Complete works of samuel.., p.178
Complete Works of Samuel Johnson, page 178
“We are the acknowledged descendants of the earliest inhabitants of Britain, of men, who, before the time of history, took possession of the island desolate and waste, and, therefore, open to the first occupants. Of this descent, our language is a sufficient proof, which, not quite a century ago, was different from yours.
“Such are the Cornishmen; but who are you? who, but the unauthorised and lawless children of intruders, invaders, and oppressors? who, but the transmitters of wrong, the inheritors of robbery? In claiming independence, we claim but little. We might require you to depart from a land which you possess by usurpation, and to restore all that you have taken from us.
“Independence is the gift of nature. No man is born the master of another. Every Cornishman is a freeman; for we have never resigned the rights of humanity: and he only can be thought free, who is ‘not governed but by his own consent.
“You may urge, that the present system of government has descended through many ages, and that we have a larger part in the representation of the kingdom than any other county.
“All this is true, but it is neither cogent nor persuasive. We look to the original of things. Our union with the English counties was either compelled by force, or settled by compact.
“That which was made by violence, may by violence be broken. If we were treated as a conquered people, our rights might be obscured, but could never be extinguished. The sword can give nothing but power, which a sharper sword can take away.
“If our union was by compact, whom could the compact bind, but those that concurred in the stipulations? We gave our ancestors no commission to settle the terms of future existence. They might be cowards that were frighted, or blockheads that were cheated; but, whatever they were, they could contract only for themselves. What they could establish, we can annul.
“Against our present form of government, it shall stand in the place of all argument, that we do not like it. While we are governed as we do not like, where is our liberty? We do not like taxes, we will, therefore, not be taxed: we do not like your laws, and will not obey them.
“The taxes laid by our representatives, are laid, you tell us, by our own consent; but we will no longer consent to be represented. Our number of legislators was originally a burden, and ought to have been refused; it is now considered as a disproportionate advantage; who, then, will complain if we resign it?
“We shall form a senate of our own, under a president whom the king shall nominate, but whose authority we will limit, by adjusting his salary to his merit. We will not withhold a proper share of contribution to the necessary expense of lawful government, but we will decide for ourselves what share is proper, what expense is necessary, and what government is lawful.
“Till our counsel is proclaimed independent and unaccountable, we will, after the tenth day of September, keep our tin in our own hands: you can be supplied from no other place, and must, therefore, comply, or be poisoned with the copper of your own kitchens.
“If any Cornishman shall refuse his name to this just and laudable association, he shall be tumbled from St. Michael’s mount, or buried alive in a tin-mine; and if any emissary shall be found seducing Cornishmen to their former state, he shall be smeared with tar, and rolled in feathers, and chased with dogs out of our dominions.
“From the Cornish congress at Truro.”
Of this memorial, what could be said, but that it was written in jest, or written by a madman? Yet I know not whether the warmest admirers of Pennsylvanian eloquence, can find any argument in the addresses of the congress, that is not, with greater strength, urged by the Cornishman.
The argument of the irregular troops of controversy, stripped of its colours, and turned out naked to the view, is no more than this. Liberty is the birthright of man, and where obedience is compelled, there is no liberty. The answer is equally simple. Government is necessary to man, and where obedience is not compelled, there is no government.
If the subject refuses to obey, it is the duty of authority to use compulsion. Society cannot subsist but by the power, first of making laws, and then of enforcing them.
To one of the threats hissed out by the congress, I have put nothing similar into the Cornish proclamation; because it is too wild for folly, and too foolish for madness. If we do not withhold our king and his parliament from taxing them, they will cross the Atlantick, and enslave us.
How they will come, they have not told us; perhaps they will take wing, and light upon our coasts. When the cranes thus begin to flutter, it is time for pygmies to keep their eyes about them. The great orator observes, that they will be very fit, after they have been taxed, to impose chains upon us. If they are so fit as their friend describes them, and so willing as they describe themselves, let us increase our army, and double our militia.
It has been, of late, a very general practice to talk of slavery among those who are setting at defiance every power that keeps the world in order. If the learned author of the Reflections on Learning has rightly observed, that no man ever could give law to language, it will be vain to prohibit the use of the word slavery; but I could wish it more discreetly uttered: it is driven, at one time, too hard into our ears by the loud hurricane of Pennsylvanian eloquence, and, at another, glides too cold into our hearts by the soft conveyance of a female patriot, bewailing the miseries of her friends and fellow-citizens.
Such has been the progress of sedition, that those who, a few years ago, disputed only our right of laying taxes, now question the validity of every act of legislation. They consider themselves as emancipated from obedience, and as being no longer the subjects of the British crown. They leave us no choice, but of yielding or conquering, of resigning our dominion or maintaining it by force.
