monarchy,--that in such an event he should overlook the captivity,
disgrace, and degradation of an unfortunate prince, and the continual
danger to a life which exists only to be endangered,--that he should
overlook the utter ruin of whole orders and classes of men, extending
itself directly, or in its nearest consequences, to at least a million
of our kind, and to at least the temporary wretchedness of a whole
community,--I do not deny to be in some sort natural; because, when
people see a political object which they ardently desire but in one
point of view, they are apt extremely to palliate or underrate the evils
which may arise in obtaining it. This is no reflection on the humanity
of those persons. Their good-nature I am the last man in the world to
dispute. It only shows that they are not sufficiently informed or
sufficiently considerate. When they come to reflect seriously on the
transaction, they will think themselves bound to examine what the
object is that has been acquired by all this havoc. They will hardly
assert that the destruction of an absolute monarchy is a thing good in
itself, without any sort of reference to the antecedent state of things,
or to consequences which result from the change,--without any
consideration whether under its ancient rule a country was to a
considerable degree flourishing and populous, highly cultivated and
highly commercial, and whether, under that domination, though personal
liberty had been precarious and insecure, property at least was ever
violated. They cannot take the moral sympathies of the human mind along
with them, in abstractions separated from the good or evil condition of
the state, from the quality of actions, and the character of the actors.
None of us love absolute and uncontrolled monarchy; but we could not
rejoice at the sufferings of a Marcus Aurelius or a Trajan, who were
absolute monarchs, as we do when Nero is condemned by the Senate to be
punished _more majorum_; nor, when that monster was obliged to fly with
his wife Sporus, and to drink puddle, were men affected in the same
manner as when the venerable Galba, with all his faults and errors, was
murdered by a revolted mercenary soldiery. With such things before our
eyes, our feelings contradict our theories; and when this is the case,
the feelings are true, and the theory is false. What I contend for is,
that, in commending the destruction of an absolute monarchy, _all the
circumstances_ ought not to be wholly overlooked, as "considerations fit
only for shallow and superficial minds." (The words of Mr. Fox, or to
that effect.)
The subversion of a government, to deserve any praise, must be
considered but as a step preparatory to the formation of something
better, either in the scheme of the government itself, or in the persons
who administer it, or in both. These events cannot in reason be
separated. For instance, when we praise our Revolution of 1688, though
the nation in that act was on the defensive, and was justified in
incurring all the evils of a defensive war, we do not rest there. We
always combine with the subversion of the old government the happy
settlement which followed. When we estimate that Revolution, we mean to
comprehend in our calculation both the value of the thing parted with
and the value of the thing received in exchange.
The burden of proof lies heavily on those who tear to pieces the whole
frame and contexture of their country, that they could find no other way
of settling a government fit to obtain its rational ends, except that
which they have pursued by means unfavorable to all the present
happiness of millions of people, and to the utter ruin of several
hundreds of thousands. In their political arrangements, men have no
right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the
question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands
is the care of our own time. With regard to futurity, we are to treat it
like a ward. We are not so to attempt an improvement of his fortune as
to put the capital of his estate to any hazard.
It is not worth our while to discuss, like sophisters, whether in no
case some evil for the sake of some benefit is to be tolerated. Nothing
universal can be rationally affirmed on any moral or any political
subject. Pure metaphysical abstraction does not belong to these
matters. The lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of
mathematics. They are broad and deep as well as long. They admit of
exceptions; they demand modifications. These exceptions and
modifications are not made by the process of logic, but by the rules of
prudence. Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues
political and moral, but she is the director, the regulator, the
standard of them all. Metaphysics cannot live without definition; but
Prudence is cautious how she defines. Our courts cannot be more fearful
in suffering fictitious cases to be brought before them for eliciting
their determination on a point of law than prudent moralists are in
putting extreme and hazardous cases of conscience upon emergencies not
existing. Without attempting, therefore, to define, what never can be
defined, the case of a revolution in government, this, I think, may be
safely affirmed,--that a sore and pressing evil is to be removed, and
that a good, great in its amount and unequivocal in its nature, must be
probable almost to certainty, before the inestimable price of our own
morals and the well-being of a number of our fellow-citizens is paid for
a revolution. If ever we ought to be economists even to parsimony, it is
in the voluntary production of evil. Every revolution contains in it
something of evil.
It must always be, to those who are the greatest amateurs, or even
professors, of revolutions, a matter very hard to prove, that the late
French government was so bad that nothing worse in the infinite devices
of men could come in its place. They who have brought France to its
present condition ought to prove also, by something better than
prattling about the Bastile, that their subverted government was as
incapable as the present certainly is of all improvement and
correction. How dare they to say so who have never made that experiment?
