France in the net of a relentless despotism. It is not necessary to say
anything upon that example. It exists no longer. Our present danger from
the example of a people whose character knows no medium is, with regard
to government, a danger from anarchy: a danger of being led, through an
admiration of successful fraud and violence, to an imitation of the
excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating,
plundering, ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy. On the side of
religion, the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but
from atheism: a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and
consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have
been embodied into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed.
These are our present dangers from France. But, in his opinion, the very
worst part of the example set is in the late assumption of citizenship
by the army, and the whole of the arrangement, or rather disarrangement,
of their military.
He was sorry that his right honorable friend (Mr. Fox) had dropped even
a word expressive of exultation on that circumstance, or that he seemed
of opinion that the objection from standing armies was at all lessened
by it. He attributed this opinion of Mr. Fox entirely to his known zeal
for the best of all causes, liberty. That it was with a pain
inexpressible he was obliged to have even the shadow of a difference
with his friend, whose authority would always be great with him, and
with all thinking people,--_Quæ maxima semper censetur nobis, et_ ERIT
_quæ maxima semper_;--his confidence in Mr. Fox was such, and so ample,
as to be almost implicit. That he was not ashamed to avow that degree of
docility. That, when the choice is well made, it strengthens, instead of
oppressing our intellect. That he who calls in the aid of an equal
understanding doubles his own. He who profits of a superior
understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the
superior understanding he unites with. He had found the benefit of such
a junction, and would not lightly depart from it. He wished almost, on
all occasions, that his sentiments were understood to be conveyed in Mr.
Fox's words. And that he wished, as amongst the greatest benefits he
could wish the country, an eminent share of power to that right
honorable gentleman; because he knew that to his great and masterly
understanding he had joined the greatest possible degree of that natural
moderation which is the best corrective of power: that he was of the
most artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition; disinterested in
the extreme; of a temper mild and placable even to a fault; without one
drop of gall in his whole constitution.
That the House must perceive, from his coming forward to mark an
expression or two of his best friend, how anxious he was to keep the
distemper of France from the least countenance in England, where he was
sure some wicked persons had shown a strong disposition to recommend an
imitation of the French spirit of reform. He was so strongly opposed to
any the least tendency towards the _means_ of introducing a democracy
like theirs, as well as to the _end_ itself, that, much as it would
afflict him, if such a thing could be attempted, and that any friend of
his could concur in such measures, (he was far, very far, from believing
they could,) he would abandon his best friends, and join with his worst
enemies, to oppose either the means or the end,--and to resist all
violent exertions of the spirit of innovation, so distant from all
principles of true and safe reformation: a spirit well calculated to
overturn states, but perfectly unfit to amend them.
That he was no enemy to reformation. Almost every business in which he
was much concerned, from the first day he sat in that House to that
hour, was a business of reformation; and when he had not been employed
in correcting, he had been employed in resisting abuses. Some traces of
this spirit in him now stand on their statute-book. In his opinion,
anything which unnecessarily tore to pieces the contexture of the state
not only prevented all real reformation, but introduced evils which
would call, but perhaps call in vain, for new reformation.
That he thought the French nation very unwise. What they valued
themselves on was a disgrace to them. They had gloried (and some people
in England had thought fit to take share in that glory) in making a
Revolution, as if revolutions were good things in themselves. All the
horrors and all the crimes of the anarchy which led to their Revolution,
which attend its progress, and which may virtually attend it in its
establishment, pass for nothing with the lovers of revolutions. The
French have made their way, through the destruction of their country, to
a bad constitution, when they were absolutely in possession of a good
one. They were in possession of it the day the states met in separate
orders. Their business, had they been either virtuous or wise, or had
been left to their own judgment, was to secure the stability and
independence of the states, according to those orders, under the monarch
on the throne. It was then their duty to redress grievances.
Instead of redressing grievances, and improving the fabric of their
state, to which they were called by their monarch and sent by their
country, they were made to take a very different course. They first
destroyed all the balances and counterpoises which serve to fix the
state and to give it a steady direction, and which furnish sure
correctives to any violent spirit which may prevail in any of the
orders. These balances existed in their oldest constitution, and in the
constitution of this country, and in the constitution of all the
countries in Europe. These they rashly destroyed, and then they melted
down the whole into one incongruous, ill-connected mass.
When they had done this, they instantly, and with the most atrocious
perfidy and breach of all faith among men, laid the axe to the root of
all property, and consequently of all national prosperity, by the
principles they established and the example they set, in confiscating
all the possessions of the Church. They made and recorded a sort of
_institute_ and _digest_ of anarchy, called the Rights of Man, in such a
pedantic abuse of elementary principles as would have disgraced boys at
school: but this declaration of rights was worse than trifling and
pedantic in them; as by their name and authority they systematically
destroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, on the
minds of the people. By this mad declaration they subverted the state,
and brought on such calamities as no country, without a long war, has
ever been known to suffer, and which may in the end produce such a war,
and perhaps many such.
