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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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A LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE ABBE RAYNAL
Thomas Paine
KYPROS PRESS
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Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Paine
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal
A LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE ABBE RAYNAL
To an author of such distinguished reputation as the Abbe Raynal, it might very well become me to apologize for the present undertaking; but as to be right is the first wish of philosophy, and the first principle of history, he will, I presume, accept from me a declaration of my motives, which are those of doing justice, in preference to any complimental apology, I might otherwise make. The Abbe, in the course of his work, has, in some instances extolled, without a reason, and wounded without a cause. He has given fame where it was not deserved, and withheld it where it was justly due; and appears to be so frequently in and out of temper with his subjects and parties, that few or none of them are decisively and uniformly marked.
It is yet too soon to write the history of the revolution; and whoever attempts it precipitately, will unavoidably mistake characters and circumstances, and involve himself in error and difficulty. Things like men are seldom understood rightly at first sight. But the Abbe is wrong even in the foundation of his work; that is, he has misconceived and misstated the causes which produced the rupture between England and her then colonies, and which led on, step by step, unstudied and uncontrived on the part of America, to a revolution, which has engaged the attention, and affected the interest of Europe.
To prove this, I shall bring forward a passage, which, though placed towards the latter part of the Abbe’s work, is more intimately connected with the beginning: and in which, speaking of the original cause of the dispute, he declares himself in the following manner—
“None,” says he, “of those energetic causes, which have produced so many revolutions upon the globe, existed in North-America. Neither religion nor laws had there been outraged. The blood of martyrs or patriots had not there streamed from scaffolds. Morals had not there been insulted. Manners, customs, habits, no object dear to nations, had there been the sport of ridicule. Arbitrary power had not there torn any inhabitant from the arms of his family and friends, to drag him to a dreary dungeon. Public order had not been there inverted. The principles of administration had not been changed there; and the maxims of government had there always remained the same. The whole question was reduced to the knowing whether the mother country had, or, had not a right to lay, directly or indirectly, a slight tax upon the colonies.”
On this extraordinary passage, it may not be improper, in general terms, to remark, that none can feel like those who suffer; and that for a man to be a competent judge of the provocative, or, as the Abbe styles them, the energetic causes of the revolution, he must have resided in America.
The Abbe, in saying that the several particulars he has enumerated did not exist in America, and neglecting to point out the particular period in which the means they did not exist, reduces thereby his declaration to a nullity, by taking away all meaning from the passage.
They did not exist in 1763, and they all existed before 1776; consequently as there was a time when they did not, and another when they did exist, the time when constitutes the essence of the fact; and not to give it, is to withhold the only evidence which proves the declaration right or wrong, and on which it must stand or fall. But the declaration as it now appears, unaccompanied by time, has an effect in holding out to the world, that there was no real cause for the revolution, because it denied the existence of all those causes which are supposed to be justifiable, and which the Abbe styles energetic.
I confess myself exceedingly at a loss to find out the time to which the Abbe alludes; because, in another part of the work, in speaking of the stamp act, which was passed in 1764, he styles it “An usurpation of the Americans’ most precious and sacred rights.” Consequently he here admits the most energetic of all causes, that is, an usurpation of their most precious and sacred rights, to have existed in America twelve years before the declaration of independence, and ten years before the breaking out of hostilities. The time, therefore, in which the paragraph is true, must be antecedent to the stamp act, but as at that time there was no revolution, nor any idea of one, it consequently applies without a meaning; and as it cannot, on the Abbe’s own principle, be applied to any time after the stamp act, it is therefore a wandering, solitary paragraph connected with nothing, and at variance with every thing.
The stamp act, it is true, was repealed two years after it was passed; but it was immediately followed by one of infinitely more mischievous magnitude, I mean the declaratory act, which asserted the right, as it was styled, of the British Parliament, “to bind America in all cases whatsoever.”
If then, the stamp act was an usurpation of the Americans’ most precious and sacred rights, the declaratory Act left them no rights at all; and contained the full grown seeds of the most despotic government ever exercised in the world. It placed America not only in the lowest, but in the basest state of vassalage; because it demanded an unconditional submission in everything, or, as the act expressed it, in all cases whatsoever: and what renders this act the more offensive, is, that it appears to have been passed as an act of mercy; truly then may it be said, that the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
All the original charters from the Crown of England, under the faith of which, the adventurers from the old world settled in the new, were by this act displaced from their foundations; because, contrary to the nature of them, which was that of a compact, they were now made subject to repeal or alteration at the mere will of one party only. The whole condition of America was thus put into the hands of the Parliament or the Ministry, without leaving to her the least right in any case whatsoever.
