nature and qualities. But what have we to do with a thousand years ? Our life-time is but a short portion of that period, and if we find the wrong in existence as soon as we begin to live, that is the point of time at which it begins to us ; and our right to resist it is the same as if it never existed before. ¶

As hereditary government could not begin as a natural right in any family, nor derive after its commencement any right from time, we have only to examine whether there exist in a nation a right to set it up, and establish it by what is called law, as has been done in England. I answer NO ; and that any law or any constitution made for that purpose is an act of treason against the right of every minor in the nation, at the time it is made, and against the rights of all succeeding generations. I shall speak upon each of those cases. First, of the minor at the time such law is made. Secondly, of the generations that are to follow. ¶

A nation, in a collective sense, comprehends all the individuals of whatever age, from just born to just dying. Of these, one part will be minors, and the other aged. The average of life is not exactly the same in every climate and country, but in general, the minority in years are the majority in numbers ; that is, the number of persons under twentyone years, is greater than the number of persons above that age. This difference in number is not necessary to the establishment of the principle I mean to lay down, but it serves to shew the justice of it more strongly. The principle would be equally as good, if the majority in years were also the majority in numbers. ¶

The rights of minors are as sacred as the rights of the aged. The difTerence is altogether in the diiTerent age of the two parties, and nothing in the nature of the rights ; the rights are the same rights ; and are to be preserved inviolate for the inheritance of the minors when they shall come of age. During the minority of minors their rights are under the sacred guardianship of the aged. The minor cannot surrender them ; the guardian cannot dispossess him ; consequently, the aged part of a nation, who are the law-makers for the time being, and who, in the march of life are but a few years ahead of those who are yet minors, and to whom they must shortly give place, have not and cannot have the right to make a law to set up and establish hereditary government, or, to speak more distinctly, an hereditary succession of governors ; because it is an attempt to deprive every minor in the nation, at the time such a law is made, of his inheritance of rights when he shall come of age, and to subjugate him to a system of government to which, during his minority, he could neither consent nor object. ¶

If a person who is a minor at the time such a law is proposed, had happened to have been born a few years sooner, so as to be of the age of twenty-one years at the time of proposing it, his right to have objected against it, to have exposed the injustice and tyrannical principles of it, and to have voted against it, will be admitted on all sides. If, therefore, the law operates to prevent his exercising the same rights after he comes of age as he would have had a right to exercise had he been of age at the time, it is undeniably a law to take away and annul the rights of every person in the nation who shall be a minor at the time of making such a law, and consequently the right to make it cannot exist. ¶

I come now to speak of government by hereditary succession, as it applies to succeeding generations ; and to shew that in this case, as in the case of minors, there does not exist in a nation a right to set it up. ¶

A nation, though continually existing, is continually in a state of renewal and succession. It is never stationary. ¶

Every day produces new births, carries minors forward to maturity, and old persons from the stage. In this ever running flood of generations there is no part superior in authority to another. Could we conceive an idea of superiority in any, at what point of time, or in what century of the world, are we to fix it ? To what cause are we to ascribe it? By what evidence are we to prove it? By what criterion are we to know it ? A single reflection will teach us that our ancestors, like ourselves, were but tenants for life in the great freehold of rights. The fee-absolute was not in them, it is not in us, it belongs to the whole family of man, thro’ all ages. If we think otherwise than this, we think either as slaves or as tyrants. As slaves, if we think that any former generation had a right to bind us ; as tyrants, if we think that we have authority to bind the generations that are to follow. ¶

It may not be inapplicable to the subject, to endeavour to define what is to be understood by a generation, in the sense the word is here used. ¶

As a natural term its meaning is sufficiently clear. The father, the son, the grandson, are so many distinct generations. But when we speak of a generation as describing the persons in whom legal authority resides, as distinct from another generation of the same description who are to succeed them, it comprehends all those who are above the age of twenty-one years, at the time that we count from ; and a generation of this kind will continue in authority between fourteen and twenty-one years, that is, until the number of minors, who shall have arrived at age, shall be greater than the number of persons remaining of the former stock. ¶

For example: if France, at this or any other moment, contains twenty-four millions of souls, twelve millions will be males, and twelve females. Of the twelve millions of males, six millions will be of the age of twenty-one years, and six will be under, and the authority to govern will reside in the first six. But every day will make some alteration, and in twenty-one years every one of those minors who survives will have arrived at age, and the greater part of the former stock will be gone : the majority of persons then living, in whom the legal authority resides, will be composed of those who, twenty-one years before, had no legal existence. Those will be fathers and grandfathers in their turn, and, in the next twenty-one years, (or less) another race of minors, arrived at age, will succeed them, and so on. ¶

As this is ever the case, and as every generation is equal in rights to another, it consequently follows, that there cannot be a right in any to establish government by hereditary succession, because it would be supposing itself possessed of a right superior to the rest, namely, that of commanding by its own authority how the world shall be hereafter governed, and who shall govern it. Every age and generation is, and must be, (as a matter of right,) as free to act for itself in all cases, as the age and generation that preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man, neither has one generation a property in the generations that are to follow. ¶

In the first part of the Rights of Man I have spoken of government by hereditary succession ; and I will here close the subject with an extract from that work, which states it under the two following heads.’ * * * ¶

The history of the English parliament furnishes an example of this kind ; and which merits to be recorded, as being the greatest instance of legislative ignorance and want of principle that is to be found in any country. The case is as follows : ¶

The English parliament of 1688, imported a man and his wife from Holland, William, and Mary, and made them king and queen of England." Having done this, the said parlia- 2 " The Bill of Rights {temp. William III.) shows that the Lords and Commons met not in Parliament but in convention, that they declared against James II., and in favour of William III. The latter was accepted as sovereign. ¶

ment made a law to convey the government of the country to the heirs of William and Mary, in the following words : " We, the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, do, in the name of the people of England, most humbly and faithfully submit ourselves, our heirs, and posterities, to William and Mary, their heirs and posterities, for ever." And in a subsequent law, as quoted by Edmund Burke, the said parliament, in the name of the people of England then living, binds the said people, their heirs and posterities, to William and Mary, their heirs and posterities, to the end of time. ¶

It is not sufificient that we laugh at the ignorance of such law-makers ; it is necessary that we reprobate their want of principle. The constituent assembly of France, 1789, fell into the same vice as the parliament of England had done, and assumed to establish an hereditary succession in the family of the Capets, as an act of the constitution of that year. That every nation, for the time being, has a right to govern itself as it pleases, must always be admitted ; but government by hereditary succession is government for another race of people, and not for itself ; and as those on whom it is to operate are not yet in existence, or are minors, so neither is the right in existence to set it up for them, and to assume such a right is treason against the right of posterity. ¶

I here close the arguments on the first head, that of government by hereditary succession ; and proceed to the second, that of government by election and representation ; or, as it may be concisely expressed, representative government, in contra-distinction to hereditary government. ¶

Reasoning by exclusion, if hereditary government has not a right to exist, and that it has not is proveable, representative government is admitted of course. ¶

In contemplating government by election and representaand, when monarch, Acts of Parliament were passed confirming what had been done." — ^Joseph Fisher in Notes and Queries (London), May 2, 1874. This does not affect Paine’s argument, as a Convention could have no more right to bind the future than a Parliament. — Editor. tion, we amuse not ourselves in enquiring when or how, orby what right, it began. Its origin is ever in view. Man is himself the origin and the evidence of the right. It appertains to him in right of his existence, and his person is the title deed.’ ¶

The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of Rights. Every man has a right to one vote, and no more, in the choice of representatives. The rich have no more right to exclude the poor from the right of voting, or of electing and being elected, than the poor have to exclude the rich ; and wherever it is attempted, or proposed, on either side, it is a question of force and not of right. Who is he that would exclude another ? That other has a right to exclude him. ¶

That which is now called aristocracy implies an inequality of rights; but who are the persons that have a right to establish this inequality ? Will the rich exclude themselves ? No. Will the poor exclude themselves? No. By what right then can any be excluded ? It would be a question, if any man or class of men have a right to exclude themselves ; but, be this as it may, they cannot have the right to exclude another. The poor will not delegate such a right to the rich, nor the rich to the poor, and to assume it is not only to assume arbitrary power, but to assume a right to commit robbery. Personal rights, of which the right of voting for representatives is one, are a species of property of the most sacred kind : and he that would employ his pecuniary property, or presume upon the influence it gives him, to dispossess or rob another of his property of rights, uses that pecuniary property as he would use fire-arms, and merits to have it taken from him. 266 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE. \M9S ¶

Inequality of rights is created by a combination in one part of the community to exclude another part from its rights. Whenever it be made an article of a constitution, or a law, that the right of voting, or of electing and being elected, shall appertain exclusively to persons possessing a certain quantity of property, be it little or much, it is a combination of the persons possessing that quantity to exclude those who do not possess the same quantity. It is investing themselves with powers as a self-created part of society, to the exclusion of the rest. ¶

It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves ; and in this view of the case, pardoning the vanity of the thing, aristocracy is a subject of laughter. This self-soothing vanity is encouraged by another idea not less selfish, which is, that the opposers conceive they are playing a safe game,>in which there is a chance to gain and none to lose ; that at any rate the doctrine of equality includes them, and that if they cannot get more rights than those whom they oppose and would exclude, they shall not have less. This opinion has already been fatal to thousands, who, not contented with equal rights, have sought more till they lost all, and experienced in themselves the degrading inequality they endeavoured to fix upon others. ¶

In any view of the case it is dangerous and impolitic, sometimes ridiculous, and always unjust, to make property the criterion of the right of voting. If the sum or value of the property upon which the right is to take place be considerable, it will exclude a majority of the people, and unite them in a common interest against the government and against those who support it ; and as the power is always with the majority, they can overturn such a government and its supporters whenever they please. ¶

If, in order to avoid this danger, a small quantity of property be fixed, as the criterion of the right, it exhibits liberty in disgrace, by putting it in competition with accident and insignificance. When a brood-mare shall fortunately produce a foal or a mule that, by being worth the sum in ques-1795] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 267 ¶

tion, shall convey to its owner the right of voting, or by its death take it from him, in whom does the origin of such a right exist ? Is it in the man, or in the mule ? When we consider how many ways property may be acquired without merit, and lost without a crime, we ought to spurn the idea of making it a criterion of rights. ¶

But the offensive part of the case is, that this exclusion from the right of voting implies a stigma on the moral character of the persons excluded ; and this is what no part of the community has a right to pronounce upon another part. No external circumstance can justify it : wealth is no proof of moral character ; nor poverty of the want of it. On the contrary, wealth is often the presumptive evidence of dishonesty ; and poverty the negative evidence of innocence. If therefore property, whether little or much, be made a criterion, the means by which that property has been acquired ought to be made a criterion also. ¶

The only ground upon which exclusion from the right of voting is consistent with justice, would be to inflict it as a punishment for a certain time upon those who should propose to take away that right from others. The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case. The proposal therefore to disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the proposal to take away property. When we speak of right, we ought always to unite with it the idea of duties : rights become duties by reciprocity. The right which I enjoy becomes my duty to guarantee it to another, and he to me ; and those who violate the duty justly incur a forfeiture of the right. ¶

In a political view of the case, the strength and permanent security of government is in proportion to the number of people interested in supporting it. The true policy therefore is to interest the whole by an equality of rights, for the danger arises from exclusions. It is possible to exclude men from the right of voting, but it is impossible to exclude them from the right of rebelling against that exclusion ; and when all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect. ¶

While men could be persuaded they had no rights, or that rights appertained only to a certain class of men, or that government was a thing existing in right of itself, it was not difficult to govern them authoritatively. The ignorance in which they were held, and the superstition in which they were instructed, furnished the means of doing it. But when the ignorance is gone, and the superstition with it ; when they perceive the imposition that has been acted upon them ; when they reflect that the cultivator and the manufacturer are the primary means of all the wealth that exists in the world, beyond what nature spontaneously produces ; when they begin to feel their consequence by their usefulness, and their right as members of society, it is then no longer possible to govern them as before. The fraud once detected cannot be re-acted. To attempt it is to provoke derision, or invite destruction. ¶

