The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [14]
Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig. Why all this childish jealousy of the power of the crown? The crown has not power enough. When I say that all governments are alike, I consider that in no government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great degree, they will rise and cut off his head. There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.110
When he acknowledged the existence of a remedy for oppression in human nature, Johnson took a large step towards the Whig position on resistance, as adumbrated in that classic text of Whig political theory Locke’s Second Treatise of Government: ‘But if… they [the people] are perswaded in their Consciences, that their Laws, and with them their Estates, Liberties, and Lives are in danger, and perhaps their Religion too, how they will be hindered from resisting illegal force, used against them, I cannot tell.’111
All the evidence, then, reveals that towards the end of his life Johnson’s political sentiments were more complicated and reflective than his reputation for adhering to a monochrome Toryism would suggest. Johnson’s friend William Maxwell saw in him a more subtle political animal than many of his recent critics have been prepared to concede:
In politicks he was deemed a Tory, but certainly was not so in the obnoxious or party sense of the term; for while he asserted the legal and salutary prerogatives of the crown, he no less respected the constitutional liberties of the people. Whiggism, at the time of the Revolution, he said, was accompanied with certain principles; but latterly, as a mere party distinction under Walpole and the Pelhams, was no better than the politicks of stock-jobbers, and the religion of infidels.112
Is this another instance of the simple and familiar story of the strong passions of youth being supplanted by the more tepid judgements of old age? In part, perhaps. His views on the abolition of the fast of 30 January commemorating the execution of Charles I show an understanding on Johnson’s part of how political emotions necessarily wane, and of how in consequence politics can never be conducted sub specie aeternitatis: ‘Why, Sir, I could have wished that it had been a temporary act, perhaps, to have expired with the century. I am against abolishing it; because that would be declaring it was wrong to establish it; but I should have no objection to make an act, continuing it for another century, and then letting it expire.’113 The misfortunes of the House of Stuart had, for Johnson, no permanent claim on the attention, sympathy and – most important – loyalty, of the nation.
Boswell supposed that Johnson was inclined to display more Jacobitism than he really felt, and he connected that to Johnson’s disposition towards combativeness:
There was here, most certainly, an affectation of more Jacobitism than he really had; and indeed an intention of admitting, for the moment, in a much greater extent than it really existed, the charge of disaffection imputed to him by the world, merely for the purpose of shewing how dexterously he could repel an attack, even though he were placed in the most disadvantageous position; for I have heard him declare, that if holding up his right hand would have secured victory at Culloden to Prince Charles’s army, he was not sure he would have held it up; so little confidence had he in the right claimed by the house of Stuart, and so fearful was he of the consequences of another revolution on the throne of Great-Britain; and Mr. Topham Beauclerk assured me, he had heard him say this before he had his pension. At another time he said to Mr. Langton, ‘Nothing has ever offered, that has made it worth my while to consider the question fully.’ He, however, also said to the same gentleman, talking of