three members, of three very different natures, of which it does
actually consist, and thinks it his duty to preserve each of those
members in its proper place and with its proper proportion of power,
must (as each shall happen to be attacked) vindicate the three several
parts on the several principles peculiarly belonging to them. He cannot
assert the democratic part on the principles on which monarchy is
supported, nor can he support monarchy on the principles of democracy,
nor can he maintain aristocracy on the grounds of the one or of the
other or of both. All these he must support on grounds that are totally
different, though practically they may be, and happily with us they are,
brought into one harmonious body. A man could not be consistent in
defending such various, and, at first view, discordant, parts of a
mixed Constitution, without that sort of inconsistency with which Mr.
Burke stands charged.
As any one of the great members of this Constitution happens to be
endangered, he that is a friend to all of them chooses and presses the
topics necessary for the support of the part attacked, with all the
strength, the earnestness, the vehemence, with all the power of stating,
of argument, and of coloring, which he happens to possess, and which the
case demands. He is not to embarrass the minds of his hearers, or to
incumber or overlay his speech, by bringing into view at once (as if he
were reading an academic lecture) all that may and ought, when a just
occasion presents itself, to be said in favor of the other members. At
that time they are out of the court; there is no question concerning
them. Whilst he opposes his defence on the part where the attack is
made, he presumes that for his regard to the just rights of all the rest
he has credit in every candid mind. He ought not to apprehend that his
raising fences about popular privileges this day will infer that he
ought on the next to concur with those who would pull down the throne;
because on the next he defends the throne, it ought not to be supposed
that he has abandoned the rights of the people.
A man, who, among various objects of his equal regard, is secure of
some, and full of anxiety for the fate of others, is apt to go to much
greater lengths in his preference of the objects of his immediate
solicitude than Mr. Burke has ever done. A man so circumstanced often
seems to undervalue, to vilify, almost to reprobate and disown, those
that are out of danger. This is the voice of Nature and truth, and not
of inconsistency and false pretence. The danger of anything very dear
to us removes, for the moment, every other affection from the mind. When
Priam had his whole thoughts employed on the body of his Hector, he
repels with indignation, and drives from him with a thousand reproaches,
his surviving sons, who with an officious piety crowded about him to
offer their assistance. A good critic (there is no better than Mr. Fox)
would say that this is a masterstroke, and marks a deep understanding of
Nature in the father of poetry. He would despise a Zoïlus who would
conclude from this passage that Homer meant to represent this man of
affliction as hating or being indifferent and cold in his affections to
the poor relics of his house, or that he preferred a dead carcass to his
living children.
Mr. Burke does not stand in need of an allowance of this kind, which, if
he did, by candid critics ought to be granted to him. If the principles
of a mixed Constitution be admitted, he wants no more to justify to
consistency everything he has said and done during the course of a
political life just touching to its close. I believe that gentleman has
kept himself more clear of running into the fashion of wild, visionary
theories, or of seeking popularity through every means, than any man
perhaps ever did in the same situation.
He was the first man who, on the hustings, at a popular election,
rejected the authority of instructions from constituents,--or who, in
any place, has argued so fully against it. Perhaps the discredit into
which that doctrine of compulsive instructions under our Constitution is
since fallen may be due in a great degree to his opposing himself to it
in that manner and on that occasion.
The reforms in representation, and the bills for shortening the duration
of Parliaments, he uniformly and steadily opposed for many years
together, in contradiction to many of his best friends. These friends,
however, in his better days, when they had more to hope from his service
and more to fear from his loss than now they have, never chose to find
any inconsistency between his acts and expressions in favor of liberty
and his votes on those questions. But there is a time for all things.
Against the opinion of many friends, even against the solicitation of
some of them, he opposed those of the Church clergy who had petitioned
the House of Commons to be discharged from the subscription. Although he
supported the Dissenters in their petition for the indulgence which he
had refused to the clergy of the Established Church, in this, as he was
not guilty of it, so he was not reproached with inconsistency. At the
same time he promoted, and against the wish of several, the clause that
gave the Dissenting teachers another subscription in the place of that
which was then taken away. Neither at that time was the reproach of
inconsistency brought against him. People could then distinguish between
a difference in conduct under a variation of circumstances and an
inconsistency in principle. It was not then thought necessary to be
freed of him as of an incumbrance.
