POLITICAL TRACTS. Fallitur, egregio quisquis sub principe credit CLAUDIANUS. PREFATORY OBSERVATIONS TO POLITICAL TRACTS. ON Johnson's character, as a political writer, we cannot dwell with pleasure, since we cannot speak of it with praise. In the following pamphlets, however, though we cannot honestly subscribe to their doctrines, we must admire the same powers of composition, the same play of imagination, the same keen sarcasm and indignant reproof, that embellish his other productions. He might, and did, think wrongly on these subjects, but he never wrote what he did not believe to be true, and, therefore, must be acquitted of all charges of servility or dishonesty. The False Alarm was published in 1770, and "intended," says Mr. Boswell, "to justify the conduct of the ministry, and their majority in the house of commons, for having virtually assumed it as an axiom, that the expulsion of a member of parliament was equivalent to exclusion, and thus having declared colonel Lutterel to be duly elected for the county of Middlesex, notwithstanding Mr. Wilkes had a great majority of votes. This being justly considered as a gross violation of the right of election, an alarm for the constitution extended itself all over the kingdom. To prove this alarm to be false, was the purpose of Johnson's pamphlet ; but even his vast powers are inadequate to cope with constitutional truth and reason, and his argument failed of effect; and the house of commons have since expunged the offensive resolution from their journals. That the house of commons might have expelled Mr. Wilkes repeatedly, and as often as he should be rechosen, was not to be denied; but incapacitation cannot be but by an act of the whole legislature. It was wonderful to see how a prejudice in favour of government in general, and an aversion to popular clamour, could blind and contract such an understanding as Johnson's in this particular case." Where Boswell expresses himself with regard to Johnson, in terms so reprehensive as the above, we cannot be accused of severity in repeating his just censure. Several answers appeared, but, perhaps, all of them, in compliance with the excited feelings of the times, dealt rather in personal abuse of Johnson, as a pensioner and hireling, than in fair and manly argument. The chief were, the Crisis; a Letter to Dr. Samuel Johnson; and, the Constitution Defender and Pensioner exposed, in Remarks on the False Alarm. THE FALSE ALARM. 1770. ONE of the chief advantages derived by the present generation from the improvement and diffusion of philosophy, is deliverance from unnecessary terrours, and exemption from false alarms. The unusual appearances, whether regular or accidental, which once spread consternation over ages of ignorance, are now the recreations of inquisitive security. The sun is no more lamented when it is eclipsed, than when it sets; and meteors play their coruscations without prognostick or prediction. The advancement of political knowledge may be expected to produce, in time, the like effects. Causeless discontent, and seditious violence, will grow less frequent and less formidable, as the science of government is better ascertained, by a diligent study of the theory of man. It is not, indeed, to be expected, that physical and political truth should meet with equal acceptance, or gain ground upon the world with equal facility. The notions of the naturalist find mankind in a state of neutrality, or, at worst, have nothing to encounter but prejudice and vanity; prejudice without malignity, and vanity without interest. But the politician's improvements are opposed by every passion that can exclude conviction or suppress it; by ambition, by avarice, by hope, and by terrour, by publick faction, and private animosity. It is evident, whatever be the cause, that this nation, with all its renown for speculation and for learning, has yet made little proficiency in civil wisdom. We are still so much unacquainted with our own state, and so unskilful in the pursuit of happiness, that we shudder without danger, complain without grievances, and suffer our quiet to be disturbed, and our commerce to be interrupted, by an opposition to the government, raised only by interest, and supported only by clamour, which yet has so far prevailed upon ignorance and timidity, that many favour it, as reasonable, and many dread it, as powerful. What is urged by those who have been so industrious to spread suspicion, and incite fury, from one end of the kingdom to the other, may be known, by perusing the papers which have been, at once, presented as petitions to the king, and exhibited in print as remonstrances to the people. It may, therefore, not be improper to lay before the publick the reflections of a man, who cannot favour the opposition, for he thinks it wicked, and cannot fear it, for he thinks it weak. The grievance which has produced all this tempest of outrage, the oppression in which all other oppressions are included, the invasion which has left us no property, the alarm that suffers no patriot to sleep in quiet, is comprised in a vote of the house of commons, by which the freeholders of Middlesex are deprived of a Briton's birthright--representation in parliament. They have, indeed, received the usual writ of election ; but that writ, alas! was malicious mockery: they were insulted with the form, but denied the reality, for there was one man excepted from their choice: "Non de vi, neque cæde, nec veneno, Sed lis est mihi de tribus capellis." The character of the man, thus fatally excepted, I have no purpose to delineate. Lampoon itself would disdain to speak ill of him, of whom no man speaks well. It is sufficient, that he is expelled the house of commons, and confined in gaol, as being legally convicted of sedition and impiety. That this man cannot be appointed one of the guardians and counsellors of the church and state, is a grievance not to be endured. Every lover of liberty stands doubtful of the fate of posterity, because the chief county in England cannot take its representative from a gaol. Whence Middlesex should obtain the right of being denominated the chief county cannot easily be discovered; it is, indeed, the county where the chief city happens to stand, but, how that city treated the favourite of Middlesex, is not yet forgotten. The county, as distinguished from the city, has no claim to particular consideration. That a man was in gaol for sedition and impiety, would, I believe, have been, within memory, a sufficient reason why he should not come out of gaol a legislator. This reason, notwithstanding the mutability of fashion, happens still to operate on the house of commons. Their notions, however strange, may be justified by a common observation, that few are mended by imprisonment, and that he, whose crimes have made confinement necessary, seldom makes any other use of his enlargement, than to do, with greater cunning, what he did before with less. But the people have been told, with great confidence, that the house cannot control the right of constituting representatives; that he who can persuade lawful electors to choose him, whatever be his character, is lawfully chosen, and has a claim to a seat in parliament, from which no human authority can depose him. Here, however, the patrons of opposition are in some perplexity. They are forced to confess, that, by a train of precedents, sufficient to establish a custom of parliament, the house of commons has jurisdiction over its own members; that the whole has power over individuals; and that this power has been exercised sometimes in imprisonment, and often in expulsion. That such power should reside in the house of commons, in some cases, is inevitably necessary; since it is required, by every polity, that where there is a possibility of offence, there should be a possibility of punishment. A member of the house cannot be cited for his conduct in parliament before any other court; and, therefore, if the house cannot punish him, he may attack, with impunity, the rights of the people, and the title of the king. This exemption from the authority of other courts was, I think, first established in favour of the five members in the long parliament. It is not to be considered as an usurpation, for it is implied in the principles of govern |