place it, from the most savage to the most refined, it would be found equally unjust and impossible; and were there a race of men, a country, and a climate, that permitted such an order of things, the same causes would render all government superfluous. To property, therefore, and to its inequalities all human laws directly or indirectly relate, which would not be equally laws in the state of nature. Now it is impossible to deduce the right of property* from pure reason. The utmost which reason could give would be a property in the forms of things, as far as the forms were produced by individual power. In the matter it could give no property. We regard angels and glorified spirits as beings of pure reason: and whoever thought of property in heaven? Even the simplest and most moral form of it, namely, marriage, (we know from the highest authority) is excluded from the state of pure reason. Rousseau himself expressly admits that property cannot be deduced from the laws of reason and nature; and he ought therefore to have admitted at the same time that his whole theory was a thing of air. In the most respectable point of view he could regard his system * I mean, practically and with the inequalities inseparable from the actual existence of property. Abstractedly, the right to property is deducible from the free-agency of man. If to act freely be a right, a sphere of action must be so too. as analogous to geometry. If indeed it be purely scientific, how could it be otherwise? Geometry holds forth an ideal which can never be fully realized in nature, even because it is nature: because bodies are more than extension, and to pure extension of space only the mathematical theorems wholly correspond. In the same manner the moral laws of the intellectual world, as far as they are deducible from pure intellect, are never perfectly applicable to our mixed and sensitive nature, because man is something besides reason; because his reason never acts by itself, but must clothe itself in the substance of individual understanding and specific inclination, in order to become a reality and an object of consciousness and experience. It will be seen hereafter that together with this, the key-stone of the arch, the greater part and the most specious of the popular arguments in favour of universal suffrage fall in and are crushed. I will mention one only at present. Major Cartwright,in his deduction of the rights of the subject from principles 'not susceptible of proof, being self-evident, if one of which be violated all are shaken,'affirms (Principle 98th; though the greater part indeed are moral aphorisms, or blank assertions, not scientific principles) 'that a power which ought never to be used ought never to exist.' Again he affirms that laws to bind all must be assented to by all, and consequently every man, even the 6 poorest, has an equal right to suffrage;' and this for an additional reason, because all without exception are capable of feeling happiness or misery, accordingly as they are well or ill governed.' But are they not then capable of feeling happiness or misery accordingly as they do or do not possess the means of a comfortable subsistence? and who is the judge, what is a comfortable subsistence, but the man himself? Might not then, on the same or equivalent principles, a leveller construct a right to equal property? The inhabitants of this country without property form, doubtless, a great majority; each of these has a right to a suffrage, and the richest man to no more; and the object of this suffrage is, that each individual may secure himself a true efficient representative of his will. Here then is a legal power of abolishing or equalizing property and according to Major C. himself, a power which ought never to be used ought not to exist. Therefore, unless he carries his system to the whole length of common labour and common possession, a right to universal suffrage cannot exist; but if not to universal suffrage, there can exist no natural right to suffrage at all. In whatever way he would obviate this objection, he must admit expedience founded on experience and particular circumstances, which will vary in every different nation, and in the same nation at different times, as the maxim of all legislation and the ground of all legislative power. For his universal principles, as far as they are principles and universal, necessarily suppose uniform and perfect subjects, which are to be found in the ideas of pure geometry and, I trust, in the realities of heaven, but never, never, in creatures of flesh and blood. END OF VOL. I. C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, WORKS BY S. T. COLERIDGE. I. THE POETICAL AND DRAMATIC WORKS, in 3 Volumes. The only complete edition extant, with many new Poems; uniformly printed with the Aldine edition of the British Poets. II. AIDS TO REFLECTION. In the formation of a manly character on the several grounds of Prudence, III. LAY SERMONS, viz. The Statesman's Manual, a Lay Sermon to the Higher Classes of Society; and a Lay Sermon to the Higher and Middle Classes on Distresses and Discontent. IV. THE FRIEND, A SERIES OF ESSAYS, To aid in the Formation of Fixed Principles in Politics, Morals, and Religion, with Literary Amusements interspersed. A New Edition, with the Author's last Corrections and an Appendix, and with a Synoptical Table of the contents of the work, by HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, Esq. M.A. 3 Vols. Foolscap, 8vo. V. ON THE CONSTITUTION OF CHURCH AND STATE, According to the idea of each; with Aids towards a right judgment on the late Catholic Bill. Third Edition, in the Press. VI. TABLE TALK. Edited by HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, Esq. VII. THE LITERARY REMAINS OF S. T. COLERIDGE, Edited by HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. Contents:-Fall of Robespierre; Poems, never before printed; Course of Lectures; Omniana; Shakespeare, English Poetry, the Drama; Notes on Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Jeremy Taylor, Fuller, Sir Thomas Browne, &c. VIII. MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, By JAMES GILLMAN, Esq. |