THE DEAN AND THE 'SQUIRE: A POLITICAL ECLOGUE. HUMBLY DEDICATED TO SOAME JENYNS,
Esq
By the Author of the Heroic Epistle to Sir WILLIAM CHAMBERS, &c.
"REMEMBER that the principles, for which the WHIGS struggle, are the FOUNDATION OF OUR PRESENT GOVERNMENT, which they apprehend to be undermined, whenever TORY MAXIMS ARE OPENLY AVOWED."
Address to the Cocoa-Tree, Written in the year 1763.
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DEDICATION. TO SOAME JENYNS,
Esq
SIR,
WHEN I lately read your Disquisition on Government and Civil Liberty, it gave me much concern to find, that you had not written it in verse. Such images and such sentiments, such wit and such arguments, were surely too good to be wasted on prose. And you who have written verse so long, and with so much facility, are highly inexcusable for not having employed that talent on so important an occasion as the present, when you had taken upon you to confute
"so many absurd principles concerning government and liberty, which have of
late
been disseminated with unusual industry,"
principles, let, me add, which were still more industriously disseminated at the Revolution by Locke, at the Accession by Hoadly, and a hundred years before either, by Hooker;
"principles, which you say, are as false, as mischievous, as inconsistent with common sense, as with all human society, and which require nothing more than to be fairly stated, to be refuted."
The pious poet, Herbert, I think tells us, that
"A verse may catch him, who a sermon flies."
Why then should you discard verse, when you intended to catch such careless readers, as would be apt to fly a sermon? Why, by dividing your discourse into five methodical heads, should you make it appear as formal as the gravest pulpit-lecture ever delivered by old bishop Beveridge, or young Bishop Bagot? I protest, Mr. Jenyns, I cannot account for this strange proceeding.
However, that such sort of readers may read you, I have attempted to do that for your benefit and theirs, which you would not do for them, or for yourself: and, unequal as I am to the task, have drest up your two first, and, as I think, principal topics, in as easy and fashionable metre as I was capable of writing. I know you would have done this much better. But, as my work is but a fragment, I am not without my hopes, that what I have done may be a spur to your indolence, and that you may be tempted not only to correct, but complete it.
But when I say that I have versified you, I take a pride in boasting, that I am not your mere versifier. I take a pleasure too in owning, that you yourself led me to attempt a nobler species of composition. I had read, some years ago, your very delectable Eclogue of the 'Squire and the Parson, written on occasion of that glorious peace, the honour of making which, is to be inscribed one day (may it be a late one!) on the mausoleum of the Earl of Bute. This, Sir, led me to think of giving my present performance a dramatic cast, so far as an eclogue can possess that title. On this idea, having resolved to make you my TITYRUS, I had not far to seek for a MELIBAEUS. A brother writer, who has of late endeavoured to disseminate principles, similar to some of yours, with unusual, though abortive industry, immediately occurred to my imagination. And as immediately I resolved to read his more elaborate treatise, in order to enable me to execute my plan with greater exactitude, and better preservation of sentiment and character.
Although I must own, that this exercitation of my patience cost me many a yawn, yet I found, to my great satisfaction, that this writer allowed for true, what you hold to be false, those two first principles of Mr. Locke, that men are equal, and that men are free
See
Tucker on Government,
ch. 1st.
. I concluded, therefore, that he was a very proper person to dispute those points with you. Accordingly, without farther ceremonial, I set you both down, not indeed sub tegmine fagi, but, for the sake of the
costumé,
in a snug town coffee-house, and there entered you fairly into debate.
If on your part, Sir, I have ever done more than elucidated any of those assertions, which you call arguments, I humbly ask your pardon: and on the Dean's, if
I have made him a little too lively and spiritual,
I as humbly ask his. I know nothing does so much harm to an ecclesiastic, in the road of perferment, as the bare suspicion of being witty. But, as the Divine in question has long been a dean, and has sworn that he will never be a bishop, I hope no great harm is done.
