means and circumstances, it is not necessary to go farther than to your
recent history. In the condition in which France was found three years
ago, what better system could be proposed, what less even savoring of
wild theory, what fitter to provide for all the exigencies whilst it
reformed all the abuses of government, than the convention of the
States-General? I think nothing better could be imagined. But I have
censured, and do still presume to censure, your Parliament of Paris for
not having suggested to the king that this proper measure was of all
measures the most critical and arduous, one in which the utmost
circumspection and the greatest number of precautions were the most
absolutely necessary. The very confession that a government wants either
amendment in its conformation or relief to great distress causes it to
lose half its reputation, and as great a proportion of its strength as
depends upon that reputation. It was therefore necessary first to put
government out of danger, whilst at its own desire it suffered such an
operation as a general reform at the hands of those who were much more
filled with a sense of the disease than provided with rational means of
a cure.
It may be said that this care and these precautions were more naturally
the duty of the king's ministers than that of the Parliament. They were
so: but every man must answer in his estimation for the advice he gives,
when he puts the conduct of his measure into hands who he does not know
will execute his plans according to his ideas. Three or four ministers
were not to be trusted with the being of the French monarchy, of all the
orders, and of all the distinctions, and all the property of the
kingdom. What must be the prudence of those who could think, in the then
known temper of the people of Paris, of assembling the States at a place
situated as Versailles?
The Parliament of Paris did worse than to inspire this blind confidence
into the king. For, as if names were things, they took no notice of
(indeed, they rather countenanced) the deviations, which were manifest
in the execution, from the true ancient principles of the plan which
they recommended. These deviations (as guardians of the ancient laws,
usages, and Constitution of the kingdom) the Parliament of Paris ought
not to have suffered, without the strongest remonstrances to the throne.
It ought to have sounded the alarm to the whole nation, as it had often
done on things of infinitely less importance. Under pretence of
resuscitating the ancient Constitution, the Parliament saw one of the
strongest acts of innovation, and the most leading in its consequences,
carried into effect before their eyes,--and an innovation through the
medium of despotism: that is, they suffered the king's ministers to
new-model the whole representation of the _Tiers Ãtat_, and, in a great
measure, that of the clergy too, and to destroy the ancient proportions
of the orders. These changes, unquestionably, the king had no right to
make; and here the Parliaments failed in their duty, and, along with
their country, have perished by this failure.
What a number of faults have led to this multitude of misfortunes, and
almost all from this one source,--that of considering certain general
maxims, without attending to circumstances, to times, to places, to
conjunctures, and to actors! If we do not attend scrupulously to all
these, the medicine of to-day becomes the poison of to-morrow. If any
measure was in the abstract better than another, it was to call the
States: _ea visa salus morientibus una_. Certainly it had the
appearance. But see the consequences of not attending to critical
moments, of not regarding the symptoms which discriminate diseases, and
which distinguish constitutions, complexions, and humors.
Mox erat hoc ipsum exitio; furiisque refecti
Ardebant; ipsique suos, jam morte sub ægra,
Discissos nudis laniabant dentibus artus.
Thus the potion which was given to strengthen the Constitution, to heal
divisions, and to compose the minds of men, became the source of
debility, frenzy, discord, and utter dissolution.
In this, perhaps, I have answered, I think, another of your
questions,--Whether the British Constitution is adapted to your
circumstances? When I praised the British Constitution, and wished it to
be well studied, I did not mean that its exterior form and positive
arrangement should become a model for you or for any people servilely to
copy. I meant to recommend the _principles_ from which it has grown, and
the policy on which it has been progressively improved out of elements
common to you and to us. I am sure it is no visionary theory of mine. It
is not an advice that subjects you to the hazard of any experiment. I
believed the ancient principles to be wise in all cases of a large
empire that would be free. I thought you possessed our principles in
your old forms in as great a perfection as we did originally. If your
States agreed (as I think they did) with your circumstances, they were
best for you. As you had a Constitution formed upon principles similar
to ours, my idea was, that you might have improved them as we have done,
conforming them to the state and exigencies of the times, and the
condition of property in your country,--having the conservation of that
property, and the substantial basis of your monarchy, as principal
objects in all your reforms.
I do not advise an House of Lords to you. Your ancient course by
representatives of the noblesse (in your circumstances) appears to me
rather a better institution. I know, that, with you, a set of men of
rank have betrayed their constituents, their honor, their trust, their
king, and their country, and levelled themselves with their footmen,
that through this degradation they might afterwards put themselves above
their natural equals. Some of these persons have entertained a project,
that, in reward of this their black perfidy and corruption, they may be
chosen to give rise to a new order, and to establish themselves into an
House of Lords. Do you think, that, under the name of a British
Constitution, I mean to recommend to you such Lords, made of such kind
of stuff? I do not, however, include in this description all of those
who are fond of this scheme.
