which proposes to beggar its subjects into submission. But remember, when you have completed your system of impoverishment, that Nature still proceeds in her ordinary course; that discontent will increase with misery; and that there are critical moments in the fortune of all states, when they who are too weak to contribute to your prosperity may be strong enough to complete your ruin. 10 ter may enfranchise too, and arm servile Spoliatis arma supersunt [Arms remain to the despoiled]. offer of liberty would not always be accepted. History furnishes few instances of it. It is sometimes as hard to persuade slaves to be free, as it is to compel free5 men to be slaves; and in this auspicious scheme we should have both these pleasing tasks on our hands at once. when we talk of enfranchisement, do we not perceive that the American mas The temper and character which prevail in our colonies, are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. We cannot, 15 I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in which they would hear you tell 20 them this tale would detect the imposition: your speech would betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery. I think it is nearly as little in our 25 power to change their republican religion as their free descent; or to substitute the Roman Catholic, as a penalty; or the Church of England, as an improvement. The mode of inquisition and dragooning 30 is going out of fashion in the Old World, and I should not confide much to their efficacy in the New. The education of the Americans is also on the same unalterable bottom with their religion. You 35 cannot persuade them to burn their books of curious science; to banish their lawyers from their courts of laws; or to quench the lights of their assemblies, by refusing to choose those persons who are best read 40 in their privileges. It would be no less impracticable to think of wholly annihilating the popular assemblies, in which these lawyers sit. The army, by which we must govern in their place, would be 45 far more chargeable to us; not quite so effectual; and perhaps, in the end, full as difficult to be kept in obedience. With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and the southern colo- 50 nies, it has been proposed, I know, to reduce it, by declaring a general enfranchisement of their slaves. This project has had its advocates and panegyrists; yet I never could argue myself into any 55 opinion of it. Slaves are often much attached to their masters. A general wild But hands in defence of freedom? A measure to which other people have had recourse more than once, and not without success, in a desperate situation of their affairs. Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men are from slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that very nation which has sold them to their present masters? from that nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with those masters is their refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic? An offer of freedom from England would come rather oddly, shipped to them in an African vessel, which is refused an entry into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo of three hundred Angola negroes. It would be curious to see the Guinea captain attempting at the same instant to publish his proclamation of liberty, and to advertise his sale of slaves. But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. The ocean remains. You cannot pump this dry; and as long as it continues in its present bed, so long all the causes which weaken authority by distance will continue. Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, and make two lovers happy!' was a pious and passionate prayer; but just as reasonable as many of the serious wishes of very grave and solemn politicians. If then, sir, it seems almost desperate to think of any alternative course for changing the moral causes, and not quite easy to remove the natural, which produce prejudices irreconcilable to the late exercise of our authority, but that the spirit infallibly will continue, and, continuing, will produce such effects as now embarrass us; the second mode under consideration is to prosecute that spirit in its overt acts as criminal. At this proposition I must pause a moment. The thing seems a great deal 5 too big for my ideas of jurisprudence. 15 25 munities, I can scarcely conceive anything more completely imprudent than for the head of the empire to insist that, if any privilege is pleaded against his will, or his acts, his whole authority is denied: instantly to proclaim rebellion, to beat to arms, and to put the offending provinces. under the ban. Will not this, sir, very soon teach the provinces to make no distinctions on their part? Will it not teach them that the government, against which a claim of liberty is tantamount to high treason, is a government to which submission is equivalent to slavery? It may not always be quite convenient to impress dependent communities with such an idea. We are indeed, in all disputes with the colonies, by the necessity of things, the judge. It is true, sir. But I confess 20 that the character of judge in my own cause is a thing that frightens me. Instead of filling me with pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it. I cannot proceed with a stern, assured, judicial confidence, until I find myself in something more like a judicial character. I must have these hesitations as long as I am compelled to recollect that, in my little reading upon such contests as these, the 30 sense of mankind has, at least, as often decided against the superior as the subordinate power. Sir, let me add too, that the opinion of my having some abstract right in my favor would not put me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be sure that there were no rights which, in their exercise under certain circumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs, and