granted, after we have thus so repeatedly hung out the white flag, the
national spirit will revive with tenfold ardor. This is an experiment
cautiously to be made. _Reculer pour mieux sauter_, according to the
French byword, cannot be trusted to as a general rule of conduct. To
diet a man into weakness and languor, afterwards to give him the greater
strength, has more of the empiric than the rational physician. It is
true that some persons have been kicked into courage,--and this is no
bad hint to give to those who are too forward and liberal in bestowing
insults and outrages on their passive companions; but such a course does
not at first view appear a well-chosen discipline to form men to a nice
sense of honor or a quick resentment of injuries. A long habit of
humiliation does not seem a very good preparative to manly and vigorous
sentiment. It may not leave, perhaps, enough of energy in the mind
fairly to discern what are good terms or what are not. Men low and
dispirited may regard those terms as not at all amiss which in another
state of mind they would think intolerable: if they grow peevish in this
state of mind, they may be roused, not against the enemy whom they have
been taught to fear, but against the ministry,[28] who are more within
their reach, and who have refused conditions that are not unreasonable,
from power that they have been taught to consider as irresistible.
If all that for some months I have heard have the least foundation, (I
hope it has not,) the ministers are, perhaps, not quite so much to be
blamed as their condition is to be lamented. I have been given to
understand that these proceedings are not in their origin properly
theirs. It is said that there is a secret in the House of Commons. It is
said that ministers act, not according to the votes, but according to
the dispositions, of the majority. I hear that the minority has long
since spoken the general sense of the nation; and that to prevent those
who compose it from having the open and avowed lead in that House, or
perhaps in both Houses, it was necessary to preoccupy their ground, and
to take their propositions out of their mouths, even with the hazard of
being afterwards reproached with a compliance which it was foreseen
would be fruitless.
If the general disposition of the people be, as I hear it is, for an
immediate peace with Regicide, without so much as considering our public
and solemn engagements to the party in France whose cause we had
espoused, or the engagements expressed in our general alliances, not
only without an inquiry into the terms, but with a certain knowledge
that none but the worst terms will be offered, it is all over with us.
It is strange, but it may be true, that, as the danger from Jacobinism
is increased in my eyes and in yours, the fear of it is lessened in the
eyes of many people who formerly regarded it with horror. It seems, they
act under the impression of terrors of another sort, which have
frightened them out of their first apprehensions. But let their fears,
or their hopes, or their desires, be what they will, they should
recollect that they who would make peace without a previous knowledge of
the terms make a surrender. They are conquered. They do not treat; they
receive the law. Is this the disposition of the people of England? Then
the people of England are contented to seek in the kindness of a
foreign, systematic enemy, combined with a dangerous faction at home, a
security which they cannot find in their own patriotism and their own
courage. They are willing to trust to the sympathy of regicides the
guaranty of the British monarchy. They are content to rest their
religion on the piety of atheists by establishment. They are satisfied
to seek in the clemency of practised murderers the security of their
lives. They are pleased to confide their property to the safeguard of
those who are robbers by inclination, interest, habit, and system. If
this be our deliberate mind, truly we deserve to lose, what it is
impossible we should long retain, the name of a nation.
In matters of state, a constitutional competence to act is in many cases
the smallest part of the question. Without disputing (God forbid I
should dispute!) the sole competence of the king and the Parliament,
each in its province, to decide on war and peace, I venture to say no
war _can_ be long carried on against the will of the people. This war,
in particular, cannot be carried on, unless they are enthusiastically in
favor of it. Acquiescence will not do. There must be zeal. Universal
zeal in such a cause, and at such a time as this is, cannot be looked
for; neither is it necessary. Zeal in the larger part carries the force
of the whole. Without this, no government, certainly not our
government, is capable of a great war. None of the ancient, regular
governments have wherewithal to fight abroad with a foreign foe, and at
home to overcome repining, reluctance, and chicane. It must be some
portentous thing, like Regicide France, that can exhibit such a prodigy.
Yet even she, the mother of monsters, more prolific than the country of
old called _ferax monstrorum_, shows symptoms of being almost effete
already; and she will be so, unless the fallow of a peace comes to
recruit her fertility. But whatever may be represented concerning the
meanness of the popular spirit, I, for one, do not think so desperately
of the British nation. Our minds, as I said, are light, but they are not
depraved. We are dreadfully open to delusion and to dejection; but we
are capable of being animated and undeceived.
