part. If we should be able, by dexterity, or power, or intrigue, to
disappoint the expectations of our constituents, what will it avail us?
We shall never be strong or artful enough to parry, or to put by, the
irresistible demands of our situation. That situation calls upon us, and
upon our constituents too, with a voice which _will_ be heard. I am sure
no man is more zealously attached than I am to the privileges of this
House, particularly in regard to the exclusive management of money. The
Lords have no right to the disposition, in any sense, of the public
purse; but they have gone further in self-denial[46] than our utmost
jealousy could have required. A power of examining accounts, to censure,
correct, and punish, we never, that I know of, have thought of denying
to the House of Lords. It is something more than a century since we
voted that body useless: they have now voted themselves so. The whole
hope of reformation is at length cast upon _us_; and let us not deceive
the nation, which does us the honor to hope everything from our virtue.
If _all_ the nation are not equally forward to press this duty upon us,
yet be assured that they all equally expect we should perform it. The
respectful silence of those who wait upon your pleasure ought to be as
powerful with you as the call of those who require your service as their
right. Some, without doors, affect to feel hurt for your dignity,
because they suppose that menaces are held out to you. Justify their
good opinion by showing that no menaces are necessary to stimulate you
to your duty. But, Sir, whilst we may sympathize with them in one point
who sympathize with us in another, we ought to attend no less to those
who approach us like men, and who, in the guise of petitioners, speak to
us in the tone of a concealed authority. It is not wise to force them to
speak out more plainly what they plainly mean.--But the petitioners are
violent. Be it so. Those who are least anxious about your conduct are
not those that love you most. Moderate affection and satiated enjoyment
are cold and respectful; but an ardent and injured passion is tempered
up with wrath, and grief, and shame, and conscious worth, and the
maddening sense of violated right. A jealous love lights his torch from
the firebrands of the furies. They who call upon you to belong _wholly_
to the people are those who wish you to return to your _proper_
home,--to the sphere of your duty, to the post of your honor, to the
mansion-house of all genuine, serene, and solid satisfaction. We have
furnished to the people of England (indeed we have) some real cause of
jealousy. Let us leave that sort of company which, if it does not
destroy our innocence, pollutes our honor; let us free ourselves at once
from everything that can increase their suspicions and inflame their
just resentment; let us cast away from us, with a generous scorn, all
the love-tokens and symbols that we have been vain and light enough to
accept,--all the bracelets, and snuff-boxes, and miniature pictures, and
hair devices, and all the other adulterous trinkets that are the pledges
of our alienation and the monuments of our shame. Let us return to our
legitimate home, and all jars and all quarrels will be lost in embraces.
Let the commons in Parliament assembled be one and the same thing with
the commons at large. The distinctions that are made to separate us are
unnatural and wicked contrivances. Let us identify, let us incorporate
ourselves with the people. Let us cut all the cables and snap the chains
which tie us to an unfaithful shore, and enter the friendly harbor that
shoots far out into the main its moles and jetties to receive us. "War
with the world, and peace with our constituents." Be this our motto, and
our principle. Then, indeed, we shall be truly great. Respecting
ourselves, we shall be respected by the world. At present all is
troubled, and cloudy, and distracted, and full of anger and turbulence,
both abroad and at home; but the air may be cleared by this storm, and
light and fertility may follow it. Let us give a faithful pledge to the
people, that we honor, indeed, the crown, but that we _belong_ to them;
that we are their auxiliaries, and not their task-masters,--the
fellow-laborers in the same vineyard, not lording over their rights, but
helpers of their joy; that to tax them is a grievance to ourselves, but
to cut off from our enjoyments to forward theirs is the highest
gratification we are capable of receiving. I feel, with comfort, that we
are all warmed with these sentiments, and while we are thus warm, I wish
we may go directly and with a cheerful heart to this salutary work.
