Aristocracy: Theory and Practice 51
discourse, having taken from our adversaries the great palladium of their cause.”^15
No one can complain of discrimination if he happens not to have the qualifica-
tions for a job.
This statement repays careful examination. Warburton disarms his opponents
not merely by denying the right to office; doubtless there is no such “right.” He
disarms them by explicitly declaring that government is not accountable to those it
governs, that it may appoint whom it pleases, and that office is not a trust but a
privilege to be conferred by those who rule. Government, or “the magistrate,” in
this case meant the Parliament, that sublime body whose power Blackstone did
not hesitate to call absolute.
Even this is not enough. The bishop has “finished his discourse,” but still thinks
of more to say, occupying ever higher ground of general principle—all to justify
the Test Act. He enunciates the doctrine of prescription, soon to be made famous
by Burke. He puts it forward as a check upon natural law. He declares that to re-
quire religious tests is not really contrary to natural law or natural right, but adds
that, even if it were, religious tests would still be justified by the doctrine of pre-
scription, which he says derives from the Roman law, and which holds that long
continual possession over many years itself creates a right—often necessary to de-
fend order and security against claims of “natural right” that may cause distur-
bance. Now at last, with the additional reminder that the whole question rests on
the utility and not the truth of religion, he is content to close his book.^16
Taken together, and with due regard for the differences between them, the four
writers just summarized, all writing about or just before 1760, may be taken as
spokesmen for the political classes of their day. The world of the constituted bod-
ies—the parliaments, diets, assemblies of estates, councils and magistracies, each
supporting and supported by the church established in its own country—would
find much to agree with in Montesquieu, Real, Blackstone, or Warburton. There
would be wide agreement on the virtues of liberty, and with the idea that nobility,
or at least a system of inherited ranks and distinctions, was necessary to assure it.
It would be agreed that parliaments or ruling councils were autonomous, self-
empowered, or empowered by history, heredity, social utility, or God; that they
were in an important sense irresponsible, free to oppose the King (where there was
one), and certainly owing no accounting to the “people.” It would be agreed that
the inequalities of position necessary to any organized society might as well be
determined by inheritance, since the claims made for “merit” would be deceptive
and confusing. It would certainly be agreed that there was no general right to of-
fice. It would probably be agreed, too, that what seemed unreasonable, what no one
would invent if he were inventing society afresh, might still be reasonable, or at
least socially useful, in a subtle or “amazing” way. And it might be agreed that pre-
scription, long- continued practice, custom, and usage might justify or necessitate
what to naive common sense seemed very peculiar, or to sensitive consciences ac-
tually unjust.
15 Ibid., 298–300.
16 Ibid., 321–23, 347.