Complete Works of Samuel Johnson

by Samuel Johnson

  But esteem must languish, and confidence decline, unless they are renewed and reanimated by new acts of beneficence; and the higher expectations the nation may have formed of our penetration to discover its real advantages, and of our steadiness to pursue them, the more violent will be its resentment, if it shall appear, on this important question, that we are either ignorant or timorous, that we are unconcerned at the miseries of the people, or content ourselves with pitying what our ancestors never failed to redress.

  Let us, therefore, my lords, for our own interest, attend impartially to the voice of the people; let us hear their complaints with tenderness, and if, at last, we reject them, let it be evident that they were impartially heard, and that we only differed from them because we were not convinced.

  Even then, my lords, we shall suffer, for some time, under the suspicion of crimes, from which I hope we shall always be free; the people will imagine that we were influenced by those whose interest it appears to continue their miseries, and, my lords, all the consolation that will be left us, must arise from the consciousness of having done our duty.

  But, my lords, this is to suppose what I believe no history can furnish an example of; it is to conceive that we may inquire diligently after the true state of national affairs, and yet not discover it, or not be able to prove it by such evidence as may satisfy the people.

  The people, my lords, however they are misrepresented by those who, from a long practice of treating them with disregard, have learned to think and speak of them with contempt, are far from being easily deceived, and yet farther from being easily deceived into an opinion of their own unhappiness: we have some instances of general satisfaction, and an unshaken affection to the government, in times when the publick good has not been very diligently consulted, but scarcely any of perpetual murmurs and universal discontent, where there have been plain evidences of oppression, negligence, or treachery.

  Let us not, therefore, my lords, think of the people as of a herd to be led or driven at pleasure, as wretches whose opinions are founded upon the authority of seditious scribblers, or upon any other than that of reason and experience; let us not suffer them to be at once oppressed and ridiculed, nor encourage, by our example, the wretched advocates for those whom they consider as their enemies, nor represent them as imputing to the misconduct of the ministry the late contrariety of the winds, and severity of the winter.

  The people, my lords, if they are mistaken in their charge, are mistaken with such evidence on their side, as never misled any nation before; not only their reason but their senses must have betrayed them; and those marks of certainty that have hitherto established truth, must have combined in the support of falsehood.

  They are persuaded, my lords, too firmly persuaded, to yield up their opinions to rhetorick, or to votes, or any proof but demonstration, that there is a first, or, to speak in the language of the nation, a sole minister, one that has the possession of his sovereign’s confidence, and the power of excluding others from his presence, one that exalts and degrades at his pleasure, and distributes, for his own purposes, the revenues of his master, and the treasure of the nation.

  Of this, my lords, can it be maintained that they have no proof? Can this be termed a chimerical suspicion, which nothing can be produced to support? How can power appear but by the exercise of it? What can prove any degree of influence or authority, but universal submission and acknowledgment? And surely, my lords, a very transient survey of the court and its dependents, must afford sufficient conviction, that this man is considered by all that are engaged in the administration, as the only disposer of honours, favours, and employments.

  Attend to any man, my lords, who has lately been preferred, rewarded, or caressed, you will hear no expressions of gratitude but to that man; no other benefactor is ever heard of, the royal bounty itself is forgotten and unmentioned, nor is any return of loyalty, fidelity, or adherence professed, but to the minister; the minister! a term which, however lately introduced, is now in use in every place in the kingdom, except this house.

  Preferments, my lords, whether civil, ecclesiastical, or military, are either wholly in his hands, or those who make it the business of their lives to discover the high road to promotion, are universally deceived, and are daily offering their adorations to an empty phantom that has nothing to bestow; for, no sooner is any man infected with avarice or ambition, no sooner is extravagance reduced to beg new supplies from the publick, or wickedness obliged to seek for shelter, than this man is applied to, and honour, conscience, and fortune offered at his feet.

  Did either those whose studies and station give them a claim to advancement in the church, or those whose bravery and long service entitle them to more honourable posts in the army; did either those who profess to understand the laws of their own country, or they who declare themselves versed in the interests and transactions of foreign powers, apply to any other man for promotion or employment, he might then, indeed, be called the chief, but not properly the sole minister.

  But it is well known, my lords; many of us know it too well, that whatever be the profession or the abilities of any person, there is no hope of encouragement or reward by any other method than that of application to this man, that he shall certainly be disappointed who shall attempt to rise by any other interest, and whoever shall dare to depend on his honesty, bravery, diligence, or capacity, or to boast any other merit than that of implicit adherence to his measures, shall inevitably lie neglected and obscure.

  For this reason, my lords, every one whose calmness of temper can enable him to support the sight, without starts of indignation and sallies of contempt, may daily see at the levee of this great man, what I am ashamed to mention, a mixture of men of all ranks and all professions, of men whose birth and titles ought to exalt them above the meanness of cringing to a mere child of fortune, men whose studies ought to have taught them, that true honour is only to be gained by steady virtue, and that all other arts, all the low applications of flattery and servility will terminate in contempt, disappointment, and remorse.