Sir, I move for leave to bring in a bill, "For the better regulation of
his Majesty's civil establishments, and of certain public offices; for
the limitation of pensions, and the suppression of sundry useless,
expensive, and inconvenient places, and for applying the moneys saved
thereby to the public service."[47]
* * * * *
Lord North stated, that there was a difference between this bill for
regulating the establishments and some of the others, as they affected
the ancient patrimony of the crown, and therefore wished them to be
postponed till the king's consent could be obtained. This distinction
was strongly controverted; but when it was insisted on as a point of
decorum _only_, it was agreed to postpone them to another day.
Accordingly, on the Monday following, viz. Feb. 14, leave was given, on
the motion of Mr. Burke, without opposition, to bring in--
1st, "A bill for the sale of the forest and other crown lands, rents,
and hereditaments, with certain exceptions, _and for applying the
produce thereof to the public service_; and for securing, ascertaining,
and satisfying _tenant rights_, and common and other rights."
2nd, "A bill for the more perfectly uniting to the crown the
Principality of Wales and the County Palatine of Chester, and for the
more commodious administration of justice within the same; as also for
abolishing certain offices now appertaining thereto, _for quieting
dormant claims, ascertaining and securing tenant rights_, and for the
sale of all forest lands, and other lands, tenements, and hereditaments,
held by his Majesty in right of the said Principality, or County
Palatine of Chester, _and for applying the produce thereof to the public
service_."
3rd, "A bill for uniting to the crown the Duchy and County Palatine of
Lancaster, for the suppression of unnecessary offices now belonging
thereto, for the _ascertainment and security of tenant and other
rights_, and for the sale of all rents, lands, tenements, and
hereditaments, and forests, within the said Duchy and County Palatine,
or either of them, _and for applying the produce thereof to the public
service_."
And it was ordered that Mr. Burke, Mr. Fox, Lord John Cavendish, Sir
George Savile, Colonel Barré, Mr. Thomas Townshend, Mr. Byng, Mr.
Dunning, Sir Joseph Mawbey, Mr. Recorder of London, Sir Robert Clayton,
Mr. Frederick Montagu, the Earl of Upper Ossory, Sir William Guise, and
Mr. Gilbert do prepare and bring in the same.
At the same time, Mr. Burke moved for leave to bring in--
4th, "A bill for uniting the Duchy of Cornwall to the crown; for the
suppression of certain unnecessary offices now belonging thereto; for
the _ascertainment and security of tenant and other rights_; and for
the sale of certain rents, lands, and tenements, within or belonging to
the said Duchy; _and for applying the produce thereof to the public
service_."
But some objections being made by the Surveyor-General of the Duchy
concerning the rights of the Prince of Wales, now in his minority, and
Lord North remaining perfectly silent, Mr. Burke, at length, though he
strongly contended against the principle of the objection, consented to
withdraw this last motion _for the present_, to be renewed upon an early
occasion.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] This term comprehends various retributions made to persons whose
offices are taken away, or who in any other way suffer by the new
arrangements that are made.
[32] Edict registered 29th January, 1780.
[33] Thomas Gilbert, Esq., member for Lichfield.
[34] Here Lord North shook his head, and told those who sat near him
that Mr. Probert's pension was to depend on his success. It may be so.
Mr. Probert's pension was, however, no essential part of the question;
nor did Mr. B. care whether he still possessed it or not. His point was,
to show the ridicule of attempting an improvement of the Welsh revenue
under its present establishment.
[35] Case of Richard Lee, Esq., appellant, against George Venables Lord
Vernon, respondent, in the year 1775.
[36] Vide Lord Talbot's speech in Almon's Parliamentary Register. Vol
VII. p. 79, of the Proceedings of the Lords.
[37] More exactly, 378,616_l._ 10 _s._ 1-3/4 _d._
[38] Et quaunt viscount ou baillif eit comence de acompter, nul autre ne
seit resceu de aconter tanque le primer qe soit assis eit peraccompte,
et qe la somme soit resceu.--Stat. 5. Ann Dom. 1266.