These instances, a few among many, are produced as an answer to the
insinuation of his having pursued high popular courses which in his late
book he has abandoned. Perhaps in his whole life he has never omitted a
fair occasion, with whatever risk to him of obloquy as an individual,
with whatever detriment to his interest as a member of opposition, to
assert the very same doctrines which appear in that book. He told the
House, upon an important occasion, and pretty early in his service,
that, "being warned by the ill effect of a contrary procedure in great
examples, he had taken his ideas of liberty very low in order that they
should stick to him and that he might stick to them to the end of his
life."
At popular elections the most rigorous casuists will remit a little of
their severity. They will allow to a candidate some unqualified
effusions in favor of freedom, without binding him to adhere to them in
their utmost extent. But Mr. Burke put a more strict rule upon himself
than most moralists would put upon others. At his first offering himself
to Bristol, where he was almost sure he should not obtain, on that or
any occasion, a single Tory vote, (in fact, he did obtain but one,) and
rested wholly on the Whig interest, he thought himself bound to tell to
the electors, both before and after his election, exactly what a
representative they had to expect in him.
"The _distinguishing_ part of our Constitution," he said, "is its
liberty. To preserve that liberty inviolate is the _peculiar_ duty and
_proper_ trust of a member of the House of Commons. But the liberty, the
_only_ liberty, I mean is a liberty connected with _order;_ and that not
only exists _with_ order and virtue, but cannot exist at all _without_
them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in _its substance and
vital principle_."
The liberty to which Mr. Burke declared himself attached is not French
liberty. That liberty is nothing but the rein given to vice and
confusion. Mr. Burke was then, as he was at the writing of his
Reflections, awfully impressed with the difficulties arising from the
complex state of our Constitution and our empire, and that it might
require in different emergencies different sorts of exertions, and the
successive call upon all the various principles which uphold and justify
it. This will appear from what he said at the close of the poll.
"To be a good member of Parliament is, let me tell you, no easy
task,--especially at this time, when there is so strong a disposition to
run into the perilous extremes of _servile_ compliance or _wild
popularity_. To unite circumspection with vigor is absolutely necessary,
but it is extremely difficult. We are now members for a rich commercial
_city_; this city, however, is but a part of a rich commercial _nation_,
the interests of which are _various, multiform, and intricate_. We are
members for that great _nation_, which, however, is itself but part of a
great _empire_, extended by our virtue and our fortune to the farthest
limits of the East and of the West. _All_ these wide-spread interests
must be _considered_,--must be _compared_,--must be _reconciled_, if
possible. We are members for a _free_ country; and surely we all know
that the machine of a free constitution is no _simple_ thing, but as
_intricate_ and as _delicate_ as it is valuable. We are members in a
_great and ancient_ MONARCHY_; and we must preserve religiously the
true, legal rights of the sovereign, which form the key-stone that binds
together the noble and well-constructed arch of our empire and our
Constitution_. A constitution made up of _balanced powers_ must ever be
a critical thing. As such I mean to touch that part of it which comes
within my reach."
In this manner Mr. Burke spoke to his constituents seventeen years ago.
He spoke, not like a partisan of one particular member of our
Constitution, but as a person strongly, and on principle, attached to
them all. He thought these great and essential members ought to be
preserved, and preserved each in its place,--and that the monarchy ought
not only to be secured in its peculiar existence, but in its preeminence
too, as the presiding and connecting principle of the whole. Let it be
considered whether the language of his book, printed in 1790, differs
from his speech at Bristol in 1774.
