The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
Chapter 83 : "'Tis plain that the Doctor is not impeached for preaching a general doctrine

"'Tis plain that the Doctor is not impeached for preaching a general doctrine, and enforcing the general duty of obedience, but for preaching against an _excepted case after he has stated the exception_. He is not impeached for preaching the general doctrine of obedience, and the utter illegality of resistance upon any pretence whatsoever, but because, having first laid down the general doctrine as true, without any exception, _he states the excepted case_, the Revolution, in express terms, as an objection, and then a.s.sumes the consideration of that excepted case, denies there was any resistance in the Revolution, and a.s.serts that to impute resistance to the Revolution would cast black and odious colors upon it. This, my Lords, is not preaching the doctrine of non-resistance in the _general_ terms used by the Homilies and the fathers of the Church, where cases of necessity may be _understood to be excepted by a tacit implication, as the counsel have allowed_,--but is preaching directly against the resistance at the Revolution, which, in the course of this debate, has been all along admitted to _be necessary and just_, and can have no other meaning than to bring a dishonor upon the Revolution, and an odium upon those great and ill.u.s.trious persons, _those friends to the monarchy and the Church, that a.s.sisted in bringing it about_. For had the Doctor intended anything else, he would have treated the case of the Revolution in a different manner, and have given _it the true and fair answer_: he would have said that the resistance at the Revolution was _of absolute necessity, and the only means left to revive the Const.i.tution, and must be therefore taken as an excepted case_, and could never come within the reach or intention of the general doctrine of the Church."

"Your Lords.h.i.+ps take notice on what grounds the Doctor continues to a.s.sert the same position in his answer. But is it not most evident that the general exhortations to be met with in the Homilies of the Church of England, and such like declarations in the statutes of the kingdom, are meant only as rules for the civil obedience of the subject to the legal administration of the supreme power in _ordinary cases_? And it is equally absurd to construe any words in a positive law to authorize the destruction of the whole, as to expect that King, Lords, and Commons should, in express terms of law, declare _such an ultimate resort as the right of resistance, at a time when the case supposes that the force of all law is ceased_."[18]

[Sidenote: Commons abhor whatever shakes the submission of posterity to the settlement of the crown.]

"The Commons must always resent, with the utmost detestation and abhorrence, every position that may shake the authority of that act of Parliament whereby the crown is settled upon her Majesty, _and whereby the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons do, in the name of all the people of England, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities, to her Majesty_, which this general principle of absolute non-resistance must certainly shake.

"For, if the resistance at the Revolution was illegal, the Revolution settled in usurpation, and this act can have no greater force and authority than an act pa.s.sed under a usurper.

"And the Commons take leave to observe, that the authority of this Parliamentary settlement is a matter of the greatest consequence to maintain, in a case where the hereditary right to the crown is contested."

"It appears by the several instances mentioned in the act declaring the rights and liberties of the subject and settling the succession of the crown, that at the time of the Revolution there was _a total subversion of the const.i.tution of government both in Church and State, which is a case that the laws of England could never suppose, provide for, or have in view._"

Sir Joseph Jekyl, so often quoted, considered the preservation of the monarchy, and of the rights and prerogatives of the crown, as essential objects with all sound Whigs, and that they were bound not only to maintain them, when injured or invaded, but to exert themselves as much for their reestablishment, if they should happen to be overthrown by popular fury, as any of their own more immediate and popular rights and privileges, if the latter should be at any time subverted by the crown.

For this reason he puts the cases of the _Revolution_, and the _Restoration_ exactly upon the same footing. He plainly marks, that it was the object of all honest men not to sacrifice one part of the Const.i.tution to another, and much more, not to sacrifice any of them to visionary theories of the rights of man, but to preserve our whole inheritance in the Const.i.tution, in all its members and all its relations, entire and unimpaired, from generation to generation. In this Mr. Burke exactly agrees with him.

_Sir Joseph Jekyl._

[Sidenote: What are the rights of the people.]

