Catholics all kind of justice, I declare I would not, if it were in my
power, take that patronage on myself. I know I ought not to do it. I
belong to another community, and it would be intolerable usurpation for
me to affect such authority, where I conferred no benefit, or even if I
did confer (as in some degree the seraglio does) temporal advantages.
But allowing that the _present_ Castle finds itself fit to administer
the government of a church which they solemnly forswear, and forswear
with very hard words and many evil epithets, and that as often as they
qualify themselves for the power which is to give this very patronage,
or to give anything else that they desire,--yet they cannot insure
themselves that a man like the late Lord Chesterfield will not succeed
to them. This man, while he was duping the credulity of Papists with
fine words in private, and commending their good behavior during a
rebellion in Great Britain, (as it well deserved to be commended and
rewarded,) was capable of urging penal laws against them in a speech
from the throne, and of stimulating with provocatives the wearied and
half-exhausted bigotry of the then Parliament of Ireland. They set to
work, but they were at a loss what to do; for they had already almost
gone through every contrivance which could _waste the vigor_ of their
country: but, after much struggle, they produced a child of their old
age, the shocking and unnatural act about marriages, which tended to
finish the scheme for making the people not only two distinct parties
forever, but keeping them as two distinct species in the same land. Mr.
Gardiner's humanity was shocked at it, as one of the worst parts of that
truly barbarous system, if one could well settle the preference, where
almost all the parts were outrages on the rights of humanity and the
laws of Nature.
Suppose an atheist, playing the part of a bigot, should be in power
again in that country, do you believe that he would faithfully and
religiously administer the trust of appointing pastors to a church
which, wanting every other support, stands in tenfold need of ministers
who will be dear to the people committed to their charge, and who will
exercise a really paternal authority amongst them? But if the superior
power was always in a disposition to dispense conscientiously, and like
an upright trustee and guardian of these rights which he holds for those
with whom he is at variance, has he the capacity and means of doing it?
How can the Lord-Lieutenant form the least judgment of their merits, so
as to discern which of the Popish priests is fit to be made a bishop? It
cannot be: the idea is ridiculous. He will hand them over to
lords-lieutenant of counties, justices of the peace, and other persons,
who, for the purpose of vexing and turning to derision this miserable
people, will pick out the worst and most obnoxious they can find amongst
the clergy to set over the rest. Whoever is complained against by his
brother will be considered as persecuted; whoever is censured by his
superior will be looked upon as oppressed; whoever is careless in his
opinions and loose in his morals will be called a liberal man, and will
be supposed to have incurred hatred because he was not a bigot.
Informers, tale-bearers, perverse and obstinate men, flatterers, who
turn their back upon their flock and court the Protestant gentlemen of
the country, will be the objects of preferment. And then I run no risk
in foretelling that whatever order, quiet, and morality you have in the
country will be lost. A Popish clergy who are not restrained by the most
austere subordination will become a nuisance, a real public grievance of
the heaviest kind, in any country that entertains them; and instead of
the great benefit which Ireland does and has long derived from them, if
they are educated without any idea of discipline and obedience, and then
put under bishops who do not owe their station to their good opinion,
and whom they cannot respect, that nation will see disorders, of which,
bad as things are, it has yet no idea. I do not say this, as thinking
the leading men in Ireland would exercise this trust worse than others.
Not at all. No man, no set of men living are fit to administer the
affairs or regulate the interior economy of a church to which they are
enemies.
As to government, if I might recommend a prudent caution to them, it
would be, to innovate as little as possible, upon speculation, in
establishments from which, as they stand, they experience no material
inconvenience to the repose of the country,--_quieta non movere_.
I could say a great deal more; but I am tired, and am afraid your
Lordship is tired too. I have not sat to this letter a single quarter of
an hour without interruption. It has grown long, and probably contains
many repetitions, from my total want of leisure to digest and
consolidate my thoughts; and as to my expressions, I could wish to be
able perhaps to measure them more exactly. But my intentions are fair,
and I certainly mean to offend nobody.
* * * * *
Thinking over this matter more maturely, I see no reason for altering my
opinion in any part. The act, as far as it goes, is good undoubtedly. It
amounts, I think, very nearly to a _toleration_, with respect to
religious ceremonies; but it puts a new bolt on civil rights, and rivets
it to the old one in such a manner, that neither, I fear, will be easily
loosened. What I could have wished would be, to see the civil advantages
take the lead; the other, of a religious toleration, I conceive, would
follow, (in a manner,) of course. From what I have observed, it is
pride, arrogance, and a spirit of domination, and not a bigoted spirit
of religion, that has caused and kept up those oppressive statutes. I am
sure I have known those who have oppressed Papists in their civil rights
exceedingly indulgent to them in their religious ceremonies, and who
really wished them to continue Catholics, in order to furnish pretences
for oppression. These persons never saw a man (by converting) escape out
of their power, but with grudging and regret. I have known men to whom I
am not uncharitable in saying (though they are dead) that they would
have become Papists in order to oppress Protestants, if, being
Protestants, it was not in their power to oppress Papists. It is
injustice, and not a mistaken conscience, that has been the principle of
persecution,--at least, as far as it has fallen under my
observation.--However, as I began, so I end. I do not know the map of
the country. Mr. Gardiner, who conducts this great and difficult work,
and those who support him, are better judges of the business than I can
pretend to be, who have not set my foot in Ireland these sixteen years.