There is no despotism to which this iniquitous law did not extend; and though it might have been convenient in the execution of it, to have consulted manners and habits, the principle of the act made all tyranny legal. It stopt no where. It went to everything. It took in with it the whole life of a man, or, if I may so express it, an eternity of circumstances. It is the nature of law to require obedience, but this demanded servitude; and the condition of an American, under the operation of it, was not that of a subject, but a vassal. Tyranny has often been established without law, and sometimes against it, but the history of mankind does not produce another instance, in which it has been established by law. It is an audacious outrage upon civil government, and cannot be too much exposed, in order to be sufficiently detested.
Neither could it be said after this, that the legislature of that country any longer made laws for this, but that it gave out commands; for wherein differed an act of Parliament constructed on this principle, and operating in this manner, over an unrepresented people, from the orders of a military establishment?
The Parliament of England, with respect to America, was not septennial but perpetual. It appeared to the latter a body always in being. Its election or expiration were to her the same, as if its members succeeded by inheritance, or went out by death, or lived for ever, or were appointed to it as a matter of office. Therefore, for the people of England to have any just conception of the mind of America, respecting this extraordinary act, they must suppose all election and expiration in that country to cease forever, and the present Parliament, its heirs, &c., to be perpetual; in this case, I ask, what would the most clamorous of them think, were an act to be passed, declaring the right of such a Parliament to bind them in all cases whatsoever? For this word whatsoever would go as effectually to their Magna Charta, Bill of Rights, trial by Juries, &c. as it went to the charters and forms of government in America.
I am persuaded, that the Gentleman to whom I address these remarks will not, after the passing of this act, say, “That the principles of administration had not been changed in America, and that the maxims of government had there been always the same.” For here is, in principle, a total overthrow of the whole; and not a subversion only, but an annihilation of the foundation of liberty and absolute dominion established in its stead.
The Abbe likewise states the case exceedingly wrong and injuriously, when he says, “that that the whole question was reduced to the knowing whether the mother country had, or had not, a right to lay, directly or indirectly, a slight tax upon the colonies.” This was not the whole of the question; neither was the quantity of the tax the object, either to the Ministry, or to the Americans. It was the principle, of which the tax made but a part, and the quantity still less, that formed the ground on which America opposed.
The tax on tea, which is the tax here alluded to, was neither more or less than an experiment to establish the practice of a declaratory law upon; modelled into the more fashionable phrase of the universal supremacy of Parliament. For until this time the declaratory law had lain dormant, and the framers of it had contented themselves with barely declaring an opinion.
Therefore the whole question with America, in the opening of the dispute, was, Shall we be bound in all cases whatsoever by the British Parliament, or shall we not? For submission to the tea or tax act, implied an acknowledgment of the declaratory act, or, in other words, of the universal supremacy of Parliament, which as they never intended to do, it was necessary they should oppose it, in its first stage of execution.
It is probable, the Abbe has been led into this mistake by perusing detached pieces in some of the American newspapers; for, in a case where all were interested, everyone had a right to give his opinion; and there were many who, with the best intentions, did not chuse the best, nor indeed the true ground, to defend their cause upon. They felt themselves right by a general impulse, without being able to separate, analyze, and arrange the parts.
I am somewhat unwilling to examine too minutely into the whole of this extraordinary passage of the Abbe, lest I should appear to treat it with severity; otherwise I could shew, that not a single declaration is justly founded; for instance, the reviving an obsolete act of the reign of Henry the Eighth, and fitting it to the Americans, by authority of which they were to be seized and brought from America to England, and there imprisoned and tried for any supposed offenses, was, in the worse sense of the words, to tear them by the arbitrary power of Parliament, from the arms of their families and friends, and drag them not only to dreary but distant dungeons. Yet this act was contrived some years before the breaking out of hostilities. And again, though the blood of martyrs and patriots had not streamed on the scaffolds, it streamed in the streets, in the massacre of the inhabitants of Boston, by the British soldiery in the year 1770.
