Government And Constitution (II)
We call it a bad government, when it is administered on other principles, and directed to other objects either wickedly or weakly, either by obtaining new laws, which want this conformity, or by perverting old ones which had it; and when this is done without law, or in open violation of the laws, we term it a tyrannical government. In a word, and to bring this home to our own case, constitution is the rule by which our princes ought to govern at all times; government is that by which they actually do govern at any particular time. One may remain immutable; the other may, and as human naure is constituted, must vary. One is the criterion by which we are to try the other; for surely we have a right to do so, since if we are to live in subjection to the government of our Kings, our Kings are to govern in subjection to the constitution; and the conformity or non-conformity of their subjection to it, prescribes the measure of our submission to them, according to the principles of the Revolution, and of our present settlement….Another thing to be considered is this: when persons are spoken of as friends to the government, and enemies to the constitution, the term friendship is a little prostituted, in compliance with common usage; for real friendship can never exist among those who have banished virtue and truth. They have no affection to any but themselves; no regard to any interest except their own. Their sole attachments are such as I mentioned in the last letter, attachments to power and profit, and when they have contracted a load of infamy and guilt in the pursuit of these, an attachment to that protection, which is sufficient to procure them appearances of consideration, and real impunity. They may bear the semblance of affection to their prince, and of zeal for his government; but they who are false to the cause of their country, will not be true to any other; and the very same minister who exalts his master’s throne on the ruins of the constitution, that he may govern without control, or retire without danger, would do the reverse of this, if any turn of affairs enabled him to compound, in that manner, the better for himself. ~Bolingbroke
2 Responses to “Government And Constitution (II)”
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I like this quote very much. There is good meat to chew on there.
Had you not put Bolingbroke’s name to the quote I would almost have supposed that it were Edmund Burke’s. Bolingbroke’s presentation suffers one or two relatively very slightly soft patches a Burke would have firmed up, but otherwise the style, the vocabulary, and, moreover, the mode of thinking seem almost identical to Burke’s. I wonder whether Burke regarded himself as Bolingbroke’s protege.
There are some similarities in the way they expres themselves. There are also some continuities between Bolingbroke and Burke as exponents of elements of “British conservatism,” and later British conservatives claim both of them, but they belonged to different factions and Burke is often quoted as saying dismissively, “Who now reads Bolingbroke, who ever read him through?” Granted, Bolingbroke produced a lot of written material, so few people can claim to have “read him through,” but the point of the citation is usually that Burke didn’t think much of Bolingbroke and didn’t put a lot of stock in his ideas. In some respects, Burke represents a reaction against Bolingbroke’s arguments (Bolingbroke hoped to transcend divisions of party, Burke defended the necessity of party), and while Burke may have sympathised with the colonists it was Bolingbroke who contributed to their philosophical arsenal and provided the foundations for the Country tradition to which our Antifederalists and Republicans/Jeffersonians belonged. I don’t believe Burke would have considered himself a protege or heir of Bolingbroke, and, in fact, I believe that his first published work was a satire that was aimed to a large extent against Bolingbroke’s views on religion (he was not, shall we say, a devout and pious man).
In any case, it is my view that the American conservative political tradition as it existed in the 18th and 19th century, to the extent that it existed, owes far more to Bolingbroke, and it is to him that American conservatives ought to look for their inspiration, at least when it coms to constitutional and political matters.