May 24th, 1796.
MY DEAR LORD,
Having received no answer to my last letter, I persuade myself
there was nothing in it to displease you; otherwise your general
politeness and your kind partiality to me would have led you to
give me such instructions as might prevent me from falling into
errors in the delicate business in which, under your countenance
and with your approbation, I have engaged myself.
We look forward with a pleasure, mixed with some degree of
impatience, to the visit which your Lordship and Lady Buckingham
have flattered us with the hope of, though I am afraid the heat of
the general election will be over before we can enjoy that
satisfaction.
I think, however unfortunate I may find myself in all my attempts
to please the Bishop of Leon, that your Lordship and Lady
Buckingham will feel the same pleasing and affecting interest in
what is done here, that all have been touched with who see what is
going on. You will be pleased with the celerity, if not with the
perfection, of our work. Five-and-forty beds are ready; the rest
will be so in a very few days. An old bad stable is converted into
an excellent school-room. The chapel is decent, in place and in
furniture. The eating-room is reasonably good. Twenty-five boys are
received, clad in a cleanly and not unpleasing manner, and they are
fed in an orderly way, with a wholesome and abundant diet. The
masters are pleased with their pupils; the pupils are pleased with
their preceptors; and I am sure I have reason to be pleased with
them all. I see them almost every day, and at almost all hours; as
well at their play as at their studies and exercise. I have never
seen finer boys, or more fit for the plan of education I mean to
follow for them, as long as it pleases the Government to continue
that charge in my hands. I am responsible, that if they are left to
me for six months, a set of finer lads, for their age and standing,
will not be seen in Europe.
The only unfortunate part of the business is, that some of them
speak not a word of English, and they who are the most forward in
it are very imperfect. There is but one of the masters who can be
said to know anything of it, and he is far indeed from the ability
to teach it. There must be a person who, besides going with them
through all their Latin readings and construing them into English,
will daily converse with them, and ground them in the principles
and the utterance of that tongue which belongs to the nation which
alone promises them an asylum upon earth. For many reasons, I
should prefer a clergyman of their own persuasion, and of our
country. But though I have always known that their number was
small, I did not conceive it to be so inconsiderable as I now find
it. But some English subject must be found to be about these boys
at all hours. It would be a terrible thing to condemn these poor
creatures to an universal exile, and to be perpetual vagrants,
without a possibility of being in a state of effectual
communication with the natives of any country or incorporating
themselves with any people. God forbid that, under the pretext of a
benefit, I should be the cause of their utter ruin.
The Bishop of Leon has written me a letter which, in my present
state of health (by no means the best), gives me a good deal of
uneasiness. Hitherto, I have received the boys without any inquiry,
as they were successively sent to me by the worthy prelate;
considering them as the objects of his selection amongst the
candidates for this situation. To my astonishment, in a letter
which I received from him last Saturday he tells me that all the
vacancies are filled: but that he has had nothing in the world to
do with the matter, and that he is no more than a simple clerk.
Your Lordship will see by the letters that I have the honour to
enclose for your perusal, that after filling up all the places, the
pleasure of rejecting the rest of the candidates is reserved for
me. He has contrived matters so, that others have all the grace of
obliging, and all the pleasure of being useful; and that all which
is harsh and odious is thrown upon me, as a reward for all the
trouble and expense I have been at in this business. On this I
shall make no further remark.
By the letters, your Lordship will see that the Bishop of Leon
tells the applicants, that the selection is to be made by certain
Lords Commissioners. I never have been apprised by the Bishop of
the existence of any Commission, or of any Commissioners for the
purpose of a choice. If such a thing at all exists, I should have
flattered myself that I should have been apprised of it; of their
rules, of its proceedings, and of the times of its sitting. I
believe I am the very first person who, having had the honour of
proposing a plan to Government, and being permitted to have the
management of it, have been kept wholly out of the secret of the
appointment of its objects. The name of every boy sent to me was
unknown to me to the moment of his arrival; the names of those who
are to come are equally unknown. Not one circumstance relative to
any of them is come to my knowledge. The poorest country
schoolmaster would have been favoured with some better account of
his pupils.
I must beg leave to remark to your Lordship, that the account given
by the Bishop of Leon to the applicants is wholly different from
that which he gives to me. In his two last letters to me (one, and
the most explicit, of which I received just now) he tells me that
the selection and nomination is not in any Commissioners, but
solely in your Lordship, and that he is no more than a clerk. If I
had not received it from so good an authority, I could hardly have
believed that your Lordship, upon a mere abstract of petitions,
without further examination, or any consultation, even with the
Bishop of Leon, should have decided upon sixty out of perhaps
fourscore applications. But, as I am sure you always act with
equity and discretion, I am perfectly satisfied in your having
assumed this very delicate and critical of all trusts. I only wish
that I had been apprised of your Lordship's having taken on you
that office, as, though I should not have ventured to recommend a
single person, I really think I might, with all humility, have made
some useful suggestions, which your desire of all matters being
before you, that might guide you to a sure decision, would make you
willing to receive, even from a person so very inconsiderable as I
am in every point of view.
I am sure your Lordship wishes that, in the very reprehensible
situation in which I stand, I may be able to give some sort of
account of my trust; and when I have engaged with Government for
the education of sixty boys, I ought to know at whose hands, on
what authority, and on whose recommendation I receive them.
Certainly they are not recommended or chosen by me; and when I go
to the Treasury, and tell the Minister who issues the money to me
(whenever it shall be issued) that I have employed it in the
maintenance and the education of those whom I do not myself know,
nor can tell in any regular and authorised manner from whom I
received them, I should make a very despicable, not to say a
criminal figure. I cannot take your Lordship's pleasure from the
Bishop of Leon; though he tells me he is (not your Lordship's
friend and adviser) but your clerk, as you have never informed me
of this his relation to you. I therefore, for my voucher and
justification, request that you will be pleased (the Committee and
the Bishop absolutely disclaiming all choice) to send me a list of
the names, circumstances and description of the boys whom you send
to me, or have sent, together with a certificate, that having duly
examined into the several claims and pretensions of the candidates,
you have found these the best entitled.
When I have received this attestation as my authority and voucher,
far from cavilling at either the person naming, or the names, I
shall receive them most cheerfully; happy that your Lordship
having generously and nobly taken to yourself the election, these
objects have obtained security for a powerful protection, to place
them, as successively they shall be qualified, in some way useful
to themselves and to the public. I shall take care that they do no
dishonour to your patronage; at least to the moment in which
(having received them from your hands) I deliver them back into the
same benevolent and protecting safeguard.
My dear Lord, have the goodness to excuse the length of this
letter, on account of the weight of my responsibility and the very
difficult situation in which I stand.
Mrs. Burke begs leave to join me in the most truly respectful
compliments to Lady Buckingham, and if we may be permitted, on very
little acquaintance, to Lord and Lady Temple. No persons can more
sincerely wish, than we do, all kind of honour and happiness to you
and all that belong to you.
I have the honour to be, with the most perfect respect and
affection,
My dear Lord,
Your Lordship's most obedient and faithful humble servant,
EDM. BURKE.
The name of Buonaparte appears for the first time in this Correspondence
in the month of August. Supported by the patronage of Barras, whose
confidence in his talents and activity were so conspicuously justified
by the results, he had recently been appointed to the command of the
army of Italy, now augmented by large reinforcements. He was at this
period only twenty-six years of age, and had never seen a regular
engagement; but his genius inspired the highest hopes, and his
extraordinary success gave a completely new aspect to the war.