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Footnote 1:
As religion is included in my idea of morality, I should not have
mentioned the term without specifying all the simple ideas which that
comprehensive word generalizes; but as the charge of atheism has been
very freely banded about in the letter I am considering, I wish to
guard against misrepresentation.
Footnote 2:
See Mr. Burke’s Bills for œconomical reform.
Footnote 3:
Page 15.
Footnote 4:
‘The doctrine of _hereditary_ right does by no means imply an
_indefeasible_ right to the throne. No man will, I think, assert this,
that has considered our laws, constitution, and history, without
prejudice, and with any degree of attention. It is unquestionably in
the breast of the supreme legislative authority of this kingdom, the
King and both Houses of Parliament, to defeat this hereditary right;
and, by particular entails, limitations, and provisions, to exclude
the immediate heir, and vest the inheritance in any one else. This is
strictly consonant to our laws and constitution; as may be gathered
from the expression so frequently used in our statute books, of “the
King’s Majesty, his heirs, and successors.” In which we may observe
that, as the word “heirs” necessarily implies an inheritance, or
hereditary right, generally subsisting in “the royal person;” so the
word successors, distinctly taken, must imply that this inheritance
may sometimes be broken through; or, that there may be a successor,
without being the heir of the king.’
I shall not, however, rest in something like a subterfuge, and quote,
as partially as you have done, from Aristotle. Blackstone has so
cautiously fenced round his opinion with provisos, that it is obvious
he thought the letter of the law leaned towards your side of the
question—but a blind respect for the law is not a part of my creed.
Footnote 5:
Page 113.
Footnote 6:
As you ironically observe, p. 114.
Footnote 7:
In July, when he first submitted to his people; and not the mobbing
triumphal catastrophe in October, which you chose, to give full scope
to your declamatory powers.
Footnote 8:
This quotation is not marked with inverted commas, because it is not
exact. P. 11.
Footnote 9:
Page 106.
Footnote 10:
I do not now mean to discuss the intricate subject of their mortality;
reason may, perhaps, be given to them in the next stage of existence,
if they are to mount in the scale of life, like men, by the medium of
death.
Footnote 11:
Page 128.
Footnote 12:
Page 129.
Footnote 13:
_Vide_ Reflections, p. 128. “We fear God; we look up with _awe_ to
kings; with _affection_ to parliaments; with _duty_ to magistrates;
with _reverence_ to priests; and with _respect_ to nobility.”
Footnote 14:
Page 137.
Footnote 15:
‘When the people have emptied themselves of all the lust of selfish
will, which without religion it is utterly impossible they ever
should; when they are conscious that they exercise, and exercise
perhaps in an higher link of the order of delegation, the power, which
to be legitimate must be according to that eternal immutable law, in
which will and reason are the same, they will be more careful how they
place power in base and incapable hands. In their nomination to
office, they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a
pitiful job, but as to an holy function; not according to their sordid
selfish interest, nor to their wanton caprice, nor to their arbitrary
will; but they will confer that power (which any man may well tremble
to give or to receive) on those only, in whom they may discern that
predominant proportion of active virtue and wisdom, taken together and
fitted to the charge, such, as in the great and inevitable mixed mass
of human imperfections and infirmities, is to be found.’ P. 140.
Footnote 16:
Page 140.
Footnote 17:
Page 148.
Footnote 18:
Page 51. ‘If the last generations of your country appeared without
much lustre in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and derived
your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious
predilection to those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized
in them a standard of virtue and wisdom, beyond the vulgar practice of
the hour: and you would have risen with the example to whose imitation
you aspired. Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught
to respect yourselves.’
Footnote 19:
Page 53. ‘If diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning the
almost obliterated constitution of your ancestors, you had looked to
your neighbours in this land, who had kept alive the ancient
principles and models of the old common law of Europe meliorated and
adapted to its present state—by following wise examples you would have
given new examples of wisdom to the world.’
Footnote 20:
Page 49. ‘Always acting as if in the presence of canonized
forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and
excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal
descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which
prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and
disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction!’
Footnote 21:
Page 6. ‘Being a citizen of a particular state, and bound up in a
considerable degree, by its _public will_,’ &c.
Footnote 22:
Page 11. ‘It looks to me as if I were in a great crisis, not of the
affairs of France alone but of all Europe, perhaps of more than
Europe. All circumstances taken together, the French revolution is the
most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world.’
Footnote 23:
Page 50. ‘We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the
principle upon which nature teaches us to revere individual men; on
account of their age; and on account of those from whom they are
descended. All your sophisters cannot produce any thing better adapted
to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have
pursued; who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our
breasts rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories and
magazines of our rights and privileges.’
Footnote 24:
_Vide_ Page 210.
Footnote 25:
‘When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by the
existing laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawful
occupation—when they have accommodated _all their ideas, and all their
habits to it_,’ &c.—‘I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an
arbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their minds and their
feelings; forcibly to degrade them from their state and condition, and
to stigmatize with shame and infamy that character and those customs
which before had been made the measure of their happiness.’ Page 230.
Footnote 26:
Page 351.
Footnote 27:
The 6th of October.
Footnote 28:
Page 118. ‘It is not clear, whether in England we learned those grand
and decorous principles, and manners, of which considerable traces yet
remain, from you, or whether you took them from us. But to you, I
think, we trace them best. You seem to me to be—_gentis incunabula
nostræ_. France has always more or less influenced manners in England;
and when your fountain is choaked up and polluted, the stream will not
run long, or not run clear with us, or perhaps with any nation. This
gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern
in what is done in France.’
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