That you may long remain on the illustrious List of Pensioners, even after the useful Board, from which you derive that right, shall be no more; that, having changed from Tory to Whig in the ministry of the Duke of Newcastle, from Whig to Tory under those, or rather
that
of Lords Bute and North, you may now again change from Tory to Whig under the New Administration;—and (since we have it on very eloquent evidence, that it is now the fashion for persons of the greatest consequence to be
no longer in shackles)
that you may soon cease to be encumbered with your present slavish principles, is the sincere and fervent wish of,
SIR,
Your most obsequious servant, MALCOLM MAC-GREGGOR.
Knightsbridge,
May 1st, 1782.
THE DEAN and the 'SQUIRE.
IN Coffee-house of good account,
Not far from Bond-street, call'd
The Mount,
Soame Jenyns met the Dean of Gloucester;
And, as they sate in lounging posture,
Each on his bench, and face to face,
The Dean began in tone of bass:
While Jenyns, in his treble key,
Replied with much alacrity.
Repeat, my Muse, th' alternate strains,
That flow'd from these Arcadian swains,
Who both were equally alert
Or to deny, or to assert.
—Arcades ambo,
Et cantare pares, & respondere parati.
—VIRG.
'Squire Jenyns, since with like intent
We both have writ on Government,
And both stand stubborn as a rock
Against the principles of Locke,
Let us, like brother meeting brother,
Compare our notes with one another.
'Tis true, I've not had time to look,
Tho' much I wish'd it, in your book.
Doctor, my book is quickly read.
I'd other crotchets in my head.
The Dean had been employed in writing his
Cui Bono?
to Mons. Neckar, which is said, by persons who have read it, to contain many curious crotchets.
Cui Bono?
But you, I guess, have studied mine.
No, to my shame, not ev'n a line.
That's something strange—yet fortunate;
For now on par we shall debate.
True. Who to play at whist regards;
When he, that deals, has seen the cards?
Well put. First then, 'tis fit, I deem,
You tell me how you treat your theme.
I controvert those five positions,
Which Whigs pretend are the conditions
Of civil rule and liberty;
That men are equal born—and free—
That kings derive their lawful sway
All from the people's yea and nay—
That compact is the only ground,
On which a Prince his rights can found—
Lastly, I scout that idle notion,
That government is put in motion,
And stopt again, like clock or chime,
Just as we want them to keep time.
'Sblood! do you controvert them all?
Indeed I do, Sir, great and small.
You're a bold man, my master Jenyns,
And have good right to count your winnings,
If you succeed.—But I, who dare
As much as most, to go so far
Had not the courage, I assure ye,
Tho' I suborned a tory jury.
Before the Dean published his elaborate treatise, he printed it first only for the perusal of certain friends, who were either Tories from principle or discre
ion. It may therefore reasonably be supposed, that (in Milton's phrase) it
numbered
many
choice intellects
among our great churchmen. The mitred author of the Letter to the Cocoa-Tree, (written at the commencement of Lord Bute's administration) from which I have taken my motto, was amongst these personages; and it is not to be doubted, but it would receive many improvements from his adroit and masterly hand.
That men were equal born at first,
I hold of all whig lies the worst.
But yet, if only this they mean,
That you and I, good Mr. Dean,
Were equally produced, 'tis true;
For I was born as much as you.
But now, comparing size and strength,
Our body's bulk, our nose's length,
The periwigs, that grace our pate,
My little wit, your learning great,
We find, we are unequal quite.
My honest friend, you're too polite.
Your wit, Lord Hardwicke deigns to own,
Surpasses every wit's in town:
And none e'er doubted Hardwicke's taste,
Who e'er were bid to Hardwicke's feast.
But yet, I fear, at this arch quibble
The Lockians will do more than nibble.