I have been given to understand that I am not considered as a friend to
that country; and I know that pains have been taken to lessen the credit
that I might have had there.
* * * * *
I am so convinced of the weakness of interfering in any business,
without the opinion of the people in whose business I interfere, that I
do not know how to acquit myself of what I have now done.
I have the honor to be, with high regard and esteem, my Lord,
Your Lordship's most obedient
And humble servant, &c.
EDMUND BURKE.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] The sketch of the bill sent to Mr. Burke, along with the repeal of
some acts, reaffirmed many others in the penal code. It was altered
afterwards, and the clauses reaffirming the incapacities left out; but
they all still exist, and are in full force.
[27] It appears that Mr. Hutchinson meant this only as one of the means
for their relief in point of education.
A
LETTER
TO
SIR HERCULES LANGRISHE, BART., M.P.,
ON THE SUBJECT OF
THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF IRELAND,
THE PROPRIETY OF ADMITTING THEM TO THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE, CONSISTENTLY
WITH THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSTITUTION, AS ESTABLISHED AT THE
REVOLUTION.
1792.
My Dear Sir,--Your remembrance of me, with sentiments of so much
kindness, has given me the most sincere satisfaction. It perfectly
agrees with the friendly and hospitable reception which my son and I
received from you some time since, when, after an absence of twenty-two
years, I had the happiness of embracing you, among my few surviving
friends.
I really imagined that I should not again interest myself in any public
business. I had, to the best of my moderate faculties, paid my club to
the society which I was born in some way or other to serve; and I
thought I had a right to put on my night-gown and slippers, and wish a
cheerful evening to the good company I must leave behind. But if our
resolutions of vigor and exertion are so often broken or procrastinated
in the execution, I think we may be excused, if we are not very punctual
in fulfilling our engagements to indolence and inactivity. I have,
indeed, no power of action, and am almost a cripple even with regard to
thinking; but you descend with force into the stagnant pool, and you
cause such a fermentation as to cure at least one impotent creature of
his lameness, though it cannot enable him either to run or to wrestle.
You see by the paper[28] I take that I am likely to be long, with malice
prepense. You have brought under my view a subject always difficult, at
present critical. It has filled my thoughts, which I wish to lay open to
you with the clearness and simplicity which your friendship demands from
me. I thank you for the communication of your ideas. I should be still
more pleased, if they had been more your own. What you hint I believe to
be the case: that, if you had not deferred to the judgment of others,
our opinions would not differ more materially at this day than they did
when we used to confer on the same subject so many years ago. If I still
persevere in my old opinions, it is no small comfort to me that it is
not with regard to doctrines properly yours that I discover my
indocility.
The case upon which your letter of the 10th of December turns is hardly
before me with precision enough to enable me to form any very certain
judgment upon it. It seems to be some plan of further indulgence
proposed for the Catholics of Ireland. You observe, that your "general
principles are not changed, but that _times and circumstances are
altered_." I perfectly agree with you, that times and circumstances,
considered with reference to the public, ought very much to govern our
conduct,--though I am far from slighting, when applied with discretion
to those circumstances, general principles and maxims of policy. I
cannot help observing, however, that you have said rather less upon the
inapplicability of your own old principles to the _circumstances_ that
are likely to influence your conduct against these principles than of
the _general_ maxims of state, which I can very readily believe not to
have great weight with you personally.
In my present state of imperfect information, you will pardon the
errors into which I may easily fall. The principles you lay down are,
"that the Roman Catholics should enjoy everything _under_ the state, but
should not be _the state itself_." And you add, "that, when you exclude
them from being _a part of the state_, you rather conform to the spirit
of the age than to any abstract doctrine"; but you consider the
Constitution as already established,--that our state is Protestant. "It
was declared so at the Revolution. It was so provided in the acts for
settling the succession of the crown:--the king's coronation oath was
enjoined in order to keep it so. The king, as first magistrate of the
state, is obliged to take the oath of abjuration,[29] and to subscribe
the Declaration; and by laws subsequent, every other magistrate and
member of the state, legislative and executive, are bound under the same
obligation."
As to the plan to which these maxims are applied, I cannot speak, as I
told you, positively about it: because neither from your letter, nor
from any in formation I have been able to collect, do I find anything
settled, either on the part of the Roman Catholics themselves, or on
that of any persons who may wish to conduct their affairs in Parliament.
