高考英语 可能考的名著 BOOK IV素材

用心 爱心 专心1 CHAPTERCHAPTER I I OFOF RESISTANCERESISTANCE Having now made some progress in the enquiry originally instituted it may be proper to look back and consider the point at which we are arrived We have examined in the first place the powers of man as they relate to the subject of which we treat secondly we have delineated the principles of society as founded in justice and general interest independently of and antecedent to every species of political government and lastly have endeavoured to ascertain the fundamental conditions which must belong to the most rational system of government We might now proceed to investigate the different objects of government and deduce the inferences respecting them which are pointed out to us by the preceding reasonings But there are various miscellaneous considerations which though they have not fallen under the former heads are of considerable importance to our disquisition and may usefully occupy the remainder of the present volume They are of different classes and in a certain degree detached from each other but may perhaps without impropriety be ranged under two branches the mode in which the speculative opinions of individuals are to be rendered effectual for the melioration of society and the mode in which opinion is found to operate in modifying the conduct of individuals The strong hold of government has appeared hitherto to have consisted in seduction However imperfect might be the political constitution under which they lived mankind have ordinarily been persuaded to regard it with a sort of reverential and implicit respect The privileges of Englishmen and the liberties of Germany the splendour of the most Christian and the solemn gravity of the Catholic king have each afforded a subject of exultation to the individuals who shared or thought they shared in the advantages these terms were conceived to describe Each man was accustomed to deem it a mark of the peculiar kindness of providence that he was born in the country whatever it was to which he happened to be long The time may come which shall subvert these prejudices The time may come when men shall exercise the piercing search of truth upon the mysteries of government and view without prepossession the defects and abuses of the constitution of their country Out of this new order of things a new series of duties will arise When a spirit of impartiality shall prevail and loyalty shall decay it will become us to enquire into the conduct which such a state of thinking shall make necessary We shall then be called upon to maintain a true medium between blindness to injustice and calamity on the one hand and an acrimonious spirit of violence and resentment on the other It will be the duty of such as shall see these subjects in the pure light of truth to exert themselves for the effectual demolition of monopolies and usurpation but effectual demolition is not the offspring of crude projects and precipitate measures He who dedicates himself to these may be suspected to be under the domination of passion rather than benevolence 用心 爱心 专心2 The true friend of equality will do nothing unthinkingly will cherish no wild schemes of uproar and confusion and will endeavour to discover the mode in which his faculties may be laid out to the greatest and most permanent advantage The whole of this question is intimately connected with the enquiry which has necessarily occupied a share In the disquisitions of all writers on the subject of government concerning the propriety and measures of resistance Are the worst government and best equally entitled to the toleration and forbearance of their subjects Is there no case of political oppression that will authorize the persons who suffer it to take up arms against their oppressors Or if there be what is the quantity of oppression at the measure of which insurrections begin to be justifiable Abuses will always exist for man will always be imperfect what is the nature of the abuse which it would be pusillanimous to oppose by words only and which true courage would instruct us was to be endured no longer No question can be conceived more important than this In the examination of it philosophy almost forgets its nature it ceases to be speculation and becomes an actor Upon the decision according as it shall be decided in the minds of a bold and resolute party the existence of thousands may be suspended The speculative enquirer if he live in a state where abuse is notorious and grievances frequent knows not while he weighs the case in the balance of reason how far that which he attempts to describe is already realized in the apprehension of numbers of his countrymen Let us enter upon the question with the seriousness which so critical an inquiry demands Resistance may have its source in the emergencies either of the public or the individual A nation it has commonly been said has a right to shake off any authority that is usurped over it This is a proposition that has generally passed without question and certainly no proposition can appear more plausible But if we examine it minutely we shall find that it is attended with equivocal circumstances What do we mean by a nation Is the whole people concerned in this resistance or only a part If the whole be prepared to resist the whole is persuaded of the injustice of the usurpation What sort of usurpation is that which can be exercised by one or a few persons over a whole nation universally disapproving of it Government is founded in opinion 1 Bad government deceives us first before it fastens itself upon us like an incubus oppressing all our efforts A nation in general must have learned to respect a king and a house of lords before a king and a house of lords can exercise any authority over them If a man or a set of men unsanctioned by any previous prejudice in their favour pretend to exercise sovereignty in a country they will become objects of derision rather than of serious resistance