They say, and with them I agree,
That, as to men's equality,
It rests on native rights they have,
Not to become another's slave,
Or tamely bear a tyrant's yoke:
The passage in Mr. Locke's treatise, which the Dean here alludes to, seems to be this:
"Though I said
that all men are by nature equal,
I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of equality: age or virtue may give men a just precedency: excellency of parts and merit may place others above the common level: birth may subject some, and alliance or benefits others, to pay an observance to those, to whom nature, gratitude, or other respects may have made it due: and yet all this consists with the
equality,
which all men are in, in respect of jurisdiction or dominion one over another: which was the equality I there (ch. 2d.) spoke of, as proper to the business in hand, being that
equal right,
that every man hath,
to his natural freedom,
without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man".
Ch. 6. sec. 54.
To this the Dean accedes in his first chapter.
"First then, I agree with Mr. Locke and his disciples, that there is a sense, in which it may be said, that no man is born the political subject of another".
This truth you parry with a joke.
Jokes, Mr. Dean, I'd have you know,
Have parried many a stouter blow.
A joke like this, as I conceive,
Is reason's representative,
Who, vested with his rights, is sent
To disputation's parliament.
Yet scorns, like some they patriots call,
To vote, as he
instructs,
at all.
Sometimes he may—but to proceed—
All men at birth, it is agreed,
Have equal learning, wit and power,
Tho', at Lucina's squalling hour,
The new-born babes, in nurse's lap,
Have only power to suck her pap.
Good heavens! to talk of wit and learning
In infants void of all discerning,
Is just as if these whigs disputed,
As most fools do, to be confuted,
Whether their teeth, in breadth and length,
Had equal size and equal strength;
When, bless each little slobbering mouth,
It had not cut a single tooth.
Your instance, I confess, is pretty:
I wish it were as apt as witty.
But let us give them all they ask,
Their equal birth, a harder task
I think remains behind, to prove
That men thro' life must equal move;
None e'er assume a jot of power
More than he had at natal hour.
Strange doctrine this! ye whigs, shall none
Be long and lank as Jenkinson,
None grow to full six feet or more,
Because some only measure four?
Or, because Hunter cannot treat us
With different size of same-aged faetus?
Thus, Mr. Dean, the point I've prov'd:
And, if your Reverence is so mov'd,
You'll find, with like facility
I prove they all are not born free.
My sprightly 'Squire, if this be proving,
Then billing is the whole of loving.
Dame Logic knows, whene'er I meet her,
With more substantial sport I treat her.
These whigs will answer your demand
With saying, all they understand
By power is, "That alone is just,
"Which to a few the rest entrust;
"And to assume without assent,
"Is force, not legal government."
So Locke.
"Government, into whatsoever hands it is put, being
intrusted
with this condition, and for this end, that men might have and secure their properties, the prince or senate, however it may have power to make laws for the regulating of property between the subjects one amongst another, yet can never have a power to take to themselves the whole or any part of the subjects property without their own
consent,
for this would be in effect to leave them no property at all".
Ch. xi. sec. 139.
As to your simile of size,
They'll say your brains are in your eyes.
But now go on.
Their next assertion
You'll find affords me more diversion.
For how should men be e'er born free,
When to be born is slavery,
An imposition in itself.
Do parents ask the little elf,
Ere they beget him, his good leave
Or to beget or to conceive?
Or does he approbation give
By self, or representative?
Yet, when begot, in my opinion,
He's then the heir to self-dominion;
Has right both to be born and bred,
To suck the breast—
And p—his bed.
He has. Nay more, I'd have you know,
Protection, while in embrio,
Is his, e'er you can justly date
His
quasi-compact
with the state.
"Children are entitled to protection,
whilst in embrio,
though they neither did nor could enter into any compact with the state for that purpose".
Tucker on Civil Government, p. 2.
I have taken the liberty to add the term
quasi
in my version of this passage, to make it more analogous to the learned writer's general sentiments, who allows of no compact, but what he is pleased to term
quasi.
