Read Online A History of Britain, Volume 3 by Simon Schama - Free Book Online
Authors: Simon Schama
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first, altogether British revolution had been about in the first place.
It was only in defiance of historical truth, he said, that Price could claim it had been licensed by the people’s right to choose their own form of government and hire or fire kings at their pleasure, or as they judged those monarchs protected the ‘natural rights’ of individual liberty. That had been the view of the men not of 1688 but of 1648 – of Milton and the king-killing generation. William III had been invited to England, not as the people’s choice, much less to make a fresh government from any sort of abstract principles, but to defend a form of law, Church and government that had always been there; the ‘ancient constitution’ violated by James II. It had thus been the most conservative of revolutions; hence its bloodlessness, hence its glory. And above all, Burke insisted, the ‘ancient constitution’ had the authority of countless generations – from Magna Carta, perhaps even Anglo-Saxon England – as its weight; pinning it to the earth of Britain rather than letting it be borne dangerously aloft by the hot-air balloon speculations of political philosophers like Rousseau. Governments could not simply be dreamed up from imagined first principles. Such ‘geometric’ or ‘arithmetical’ constructions were, by definition, lifeless. ‘The very idea of the fabrication of a new government’, Burke wrote, ‘…is enough to fill us with disgust and horror.’ Governments, legitimate governments at any rate, drew their authority from the immemorial experience of their practical use. That, at any rate, was Britain’s native way of doing things. ‘This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity’ So the ‘spot of earth on which we happen to have been born’ made light of by Price was, in fact, of the utmost importance in giving us a sense of our community. ‘In England we have not yet been completely embowelled of our natural entrails; we still feel within us, and we cherish and cultivate, those inbred sentiments which are the faithful guardians, the active monitors of our duty.’ Our territorial ancestry, complete with what Burke – heavily in love with heraldry – called ‘armorial bearings’,
was
our birthright, our political constitution. We damaged it at our peril.
As the prophets of international peace and understanding sang hymns to the coming universal communion of humanity, Burke thundered back, in effect: Nature! I’ll tell you about
Nature
. You imagine it’s all the same, daisychains and hands across the seas and songs of fraternity. But what
you’re
talking about is the brotherhood of intellectuals who sip from the same little cups of chocolate, chatter away the same clichés and dream the same puerile dreams. But
nature
, my friends, is lived, not thought. Nature is familiarity, a feeling for place. Nature is a patriot.
The ‘people’ whom the demagogues so freely apostrophized had been revealed in France to be ignorant, credulous and bloodthirsty. Democracy was mobocracy. ‘The occupation of a hairdresser or of a working tallow-chandler cannot’, Burke insisted, ‘be a matter of honor to any person. … Such descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression if such as they … are permitted to rule.’ But they didn’t know what they were doing. The unforgivable responsibility for giving them the illusion of their own importance and power lay with those who should have known better: class traitors, gentlemen or clergymen who toyed with democracy like a pastime and were rich enough to evade its lethal consequences, who fantasized about exchanging their allotted role in the political order for mere ‘citizenship’. In England it was the dukes and earls – Richmond, Grafton, Shelburne and, regrettably, his old friend Charles James Fox – who, by lending their voice to the destruction of their own nobility, were
It was only in defiance of historical truth, he said, that Price could claim it had been licensed by the people’s right to choose their own form of government and hire or fire kings at their pleasure, or as they judged those monarchs protected the ‘natural rights’ of individual liberty. That had been the view of the men not of 1688 but of 1648 – of Milton and the king-killing generation. William III had been invited to England, not as the people’s choice, much less to make a fresh government from any sort of abstract principles, but to defend a form of law, Church and government that had always been there; the ‘ancient constitution’ violated by James II. It had thus been the most conservative of revolutions; hence its bloodlessness, hence its glory. And above all, Burke insisted, the ‘ancient constitution’ had the authority of countless generations – from Magna Carta, perhaps even Anglo-Saxon England – as its weight; pinning it to the earth of Britain rather than letting it be borne dangerously aloft by the hot-air balloon speculations of political philosophers like Rousseau. Governments could not simply be dreamed up from imagined first principles. Such ‘geometric’ or ‘arithmetical’ constructions were, by definition, lifeless. ‘The very idea of the fabrication of a new government’, Burke wrote, ‘…is enough to fill us with disgust and horror.’ Governments, legitimate governments at any rate, drew their authority from the immemorial experience of their practical use. That, at any rate, was Britain’s native way of doing things. ‘This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity’ So the ‘spot of earth on which we happen to have been born’ made light of by Price was, in fact, of the utmost importance in giving us a sense of our community. ‘In England we have not yet been completely embowelled of our natural entrails; we still feel within us, and we cherish and cultivate, those inbred sentiments which are the faithful guardians, the active monitors of our duty.’ Our territorial ancestry, complete with what Burke – heavily in love with heraldry – called ‘armorial bearings’,
was
our birthright, our political constitution. We damaged it at our peril.
As the prophets of international peace and understanding sang hymns to the coming universal communion of humanity, Burke thundered back, in effect: Nature! I’ll tell you about
Nature
. You imagine it’s all the same, daisychains and hands across the seas and songs of fraternity. But what
you’re
talking about is the brotherhood of intellectuals who sip from the same little cups of chocolate, chatter away the same clichés and dream the same puerile dreams. But
nature
, my friends, is lived, not thought. Nature is familiarity, a feeling for place. Nature is a patriot.
The ‘people’ whom the demagogues so freely apostrophized had been revealed in France to be ignorant, credulous and bloodthirsty. Democracy was mobocracy. ‘The occupation of a hairdresser or of a working tallow-chandler cannot’, Burke insisted, ‘be a matter of honor to any person. … Such descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression if such as they … are permitted to rule.’ But they didn’t know what they were doing. The unforgivable responsibility for giving them the illusion of their own importance and power lay with those who should have known better: class traitors, gentlemen or clergymen who toyed with democracy like a pastime and were rich enough to evade its lethal consequences, who fantasized about exchanging their allotted role in the political order for mere ‘citizenship’. In England it was the dukes and earls – Richmond, Grafton, Shelburne and, regrettably, his old friend Charles James Fox – who, by lending their voice to the destruction of their own nobility, were
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