That property will ever be unequal is certain. Industry, superiority of talents, dexterity of management, extreme frugality, fortunate opportunities, or the opposite, or the means of those things, will ever produce that effect, without having recourse to the harsh, ill sounding names of avarice and oppression ; and besides this, there are some men who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery or the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with it beyond their wants or their independence ; whilst in others there is an avidity to obtain it by every means not punishable ; it makes the sole business of their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it criminally ; but it is always criminally employed when it is made a criterion for exclusive rights. ¶

In institutions that are purely pecuniary, such as that of a bank or a commercial company, the rights of the members composing that company are wholly created by the property ¶

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they invest therein ; and no other rights are represented in the government of that company, than what arise out of that property ; neither has that government cognizance of any thing but property. ¶

But the case is totally different with respect to the institution of civil government, organized on the system of representation. Such a government has cognizance of every thing, and of every man as a member of the national society, whether he has property or not ; and, therefore, the principle requires that every .man, and every kind of right, be represented, of which the right to acquire and to hold property is but one, and that not of the most essential kind. The protection of a man’s person is more sacred than the protection of property ; and besides this, the faculty of performing any kind of work or services by which he acquires a livelihood, or maintaining his family, is of the nature of property. It is property to him ; he has acquired it ; and it is as much the object of his protection as exterior property, possessed without that faculty, can be the object of protection in another person. ¶

I have always believed that the best security for property, be it much or little, is to remove from every part of the community, as far as can possibly be done, every cause of complaint, and every motive to violence ; and this can only be done by an equality of rights. When rights are secure, property is secure in consequence. But when property is made a pretence for unequal or exclusive rights, it weakens the right to hold the property, and provokes indignation and tumult ; for it is unnatural to believe that property can be secure under the guarantee of a society injured in its rights by the influence of. that property. ¶

Next to the injustice and ill-policy of making property a pretence for exclusive rights, is the unaccountable absurdity of giving to mere sound the idea of property, and annexing to it certain rights ; for what else is a title but sound ? Nature is often giving to the world some extraordinary men who arrive at fame by merit and universal consent, such as Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, &c. They were truly great or noble. ¶

But when government sets up a manufactory of nobles, it is as absurd as if she undertook to manufacture wise men. Her nobles are all counterfeits. ¶

This wax-work oi’der has assumed the name of aristocracy ; and the disgrace of it would be lessened if it could be considered only as childish imbecility. We pardon foppery because of its insignificance, and on the same ground we might pardon the foppery of Titles. But the origin of aristocracy was worse than foppery. It was robbery. The first aristocrats in all countries were brigands. Those of later times, sycophants. ¶

It is very well known that in England, (and the same will be found in other countries) the great landed estates now held in descent were plundered from the quiet inhabitants at the conquest. The possibility did not exist of acquiring such estates honestly. If it be asked how they could have been acquired, no answer but that of robbery can be given. That they were not acquired by trade, by commerce, by manufactures, by agriculture, or by any reputable employment, is certain. How then were they acquired ? Blush, aristocracy, to hear your origin, for your progenitors were Thieves. They were the Robespierres and the Jacobins of that day. When they had committed the robbery, they endeavoured to lose the disgrace of it by sinking their real names under fictitious ones, which they called Titles. It is ever the practice of Felons to act in this manner. They never pass by their real names.* ¶

As property, honestly obtained, is best secured by an equality of Rights, so ill-gotten property depends for protection on a monopoly of rights. He who has robbed another of his property, will next endeavour to disarm him of his rights, to secure that property ; for when the robber becomes the legislator he believes himself secure. That part of the government of England that is called the house of lords, was originally composed of persons who had committed the rob- ¶

’ This and the preceding paragraph have been omitted from some editions. — £ditor. ¶

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beries of which I have been speaking. It was an association for the protection of the property they had stolen. ¶

But besides the criminality of the origin of aristocracy, it has an injurious effect on the moral and physical character of man. Like slavery it debilitates the human faculties ; for as the mind bowed down by slavery loses in silence its elastic powers, so, in the contrary extreme, when it is buoyed up by folly, it becomes incapable of exerting them, and dwindles into imbecility. It is impossible that a mind employed upon ribbands and titles can ever be great. The childishness of the objects consumes the man. ¶

It is at all times necessary, and more particularly so during the progress of a revolution, and until right ideas confirm themselves by habit, that we frequently refresh our patriotism by reference to first principles. It is by tracing things to their origin that we learn to understand them : and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view that we never forget them. ¶

An enquiry into the origin of Rights will demonstrate to us that rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another ; for who is he who could be the first giver, or by what principle, or on what authority, could he possess the right of giving ? A declaration of rights is not a creation of them, nor a donation of them. It is a manifest of the principle by which they exist, followed by a detail of what the rights are ; for every civil right has a natural right for its foundation, and it includes the principle of a reciprocal guarantee of those rights from man to man. As, therefore, it is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man, it consequently follows, that rights appertain to man in right of his existence only, and must therefore be equal to every man. The principle of an equality of rights is clear and simple. Every man can understand it, and it is by understanding his rights that he learns his duties ; for where the rights of men are equal, every man must finally see the necessity of protecting the rights of others as the most effectual security for his own. But if, in the formation of a constitution, we depart from the prin- ciple of equal rights, or attempt any modification of it, we plunge into a labyrinth of difficulties from which there is no way out but by retreating. Where are we to stop ? Or by what principle are we to find out the point to stop at, that shall discriminate between men of the same country, part of whom shall be free, and the rest not ? If property is to be made the criterion, it is a total departure from every moral principle of liberty, because it is attaching rights to mere matter, and making man the agent of that matter. It is, moreover, holding up property as an apple of discord, and not only exciting but justifying war against it ; for I maintain the principle, that when property is used as an instrument to take away the rights of those who may happen not to possess property, it is used to an unlawful purpose, as fire-arms would be in a similar case. ¶

In a state of nature all men are equal in rights, but they are not equal in power ; the weak cannot protect themselves against the strong. This being the case, the institution of civil society is for the purpose of making an equalization-of powers that shall be parallel to, and a guarantee of, the equality of rights. The laws of a country, when properly constructed, apply to this purpose. Every man takes the arm of the law for his protection as more effectual than his own ; and therefore every man has an equal right in the formation of the government, and of the laws by which he is to be governed and judged. In extensive countries and societies, such as America and France, this right in the individual can only be exercised by delegation, that is, by election arid representation ; and hence it is that the institution of representative government arises. ¶

Hitherto, I have confined myself to matters of principle only. First, that hereditary government has not a right to exist ; that it cannot be established on any principle of right ; and that it is a violation of all principle. Secondly, that government by election and representation has its origin in the natural and eternal rights of man ; for whether a man be his own lawgiver, as he would be in a state of nature ; or whether he exercises his portion of legislative sovereignty in his own person, as might be the case in small democracies where all could assemble for the formation of the laws by which they were to be governed ; or whether he exercises it in the choice of persons to represent him in a national assembly of representatives, the origin of the right is the same in all cases. The first, as is before observed, is defective in power ; the second, is practicable only in democracies of small extent; the third, is the greatest scale upon which human government can be instituted. ¶

Next to matters of principle are matters of opinion, and it is necessary to distinguish between the two. Whether the rights of men shall be equal is not a matter of opinion but of right, and consequently of principle ; for men do not hold their rights as grants from each other, but each one in right of himself. Society is the guardian but not the giver. And as in extensive societies, such as America and France, the right of the individual in matters of government cannot be exercised but by election and representation, it consequently follows that the only system of government consistent with principle, where simple democracy is impracticable, is the representative system. But as to the organical part, or the manner in which the several parts of government shall be arranged and composed, it is altogether matter of opinion. It is necessary that all the parts be conformable with the principle of equal rights ; and so long as this principle be religiously adhered to, no very material error can take place, neither can any error continue long in that part which falls within the province of opinion. ¶

In all matters of opinion, the social compact, or the principle by which society is held together, requires that the majority of opinions becomes the rule for the whole, and that the minority yields practical obedience thereto. This is perfectly conformable to the principle of equal rights: for, in the first place, every man has a right to give an opinion but no man has a right that his opinion should govern the rest. In the second place, it is not supposed to be known beforehand on which side of any question, whether for or against, any man’s opinion will fall. He may happen to ¶

VOL III— 18 ¶

be in a majority upon some questions, and in a minority upon others ; and by the same rule that he expects obedience in the one case, he must yield it in the other. All the disorders that have arisen in France, during the progress of the revolution, have had their origin, not in ^& principle of equal rights, but in the violation of that principle. The principle of equal rights has been repeatedly violated, and that not by the majority but by the minority, and that minority has been composed of men possessing property, as well as of men without property ; property, therefore, even upon the experience already had, is no more a criterion of character than it is of rights. It will sometimes happen that the minority are right, and the majority are wrong, but as soon as experience proves this to be the case, the minority will increase to a majority, and the error will reform itself by the tranquil operation of freedom of opinion and equality of rights. Nothing, therefore, can justify an insurrection, neither can it ever be necessary where rights are equal and opinions free. ¶

Taking then the principle of equal rights as the foundation of the revolution, and consequently of the constitution, the organical part, or the manner in which the several parts of the government shall be arranged in the constitution, will, as is already said, fall within the province of opinion. ¶

Various methods will present themselves upon a question of this kind, and tho’ experience is yet wanting to determine which is the best, it has, I think, sufficiently decided which is the worst. That is the worst, which in its deliberations and decisions is subject to the precipitancy and passion of an individual ; and when the whole legislature is crowded into one body it is an individual in mass. In all cases of deliberation it is necessary to have a corps of reserve, and it would be better to divide the representation by lot into two parts, and let them revise and correct each other, than that the whole should sit together, and debate at once. ¶

Representative government is not necessarily confined to any one particular form. The principle is the same in all ¶

1795] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 2/5 ¶

the forms under which it can be arranged. The equal rights of the people is the root from which the whole springs, and the branches may be arranged as present opinion or future experience shall best direct. As to that hospital of incurables (as Chesterfield calls it), the British house of peers, it is an excrescence growing out of corruption ; and there is no more affinity or resemblance between any of the branches of a legislative body originating from the right of the people, and the aforesaid house of peers, than between a regular member of the human body and an ulcerated wen. ¶

As to that part of government that is called the executive, it is necessary in the first place to fix a precise meaning to the word. ¶

There are but two divisions into which power can be arranged. First, that of willing or decreeing the laws; secondly, that of executing or putting them in practice. The former corresponds to the intellectual faculties of the human mind, which reasons and determines what shall be -done ; the second, to the mechanical powers of the human body, that puts that determination into practice.’ If the former decides, and the latter does not perform, it is a state of imbecility ; and if the latter acts without the predetermination of the former, it is a state of lunacy. The executive department therefore is official, and is subordinate to the legislative, as the body is to the mind, in a state of health ; for it is impossible to conceive the idea of two sovereignties, a sovereignty to will, and a sovereignty to act. The executive is not invested with the power of deliberating whether it shall act or not ; it has no discretionary authority in the case ; for it can act no other thing than what the laws <iecree, and it is obliged to act conformably thereto ; and in this view of the case, the executive is made up of all the •official departments that execute the laws, of which that -which is called the judiciary is the chief. ¶

But mankind have conceived an idea that some kind of authority is necessary to superintend the execution of the 276 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE. [i795 laws and to see that they are faithfully performed ; and it is by confounding this superintending authority with the ofificial execution that we get embarrassed about the term executive power. All the parts in the governments of the United States of America that are called THE EXECUTIVE, are no other than authorities to superintend the execution of the laws; and they are so far independent of the legislative, that they know the legislative only thro’ the laws, and cannot be controuled or directed by it through any other medium. ¶