If you were now to form such an House of Peers, it would bear, in my
opinion, but little resemblance to ours, in its origin, character, or
the purposes which it might answer, at the same time that it would
destroy your true natural nobility. But if you are not in a condition to
frame a House of Lords, still less are you capable, in my opinion, of
framing anything which virtually and substantially could be answerable
(for the purposes of a stable, regular government) to our House of
Commons. That House is, within itself, a much more subtle and artificial
combination of parts and powers than people are generally aware of. What
knits it to the other members of the Constitution, what fits it to be at
once the great support and the great control of government, what makes
it of such admirable service to that monarchy which, if it limits, it
secures and strengthens, would require a long discourse, belonging to
the leisure of a contemplative man, not to one whose duty it is to join
in communicating practically to the people the blessings of such a
Constitution.
Your _Tiers Ãtat_ was not in effect and substance an House of Commons.
You stood in absolute need of something else to supply the manifest
defects in such a body as your _Tiers Ãtat_. On a sober and
dispassionate view of your old Constitution, as connected with all the
present circumstances, I was fully persuaded that the crown, standing as
things have stood, (and are likely to stand, if you are to have any
monarchy at all,) was and is incapable, alone and by itself, of holding
a just balance between the two orders, and at the same time of effecting
the interior and exterior purposes of a protecting government. I, whose
leading principle it is, in a reformation of the state, to make use of
existing materials, am of opinion that the representation of the clergy,
as a separate order, was an institution which touched all the orders
more nearly than any of them touched the other; that it was well fitted
to connect them, and to hold a place in any wise monarchical
commonwealth. If I refer you to your original Constitution, and think
it, as I do, substantially a good one, I do not amuse you in this, more
than in other things, with any inventions of mine. A certain
intemperance of intellect is the disease of the time, and the source of
all its other diseases. I will keep myself as untainted by it as I can.
Your architects build without a foundation. I would readily lend an
helping hand to any superstructure, when once this is effectually
secured,--but first I would say, ÎÏÏ Ïον ÏÏῶ.
You think, Sir, (and you might think rightly, upon the first view of the
theory,) that to provide for the exigencies of an empire so situated and
so related as that of France, its king ought to be invested with powers
very much superior to those which the king of England possesses under
the letter of our Constitution. Every degree of power necessary to the
state, and not destructive to the rational and moral freedom of
individuals, to that personal liberty and personal security which
contribute so much to the vigor, the prosperity, the happiness, and the
dignity of a nation,--every degree of power which does not suppose the
total absence of all control and all responsibility on the part of
ministers,--a king of France, in common sense, ought to possess. But
whether the exact measure of authority assigned by the letter of the law
to the king of Great Britain can answer to the exterior or interior
purposes of the French monarchy is a point which I cannot venture to
judge upon. Here, both in the power given, and its limitations, we have
always cautiously felt our way. The parts of our Constitution have
gradually, and almost insensibly, in a long course of time, accommodated
themselves to each other, and to their common as well as to their
separate purposes. But this adaptation of contending parts, as it has
not been in ours, so it can never be in yours, or in any country, the
effect of a single instantaneous regulation, and no sound heads could
ever think of doing it in that manner.
I believe, Sir, that many on the Continent altogether mistake the
condition of a king of Great Britain. He is a real king, and not an
executive officer. If he will not trouble himself with contemptible
details, nor wish to degrade himself by becoming a party in little
squabbles, I am far from sure that a king of Great Britain, in whatever
concerns him as a king, or indeed as a rational man, who combines his
public interest with his personal satisfaction, does not possess a more
real, solid, extensive power than the king of France was possessed of
before this miserable revolution. The direct power of the king of
England is considerable. His indirect, and far more certain power, is
great indeed. He stands in need of nothing towards dignity,--of nothing
towards splendor,--of nothing towards authority,--of nothing at all
towards consideration abroad. When was it that a king of England wanted
wherewithal to make him respected, courted, or perhaps even feared, in
every state in Europe?
I am constantly of opinion that your States, in three orders, on the
footing on which they stood in 1614, were capable of being brought into
a proper and harmonious combination with royal authority. This
constitution by Estates was the natural and only just representation of
France. It grew out of the habitual conditions, relations, and
reciprocal claims of men. It grew out of the circumstances of the
country, and out of the state of property. The wretched scheme of your
present masters is not to fit the Constitution to the people, but wholly
to destroy conditions, to dissolve relations, to change the state of the
nation, and to subvert property, in order to fit their country to their
theory of a Constitution.
