LE PRINCIPE DE L'UTILITÉ CONTRE LA THÉORIE DES DROITS DE L'HOMME

1. À discourse on the love of our country, delivered on Nov. 4, 1789, at the meeting-house in the Old Jewry, to the Society for commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain, with an appendix, containing the report of the committee of the Society, an account of the population of France, and the declaration of rights by the National Assembly of France, by Richard Price, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S., and fellow of the American Philosophical Societies at Philadelphia and Boston, London, 1789. — V., sur ce discours, une lettre intéressante de Burke. (Corr. vol. IIT, pp. 395-6).

2. Burke avait déjà, une première fois, dénoncé la Révolution, dans un discours parlementaire , 9 février 1790: Speech on the Army Estimates (Works, vol. V, p.3sqq.). On trouvera des exposés de la philosophie politique de Burke dans le Burke de John Morley, dans le volume récent de M. Graham, English Political Philosophy (pp. 88-173. — Rapprochements avec Bentham, pp. 106, 145, 155), et surtout chez Lecky, Hist. of England, etc., vol. V, pp. 463 sqq.

3. Works, vol. V, p. 67: Those exploded fanatics of slavery, who formerly maintained, what I believe no creature now maintains, « that the crown is held by divine, hereditary, and indefeasible right».— p. 71 : Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants of the people, because their power has no other rational end than that of the general advantage. — fl ne

veut cependant pas donner tout à fait raison sur ce point à Price, qui avait déclaré que les rois étaient, par définition, les serviteurs du peuple, et nie qu'ils puissent être appelés de ce nom « in the ordinary sense (by our constitution, at least) » : c’est le roi, non le peuple, qui est, constitutionnellement, le souverain.

4. Speech on American Taæation, 19 avril 1774(Works, vol. IT, pp. 375-376) 5. Works, vol. X, pp. 92-108 : Speech on the Reform of Parliament. 6. Works, vol. VI, p. 207: An Appeal from the new to the old whigs. 7. Reflections (Works, vol. V, p. 122). Cf. vol. UT, p. 186 : letter to the sheriffs of Bristol (1771) : I was persuaded that government was a practical thing, made for the happiness of mankind, and not to furnish out a spectacle of uniformity, to gratify the schemes of visionary politics.

8. Ibid., pp. 119-120 : Far am I from denying in theory, full as far. is my heart from withholding in practice (if 1 were of power to give or to withhold) the real rights of men... Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has à right to do for himself; and he has a right {o a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour... But... as to the share of power, authority, and direction, which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that 1 must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society : for [| have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other.

9. Ibid., pp. 122-193 : The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience.