Of Political Associations A question suggests itself under this branch of enquiry, respecting the propriety of associations among the people at large for the purpose of operating a change in their political institutions.
Many arguments have been alleged in favour of such associations. It has been said "that they are necessary to give effect to public opinion, which, in its insulated state, is incapable of counteracting abuses the most generally disapproved, or of carrying into effect what is most generally desired." They have been represented "as indispensable for the purpose of ascertaining public opinion, which must otherwise forever remain in a great degree problematical." Lastly, they have been pointed out "as the most useful means for generating a sound public opinion, and diffusing, in the most rapid and effectual manner, political information."
In answer to these allegations, various things may be observed. That opinion will always have its weight; that all government is founded in opinion; and that public institutions will fluctuate with the fluctuations of opinion, without its being necessary for that purpose that opinion should be furnished with an extraordinary organ; are points perhaps sufficiently established in the preceding divisions of this work. These principles amount to a sufficient answer to the two first arguments in favour of political associations: the third shall receive a more particular discussion.
One of the most obvious features of political association is its tendency to make a part stand for the whole. A number of persons, sometimes greater and sometimes less, combine together. The tendency of their combination, often avowed, but always unavoidable, is to give to their opinion a weight and operation which the opinion of unconnected individuals cannot have.
A greater number, some from the urgency of their private affairs, some from a temper averse to scenes of concourse and contention, and others from a conscientious disapprobation of the measures pursued, withhold themselves from such combinations. The acrimonious, the intemperate, and the artful will generally be found among the most forward in matters of this kind.
The prudent, the sober, the sceptical, and the contemplative, those who have no resentments to gratify, and no selfish purposes to promote, will be overborne and lost in the progress. What justification can be advanced for a few persons who thus, from mere impetuosity and incontinence of temper, occupy a post the very principle of which is the passing them for some thing greater and more important in the community than they are? Is the business of reform likely to be well and judiciously conducted in such hands? Add to this that associations in favour of one set of political tenets are likely to engender counter-associations in favour of another.
Thus we should probably be involved in all the mischiefs of resistance, and all the uproar of revolution.
Political reform cannot be usefully effected but through the medium of the discovery of political truth. But truth will never be investigated in a manner sufficiently promising if violence and passion be not removed to a distance. To whatever property adhering to the human mind, or accident affecting it, we are to ascribe the phenomenon, certain it is that truth does not lie upon the surface. It is laborious enquiry that has, in almost all instances, led to important discovery. If therefore we are desirous to liberate ourselves and our neighbours from the influence of prejudice, we must suffer nothing but arguments to bear sway in the discussion. The writings and the tenets which offer themselves to public attention should rest upon their own merits. No patronage, no recommendations, no lift of venerable names to bribe our suffrage, no importunity to induce us, to bestow upon them our consideration, and to consider them with favour. These however are small matters. It is much worse than this, when any species of publications is patronized by political associations. The publications are then perused, not to see whether what they contain is true or false, but that the reader may learn from them how he is to think upon the subjects of which they treat. A sect is generated, and upon grounds not less irrational than those of the worst superstition that ever infested mankind.
If we would arrive at truth, each man must be taught to enquire and think for himself. If a hundred men spontaneously engage the whole energy of their faculties upon the solution of a given question, the chance of success will be greater than if only ten men are so employed. By the same reason, the chance will also be increased in proportion as the intellectual operations of these men are individual, and their conclusions are suggested by the reason of the thing, uninfluenced by the force either of compulsion or sympathy. But, in political associations, the object of each man is to identify his creed with that of his neighbour. We learn the Shibboleth of a party. We dare not leave our minds at large in the field of enquiry, lest we should arrive at some tenet disrelished by our party. We have no temptation to enquire. Party has a more powerful tendency than perhaps any other circumstance in human affairs to render the mind quiescent and stationary. Instead of making each man an individual, which the interest of the whole requires, it resolves all understandings into one common mass, and subtracts from each the varieties that could alone distinguish him from a brute machine. Having learned the creed of our party, we have no longer any employment for those faculties which might lead us to detect its errors. We have arrived, in our own opinion, at the last page of the volume of truth; and all that remains is by some means to effect the adoption of our sentiments as the standard of right to the whole race of mankind.