Until you make out practically that great work, a combination of
opposing forces, "a work of labor long, and endless praise," the utmost
caution ought to have been used in the reduction of the royal power,
which alone was capable of holding together the comparatively
heterogeneous mass of your States. But at this day all these
considerations are unseasonable. To what end should we discuss the
limitations of royal power? Your king is in prison. Why speculate on the
measure and standard of liberty? I doubt much, very much indeed, whether
France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Men are qualified for
civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral
chains upon their own appetites,--in proportion as their love to justice
is above their rapacity,--in proportion as their soundness and sobriety
of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,--in proportion
as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and
good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist,
unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere;
and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It
is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of
intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
This sentence the prevalent part of your countrymen execute on
themselves. They possessed not long since what was next to freedom, a
mild, paternal monarchy. They despised it for its weakness. They were
offered a well-poised, free Constitution. It did not suit their taste or
their temper. They carved for themselves: they flew out, murdered,
robbed, and rebelled. They have succeeded, and put over their country an
insolent tyranny made up of cruel and inexorable masters, and that, too,
of a description hitherto not known in the world. The powers and
policies by which they have succeeded are not those of great statesmen
or great military commanders, but the practices of incendiaries,
assassins, housebreakers, robbers, spreaders of false news, forgers of
false orders from authority, and other delinquencies, of which ordinary
justice takes cognizance. Accordingly, the spirit of their rule is
exactly correspondent to the means by which they obtained it. They act
more in the manner of thieves who have got possession of an house than
of conquerors who have subdued a nation.
Opposed to these, in appearance, but in appearance only, is another
band, who call themselves _the Moderate_. These, if I conceive rightly
of their conduct, are a set of men who approve heartily of the whole
new Constitution, but wish to lay heavy on the most atrocious of those
crimes by which this fine Constitution of theirs has been obtained. They
are a sort of people who affect to proceed as if they thought that men
may deceive without fraud, rob without injustice, and overturn
everything without violence. They are men who would usurp the government
of their country with decency and moderation. In fact, they are nothing
more or better than men engaged in desperate designs with feeble minds.
They are not honest; they are only ineffectual and unsystematic in their
iniquity. They are persons who want not the dispositions, but the energy
and vigor, that is necessary for great evil machinations. They find that
in such designs they fall at best into a secondary rank, and others take
the place and lead in usurpation which they are not qualified to obtain
or to hold. They envy to their companions the natural fruit of their
crimes; they join to run them down with the hue and cry of mankind,
which pursues their common offences; and then hope to mount into their
places on the credit of the sobriety with which they show themselves
disposed to carry on what may seem most plausible in the mischievous
projects they pursue in common. But these men are naturally despised by
those who have heads to know, and hearts that are able to go through the
necessary demands of bold, wicked enterprises. They are naturally
classed below the latter description, and will only be used by them as
inferior instruments. They will be only the Fairfaxes of your Cromwells.
If they mean honestly, why do they not strengthen the arms of honest men
to support their ancient, legal, wise, and free government, given to
them in the spring of 1788, against the inventions of craft and the
theories of ignorance and folly? If they do not, they must continue the
scorn of both parties,--sometimes the tool, sometimes the incumbrance of
that whose views they approve, whose conduct they decry. These people
are only made to be the sport of tyrants. They never can obtain or
communicate freedom.
You ask me, too, whether we have a Committee of Research. No, Sir,--God
forbid! It is the necessary instrument of tyranny and usurpation; and
therefore I do not wonder that it has had an early establishment under
your present lords. We do not want it.
Excuse my length. I have been somewhat occupied since I was honored with
your letter; and I should not have been able to answer it at all, but
for the holidays, which have given me means of enjoying the leisure of
the country. I am called to duties which I am neither able nor willing
to evade. I must soon return to my old conflict with the corruptions and
oppressions which have prevailed in our Eastern dominions. I must turn
myself wholly from those of France.
In England we _cannot_ work so hard as Frenchmen. Frequent relaxation is
necessary to us. You are naturally more intense in your application. I
did not know this part of your national character, until I went into
France in 1773. At present, this your disposition to labor is rather
increased than lessened. In your Assembly you do not allow yourselves a
recess even on Sundays. We have two days in the week, besides the
festivals, and besides five or six months of the summer and autumn. This
continued, unremitted effort of the members of your Assembly I take to
be one among the causes of the mischief they have done. They who always
labor can have no true judgment. You never give yourselves time to cool.
You can never survey, from its proper point of sight, the work you have
finished, before you decree its final execution. You can never plan the
future by the past. You never go into the country, soberly and
dispassionately to observe the effect of your measures on their objects.
You cannot feel distinctly how far the people are rendered better and
improved, or more miserable and depraved, by what you have done. You
cannot see with your own eyes the sufferings and afflictions you cause.