With them the question was not between despotism and liberty. The
sacrifice they made of the peace and power of their country was not made
on the altar of freedom. Freedom, and a better security for freedom than
that they have taken, they might have had without any sacrifice at all.
They brought themselves into all the calamities they suffer, not that
through them they might obtain a British constitution; they plunged
themselves headlong into those calamities to prevent themselves from
settling into that constitution, or into anything resembling it.
That, if they should perfectly succeed in what they propose, as they are
likely enough to do, and establish a democracy, or a mob of democracies,
in a country circumstanced like France, they will establish a very bad
government,--a very bad species of tyranny.
That the worst effect of all their proceeding was on their military,
which was rendered an army for every purpose but that of defence. That,
if the question was, whether soldiers were to forget they were citizens,
as an abstract proposition, he could have no difference about it;
though, as it is usual, when abstract principles are to be applied, much
was to be thought on the manner of uniting the character of citizen and
soldier. But as applied to the events which had happened in France,
where the abstract principle was clothed with its circumstances, he
thought that his friend would agree with him, that what was done there
furnished no matter of exultation, either in the act or the example.
These soldiers were not citizens, but base, hireling mutineers, and
mercenary, sordid deserters, wholly destitute of any honorable
principle. Their conduct was one of the fruits of that anarchic spirit
from the evils of which a democracy itself was to be resorted to, by
those who were the least disposed to that form, as a sort of refuge. It
was not an army in corps and with discipline, and embodied under the
respectable patriot citizens of the state in resisting tyranny. Nothing
like it. It was the case of common soldiers deserting from their
officers, to join a furious, licentious populace. It was a desertion to
a cause the real object of which was to level all those institutions,
and to break all those connections, natural and civil, that regulate and
hold together the community by a chain of subordination: to raise
soldiers against their officers, servants against their masters,
tradesmen against their customers, artificers against their employers,
tenants against their landlords, curates against their bishops, and
children against their parents. That this cause of theirs was not an
enemy to servitude, but to society.
He wished the House to consider how the members would like to have their
mansions pulled down and pillaged, their persons abused, insulted, and
destroyed, their title-deeds brought out and burned before their faces,
and themselves and their families driven to seek refuge in every nation
throughout Europe, for no other reason than this, that, without any
fault of theirs, they were born gentlemen and men of property, and were
suspected of a desire to preserve their consideration and their estates.
The desertion in France was to aid an abominable sedition, the very
professed principle of which was an implacable hostility to nobility and
gentry, and whose savage war-whoop was, _"A l'Aristocrate!"_--by which
senseless, bloody cry they animated one another to rapine and murder;
whilst abetted by ambitious men of another class, they were crushing
everything respectable and virtuous in their nation, and to their power
disgracing almost every name by which we formerly knew there was such a
country in the world as France.
He knew too well, and he felt as much as any man, how difficult it was
to accommodate a standing army to a free constitution, or to any
constitution. An armed disciplined body is, in its essence, dangerous to
liberty; undisciplined, it is ruinous to society. Its component parts
are in the latter case neither good citizens nor good soldiers. What
have they thought of in France, under such a difficulty as almost puts
the human faculties to a stand? They have put their army under such a
variety of principles of duty, that it is more likely to breed
litigants, pettifoggers, and mutineers than soldiers.[76] They have set
up, to balance their crown army, another army, deriving under another
authority, called a municipal army,--a balance of armies, not of orders.
These latter they have destroyed with every mark of insult and
oppression. States may, and they will best, exist with a partition of
civil powers. Armies cannot exist under a divided command. This state of
things he thought in effect a state of war, or at best but a truce,
instead of peace, in the country.
What a dreadful thing is a standing army for the conduct of the whole or
any part of which no man is responsible! In the present state of the
French crown army, is the crown responsible for the whole of it? Is
there any general who can be responsible for the obedience of a
brigade, any colonel for that of a regiment, any captain for that of a
company? And as to the municipal army, reinforced as it is by the new
citizen deserters, under whose command are they? Have we not seen them,
not led by, but dragging, their nominal commander, with a rope about his
neck, when they, or those whom they accompanied, proceeded to the most
atrocious acts of treason and murder? Are any of these armies? Are any
of these citizens?
We have in such a difficulty as that of fitting a standing army to the
state, he conceived, done much better. We have not distracted our army
by divided principles of obedience. We have put them under a single
authority, with a simple (our common) oath of fidelity; and we keep the
whole under our annual inspection. This was doing all that could be
safely done.
