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in another. The object and principle of the laws of property then is this: 1. To supply individuals and the community with what they need. 2. To secure an equal share to each individual, other circumstances being the same. 3. To keep the peace and promote industry and plenty by proportioning each man's share to his own exertions, or to the good-will and discretion of others. The intention then being that no individual should rob another, or be starved but by his refusing to work (the earth and its produce being the natural estate of the community, subject to these regulations of individual right and public welfare,) the question is, whether any individual can have a right to rob or starve the whole community; or if the necessary discretion left in the application of the principle has led to a state of things subversive of the principle itself, and destructive to the welfare and existence of the state, whether the end being defeated, the law does not fall to the ground, or require either a powerful corrective or a total reconstruction. The end is superior to the means, and the use of a thing does not justify its abuse. If a clock is quite out of order and always goes wrong, it is no argument to say it was set right at first and on true mechanical principles, and therefore it must go on as it has done, accord-. ing to all the rules of art; on the contrary, it is taken to pieces, repaired, and the whole restored to the original state, or, if this is impossble, a new one is made. So society, when out of order, which it is whenever the interests of the many are regularly and outrageously sacrificed to those of the few, must be repaired, and either a reform or a revolution cleanse its corruptions and renew its elasticity. People talk of the poor laws as a grievance. Either they or a national bankruptcy, or a revolution, are necessary. The laboring population have not doubled in the last forty years; there are still no more than are necessary to do the work in husbandry, &c. that is indispensably required; but the wages of a laboring man are no higher than they were forty years ago, and the price of food and necessaries is at least double what it was then, owing to taxes, grants, monopolies, and immense fortunes gathered during the war by the richer or more prosperous classes, who have not ceased to propagate in the geometrical ratio, though the poor have not done it, and the maintaining of whose younger and increasing branches in becoming splendor and affluence presses with double weight on the poor and laboring classes. The greater part of a community ought not to be paupers or starving; and when a government by obstinacy and madness has reduced them to that state, it must either take wise and effectual measures to relieve them from it, or pay the forfeit of its own wickedness and folly.

It seems, then, that a system of just and useful laws may be constructed nearly, if not wholly, on the principle of the right of self-defence or the security for person, liberty, and property. There are exceptions, such, for instance, as in the case of children, idiots, and insane persons. These common sense dictates for a general principle can only hold good where the general conditions are complied with. There are also mixed cases, partaking of civil and moral justice. Is a man bound to support his children? Not in strict political right; but he may be compelled to forego all the benefits of civil society, if he does not fulfil an engagement which, according to the feelings and principles of that society, he has undertaken. So in respect to marriage. It is a voluntary contract, and the violation of it is punishable on the same plea of sympathy and custom. Government

is not necessarily founded on common consent, but on the right which society has to defend itself against all aggression. But am I bound to pay or support the government for defending the society against any violence or injustice? No: but then they may withdraw the protection of the law from me if I refuse, and it is on this ground that the contributions of each individual to the maintenance of the state are demanded. Laws are, or ought to be, founded on the supposed infraction of individual rights. If these rights, and the best means of maintaining them, are always clear, and there could be no injustice or abuse of power on the part of the government, every government might be its own lawgiver: but as neither of these is the case, it is necessary to recur to the general voice for settling the boundaries of right and wrong, and even more for preventing the government, under pretence of the general peace and safety, from subjecting the whole liberties, rights, and resources of the community to its own advantage and sole will.

*

ESSAY II.

DEFINITION OF WIT.

WIT is the putting together in jest, i. e. in fancy, or in bare supposition, ideas between which there is a serious, i. e. a customary incompatibility, and by this pretended union, or juxta-position, to point out more strongly some lurking incongruity. Or wit is the dividing a sentence or an object into a number of constituent parts, as suddenly and with the same vivacity of apprehension to compound them again with other objects," wherein the most distant resemblance or the most partial coincidence may be found." It is the polypus power of the mind, by which a distinct life and mean-' ing is imparted to the different parts of a sentence or object after they are severed from each other; or it is the prism dividing the simplicity and candor of our ideas into a parcel of motly and variegated hues; or it is the mirror broken into pieces, each fragment of which reflects a new light from surrounding objects; or it is the untwisting the chain of our ideas, whereby each link is made to hook on more readily to others than when they were all bound up together by habit, and with a view to a set purpose. Ideas exist as a sort of fixtures in the understanding; they are like moveables (that will also unscrew and take to pieces) in the wit or fancy. If our grave notions were always well founded: if there were no aggregates of power, of prejudice, and absurdity; if the value and importance of an object went on increasing with the opinion entertained of it, and with the surrender of our faith, freedom, and every thing else to aggrandise it, then "the squandering glances" of the wit, "whereby the wise man's folly is anatomised," would be as impertinent as they would be useless. But while gravity and imposture not only exist, but reign triumphant ; while the proud, obstinate, sacred tumors rear their heads on high, and are trying to get a new lease of for ever and a day; then oh! for the Frenchman's art ("Voltaire's—the same") to break the torpid spell, and reduce the bloated mass to its native insignificance! When a Ferdinand still rules, seated on his throne of darkness and blood, by English bayonets and by English gold (that have no mind to remove him thence) who is not glad that an Englishman has the wit and spirit to translate the title of King Ferdinand into Thing Ferdinand; and does not regret that, instead of pointing the public scorn and exciting an indignant smile, the stroke of wit has not the power to shatter, to wither, and annihilate in its lightning blaze the monstrous assumption, with all its open or covert abettors? This would be a set-off, indeed, to the joint efforts of pride, ignorance, and

*This was written in 1829.

hypocrisy; as it is, wit plays its part, and does not play it ill, though it is too apt to cut both ways.