From force many endeavours have been used, either to dissuade, or to deter us. Sometimes the merit of the Americans is exalted, and sometimes their sufferings are aggravated. We are told of their contributions to the last war; a war incited by their outcries, and continued for their protection; a war by which none but themselves were gainers. All that they can boast is, that they did something for themselves, and did not wholly stand inactive, while the sons of Britain were fighting in their cause.
If we cannot admire, we are called to pity them; to pity those that show no regard to their mother-country; have obeyed no law, which they could violate; have imparted no good, which they could withhold; have entered into associations of fraud to rob their creditors; and into combinations to distress all who depended on their commerce. We are reproached with the cruelty of shutting one port, where every port is shut against us. We are censured as tyrannical, for hindering those from fishing, who have condemned our merchants to bankruptcy, and our manufacturers to hunger.
Others persuade us to give them more liberty, to take off restraints, and relax authority; and tell us what happy consequences will arise from forbearance; how their affections will be conciliated, and into what diffusions of beneficence their gratitude will luxuriate. They will love their friends. They will reverence their protectors. They will throw themselves into our arms, and lay their property at our feet; they will buy from no other what we can sell them; they will sell to no other what we wish to buy.
That any obligations should overpower their attention to profit, we have known them long enough not to expect. It is not to be expected from a more liberal people. With what kindness they repay benefits, they are now showing us, who, as soon as we have delivered them from France, are defying and proscribing us.
But if we will permit them to tax themselves, they will give us more than we require. If we proclaim them independent, they will, during pleasure, pay us a subsidy. The contest is not now for money, but for power. The question is not, how much we shall collect, but, by what authority the collection shall be made.
Those who find that the Americans cannot be shown, in any form, that may raise love or pity, dress them in habiliments of terrour, and try to make us think them formidable. The Bostonians can call into the field ninety thousand men. While we conquer all before us, new enemies will rise up behind, and our work will be always to begin. If we take possession of the towns, the colonists will retire into the inland regions, and the gain of victory will be only empty houses, and a wide extent of waste and desolation. If we subdue them for the present, they will universally revolt in the next war, and resign us, without pity, to subjection and destruction.
To all this it may be answered, that between losing America, and resigning it, there is no great difference; that it is not very reasonable to jump into the sea, because the ship is leaky. All those evils may befall us, but we need not hasten them.
The dean of Gloucester has proposed, and seems to propose it seriously, that we should, at once, release our claims, declare them masters of themselves, and whistle them down the wind. His opinion is, that our gain from them will be the same, and our expense less. What they can have most cheaply from Britain, they will still buy; what they can sell to us at the highest price, they will still sell.
It is, however, a little hard, that, having so lately fought and conquered for their safety, we should govern them no longer. By letting them loose before the war, how many millions might have been saved. One wild proposal is best answered by another. Let us restore to the French what we have taken from them. We shall see our colonists at our feet, when they have an enemy so near them. Let us give the Indians arms, and teach them discipline, and encourage them, now and then, to plunder a plantation. Security and leisure are the parents of sedition.
While these different opinions are agitated, it seems to be determined, by the legislature, that force shall be tried. Men of the pen have seldom any great skill in conquering kingdoms, but they have strong inclination to give advice. I cannot forbear to wish, that this commotion may end without bloodshed, and that the rebels may be subdued by terrour rather than by violence; and, therefore, recommend such a force as may take away, not only the power, but the hope of resistance, and, by conquering without a battle, save many from the sword.
If their obstinacy continues, without actual hostilities, it may, perhaps, be mollified, by turning out the soldiers to free quarters, forbidding any personal cruelty or hurt. It has been proposed, that the slaves should be set free, an act which, surely, the lovers of liberty cannot but commend. If they are furnished with firearms for defence, and utensils for husbandry, and settled in some simple form of government within the country, they may be more grateful and honest than their masters.
Far be it from any Englishman, to thirst for the blood of his fellow-subjects. Those who most deserve our resentment are, unhappily, at less distance. The Americans, when the stamp act was first proposed, undoubtedly disliked it, as every nation dislikes an impost; but they had no thought of resisting it, till they were encouraged and incited by European intelligence, from men whom they thought their friends, but who were friends only to themselves.
On the original contrivers of mischief let an insulted nation pour out its vengeance. With whatever design they have inflamed this pernicious contest, they are, themselves, equally detestable. If they wish success to the colonies, they are traitors to this country; if they wish their defeat, they are traitors, at once, to America and England. To them, and them only, must be imputed the interruption of commerce, and the miseries of war, the sorrow of those that shall be ruined, and the blood of those that shall fall.
Since the Americans have made it necessary to subdue them, may they be subdued with the least injury possible to their persons and their possessions! When they are reduced to obedience, may that obedience be secured by stricter laws and stronger obligations!
