CHAPTER II.

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THE WORKS

OF

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

EDMUND BURKE

IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME THE SIXTH

[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms.]

LONDON

JOHN C. NIMMO

14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.

MDCCCLXXXVII

CONTENTS OF VOL. VI.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND POSTHUMOUS VOLUME, IN A LETTER TO THE RIGHT

HON. WILLIAM ELLIOT v

FOURTH LETTER ON THE PROPOSALS FOR PEACE WITH THE REGICIDE DIRECTORY

OF FRANCE; WITH THE PRELIMINARY CORRESPONDENCE 1

LETTER TO THE EMPRESS OF RUSSIA, November 1, 1791 113

LETTER TO SIR CHARLES BINGHAM, BART., ON THE IRISH ABSENTEE TAX,

October 30, 1773 121

LETTER TO THE HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX, ON THE AMERICAN WAR,

October 8, 1777 135

LETTER TO THE MARQUIS OF ROCKINGHAM, WITH ADDRESSES TO THE KING,

AND THE BRITISH COLONISTS IN NORTH AMERICA, IN RELATION TO THE

MEASURES OF GOVERNMENT IN THE AMERICAN CONTEST, AND A PROPOSED

SECESSION OF THE OPPOSITION FROM PARLIAMENT, January, 1777 149

LETTER TO THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND S. PERRY, IN RELATION TO A BILL

FOR THE RELIEF OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF IRELAND, July 18, 1778 197

TWO LETTERS TO THOMAS BURGH, ESQ., AND JOHN MERLOTT, ESQ., IN

VINDICATION OF HIS PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT RELATIVE TO THE AFFAIRS

OF IRELAND, 1780 207

LETTERS AND REFLECTIONS ON THE EXECUTIONS OF THE RIOTERS IN 1780 239

LETTER TO THE RIGHT HON. HENRY DUNDAS: WITH THE SKETCH OF A NEGRO

CODE, 1792 255

LETTER TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE MEETING, HELD AT

AYLESBURY, APRIL 13, 1780, ON THE SUBJECT OF PARLIAMENTARY

REFORM 291

FRAGMENTS OF A TRACT RELATIVE TO THE LAWS AGAINST POPERY IN IRELAND 299

LETTER TO WILLIAM SMITH, ESQ., ON THE SUBJECT OF CATHOLIC

EMANCIPATION, January 29, 1795 361

SECOND LETTER TO SIR HERCULES LANGRISHE, ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION,

May 26, 1795 375

LETTER TO RICHARD BURKE, ESQ., ON PROTESTANT ASCENDENCY IN IRELAND,

1793 385

LETTER ON THE AFFAIRS OF IRELAND, 1797 413

PREFACE

TO THE SECOND POSTHUMOUS VOLUME,[1]

IN A LETTER TO

THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM ELLIOT

My dear sir,--As some prefatory account of the materials which compose

this second posthumous volume of the Works of Mr. Burke, and of the

causes which have prevented its earlier appearance, will be expected

from me, I hope I may be indulged in the inclination I feel to run over

these matters in a letter to you, rather than in a formal address to the

public.

Of the delay that has intervened since the publication of the former

volume I shall first say a few words. Having undertaken, in conjunction

with the late Dr. Laurence, to examine the manuscript papers of Mr.

Burke, and to select and prepare for the press such of them as should be

thought proper for publication, the difficulties attending our

coöperation were soon experienced by us. The remoteness of our places

of residence in summer, and our professional and other avocations in

winter, opposed perpetual obstacles to the progress of our undertaking.

Soon after the publication of the fourth volume, I was rendered

incapable of attending to any business by a severe and tedious illness.

And it was not long after my recovery before the health of our

invaluable friend began gradually to decline, and soon became unequal to

the increasing labors of his profession and the discharge of his

Parliamentary duties. At length we lost a man, of whom, as I shall have

occasion to speak more particularly in another part of this undertaking,

I will now content myself with saying, that in my humble opinion he

merited, and certainly obtained with those best acquainted with his

extensive learning and information, a considerable rank amongst the

eminent persons who have adorned the age in which we have lived, and of

whose services the public have been deprived by a premature death.