Once, Sir, I knew a pious lady,
Who, just as she was getting ready
For church, one Easter-Sunday morn,
With labour-pains was sorely torn.
The church, good soul! she lov'd so dearly,
That with her spouse she chose to parley;
Nor would she let the midwife lay her,
Till she had been at morning prayer;
When, lo! in midst of all this fray,
Before mama had time to pray,
Her heir, a free-born British boy,
Bolted to light and liberty.
Your story, Mr. Dean, is pleasant,
And wrapt withal, in terms right decent.
Yet vainly sure such proof you bring;
One swallow does not make a spring.
I say, in spite of your strange tale,
For full nine months he lies in jail.
And what a jail! so little roomy,
So dank, so sultry and so gloomy,
Howard, who ev'ry prison knows,
Ne'er ventur'd there to thrust his nose.
Yet there he lies, unlucky wight!
Depriv'd of sunshine and of sight,
Floating in brine, like a young porpus,
Till, by obstetric Habeas Corpus,
The brat is pluck'd to liberty.
But, tell me, is such freedom free?
In swaddling cloaths he now is bound,
Like Styx,
Tho' Fate had fast bound her,
With Styx nine times round her.
Pope's Ode on St. Caecilia's Day.
that gird him nine times round;
They squeeze his navel, press his head,
Feed him with water and with bread.
Thus nine months more he lies in chains,
And, when his freedom he regains,
He puts it to so bad a use,
'Tis found he must not yet go loose.
Tyrannic nurse then claims her right
To plague him both by day and night.
Then grave as Pope, and gruff as Turk,
Prelatic schoolmaster, like York,
Thrashes the wretch with grammar's flail,
To mend his head corrects his tail,
And this with most despotic fury,
Heedless of mercy, law, and jury.
Sir, you've a happy vein for satire,
And touch it with a
main du maitre.
Yet why, Sir, treat mild M*****m thus?
His Grace, you know, is one of us.
I ask his pardon. At the time
He chanc'd to hitch into my rhyme—
Had not this unlucky bolt been shot by the 'Squire, it is probable the Dean would not have been thrown off his scent, but would have answered all, that had been asserted, in some such manner as Mr. Locke does:
"Children, I confess, are not born in this full state of
equality,
though they are born to it. Their parents have a sort of rule and jurisdiction over them, when they come into the world, and for some time after; but it is but a temporary one. The bonds of this subjection are like the swaddling cloths they are wrapt up in, and supported by, in the weakness of their infancy: age and reason, as they grow up, loosen them, till at length they drop quite off, and leave a man at his own free disposal".
Ch. 6. sec. 55.
This passage, and the other two already quoted, seem to be a sufficient answer to Mr. Jenyns on his two first heads. All his objections turn on the term
born:
whereas Locke's propositions are,
"Men are by nature equal, and by nature free";
that is, have equal natural rights in their persons and liberty.
But to our point—thus far I've stated,
The boy is born and educated;
And now he walks the world at large;
Yet has he got a free discharge?
No;
volens nolens,
as at school,
He still must yield to civil rule;
A subject born, he's subject still,
Not govern'd by his mere self-will;
But, if he breaks the laws in force,
Or kills his man, or steals a horse,
Howe'er he may dispute their right,
And Coke with Burgersdicius fight,
Must make at Tyburn his confession.
I fear, Sir, here you beg the question.
A subject born in any state
May, if he please, depatriate,
And go, for reasons weak or weighty,
To Zealand-New, or Otaheite.
Yet there what freedom will he have,
When made Queen Oberea's slave?
Her majesty may lay a tax,
I fear would weaken stronger backs,
Than ev'n was your's, my doughty Dean,
When nerv'd with youth, and stout eighteen.