Nothing can be more noxious to society, than that erroneous clemency, which, when a rebellion is suppressed, exacts no forfeiture, and establishes no securities, but leaves the rebels in their former state. Who would not try the experiment, which promises advantage without expense? If rebels once obtain a victory, their wishes are accomplished; if they are defeated, they suffer little, perhaps less than their conquerors; however often they play the game, the chance is always in their favour. In the mean time, they are growing rich by victualling the troops that we have sent against them, and, perhaps, gain more by the residence of the army than they lose by the obstruction of their port.
Their charters being now, I suppose, legally forfeited, may be modelled, as shall appear most commodious to the mother-country. Thus the privileges which are found, by experience, liable to misuse, will be taken away, and those who now bellow as patriots, bluster as soldiers, and domineer as legislators, will sink into sober merchants and silent planters, peaceably diligent, and securely rich.
But there is one writer, and, perhaps, many who do not write, to whom the contraction of these pernicious privileges appears very dangerous, and who startle at the thoughts of “England free, and America in chains.” Children fly from their own shadow, and rhetoricians are frighted by their own voices. Chains is, undoubtedly, a dreadful word; but, perhaps, the masters of civil wisdom may discover some gradations between chains and anarchy. Chains need not be put upon those who will be restrained without them. This contest may end in the softer phrase of English superiority and American obedience.
We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
But let us interrupt awhile this dream of conquest, settlement, and supremacy. Let us remember, that being to contend, according to one orator, with three millions of whigs, and, according to another, with ninety thousand patriots of Massachusetts bay, we may possibly be checked in our career of reduction. We may be reduced to peace upon equal terms, or driven from the western continent, and forbidden to violate, a second time, the happy borders of the land of liberty. The time is now, perhaps, at hand, which sir Thomas Browne predicted, between jest and earnest:
“When America should no more send out her treasure,
But spend it at home in American pleasure.”
If we are allowed, upon our defeat, to stipulate conditions, I hope the treaty of Boston will permit us to import into the confederated cantons such products as they do not raise, and such manufactures as they do not make, and cannot buy cheaper from other nations, paying, like others, the appointed customs; that, if an English ship salutes a fort with four guns, it shall be answered, at least, with two; and that, if an Englishman be inclined to hold a plantation, he shall only take an oath of allegiance to the reigning powers, and be suffered, while he lives inoffensively, to retain his own opinion of English rights, unmolested in his conscience by an oath of abjuration.
A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND
This 1775 travel narrative concerns an eighty-three day journey through Scotland, in particular the islands of the Hebrides, made by the author in the late summer and autumn of 1773. The sixty-three year-old Johnson was accompanied by his thirty-two year-old friend of many years, James Boswell, who was also keeping a record of the trip, which he published in 1785 as A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.
Scotland was still a relatively wild place in 1773, with marauding privateers and slave-ships working the coasts and the destruction of Scottish forests was in operation. The Scottish clan system had been dismantled by Act of Parliament, the population had been disarmed and wearing of the tartan was prohibited. Scotch whisky was distilled illegally and profusely. The rule of law was by no means properly established and though the power of the clan chieftains was curtailed, it was often the only real authority.
Johnson and Boswell toured the Highlands and islands by carriage, on horseback and by boat, planning the stages of their journey to stay at the houses of the local gentry. They were astounded when they visited their colleague Lord Monboddo at Monboddo House and saw him in his primitive attire as a farmer, a quite different picture from his image as an urbane Edinburgh Court of Session jurist, philosopher and evolutionary thinker.
This part of Scotland in 1773 was a romantic place. It was relatively empty of people and nearly unspoiled by commerce, roads and other displays of modern life; in fact, Johnson was fascinated that in some Highland islands money had not yet become custom, with some parts of Scotland were more akin to the 8th century than the 18th century. Once Johnson reached the West Highlands, there were few roads, none at all on the Isle of Skye, and so they traveled by horseback, usually along the ridge of a hill with a local guide, who knew the terrain and the best route for the season.
The original title page
CONTENTS
INCH KEITH
ST. ANDREWS
ABERBROTHICK
MONTROSE
ABERDEEN
SLANES CASTLE, THE BULLER OF BUCHAN
BAMFF
ELGIN
FORES. CALDER. FORT GEORGE
INVERNESS
LOUGH NESS
FALL OF FIERS
FORT AUGUSTUS
ANOCH
GLENSHEALS
THE HIGHLANDS
GLENELG
SKY. ARMIDEL
CORIATACHAN IN SKY
RAASAY
DUNVEGAN
ULINISH
TALISKER IN SKY
OSTIG IN SKY
COL
GRISSIPOL IN COL
CASTLE OF COL
MULL
ULVA
INCH KENNETH
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (1740-1795) was a lawyer, diarist and author from Edinburgh. This portrait was painted by Boswell’s and Johnson’s close friend Joshua Reynolds in 1785.