In what manner this superintending authority shall be appointed, or composed, is a matter that falls within the province of opinion. Some may prefer one method and some another; and in all cases, where opinion only and not principle is concerned, the majority of opinions forms the rule for all. There are however some things deducible from reason, and evidenced by experience, that serve to guide our decision upon the case. The one is, never to invest any individual with extraordinary power ; for besides his being tempted to misuse it, it will excite contention and commotion in the nation for the office. Secondly, never to invest power long in the hands of any number of individuals. The inconveniences that may be supposed to accompany frequent changes are less to be feared than the danger that arises from long continuance. ¶

I shall conclude this discourse with offering some observations on the means of preserving liberty ; for it is not only necessary that we establish it, but that we preserve it. ¶

It is, in the first place, necessary that we distinguish between the means made use of to overthrow despotism, in order to prepare the way for the establishment of liberty, and the means to be used after the despotism is overthrown. ¶

The means made use of in the first case are justified by necessity. Those means are, in general, insurrections ; for whilst the established government of despotism continues in any country it is scarcely possible that any other means can be used. It is also certain that in the commencement of a revolution, the revolutionary party permit to themselves a discretionary exercise of power regulated more by circum- ¶

^795] FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 277 ¶

stances than by principle, which, were the practice to continue, liberty would never be established, or if established would soon be overthrown. It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious, that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must co-operate with each other to the final establishment of any principle ; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy. ¶

Had a constitution been established two years ago, (as ought to have been done,) the violences that have since desolated France and injured the character of the revolution, would, in my opinion, have been prevented.’ The nation would then have had a bond of union, and every individual would have known the line of conduct he was to follow. But, instead of this, a revolutionary government, a, thing without either principle or authority, was substituted in its place ; virtue and crime depended upon accident ; and that which was patriotism one day, became treason the next. All these things have followed from the want of a constitution ; for it is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, thus far shalt thou go and no further. But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle. ¶

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression ; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. Thomas Paine. ¶

Paris, July, 1795. ¶

’ The Constitution adopted August ro, 1793, was by the determination of " The Mountain," suspended during the war against France. The revolutionary government was thus made chronic. — Editor, ¶

XXV. THE CONSTITUTION OF 1795. ¶

Speech in the French National Convention, July J

1795-On the motion of Lanthenas, “That permission be granted to Thomas Paine, to deliver his sentiments on the declaration of rights and the constitution,” Thomas Paine ascended the Tribune ; and no opposition being made to the motion, one of the Secretaries, who stood by Mr. Paine, read his speech, of which the following is a literal translation : ¶

Citizens : ¶

The effects of a malignant fever, with which I was afflicted during a rigorous confinement in the Luxembourg, have thus long prevented me from attending at my post in the bosom of the Convention, and the magnitude of the subject under discussion, and no other consideration on earth, could induce me now to repair to my station. ¶

A recurrence to the vicissitudes I have experienced, and the critical situations in which I have been placed in consequence of the French Revolution, will throw upon what I now propose to submit to the Convention . the most unequivocal proofs of my integrity, and the rectitude of those principles which have uniformly influenced my conduct. ¶

In England I was proscribed for having vindicated the French Revolution, and I have suffered a rigorous imprisonment in France for having pursued a similar mode of conduct. During the reign of terrorism, I was a close prisoner for eight long months, and remained so above three months after the era of the lOth Thermidor.’ I ought, however, to state, that I was not persecuted by the people either of England or France. The proceedings in both countries were the effects of the despotism existing in their respective governments. But, even if my persecution had originated in the people at large, my principles and conduct would still have remained the same. Principles which are influenced and subject to the controul of tyranny, have not their foundation in the heart. ¶

A few days ago, I transmitted to you by the ordinary mode of distribution, a short Treatise, entitled " Dissertation on the First Principles of Government." This little work I did intend to have dedicated to the people of Holland, who, about the time I began to write it, were determined to accomplish a Revolution in their Government, rather than to the people of France, who had long before effected that glorious object. But there are, in the Constitution which is about to be ratified by the Convention certain articles, and in the report which preceded it certain points, so repugnant to reason, and incompatible with the true principles of liberty, as to render this Treatise, drawn up for another purpose, applicable to the present occasion, and under this impression I presumed to submit it to your consideration. ¶

If there be faults in the Constitution, it were better to expunge them now, than to abide the event of their mischievous tendency ; for certain it is, that the plan of the Constitution which has been presented to you is not consistent with the grand object of the Revolution, nor congenial to the sentiments of the individuals who accomplished it. ¶

To deprive half the people in a nation of their rights as citizens, is an easy matter in theory or on paper : but it is a most dangerous experiment, and rarely practicable in the execution. 28o THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE. [i79S ¶

I shall now proceed to the observations I have to offer on this important subject ; and I pledge myself that they shall be neither numerous nor diffusive. ¶

In my apprehension, a constitution embraces two distinct parts or objects, the Principle and the Practice ; and it is not only an essential but an indispensable provision that the practice should emanate from, and accord with, the principle. Now I maintain, that the reverse of this proposition is the case in the plan of the Constitution under discussion. The first article, for instance, of the political state of citizens, (v. Title ii. of the Constitution,) says : ¶

" Every man born and resident in France, who, being twenty-one years of age, has inscribed his name on the Civic Register of his Canton, and who has lived afterwards one year on the territory of the Republic, and who pays any direct contribution whatever, real or personal, is a French citizen." ’ ¶

I might here ask, if those only who come under the above description are to be considered as citizens, what designation do you mean to give the rest of the people ? I allude to that portion of the people on whom the principal part of the labour falls, and on whom the weight of indirect taxation will in the event chiefly press. In the structure of the social fabric, this class of people are infinitely superior to that privileged order whose only qualification is their wealth or territorial possessions. For what is trade without merchants ? What is land without cultivation ? And what is the produce of the land without manufactures? But to return to the subject. ¶

In the first place, this article is incompatible with the three first articles of the Declaration of Rights, which precede the Constitutional Act. ¶

The first article of the Declaration of Rights says : ¶

" The end of society is the public good ; and the institution of government is to secure to every individual the enjoyment of his rights." But the article of the Constitution to which I have just adverted proposes as the object of society, not the public good, or in other words, the good of all, but a partial good ; or the good only of a few ; and the Constitution provides solely for the rights of this few, to the exclusion of the many. ¶

The second article of the Declaration of Rights says : ¶

" The Rights of Man in society are Liberty, Equality, Security of his person and property." ¶

But the article alluded to in the Constitution has a direct tendency to establish the reverse of this position, inasmuch as the persons excluded by this inequality can neither be said to possess liberty, nor security against oppression. They are consigned totally to the caprice and tyranny of the rest. ¶

The third article of the Declaration of Rights says : ¶

" Liberty consists in such acts of volition as are not injurious to others." ¶

But the article of the Constitution, on which I have observed, breaks down this barrier. It enables the liberty of one part of society to destroy the freedom of the other. ¶

Having thus pointed out the inconsistency of this article to the Declaration of Rights, I shall proceed to comment on that of the same article which makes a direct contribution a necessary qualification to the right of citizenship. ¶

A modern refinement on the object of public revenue has divided the taxes, or contributions, into two classes, the direct and the indirect, without being able to define precisely the distinction or difference between them, because the effect of both is the same. ¶

Those are designated indirect taxes which fall upon the consumers of certain articles, on which the tax is imposed, because, the tax being included in the price, the consumer pays it without taking notice of it. ¶

The same observation is applicable to the territorial tax. The land proprietors, in order to reimburse themselves, will rack-rent their tenants : the farmer, of course, will transfer the obligation to the miller, by enhancing the price of grain ; ¶

the miller to the baker, by increasing the price of flour ; and the baker to the consumer, by raising the price of bread. The territorial tax, therefore, though called direct, is, in its consequences, indirect. ¶

To this tax the land proprietor contributes only in proportion to the quantity of bread and other provisions that are consumed in his own family. The deficit is furnished by the great mass of the community, which comprehends every individual of the nation. ¶

From the logical distinction between the direct and indirect taxation, some emolument may result, I allow, to auditors of public accounts, &c., but to the people at large I deny that such a distinction (which by the by is without a difference) can be productive of any practical benefit. It ought not, therefore, to be admitted as a principle in the constitution. ¶

Besides this objection, the provision in question does not afifect to define, secure, or establish the right of citizenship. It consigns to the caprice or discretion of the legislature the power of pronouncing who shall, or shall not, exercise the functions of a citizen ; and this may be done effectually, either by the imposition of a direct or indirect tax, according to the selfish views of the legislators, or by the mode of collecting the taxes so imposed. ¶

Neither a tenant who occupies an extensive farm, nor a merchant or manufacturer who may have embarked a large capital in their respective pursuits, can ever, according to this system, attain the pre-emption of a citizen. On the other hand, any upstart, who has, by succession or management, got possession of a few acres of land or a miserable tenement, may exultingly exercise the functions of a citizen, although perhaps neither possesses a hundredth part of the worth or property of a simple mechanic, nor contributes in any proportion to the exigencies of the State. ¶

The contempt in which the old government held mercantile pursuits, and the obloquy that attached on merchants and manufacturers, contributed not a little to its embarrassments, and its eventual subversion ; and, strange to tell, though the mischiefs arising from this mode of conduct are so obvious, yet an article is proposed for your adoption which has a manifest tendency to restore a defect inherent in the monarchy. ¶

I shall now proceed to the second article of the same Title, with which I shall conclude my remarks. ¶

The second article says, " Every French soldier, who shall have served one or more campaigns in the cause of liberty, is deemed a citizen of the republic, without any respect or reference to other qualifications." ’ ¶

It would seem, that in this Article the Committee were desirous of extricating themselves from a dilemma into which they had been plunged by the preceding article. When men depart from an established principle they are compelled to resort to trick and subterfuge, always shifting their means to preserve the unity of their objects ; and as it rarely happens that the first expedient makes amends for the prostitution of principle, they must call in aid a second, of a more flagrant nature, to supply the deficiency of the former. In this manner legislators go on accumulating error upon error, and artifice upon artifice, until the mass becomes so bulky and incongruous, and their embarrassment so desperate, that they are compelled, as their last expedient, to resort to the very principle they had violated. The Committee were precisely in this predicament when they framed this article ; and to me, I confess, their conduct appears specious rather than efficacious." ¶

It was not for himself alone, but for his family, that the French citizen, at the dawn of the revolution, (for then indeed every man was considered a citizen) marched soldierlike to the frontiers, and repelled a foreign invasion. He had it not in his contemplation, that he should enjoy liberty for the residue of his earthly career, ai^ by his own act ¶

’ This article eventually stood : " All FrencI^^^^B shall have made one or more campaigns for the establishment of th»^^^^^K are citizens, without condition as to taxes." — Editor. ^f^^ ¶

" The head of the Committee (eleven) was the Abbe Si^yes, whose political treachery was well known to Paine before it became known to the world by his services to Napoleon in overthrowing the Republic. — Editor. ¶

preclude his offspring from that inestimable blessing. No ! He wished to leave it as an inheritance to his children, and that they might hand it down to their latest posterity. If a Frenchman, who united in his person the character of a Soldier and a Citizen, was now to return from the army to his peaceful habitation, he must address his small family in this manner : " Sorry I am, that I cannot leave to you a small portion of what I have acquired by exposing my person to the ferocity of our enemies and defeating their machinations. I have established the republic, and, painful the reflection, all the laurels which I have won in the field are blasted, and all the privileges to which my exertions have entitled me extend not beyond the period of my own existence!" Thus the measure that has been adopted by way of subterfuge falls short of what the framers of it speculated upon ; for in conciliating the affections of the Soldier, they have subjected the Father to the most pungent sensations, by obliging him to adopt a generation of Slaves. ¶