Perhaps she might. Then let's suppose
To some unpeopled isle he goes,
And takes a mistress in his sleeve,
To live as Adam did with Eve;
Or say, that he had luck to find
A hundred more of the same mind,
To migrate with their mates by dozens,
And there to live like cater-cousins,
We will not call them sirs, and madams,
But a cool hundred Eves and Adams;
I think they would, or soon, or late,
By
quasi-compact
found a state.
Here the Dean turns aside to his own ingenious hypothesis, which he makes the true basis of civil government, and which, the more to disseminate it, I shall here briefly explain. He supposes, that a hundred Adams and Eves should all be produced full grown, and in
conjugal pairs;
and then concludes, that they would naturally herd together, and form a civil society, from their instinctive love of living together as gregarious animals. But, as some might object that another instinctive appetite would speedily disturb the peace of this society, and that Horace's
tetrrima belli causa
might make it a state of war, he sagely provides against this by noting,
"that the appetite between the sexes can have no place in the question, because it is not of that sort, which renders mankind gregarious."
Yet, as he also owns,
"that the most solitary animals at certain seasons
converse
in pairs",
it is necessary, for the support of his hypothesis, that all his Adams and Eves should be as chaste as turtles; and, therefore, I have called them a
cool
hundred, an epithet which, the reader sees, is here far from being an expletive, but highly emphatical; for, if the Dean's hundred Adams and Eves were not more
cool
than an hundred pairs of people of fashion, whom I could mention, it is to be feared, that many of the males in his civil society, would not only be
gregarious animals,
but absolutely
horned cattle.
See Tucker on Government, p. 136.
What think you, 'Squire, of that Scotch peer,
The late Lord Fairfax, usually distinguished by the name of
Lord Fairfax of Virginia.
Who wenching held so very dear,
(I don't aver his taste was right
In liking black girls more than white,
Not that I rashly would decide;
They know the best, who both have tried)
That, to indulge and take his fill,
He fenc'd an Apalachian hill,
And, holding there supreme command,
"Scatter'd his image o'er the land,"
Dryden.
Till soon he got so large a race
Of little tawny babes of grace,
And these so soon begot a second,
And those a third, that quick he reckon'd
Subjects enough of his own blood,
To reign their sovereign great and good.
If such a man was not born free,
I know not what is liberty.
Dear Dean, you interrupt my theme.
I want to preach, but you to dream
Of negro girls and patriarch kings—
Pray clip your fancy's wayward wings.
My two points prov'd, I draw from hence
This truly Christian inference,
That all, whom we the factious call,
Who 'gainst court influence hourly bawl,
Who from their seats would dash contractors,
And be themselves the nation's factors,
Are all of the old round-head leaven,
And therefore ne'er will get to heaven.
Right. This would give my mind much ease,
If drawn from sounder premises.
Locke and his crew, I know right well,
Have sent full many a fool to hell,
But not from what you've prov'd, but I—
Hold Muse! nor give the 'Squire's reply.
You've run two heats; to start a third
Would now, I think, be quite absurd;
'Tis much beyond an Eclogue's length;
Come breath a while, and gather strength.
You shall not tax, should it be willing,
The town beyond a single shilling:
Though the Author chooses to be so very moderate in his mode of taxation, I, his bookseller, in strict conformity to our rule of trade, have ventured to lay on the other sixpence. DEBRETT.
Stop then in time your tinkling rill;
The reader's ears have drank their fill.
Claudite jam rivos, pueri; sat prata biberunt.
VIRG.
THE END.
CERTIFICATE.
WHEREAS a late ingenious and anonymous production, entitled
An Archaeological Epistle,
has been attributed to my pen, I think proper to declare, that, however I may approve the political sentiments therein contained, I am above wearing any man's laurels; and that I conceive those, who do not discriminate between my style and that author's, have as little critical acumen, as he seems to allow to his reverend correspondent.
(Signed) MALCOLM MAC-GREGGOR.
Knightsbridge.