I Parties and the Revolution settlement

The Petition of Right (History of England, ch. 41 (v: 192–5))

The … commons … knew, that their own vote … had not, of itself, sufficient authority to secure the constitution against future invasion. Some act to that purpose must receive the sanction of the whole legislature; and they appointed a committee to prepare the model of so important a law. By collecting into one effort all the dangerous and oppressive claims of his prerogative, Charles had exposed them to the hazard of one assault; and had farther, by presenting a nearer view of the consequences attending them, rouzed the independent genius of the commons. Forced loans, benevolences, taxes without consent of parliament, arbitrary imprisonments, the billeting of soldiers, martial law; these were the grievances complained of, and against these an eternal remedy was to be provided. The commons pretended not, as they affirmed, to any unusual powers or privileges: They aimed only at securing those which had been transmitted them from their ancestors: And their law they resolved to call a petition of right; as implying that it contained a corroboration or explanation of the ancient constitution, not any infringement of royal prerogative, or acquisition of new liberties.

While the committee was employed in framing the petition of right, the favourers of each party, both in parliament and throughout the nation, were engaged in disputes about this bill, which, in all likelihood, was to form a memorable aera in the English government.

It is not my intention, as is common among writers of travels, to entertain my readers with an account of my birth, parentage, and education. For what is it to them, whether I was born in the north or south of England, whether my father was a fat man or a lean one, a cobler or a person of an independent fortune; or whether I was born on a Sunday or a Monday? when at the same time, perhaps, it does not signify whether I had ever been born at all. However, it will be necessary to say thus much of myself; that I was born a younger brother, and met with the same fate that those gentry generally do, viz. to starve for want; while he that has the good luck to come into the world first, is riding in his coach and six.

’Tis true, I had a small fortune, about the quarter of one year's income of the estate, but it did not last long; and when that was gone, by being burthensome to my relations, they soon grew tired of me; and ill-natured things being told them, such as, that if I had not been extravagant, I might have lived comfortably upon the interest of my fortune; that if a person cannot live within his circumstances, he ought to starve; and many others of the same kind: I say, through these means I was entirely deserted by them, and misery soon followed.

Luxury is a word of an uncertain signification, and may be taken in a good as well as in a bad sense. In general, it means great refinement in the gratification of the senses; and any degree of it may be innocent or blameable, according to the age, or country, or condition of the person. The bounds between the virtue and the vice cannot here be exactly fixed, more than in other moral subjects. To imagine, that the gratifying of any sense, or the indulging of any delicacy in meat, drink, or apparel, is of itself a vice, can never enter into a head, that is not disordered by the frenzies of enthusiasm. I have, indeed, heard of a monk abroad, who, because the windows of his cell opened upon a noble prospect, made a covenant with his eyes never to turn that way, or receive so sensual a gratification. And such is the crime of drinking champagne or burgundy, preferably to small beer or porter. These indulgences are only vices, when they are pursued at the expence of some virtue, as liberality or charity; in like manner as they are follies, when for them a man ruins his fortune, and reduces himself to want and beggary. Where they entrench upon no virtue, but leave ample subject whence to provide for friends, family, and every proper object of generosity or compassion, they are entirely innocent, and have in every age been acknowledged such by almost all moralists.

It affords a violent prejudice against almost every science, that no prudent man, however sure of his principles, dares prophesy concerning any event, or foretel the remote consequences of things. A physician will not venture to pronounce concerning the condition of his patient a fortnight or month after: And still less dares a politician foretel the situation of public affairs a few years hence. Harrington thought himself so certain of his general principle, that the balance of power depends on that of property, that he ventured to pronounce it impossible ever to re-establish monarchy in England: But his book was scarcely published when the king was restored; and we see, that monarchy has ever since subsisted upon the same footing as before. Notwithstanding this unlucky example, I will venture to examine an important question, viz. Whether the Britishgovernment inclines more to absolute monarchy, or to a republic; and in which of these two species of government it will most probably terminate? As there seems not to be any great danger of a sudden revolution either way, I shall at least escape the shame attending my temerity, if I should be found to have been mistaken.

Those who assert, that the balance of our government inclines towards absolute monarchy, may support their opinion by the following reasons. That property has a great influence on power cannot possibly be denied; but yet the general maxim, that the balance of one depends on the balance of the other, must be received with several limitations.