the most vexatious of all injustice. Sir, these considerations have great weight with me, when I find things so circumstanced, that I see the same party at once a civil litigant against me in point of right; and a culprit before 45 me, while I sit as a criminal judge on acts of his, whose moral quality is to be decided upon the merits of that very litigation. Men are every now and then put, by the complexity of human affairs, 50 into strange situations; but justice is the same, let the judge be in what situation he will. 35 Perhaps, sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an empire, as distinguished from a single state or kingdom. But my idea of it is this: that an empire is the aggregate of many states under one common head; whether this head be a monarch, or a presiding republic. It does, in such constitutions, frequently happen (and nothing but the dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can prevent its happening) that the subordinate parts 4° have many local privileges and immunities. Between these privileges and the supreme common authority the line may be extremely nice. Of course, disputes, often, too, very bitter disputes, and much ill blood, will arise. But though every privilege is an exemption (in the case) from the ordinary exercise of the supreme authority, it is no denial of it. The claim of the privilege seems rather, ex vi termini [by the meaning of the term], to imply a superior power. For to talk of the privileges of a state, or of a person, who has no superior, is hardly any better than speaking nonsense. Now, in such unfortunate quarrels among the component parts of a great political union of com There is, sir, also a circumstance which convinces me that this mode of criminal 55 proceeding is not (at least in the present stage of our contest) altogether expedient; which is nothing less than the con duct of those very persons who have In this situation, let us seriously and 20 coolly ponder. What is it we have got by all our menaces, which have been many and ferocious? What advantage have we derived from the penal laws we have rightly passed, and which, for the 25 time, have been severe and numerous? What advances have we made towards our object, by the sending of a force which, by land and sea, is no contemptible strength? Has the disorder abated? Nothing less. When I see things in this situation, after such confident hopes, bold promises, and active exertions, I cannot for my life avoid a suspicion that the plan itself is not correctly right. 30 please any people, you must give them the boon which they ask; not what you may think better for them, but of a kind totally different. Such an act may be a 5 wise regulation, but it is no concession; whereas our present theme is the mode of giving satisfaction. Sir, I think you must perceive that I am resolved this day to have nothing at all to do with the question of the right of taxation. Some gentlemen startle but it is true; I put it totally out of the question. It is less than nothing in my consideration. I do not indeed wonder, nor will you, sir, that gentlemen of profound learning are fond of displaying it on this profound subject. But my consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly limited to the policy of the question. I do not examine whether the giving away a man's money be a power excepted and reserved out of the general trust of government; and how far all mankind, in all forms of polity, are entitled to an exercise of that right by the charter of Nature. Or whether, on the contrary, a right of taxation is necessarily involved in the general principle of legislation, and inseparable from the ordinary supreme power. These are deep questions, where great names militate against each other; where reason is perplexed; and an appeal to authorities only thickens the confusion. For high and reverend authorities lift up 35 their heads on both sides; and there is no sure footing in the middle. This point 'is the great Serbonian bog. Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk.' I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though in such respectable company. The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Is a politic act the worse for being a generous one? Is no concession proper, but that which is made from your want of right to keep what you grant? Or does it lessen the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim, because you have your evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce them? What signify all those titles and all those arms? Of what avail 40 If then the removal of the causes of this spirit of American liberty be, for the greater part, or rather entirely, impracticable; if the ideas of criminal process be inapplicable, or if applicable, are in the highest degree inexpedient; what way. yet remains? No way is open but the third and last to comply with the American spirit as necessary; or, if you please, to submit to it as a necessary evil. 45 If we adopt this mode; if we mean to conciliate and concede; let us see of what nature the concession ought to be: to ascertain the nature of our concession we must look at their complaint. The col- 50 onies complain that they have not the characteristic mark and seal of British freedom. They complain that they are taxed in a parliament in which they are not represented. If you mean to satisfy 55 them at all, you must satisfy them with regard to this complaint. If you mean to are they, when the reason of the thing tells me that the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit; and that I could do nothing but wound myself by the use of my own weapons? Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of keeping up the concord of this empire by a unity of spirit, though in a diversity of operations, that, 5 My idea, therefore, without considering. whether we yield as matter of right, or grant as matter of favor, is to admit the people of our colonies into an interest in the Constitution; and, by recording that admission in the journals of parliament, to give them as strong an assurance as the nature of the thing will admit, that we mean for ever to adhere to that gence. if I were sure the colonists had, at their 10 solemn declaration of systematic indulleaving this country, sealed a regular compact of servitude; that they had solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens; that they had made a vow to renounce all ideas of liberty for them and their posterity to all generations; yet I should hold myself obliged to conform to the temper I found universally prevalent in my own day, and to govern two million of men, impatient of servitude, on the 20 principles of freedom. I am not determining a point of law; I am restoring tranquillity; and the general character and situation of a people must determine what sort of government is fitted for them. 25 That point nothing else can or ought to determine. Some years ago, the repeal of a Revenue Act, upon its understood principle, might have served to show that we in15.tended an unconditional abatement of the exercise of a taxing power. Such a measure was then sufficient to remove all suspicion, and to give perfect content. But unfortunate events, since that time, may make something further necessary; and not more necessary for the satisfaction of the colonies, than for the dignity and consistency of our own future proceedings. (1775) EDWARD GIBBON (1737-1794) The greatest of English historians was born not far from London, at Putney in Surrey, where his father lived the easy life of a country gentleman.. Gibbon ascribed the success of his later years to the golden mediocrity' of his fortunes, which preserved him on the one hand from the seductions of pleasure and, on the other, from the need of earning a living. His childhood was sickly, his education was intermittent, and he was indulged in his bent for reading which soon settled to a passion for history. At an early age he had devoured everything in that department which was accessible in English and had begun to annex other languages in order that he might gratify his hunger for original documents. He was sent at fifteen to Magdalen College, Oxford, and has left a withering indictment of the neglect and incompetence which he encountered at that seat of learning. Left to himself, he fell under the influence of a Jesuit and was converted to Roman Catholicism; whereupon his father promptly deported him to Switzerland and placed him under the care of a Calvinist minister at Lausanne. Through constant practice in the defense of his faith he became familiar with its assailable points, and soon passed to the position of scepticism which he permanently occupied. He mastered the French language and the French method of study and became deeply imbued with the French rationalistic ideas of the period. By five years of great diligence under able direction he laid the foundation of his superb equipment for the task of his life. Returning to England, he published in the French language his first book, Essai sur l'Etude de la Litterature [Essay on the Study of Literature] (1761). To please his father he served for two years and a half as a captain of militia. The singleness of his ambition is well illustrated by his summary of these lost years: The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legions, and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers the reader may smile has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire.' But of this and of his later career in Parliament he was impatient as of anything which did not contribute directly to his one ambition. From his early youth he had aspired to the character of a historian,' but he remained unsettled as to the field he should occupy until he found himself at Rome. In my journal, the place and the moment of the conception are recorded,' he tells us in his Memoirs, the fifteenth of October, 1764, in the close of the evening, as I sat musing in the church of the Zoccolanti or Franciscan friars, while they were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter on the ruins of the Capitol.' Two years elapsed before he was able to set to work, twelve before the first volume was published in London, and another twelve before he laid down his pen at Lausanne. His History of the Decline and Fall had been his life, the one object toward which all his reading and experience were made to converge, and is the one subject of his Memoirs. He quietly finished his days at Lausanne, undoubtedly justified in his feeling that this achievement had been enough for one life. The substance of Gibbon's 'candid and rational inquiry into the human causes' of the religious growth which undermined the civilization of the ancient world, has not remained totally unassailed by the modern historian; nor is Gibbon's style perfect; but it is safe to say that no other Englishman has united in an equal degree abundance and accuracy of information, sense of historical perspective and proportion, vigor of narrative, and splendor of style. FROM THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE a deep ditch of the depth of one hundred feet. Against this line of fortification, which Phranza, an eye-witness, prolongs to the measure of six miles, the Ottomans 5 directed their principal attack; and the emperor, after distributing the service and command of the most perilous stations, undertook the defence of the external wall. In the first days of the siege, Of the triangle which composes the figure of Constantinople, the two sides along the sea were made inaccessible to an enemy: the Propontis by nature and the harbor by art. Between the two waters, the basis of the triangle, the land side was protected by a double wall and 10 the Greek soldiers descended into the |