The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Volume 11
That any real discoveries of misconduct would be made, that the interest of our country would be found ever to have been lazily neglected, or treacherously betrayed, that any of our rights have been either yielded by cowardice, or sold by avarice, or that our enemies have gained any advantage over us by the connivance or ignorance of our ministers, I am indeed very far from believing; but as I am now endeavouring to convince those of the impropriety of this motion, who have long declared themselves of a different opinion, it may not be improper to ask, what advantage they propose by detecting errours of twenty years, which are now irretrievable; of inquiring into fraudulent practices, of which the authors and the agents are now probably in their graves; and exposing measures, of which all the inconveniencies have been already felt, and which have now ceased to affect us.
If it be wise to neglect our present interest for the sake of inquiring into past miscarriages, and the inquiry now proposed be in itself possible, I have no objections to the present motion; but as I think the confused state of Europe demands our utmost attention, and the prosecution of the war against Spain is in itself of far more importance than the examination of all past transactions, I cannot but think, that the duty which I owe to my country requires that I should declare myself unwilling to concur in any proposal, that may unnecessarily divert our thoughts or distract our councils.
Lord PERCIVAL then rose and spoke to the following purpose:—Sir, to discourage good designs by representations of the danger of attempting, and the difficulty of executing them, has been, at all times, the practice of those whose interest has been threatened by them. A pirate never fails to intimidate his pursuers by exaggerating the number and resolution of his crew, the strength of his vessels, and the security of his retreats. A cheat discourages a prosecution by dwelling upon his knowledge of all the arts and subterfuges of the law, the steadiness of his witnesses, and the experience of his agents.
To raise false terrours by artful appearances is part of the art of war, nor can the general be denied praise, who by an artful disposition of a small body, discourages those enemies from attacking him by whom he would certainly be overcome; but then, surely the appearance ought to be such as may reasonably be expected to deceive; for a stratagem too gross only produces contempt and confidence, and adds the vexation of being ridiculous to the calamity of being defeated.
Whether this will be the fate of the advocates for the ministry, I am not able to determine; but surely they have forgot the resolution with which their enemies bore up for many years against their superiority, and the conduct by which at last they defeated the united influence of power and money; if they hope to discourage them from an attack, by representing the bulk and strength of their paper fortifications. They have lost all memory of the excise and the convention, who can believe their eloquence sufficiently powerful to evince, that the inquiry now proposed ought to be numbered among impossibilities.
Whoever, sir, is acquainted with their methods of negotiation, will, indeed, easily believe the papers sufficiently numerous, and the task of examining them such as no man would willingly undertake; for it does not appear for what end the immense sums which late senates have granted, were expended, except for the payment of secretaries, and ministers, and couriers. But whatever care has been employed to perplex every transaction with useless circumstances, and to crowd every office with needless papers, it will be long before they convince us, that it is impossible to examine them. They may, doubtless, be in time perused, though, perhaps, they can never be understood.
The utmost inconvenience, sir, that can be feared, is the necessity of engaging a greater number of hands than on former occasions; and it will be no disagreeable method to the publick, if we employ some of the clerks which have been retained only for the sake of gratifying the leaders of boroughs, or advancing the distant relations of the defenders of the ministry, in unravelling those proceedings which they have been hitherto hired only to embarrass, and in detecting some of those abuses to which the will of their masters has made them instrumental; that they may at last deserve, in some degree, the salaries which they have enjoyed, may requite the publick for their part of its spoils, by contributing to the punishment of the principal plunderers, and leave their offices, of which I hope the number will be quickly diminished, with the satisfaction of having deserved at last the thanks of their country.
By this expedient, sir, the inquiry will be made at least possible, and I hope, though it should still remain difficult, those who have so long struggled for the preservation of their country, and who have at last seen their labours rewarded with success, will not be discouraged from pursuing it.
The necessity of such an inquiry will grow every day more urgent; because wicked men will be hardened in confidence of impunity, and the difficulty, such as it is, will be increased by every delay; for what now makes an inquiry difficult, or in the style of these mighty politicians impossible, but the length of time that has elapsed since the last exertion of this right of the senate, and the multitude of transactions which are necessarily to be examined?
What is this year an irksome and tedious task, will in another year require still more patience and labour; and though I cannot believe that it will ever become impossible, it will undoubtedly in time be sufficient to weary the most active industry, and to discourage the most ardent zeal.
The chief argument, therefore, that has been hitherto employed to discourage us from an inquiry, ought rather, in my opinion, to incite us to it. We ought to remember, that while the enemies of our country are fortifying themselves behind an endless multiplicity of negotiations and accounts, every day adds new strength to their intrenchments, and that we ought to force them while they are yet unable to resist or escape us.