You know them but at a distance, on the statements of those who always
flatter the reigning power, and who, amidst their representations of the
grievances, inflame your minds against those who are oppressed. These
are amongst the effects of unremitted labor, when men exhaust their
attention, burn out their candles, and are left in the dark.--_Malo
meorum negligentiam, quam istorum obscuram diligentiam_.
I have the honor, &c.,
EDMUND BURKE.
BEACONSFIELD, January 19th, 1791.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It is said in the last quackish address of the National Assembly to
the people of France, that they have not formed their arrangements upon
vulgar practice, but on a theory which cannot fail,--or something to
that effect.
[2] See Burnet's Life of Hale.
[3] The pillory (_carcan_) in England is generally made very high like
that raised to exposing the king of France.
[4] "Filiola tua te delectari lætor, et prohari tibi ΦÏ
Ïικὴν
esse Ïὴν ÏÏá½¸Ï Ïá½° Ïεκνα: etenim, si hæc non est, nulla potest
homini esse ad hominem naturæ adjunctio: qua sublata, vitæ societas
tollitur. Valete Patron [Rousseau] et tui condiscipuli [L'Assemblée
Nationale]"--Cic. Ep. ad Atticum.
[5] Mirabeau's speech concerning universal peace.
AN
APPEAL
FROM
THE NEW TO THE OLD WHIGS,
IN CONSEQUENCE OF SOME LATE
DISCUSSIONS IN PARLIAMENT
RELATIVE TO THE
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
1791.
ADVERTISEMENT
TO THE SECOND EDITION.
There are some corrections in this edition, which tend to render the
sense less obscure in one or two places. The order of the two last
members is also changed, and I believe for the better. This change was
made on the suggestion of a very learned person, to the partiality of
whose friendship I owe much; to the severity of whose judgment I owe
more.
AN APPEAL
FROM
THE NEW TO THE OLD WHIGS.
At Mr. Burke's time of life, and in his dispositions, _petere honestam
missionem_ was all he had to do with his political associates. This boon
they have not chosen to grant him. With many expressions of good-will,
in effect they tell him he has loaded the stage too long. They conceive
it, though an harsh, yet a necessary office, in full Parliament to
declare to the present age, and to as late a posterity as shall take any
concern in the proceedings of our day, that by one book he has disgraced
the whole tenor of his life.--Thus they dismiss their old partner of the
war. He is advised to retire, whilst they continue to serve the public
upon wiser principles and under better auspices.
Whether Diogenes the Cynic was a true philosopher cannot easily be
determined. He has written nothing. But the sayings of his which are
handed down by others are lively, and may be easily and aptly applied on
many occasions by those whose wit is not so perfect as their memory.
This Diogenes (as every one will recollect) was citizen of a little
bleak town situated on the coast of the Euxine, and exposed to all the
buffets of that inhospitable sea. He lived at a great distance from
those weather-beaten walls, in ease and indolence, and in the midst of
literary leisure, when he was informed that his townsmen had condemned
him to be banished from Sinope; he answered coolly, "And I condemn them
to live in Sinope."
The gentlemen of the party in which Mr. Burke has always acted, in
passing upon him the sentence of retirement,[6] have done nothing more
than to confirm the sentence which he had long before passed upon
himself. When that retreat was choice, which the tribunal of his peers
inflict as punishment, it is plain he does not think their sentence
intolerably severe. Whether they, who are to continue in the Sinope
which shortly he is to leave, will spend the long years, which I hope
remain to them, in a manner more to their satisfaction than he shall
slide down, in silence and obscurity, the slope of his declining days,
is best known to Him who measures out years, and days, and fortunes.
The quality of the sentence does not, however, decide on the justice of
it. Angry friendship is sometimes as bad as calm enmity. For this reason
the cold neutrality of abstract justice is, to a good and clear cause, a
more desirable thing than an affection liable to be any way disturbed.
When the trial is by friends, if the decision should happen to be
favorable, the honor of the acquittal is lessened; if adverse, the
condemnation is exceedingly embittered. It is aggravated by coming from
lips professing friendship, and pronouncing judgment with sorrow and
reluctance. Taking in the whole view of life, it is more safe to live
under the jurisdiction of severe, but steady reason, than under the
empire of indulgent, but capricious passion. It is certainly well for
Mr. Burke that there are impartial men in the world. To them I address
myself, pending the appeal which on his part is made from the living to
the dead, from the modern Whigs to the ancient.
The gentlemen, who, in the name of the party, have passed sentence on
Mr. Burke's book, in the light of literary criticism, are judges above
all challenge. He did not, indeed, flatter himself that as a writer he
could claim the approbation of men whose talents, in his judgment and in
the public judgment, approach to prodigies, if ever such persons should
be disposed to estimate the merit of a composition upon the standard of
their own ability.