[39] Summum jus summa injuria.
[40] It was supposed by the Lord Advocate, in a subsequent debate, that
Mr. Burke, because he objected to an inquiry into the pension list for
the purpose of economy and relief of the public, would have it withheld
from the judgment of Parliament for all purposes whatsoever. This
learned gentleman certainly misunderstood him. His plan shows that he
wished the whole list to be easily accessible; and he knows that the
public eye is of itself a great guard against abuse.
[41] Before the statute of Queen Anne, which limited the alienation of
land.
[42] Duke of Newcastle, whose dining-room is under the House of Commons.
[43] Letters between Dr. Addington and Sir James Wright.
[44] Titles of the bills read.
[45] W. Dowdeswell, Esq., Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1765.
[46] Rejection of Lord Shelburne's motion in the House of Lords.
[47] The motion was seconded by Mr. Fox.
SPEECH
AT THE
GUILDHALL IN BRISTOL, PREVIOUS TO THE LATE ELECTION IN THAT CITY,
UPON
CERTAIN POINTS RELATIVE TO HIS PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT.
1780.
Mr. Mayor, and Gentlemen,--I am extremely pleased at the appearance of
this large and respectable meeting. The steps I may be obliged to take
will want the sanction of a considerable authority; and in explaining
anything which may appear doubtful in my public conduct, I must
naturally desire a very full audience.
I have been backward to begin my canvass. The dissolution of the
Parliament was uncertain; and it did not become me, by an unseasonable
importunity, to appear diffident of the effect of my six years'
endeavors to please you. I had served the city of Bristol honorably, and
the city of Bristol had no reason to think that the means of honorable
service to the public were become indifferent to me.
I found, on my arrival here, that three gentlemen had been long in eager
pursuit of an object which but two of us can obtain. I found that they
had all met with encouragement. A contested election in such a city as
this is no light thing. I paused on the brink of the precipice. These
three gentlemen, by various merits, and on various titles, I made no
doubt were worthy of your favor. I shall never attempt to raise myself
by depreciating the merits of my competitors. In the complexity and
confusion of these cross pursuits, I wished to take the authentic public
sense of my friends upon a business of so much delicacy. I wished to
take your opinion along with me, that, if I should give up the contest
at the very beginning, my surrender of my post may not seem the effect
of inconstancy, or timidity, or anger, or disgust, or indolence, or any
other temper unbecoming a man who has engaged in the public service. If,
on the contrary, I should undertake the election, and fail of success, I
was full as anxious that it should be manifest to the whole world that
the peace of the city had not been broken by my rashness, presumption,
or fond conceit of my own merit.
I am not come, by a false and counterfeit show of deference to your
judgment, to seduce it in my favor. I ask it seriously and unaffectedly.
If you wish that I should retire, I shall not consider that advice as a
censure upon my conduct, or an alteration in your sentiments, but as a
rational submission to the circumstances of affairs. If, on the
contrary, you should think it proper for me to proceed on my canvass, if
you will risk the trouble on your part, I will risk it on mine. My
pretensions are such as you cannot be ashamed of, whether they succeed
or fail.
If you call upon me, I shall solicit the favor of the city upon manly
ground. I come before you with the plain confidence of an honest servant
in the equity of a candid and discerning master. I come to claim your
approbation, not to amuse you with vain apologies, or with professions
still more vain and senseless. I have lived too long to be served by
apologies, or to stand in need of them. The part I have acted has been
in open day; and to hold out to a conduct which stands in that clear and
steady light for all its good and all its evil, to hold out to that
conduct the paltry winking tapers of excuses and promises,--I never
will do it. They may obscure it with their smoke, but they never can
illumine sunshine by such a flame as theirs.
I am sensible that no endeavors have been left untried to injure me in
your opinion. But the use of character is to be a shield against
calumny. I could wish, undoubtedly, (if idle wishes were not the most
idle of all things,) to make every part of my conduct agreeable to every
one of my constituents; but in so great a city, and so greatly divided
as this, it is weak to expect it.