He felt some concern that this strange thing called a Revolution in
France should be compared with the glorious event commonly called the
Revolution in England, and the conduct of the soldiery on that occasion
compared with the behavior of some of the troops of France in the
present instance. At that period, the Prince of Orange, a prince of the
blood-royal in England, was called in by the flower of the English
aristocracy to defend its ancient Constitution, and not to level all
distinctions. To this prince, so invited, the aristocratic leaders who
commanded the troops went over with their several corps, in bodies, to
the deliverer of their country. Aristocratic leaders brought up the
corps of citizens who newly enlisted in this cause. Military obedience
changed its object; but military discipline was not for a moment
interrupted in its principle. The troops were ready for war, but
indisposed to mutiny.
But as the conduct of the English armies was different, so was that of
the whole English nation at that time. In truth, the circumstances of
our Revolution (as it is called) and that of France are just the reverse
of each other in almost every particular, and in the whole spirit of the
transaction. With us it was the case of a legal monarch attempting
arbitrary power; in France it is the case of an arbitrary monarch
beginning, from whatever cause, to legalize his authority. The one was
to be resisted, the other was to be managed and directed; but in neither
case was the order of the state to be changed, lest government might be
ruined, which ought only to be corrected and legalized. With us we got
rid of the man, and preserved the constituent parts of the state. There
they get rid of the constituent parts of the state, and keep the man.
What we did was in truth and substance, and in a constitutional light, a
revolution, not made, but prevented. We took solid securities; we
settled doubtful questions; we corrected anomalies in our law. In the
stable, fundamental parts of our Constitution we made no
revolution,--no, nor any alteration at all. We did not impair the
monarchy. Perhaps it might be shown that we strengthened it very
considerably. The nation kept the same ranks, the same orders, the same
privileges, the same franchises, the same rules for property, the same
subordinations, the same order in the law, in the revenue, and in the
magistracy,--the same lords, the same commons, the same corporations,
the same electors.
The Church was not impaired. Her estates, her majesty, her splendor, her
orders and gradations, continued the same. She was preserved in her
full efficiency, and cleared only of a certain intolerance, which was
her weakness and disgrace. The Church and the State were the same after
the Revolution that they were before, but better secured in every part.
Was little done because a revolution was not made in the Constitution?
No! Everything was done; because we commenced with reparation, not with
ruin. Accordingly, the state flourished. Instead of lying as dead, in a
sort of trance, or exposed, as some others, in an epileptic fit, to the
pity or derision of the world, for her wild, ridiculous, convulsive
movements, impotent to every purpose but that of dashing out her brains
against the pavement, Great Britain rose above the standard even of her
former self. An era of a more improved domestic prosperity then
commenced, and still continues, not only unimpaired, but growing, under
the wasting hand of time. All the energies of the country were awakened.
England never preserved a firmer countenance or a more vigorous arm to
all her enemies and to all her rivals. Europe under her respired and
revived. Everywhere she appeared as the protector, assertor, or avenger
of liberty. A war was made and supported against fortune itself. The
treaty of Ryswick, which first limited the power of France, was soon
after made; the grand alliance very shortly followed, which shook to the
foundations the dreadful power which menaced the independence of
mankind. The states of Europe lay happy under the shade of a great and
free monarchy, which knew how to be great without endangering its own
peace at home or the internal or external peace of any of its
neighbors.
Mr. Burke said he should have felt very unpleasantly, if he had not
delivered these sentiments. He was near the end of his natural, probably
still nearer the end of his political career. That he was weak and
weary, and wished for rest. That he was little disposed to
controversies, or what is called a detailed opposition. That at his time
of life, if he could not do something by some sort of weight of opinion,
natural or acquired, it was useless and indecorous to attempt anything
by mere struggle. _Turpe senex miles_. That he had for that reason
little attended the army business, or that of the revenue, or almost any
other matter of detail, for some years past. That he had, however, his
task. He was far from condemning such opposition; on the contrary, he
most highly applauded it, where a just occasion existed for it, and
gentlemen had vigor and capacity to pursue it. Where a great occasion
occurred, he was, and, while he continued in Parliament, would be,
amongst the most active and the most earnest,--as he hoped he had shown
on a late event. With respect to the Constitution itself, he wished few
alterations in it,--happy if he left it not the worse for any share he
had taken in its service.
* * * * *
Mr. Fox then rose, and declared, in substance, that, so far as regarded
the French army, he went no farther than the general principle, by which
that army showed itself indisposed to be an instrument in the servitude
of their fellow-citizens, but did not enter into the particulars of
their conduct. He declared that he did not affect a democracy: that he
always thought any of the simple, unbalanced governments bad: simple
monarchy, simple aristocracy, simple democracy,--he held them all
imperfect or vicious; all were bad by themselves; the composition alone
was good. That these had been always his principles, in which he had
agreed with his friend Mr. Burke,--of whom he had said many kind and
flattering things, which Mr. Burke, I take it for granted, will know
himself too well to think he merits from anything but Mr. Fox's
acknowledged good-nature. Mr. Fox thought, however, that, in many cases,
Mr. Burke was rather carried too far by his hatred to innovation.