[Sidenote: Restoration and Revolution.]

[Sidenote: People have an equal interest in the legal rights of the crown and of their own.]

"Nothing is plainer than that the people have a right to the laws and the Const.i.tution. This right the nation hath a.s.serted, and recovered out of the hands of those who had dispossessed them of it at several times.

There are of this _two famous instances_ in the knowledge of the present age: I mean that of the _Restoration_, and that of the _Revolution_: in both these great events were the _regal power_ and the _rights of the people_ recovered. And it is _hard to say in which the people have the greatest interest; for the Commons are sensible that there it not one legal power belonging to the crown, but they have an interest in it; and I doubt not but they will always be as careful to support the rights of the crown as their own privileges_."

The other Whig managers regarded (as he did) the overturning of the monarchy by a republican faction with the very same horror and detestation with which they regarded the destruction of the privileges of the people by an arbitrary monarch.

_Mr. Lechmere_,

[Sidenote: Const.i.tution recovered at the Restoration and Revolution.]

Speaking of our Const.i.tution, states it as "a Const.i.tution which happily recovered itself, at the Restoration, from the confusions and disorders which _the horrid and detestable proceedings of faction and usurpation had thrown it into_, and which after many convulsions and struggles was providentially saved at the late happy Revolution, and by the many good laws pa.s.sed since that time stands now upon a firmer foundation, together with the most comfortable prospect of _security to all posterity_ by the settlement of the crown in the Protestant line."

I mean now to show that the Whigs (if Sir Joseph Jekyl was one, and if he spoke in conformity to the sense of the Whig House of Commons, and the Whig ministry who employed him) did carefully guard against any presumption that might arise from the repeal of the non-resistance oath of Charles the Second, as if at the Revolution the ancient principles of our government were at all changed, or that republican doctrines were countenanced, or any sanction given to seditious proceedings upon general undefined ideas of misconduct, or for changing the form of government, or for resistance upon any other ground than the _necessity_ so often mentioned for the purpose of self-preservation. It will show still more clearly the equal care of the then Whigs to prevent either the regal power from being swallowed up on pretence of popular rights, or the popular rights from being destroyed on pretence of regal prerogatives.

_Sir Joseph Jekyl_.

[Sidenote: Mischief of broaching antimonarchical principles.]

[Sidenote: Two cases of resistance: one to preserve the crown, the other the rights of the subject.]

"Further, I desire it may be considered, these legislators" (the legislators who framed the non-resistance oath of Charles the Second) "were guarding against the consequences of those _pernicious and antimonarchical principles which had been broached a little before in this nation_, and those large declarations in favor of _non-resistance_ were made to encounter or obviate the _mischief_ of those principles,--as appears by the preamble to the fullest of those acts, which is the _Militia Act_, in the 13th and 14th of King Charles the Second. The words of that act are these: _And during the late usurped governments, many evil and rebellious principles have been instilled into the minds of the people of this kingdom, which may break forth, unless prevented, to the disturbance of the peace and quiet thereof: Be it therefore enacted_, &c. Here your Lords.h.i.+ps may see the reason that inclined those legislators to express themselves in such a manner against resistance. _They had seen the regal rights swallowed up under the pretence of popular ones_: and it is no imputation on them, that they did not then foresee a _quite different case_, as was that of the Revolution, where, under the pretence of regal authority, a total subversion of the rights of the subject was advanced, and in a manner effected. And this may serve to show that it was not the design of those legislators to condemn resistance, in a case _of absolute necessity, for preserving the Const.i.tution_, when they were guarding against principles which had so lately destroyed it."

[Sidenote: Non-resistance oath not repealed because (with the restriction of necessity) it was false, but to prevent false interpretations.]