It cannot be concealed: we are a divided people. But in divisions, where
a part is to be taken, we are to make a muster of our strength. I have
often endeavored to compute and to class those who, in any political
view, are to be called the people. Without doing something of this sort,
we must proceed absurdly. We should not be much wiser, if we pretended
to very great accuracy in our estimate; but I think, in the calculation
I have made, the error cannot be very material. In England and Scotland,
I compute that those of adult age, not declining in life, of tolerable
leisure for such discussions, and of some means of information, more or
less, and who are above menial dependence, (or what virtually is such,)
may amount to about four hundred thousand. There is such a thing as a
natural representative of the people. This body is that representative;
and on this body, more than on the legal constituent, the artificial
representative depends. This is the British public; and it is a public
very numerous. The rest, when feeble, are the objects of
protection,--when strong, the means of force. They who affect to
consider that part of us in any other light insult while they cajole us;
they do not want us for counsellors in deliberation, but to list us as
soldiers for battle.
Of these four hundred thousand political citizens, I look upon one
fifth, or about eighty thousand, to be pure Jacobins, utterly incapable
of amendment, objects of eternal vigilance, and, when they break out, of
legal constraint. On these, no reason, no argument, no example, no
venerable authority, can have the slightest influence. They desire a
change; and they will have it, if they can. If they cannot have it by
English cabal, they will make no sort of scruple of having it by the
cabal of France, into which already they are virtually incorporated. It
is only their assured and confident expectation of the advantages of
French fraternity, and the approaching blessings of Regicide
intercourse, that skins over their mischievous dispositions with a
momentary quiet.
This minority is great and formidable. I do not know whether, if I aimed
at the total overthrow of a kingdom, I should wish to be incumbered with
a larger body of partisans. They are more easily disciplined and
directed than if the number were greater. These, by their spirit of
intrigue, and by their restless agitating activity, are of a force far
superior to their numbers, and, if times grew the least critical, have
the means of debauching or intimidating many of those who are now sound,
as well as of adding to their force large bodies of the more passive
part of the nation. This minority is numerous enough to make a mighty
cry for peace, or for war, or for any object they are led vehemently to
desire. By passing from place to place with a velocity incredible, and
diversifying their character and description, they are capable of
mimicking the general voice. We must not always judge of the generality
of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
The majority, the other four fifths, is perfectly sound, and of the best
possible disposition to religion, to government, to the true and
undivided interest of their country. Such men are naturally disposed to
peace. They who are in possession of all they wish are languid and
improvident. With this fault, (and I admit its existence in all its
extent,) they would not endure to hear of a peace that led to the ruin
of everything for which peace is dear to them. However, the desire of
peace is essentially the weak side of that kind of men. All men that are
ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities. There they
are unguarded. Above all, good men do not suspect that their destruction
is attempted through their virtues. This their enemies are perfectly
aware of; and accordingly they, the most turbulent of mankind, who never
made a scruple to shake the tranquillity of their country to its centre,
raise a continual cry for peace with France. "Peace with Regicide, and
war with the rest of the world," is their motto. From the beginning, and
even whilst the French gave the blows, and we hardly opposed the _vis
inertiæ_ to their efforts, from that day to this hour, like importunate
Guinea-fowls, crying one note day and night, they have called for
peace.
In this they are, as I confess in all things they are, perfectly
consistent. They who wish to unite themselves to your enemies naturally
desire that you should disarm yourself by a peace with these enemies.
But it passes my conception how they who wish well to their country on
its ancient system of laws and manners come not to be doubly alarmed,
when they find nothing but a clamor for peace in the mouths of the men
on earth the least disposed to it in their natural or in their habitual
character.
I have a good opinion of the general abilities of the Jacobins: not that
I suppose them better born than others; but strong passions awaken the
faculties; they suffer not a particle of the man to be lost. The spirit
of enterprise gives to this description the full use of all their native
energies. If I have reason to conceive that my enemy, who, as such, must
have an interest in my destruction, is also a person of discernment and
sagacity, then I must be quite sure, that, in a contest, the object he
violently pursues is the very thing by which my ruin is likely to be the
most perfectly accomplished. Why do the Jacobins cry for peace? Because
they know, that, this point gained, the rest will follow of course. On
our part, why are all the rules of prudence, as sure as the laws of
material Nature, to be, at this time reversed? How comes it, that now,
for the first time, men think it right to be governed by the counsels of
their enemies? Ought they not rather to tremble, when they are persuaded
to travel on the same road and to tend to the same place of rest?