Sir William YONGE then spoke to the following effect:—Sir, however I may be convinced in my own opinion of the impracticability of the inquiry now proposed, whatever confidence I may repose in the extensive knowledge and long experience of those, by whom it has been openly pronounced not only difficult but impossible, I think there are arguments against the motion, which though, perhaps, not stronger in themselves, (for what objection can be stronger than impossibility,) ought at least more powerfully to incite us to oppose it.
Of the impossibility of executing this inquiry, those who have proposed it well deserve to be convinced, not by arguments but experience; they deserve not to be diverted by persuasions from engaging in a task, which they have voluntarily determined to undergo; a task, which neither honour, nor virtue, nor necessity has imposed upon them, and to which it may justly be suspected, that they would not have submitted upon any other motives, than those by which their conduct has hitherto been generally directed, ambition and resentment.
Men who, upon such principles, condemn themselves to labours which they cannot support, surely deserve to perish in the execution of their own projects, to be overwhelmed by the burdens which they have laid upon themselves, and to suffer the disgrace which always attends the undertakers of impossibilities; and from which the powers of raillery and ridicule, which they have so successfully displayed on this occasion, will not be sufficient to defend them.
They have, indeed, sir, with great copiousness of language, and great fertility of imagination, shown the weakness of supposing this inquiry impossible; they have proposed a method of performing it, which they hope will at once confute and irritate their opponents; but all their raillery and all their arguments have in reality been thrown away upon an attempt to confute what never was advanced. They have first mistaken the assertion which they oppose, and then exposed its absurdity; they have introduced a bugbear, and then attempted to signalize their courage and their abilities, by showing that it cannot fright them.
The honourable gentleman, sir, who first mentioned to you the impossibility of this inquiry, spoke only according to the common acceptation of words, and was far from intending to imply natural and philosophical impossibility. He was far from intending to insinuate, that to examine any series of transactions, or peruse any number of papers, implied an absurdity, or contrariety to the established order of nature; he did not intend to rank this design with those of building in the air, or pumping out the ocean; he intended only to assert a moral or popular impossibility, to show that the scheme was not practicable but by greater numbers than could be conveniently employed upon it, or in a longer space of time than it was rational to assign to it; as we say it is impossible to raise groves upon rocks, or build cities in deserts; by which we mean only to imply, that there is no proportion between the importance of the effect, and the force of the causes which must operate to produce it; that the toil will be great, and the advantage little.
In this sense, sir, and nothing but malice or perverseness could have discovered any other, the motion may be truly said to be impossible; but its impossibility ought to be rather the care of those who make, than of those that oppose it; and, therefore, I shall lay before the house other reasons, which, unless they can be answered, will determine me to vote against it.
It cannot be doubted, but the papers which must on this occasion be examined, contain a great number of private transactions, which the interest of the nation, and the honour of our sovereign require to be concealed. The system of policy which the French have, within the last century, introduced into the world, has made negotiation more necessary than in any preceding time. What was formerly performed by fleets and armies, by invasions, sieges, and battles, has been of late accomplished by more silent methods. Empires have been enlarged without bloodshed, and nations reduced to distress without the ravages of hostile armies, by the diminution of their commerce, and the alienation of their allies.
For this reason, sir, it has been necessary frequently to engage in private treaties, to obviate designs sometimes justly, and at other times, perhaps, unreasonably suspected. It has been proper to act upon remote suppositions, and to conclude alliances which were only to be publickly owned, in consequence of measures taken by some other powers, which measures were sometimes laid aside, and the treaty, therefore, was without effect. In some of these provisionary contracts, it is easy to conceive, that designs were formed not to the advantage of some powers, whom yet we do not treat as enemies, which were only to be made publick by the execution of them: in others, perhaps, some concessions were made to us, in consideration of the assistance that we promised, by which the weakness of our allies may be discovered, and which we cannot disclose without making their enemies more insolent, and increasing that danger from which they apply to us for security and protection.
If to this representation of the nature of the papers, with which our offices have been filled by the negotiations of the last twenty years, any thing were necessary to be added, it may be farther alleged, that it has long been the practice of every nation on this side of the globe, to procure private intelligence of the designs and expectations of the neighbouring powers, to penetrate into the councils of princes and the closets of ministers, to discover the instructions of ambassadours, and the orders of generals, to learn the intention of fleets before they are equipped, and of armies before they are levied, and to provide not only against immediate and visible hostilities, but to obviate remote and probable dangers.