Citizens, a great deal has been urged respecting insurrections. I am confident that no man has a greater abhorrence of them than myself, and I am sorry that any insinuations should have been thrown out upon me as a promoter of violence of any kind. The whole tenor of my life and conversation gives the lie to those calumnies, and proves me to be a friend to order, truth and justice. ¶

I hope you will attribute this effusion of my sentiments to my anxiety for the honor and success of the revolution. I have no interest distinct from that which has a tendency to meliorate the situation of mankind. The revolution, as far as it respects myself, has been productive of more loss and persecution than it is possible for me to describe, or for you to indemnify. But with respect to the subject under consideration, I could not refrain from declaring my sentiments. ¶

In my opinion, if you subvert the basis of the revolution, if you dispense with principles, and substitute expedients, you will extinguish that enthusiasm and energy which have hitherto been the Ufe and soul of the revolution ; and you will substitute in its place nothing but a cold indifference and self-interest, which will again degenerate into intrigue, cunning, and effeminacy. ¶

But to discard all considerations of a personal and subordinate nature, it is essential to the well-being of the republic that the practical or organic part of the constitution should correspond with its principles ; and as this does not appear to be the case in the plan that has been presented to you, it is absolutely necessary that it should be submitted to the revision of a committee, who should be instructed to compare it with the Declaration of Rights, in order to ascertain the difference between the two, and to make such alterations as shall render them perfectly consistent and compatible with each other. ¶

XXVI. The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance.’

" On the verge, nay even in the gulph of bankruptcy.‘’ ¶

Debates in Parliament. ¶

Nothing, they say, is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying ; yet we can always fix a period beyond which man cannot live, and within some moment of which he will die. We are enabled to do this, not by any spirit of prophecy, or foresight into the event, but by observation of what has happened in all cases of human or animal existence. If then any other subject, such, for instance, as a system of finance, exhibits in its progress a series of symptoms indicating decay, its final dissolution is certain, and the period of it can be calculated from the symptoms it exhibits. ¶

Those who have hitherto written on the English system of finance, (the funding system,) have been uniformly impressed with the idea that its downfall would happen some time or other. They took, however, no data for their opinion, but ¶

’ This pamphlet, as Paine predicts at its close (no doubt on good grounds), was translated into all languages of Europe, and probably hastened the gold suspension of the Bank of England (1797), which it predicted. The British Government entrusted its reply to Ralph Broome and George Chalmers, who wrote pamphlets. There is in the French Archives an order for 1000 copies, April 27, 1796, nineteen days after Paine’s pamphlet appeared. " Mr. Cobbett has made this little pamphlet a text-book for most of his elaborate treatises on our finances. … On the authority of a late Register of Mr. Cobbett’s I learn that the profits arising from the sale of this pamphlet were devoted [by Paine] to the relief of the prisoners confined in Newgate for debt." — " Life of Paine," by Richard Carlile, 1819. — Editor. expressed it predictively, or merely as opinion, from a conviction that the perpetual duration of such a system was a natural impossibility. It is in this manner that Dr. Price has spoken of it ; and Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, has spoken in the same manner ; that is, merely as opinion without data. " The progress," says Smith, " of the enormous debts, which at present oppress, and will in the long run most probably ruin, all the great nations of Europe [he should have said governments] has been pretty uniform." But this general manner of speaking, though it might make some impression, carried with it no conviction. ¶

It is not my intention to predict any thing ; but I will show from data already known, from symptoms and facts which the English funding system has already exhibited publicly, that it will not continue to the end of Mr. Pitt’s life, supposing him to live the usual age of a man. How much sooner it may fall, I leave to others to predict. ¶

Let financiers diversify systems of credit as they will, it is nevertheless true, that every system of credit is a system of paper money. Two experiments have already been had upon paper money ; the one in America, the other in France. In both those cases the whole capital was emitted, and that whole capital, which in America was called continental money, and in France assignats, appeared in circulation ; the consequence of which was, that the quantity became so enormous, and so disproportioned to the quantity of population, and to the quantity of objects upon which it could be employed, that the market, if I may so express it, was glutted with it, and the value of it fell. Between five and six years determined the fate of those experiments. The same fate would have happened to gold and silver, could gold and silver have been issued in the same abundant manner that paper had been, and confined within the country as paper money always is, by having no circulation out of it ; or, to speak on a larger scale, the same thing would happen in the world, could the world be glutted with gold and silver, as America and France have been with paper. ¶

The English system differs from that of America and France in this one particular, that its capital is kept out of sight ; that is, it does not appear in circulation. Were the whole capital of the national debt, which at the time I write this is almost one hundred million pounds sterling, to be emitted in assignats or bills, and that whole quantity put into circulation, as was done in America and in France, those English assignats, or bills, would soon sink in value as those of America and France have done ; and that in a greater degree, because the quantity of them would be more disproportioned to the quantity of population in England, than was the case in either of the other two countries. A nominal pound sterling in such bills would not be worth one penny. ¶

But though the English system, by thus keeping the capital out of sight, is preserved from hasty destruction, as in the case of America and France, it nevertheless approaches the same fate, and will arrive at it with the same certainty, though by a slower progress. The difference is altogether in the degree of speed by which the two systems approach their fate, which, to speak in round numbers, is as twenty is to one ; that is, the English system, that of funding the capital instead of issuing it, contained within itself a capacity of enduring twenty times longer than the systems adopted by America and France ; and at the end of that time it would arrive at the same common grave, the Potter’s Field of paper money. ¶

The datum, I take for this proportion of twenty to one, is the difference between a capital and the interest at five per cent. Twenty times the interest is equal to the capital. The accumulation of paper money in England is in proportion to the accumulation of the interest upon every new loan ; and therefore the progress to the dissolution is twenty times slower than if the capital were to be emitted and put into circulation immediately. Every twenty years in the English system is equal to one year in the French and American systems. ¶

Having thus stated the duration of the two systems, that of funding upon interest, and that of emitting the whole capital without funding, to be as twenty to one, I come to examine the symptoms of decay, approaching to dissolution, that the English system has already exhibited, and to compare them with similar systems in the French and American systems. ¶

The English funding system began one hundred years ago ; in which time there have been six wars, including the war that ended in 1697. ¶

1. The war that ended, as I have just said, in 1697. ¶

2. The war that began in 1702. ¶

3. The war that began in 1739. ¶

4. The war that began in 1756. ¶

5. The American war, that began in 1775. ¶

6. The present war, that began in 1793. ¶

The national debt, at the conclusion of the war which ended in 1697, was twenty-one millions and an half. (See Smith’s Wealth of Nations, chapter on Public Debts.) We now see it approaching fast to four hundred millions. If between these two extremes of twenty-one millions and four hundred millions, embracing the several expenses of all the including wars, there exist some common ratio that will ascertain arithmetically the amount of the debts at the end of each war, as certainly as the fact is known to be, that ratio will in like manner determine what the amount of the debt will be in all future wars, and will ascertain the period within which the funding system will expire in a bankruptcy of the government ; for the ratio I allude to, is the ratio which the nature of the thing has established for itself. ¶

Hitherto no idea has been entertained that any such ratio existed, or could exist, that would determine a problem of this kind ; that is, that would ascertain, without having any knowledge of the fact, what the expense of any former war had been, or what the expense of any future war would be ; but it is nevertheless true that such a ratio does exist, as I shall show, and also the mode of applying it. ¶

The ratio I allude to is not in arithmetical progression like the numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ; nor yet in geometrical progression, like the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256; ¶

VOL 111 — 19 ¶

but it is in the series of one half upon each preceding number ; like the numbers 8, 12, 18, 27, 40, 60, 90, 135. ¶

Any person can perceive that the second number, 12, is produced by the preceding number, 8, and half 8 ; and that the third number, 18, is in like manner produced by the preceding number, 12, and half 12 ; and so on for the rest. They can also see how rapidly the sums increase as the ratio proceeds. The difference between the two first numbers is but four ; but the difference between the two last is fortyfive ; and from thence they may see with what immense rapidity the national debt has increased, and will continue to increase, till it exceeds the ordinary powers of calculation, and loses itself in ciphers. ¶

I come now to apply the ratio as a rule to determine in all cases. ¶

I began with the war that ended in 1697, which was the war in which the funding system began. The expense of that war was twenty-one millions and an half. In order to ascertain the expense of the next war, I add to twenty-one millions and an half, the half thereof (ten millions and three quarters) which makes thirty-two millions and a quarter for the expense of that war. This thirty-two millions and a quarter, added to the former debt of twenty-one millions and an half, carries the national debt to fifty-three millions and three quarters. Smith, in his chapter on Public Debts, says, that the national debt was at this time fifty-three millions. ¶

I proceed to ascertain the expense of the next war, that of 1739, by adding, as in the former case, one half to the expense of the preceding war. The expense of the preceding war was thirty-two millions and a quarter ; for the sake of even numbers, say, thirty-two millions ; the half of which (16) makes forty-eight millions for the expense of that war. ¶

I proceed to ascertain the expense of the war of 1756, by adding, according to the ratio, one half to the expense of the preceding war. The expense of the preceding was taken at 48 millions, the half of which (24) makes 72 millions for the expense of that war. Smith, (chapter on Public Debts,) ¶

says, the expense of the war of 1756, was 72 millions and a quarter. ¶

I proceed to ascertain the expense of the American war, of 1775, by adding, as in the former cases, one half to the expense of the preceding war. The expense of the preceding war was 72 millions, the half of which (36) makes 108 millions for the expense of that war. In the last edition of Smith, (chapter on Public Debts,) he says, the expense of the American war was more than an hundred millions. ¶

I come now to ascertain the expense of the present war, supposing it to continue as long as former wars have done, and the funding system not to break up before that period. The expense of the preceding war was 108 millions, the half of which (54) makes 162 millions for the expense of the present war. It gives symptoms of going beyond this sum, supposing the funding system not to break up ; for the loans of the last year and of the present year are twenty-two millions each, which exceeds the ratio compared with the loans of the preceding war. It will not be from the inability of procuring loans that the system will break up. On the contrary, it is the facility with which loans can be procured that hastens that event. The loans are altogether paper transactions ; and it is the excess of them that brings on, with accelerating speed, that progressive depreciation of funded paper money that will dissolve the funding system. ¶

I proceed to ascertain the expense of future wars, and I do this merely to show the impossibility of the continuance of the funding system, and the certainty of its dissolution. ¶

The expense of the next war after the present war, according to the ratio that has ascertained the preceding cases, will be ¶

Expense of the second war ¶

third war ¶

fourth war ¶

fifth war ¶

millions. ¶

1228 ¶

millions ; which, at only four per cent, will require taxes to the nominal amount of one hundred and twenty-eight millions to pay the annual interest, besides the interest of the present debt, and the expenses of government, which are not included in this account. Is there a man so mad, so stupid, as to suppose this system can continue ? ¶

When I first conceived the idea of seeking for some common ratio that should apply as a rule of measurement to all the cases of the funding system, so far as to ascertain the several stages of its approach to dissolution, I had no expectation that any ratio could be found that would apply with so much exactness as this does. I was led to the idea merely by observing that the funding system was a thing in continual progression, and that whatever was in a state of progression might be supposed to admit of, at least, some general ratio of measurement, that would apply without any very great variation. But who could have supposed that falling systems, or falling opinions, admitted of a ratio apparently as true as the descent of falling bodies ? I have not m.ade the ratio any more than Newton made the ratio of gravitation. I have only discovered it, and explained the mode of applying it. ¶

To shew at one view the rapid progression of the funding^ system to destruction, and to expose the folly of those who* blindly believe in its continuance, and who artfully endeavour to impose that belief upon others, I exhibit in the annexed table, the expense of each of the six wars since the funding system began, as ascertained by ratio, and the expense of the six wars yet to come, ascertained by the same ratio. ¶