In such a discordancy of sentiments it is better to look to the nature
of things than to the humors of men. The very attempt towards pleasing
everybody discovers a temper always flashy, and often false and
insincere. Therefore, as I have proceeded straight onward in my conduct,
so I will proceed in my account of those parts of it which have been
most excepted to. But I must first beg leave just to hint to you that we
may suffer very great detriment by being open to every talker. It is not
to be imagined how much of service is lost from spirits full of activity
and full of energy, who are pressing, who are rushing forward, to great
and capital objects, when you oblige them to be continually looking
back. Whilst they are defending one service, they defraud you of an
hundred. Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when
we recover; but let us pass on,--for God's sake, let us pass on!
Do you think, Gentlemen, that every public act in the six years since I
stood in this place before you, that all the arduous things which have
been done in this eventful period which has crowded into a few years'
space the revolutions of an age, can be opened to you on their fair
grounds in half an hour's conversation?
But it is no reason, because there is a bad mode of inquiry, that there
should be no examination at all. Most certainly it is our duty to
examine; it is our interest, too: but it must be with discretion, with
an attention to all the circumstances and to all the motives; like sound
judges, and not like cavilling pettifoggers and quibbling pleaders,
prying into flaws and hunting for exceptions. Look, Gentlemen, to the
_whole tenor_ of your member's conduct. Try whether his ambition or his
avarice have justled him out of the straight line of duty,--or whether
that grand foe of the offices of active life, that master vice in men of
business, a degenerate and inglorious sloth, has made him flag and
languish in his course. This is the object of our inquiry. If our
member's conduct can bear this touch, mark it for sterling. He may have
fallen into errors, he must have faults; but our error is greater, and
our fault is radically ruinous to ourselves, if we do not bear, if we do
not even applaud, the whole compound and mixed mass of such a character.
Not to act thus is folly; I had almost said it is impiety. He censures
God who quarrels with the imperfections of man.
Gentlemen, we must not be peevish with those who serve the people; for
none will serve us, whilst there is a court to serve, but those who are
of a nice and jealous honor. They who think everything, in comparison of
that honor, to be dust and ashes, will not bear to have it soiled and
impaired by those for whose sake they make a thousand sacrifices to
preserve it immaculate and whole. We shall either drive such men from
the public stage, or we shall send them to the court for protection,
where, if they must sacrifice their reputation, they will at least
secure their interest. Depend upon it, that the lovers of freedom will
be free. None will violate their conscience to please us, in order
afterwards to discharge that conscience, which they have violated, by
doing us faithful and affectionate service. If we degrade and deprave
their minds by servility, it will be absurd to expect that they who are
creeping and abject towards us will ever be bold and incorruptible
assertors of our freedom against the most seducing and the most
formidable of all powers. No! human nature is not so formed: nor shall
we improve the faculties or better the morals of public men by our
possession of the most infallible receipt in the world for making cheats
and hypocrites.
Let me say, with plainness, I who am no longer in a public character,
that, if, by a fair, by an indulgent, by a gentlemanly behavior to our
representatives, we do not give confidence to their minds and a liberal
scope to their understandings, if we do not permit our members to act
upon a _very_ enlarged view of things, we shall at length infallibly
degrade our national representation into a confused and scuffling bustle
of local agency. When the popular member is narrowed in his ideas and
rendered timid in his proceedings, the service of the crown will be the
sole nursery of statesmen. Among the frolics of the court, it may at
length take that of attending to its business. Then the monopoly of
mental power will be added to the power of all other kinds it possesses.
On the side of the people there will be nothing but impotence: for
ignorance is impotence; narrowness of mind is impotence; timidity is
itself impotence, and makes all other qualities that go along with it
impotent and useless.