It need not be declared in this assembly, that this cannot always be done without employing men who abuse the confidence reposed in them, a practice on which I shall not at this time trouble the house with my opinion, nor interrupt the present debate, by any attempt to justify or condemn it. This, I think, may be very reasonably alleged; that whether the employment of such persons be defensible by the reciprocal practice of nations, or not, it becomes at least those that corrupt them and pay them for their treachery, not to expose them to vengeance, to torture, or to ruin; not to betray those crimes which they have hired them to commit, or give them up to punishment, to which they have made themselves liable only by their instigation, and for their advantage.
That private compacts between nations and sovereigns ought to be kept inviolably secret, cannot be doubted by any man who considers, that secrecy is one of the conditions of those treaties, without which they had not been concluded; and, therefore, that to discover them is to violate them, to break down the securities of human society, to destroy mutual trust, and introduce into the world universal confusion. For nothing less can be produced by a disregard of those ties which link nations in confederacies, and produce confidence and security, and which enable the weak, by union, to resist the attacks of powerful ambition.
How much it would injure the honour of our sovereign to be charged with the dissolution of concord, and the subversion of the general bulwarks of publick faith, it is superfluous to explain. To know the condition to which a compliance with this motion would reduce the British nation, we need only turn our eyes downwards upon the hourly scenes of common life; we need only attend to the occurrences which crowd perpetually upon our view, and consider the calamitous state of that man, of whom it is generally known that he cannot be trusted, and that secrets communicated to him are in reality scattered among mankind.
Every one knows that such a man can expect none of the advantages or pleasures of friendship, that he cannot transact affairs with others upon terms of equality, that he must purchase the favours of those that are more powerful than himself, and frighten those into compliance with his designs who have any thing to fear from him; that he must give uncommon security for the performance of his covenants, that he can have no influence but that of money, which will probably become every day less, that his success will multiply his enemies, and that in misfortunes he will be without refuge.
The condition of nations collectively considered is not different from that of private men, their prosperity is produced by the same conduct, and their calamities drawn upon them by the same errours, negligences, or crimes; and therefore, since he that betrays secrets in private life, indisputably forfeits his claim to trust, and since he that can be no longer trusted is on the brink of ruin, I cannot but conclude that, as by this motion all the secrets of our government must be inevitably betrayed, my duty to his majesty, my love of my country, and my obligations to discharge with fidelity the trust which my constituents have conferred upon me, oblige me to oppose it.
Mr. LITTLETON then rose, and spoke to this effect:—Sir, it always portends well to those who dispute on the side of truth and reason, when their opponents appear not wholly to be hardened against the force of argument, when they seem desirous to gain the victory, not by superiority of numbers but of reason, and attempt rather to convince, than to terrify or bribe. For though men are not in quest of truth themselves, nor desirous to point it out to others; yet, while they are obliged to speak with an appearance of sincerity, they must necessarily afford the unprejudiced and attentive an opportunity of discovering the right. While they think themselves under a necessity of reasoning, they cannot but show the force of a just argument, by the unsuccessfulness of their endeavours to confute it, and the propriety of an useful and salutary motion, by the slight objections which they raise against it. They cannot but find themselves sometimes forced to discover what they can never be expected to acknowledge, the weakness of their own reasons, by deserting them when they are pressed with contrary assertions, and seeking a subterfuge in new arguments equally inconclusive and contemptible. They show the superiority of their opponents, like other troops, by retreating before them, and forming one fortification behind another, in hopes of wearying those whom they cannot hope to repulse.
Of this conduct we have had already an instance in the present debate; a debate managed with such vigour, order, and resolution, as sufficiently shows the advantage of regular discipline long continued, and proves, that troops may retain their skill and spirit, even when they are deprived of that leader, to whose instructions and example they were indebted for them. When first this motion was offered, it seems to have been their chief hope to divert us from it by outcries of impossibility, by representing it as the demand of men unacquainted with the state of our offices, or the multiplicity of transactions, in which the indefatigable industry of our ministers has been employed; and they have therefore endeavoured to persuade us, that they are only discouraging us from an insuperable labour, and advising us to desist from measures which we cannot live to accomplish.
But when they found, sir, that their exaggerations produced merriment instead of terrour, that their opponents were determined to try their strength against impossibility, that they were resolved to launch out into this boundless ocean of inquiry; an ocean of which they have been boldly told, that it has neither shore nor bottom, and that whoever ventures into it must be tost about for life; when they discovered that this was not able to shake our resolution, or move us to any other disposition, they thought it proper to explain away their assertion of impossibility, by making a kind of distinction between things impossible, and things which cannot be performed; and finding it necessary to enlarge their plea, they have now asserted, that this inquiry is both impossible and inexpedient.
Its impossibility, sir, has been already sufficiently discussed, and shown to mean only a difficulty which the unskilfulness of our ministers has produced; for transactions can only produce difficulties to the inquirer, when they are confused; and confusion can only be the effect of ignorance or neglect.