First Six Wars

Second Six Wars

21 millions ¶

243 millions ¶

• 364 ¶

. . 48 ¶

• 546 ¶

819 " ¶

. 1228 " ¶

. 1842 " ¶

Total ^444 ¶

Total ;^So42 " ¶

• The actual expense of the war of 1739 did not come up to the sum ascertained by the ratio. But as that which is the natural disposition of a thing, as ¶

Those who are acquainted with the power with which even -a small ratio, acting in progression, multiplies in a long series, will see nothing to wonder at in this table. Those who are not acquainted with that subject, and not knowing what else to say, may be inclined to deny it. But it is not their opinion one way, nor mine the other, that can influ- .ence the event. The table exhibits the natural march of the funding system to its irredeemable dissolution. Supposing the present government of England to continue, and to go -on as it has gone on since the funding system began, I would not give twenty shillings for one hundred pounds in "the funds to be paid twenty years hence. I do not speak this predictively ; I produce the data upon which that belief is founded ; and which data it is every body’s interest to know, who have any thing to do with the funds, or who are going to bequeath property to their descendants to be paid ^t a future day. ¶

Perhaps it may be asked, that as governments or ministers proceeded by no ratio in making loans or incurring •debts, and nobody intended any ratio, or thought of any, how does it happen that there is one? I answer, that the ratio is founded in necessity ; and I now go to explain what that necessity is. ¶

It will always happen, that the price of labour, or of the produce of labour, be that produce what it may, will be in proportion to the quantity of money in a country, admitting things to take their natural course. Before the invention of the funding system, there was no other money than gold and it is the natural disposition of a stream of water to descend, will, if impeded in its course, overcome by a new effort what it had lost by that impediment, so it was with respect to this war and the next (1756) taken collectively; for the expense of the war of 1756 restored the equilibrium of the ratio, as fully as if it had not been impeded. A circumstance that serves to prove the truth of the ratio more fully than if the interruption had not taken place. The war ¶

.of 1739 was languid ; the efforts were below the value of money at that time ; for the ratio is the measure of the depreciation of money in consequence of the funding system ; or what comes to the same end, it is the measure of the increase of paper. Every additional quantity of it, whether in bank notes or ¶

-otherwise, diminishes the real, though not the nominal value of the former vquantity. — A uthor. silver ; and as nature gives out those metals with a sparing hand, and in regular annual quantities from the mines, the several prices of things were proportioned to the quantity of money at that time, and so nearly stationary as to vary but little in any fifty or sixty years of that period. ¶

When the funding system began, a substitute for gold and silver began also. That substitute was paper ; and the quantity increased as the quantity of interest increased upon accumulated loans. This appearance of a new and additional species of money in the nation soon began to break the rela^ tive value which money and the things it will purchase bore to each other before. Every thing rose in price ; but the rise at first was little and slow, like the difference in units between two first numbers, 8 and 12, compared with the two last numbers 90 and 135, in the table. It was however sufficient to make itself considerably felt in a large transaction. When therefore government, by engaging in a new war, required a new loan, it was obliged to make a higher loan than the former loan, to balance the increased price to which things had risen ; and as that new loan increased the quantity of paper in proportion to the new quantity of interest, it carried the price of things still higher than before. The next loan was again higher, to balance that further increased price ; and all this in the same manner, though not in the same degree, that every new emission of continental money in America, or of assignats in France, was greater than the preceding emission, to make head against the advance of prices, till the combat could be maintained no longer. Herein is founded the necessity of which I have just spoken. That necessity proceeds with accelerating velocity, and the ratio I have laid down is the measure of that acceleration ; or, to speak the technical language of the subject, it is the measure of the increasing depreciation of funded paper money, which it is impossible to prevent while the quantity of that money and of bank notes continues to multiply. What else but this can account for the difference between one war costing 21 milHons, and another war costing 160 millions ? ¶

The difference cannot be accounted for on the score of extraordinary efforts or extraordinary achievements. The war that cost twenty -one millions was the war of the confederates, historically called the grand alliance, consisting of England, Austria, and Holland in the time of William III. against Louis XIV. and in which the confederates were victorious. The present is a war of a much greater confederacy — a confederacy of England, Austria, Prussia, the German Empire, Spain, Holland, Naples, and Sardinia, eight powers, against the French Republic singly, and the Republic has beaten the whole confederacy. — But to return to my subject. ¶

It is said in England, that the value of paper keeps equal with the value of gold and silver. But the case is not rightly stated ; for the fact is, that the paper has pulled down the value of gold and silver to a level with itself. Gold and silver will not purchase so much of any purchasable article at this day as if no paper had appeared, nor so much as it will in any country in Europe where there is no paper. How long this hanging together of money and paper will continue, makes a new case ; because it daily exposes the system to sudden death, independent of the natural death it would otherwise suffer. ¶

I consider the funding system as being now advanced into the last twenty years of its existence. The single circumstance, were there no other, that a war should now cost nominally one hundred and sixty millions, which when the system began cost but twenty-one millions, or that the loan for one year only (including the loan to the Emperor) should now be nominally greater than the whole expense of that war, shows the state of depreciation to which the funding system has arrived. Its depreciation is in the proportion of eight for one, compared with the value of its money when the system began ; which is the state the French assignats stood a year ago (March 1795) compared with gold and silver. It is therefore that I say, that the English funding system has entered on the last twenty years of its existence, comparing each twenty years of the English system with every single year of the American and French systems, as before stated. ¶

Again, supposing the present war to close as former wars have done, and without producing either revolution or reform in England, another war at least must be looked for in the space of the twenty years I allude to ; for it has never yet happened that twenty years have passed off without a war, and that more especially since the English government has dabbled in German politics, and shown a disposition to insult the world, and the world of commerce, with her navy. The next war will carry the national debt to very nearly seven hundred millions, the interest of which, at four per cent, will be twenty-eight millions besides the taxes for the (then) expenses of government, which will increase in the same proportion, and which will carry the taxes to at least forty millions ; and if another war only begins, it will quickly carry them to above fifty ; for it is in the last twenty years of the funding system, as in the last year of the American and French systems without funding, that all the great shocks begin to operate. ¶

I have just mentioned that, paper in England has pulled down the value of gold and silver to a level with itself ; and that ^\s pulling down of gold and silver money has created the appearance of paper money keeping up. The same thing, and the same mistake, took place in America and in France, and continued for a considerable time after the commencement of their system of paper ; and the actual depreciation of money was hidden under that mistake. ¶

It was said in America, at that time, that everything was becoming dear ; but gold and silver could then buy those dear articles no cheaper than paper could ; and therefore it was not called depreciation. The idea of dearness established itself for the idea of depreciation. The same was the case in France. Though every thing rose in price soon after assignats appeared, yet those dear articles could be purchased no cheaper with gold and silver, than with paper, and it was only said that things were dear. The same is still the language in England. They call it deariness. But they will soon find that it is an actual depreciation, and that this depreciation is the effect of the funding system ; which, by crowding such a continually increasing mass of paper into circulation, carries down the value of gold and silver with it. But gold and silver, will, in the long run, revolt against depreciation, and separate from the value of paper ; for the progress of all such systems appears to be, that the paper will take the command in the beginning, and gold and silver in the end. ¶

But this succession in the command of gold and silver over paper, makes a crisis far more eventful to the funding system than to any other system upon which paper can be issued ; for, strictly speaking, it is not a crisis of danger but a symptom of death. It is a death-stroke to the funding system. It is a revolution in the whole of its afifairs. ¶

If paper be issued without being funded upon interest, emissions of it can be continued after the value of it separates from gold and silver, as we have seen in the two cases of America and France. But the funding system rests altogether upon the value of paper being equal to gold and silver ; which will be as long as the paper can continue carrying down the value of gold and silver to the same level to which itself descends, and no longer. But even in this state, that of descending equally together, the minister, whoever he may be, will find himself beset with accumulating difficulties ; because the loans and taxes voted for the service of each ensuing year will wither in his hands before the year expires, or before they can be applied. This will force him to have recourse to emissions of what are called exchequer and navy bills, which, by still increasing the mass of paper in circulation, will drive on the depreciation still more rapidly. ¶

It ought to be known that taxes in England are not paid in gold and silver, but in paper (bank notes). Every person who pays any considerable quantity of taxes, such as maltsters, brewers, distillers, (I appeal for the truth of it, to any of the collectors of excise in England, or to Mr. Whitebread,)" knows this to be the case. There is not gold and ’ An eminent Member of Parliament, — Editor. ¶

silver enough in the nation to pay the taxes in coin, as I shall show; and consequently there is not money enough in the bank to pay the notes. The interest of the national funded debt is paid at the bank in the same kind of paper in which the taxes are collected. When people find, as they will find, a reservedness among each other in giving gold and silver for bank notes, or the least preference for the former over the latter, they will go for payment to the bank, where they have a right to go. They will do this as a measure of prudence, each one for himself, and the truth or delusion of the funding system will then be proved. ¶

I have said in the foregoing paragraph that there is not gold and silver enough in the nation to pay the taxes in coin, and consequently that there cannot be enough in the bank to pay the notes. As I do not choose to rest anything upon assertion, I appeal for the truth of this to the publications of Mr. Eden (now called Lord Auckland) and George Chalmers, Secretary to the Board of Trade and Plantation, of which Jenkinson (now Lord Hawkesbury) is president.’ (These sort of folks change their names so often that it is as difficult to know them as it is to know a thief.) Chalmers gives the quantity of gold and silver coin from the returns of coinage at the Mint ; and after deducting for the light gold recoined, says that the amount of gold and silver coined is about twenty millions. He had better not have proved this, especially if he had reflected that public credit is suspicion asleep. The quantity is much too little. ¶

Of this twenty millions (which is not a fourth part of the quantity of gold and silver there is in France, as is shown in Mr. Neckar’s Treatise on the Administration of the Finances) three millions at least must be supposed to be in Ireland, some in Scotland, and in the West Indies, Newfoundland, &c. The quantity therefore in England cannot be more than sixteen millions, which is four millions less than the amount of the taxes. But admitting that there are sixteen millions, not more than a fourth part thereof (four ¶

’ Concerning Chalmers and Hawkesbury see vol. ii., p. 522, Also, preface to my " Life of Paine," xvi., and other passages. — Editor. t _ I I. ,…^i II… — I .^.^i ., I, millions) can be in London, when it is considered that every city, town, village, and farm-house in the nation must have a part of it, and that all the great manufactories, which most require cash, are out of London. Of this four millions in London, every banker, merchant, tradesman, in short every individual, must have some. He must be a poor shopkeeper indeed, who has not a few guineas in his till. The quantity of cash therefore in the bank can never, on the evidence of circumstances, be so much as two millions ; most probably not more than one million ; and on this slender twig, always liable to be broken, hangs the whole funding system of four hundred millions, besides many millions in bank notes. The sum in the bank is not sufficient to pay one-fourth of only one year’s interest of the national debt, were the creditors to demand payment in cash, or demand cash for the bank notes in which the interest is paid, a circumstance always liable to happen. ¶