At present it is the plan of the court to make its servants
insignificant. If the people should fall into the same humor, and should
choose their servants on the same principles of mere obsequiousness and
flexibility and total vacancy or indifference of opinion in all public
matters, then no part of the state will be sound, and it will be in vain
to think of saving it.
I thought it very expedient at this time to give you this candid
counsel; and with this counsel I would willingly close, if the matters
which at various times have been objected to me in this city concerned
only myself and my own election. These charges, I think, are four in
number: my neglect of a due attention to my constituents, the not paying
more frequent visits here; my conduct on the affairs of the first Irish
Trade Acts; my opinion and mode of proceeding on Lord Beauchamp's
Debtors' Bills; and my votes on the late affairs of the Roman Catholics.
All of these (except perhaps the first) relate to matters of very
considerable public concern; and it is not lest you should censure me
improperly, but lest you should form improper opinions on matters of
some moment to you, that I trouble you at all upon the subject. My
conduct is of small importance.
With regard to the first charge, my friends have spoken to ms of it in
the style of amicable expostulation,--not so much blaming the thing as
lamenting the effects. Others, less partial to me, were less kind in
assigning the motives. I admit, there is a decorum and propriety in a
member of Parliament's paying a respectful court to his constituents. If
I were conscious to myself that pleasure, or dissipation, or low,
unworthy occupations had detained me from personal attendance on you, I
would readily admit my fault, and quietly submit to the penalty. But,
Gentlemen, I live at an hundred miles' distance from Bristol; and at the
end of a session I come to my own house, fatigued in body and in mind,
to a little repose, and to a very little attention to my family and my
private concerns. A visit to Bristol is always a sort of canvass, else
it will do more harm than good. To pass from the toils of a session to
the toils of a canvass is the furthest thing in the world from repose. I
could hardly serve you _as I have done_, and court you too. Most of you
have heard that I do not very remarkably spare myself in _public_
business; and in the _private_ business of my constituents I have done
very near as much as those who have nothing else to do. My canvass of
you was not on the 'change, nor in the county meetings, nor in the clubs
of this city: it was in the House of Commons; it was at the
Custom-House; it was at the Council; it was at the Treasury; it was at
the Admiralty. I canvassed you through your affairs, and not your
persons. I was not only your representative as a body; I was the agent,
the solicitor of individuals; I ran about wherever your affairs could
call me; and in acting for you, I often appeared rather as a ship-broker
than as a member of Parliament. There was nothing too laborious or too
low for me to undertake. The meanness of the business was raised by the
dignity of the object. If some lesser matters have slipped through my
fingers, it was because I filled my hands too full, and, in my eagerness
to serve you, took in more than any hands could grasp. Several gentlemen
stand round me who are my willing witnesses; and there are others who,
if they were here, would be still better, because they would be
unwilling witnesses to the same truth. It was in the middle of a summer
residence in London, and in the middle of a negotiation at the Admiralty
for your trade, that I was called to Bristol; and this late visit, at
this late day, has been possibly in prejudice to your affairs.
Since I have touched upon this matter, let me say, Gentlemen, that, if I
had a disposition or a right to complain, I have some cause of complaint
on my side. With a petition of this city in my hand, passed through the
corporation without a dissenting voice, a petition in unison with almost
the whole voice of the kingdom, (with whose formal thanks I was covered
over,) whilst I labored on no less than five bills for a public reform,
and fought, against the opposition of great abilities and of the
greatest power, every clause and every word of the largest of those
bills, almost to the very last day of a very long session,--all this
time a canvass in Bristol was as calmly carried on as if I were dead. I
was considered as a man wholly out of the question. Whilst I watched and
fasted and sweated in the House of Commons, by the most easy and
ordinary arts of election, by dinners and visits, by "How do you dos,"
and "My worthy friends," I was to be quietly moved out of my seat,--and
promises were made, and engagements entered into, without any exception
or reserve, as if my laborious zeal in my duty had been a regular
abdication of my trust.