With equal justice his opinions on the American war are introduced, as
if in his late work he had belied his conduct and opinions in the
debates which arose upon that great event. On the American war he never
had any opinions which he has seen occasion to retract, or which he has
ever retracted. He, indeed, differs essentially from Mr. Fox as to the
cause of that war. Mr. Fox has been pleased to say that the Americans
rebelled "because they thought they had not enjoyed liberty enough."
This cause of the war, _from him_, I have heard of for the first time.
It is true that those who stimulated the nation to that measure did
frequently urge this topic. They contended that the Americans had from
the beginning aimed at independence,--that from the beginning they meant
wholly to throw off the authority of the crown, and to break their
connection with the parent country. This Mr. Burke never believed. When
he moved his second conciliatory proposition, in the year 1776, he
entered into the discussion of this point at very great length, and,
from nine several heads of presumption, endeavored to prove the charge
upon that people not to be true.
If the principles of all he has said and wrote on the occasion be viewed
with common temper, the gentlemen of the party will perceive, that, on a
supposition that the Americans had rebelled merely in order to enlarge
their liberty, Mr. Burke would have thought very differently of the
American cause. What might have been in the secret thoughts of some of
their leaders it is impossible to say. As far as a man so locked up as
Dr. Franklin could be expected to communicate his ideas, I believe he
opened them to Mr. Burke. It was, I think, the very day before he set
out for America that a very long conversation passed between them, and
with a greater air of openness on the Doctor's side than Mr. Burke had
observed in him before. In this discourse Dr. Franklin lamented, and
with apparent sincerity, the separation which he feared was inevitable
between Great Britain and her colonies. He certainly spoke of it as an
event which gave him the greatest concern. America, he said, would never
again see such happy days as she had passed under the protection of
England. He observed, that ours was the only instance of a great empire
in which the most distant parts and members had been as well governed as
the metropolis and its vicinage, but that the Americans were going to
lose the means which secured to them this rare and precious advantage.
The question with them was not, whether they were to remain as they had
been before the troubles,--for better, he allowed, they could not hope
to be,--but whether they were to give up so happy a situation without a
struggle. Mr. Burke had several other conversations with him about that
time, in none of which, soured and exasperated as his mind certainly
was, did he discover any other wish in favor of America than for a
security to its _ancient_ condition. Mr. Burke's conversation with other
Americans was large, indeed, and his inquiries extensive and diligent.
Trusting to the result of all these means of information, but trusting
much more in the public presumptive indications I have just referred to,
and to the reiterated solemn declarations of their Assemblies, he always
firmly believed that they were purely on the defensive in that
rebellion. He considered the Americans as standing at that time, and in
that controversy, in the same relation to England as England did to King
James the Second in 1688. He believed that they had taken up arms from
one motive only: that is, our attempting to tax them without their
consent,--to tax them for the purposes of maintaining civil and military
establishments. If this attempt of ours could have been practically
established, he thought, with them, that their Assemblies would become
totally useless,--that, under the system of policy which was then
pursued, the Americans could have no sort of security for their laws or
liberties, or for any part of them,--and that the very circumstance of
_our_ freedom would have augmented the weight of _their_ slavery.
Considering the Americans on that defensive footing, he thought Great
Britain ought instantly to have closed with them by the repeal of the
taxing act. He was of opinion that our general rights over that country
would have been preserved by this timely concession.[9] When, instead of
this, a Boston Port Bill, a Massachusetts Charter Bill, a Fishery Bill,
an Intercourse Bill, I know not how many hostile bills, rushed out like
so many tempests from all points of the compass, and were accompanied
first with great fleets and armies of English, and followed afterwards
with great bodies of foreign troops, he thought that their cause grew
daily better, because daily more defensive,--and that ours, because
daily more offensive, grew daily worse. He therefore, in two motions, in
two successive years, proposed in Parliament many concessions beyond
what he had reason to think in the beginning of the troubles would ever
be seriously demanded.
So circumstanced, he certainly never could and never did wish the
colonists to be subdued by arms. He was fully persuaded, that, if such
should be the event, they must be held in that subdued state by a great
body of standing forces, and perhaps of foreign forces. He was strongly
of opinion that such armies, first victorious over Englishmen, in a
conflict for English constitutional rights and privileges, and
afterwards habituated (though in America) to keep an English people in a
state of abject subjection, would prove fatal in the end to the
liberties of England itself; that in the mean time this military system
would lie as an oppressive burden upon the national finances; that it
would constantly breed and feed new discussions, full of heat and
acrimony, leading possibly to a new series of wars; and that foreign
powers, whilst we continued in a state at once burdened and distracted,
must at length obtain a decided superiority over us. On what part of his
late publication, or on what expression that might have escaped him in
that work, is any man authorized to charge Mr. Burke with a
contradiction to the line of his conduct and to the current of his
doctrines on the American war? The pamphlet is in the hands of his
accusers: let them point out the passage, if they can.
Indeed, the author has been well sifted and scrutinized by his friends.
He is even called to an account for every jocular and light expression.
A ludicrous picture which he made with regard to a passage in the speech
of a late minister[10] has been brought up against him. That passage
contained a lamentation for the loss of monarchy to the Americans, after
they had separated from Great Britain. He thought it to be unseasonable,
ill-judged, and ill-sorted with the circumstances of all the parties.
Mr. Burke, it seems, considered it ridiculous to lament the loss of some
monarch or other to a rebel people, at the moment they had forever
quitted their allegiance to theirs and our sovereign, at the time when
they had broken off all connection with this nation and had allied
themselves with its enemies. He certainly must have thought it open to
ridicule; and now that it is recalled to his memory, (he had, I believe,
wholly forgotten the circumstance,) he recollects that he did treat it
with some levity. But is it a fair inference from a jest on this
unseasonable lamentation, that he was then an enemy to monarchy, either
in this or in any other country? The contrary perhaps ought to be
inferred,--if anything at all can be argued from pleasantries good or
bad. Is it for this reason, or for anything he has said or done relative
to the American war, that he is to enter into an alliance offensive and
defensive with every rebellion, in every country, under every
circumstance, and raised upon whatever pretence? Is it because he did
not wish the Americans to be subdued by arms, that he must be
inconsistent with himself, if he reprobates the conduct of those
societies in England, who, alleging no one act of tyranny or oppression,
and complaining of no hostile attempt against our ancient laws, rights,
and usages, are now endeavoring to work the destruction of the crown of
this kingdom, and the whole of its Constitution? Is he obliged, from the
concessions he wished to be made to the colonies, to keep any terms with
those clubs and federations who hold out to us, as a pattern for
imitation, the proceedings in France, in which a king, who had
voluntarily and formally divested himself of the right of taxation, and
of all other species of arbitrary power, has been dethroned? Is it
because Mr. Burke wished to have America rather conciliated than
vanquished, that he must wish well to the army of republics which are
set up in France,--a country wherein not the people, but the monarch,
was wholly on the defensive, (a poor, indeed, and feeble defensive,) to
preserve _some fragments_ of the royal authority against a determined
and desperate body of conspirators, whose object it was, with whatever
certainty of crimes, with whatever hazard of war, and every other
species of calamity, to annihilate the _whole_ of that authority, to
level all ranks, orders, and distinctions in the state, and utterly to
destroy property, not more by their acts than in their principles?
Mr. Burke has been also reproached with an inconsistency between his
late writings and his former conduct, because he had proposed in
Parliament several economical, leading to several constitutional
reforms. Mr. Burke thought, with a majority of the House of Commons,
that the influence of the crown at one time was too great; but after his
Majesty had, by a gracious message, and several subsequent acts of
Parliament, reduced it to a standard which satisfied Mr. Fox himself,
and, apparently at least, contented whoever wished to go farthest in
that reduction, is Mr. Burke to allow that it would be right for us to
proceed to indefinite lengths upon that subject? that it would therefore
be justifiable in a people owing allegiance to a monarchy, and
professing to maintain it, not to _reduce_, but wholly to _take away
all_ prerogative and _all_ influence whatsoever? Must his having made,
in virtue of a plan of economical regulation, a reduction of the
influence of the crown compel him to allow that it would be right in the
French or in us to bring a king to so abject a state as in function not
to be so respectable as an under-sheriff, but in person not to differ
from the condition of a mere prisoner? One would think that such a thing
as a medium had never been heard of in the moral world.