One of the amusements that has kept up the farce of the funding system is, that the interest is regularly paid. But as the interest is always paid in bank notes, and as bank notes can always be coined for the purpose, this mode of payment proves nothing. The point of proof is, can the bank give cash for the bank notes with which the interest is paid ? If it cannot, and it is evident it cannot, some millions of bank notes must go without payment, and those holders of bank notes who apply last will be worst off. When the present quantity of cash in the bank is paid away, it is next to impossible to see how any new quantity is to arrive. None will arrive from taxes, for the taxes will all be paid in bank notes ; and should the government refuse bank notes in payment of taxes, the credit of bank notes will be gone at once. No cash will arise from the business of discounting merchants’ bills ; for every merchant will pay off those bills in bank notes, and not in cash. There is therefore no means left for the bank to obtain a new supply of cash, after the present quantity is paid away. But besides the impossibility of paying the interest of the funded debt in cash, there are many thousand persons, in London and in the country, who are holders of bank notes that came into their hands in the fair way of trade, and who are not stockholders in the funds ; and as such persons have had no hand in increasing the demand upon the bank, as those have had who for their own private interest, like Boyd and others, are contracting or pretending to contract for new loans, they will conceive they have a just right that their bank notes should be paid first. Boyd has been very sly in France, in changing his paper into cash. He will be just as sly in doing the same thing in London, for he has learned to calculate ; and then it is probable he will set off for America. ¶

A stoppage of payment at the bank is not a new thing. Smith in his Wealth of Nations, book ii. chap. 2. says, that in the year 1696, exchequer bills fell forty, fifty, and sixty per cent ; bank notes twenty per cent ; and the bank stopped payment. That which happened in 1696 may happen again in 1796. The period in which it happened was the last year of the war of King William. It necessarily put a stop to the further emissions of exchequer and navy bills, and to the raising of new loans ; and the peace which took place the next year was probably hurried on by this circumstance, and saved the bank from bankruptcy. Smith in speaking from the circumstances of the bank, upon another occasion, says (book ii. chap. 2.) " This great company had been reduced to the necessity of paying in sixpences." When a bank adopts the expedient of paying in sixpences, it is a confession of insolvency. ¶

It is worthy of observation, that every case of failure in finances, since the system of paper began, has produced a revolution in governments, either total or partial. A failure in the finances of France produced the French revolution. A failure in the finance of the assignats broke up the revolutionary government, and produced the present French Constitution. A failure in the finances of the Old Congress of America, and the embarrassments it brought upon commerce, broke up the system of the old confederation, and produced the federal Constitution. If, then, we admit of reasoning by comparison of causes and events, the failure of the English finances will produce some change in the government of that country. ¶

As to Mr. Pitt’s project of paying off the national debt by applying a million a-year for that purpose, while he continues adding more than twenty millions a-year to it, it is like setting a man with a wooden leg to run after a hare. The longer he runs the farther he is off. ¶

When I said that the funding system had entered the last twenty years of its existence, I certainly did not mean that it would continue twenty years, and then expire as a lease would do. I meant to describe that age of decrepitude in which death is every day to be expected, and life cannot continue long. But the death of credit, or that state that is called bankruptcy, is not always marked by those progressive stages of visible decline that marked the decline of natural life. In the progression of natural life age cannot counterfeit youth, nor conceal the departure of juvenile abilities. But it is otherwise with respect to the death of credit ; for though all the approaches to bankruptcy may actually exist in circumstances, they admit of being concealed by appearances. Nothing is more common than to see the bankrupt of to-day a man in credit but the day before ; yet no sooner is the real state of his affairs known, than every body can see he had been insolvent long before. In London, the greatest theatre of bankruptcy in Europe, this part of the subject will be well and feelingly understood. ¶

Mr. Pitt continually talks of credit, and the national resources. These are two of the feigned appearances by which the approaches to bankruptcy are concealed. That which he calls credit may exist, as I have just shown, in a state of insolvency, and is always what I have before described it to be, suspicion asleep. ¶

source, but is the anticipation of a resource. They have anticipated what would have been a resource in another generation, had not the use of it been so anticipated. The funding system is a system of anticipation. Those who established it an hundred years ago anticipated the resources of those who were to live an hundred years after ; for the people of the present day have to pay the interest of the debts contracted at that time, and all debts contracted since. But it is the last feather that breaks the horse’s back. Had the system begun an hundred years before, the amount of taxes at this time to pay the annual interest at four per cent, (could we suppose such a system of insanity could have continued) would be two hundred and twenty millions annually : for the capital of the debt would be 5486 millions, according to the ratio that ascertains the expense of the wars for the hundred years that are past. But long before it could have reached this period, the value of bank notes, from the immense quantity of them, (for it is in paper only that such a nominal revenue could be collected,) would have been as low or lower than continental paper has been in America, or assignats in France ; and as to the idea of exchanging them for gold and silver, it is too absurd to be contradicted. ¶

Do we not see that nature, in all her operations, disowns the visionary basis upon which the funding system is built? She acts always by renewed successions, and never by accumulating additions perpetually progressing. Animals and vegetables, men and trees, have existed since the world began : but that existence has been carried on by succession of generations, and not by continuing the same men and the same trees in existence that existed first ; and to make room for the new she removes the old. Every natural idiot can see this ; it is the stock-jobbing idiot only that mistakes. He has conceived that art can do what nature cannot. He is teaching her a new system — that there is no occasion for man to die — that the scheme of creation can be carried on upon the plan of the funding system — that it can proceed by continual additions of new beings, like new loans, and all live together in eternal youth. Go, count the graves, thou idiot, and learn the folly of thy arithmetic ! ¶

But besides these things, there is something visibly farcical in the whole operation of loaning. It is scarcely more than four years ago that such a rot of bankruptcy spread itself over London, that the whole commercial fabric tottered ; trade and credit were at a stand ; and such was the state of things that, to prevent or suspend a general bankruptcy, the government lent the merchants six millions in government paper, and now the merchants lend the government twentytwo millions in their paper ; and two parties, Boyd and Morgan, men but little known, contend who shall be the lenders. What a farce is this ! It reduces the operation of loaning to accommodation paper, in which the competitors contend, not who shall lend, but who shall sign, because there is something to be got for signing. ¶

Every English stock-jobber and minister boasts of the credit of England. Its credit, say they, is greater than that of any country in Europe. There is a good reason for this : for there is not another country in Europe that could be made the dupe of such a delusion. The English funding system will remain a monument of wonder, not so much on account of the extent to which it has been carried, as of the folly of believing in it. ¶

Those who had formerly predicted that the fiinding system would break up when the debt should amount to one hundred or one hundred and fifty millions, erred only in not distinguishing between insolvency and actual bankruptcy ; for the insolvency commenced as soon as the government became unable to pay the interest in cash, or to give cash for the bank notes in which the interest was paid, whether that inability was known or not, or whether it was suspected or not. Insolvency always takes place before bankruptcy ; for bankruptcy is nothing more than the publication of that insolvency. In the affairs of an individual, it often happens that insolvency exists several years before bankruptcy, and that the insolvency is concealed and carried on till the individual is not able to pay one shilling in the pound. A government can ward off bankruptcy longer than an individual : but insolvency will inevitably produce bankruptcy, whether in an individual or in a government. If then the quantity of bank notes payable on demand, which the bank has issued, are greater than the bank can pay off, the bank is insolvent : and when that insolvency is declared, it is bankruptcy.* ¶

I come now to show the several ways by which bank notes get into circulation : I shall afterwards offer an estimate on the total quantity or amount of bank notes existing at this moment. ¶

The bank acts in three capacities. As a bank of discount ; as a bank of deposit ; and as a banker for the government. ¶

First, as a bank of discount. The bank discounts merchants’ bills of exchange for two months. When a merchant ¶

• Among the delusions that have been imposed upon the nation by ministers to give a false colouring to its affairs, and by none more than by Mr. Pitt, is a motley, amphibious-charactered thing called the balance of trade. This balance of trade, as it is called, is taken from the custom-house books, in which entries are made of all cargoes exported, and also of all cargoes imported, in each year ; and when the value of the exports, according to the price set upon them by the exporter or by the custom-house, is greater than the value of the imports, estimated in the same manner, they say the balance of trade is much in their favour. ¶

The custom-house books prove regularly enough that so many cargoes have been exported, and so many imported ; but this is all that they prove, or were intended to prove. They have nothing to do vrith the balance of profit or loss ; and it is ignorance to appeal to them upon that account : for the case is, that the greater the loss is in any one year, the higher will this thing called the balance of trade appear to be according to the custom-house books. For example, nearly the whole of the Mediterranean convoy has been taken by the French this year ; consequently those cargoes will not appear as imports on the custom-house books, and therefore the balance of trade, by which they mean the profits of it, will appear to be so much the greater as the loss amounts to ; and, on the other hand, had the loss not happened, the profits would have appeared to have been so much the less. All the losses happening at sea to returning cargoes, by accidents, by the elements, or by capture, make the balance appear the higher on the side of the exports ; and were they aU lost at sea, it would appear to be all profit on the custom-house books. Also every cargo of exports that is lost that occasions another to be sent, adds in like manner to the side of the exports, and appears as profit. This year the balance of trade will appear high, because the losses have been great by capture and by storms. The ignorance of the British Parliament in listening to this hackneyed imposition of ministers about the balance of trade is astonishing. It shows how little they know of national affairs — and Mr. Grey may as well talk Greek to them, as to make motions about the state of the nation. They understand only fox-hunting and the game laws. — Author. has a bill that will become due at the end of two months, and wants payment before that time, the bank advances that payment to him, deducting therefrom at the rate of five per cent, per annum. The bill of exchange remains at the bank as a pledge or pawn, and at the end of two months it must be redeemed. This transaction is done altogether in paper ; for the profits of the bank; as a bank of discount, arise entirely from its making use of paper as money. The bank gives bank notes to the merchant in discounting the bill of exchange, and the redeemer of the bill pays bank notes to the bank in redeeming it. It very seldom happens that any real money passes between them. ¶

If the profits of a bank be, for example, two hundred thousand pounds a year (a great sum to be made merely by exchanging one sort of paper for another, and which shows also that the merchants of that place are pressed for money for payments, instead of having money to spare to lend to government,) it proves that the bank discounts to the amount of four millions annually, or 666,666/. every two months ; and as there never remain in the bank more than two months’ pledges, of the value of 666,666/., at any one time, the amount of bank notes in circulation at any one time should not be more than to that amount. This is sufficient to show that the present immense quantity of bank notes, which are distributed through every city, town, village, and farm-house in England, cannot be accounted for on the score of discounting. ¶

Secondly, as a bank of deposit. To deposit money at the bank means to lodge it there for the sake of convenience, and to be drawn out at any moment the depositor pleases, or to be paid away to his order. When the business of discounting is great, that of depositing is necessarily small. No man deposits and applies for discounts at the same time ; for it would be like paying interest for lending money, instead of for borrowing it. The deposits that are now made at the bank are almost entirely in bank notes, and consequently they add nothing to the ability of the bank to pay ofT the bank notes that may be presented for payment ; and ¶

VOL III— 20 ¶

besides this, the deposits are no more the property of the bank than the cash or bank notes in a merchant’s countinghouse are the property of his book-keeper. No great increase therefore of bank notes, beyond what the discounting business admits, can be accounted for on the score of deposits. ¶

Thirdly, the bank acts as banker for the government. This is the connection that threatens to ruin every public bank. It is through this connection that the credit of a bank is forced far beyond what it ought to be, and still further beyond its ability to pay. It is through this connection, that such an immense redundant quantity of bank notes have gotten into circulation ; and which, instead of being issued because there was property in the bank, have been issued because there was none. ¶

When the treasury is empty, which happens in almost every year of every war, its coffers at the bank are empty also. It is in this condition of emptiness that the minister has recourse to emissions of what are called exchequer and navy bills, which continually generates a new increase of bank notes, and which are sported upon the public, without there being property in the bank to pay them. These exchequer and navy bills (being, as I have said, emitted because the treasury and its coffers at the bank are empty, and cannot pay the demands that come in) are no other than an acknowledgment that the bearer is entitled to receive so much money. They may be compared to the settlement of an account, in which the debtor acknowledges the balance he owes, and for which he gives a note of hand ; or to a note of hand given to raise money upon it. ¶

