The Most Perfect State of Civil Liberty, by Oliver Goldsmith

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THESE prohibitions are useful; though it be prudent in their magistrates, and happy for the people, that they are not enforced, and none but the venal or mercenary attempt to enforce them. The law in this case, like an indulgent parent, still keeps the rod, though the child is seldom corrected. Were those pardoned offences to rise into enormity, were they likely to obstruct the happiness of society, or endanger the state, it is then that justice would resume her terrors, and punish those faults she had so often overlooked with indulgence. It is to this ductility of the laws, that an Englishman owes the freedom he enjoys superior to others in a more popular government.

Every popular government seems calculated to last only for a time; it grows rigid with age, new laws are multiplying, and the old continue in force; the subjects are oppressed, burthened with a multiplicity of legal injunctions; there are none from whom to expect redress, and nothing but a strong convulsion in the state can vindicate them into former liberty.*

by Oliver Goldsmith 1728-1774

Abridged from ‘The Works of Oliver Goldsmith’ Vol. II (1851) by Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774).

* ‘Popular’ here is not used in the sense of ‘widely liked’ but in the sense of a government in which the general public, as opposed to a closed political class, plays a dominant role in making policy. Goldsmith was one of a number of English political writers who welcomed a degree of popular government as a brake on the Crown, but feared the consequences of too much. Another Irishman, William Lecky (1838-1903), foresaw a day when a deluded public might even vote for a dictator, which Germany did in 1933. See Democracy in Europe.

Précis

Of course (Goldsmith added) if the relaxed attitude to regulation began to cause harm to wider society, then magistrates still retained the power to exact punishment. This was, however, not an option in Continental countries, where their forms of government piled on more and more regulations and rigorously enforced them — a state of affairs he could not see lasting long.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

A parent has a right to punish his child. He does not often exercise it. English law is similar.

See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.

IAuthority. IILiken. IIISparing.

Précis

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