  This scene, my lords, is daily to be viewed, it is ostentatiously displayed to the sight of mankind, the minister amuses himself in publick with the splendour, and number, and dignity of his slaves; and his slaves with no more shame pay their prostrations to their master in the face of day, and boast of their resolutions to gratify and support him. And yet, my lords, it is inquired why the people assert that there is a sole minister?

  Those who deny, my lords, that there is a sole minister to whom the miscarriages of the government may justly be imputed, may easily persuade themselves to believe that there have been no miscarriages, that all the measures were necessary, and well formed, that there is neither poverty nor oppression felt in the nation, that our compliance with France was no weakness, and that our dread of the treaty of Vienna was not chimerical.

  The treaty of Vienna, my lords, which has been the parent of so many terrours, consultations, embassies, and alliances is, I find, not yet to be acknowledged, what it certainly was, a mere phantom, an empty illusion, sent by the arts of the French to terrify our ministry. His late majesty’s testimony is cited to prove that stipulations were really entered into by the two powers allied by that treaty, to destroy our trade, subvert our constitution, and set a new king upon the throne, without consent of the nation.

  Such improbabilities, my lords, ought, indeed, to be proved by a high testimony, by a testimony which no man shall dare to question or contradict; for as any man is at liberty to consult his reason, it will always remonstrate to him, that it is no less absurd to impute the folly of designing impossibilities to any powers not remarkable for weak counsels, than unjust to suspect princes of intending injuries, to which they have not been incited by any provocation.

  But, my lords, nowithstanding the solemnity with which his late majesty has been introduced, his testimony can prove nothing more than that he believed the treaty to be such as he represents, that he had been deceived into fals
e apprehensions and unnecessary cautions by his own ministers, as they had been imposed upon by the agents of France.

  This is all, my lords, that can be collected from the royal speech, and to infer more from it is to suppose that the king was himself a party in the designs formed against him; for if he was not himself engaged in this treaty, he could only be informed, by another, of the stipulations, and could only report what he had been told upon the credit of the informer, a man, necessarily of very little credit. Thus, my lords, all the evidence of his late majesty vanishes into nothing more than the whisper of a spy.

  But as great stress ought, doubtless, to be laid upon intelligence which the nation is believed to purchase at a very high price, let it be inquired, what proofs those have who dare to suspect the sagacity of our ministers, to put in the balance against their intelligence, and it will be discovered, my lords, that they have a testimony no less than that of the German emperour himself, who could not be mistaken with regard to the meaning of the treaty concluded at his own court, and to whom it will not be very decent to deny such a degree of veracity as may set him at least on the level with a traitor and a hireling.

  If the treaty of Vienna was an imposture, most of our misfortunes are evidently produced by the weakness of the minister; but even supposing it real, as it was only a formidable mockery, an idle threat, that could never be executed, it was not necessary, that in order to obviate it, we should give ourselves implicitly into the hands of France.

  It was not necessary, my lords, that we should suffer them first to elude the treaty of Utrecht, by making a port at Mardyke, and then directly and openly to violate it by repairing Dunkirk. That this latter is a port contrary to treaty, the bills of entry at the custom-house daily show; and as the customs are particularly under the inspection of the commissioners of the treasury, this man cannot plead ignorance of this infraction, were no information given him by other means. If it should now be asked, my lords, what, in my opinion, ought to be done, I cannot advise that we should attempt to demolish it by force, or draw upon ourselves the whole power of France by a declaration of war, but what it may be difficult now to remedy, it was once easy to obviate.

  Had we shown the same contempt of the French power with our ancestors, and the same steadiness in our councils, the same firmness in our alliances, and the same spirit in our treaties, that court would never have ventured to break a known solemn stipulation, to have exasperated a brave and determined adversary by flagrant injustice, and to have exposed themselves to the hazard of a war, in which it would have been the interest of every prince of Europe who regarded justice or posterity to wish their defeat.

  Now they see us engaged in a war, my lords, they may be animated to a more daring contempt of the faith of treaties, and insult us with yet greater confidence of success, as they cannot but remark the cowardice or the ignorance with which we have hitherto carried on this war. They cannot but observe that either our minister means in reality to make war rather upon the Britons than the Spaniards, or that he is totally unacquainted with military affairs, and too vain to ask the opinion of others who have greater knowledge than himself.

  Nothing, my lords, is more apparent than that the minister was forced, by the continual clamours of the nation, to declare war, contrary to his own inclination, and that he always affected to charge it upon others, and to exempt himself from the imputation of it. It is, therefore, probable that he has not acted on this occasion so wisely as even his own experience and penetration might, if they were honestly employed, enable him to act, and that he has suffered our counsels to be embarrassed; that he sees with great tranquillity those suffering by the war, at whose request it was begun, and imagines it a proof of the excellence of his own scheme, that those who forced him to break it, may in time repent of their importunities.