They are experimenters by their trade. They have made an hundred others,
infinitely more hazardous.
The English admirers of the forty-eight thousand republics which form
the French federation praise them not for what they are, but for what
they are to become. They do not talk as politicians, but as prophets.
But in whatever character they choose to found panegyric on prediction,
it will be thought a little singular to praise any work, not for its own
merits, but for the merits of something else which may succeed to it.
When any political institution is praised, in spite of great and
prominent faults of every kind, and in all its parts, it must be
supposed to have something excellent in its fundamental principles. It
must be shown that it is right, though imperfect,--that it is not only
by possibility susceptible of improvement, but that it contains in it a
principle tending to its melioration.
Before they attempt to show this progression of their favorite work from
absolute pravity to finished perfection, they will find themselves
engaged in a civil war with those whose cause they maintain. What! alter
our sublime Constitution, the glory of France, the envy of the world,
the pattern for mankind, the masterpiece of legislation, the collected
and concentrated glory of this enlightened age? Have we not produced it
ready-made and ready-armed, mature in its birth, a perfect goddess of
wisdom and of war, hammered by our blacksmith midwives out of the brain
of Jupiter himself? Have we not sworn our devout, profane, believing,
infidel people to an allegiance to this goddess, even before she had
burst the _dura mater_, and as yet existed only in embryo? Have we not
solemnly declared this Constitution unalterable by any future
legislature? Have we not bound it on posterity forever, though our
abettors have declared that no one generation is competent to bind
another? Have we not obliged the members of every future Assembly to
qualify themselves for their seats by swearing to its conservation?
Indeed, the French Constitution always must be (if a change is not made
in all their principles and fundamental arrangements) a government
wholly by popular representation. It must be this or nothing. The French
faction considers as an usurpation, as an atrocious violation of the
indefensible rights of man, every other description of government. Take
it, or leave it: there is no medium. Let the irrefragable doctors fight
out their own controversy in their own way and with their own weapons;
and when they are tired, let them commence a treaty of peace. Let the
plenipotentiary sophisters of England settle with the diplomatic
sophisters of France in what manner right is to be corrected by an
infusion of wrong, and how truth may be rendered more true by a due
intermixture of falsehood.
* * * * *
Having sufficiently proved that nothing could make it _generally_
improper for Mr. Burke to prove what he had alleged concerning the
object of this dispute, I pass to the second question, that is, Whether
he was justified in choosing the committee on the Quebec Bill as the
field for this discussion? If it were necessary, it might be shown that
he was not the first to bring these discussions into Parliament, nor the
first to renew them in this session. The fact is notorious. As to the
Quebec Bill, they were introduced into the debate upon that subject for
two plain reasons: First, that, as he thought it _then_ not advisable to
make the proceedings of the factious societies the subject of a direct
motion, he had no other way open to him. Nobody has attempted to show
that it was at all admissible into any other business before the House.
Here everything was favorable. Here was a bill to form a new
Constitution for a French province under English dominion. The question
naturally arose, whether we should settle that constitution upon English
ideas, or upon French. This furnished an opportunity for examining into
the value of the French Constitution, either considered as applicable to
colonial government, or in its own nature. The bill, too, was in a
committee. By the privilege of speaking as often as he pleased, he hoped
in some measure to supply the want of support, which he had but too much
reason to apprehend. In a committee it was always in his power to bring
the questions from generalities to facts, from declamation to
discussion. Some benefit he actually received from this privilege. These
are plain, obvious, natural reasons for his conduct. I believe they are
the true, and the only true ones.
They who justify the frequent interruptions, which at length wholly
disabled him from proceeding, attribute their conduct to a very
different interpretation of his motives. They say, that, through
corruption, or malice, or folly, he was acting his part in a plot to
make his friend Mr. Fox pass for a republican, and thereby to prevent
the gracious intentions of his sovereign from taking effect, which at
that time had begun to disclose themselves in his favor.[8] This is a
pretty serious charge. This, on Mr. Burke's part, would be something
more than mistake, something worse than formal irregularity. Any
contumely, any outrage, is readily passed over, by the indulgence which
we all owe to sudden passion. These things are soon forgot upon
occasions in which all men are so apt to forget themselves. Deliberate
injuries, to a degree, must be remembered, because they require
deliberate precautions to be secured against their return.
I am authorized to say for Mr. Burke, that he considers that cause
assigned for the outrage offered to him as ten times worse than the
outrage itself. There is such a strange confusion of ideas on this
subject, that it is far more difficult to understand the nature of the
charge than to refute it when understood. Mr. Fox's friends were, it
seems, seized with a sudden panic terror lest he should pass for a
republican. I do not think they had any ground for this apprehension.