Destroy the existing prejudice in favour of any of our present institutions and they will fall into similar disuse and contempt 用心 爱心 专心3 It has sometimes been supposed that an army foreign or domestic may be sufficient to hold a people in subjection completely against their inclination A domestic army at least will in some degree partake of the opinions and sentiments of the people at large The more precautions are employed to prevent the infection the doctrine will probably spread with so much the more certainty and rapidity Show me that you are afraid of my entertaining certain opinions or hearing certain principles and you will infallibly sooner or later awaken my curiosity A domestic army will always be found a very doubtful instrument of tyranny in a period of crisis A foreign army after a time will become domesticated If the question be of importing a foreign army for the specific purpose of supporting tottering abuse great alarm will inevitably be excited These men it may be are adapted for continuing the reign of tyranny but who will pay them A weak superstitious or ignorant people may be held in the chains of foreign power but the school of moral and political independence sends forth pupils of a very different character In the encounter with their penetration and discernment tyranny will feel itself powerless and transitory In a word either the people are unenlightened and unprepared for a state of freedom and then the struggle and the consequences of the struggle will be truly perilous or the progress of political knowledge among them is decisive and then everyone will see how futile and short lived will be the attempt to hold them in subjection by means of garrisons and a foreign force The party attached to liberty is upon that supposition the numerous one they are the persons of true energy and who have an object worthy of their zeal Their oppressors few in number and degraded to the rank of lifeless machines wander with no certain destination or prospect over the vast surface and are objects of pity rather than serious alarm Every hour diminishes their number and their resources while on the other hand every moment s delay gives new strength to the cause and fortitude to the champions of liberty Men would not be inclined pertinaciously to object to a short delay if they recollected the advantages and the certainty of success with which it is pregnant Meanwhile these reasonings turn upon the probability that the purposes of liberty will be full as effectually answered without the introduction of force there can be little doubt of the justifiableness of a whole nation having recourse to arms if a case can be made out in which it shall be impossible for them to prevent the introduction of slavery in any other way The same reasonings with little variation will apply to the case of an unquestionable majority of a nation as to that of the whole The majority of a nation is irresistible it as little needs to have recourse to violence there is as little reason to expect that any usurper will be so mad as to contend with it If ever it appear to be other wise it is because in one of two ways we deceive ourselves with the term majority First nothing is more obvious than the danger incident to a man of a sanguine temper of overestimating the 用心 爱心 专心4 strength of his party He associates perhaps only with persons of his own way of thinking and a very small number appears to him as if it were the whole world Ask persons of different tempers and habits of life how many republicans there are at this hour in England or Scotland and you will immediately be struck with the very opposite answers you will receive There are many errors of a sanguine temper that appear at first sight innocent or even useful but surely every man of integrity and conscience will hesitate before he suffers the possibility that an error of this sort should encourage him to plunge a nation in violence and open a sea of blood He must have a heart of strange composition who for the precarious inferences he draws in moral or political calculation would volunteer a mandate of death or be the first to unsheath the sword of summary execution A second deception that lurks under the word majority lies not in the question of number but of quality and degree of illumination A majority we say perhaps is dissatisfied with the present state of things and wishes for such a specific alteration Alas it is to be feared that the greater part of this majority are often mere parrots who have been taught a lesson of the subject of which they understand little or nothing What is it they dislike A specific tax perhaps or some temporary grievance Do they dislike the vice and meanness that grow out of tyranny and pant for the liberal and ingenuous virtue that would be fostered in their own minds in a different condition No They are very angry and fancy themselves very judicious What is it they desire They know not It would probably be easy to show that what they profess to desire is little better than what they hate What they hate is not the general depravation of the human character and what they desire is not its improvement It is an insult upon human understanding when we speak of persons in this state of infantine ignorance to say that the majority of the nation is on the side of political renovation Few greater misfortunes can befall any country than for such persons to be instigated to subvert existing institutions and violently to take the work of political reformation into their own hands There is an obvious remedy to each of the deceptions here enumerated Time Is it doubtful whether the reformers be a real majority of the inhabitants of any country Is it doubtful whether the majority truly understand the object of their professed wishes and therefore whether they be ripe for its reception and competent to its assertion Wait but a little while and the doubt will probably be solved in the manner that the warmest friend of human