  For that in the management of the war, my lords, no regard has been had either to the advantages which the course of our trade inevitably gives to our enemies, or to the weakness to which the extent of their dominions necessarily subjects them, that neither the interest of the merchant has been consulted, nor the ease of the nation in general regarded, that the treasure of the publick has been squandered, and that our military preparations have intimidated no nation but our own, is evident beyond contradiction.

  It is well known, my lords, to every man but the minister, that we have nothing to fear from either the fleets or armies of the Spaniards, that they cannot invade us except in America, and that they can only molest us by intercepting our traders. This they can only effect by means of their privateers, whose vessels, being light and active, may be easily fitted out, nimbly seize their prey, and speedily retire.

  The experience of the last French war, my lords, might have taught us how much we have to fear from the activity of men incited by prospects of private gain, and equipped with that care and vigilance, which, however omitted in national affairs, the interest of particular men never fails to dictate. It is well known, my lords, how much we lost amidst our victories and triumphs, and how small security the merchants received from our magnificent navies, and celebrated commanders. It was, therefore, surely the part of wise men, not to miscarry twice by the same omission, when they had an opportunity to supply it.

  I need not inform your lordships of what every reader of newspapers can tell, and which common sense must easily discover, that privateers are only to be suppressed by ships of the same kind with their own, which may scour the seas with rapidity, pursue them into shallow water, where great ships cannot attack them, seize them as they leave the harbours, or destroy them upon their own coasts.

  That this is, in its own nature, at once obvious to be contrived, and easy to be done, must appear upon the bare mention of it, and yet that it has been either treacherously neglected, or ignorantly omitted, the accounts of every day have long informed us. Not a week passes in which our ships are not seized, and our sailors carried into a state of slavery. Nor does this happen only on the wide ocean, which is too spacious to be garrisoned, or upon our enemies’ coasts, where they may have, sometimes, insuperable advantages, but on our own shores, within sight of our harbours, and in those seas of which we vainly style our nation the sovereign.

  Who is there, my lords, whose indignation is not raised at such ignominy? Who is there by whom such negligence will not be resented? It cannot be alleged that we had not time to make better preparations; we had expected war long before we declared it, and if the minister was the only man by whom it was not expected, it will make another head of accusation.

  Nor was his disregard of our dominions less flagrant than that of our trade: it was publickly declared by don Geraldino, that his master would never give up his claim to part of our American colonies, which yet were neither fortified on the frontiers, nor supplied with arms, nor enabled to oppose an enemy, nor protected against him.

  One man there is, my lords, whose natural generosity, contempt of danger, and regard for the publick, prompted him to obviate the designs of the Spaniards, and to attack them in their own territories; a man, whom by long acquaintance I can confidently affirm to have been equal to his undertaking, and to have learned the art of war by a regular education, who yet miscarried in his design, only for want of supplies necessary to a possibility of success.

  Nor is there, my lords, much probability that the forces sent lately to Vernon will be more successful; for this is not a war to be carried on by boys: the state of the enemy’s dominions is such, partly by situation, and partly by the neglect of that man whose conduct we are examining, that to attack them with any prospect of advantage, will require the judgment of an experienced commander; of one who had learned his trade, not in Hyde-park, but in the field of battle; of one that has been accustomed to sudden exigencies and unsuspected difficulties, and has learned cautiously to form, and readily to vary his schemes.

  An officer, my lords, an officer qualified to invade kingdoms is not formed by blustering in his quarters, by drinking on birth-nights, or danc
ing at assemblies; nor even by the more important services of regulating elections, and suppressing those insurrections which are produced by the decay of our manufactures. Many gallant colonels have led out their forces against women and children, with the exactest order, and scattered terrour over numerous bodies of colliers and weavers, who would find difficulties not very easily surmountable, were they to force a pass, or storm a fortress.

  But, my lords, those whom we have destined for the conquest of America, have not even flushed their arms with such services, nor have learned, what is most necessary to be learned, the habit of obedience; they are only such as the late frost hindered from the exercise of their trades, and forced to seek for bread in the service; they have scarcely had time to learn the common motions of the exercise, or distinguish the words of command.

  Nor are their officers, my lords, extremely well qualified to supply those defects, and establish discipline and order in a body of new-raised forces; for they are absolutely strangers to service, and taken from school to receive a commission, or if transplanted from other regiments, have had time only to learn the art of dress. We have sent soldiers undisciplined, and officers unable to instruct them, and sit in expectation of conquests to be made by one boy acting under the direction of another.

  To their commander-in-chief, my lords, I object nothing but his inexperience, which is by no means to be imputed to his negligence, but his want of opportunities; though of the rest, surely it may be said, that they are such a swarm as were never before sent out on military designs; and, in my opinion, to the other equipments, the government should have added provisions for women to nurse them.

  Had my knowledge of war, my lords, been thought sufficient to have qualified me for the chief command in this expedition, or had my advice been asked with regard to the conduct of it, I should willingly have assisted my country with my person or my counsels; but, my lords, this man, who engrosses all authority, seems, likewise, to believe that he is in possession of all knowledge, and that he is equally capable, as he is equally willing, to usurp the supreme and uncontroulable direction both of civil and military affairs.