Sometimes the bank discounts those bills as it would discount merchants’ bills of exchange ; sometimes it purchases them of the holders at the current price ; and sometimes it agrees with the ministers to pay an interest upon them to the holders, and keep them in circulation. In every one of these cases an additional quantity of bank notes gets into circulation, and are sported, as I have said, upon the public, without there being property in the bank, as banker for the ¶

179^] THE ENGLISH SYSTEM OF FINANCE. 307 ¶

government, to pay them ; and besides this, the bank has now no money of its own ; for the money that was originally subscribed to begin the credit of the bank with, at its first establishment, has been lent to government and wasted long ago. ¶

" The bank " (says Smith, book ii. chap. 2.) " acts not only as an ordinary bank, but as a great engine of State; it receives and pays a greater part of the annuities which are due to the creditors of the public" (It is worth observing, that the public, or the nation, is always put for the government, in speaking of debts.) " It circulates " (says Smith) " exchequer bills, and it advances to government the annual amount of the land and malt taxes, which are frequently not paid till several years afterwards." (This advancement is also done in bank notes, for which there is not property in the bank.) " In those different operations " (says Smith) *’ its duty to the public may sometimes have obliged it, without any fault of its directors, to overstock the circulation with paper money" — bank notes. How its duty to the public can induce it to overstock that public with promissory bank notes which it cannot pay, and thereby expose the individuals of that public to ruin, is too paradoxical to be explained ; for it is on the credit which individuals give to the bank, by receiving and circulating its notes, and not upon its own credit or its own property, for it has none, that the bank sports. If, however, it be the duty of the bank to expose the public to this hazard, it is at least equally the duty of the individuals of that public to get their money and take care of themselves ; and leave it to placemen, pensioners, government contractors, Reeves’ association, and the members of both houses of Parliament, who have voted away the money at the nod of the minister, to continue the credit if they can, and for which their estates individually and collectively ought to answer, as far as they will go. ¶

There has always existed, and still exists, a mysterious, suspicious connection, between the minister and the directors of the bank, and which explains itself no otherways than by a continual increase in bank notes. Without, therefore, entering into any further details of the various contrivances by which bank notes are issued, and thrown upon the public, I proceed, as I before mentioned, to offer an estimate on the total quantity of bank notes in circulation. ¶

However disposed governments may be to wring money by taxes from the people, there is a limit to the practice established by the nature of things. That limit is the proportion between the quantity of money in a nation, be that quantity what it may, and the greatest quantity of taxes that can be raised upon it. People have other uses for money besides paying taxes ; and it is only a proportional part of the money they can spare for taxes, as it is only a proportional part they can spare for house-rent, for clothing, or for any other particular use. These proportions find out and establish themselves ; and that with such exactness, that if any one part exceeds its proportion, all the other parts feel it. ¶

Before the invention of paper money (bank notes,) there was no other money in the nation than gold and silver, and the greatest quantity of money that was ever raised in taxes during that period never exceeded a fourth part of the quantity of money in the nation. It was high taxing when it came to this point. The taxes in the time of William III. never reached to four millions before the invention of paper, and the quantity of money in the nation at that time was estimated to be about sixteen millions. The same proportions established themselves in France. There was no paper money in France before the present revolution, and the taxes were collected in gold and silver money. The highest quantity of taxes never exceeded twenty-two millions sterling; and the quantity of gold and silver money in the nation at the same time, as stated by M. Neckar, from returns of coinage at the Mint, in his Treatise on the Administration of the Finances, was about ninety millions sterling. To go beyond this limit of a fourth part, in England, they were obliged to introduce paper money ; and the attempt to go beyond it in France, where paper could not ¶

T796] THE ENGLISH SYSTEM OF FINANCE. 309 ¶

be introduced, broke up the government. This proportion, therefore, of a fourth part, is the limit which the thing establishes for itself, be the quantity of money in a nation more or less. ¶

The amount of taxes in England at this time is full twenty millions ; and therefore the quantity of gold and silver, and of bank notes, taken together, amounts to eighty millions. The quantity of gold and silver, as stated by Lord Hawkesbury’s Secretary, George Chalmers, as I have before shown, is twenty millions ; and, therefore, the total amount of bank notes in circulation, all made payable on demand, is sixty millions. This enormous sum will astonish the most stupid stock-jobber, and overpower the credulity of the most thoughtless Englishman : but were it only a third part of that sum, the bank cannot pay half a crown in the pound. ¶

There is something curious in the movements of this modern complicated machine, the funding system ; and it is only now that it is beginning to unfold the full extent of its movements. In the first part of its movements it gives great powers into the hands of government, and in the last part it takes them completely away. ¶

The funding system set out with raising revenues under the name of loans, by means of which government became both prodigal and powerful. The loaners assumed the name of creditors, and though it was soon discovered that loaning was government-jobbing, those pretended loaners, or the persons who purchased into the funds afterwards, conceived themselves not only to be creditors, but to be the only creditors. ¶

But such has been the operation of this complicated machine, the funding system, that it has produced, unperceived, a second generation of creditors, more numerous and far more formidable and withal more real than the first generation ; for every holder of a bank note is a creditor, and a real creditor, and the debt due to him is made payable on demand. The debt therefore which the government owes to individuals is composed of two parts ; the one about four hundred millions bearing interest, the other about sixty mil- lions payable on demand. The one is called the funded debt, the other is the debt due in bank notes. ¶

The second debt (that contained in the bank notes) has, in a great measure, been incurred to pay the interest of the first debt ; so that in fact little or no real interest has been paid by government. The whole has been delusion and fraud. Government first contracted a debt, in the form of loans, with one class of people, and then run clandestinely into debt with another class, by means of bank notes, to pay the interest. Government acted of itself in contracting the first debt, and made a machine of the bank to contract the second. It is this second debt that changes the seat of power and the order of things ; for it puts it in the power of even a small part of the holders of bank notes (had they no other motives than disgust at Pitt and Grenville’s sedition bills,) to control any measure of government they found to be injurious to their interest ; and that not by popular meetings, or popular societies, but by the simple and easy operation of withholding their credit from that government ; that is, by individually demanding payment at the bank for every bank note that comes into their hands. Why should Pitt and Grenville expect that the very men whom they insult and injure, should, at the same time, continue to support the measures of Pitt and Grenville, by giving credit to their promissory notes of payment ? No new emissions of bank notes could go on while payment was demanding on the old, and the cash in the bank wasting daily away ; nor any new advances be made to government, or to the emperor, to carry on the war ; nor any new emission be made on exchequer bills. ¶

" The bank" says Smith, (book ii. chap. 2) " is a great eru gine of state." And in the same paragraph he says, " The stability of the bank is equal to that of the British government ; " which is the same as to say that the stability of the government is equal to that of the bank, and no more. If then the bank cannot pay, the arch-treasurer of the holy Roman empire (S. R. I. A.*) is a bankrupt. When Folly invented titles, she did not attend to their application ; for * Part of the inscription on an English guinea. — AutJwr. ¶

ever since the government of England has been in the hands of arck-treasurers, it has been running into bankruptcy ; and as to the arch-treasurer apparent, he has been a bankrupt long ago. What a miserable prospect has England before its eyes ! ¶

Before the war of 1755 there were no bank notes lower than twenty pounds. During that war, bank notes of fifteen pounds and of ten pounds were coined ; and now, since the commencement of the present war, they are coined as low as five pounds. These five-pound notes will circulate chiefly among little shop-keepers, butchers, bakers, market-people, renters of small houses, lodgers, &c. All the high departments of commerce and the affluent stations of life were already overstocked, as Smith expresses it, with the bank notes. No place remained open wherein to crowd an additional quantity of bank notes but artiong the class of people I have just mentioned, and the means of doing this could be best effected by coining five-pound notes. This conduct has the appearance of that of an unprincipled insolvent, who, when on the verge of bankruptcy to the amount of many thousands, will borrow as low as five pounds of the servants in his house, and break the next day. ¶

But whatever momentary relief or aid the minister and his bank might expect from this low contrivance of five-pound notes, it will increase the inability of the bank to pay the higher notes, and hasten the destruction of all ; for even the small taxes that used to be paid in money will now be paid in those notes, and the bank will soon find itself with scarcely any other money than what the hair-powder guinea-tax brings in. ¶

The bank notes make the most serious part of the business of finance : what is called the national funded debt is but a trifle when put in comparison with it ; yet the case of the bank notes has never been touched upon. But it certainly ought to be known upon what authority, whether that of the minister or of the directors, and upon what foundation, such immense quantities are issued. I have stated the amount of them at sixty millions ; I have produced data for that estimation ; and besides this, the apparent quantity of them, far beyond that of gold and silver in the nation, corroborates the statement. But were there but a third part of sixty millions, the bank cannot pay half a crown in the pound ; for no new supply of money, as before said, can arrive at the bank, as all the taxes will be paid in paper. ¶

When the funding system began, it was not doubted that the loans that had been borrowed would be repaid. Government not only propagated that belief, but it began paying them off. In time this profession came to be abandoned : and it is not difificult to see that bank notes will march the same way ; for the amount of them is only another debt under another name ; and the probability is that Mr. Pitt will at last propose funding them. In that case bank notes will not be so valuable as French assignats. The assignats have a solid property in reserve, in the national domains ; bank notes have none ; and, besides this, the English revenue must then sink down to what the amount of it was before the funding system began — ^between three and four millions ; one of which the arch-treasurer would require for himself, and the arch-treasurer apparent would require three-quarters of a million more to pay his debts. " In France" says Sterne, " they order these things better" ¶

I have now exposed the English system of finance to the eyes of all nations ; for this work will be published in all languages. In doing this, I have done an act of justice to those numerous citizens of neutral nations who have been imposed upon by that fraudulent system, and who have property at stake upon the event. ¶

As an individual citizen of America, and as far as an individual can go, I have revenged (if I may use the expression without any immoral meaning) the piratical depredations committed on the American commerce by the English government. I have retaliated for France on the subject of finance : and I conclude with retorting on Mr. Pitt the expression he used against France, and say, that the English system of finance " is ON THE VERGE, NAY EVEN IN THE gulph of bankruptcy." ¶

Thomas Paine. ¶

Paris, igth Germinal, 4th year of the Republic, April 8, 1796. ¶

XXVII. Forgetfulness.’

FROM “THE CASTLE IN THE AIR,” TO THE “LITTLE CORNER OF THE WORLD.” ¶

Memory, like a beauty that is always present to hear herself flattered, is flattered by every one. But the absent and silent goddess, Forgetfulness, has no votaries, and is never thought of : yet we owe her much. She is the goddess of ease, though not of pleasure. ¶

When the mind is like a room hung with black, and every corner of it crowded with the most horrid images imagination can create, this kind speechless goddess of a maid, Forgetfulness, is following us night and day with her opium wand, and gently touching first one, and then another, benumbs them into rest, and at last glides them away with the silence of a departing shadow. It is thus the tortured mind is restored to the calm condition of ease, and fitted for happiness. ¶

’ This undated composition, of much biographical interest, was shown by Paine to Heniy Redhead Yorke, who visited him in Paris (1802), and was allowed to copy the only portions now preserved. In the last of Yorke’s Letters from France (Lond., 1814), thirty-three pages are given to Paine. Under the name " Little Comer of the World," Lady Smyth wrote cheering letters to Paine in his prison, and he replied to his then unknown correspondent under the name of " The Castle in the Air." After his release he discovered in his correspondent a lady who had appealed to him for assistance, no doubt for her husband. With Sir Robert (an English banker in Paris) and Lady Smyth, Paine formed a fast friendship which continued through life. Sir Robert was bom in 1744, and married (1776) a Miss Blake of Hanover Square, London. He died in 1802 of illness brought on by his imprisonment under Napoleon. Several of Paine’ s poems were addressed to Lady Smyth. — Editor, How dismal must the picture of life appear to the mind in that dreadful moment when it resolves on darkness, and to die ! One can scarcely believe such a choice was possible. Yet how many of the young and beautiful, timid in every thing else, and formed for delight, have shut their eyes upon the world, and made the waters their sepulchral bed ! Ah, would they in that crisis, when life and death are before them, and each within their reach, would they but think, or try to think, that Forgetfulness will come to their relief, and lull them into ease, they could stay their hand, and lay hold of life. But there is a necromancy in wretchedness that entombs the mind, and increases the misery, by shutting out every ray of light and hope. It makes the wretched falsely believe they will be wretched ever. It is the most fatal of all dangerous delusions ; and it is only when this necromantic night-mare of the mind begins to vanish, by being resisted, that it is discovered to be but a tyrannic spectre. All grief, like all things else, will yield to the obliterating power of time. While despair is preying on the mind, time and its effects are preying on despair ; and certain it is, the dismal vision will fade away, and Forgetfulness, with her sister Ease, will change the scene. Then let not the wretched be rash, but wait, painful as the struggle may be, the arrival of Forgetfulness ; for it will certainly arrive. ¶