Artifice is, indeed, one more source of perplexity: it is the interest of that man whose cause is bad to speak unintelligibly in the defence of it, and of him whose actions cannot bear to be examined, to hide them in disorder, to engage his pursuers in a labyrinth, that they may not trace his steps and discover his retreat; and what intricacies may be produced by fraud cooperating with subtilty, it is not possible to tell.
I do not, however, believe, that all the art of wickedness can elude the inquiries of a British senate, quickened by zeal for the publick happiness. The sagacity of our predecessors has often detected crimes concealed with more policy than can be ascribed to those whose conduct is now to be examined, and dragged the authors of national calamities to punishment from their darkest retreats. The expediency, therefore, of this motion, is now to be considered, and surely it will not require long reflection to prove that it is proper, when the nation is oppressed with calamities, to inquire by what misconduct they were brought upon it; when immense sums have been raised by the most oppressive methods of exaction, to ask why they were demanded, and how they were expended; when penal laws have been partially executed, to examine by what authority they were suspended, and by what they were enforced; and when the senate has for twenty years implicitly obeyed the direction of one man, when it has been known throughout the nation, before any question was proposed, how it would be decided, to search out the motive of that regular compliance, and to examine whether the minister was reverenced for his wisdom and virtue, or feared for his power, or courted for the publick money; whether he owed his prevalence to the confidence or corruption of his followers?
It cannot surely be thought inexpedient, to inquire into the reasons for which our merchants were for many years suffered to be plundered, or for which a war, solicited by the general voice of the whole nation, was delayed; into the reasons for which our fleets were fitted out only to coast upon the ocean, and connive at the departure of squadrons and the transportation of armies, to suffer our allies to be invaded, and our traders ruined and enslaved.
It is, in my opinion, convenient to examine with the utmost rigour, why time was granted to our enemies to fortify themselves against us, while a standing army preyed upon our people? Why forces unacquainted with the use of arms were sent against them, under the command of leaders equally ignorant? And why we have suffered their privateers in the mean time to rove at large over the ocean, and insult us upon our own coasts? Why we did not rescue our sailors from captivity, when opportunities of exchange were in our power? And why we robbed our merchants of their crews by rigorous impresses, without employing them either to guard our trade, or subdue our enemies?
If the senate is not to be suffered to inquire into affairs like these, it is no longer any security to the people, that they have the right of electing representatives; and unless they may carry their inquiries back as far as they shall think it necessary, the most acute sagacity may be easily eluded; causes may be very remote from their consequences, the original motives of a long train of wicked measures may lie hid in some private transaction of former years, and those advantages which our enemies have been of late suffered to obtain, were perhaps sold them at some forgotten congress by some secret article.
Such are, probably, the private transactions which the honourable gentleman is so much afraid of exposing to the light; transactions in which the interest of this nation has been meanly yielded up by cowardice, or sold by treachery; in which Britain has been considered as a province subordinate to some other country, or in which the minister has enriched himself by the sacrifice of the publick rights.
It has been, indeed, alleged with some degree of candour, that many of our treaties were provisions against invasions which perhaps were never intended, and calculated to defeat measures which only our own cowardice disposed us to fear. That such treaties have, indeed, been made, Hanover is a sufficient witness; but however frequently they may occur, they may surely be discovered with very little disadvantage to the nation; they will prove only the weakness of those that made them, who were at one time intimidated by chimerical terrours, and at another, lulled into confidence by airy security.
The concessions from foreign powers, which have been likewise mentioned, ought surely not to be produced as arguments against the motion; for what could more excite the curiosity of the nation, if, indeed, this motion were in reality produced by malevolence or resentment; if none were expected to concur in it but those who envied the abilities, or had felt the power of the late minister, it might be, perhaps, defeated by such insinuations; for nothing could more certainly regain his reputation, or exalt him to more absolute authority, than proofs that he had obtained for us any concessions from foreign powers.
If any advantageous terms have been granted us, he must be confessed to have so far discharged his trust to his allies, that he has kept them with the utmost caution from the knowledge of the people, who have heard, during all his administration, of nothing but subsidies, submission, and compliances paid to almost every prince on the continent who has had the confidence to demand them; and if by this inquiry any discovery to the disadvantage of our allies should be struck out, he may with great sincerity allege, that it was made without his consent.
Another objection to this inquiry is, that the spies which are retained in foreign courts may be detected by it, that the canals of our intelligence will be for ever stopped, and that we shall henceforth have no knowledge of the designs of foreign powers, but what may be honestly attained by penetration and experience. Spies are, indeed, a generation for whose security I have not much regard, but for whom I am on this occasion less solicitous, as I believe very few of them will be affected by this motion.