But let us admit they had. What was there in the Quebec Bill, rather
than in any other, which could subject him or them to that imputation?
Nothing in a discussion of the French Constitutions which might arise on
the Quebec Bill, could tend to make Mr. Fox pass for a republican,
except he should take occasion to extol that state of things in France
which affects to be a republic or a confederacy of republics. If such an
encomium could make any unfavorable impression on the king's mind,
surely his voluntary panegyrics on that event, not so much introduced as
intruded into other debates, with which they had little relation, must
have produced that effect with much more certainty and much greater
force. The Quebec Bill, at worst, was only one of those opportunities
carefully sought and industriously improved by himself. Mr. Sheridan had
already brought forth a panegyric on the French system in a still higher
strain, with full as little demand from the nature of the business
before the House, in a speech too good to be speedily forgotten. Mr. Fox
followed him without any direct call from the subject-matter, and upon
the same ground. To canvass the merits of the French Constitution on the
Quebec Bill could not draw forth any opinions which were not brought
forward before, with no small ostentation, and with very little of
necessity, or perhaps of propriety. What mode or what time of discussing
the conduct of the French faction in England would not equally tend to
kindle this enthusiasm, and afford those occasions for panegyric, which,
far from shunning, Mr. Fox has always industriously sought? He himself
said, very truly, in the debate, that no artifices were necessary to
draw from him his opinions upon that subject. But to fall upon Mr. Burke
for making an use, at worst not more irregular, of the same liberty, is
tantamount to a plain declaration that the topic of Franco is _tabooed_
or forbidden ground to Mr. Burke, and to Mr. Burke alone. But surely
Mr. Fox is not a republican; and what should hinder him, when such a
discussion came on, from clearing himself unequivocally (as his friends
say he had done near a fortnight before) of all such imputations?
Instead of being a disadvantage to him, he would have defeated all his
enemies, and Mr. Burke, since he has thought proper to reckon him
amongst them.
But it seems some newspaper or other had imputed to him republican
principles, on occasion of his conduct upon the Quebec Bill. Supposing
Mr. Burke to have seen these newspapers, (which is to suppose more than
I believe to be true,) I would ask, When did the newspapers forbear to
charge Mr Fox, or Mr. Burke himself, with republican principles, or any
other principles which they thought could render both of them odious,
sometimes to one description of people, sometimes to another? Mr. Burke,
since the publication of his pamphlet, has been a thousand times charged
in the newspapers with holding despotic principles. He could not enjoy
one moment of domestic quiet, he could not perform the least particle of
public duty, if he did not altogether disregard the language of those
libels. But, however his sensibility might be affected by such abuse, it
would in _him_ have been thought a most ridiculous reason for shutting
up the mouths of Mr. Fox or Mr. Sheridan, so as to prevent their
delivering their sentiments of the French Revolution, that, forsooth,
"the newspapers had lately charged Mr. Burke with being an enemy to
liberty."
I allow that those gentlemen have privileges to which Mr. Burke has no
claim. But their friends ought to plead those privileges, and not to
assign bad reasons, on the principle of what is fair between man and
man, and thereby to put themselves on a level with those who can so
easily refute them. Let them say at once that his reputation is of no
value, and that he has no call to assert it,--but that theirs is of
infinite concern to the party and the public, and to that consideration
he ought to sacrifice all his opinions and all his feelings.
In that language I should hear a style correspondent to the
proceeding,--lofty, indeed, but plain and consistent. Admit, however,
for a moment, and merely for argument, that this gentleman had as good a
right to continue as they had to begin these discussions; in candor and
equity they must allow that their voluntary descant in praise of the
French Constitution was as much an oblique attack on Mr. Burke as Mr.