Nothing is more apt to surprize a foreigner, than the extreme liberty, which we enjoy in this country, of communicating whatever we please to the public, and of openly censuring every measure, entered into by the king or his ministers. If the administration resolve upon war, it is affirmed, that, either wilfully or ignorantly, they mistake the interest of the nation, and that peace, in the present situation of affairs, is infinitely preferable. If the passion of the ministers lie towards peace, our political writers breathe nothing but war and devastation, and represent the pacific conduct of the government as mean and pusillanimous. As this liberty is not indulged in any other government, either republican or monarchical; in Holland and Venice, more than in France or Spain; it may very naturally give occasion to a question, How it happens that Great Britainalone enjoys this peculiar privilege?

The Reason, why the laws indulge us in such a liberty seems to be derived from our mixed form of government, which is neither wholly monarchical, nor wholly republican. It will be found, if I mistake not, a true observation in politics, that the two extremes in government, liberty and slavery, commonly approach nearest to each other; and that, as you depart from the extremes, and mix a little of monarchy with liberty, the government becomes always the more free; and on the other hand, when you mix a little of liberty with monarchy, the yoke becomes always the more grievous and intolerable.

Letter I.

Sibi convenientia finge

To J - - - - - - H - - - - - - Esq; at his House near Holborn, London.

Dear Sir,

In my former I gave you an Account of our Ship's being cast away on the Southern Coast, without the Loss of anyone Man, or much of its Cargo; I let you know the Hardships we underwent in an uninhabited Country, and how, endeavouring to make Discoveries in our Long Boat, we fell into the Hands of a very hospitable People. I gave you also an Account of the several Cities, the Manners and Customs, through which we pass'd, and which were not very different from our own; the People being actuated by the same Passions of Avarice, Envy and Malice, which are so common in Europe, divided by the same Factions and Parties, both in Politicks and Religion; and this, till we arriv'd at the Foot of vast unpassable Mountains, which Nature seems to have made as the Barrier betwixt these wretched People, and those happy Men who inhabit the other Side of it. You must observe, that all those on this Side the Mountain were originally Exiles banish'd from the other Side for Crimes which would not be suffer'd among them; such as Avarice, Ingratitude, unchristian Dealing, Lust, and the like; and they are still the Receptacle of all those who are punish'd for such Offences on the other Side of the Mountain, and have Governors in every City sent from them.

It appears to have been the common practice of antiquity, to make provision, during peace, for the necessities of war, and to hoard up treasures before-hand, as the instruments either of conquest or defence; without trusting to extraordinary impositions, much less to borrowing, in times of disorder and confusion. Besides the immense sums above mentioned, which were amassed by Athens, and by the Ptolemies, and other successors of Alexander; we learn from Plato, that the frugal Lacedemonians had also collected a great treasure; and Arrian and Plutarch take notice of the riches which Alexander got possession of on the conquest of Susa and Ecbatana, and which were reserved, some of them, from the time of Cyrus. If I remember right the scripture also mentions the treasure of Hezekiah and the Jewish princes; as profane history does that of Philip and Perseus, kings of Macedon. The ancient republics of Gaul had commonly large sums in reserve. Every one knows the treasure seized in Rome by Julius Caesar, during the civil wars; and we find afterwards, that the wiser emperors, Augustus, Tiberius, Vespasian, Severus &c. always discovered the prudent foresight, of saving great sums against any public exigency.

On the contrary, our modern expedient, which has become very general, is to mortgage the public revenues, and to trust that posterity will pay off the incumbrances contracted by their ancestors: And they, having before their eyes, so good an example of their wise fathers, have the same prudent reliance on their posterity; who, at last, from necessity more than choice, are obliged to place the same confidence in a new posterity.

[Self-Estrangement]

We begin with a fact of contemporary economic life: The more wealth the worker produces, the more his production grows in power and scope, the poorer he becomes. The more commodities he creates, the cheaper a commodity he becomes. The more the world of things increases in value, the more in direct proportion the world of men loses value. The activity of labour does not just produce commodities, but also turns itself and the worker into a commodity, and it does this to the same extent that it produces commodities in general.

This fact simply expresses the following: The object that labour produces, labour's own product, confronts it as an alien thing, a power independent of the producer. The product of labour is labour that has taken the form of an object, labour that has made itself into a thing; it is the transformation of labour into an object. The actualisation of labour is its objectification [Vergegenständlichung]. But in present economic conditions, labour's actualisation carries with it the worker's loss of actualisation, labour's objectification is the worker's loss of the object and servitude to it, and instead of appropriation, there is for the worker estrangement [Entfremdung], alienation [Entausserung].