The minority I speak of is not susceptible of an impression from the
topics of argument to be used to the larger part of the community. I
therefore do not address to them any part of what I have to say. The
more forcibly I drive my arguments against their system, so as to make
an impression where I wish to make it, the more strongly I rivet them in
their sentiments. As for us, who compose the far larger, and what I call
the far better part of the people, let me say, that we have not been
quite fairly dealt with, when called to this deliberation. The Jacobin
minority have been abundantly supplied with stores and provisions of all
kinds towards their warfare. No sort of argumentative materials, suited
to their purposes, have been withheld. False they are, unsound,
sophistical; but they are regular in their direction. They all bear one
way, and they all go to the support of the substantial merits of their
cause. The others have not had the question so much as fairly stated to
them.
There has not been in this century any foreign peace or war, in its
origin the fruit of popular desire, except the war that was made with
Spain in 1739. Sir Robert Walpole was forced into the war by the people,
who were inflamed to this measure by the most leading politicians, by
the first orators, and the greatest poets of the time. For that war Pope
sang his dying notes. For that war Johnson, in more energetic strains,
employed the voice of his early genius. For that war Glover
distinguished himself in the way in which his muse was the most natural
and happy. The crowd readily followed the politicians in the cry for a
war which threatened little bloodshed, and which promised victories that
were attended with something more solid than glory. A war with Spain was
a war of plunder. In the present conflict with Regicide, Mr. Pitt has
not hitherto had, nor will perhaps for a few days have, many prizes to
hold out in the lottery of war, to tempt the lower part of our
character. He can only maintain it by an appeal to the higher; and to
those in whom that higher part is the most predominant he must look the
most for his support. Whilst he holds out no inducements to the wise nor
bribes to the avaricious, he may be forced by a vulgar cry into a peace
ten times more ruinous than the most disastrous war. The weaker he is in
the fund of motives which apply to our avarice, to our laziness, and to
our lassitude, if he means to carry the war to any end at all, the
stronger he ought to be in his addresses to our magnanimity and to our
reason.
In stating that Walpole was driven by a popular clamor into a measure
not to be justified, I do not mean wholly to excuse his conduct. My time
of observation did not exactly coincide with that event, but I read much
of the controversies then carried on. Several years after the contests
of parties had ceased, the people were amused, and in a degree warmed
with them. The events of that era seemed then of magnitude, which the
revolutions of our time have reduced to parochial importance; and the
debates which then shook the nation now appear of no higher moment than
a discussion in a vestry. When I was very young, a general fashion told
me I was to admire some of the writings against that minister; a little
more maturity taught me as much to despise them. I observed one fault in
his general proceeding. He never manfully put forward the entire
strength of his cause. He temporized, be managed, and, adopting very
nearly the sentiments of his adversaries, he opposed their inferences.
This, for a political commander, is the choice of a weak post. His
adversaries had the better of the argument as he handled it, not as the
reason and justice of his cause enabled him to manage it. I say this,
after having seen, and with some care examined, the original documents
concerning certain important transactions of those times. They perfectly
satisfied me of the extreme injustice of that war, and of the falsehood
of the colors which, to his own ruin, and guided by a mistaken policy,
he suffered to be daubed over that measure. Some years after, it was my
fortune to converse with many of the principal actors against that
minister, and with those who principally excited that clamor. None of
them, no, not one, did in the least defend the measure, or attempt to
justify their conduct. They condemned it as freely as they would have
done in commenting upon any proceeding in history in which they were
totally unconcerned. Thus it will be. They who stir up the people to
improper desires, whether of peace or war, will be condemned by
themselves. They who weakly yield to them will be condemned by history.
In my opinion, the present ministry are as far from doing full justice
to their cause in this war as Walpole was from doing justice to the
peace which at that time he was willing to preserve. They throw the
light on one side only of their case; though it is impossible they
should not observe that the other side, which is kept in the shade, has
its importance too. They must know that France is formidable, not only
as she is France, but as she is Jacobin France. They knew from the
beginning that the Jacobin party was not confined to that country. They
knew, they felt, the strong disposition of the same faction in both
countries to communicate and to coöperate. For some time past, these two
points have been kept, and even industriously kept, out of sight. France
is considered as merely a foreign power, and the seditious English only
as a domestic faction. The merits of the war with the former have been
argued solely on political grounds. To prevent the mischievous doctrines
of the latter from corrupting our minds, matter and argument have been
supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit, on the excellency of our own
government. But nothing has been done to make us feel in what manner the
safety of that government is connected with the principle and with the
issue of this war. For anything which in the late discussion has
appeared, the war is entirely collateral to the state of Jacobinism,--as
truly a foreign war to us and to all our home concerns as the war with
Spain in 1739, about _Guardacostas_, the Madrid Convention, and the
fable of Captain Jenkins's ears.