Burke's inquiry into the foundation of this encomium could possibly be
construed into an imputation upon them. They well knew that he felt like
other men; and of course he would think it mean and unworthy to decline
asserting in his place, and in the front of able adversaries, the
principles of what he had penned in his closet and without an opponent
before him. They could not but be convinced that declamations of this
kind would rouse him,--that he must think, coming from men of their
calibre, they were highly mischievous,--that they gave countenance to
bad men and bad designs; and though he was aware that the handling such
matters in Parliament was delicate, yet he was a man very likely,
whenever, much against his will, they were brought there, to resolve
that there they should be thoroughly sifted. Mr. Fox, early in the
preceding session, had public notice from Mr. Burke of the light in
which he considered every attempt to introduce the example of France
into the politics of this country, and of his resolution to break with
his host friends and to join with his worst enemies to prevent it. He
hoped that no such necessity would ever exist; but in case it should,
his determination was made. The party knew perfectly that he would at
least defend himself. He never intended to attack Mr. Fox, nor did he
attack him directly or indirectly. His speech kept to its matter. No
personality was employed, even in the remotest allusion. He never did
impute to that gentleman any republican principles, or any other bad
principles or bad conduct whatsoever. It was far from his words; it was
far from his heart. It must be remembered, that, notwithstanding the
attempt of Mr. Fox to fix on Mr. Burke an unjustifiable change of
opinion, and the foul crime of teaching a set of maxims to a boy, and
afterwards, when these maxims became adult in his mature age, of
abandoning both the disciple and the doctrine, Mr. Burke never
attempted, in any one particular, either to criminate or to recriminate.
It may be said that he had nothing of the kind in his power. This he
does not controvert. He certainly had it not in his inclination. That
gentleman had as little ground for the charges which he was so easily
provoked to make upon him.
The gentlemen of the party (I include Mr. Fox) have been kind enough to
consider the dispute brought on by this business, and the consequent
separation of Mr. Burke from their corps, as a matter of regret and
uneasiness. I cannot be of opinion that by his exclusion they have had
any loss at all. A man whose opinions are so very adverse to theirs,
adverse, as it was expressed, "as pole to pole," so mischievously as
well as so directly adverse that they found themselves under the
necessity of solemnly disclaiming them in full Parliament,--such a man
must ever be to them a most unseemly and unprofitable incumbrance. A
coöperation with him could only serve to embarrass them in all their
councils. They have besides publicly represented him as a man capable of
abusing the docility and confidence of ingenuous youth,--and, for a bad
reason or for no reason, of disgracing his whole public life by a
scandalous contradiction of every one of his own acts, writings, and
declarations. If these charges be true, their exclusion of such a person
from their body is a circumstance which does equal honor to their
justice and their prudence. If they express a degree of sensibility in
being obliged to execute this wise and just sentence, from a
consideration of some amiable or some pleasant qualities which in his
private life their former friend may happen to possess, they add to the
praise of their wisdom and firmness the merit of great tenderness of
heart and humanity of disposition.
On their ideas, the new Whig party have, in my opinion, acted as became
them. The author of the Reflections, however, on his part, cannot,
without great shame to himself, and without entailing everlasting
disgrace on his posterity, admit the truth or justice of the charges
which have been made upon him, or allow that he has in those Reflections
discovered any principles to which honest men are bound to declare, not
a shade or two of dissent, but a total, fundamental opposition. He must
believe, if he does not mean wilfully to abandon his cause and his
reputation, that principles fundamentally at variance with those of his
book are fundamentally false. What those principles, the antipodes to
his, really are, he can only discover from their contrariety. He is very
unwilling to suppose that the doctrines of some books lately circulated
are the principles of the party; though, from the vehement declarations
against his opinions, he is at some loss how to judge otherwise.
For the present, my plan does not render it necessary to say anything
further concerning the merits either of the one set of opinions or the
other. The author would have discussed the merits of both in his place,
but he was not permitted to do so.
* * * * *
I pass to the next head of charge,--Mr. Burke's inconsistency. It is
certainly a great aggravation of his fault in embracing false opinions,
that in doing so he is not supposed to fill up a void, but that he is
guilty of a dereliction of opinions that are true and laudable. This is
the great gist of the charge against him. It is not so much that he is
wrong in his book (that, however, is alleged also) as that he has
therein belied his whole life. I believe, if he could venture to value
himself upon anything, it is on the virtue of consistency that he would
value himself the most. Strip him of this, and you leave him naked
indeed.
In the case of any man who had written something, and spoken a great
deal, upon very multifarious matter, during upwards of twenty-five
years' public service, and in as great a variety of important events as
perhaps have ever happened in the same number of years, it would appear
a little hard, in order to charge such a man with inconsistency, to see
collected by his friend a sort of digest of his sayings, even to such
as were merely sportive and jocular. This digest, however, has been
made, with equal pains and partiality, and without bringing out those
passages of his writings which might tend to show with what restrictions
any expressions quoted from him ought to have been understood. From a
great statesman he did not quite expect this mode of inquisition. If it
only appeared in the works of common pamphleteers, Mr. Burke might
safely trust to his reputation. When thus urged, he ought, perhaps, to
do a little more. It shall be as little as possible; for I hope not much
is wanting. To be totally silent on his charges would not be respectful
to Mr. Fox. Accusations sometimes derive a weight from the persons who
make them to which they are not entitled from their matter.