But if I have leave to conjecture, something is in agitation towards
admitting them, under _certain qualifications_, to have _some share_ in
the election of members of Parliament. This I understand is the scheme
of those who are entitled to come within your description of persons of
consideration, property, and character,--and firmly attached to the king
and Constitution, as by "law established, with a grateful sense of your
former concessions, and a patient reliance on the benignity of
Parliament for the further mitigation of the laws that still affect
them."--As to the low, thoughtless, wild, and profligate, who have
joined themselves with those of other professions, but of the same
character, you are not to imagine that for a moment I can suppose them
to be met with anything else than the manly and enlightened energy of a
firm government, supported by the united efforts of all virtuous men, if
ever their proceedings should become so considerable as to demand its
notice. I really think that such associations should be crushed in their
very commencement.
Setting, therefore, this case out of the question, it becomes an object
of very serious consideration, whether, because wicked men of _various_
descriptions are engaged in seditious courses, the rational, sober, and
valuable part of _one_ description should not be indulged in their sober
and rational expectations. You, who have looked deeply into the spirit
of the Popery laws, must be perfectly sensible that a great part of the
present mischief which we abhor in common (if it at all exists) has
arisen from them. Their declared object was, to reduce the Catholics of
Ireland to a miserable populace, without property, without estimation,
without education. The professed object was, to deprive the few men,
who, in spite of those laws, might hold or obtain any property amongst
them, of all sort of influence or authority over the rest. They divided
the nation into two distinct bodies, without common interest, sympathy,
or connection. One of these bodies was to possess _all_ the franchises,
_all_ the property, _all_ the education: the other was to be composed of
drawers of water and cutters of turf for them. Are we to be astonished,
when, by the efforts of so much violence in conquest, and so much policy
in regulation, continued without intermission for near an hundred years,
we had reduced them to a mob, that, whenever they came to act at all,
many of them would act exactly like a mob, without temper, measure, or
foresight? Surely it might be just now a matter of temperate discussion,
whether you ought not to apply a remedy to the real cause of the evil.
If the disorder you speak of be real and considerable, you ought to
raise an aristocratic interest, that is, an interest of property and
education, amongst them,--and to strengthen, by every prudent means, the
authority and influence of men of that description. It will deserve your
best thoughts, to examine whether this can be done without giving such
persons the means of demonstrating to the rest that something more is to
be got by their temperate conduct than can be expected from the wild and
senseless projects of those who do not belong to their body, who have no
interest in their well-being, and only wish to make them the dupes of
their turbulent ambition.
If the absurd persons you mention find no way of providing for liberty,
but by overturning this happy Constitution, and introducing a frantic
democracy, let us take care how we prevent better people from any
rational expectations of partaking in the benefits of that Constitution
_as it stands_. The maxims you establish cut the matter short. They have
no sort of connection with the good or the ill behavior of the persons
who seek relief, or with the proper or improper means by which they seek
it. They form a perpetual bar to all pleas and to all expectations.
You begin by asserting, that "the Catholics ought to enjoy all things
_under_ the state, but that they ought not to _be the state_": a
position which, I believe, in the latter part of it, and in the latitude
there expressed, no man of common sense has ever thought proper to
dispute; because the contrary implies that the state ought to be in them
_exclusively_. But before you have finished the line, you express
yourself as if the other member of your proposition, namely, that "they
ought not to be a _part_ of the state," were necessarily included in the
first,--whereas I conceive it to be as different as a part is from the
whole, that is, just as different as possible. I know, indeed, that it
is common with those who talk very differently from you, that is, with
heat and animosity, to confound those things, and to argue the admission
of the Catholics into any, however minute and subordinate, parts of the
state, as a surrender into their hands of the whole government of the
kingdom. To them I have nothing at all to say.
Wishing to proceed with a deliberative spirit and temper in so very
serious a question, I shall attempt to analyze, as well as I can, the
principles you lay down, in order to fit them for the grasp of an
understanding so little comprehensive as
mine.--"State,"--"Protestant,"--"Revolution." These are terms which, if
not well explained, may lead us into many errors. In the word _State_ I
conceive there is much ambiguity. The state is sometimes used to signify
_the whole commonwealth_, comprehending all its orders, with the several
privileges belonging to each. Sometimes it signifies only _the higher
and ruling part_ of the commonwealth, which we commonly call _the
Government_. In the first sense, to be under the state, but not the
state itself, _nor any part of it_, that is, to be nothing at all in the
commonwealth, is a situation perfectly intelligible,--but to those who
fill that situation, not very pleasant, when it is understood. It is a
state of _civil servitude_, by the very force of the definition.