happiness and improvement would desire If the system of independence and equality be the truth it may be expected hourly to gain converts The more it is discussed the more will it be understood and its value cherished and felt If the state of the majority be doubtful a very few years perhaps a shorter time will tend to place it beyond the reach of controversy The great cause of humanity which is now pleading in the face of the universe has but two enemies those friends of antiquity and those friends of innovation who impatient of 用心 爱心 专心5 suspense are inclined violently to interrupt the calm the incessant the rapid and auspicious progress which thought and reflection appear to be making in the world Happy would it be for mankind if those persons who interest themselves most zealously in these great questions would confine their exertions to the diffusing in every possible mode a spirit of enquiry and the embracing every opportunity of increasing the stock and generalizing the communication of political knowledge A third situation which may be conceived to exist in a country where political reform has been made a topic of considerable attention is that where neither the whole nor the majority of the nation is desirous of the reform in question but where the innovators are an unquestionable minority In this case nothing can be more indefensible than a project for introducing by violence that state of society which our judgements may happen to approve In the first place no persons are ripe for the participation of a benefit the advantage of which they do not understand No people are competent to enjoy a state of freedom who are not already imbued with a love of freedom The most dreadful tragedies will infallibly result from an attempt to goad mankind prematurely into a position however abstractedly excellent for which they are in no degree prepared Secondly to endeavour to impose our sentiments by force is the most detestable species of persecution Others are as much entitled to deem themselves in the right as we are The most sacred of all privileges is that by which each man has a certain sphere relative to the government of his own actions and the exercise of his discretion not liable to be trenched upon by the intemperate zeal or dictatorial temper of his neighbour 2 To dragoon men into the adoption of what we think right is an intolerable tyranny It leads to unlimited disorder and injustice Every man thinks himself in the right and if such a proceeding were universally introduced the destiny of mankind would be no longer a question of argument but of strength presumption or intrigue There is a further ambiguity in the term nation as employed in the proposition above stated that a nation has a right forcibly to shake off any authority that is usurped over it A nation is an arbitrary term Which is most properly termed a nation the Russian empire or the canton of Berne Or is everything a nation upon which accident shall bestow that appellation It seems most accurate to say that any number of persons who are able to establish and maintain a system of mutual regulation for themselves conformable to their own opinions without imposing a system of regulation upon a considerable number of others inconsistent with the opinion of these others have a right or more properly speaking a duty obliging them to adopt that measure That any man or body of men should impose their sense upon persons of a different opinion is absolutely speaking wrong and in all cases deeply to be regretted but this evil it is perhaps in some degree necessary to incur for the sake of a preponderating good All government includes in it this evil as one of its fundamental characteristics 用心 爱心 专心6 There is one circumstance of much importance to be attended to in this disquisition Superficial thinkers lay great stress upon the external situation of men and little upon their internal sentiments Persevering enquiry will probably lead to a mode of thinking the reverse of this To be free is a circumstance of little value if we could suppose men in a state of external freedom without the magnanimity energy and firmness that constitute almost all that is valuable in a state of freedom On the other hand if a man have these qualities there is little left for him to desire He cannot be degraded he cannot readily become either useless or unhappy He smiles at the impotence of despotism he fills up his existence with serene enjoyment and industrious benevolence Civil liberty is chiefly desirable as a means to procure and perpetuate this temper of mind They therefore begin at the wrong end who make haste to overturn and confound the usurped powers of the world Make men wise and by that very operation you make them free Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion Everything then is in order and succeeds at its appointed time How unfortunate is it that men are so eager to strike and have so little constancy to reason It is probable that this question of resistance would never have admitted of so long a controversy if the advocates of the system of liberty promulgated in the last century had not unobserved to themselves introduced a confusion into the question Resistance may be employed either to repel the injuries committed against the nation generally or such as in their immediate application relate to the individual To the first of these the preceding reasonings principally apply The injuries to a nation depend for their nature for the most part upon their permanency and therefore admit of the utmost sobriety and deliberation as to the mode in which they are to be remedied Individuals may be injured or destroyed by a specific act of tyranny but nations cannot the principal mischief to the nation lies in the presage contained in the single act of the injustice that is to continue to be exercised Resistance by the very meaning of the term as it is used in political enquiry signifies a species of conduct that is to be a