Note 370 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 4)

In our country, Mandeville, Swift, and Chesterfield have trod in the track of Hobbes; and in France, Helvetius, Rochefoucault in his “Maxims,” and L’Esprit more openly in his “Fausetté des Vertus Humaines.” They only degrade us—they are polished cynics! But what are we to think of the tremendous cynicism of Machiavel? That great genius eyed human nature with the ferocity of an enraged savage. Machiavel is a vindictive assassin, who delights even to turn his dagger within the mortal wound he has struck; but our Hobbes, said his friend Sorbiere, “is a gentle and skilful surgeon, who, with regret, cuts into the living flesh, to get rid of the corrupted.” It is equally to be regretted that the same system of degrading man has been adopted by some, under the mask of religion.

Yet Hobbes, perhaps, never suspected the arms he was placing in the hands of wretched men, when he furnished them with such fundamental positions as, that “Man is naturally an evil being; that he does not love his equal; and only seeks the aid of society for his own particular purposes.” He would at least have disowned some of his diabolical disciples. One of them, so late as in 1774, vented his furious philosophy in “An Essay on the Depravity and Corruption of Human Nature, wherein the Opinions of Hobbes, Mandeville, Helvetius, &c. are supported against Shaftesbury, Hume, Sterne, &c. by Thomas O’Brien M’Mahon.” This gentleman, once informed that he was born wicked, appears to have considered that wickedness was his paternal estate, to be turned to as profitable an account as he could. The titles of his chapters, serving as a string of the most extraordinary propositions, have been preserved in the “Monthly Review,” vol. lii. 77. The demonstrations in the work itself must be still more curious. In these axioms we find that “Man has an enmity to all beings; that had he power, the first victims of his revenge would be his wife, children, &c.—a sovereign, if he could reign with the unbounded authority every man longs for, free from apprehension of punishment for misrule, would slaughter all his subjects; perhaps he would not leave one of them alive at the end of his reign.” It was perfectly in character with this wretched being, after having quarrelled with human nature, that he should be still more inveterate against a small part of her family, with whom he was suffered to live on too intimate terms; for he afterwards published another extraordinary piece—“The Conduct and Good-Nature of Englishmen Exemplified in their charitable way of Characterising the Customs, Manners, &c. of Neighbouring Nations; their Equitable and Humane Mode of Governing States, &c.; their Elevated and Courteous Deportment, &c. of which their own Authors are everywhere produced as Vouchers,” 1777. One is tempted to think that this O’Brien M’Mahon, after all, is only a wag, and has copied the horrid pictures of his masters, as Hogarth did the School of Rembrandt by his “Paul before Felix, designed and scratched in the true Dutch taste.” These works seem, however, to have their use. To have carried the conclusions of the Anti-social Philosophy to as great lengths as this writer has, is to display their absurdity. But, as every rational Englishman will appeal to his own heart, in declaring the one work to be nothing but a libel on the nation; so every man, not destitute of virtuous emotions, will feel the other to be a libel on human nature itself.