Mr. Burke said, he well knew that these had been Mr. Fox's invariable
opinions; that they were a sure ground for the confidence of his
country. But he had been fearful that cabals of very different
intentions would be ready to make use of his great name, against his
character and sentiments, in order to derive a credit to their
destructive machinations.
Mr. Sheridan then rose, and made a lively and eloquent speech against
Mr. Burke; in which, among other things, he said that Mr. Burke had
libelled the National Assembly of France, and had cast out reflections
on such characters as those of the Marquis de La Fayette and Mr. Bailly.
Mr. Burke said, that he did not libel the National Assembly of France,
whom he considered very little in the discussion of these matters. That
he thought all the substantial power resided in the republic of Paris,
whose authority guided, or whose example was followed by, all the
republics of France. The republic of Paris had an army under their
orders, and not under those of the National Assembly.
N.B. As to the particular gentlemen, I do not remember that Mr. Burke
mentioned either of them,--certainly not Mr. Bailly. He alluded,
undoubtedly, to the case of the Marquis de La Fayette; but whether what
he asserted of him be a libel on him must be left to those who are
acquainted with the business.
Mr. Pitt concluded the debate with becoming gravity and dignity, and a
reserve on both sides of the question, as related to France, fit for a
person in a ministerial situation. He said, that what he had spoken only
regarded France when she should unite, which he rather thought she soon
might, with the liberty she had acquired, the blessings of law and
order. He, too, said several civil things concerning the sentiments of
Mr. Burke, as applied to this country.
FOOTNOTES:
[75] Mr. Burke probably had in his mind the remainder of the passage,
and was filled with some congenial apprehensions:--
Hæc finis Priami fatorum; hic exitus illum
Sorte tulit, Trojam incensam et prolapsa videntem
Pergama, tot quondam populis terrisque superbum
Regnatorem Asiæ. Jacet ingens littore truncus,
Avolsumque humeris caput, et sine nomine corpus.
_At me_ tum primum sævus circumstetit horror.
Obstupui: _subiit chari genitoris imago_.
[76] They are Sworn to obey the king, the nation, and the law.
REFLECTIONS
ON THE
REVOLUTION IN FRANCE,
THE PROCEEDINGS IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES IN
LONDON RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT:
IN A LETTER
INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SENT TO A GENTLEMAN IN PARIS.
1790.
It may not be unnecessary to inform the reader that the following
Reflections had their origin in a correspondence between the author and
a very young gentleman at Paris, who did him the honor of desiring his
opinion upon the important transactions which then, and ever since have,
so much occupied the attention of all men. An answer was written some
time in the month of October, 1789; but it was kept back upon prudential
considerations. That letter is alluded to in the beginning of the
following sheets. It has been since forwarded to the person to whom it
was addressed. The reasons for the delay in sending it were assigned in
a short letter to the same gentleman. This produced on his part a new
and pressing application for the author's sentiments.
The author began a second and more full discussion on the subject. This
he had some thoughts of publishing early in the last spring; but the
matter gaining upon him, he found that what he had undertaken not only
far exceeded the measure of a letter, but that its importance required
rather a more detailed consideration than at that time he had any
leisure to bestow upon it. However, having thrown down his first
thoughts in the form of a letter, and, indeed, when he sat down to
write, having intended it for a private letter, he found it difficult to
change the form of address, when his sentiments had grown into a greater
extent and had received another direction. A different plan, he is
sensible, might be more favorable to a commodious division and
distribution of his matter.
REFLECTIONS
ON
THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE.
Dear Sir,--You are pleased to call again, and with some earnestness, for
my thoughts on the late proceedings in France. I will not give you
reason to imagine that I think my sentiments of such value as to wish
myself to be solicited about them. They are of too little consequence to
be very anxiously either communicated or withheld. It was from attention
to you, and to you only, that I hesitated at the time when you first
desired to receive them. In the first letter I had the honor to write to
you, and which at length I send, I wrote neither for nor from any
description of men; nor shall I in this. My errors, if any, are my own.
My reputation alone is to answer for them.
You see, Sir, by the long letter I have transmitted to you, that, though
I do most heartily wish that France may be animated by a spirit of
rational liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest policy, to
provide a permanent body in which that spirit may reside, and an
effectual organ by which it may act, it is my misfortune to entertain
great doubts concerning several material points in your late
transactions.
You imagined, when you wrote last, that I might possibly be reckoned
among the approvers of certain proceedings in France, from the solemn
public seal of sanction they have received from two clubs of gentlemen
in London, called the Constitutional Society, and the Revolution
Society.