"As to the truth of the doctrine in this declaration which was repealed, _I'll admit it to be as true as the Doctor's counsel a.s.sert it,--that is, with an exception of cases of necessity_: and it was not repealed because it was false, _understanding it with that restriction_; but it was repealed because it might be interpreted in _an unconfined sense, and exclusive of that restriction_, and, being so understood, would reflect on the justice of the Revolution: and this the legislature had at heart, and were very jealous of, and by this repeal of that declaration gave a Parliamentary or legislative admonition against a.s.serting this doctrine of non-resistance _in an unlimited sense_."

[Sidenote: General doctrine of non-resistance G.o.dly and wholesome; not bound to state _explicitly_ the exceptions.]

"Though the general doctrine of non-resistance, the doctrine of the Church of England, as stated in her Homilies, or elsewhere delivered, by which the general duty of subjects to the higher powers is taught, be owned to be, as unquestionably it is, _a G.o.dly and wholesome doctrine_,--though this general doctrine has been constantly inculcated by the reverend fathers of the Church, dead and living, and preached by them as a preservative against the Popish doctrine of deposing princes, and as the ordinary rule of obedience,--and though the same doctrine has been preached, maintained, and avowed by our most orthodox and able divines from the time of the Reformation,--and how _innocent a man_ soever Dr. Sacheverell had been, if, _with an honest and well-meant_ zeal, he had preached the same doctrine in the same general terms in which he found it delivered by the Apostles of Christ, as taught by the Homilies and the reverend fathers of our Church, and, in imitation of those great examples, had only pressed the general duty of obedience, and the illegality of resistance, without taking notice of any exception," &c.

Another of the managers for the House of Commons, Sir John Holland, was not less careful in guarding against a confusion of the principles of the Revolution with any loose, general doctrines of a right in the individual, or even in the people, to undertake for themselves, on any prevalent, temporary opinions of convenience or improvement, any fundamental change in the Const.i.tution, or to fabricate a new government for themselves, and thereby to disturb the public peace, and to unsettle the ancient Const.i.tution of this kingdom.

_Sir John Holland_.

[Sidenote: Submission to the sovereign a conscientious duty, except in cases of necessity.]

"The Commons would not be understood as if they were pleading for a licentious resistance, as if _subjects_ were left to _their_ good-will and pleasure when they are to _obey_ and when to _resist_. No, my Lords, they know they are _obliged by all the ties of social creatures and Christians, for wrath and conscience' sake, to submit to their sovereign_. The Commons do not abet _humorsome, factious arms_: they aver them to be _rebellions_. But yet they maintain that that resistance at the Revolution, which was so _necessary, was lawful and just from that necessity_."

[Sidenote: Right of resistance how to be understood.]

"These general rules of obedience may, upon a _real necessity,_ admit a lawful _exception_; and such a _necessary exception_ we a.s.sert the Revolution to be.

"'Tis with this view of _necessity_, only _absolute necessity_ of preserving our laws, liberties, and religion,--'tis with _this limitation_, that we desire to be understood, when any of us speak of resistance in general. The _necessity_ of the resistance at the Revolution was at that time obvious to every man."

I shall conclude these extracts with a reference to the Prince of Orange's Declaration, in which he gives the nation the fullest a.s.surance that in his enterprise he was far from the intention of introducing any change whatever in the fundamental law and Const.i.tution of the state. He considered the object of his enterprise not to be a precedent for further revolutions, but that it was the great end of his expedition to make such revolutions, so far as human power and wisdom could provide, unnecessary.

_Extracts from the Prince of Orange's Declaration_.

"_All magistrates, who have been_ unjustly turned out, shall _forthwith resume their former_ employments; as well as all the boroughs of England shall return again to _their ancient prescriptions and charters_, and, more particularly, that _the ancient_ charter of the great and famous city of London shall again be in force; and that the writs for the members of Parliament shall be addressed to the _proper officers, according to law and custom_."

"And for the doing of all other things which the two Houses of Parliament shall find necessary for the peace, honor, and safety of the nation, so that there may _be no more danger of the nation's falling, at any time hereafter, under arbitrary government_."

_Extract from the Prince of Oranges Additional Declaration_.