第31章 Letter IX(1)

Sir,But whatever the state of parties was at the Revolution,and for some time afterwards,the settlement made at that time having continued,that state of parties hath changed gradually,though slowly,and hath received at length,according to the necessary course of things,a total alteration.

This alteration would have been sooner wrought,if the attempt I have mentioned,to defend principles no longer defensible,had not furnished the occasion and pretence to keep up the appearances of a Tory and a Whig party.Some of those who had been called Tories furnished this pretence.They who had been called Whigs seized and improved it.The advantages to one side,the disadvantages to the other,the mischiefs to the whole,which have ensued,I need not deduce.It shall suffice to observe,that these appearances were the more easy to be kept up,because several men,who had stood conspicuous in opposition to one another before the Revolution,continued an opposition,though not the same,afterwards.Fresh provocations were daily given,and fresh pretences for division daily taken.These contests were present;they recalled those that had passed in the time of King Charles the Second,and both sides forgot that union which their common danger and their common interest had formed at the Revolution.Old reproaches were renewed,new ones invented,against the party called Whigs,when they were as complaisant to a court as ever the Tories had been;against the party called Tories,when they were as jealous of public liberty and as frugal of public money as ever the Whigs had been.Danger to the Church,on one side,and danger to the state,on the other,were apprehended from men who meant no harm to either;for though Dissenters mingled themselves on one side,and Jacobites on the other,and notwithstanding the leanings of parties in favour of those,by whom they were abetted,yet is it a certain truth,that the struggle was in the main for power,not principle;and that there was no formal design laid on one side to destroy the Church,nor on the other the state.The cavils which may be made,and the facts which may be cited,some of older,and some of fresher date,against what hath been here said,do not escape me.Men of knowledge,and of cool and candid thought,will answer one,and account for the other,without my help;and I cannot resolve,for the sake of the passionate,nor even of the ignorant,to descend upon this subject into a greater detail.

I pass to that which is closer to my present purpose,and of more immediate use;and I say,that as the natural dispositions of men are altered and formed into different moral characters by education,so the spirit of a constitution of government,which is confirmed,improved and strengthened by the course of events,and especially by those of fruitless opposition,in a long tract of time,will have a proportionable influence on the reasoning,the sentiments,and the conduct of those who are subject to it.A different spirit and contrary prejudices may prevail for a time,but the spirit and principles of the constitution will prevail at last.If one be unnatural,and the other absurd,and that is the case in many governments,a vigorous exercise of power,signal rewards,signal punishments,and a variety of other secondary means,which in such constitutions are never wanting,will however maintain,as long as they are employed,both the spirit and the principles.But if the spirit and principles of a constitution be agreeable to nature and the true ends of government,which is the case of the present constitution of the British government,they want no such means to make them prevail.They not only flourish without them,but they would fade and die away with them.As liberty is nourished and supported by such a spirit and such principles,so they are propagated by liberty.Truth and reason are often able to get the better of authority in particular minds;but truth and reason,with authority on their side,will carry numbers,bear down prejudices,and become the very genius of a people.The progress they make is always sure,but sometimes not observable by every eye.Contrary prejudices may seem to maintain themselves in vigour,and these prejudices may be kept up long by passion and by artifice.But when truth and reason continue to act without restraint,a little sooner or a little later,and often when this turn is least expected,the prejudices vanish at once,and truth and reason triumph without any rival.

The constitution of England had been seen in two very different lights for almost a century before the Revolution;so that there is no room to be surprised at the great opposition that appeared,when the Whig and Tory parties arose a very few years before that era,between principles which,as opposite as they were,each side pretended to establish on the nature of one and the same constitution.How this happened hath been often hinted,and I have not here room to explain any farther.Let us be satisfied that it is no longer the case.Our constitution is no longer a mystery;the power of the crown is now exactly limited,the chimera of prerogative removed,and the rights of the subject are no longer problematical,though some things necessary to the more effectual security of them may be still wanting.Under this constitution the greatest part of the men now alive were born.They lie under no pretence of obligation to any other,and to the support of this they are bound by all the ties of society,and all the motives of interest.