It may be said that what I have just quoted is not an instance of the decomposition of an idea or word into its elements, and finding a solid sense hid in the unnoticed particles of wit, but is the addition of another element or letter. But it was the same lively perception of individual and salient points, that saw the word KING stuck up in capital letters, as it were, and like a transparency in the Illuminated Missal of the Fancy, that enabled the satirist to conjure up the letter T before it, and made the transition (urged by contempt) easy. For myself, with all my blind, rooted prejudices against the name, it would be long enough before I should hit upon so happy a mode of expressing them. My mind is not sufficiently alert and disengaged. I cannot run along the letters composing it like the spider along its web, to see what they are or how to combine them anew; I am crushed like the worm, and writhing beneath the load. I can give no reasons for the faith that is in me, unless I read a novel of Sir Walter's, but there I find plenty of examples to justify my hatred of kings in former times, and to prevent my wishing to "revive the ancient spirit of loyalty" in this! Wit, then, according to this account of it, depends on the rapid analysis or solution of continuity in our ideas, which, by detaching, puts them into a condition to coalesce more readily with others, and form new and unexpected combinations: but does all analysis imply wit, or where is the difference? Does the examining the leaves and flowers in the cover of a chair-bottom, or the several squares in a marble pavement, constitute wit? Does looking through a microscope amount to it? The painter analyses the face into features-nose, eyes, and mouth-the features into their component parts: but this process of observation and attention to details only leads him to discriminate more nicely, and not to confound objects. The mathematician abstracts in his reasonings, and considers the same line, now as forming the side of a triangle, now of a square figure; but does he laugh at the discovery, or tell it to any one else as a monstrous good jest? These questions require an answer, and an evasive one, will not do. With respect to the wit of words, the explanation is not difficult; and if all wit were verbal, my task would be soon ended. For language, being in its own nature arbitrary and ambiguous; or consisting of " sounds significant," which are now applied to one thing, now to something wholly different and unconnected, the most opposite and jarring mixtures may be introduced into our ideas by making use of this medium which looks two ways at once, either by applying the same word to two different meanings, or by dividing it into several parts, each probably the sign of a different thing, and which may erve as the starting-post of a different set of associations. The very circumstance which at first one might suppose would convert all the world into punsters and word-catchers, and make a Babel and chaos of language, viz. the arbitrary and capricious nature of the symbols it uses, is that which prevents them from becoming so; for words not being substantive things in themselves, and utterly valueless and unimportant except as the index of thought, the mind takes no notice of or lays no kind of stress upon them, passes on to what is to follow, uses them mechanically and almost unconsciously; and thus the syllables of which a word may be composed, are lost in its known import, and the word itself in the general context. We may be said neither to hear nor see the

words themselves; we attend only to the inference, the intention they are meant to communicate. This merging of the sound in the sense, of the means in the end, both common sense, the business of life, and the limitation of the human faculties dictate. But men of wit and leisure are not contented with this; in the discursiveness of their imaginations and with their mercurial spirits, they find it an amusement to attend not only to the conclusion or the meaning of words, but to criticise and have an eye to the words themselves. Dull, plodding people go no farther than the literal, or more properly, the practical sense; the parts of a word or phrase are massed together in their habitual conceptions; their rigid understandings are confined to the one meaning of any word predetermined by its place in the sentence, and they are propelled forward to the end without looking to the right or the left. The others, who are less the creatures of habit and have a greater quantity of disposable activity, take the same words. out of harness, as it were, lend them wings, and flutter round them in all sorts of fantastic combinations, and in every direction that they choose to take. For instance: the word elder signifies in the dictionary either age or a certain sort of tree or berry; but if you mention elder wine all the other senses sink into the dictionary as superfluous and nonsensical, and you think only of the wine which happens to bear this name.

It required, therefore, a man of Mr. Lamb's wit and disdain of the ordinary trammels of thought, to cut short a family dispute over some very excellent wine of this description, by saying, I wonder what it is that makes elder wine so very pleasant, when elder brothers are so extremely disagreeable?" Compagnons du lys, may mean either the companions of the order of the flower-de-luce, or the companions of Ulysses who were transformed into swine-according as you lay the emphasis. The French wits at the restoration of Louis XVIII., with admirable point and truth, applied it in this latter sense. Two things may thus meet, in the casual construction and artful encounters of language, wide as the poles asunder and yet perfectly alike; and this is the perfection of wit, when the physical sound is the same, the physical sense totally unlike, and the moral sense absolutely identical. What is it that in things supplies the want of the double-entendre of language?—ABSURDITY. And this is the very signification of the term. For it is only when the two contradictory natures are found in the same object that the verbal wit holds good, and the real wit or jeu d'esprit exists may be brought out wherever this contradiction is obvious with or without the jeu-de-mots to assist it. We can comprehend how the evolving or disentangling an unexpected coincidence, hid under the same name is full of ambiguity and surprise; but an absurdity may be written on the face of a thing without the help of language; and it is in detecting and embodying this that the finest wit lies.

Language is merely one instrument or handle that forwards the operation: Fancy is the midwife of wit. But how?-If we look narrowly and attentively, we shall find that there is a language of things as well as words, and the same variety of meaning, a hidden and an obvious, a partial and a general one, in both the one and the other. For things, any more than words, are not detached, independent existences, but are connected and cohere together by habit and circumstances in certain sets of association, and consist of an alphabet, which is thus formed into words and regular propositions, which being once done and established as the under

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