So much is labour's actualisation the worker's loss of it that this loss goes even to the point of death by starvation. So much is labour's objectification the worker's loss of the object that the worker is robbed even of the objects he needs for both his life and his work.

The complex and many-faceted problem of democracy will be dealt with in this paper only as it affects the situation at the present moment here in Germany. We shall go straight into the topic without further ado and without reflections of a general kind.

As is generally known, the present franchise for elections to the Reichstag was introduced by Bismarck for purely demagogic reasons in his famous ultimatum to the Frankfurt Federal Diet when he championed this principle in the face of grave reservations from the liberals of the time. His motives had to do partly with foreign policy objectives, and partly with the domestic political aim of realising his Caesarist ambitions in defiance of the (at that time) recalcitrant middle classes. Admittedly, his hopes that the masses would respond conservatively were disappointed, but the splitting of precisely those social strata which are so characteristic of the structure of modern society into two classes existing in close proximity and hence in hostility to one another (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat) later made it possible (as Prince Hohenlohe observed) to exploit the cowardice (Hohenlohe called it ‘timidity’) of the bourgeoisie in the face of ‘democracy’ and thereby preserve the rule of the bureaucracy. This cowardice is still having its effects today. The fact that it was perfectly possible to be a democrat and yet to reject Lassalle's enthusiasm for that form of franchise under the circumstances of the time, is evident, for example, from the position taken by Eduard Bernstein in his introduction to Lassalle's writings.

So far I have not known anyone who has not governed some state. I am not talking about right honourable ministers, who really do govern, some for two or three years, others for six months, others for six weeks; I am talking about all those other men who, over supper or in their study, set out their systems of government, reform the army, the Church, the law and [the world of] finance.

The abbé Bourzeis set about governing France around 1645 in the name of Cardinal Richelieu, and wrote that Political testament in which he wants to draft the nobility into the cavalry for three years, make the Audit Office and the parlements pay taxes, and deprive the king of income from the salt tax. He contends in particular that for the sake of economy a hundred thousand men should be raised in order to wage a campaign with fifty thousand. He maintains that ‘Provence alone has more good ports than Spain and Italy put together.’

The abbé Bourzeis had done no travelling. Moreover, his work teems with anachronisms and mistakes; he makes Cardinal Richelieu sign in a way that he never signed, just as he made him speak as he never spoke. For the rest, he takes a whole chapter to say that reason must be a state's rule of thumb’, and to seek to prove this discovery.

May I be permitted to add to the above account, which has kindly been made available to us, some remarks about the political current in which the draft originated. The question of the extent to which the draft might assume practical importance in forthcoming political discussions is one we shall leave aside. For our purposes it suffices that the draft is symptomatic of a particular mode of political thought amongst outstandingly able and idealistic Russian patriots for whom we have complete personal sympathy, regardless of any success, given the enormous difficulties in their situation, their work ultimately has. The fact that they are generally no friends of German culture – indeed often its bitter enemies on Russian soil – and the fact that they are predominantly hostile to Germany in political matters does nothing to change my attitude.

The draft has been worked out by members of the ‘Union of Liberation’ (Soyuz Osvobozhdeniya) and is formally one of the projects debated at the congresses of the members of the zemstvos and the Duma. Let me say a few words about both organisations which are the bearers of the liberal and democratic movement. Although its official constitution did not take place until January 1904 in Petersburg, the ‘Union of Liberation’ was founded in the summer of 1903 during an ostensible group holiday in the Black Forest under the chairmanship of the estate-owner Petrunkevich who, along with the zemstvo of Tver, had been disciplined by Plehve.

Pure despotism is the punishment for men's bad behaviour. If a community is governed by a single person or by several, that is clearly because it has not had either the courage or the skill to govern itself.

A society of men governed arbitrarily resembles perfectly a herd of cattle yoked in the service of a master. He feeds them only so that they are in a condition to serve him; he only tends them when they are ill so that in [good] health they will be useful to him; he fattens them up so that he can obtain nourishment from what their bodies produce; he uses the skins of some to harness others to the plough.

Thus a nation is subjugated either by a skillful fellow-countryman, who has profited from its stupidity or divisiveness, or by a thief, known as a conqueror who, with other thieves, has taken possession of its territory, killed those who resisted, and made slaves of the cowards he allows to live.

This thief, who deserves to be broken on the wheel, sometimes has altars built to himself. The enslaved nation has seen in the thief's children a race of gods; they have viewed any questioning of their authority as blasphemy, and the slightest attempt to gain freedom as sacrilege.