I have twice been present at the scene of attempted suicide. The one a love-distracted girl in England, the other of a patriotic friend in France; and as the circumstances of each are strongly pictured in my memory, I will relate them to you. They will in some measure corroborate what I have said of Forgetfulness. ¶

About the year 1766, I was in Lincolnshire, in England, and on a visit at the house of a widow lady, Mrs. E , at a small village in the fens of that county. It was in summer ; and one evening after supper, Mrs. E and myself went to take a turn in the garden. It was about eleven o’clock, and to avoid the night air of the fens, we were walking in a bower, shaded over with hazel bushes. On a sudden, she screamed out, and cried " Lord, look, look ! " I cast my eyes through the openings of the hazel bushes in the direction she was looking, and saw a white shapeless figure, without head or arms, moving along one of the walks at some distance from us. I quitted Mrs. E , and went after it. When I got into the walk where the figure was, and was following it, it took up another walk. There was a holly bush in the corner of the two walks, which, it being night, I did not observe ; and as I continued to step forward, the holly bush came in a straight line between me and the figure, and I Ipst sight of it ; and as I passed along one walk, and the figure the other, the holly bush still continued to intercept the view, so as to give the appearance that the figure had vanished. When I came to the corner of the two walks, I caught sight of it again, and coming up with it, I reached out my hand to touch it ; and in the act of doing this, the idea struck me, will my hand pass through the air, or shall I feel any thing ? Less than a moment would decide this, and my hand rested on the shoulder of a human figure. I spoke, but do not recollect what I said. It answered in a low voice, " Pray let me alone." I then knew who it was. It was a young lady who was on a visit to ¶

Mrs. E , and who, when we sat down to supper, said she found herself extremely ill, and would go to bed. I called to Mrs. E , who came, and I said to her, " It is Miss ¶

N ." Mrs. E said, " My God, I hope you are not going to do yourself any hurt ; " for Mrs. E suspected something. She replied with pathetic melancholy, " Life has not one pleasure for me." We got her into the house, and Mrs. E took her to sleep with her. ¶

The case was, the man to whom she expected to be married had forsaken her, and when she heard he was to be married to another the shock appeared to her to be too great to be borne. She had retired, as I have said, to her room, and when she supposed all the family were gone to bed, (which would have been the case if Mrs. E and I had not walked into the garden,) she undressed herself, and tied her apron over her head ; which, descending below her waist, gave her the shapeless figure I have spoken of. With this and a white under petticoat and slippers, for she had taken out her buckles and put them at the servant maid’s door, I suppose as a keepsake, and aided by the obscurity of almost midnight, she came down stairs, and was going to drown herself in a pond at the bottom of the garden, towards which she was going when Mrs. E screamed out. We found afterwards that she had heard the scream, and that was the cause of her changing her walk. ¶

By gentle usage, and leading her into subjects that might, without doing violence to her feelings, aijd without letting her see the direct intention of it, steal her as it were from the horror she was in, (and I felt a compassionate, earnest disposition to do it, for she was a good girl,) she recovered her former cheerfulness, and was afterwards a happy wife, and the mother of a family. ¶

The other case, and the conclusion in my next : In Paris, in 1793, I had lodgings in the Rue Fauxbourg, St. Denis, No. 63.’ They were the most agreeable, for situation, of any I ever had in Paris, except that they were too remote from the Convention, of which I was then a member. But this was recompensed by their being also remote from the alarms and confusion into which the interior of Paris was then often thrown. The news of those things used to arrive to us, as if we were in a state of tranquility in the country. The house, which was enclosed by a wall and gateway from the street, was a good deal like an old mansion farm house, and the court yard was like a farm-yard, stocked with fowls, ducks, turkies, and geese ; which, for amusement, we used to feed out of the parlour window on the ground floor. There were some hutches for rabbits, and a sty with two pigs. Beyond, was a garden of more than an acre of ground, well laid out, and stocked with excellent fruit trees. The orange, apricot, and green-gage plum, were the best I ever tasted ; and it is the only place where I saw the wild cucumber. The place had formerly been occupied by some curious person." ¶

’ This ancient mansion is still standing (1895). — Editor. ’ Madame de Pompadour, among others. — Editor. My apartments consisted of three rooms ; the first for wood, water, etc., with an old fashioned closet chest, high enough to hang up clothes in ; the next was the bed room ; and beyond it the sitting room, which looked into the garden through a glass door ; and on the outside there was a small landing place railed in, and a flight of narrow stairs almost hidden by the vines that grew over it, by which I could descend into the garden, without going down stairs through the house. I am trying by description to make you see the place in your mind, because it will assist the story I have to tell ; and which I think you can do, because you once called upon me there on account of Sir [Robert Smyth], who was then, as I was soon afterwards, in arrestation. But it was winter when you came, and it is a summer scene I am ¶

describing. I went into my chambers to write and sign a certificate for them, which I intended to take to the guard house to obtain their release. Just as I had finished it a man came into my room dressed in the Parisian uniform of a captain, and spoke to me in good English, and with a good address. He told me that two young men. Englishmen, were arrested and detained in the guard house, and that the section, (meaning those who represented and acted for the section,) had sent him to ask me if I knew them, in which case they would be liberated. This matter being soon settled between us, he talked to me about the Revolution, and something about the " Rights of Man," which he had read in English ; and at parting offered me in a polite and civil manner, his services. And who do you think the man was that offered me his services ? It was no other than the public executioner Samson, who guillotined the king, and all who were guillotined in Paris ; and who lived in the same section, and in the same street with me. As to myself, I used to find some relief by walking alone in the garden after dark, and cursing with hearty good will the authors of that terrible system that had turned the character of the Revolution I had been proud to defend. ¶

I went but little to the Convention, and then only to make my appearance ; because I found it impossible to join in their tremendous decrees, and useless and dangerous to oppose them. My having voted and spoken extensively, more so than any other member, against the execution of the king, had already fixed a mark upon me : neither dared any of my associates in the Convention to translate and speak in French for me anything I might have dared to have written. Pen and ink were then of no use to me : no good could be done by writing, and no printer dared to print ; and whatever I might have written for my private amusement, as anecdotes of the times, would have been continually exposed to be examined, and tortured into any meaning that the rage of party might fix upon it ; and as to softer subjects, my heart was in distress at the fate of my friends, and my harp hung upon the weeping willows.’ ¶

As it was summer we spent most of our time in the garden, and passed it away in those childish amusements that serve to keep reflection from the mind, such as marbles, scotch-hops, battledores, etc., at which we were all pretty expert. ¶

In this retired manner we remained about six or seven weeks, and our landlord went every evening into the city to bring us the news of the day and the evening journal. ¶

I have now, my " Little Corner of the World," led you on, step by step, to the scene that makes the sequel to this narrative, and I will put that scene before your eyes. You shall see it in description as I saw it in fact." ¶

He recovered, and being anxious to get out of France, a passage was obtained for him and Mr. Choppin: they re- ¶

This allusion is to the Girondins. — Editor. ¶

‘Yorke omits the description "from motives of personal delicacy.’’ The case was that of young Johnson, a wealthy devotee of Paine in London, who ceived it late in the evening, and set off the next morning for Basle before four, from which place I had a letter from them, highly pleased with their escape from France, into which they had entered with an enthusiasm of patriotic devotion. Ah, France! thou hast ruined the character of a Revolution virtuously begun, and destroyed those who produced it. I might almost say like Job’s servant, " and I only am escaped." ¶

Two days after they were gone I heard a rapping at the gate, and looking out of the window of the bed room I saw the landlord going with the candle to the gate, which he opened, and a guard with musquets and fixed bayonets entered. I went to bed again, and made up my mind for prison, for I was then the only lodger. It was a guard to take up [Johnson and Choppin], but, I thank God, they were out of their reach. ¶

The guard came about a month after in the night, and took away the landlord Georgeit ; and the scene in the house finished with the arrestation of myself. This was soon after you called on me, and sorry I was it was not in my power to render to [Sir Robert Smyth] the service that you asked. ¶

I have now fulfilled my engagement, and I hope your expectation, in relating the case of [Johnson], landed back on the shore of life, by the mistake of the pilot who was conducting him out ; and preserved afterwards from prison, perhaps a worse fate, without knowing it himself. ¶

You say a story cannot be too melancholy for you. This is interesting and affecting, but not melancholy. It may raise in your mind a sympathetic sentiment in reading it ; and though it may start a tear of pity, you will not have a tear of sorrow to drop on the page. Here, my contemplative correspondent, let us stop and look back upon the scene. The matters here related being tad followed him to Paris and lived in the same house with him. Hearing that Marat had resolved on Paine’s death, Johnson wrote a will bequeathing his property to Paine, then stabbed himself, biit recovered. Paine was examined about this incident at Marat’s trial. (Moniteur, April 24, 1793.) See my " Life of Paine," vol. ii., p. 48 seq.— Editor. ¶

all facts, are strongly pictured in my mind, and in this sense Forgetfulness does not apply. But facts and feelings are distinct things, and it is against feelings that the opium wand of Forgetfulness draws us into ease. Look back on any scene or subject that once gave you distress, for all of us have felt some, and you will find, that though the remembrance of the fact is not extinct in your memory, the feeling is extinct in your mind. You can remember when you had felt distress, but you cannot feel that distress again, and perhaps will wonder you felt it then. It is like a shadow that loses itself by light. ¶

It is often difficult to know what is a misfortune : that which we feel as a great one today, may be the means of turning aside our steps into some new path that leads to happiness yet unknown. In tracing the scenes of my own life, I can discover that the condition I now enjoy, which is sweet to me, and will be more so when I get to America, except by the loss of your society, has been produced, in the first instance, in my being disappointed in former projects. Under that impenetrable veil, futurity, we know not what is concealed, and the day to arrive is hidden from us. Turning then our thoughts to those cases of despair that lead to suicide, when, " the mind," as you say, " neither sees nor hears, and holds counsel only with itself ; when the very idea of consolation would add to the torture, and self-destruction is its only aim," what, it may be asked, is the best advice, what the best relief? I answer, seek it not in reason, for the mind is at war with reason, and to reason against feelings is as vain as to reason against fire : it serves only to torture the torture, by adding reproach to horror. All reasoning with ourselves in such cases acts upon us like the reason of another person, which, however kindly done, serves but to insult the misery we suffer. If reason could remove the pain, reason would have prevented it. If she could not do the one, how is she to perform the other ? In all such cases we must look upon Reason as dispossessed of her empire, by a revolt of the mind. She retires herself to a distance to weep, and the ebony seep- tre of Despair rules alone. All that Reason can do is to suggest, to hint a thought, to signify a wish, to cast now and then a kind of bewailing look, to hold up, when she can catch the eye, the miniature-shaded portrait of Hope ; and though dethroned, and can dictate no more, to wait upon us in the humble station of a handmaid. ¶

XXVIII. ¶