Whenever the adverse party has raised a cry for peace with the Regicide,
the answer has been little more than this: "That the administration
wished for such a peace full as much as the opposition, but that the
time was not convenient for making it." Whatever else has been said was
much in the same spirit. Reasons of this kind never touched the
substantial merits of the war. They were in the nature of dilatory
pleas, exceptions of form, previous questions. Accordingly, all the
arguments against a compliance with what was represented as the popular
desire (urged on with all possible vehemence and earnestness by the
Jacobins) have appeared flat and languid, feeble and evasive. They
appeared to aim only at gaining time. They never entered into the
peculiar and distinctive character of the war. They spoke neither to the
understanding nor to the heart. Cold as ice themselves, they never could
kindle in our breasts a spark of that zeal which is necessary to a
conflict with an adverse zeal; much less were they made to infuse into
our minds that stubborn, persevering spirit which alone is capable of
bearing up against those vicissitudes of fortune which will probably
occur, and those burdens which must be inevitably borne, in a long war.
I speak it emphatically, and with a desire that it should be marked,--in
a _long_ war; because, without such a war, no experience has yet told us
that a dangerous power has ever been reduced to measure or to reason. I
do not throw back my view to the Peloponnesian War of twenty-seven
years; nor to two of the Punic Wars, the first of twenty-four, the
second of eighteen; nor to the more recent war concluded by the Treaty
of Westphalia, which continued, I think, for thirty. I go to what is but
just fallen behind living memory, and immediately touches our own
country. Let the portion of our history from the year 1689 to 1713 be
brought before us. We shall find that in all that period of twenty-four
years there were hardly five that could be called a season of peace; and
the interval between the two wars was in reality nothing more than a
very active preparation for renovated hostility. During that period,
every one of the propositions of peace came from the enemy: the first,
when they were accepted, at the Peace of Ryswick; the second, where they
were rejected, at the Congress at Gertruydenberg; the last, when the war
ended by the Treaty of Utrecht. Even then, a very great part of the
nation, and that which contained by far the most intelligent statesmen,
was against the conclusion of the war. I do not enter into the merits of
that question as between the parties. I only state the existence of that
opinion as a fact, from whence you may draw such an inference as you
think properly arises from it.
It is for us at present to recollect what we have been, and to consider
what, if we please, we may be still. At the period of those wars our
principal strength was found in the resolution of the people, and that
in the resolution of a part only of the then whole, which bore no
proportion to our existing magnitude. England and Scotland were not
united at the beginning of that mighty struggle. When, in the course of
the contest, they were conjoined, it was in a raw, an ill-cemented, an
unproductive, union. For the whole duration of the war, and long after,
the names and other outward and visible signs of approximation rather
augmented than diminished our insular feuds. They were rather the causes
of new discontents and new troubles than promoters of cordiality and
affection. The now single and potent Great Britain was then not only two
countries, but, from the party heats in both, and the divisions formed
in each of them, each of the old kingdoms within itself, in effect, was
made up of two hostile nations. Ireland, now so large a source of the
common opulence and power, and which, wisely managed, might be made much
more beneficial and much more effective, was then the heaviest of the
burdens. An army, not much less than forty thousand men, was drawn from
the general effort, to keep that kingdom in a poor, unfruitful, and
resourceless subjection.
Such was the state of the empire. The state of our finances was worse,
if possible. Every branch of the revenue became less productive after
the Revolution. Silver, not as now a sort of counter, but the body of
the current coin, was reduced so low as not to have above three parts in
four of the value in the shilling. In the greater part the value hardly
amounted to a fourth. It required a dead expense of three millions
sterling to renew the coinage. Public credit, that great, but ambiguous
principle, which has so often been predicted as the cause of our certain
ruin, but which for a century has been the constant companion, and often
the means, of our prosperity and greatness, had its origin, and was
cradled, I may say, in bankruptcy and beggary. At this day we have seen
parties contending to be admitted, at a moderate premium, to advance
eighteen millions to the exchequer. For infinitely smaller loans, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day, Montagu, the father of public
credit, counter-securing the state by the appearance of the city with
the Lord Mayor of London at his side, was obliged, like a solicitor for
an hospital, to go cap in hand from shop to shop, to borrow an hundred
pound, and even smaller sums. When made up in driblets as they could,
their best securities were at an interest of twelve per cent. Even the
paper of the Bank (now at par with cash, and generally preferred to it)
was often at a discount of twenty per cent. By this the state of the
rest may be judged.