into ranks
and societies he always esteemed highly. "I am a friend to
subordination," he said, "as most conducive to the happiness of
society." He was a Jacobite and Tory to the end. Whiggism was the
offspring of the devil, the "negation of all principle"; and he seems to
have implied that it led to atheism, which he regarded as the worst of
sins. He did not believe in the honesty of republicans; they levelled
down, but were never inclined to level up. Men, he felt, had a part to
act in society, and their business was to fulfil their allotted station.
Rousseau was a very bad man: "I would sooner sign a sentence for his
transportation than that of any fellow who has gone from the Old Bailey
these many years." Political liberty was worthless; the only thing worth
while was freedom in private concerns. He blessed the government in the
case of general warrants and thought the power of the Crown too small.
Toleration he considered due to an inapt distinction between freedom to
think and freedom to talk, and any magistrate "while he thinks himself
right ... ought to enforce what he thinks." The American revolt he
ascribed to selfish faction; and in his _Taxation no Tyranny_ (1775) he
defended the British government root and branch upon his favorite ground
of the necessity of subordination. He was willing, he said, to love all
mankind except an American.

Yet Dr. Johnson was the friend of Burke, and he found pleasure in an
acquaintance with Wilkes. Nor, in all his admiration for rank and
fortune, is there a single element of meanness. The man who wrote the
letter to Lord Chesterfield need never fear the charge of abasement. He
knew that there was "a remedy in human nature that will keep us safe
under every form of government." He defined a courtier in the _Idler_ as
one "whose business it is to watch the looks of a being weak and foolish
as himself." Much of what he felt was in part a revolt against the
sentimental aspect of contemporary liberalism, in part a sturdy contempt
for the talk of degeneracy that men such as Brown had made popular.
There is, indeed, in all his political observations a strong sense of
the virtue of order, and a perception that the radicalism of the time
was too abstract to provide an adequate basis for government. Here, as
elsewhere, Johnson hated all speculation which raised the fundamental
questions. What he did not see was the important truth that in no age
are fundamental questions raised save whe