_Servorum non est respublica_ is a very old and a very true maxim. This
servitude, which makes men _subject_ to a state without being
_citizens_, may be more or less tolerable from many circumstances; but
these circumstances, more or less favorable, do not alter the nature of
the thing. The mildness by which absolute masters exercise their
dominion leaves them masters still. We may talk a little presently of
the manner in which the majority of the people of Ireland (the
Catholics) are affected by this situation, which at present undoubtedly
is theirs, and which you are of opinion ought so to continue forever.
In the other sense of the word _State_, by which is understood the
_Supreme Government_ only, I must observe this upon the question: that
to exclude whole classes of men entirely from this _part_ of government
cannot be considered as _absolute slavery_. It only implies a lower and
degraded state of citizenship: such is (with more or less strictness)
the condition of all countries in which an hereditary nobility possess
the exclusive rule. This may be no bad mode of government,--provided
that the personal authority of individual nobles be kept in due bounds,
that their cabals and factions are guarded against with a severe
vigilance, and that the people (who have no share in granting their own
money) are subjected to but light impositions, and are otherwise treated
with attention, and with indulgence to their humors and prejudices.
The republic of Venice is one of those which strictly confines all the
great functions and offices, such as are truly _stale_ functions and
_state_ offices, to those who by hereditary right or admission are noble
Venetians. But there are many offices, and some of them not mean nor
unprofitable, (that of Chancellor is one,) which are reserved for the
_cittadini_. Of these all citizens of Venice are capable. The
inhabitants of the _terra firma_, who are mere subjects of conquest,
that is, as you express it, under the state, but "not a part of it," are
not, however, subjects in so very rigorous a sense as not to be capable
of numberless subordinate employments. It is, indeed, one of the
advantages attending the narrow bottom of their aristocracy, (narrow as
compared with their acquired dominions, otherwise broad enough,) that an
exclusion from such employments cannot possibly be made amongst their
subjects. There are, besides, advantages in states so constituted, by
which those who are considered as of an inferior race are indemnified
for their exclusion from the government, and from nobler employments. In
all these countries, either by express law, or by usage more operative,
the noble castes are almost universally, in their turn, excluded from
commerce, manufacture, farming of land, and in general from all
lucrative civil professions. The nobles have the monopoly of honor; the
plebeians a monopoly of all the means of acquiring wealth. Thus some
sort of a balance is formed among conditions; a sort of compensation is
furnished to those who, in a _limited sense_, are excluded from the
government of the state.
Between the extreme of _a total exclusion_, to which your maxim goes,
and _an universal unmodified capacity_, to which the fanatics pretend,
there are many different degrees and stages, and a great variety of
temperaments, upon which prudence may give full scope to its exertions.
For you know that the decisions of prudence (contrary to the system of
the insane reasoners) differ from those of judicature; and that almost
all the former are determined on the more or the less, the earlier or
the later, and on a balance of advantage and inconvenience, of good and
evil.
In all considerations which turn upon the question of vesting or
continuing the state solely and exclusively in some one description of
citizens, prudent legislators will consider how far _the general form
and principles of their commonwealth render it fit to be cast into an
oligarchical shape, or to remain always in it_. We know that the
government of Ireland (the same as the British) is not in its
constitution _wholly_ aristocratical; and as it is not such in its form,
so neither is it in its spirit. If it had been inveterately
aristocratical, exclusions might be more patiently submitted to. The lot
of one plebeian would be the lot of all; and an habitual reverence and
admiration of certain families might make the people content to see
government wholly in hands to whom it seemed naturally to belong. But
our Constitution has _a plebeian member_, which forms an essential
integrant part of it. A plebeian oligarchy is a monster; and no people,
not absolutely domestic or predial slaves, will long endure it. The
Protestants of Ireland are not _alone_ sufficiently the people to form a
democracy; and they are _too numerous_ to answer the ends and purposes
of _an aristocracy_. Admiration, that first source of obedience, can be
only the claim or the imposture of the few. I hold it to be absolutely
impossible for two millions of plebeians, composing certainly a very
clear and decided majority in that class, to become so far in love with
six or seven hundred thousand of their fellow-citizens (to all outward
appearance plebeians like themselves, and many of them tradesmen,
servants, and otherwise inferior to some of them) as to see with
satisfaction, or even with patience, an exclusive power vested in them,
by which _constitutionally_ they become the absolute masters, and, by
the _manners_ derived from their circumstances, must be capable of
exercising upon them, daily and hourly, an insulting and vexatious
superiority. Neither are the majority of the Irish indemnified (as in
some aristocracies) for this state of humiliating vassalage (often
inverting the nature of things and relations) by having the lower walks
of industry wholly abandoned to them. They are rivalled, to say the
least of the matter, in every laborious and lucrative course of life;
while every franchise, every honor, every trust, every place, down to
the very lowest and least confidential, (besides whole professions,) is
reserved for the master caste.