This mode of arguing from your having done _any_ thing in a certain line
to the necessity of doing _every_ thing has political consequences of
other moment than those of a logical fallacy. If no man can propose any
diminution or modification of an invidious or dangerous power or
influence in government, without entitling friends turned into
adversaries to argue him into the destruction of all prerogative, and to
a spoliation of the whole patronage of royalty, I do not know what can
more effectually deter persons of sober minds from engaging in any
reform, nor how the worst enemies to the liberty of the subject could
contrive any method more fit to bring all correctives on the power of
the crown into suspicion and disrepute.
If, say his accusers, the dread of too great influence in the crown of
Great Britain could justify the degree of reform which he adopted, the
dread of a return under the despotism of a monarchy might justify the
people of France in going much further, and reducing monarchy to its
present nothing.--Mr. Burke does not allow that a sufficient argument
_ad hominem_ is inferable from these premises. If the horror of the
excesses of an absolute monarchy furnishes a reason for abolishing it,
no monarchy once absolute (all have been so at one period or other)
could ever be limited. It must be destroyed; otherwise no way could be
found to quiet the fears of those who were formerly subjected to that
sway. But the principle of Mr. Burke's proceeding ought to lead him to a
very different conclusion,--to this conclusion,--that a monarchy is a
thing perfectly susceptible of reform, perfectly susceptible of a
balance of power, and that, when reformed and balanced, for a great
country it is the best of all governments. The example of our country
might have led France, as it has led him, to perceive that monarchy is
not only reconcilable to liberty, but that it may be rendered a great
and stable security to its perpetual enjoyment. No correctives which he
proposed to the power of the crown could lead him to approve of a plan
of a republic (if so it may be reputed) which has no correctives, and
which he believes to be incapable of admitting any. No principle of Mr.
Burke's conduct or writings obliged him from consistency to become an
advocate for an exchange of mischiefs; no principle of his could compel
him to justify the setting up in the place of a mitigated monarchy a new
and far more despotic power, under which there is no trace of liberty,
except what appears in confusion and in crime.
Mr. Burke does not admit that the faction predominant in France have
abolished their monarchy, and the orders of their state, from any dread
of arbitrary power that lay heavy on the minds of the people. It is not
very long since he has been in that country. Whilst there he conversed
with many descriptions of its inhabitants. A few persons of rank did, he
allows, discover strong and manifest tokens of such a spirit of liberty
as might be expected one day to break all bounds. Such gentlemen have
since had more reason to repent of their want of foresight than I hope
any of the same class will ever have in this country. But this spirit
was far from general, even amongst the gentlemen. As to the lower
orders, and those little above them, in whose name the present powers
domineer, they were far from discovering any sort of dissatisfaction
with the power and prerogatives of the crown. That vain people were
rather proud of them: they rather despised the English for not having a
monarch possessed of such high and perfect authority. _They_ had felt
nothing from _lettres de cachet_. The Bastile could inspire no horrors
into _them_. This was a treat for their betters. It was by art and
impulse, it was by the sinister use made of a season of scarcity, it was
under an infinitely diversified succession of wicked pretences wholly
foreign to the question of monarchy or aristocracy, that this light
people were inspired with their present spirit of levelling. Their old
vanity was led by art to take another turn: it was dazzled and seduced
by military liveries, cockades, and epaulets, until the French populace
was led to become the willing, but still the proud and thoughtless,
instrument and victim of another domination. Neither did that people
despise or hate or fear their nobility: on the contrary, they valued
themselves on the generous qualities which distinguished the chiefs of
their nation.
So far as to the attack on Mr. Burke in consequence of his reforms.