The committee, then, seem to have been in an error when they saw in this conduct of the Attorney General a new motive to solicit his Majesty to remove him from his situation of Attorney General of this province, upon grounds so slender as these; and which, slender as they are, no opportunity of answering them had been afforded to the party whose conduct was thus vainly attempted to be implicated.

165

NO. XV.

ON THE SECOND REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF GRIEVANCES.

E da notare per questo testo quanto siano nelle città libere e in ogni altro modo di vivere detestabili le calunnie, e come per reprimerle si debbe non perdonare a ordine alcuno che vi faccia a proposito. Ne può essere miglior ordine a torle via che aprire assai luoghi alle accuse, perche quanto le accuse giovano alle Repubbliche. tanto le calunnie_nuocono; e dall' altra parte questa differenza, che le calunnie non hanno bisogno di testimone nè d'alcun altro particolare riscontro a provarle, in modoche ciascuno da ciuscuno può essere calunniato, ma non può già essere accusato, avendo le accuse bisogno di riscontri veri e di circostanze che mostrino la verità dell' accusa.-Discorsi sopra la prima deca di T. Livio, di Niccolo Machiavelli: lib. 1, cap. 8.

THE first of modern philosophical politicians, the Florentine Secretary, treats in this chapter of the dangers and inconveniences arising to states from calumnies, as contrasted with the advantages proceeding from the legal and regular accusation and trial of all offences of whatsoever nature.Deeply imbued with the sound ethical principles of Aristotle, and maturely trained in the use of the severe moral analysis of his great master, he here, and elsewhere throughout this noble work, establishes, by means of that analysis, universal political formulæ hardly surpassed in beauty or in evidence by any of the most splendid discoveries of pure geometry or of mixed mathematics.

The principles to which he refers are those of our nature; and, analysing and combining these, he reaches moral results as universal and as enduring as the principles of that nature. As the prism separates the rays of light, and they again become

confounded in one common colour by an unerring law, the same yesterday as to-day and so henceforth for ever, the nature of light remaining unchanged; so we are led by this writer, by the aid of an analysis, similar in its elements, and differing only in its objects, to the conclusions stated at the head of this text; conclusions as true in the frozen regions of Quebec, and as applicable to the humble affairs of a colony, as they were under the bright sun of Italy, and in the great empire which once overshadowed the whole earth. The character of calumny, as contradistinguished from accusation by Machiavelli, is, that the one is sanctioned and regulated by the law, whilst the other depends upon the mere caprice of individuals; that the one requires, on the part of the accuser, evidence of his charges, thereby checking unfounded aspersions on private or public character, whilst the other is subject to no such restraint. In the one the party accused may have the benefit of a full and fair defence, whilst in the other he is condemned and mulcted in his fair fame, without being heard. He adds, as a further check upon unfounded accusations, that, in the event of failure in maintaining the accusation, the accuser should suffer severe and condign punishment. One other effect of regular accusations which he also points out is, that they create a salutary fear throughout the society at large, and prevent offences from being committed, thereby steadying social institutions, deterring from crime and encouraging to virtue, whilst calumnies serve only to excite angry passions in those who are the subject of them, and those who publish them, thereby disturbing the equability of social life, without producing any beneficial effects whatever.

And here it may not be amiss to point out some of the mischiefs arising from proceedings like those under consideration-mischiefs which Machiavelli seems to have had in his mind when he wrote the chapter from which the extract at the head of this paper is taken, but which, following the method of the true Aristotelian philosophy, of touching only the apices rerum, as connected with the subject immediately in hand, he

has rather hinted at than fully disclosed. I will try to supply this part of the subject in the best way I can.

The desire of the esteem of our fellow men is an instinctive elementary principle of our nature; like the law of self preservation, simple, inherent, and independent of all ratiocinative processes; it exhibits itself in the infant at the dawn of perception, and waits not the developement of reason; it does for civil society what the law of self preservation does for the individual. Without the latter, man could not live-without the former, he could not live as a gregarious and social animal. It is the cement of all human society, both natural and artificial; we owe to it many of our pleasures: imagination can conceive no higher misery than that of an individual deprived of all consideration with each, every and the whole of his species. The captain of banditti, for this reward, surpasses his fellows in courage and daring; and, in the division of the spoil amongst his fellows in crime, maintains honour even among thieves.The legislature cannot, and ought not, to lose sight of this principle, in accusations against any private individuals, but particularly against public officers of the state. Legal accusations and regular trials maintain this principle in its efficacy, by at once protecting, defending and securing to the innocent and virtuous the esteem of their fellow men; whilst, on the other hand, the guilty are deprived of this inestimable boon; and all the citizens of the state come to be incited to virtue by the hope of praise, and deterred from crime by the fear of blame: thus rendering the two great movers of man, hope and fear, subservient to the advancement of truth and of right.

Let us now see how calumny (I use the word in the philosophical sense assigned to it by Machiavelli) operates. It obviously annihilates the motive of action here referred to. Let calumny be admitted, and then the esteem of our fellow men cannot be maintained by good actions, nor lost by bad ones. The hope of that esteem which legal accusations sustain, and the fear of the loss of it which they inspire, at

once disappear, and have their places supplied by the rancorous passions which calumnies imply in the framers of them, and often also by the hate which is too apt to be naturally engendered in the breasts of those who suffer from them. But if this be true as to the citizens generally, it is eminently true as to the officers of government. Their character is public property, not in the sense in which some short sighted demagogues so treat it, to be pillaged, wasted, and cast into the dust and mud of their pleasure or caprice; but, on the contrary, to be sustained when good, to be exposed when bad, to the admiration in the one instance, and to the contempt in the other, of their fellow subjects. For this purpose, the shield of public accusation and public trial is placed before the innocent, and the sword of public justice cuts down the guilty. Again, all government rests on public opinion; destroy the confidence of a large majority of any given country, in the public officers of that country, and you destroy the government of the country. Let the accused officers be tried, convicted, removed, and, if their offences require it, punished, and you reform that government; the first course of proceeding, then, produces anarchy-the last, reformation. How far the proceedings which it has been our duty here to bring under the public eye, and subject to the public judgment, have the character of the former or of the latter course, I leave to my readers to determine.

It is upon this report only (for the other two reports of the Committee of Grievances had never been concurred in by the House) that were founded the resolutions already given, recommended by the Committee of Grievances, and adopted by the House, and embodied in their address to his Excellency the Governor in Chief.

To complete my history of this part of the subject, it is only now necessary to give his Excellency's answer to the address, which is in the form of a message to the Assembly, and is as follows::