Jeremy Bentham - Emancipate your colonies!

Jeremy Bentham

Published by Good Press, 2020

EAN 4064066067960

Y OUR predecessors made me a French citizen: hear me speak like one: War thickens round you: I will shew you a vast resource: Emancipate your Colonies . You start: Hear and you will be reconciled. I say again, emancipate your Colonies. Justice, consistency, policy, economy, honour, generosity, all demand it of you: all this you shall see. Conquer, you are still but running the race of vulgar ambition: Emancipate: you strike out a new path to glory. Conquer, it is by your armies: Emancipate, the conquest is your own, and made over yourselves. To give freedom at the expence of others, is but conquest in disguise: to rise superior to conquerors, the sacrifice must be your own.Reasons you will not find wanting, if you will hear them: some more pressing than you might wish. What is least pleasant among them, may pay you best for hearing it. Were it ever so unpleasant, better hear it while it is yet time, than when it is too late, and from one friend, than from a host of enemies. If you are kings, you will hear nothing but flattery; if you are republicans, you will bear rugged truths.

I begin with justice: it stands foremost in your thoughtsAnd are you yet to learn, that on this ground the question is already judged? That you at least have judged it, and given judgment against yourselves?You abhor tyranny: You abhor it in the lump not less than in detail: You abhor the subjection of one nation to another: You call it slavery. You gave sentence in the case of Britain against her colonies: Have you so soon forgot that sentence? Have you so soon forgot the school in which you served your apprenticeship to freedom?

You choose your own government, why are not other people to choose theirs? Do you seriously mean to govern the world, and do you call that liberty? What is become of the rights of men? Are you the only men who have rights? Alas! my fellow citizens, have you two measures?

Oh! but they are but a part of the empire, and a part must be governed by the whole.Part of the empire, say you? Yes, in point of fact, they certainly are, or at least were. Yes: so was New-York a part of the British empire, while the British army garrisoned it: so were Longwy and Verdun parts of the Prussian or the Austrian empire t'other day: that you have, or at least had possession of them is out of dispute: the question is, whether you now ought to have it?

Yes, you have, or had it: but whence came it to you? Whence, but from the hand of despotism. Think how you have dealt by them. One common Bastile inclosed them and you. You knock down the jailor, you let youselves out, you keep them in, and put yourselves into his place. You destroy the criminal, and you reap the profit, I mean always what seems to you profit, of the crime.

Oh, but they will find deputies: and those deputies will govern us, as much as we govern them. Illusion!What is that but doubling the mischief instead of lessening it? To give yourselves a pretence for governing a million or two of strangers, you admit half a dozen. To govern a million or two of people you don't care about, you admit half a dozen people who don't care about you. To govern a set of people whose business you know nothing about, you encumber yourselves with half a dozen starers who know nothing about your's. Is this fraternity? Is this liberty and equality? Open domination would be a less grievance. Were I an American, I had rather not be represented at all, than represented thus. If tyranny must come, let it come without a mask. Oh, but informationTrue, it must be had; but to give information, must a man possess a vote?

Frenchmen, how would you like a Parliament of ours to govern you, you sending six members to it? London is not a third part so far from Paris, as London from the Orkneys, or Paris from Perpignan. You startthink then, what may be the feelings of the colonists. Are they Frenchmen? they will feel like Frenchmen? Are they not Frenchmen? then where is our right to govern them?

Is equality what you want? I will tell you how to make it. As often as France sends commissaries with fleets and armies to govern the colonies, let the colonies send commissaries with equal fleets and armies to govern France.

What are a thousand such pleas to the purpose? Let us leave imagination, and consult feelings. Is it for their advantage to be governed by you rather than by themselves? Is it for your advantage to govern them, rather than leave them to themselves?

Is it then for their advantage to be governed by a people who never know, nor ever can know either their inclinations or their wants? What is it you ever can know about them? The wishes they entertain? The wants they labour under? No such thing: but the wishes they entertained, the wants they laboured under two months ago, wishes that may have changed, and for the best reasons: wants that may have been relieved, or become unrelievable.Do they apply to you for justice? Truth is unattainable for want of evidence: You get not a tenth part perhaps of the witnesses you ought to have, and those perhaps only on one side.Do they ask succours of you? You put yourselves to immense expence: You fit out an armament, and when it arrives, it finds nothing to be done; the party to whom yon send it are either conquerors or conquered.Do they want subsistence? Before your supply reaches them, they are starved. No negligence could put them in a situation so helpless, as that in which, so long as they continue dependant on you, the nature of things has fixed them, in spite of all your solicitude.

Solicitude did I say? How can they expect any such thing? What care you, or what can you care about them? What do you know about them? What picture can you so much as form to youselves of the country? What conception can you frame to yourselves of manners and modes of life so different from your own? When will you ever see them? When will they ever see you? If they suffer, will their cries ever wound your ears? Will their wretchedness ever meet your eyes? What time have you to think about them? Pressed by so many important objects that are at your door, how uninteresting will be the tale that comes from St. Domingo or Martinique?

What is it you want to govern them for? What? but to monopolize and cramp their trade. What is it they can want you to govern them for?Defence?their only ger is from you.

Do they like to be governed by you? ask them and you will know. Yet why ask them, as if you did not know? They may be better pleased to be governed by you than by any body else; but is it possible they should not be still better pleased to be governed by themselves?A minority among them might choose rather to be governed by you than by their antagonists, the majority: but is it for you to protect minorities?A majority, which did not feel itself so strong as it could wish, might wish to borrow a little strength of you:but for the loan of a moment, would you exact a perpetual annuity of servitude?

Oh, but they are aristocratsAre they so?then I am sure you have no right to govern them: then I am sure it is not their interest to be governed by you; then I am sure it is not your interest to govern them. Are they aristocrats? they hate you. Are they aristocrats? you hate them. For what would you wish to govern a people who hate you? Will they hate you the less for governing them? Are a people the happier for being governed by those they hate? If so, send for the Duke of Brunswick , and seat him on your throne. For what can you wish to govern a people whom you hate? Is it for the pleasure of making them miserable? Is not this copying the Fredericks and the Francis's? Is not this being aristocrats, and aristocrats with a vengeance?