From these causes little progress had been made in our work when I was

deprived of my coadjutor. But from that time you can testify of me that

I have not been idle. You can bear witness to the confused state in

which the materials that compose the present volume came into my hands.

The difficulty of reading many of the manuscripts, obscured by

innumerable erasures, corrections, interlineations, and marginal

insertions, would perhaps have been insuperable to any person less

conversant in the manuscripts of Mr. Burke than myself. To this

difficulty succeeded that of selecting from several detached papers,

written upon the same subject and the same topics, such as appeared to

contain the author's last thoughts and emendations. When these

difficulties were overcome, there still remained, in many instances,

that of assigning its proper place to many detached members of the same

piece, where no direct note of connection had been made. These

circumstances, whilst they will lead the reader not to expect, in the

cases to which they apply, the finished productions of Mr. Burke,

imposed upon me a task of great delicacy and difficulty,--namely, that

of deciding upon the publication of any, and which, of these unfinished

pieces. I must here beg permission of you, and Lord Fitzwilliam, to

inform the public, that in the execution of this part of my duty I

requested and obtained your assistance.

Our first care was to ascertain, from such evidence, internal and

external, as the manuscripts themselves afforded, what pieces appeared

to have been at any time intended by the author for publication. Our

next was to select such as, though not originally intended for

publication, yet appeared to contain matter that might contribute to the

gratification and instruction of the public. Our last object was to

determine what degree of imperfection and incorrectness in papers of

either of these classes ought or ought not to exclude them from a place

in the present volume. This was, doubtless, the most nice and arduous

part of our undertaking. The difficulty, however, was, in our minds,

greatly diminished by our conviction that the reputation of our author

stood far beyond the reach of injury from any injudicious conduct of

ours in making this selection. On the other hand, we were desirous that

nothing should be withheld, from which the public might derive any

possible benefit.

Nothing more is now necessary than that I should give a short account of

the writings which compose the present volume.

I. Fourth Letter on a Regicide Peace.

Some account has already been given of this Letter in the Advertisement

to the fourth quarto volume.[2] That part of it which is contained

between the first and the middle of the page 67[3] is taken from a

manuscript which, nearly to the conclusion, had received the author's

last corrections: the subsequent part, to the middle of the page 71,[4]

is taken from some loose manuscripts, that were dictated by the author,

but do not appear to have been revised by him; and though they, as well

as what follows to the conclusion, were evidently designed to make a

part of this Letter, the editor alone is responsible for the order in

which they are here placed. The last part, from the middle of the page

71, had been printed as a part of the Letter which was originally

intended to be the third on Regicide Peace, as in the preface to the

fourth volume has already been noticed.

It was thought proper to communicate this Letter before its publication

to Lord Auckland, the author of the pamphlet so frequently alluded to in

it. His Lordship, in consequence of this communication, was pleased to

put into my hands a letter with which he had sent his pamphlet to Mr.

Burke at the time of its publication, and Mr. Burke's answer to that

letter. These pieces, together with the note with which his Lordship

transmitted them to me, are prefixed to the Letter on Regicide Peace.

II. Letter to the Empress of Russia.

III. Letter to Sir Charles Bingham.

IV. Letter to the Honorable Charles James Fox.

Of these Letters it will be sufficient to remark, that they come under

the second of those classes into which, as I before observed, we divided

the papers that presented themselves to our consideration.

V. Letter to the Marquis of Rockingham.

VI. An Address to the King.

VII. An Address to the British Colonists in North America.

These pieces relate to a most important period in the present reign;

and I hope no apology will be necessary for giving them to the public.

VIII. Letter to the Right Honorable Edmund [Sexton] Pery.

IX. Letter to Thomas Burgh, Esq.

X. Letter to John Merlott, Esq.

The reader will find, in a note annexed to each of these Letters, an

account of the occasions on which they were written. The Letter to T.

Burgh, Esq., had found its way into some of the periodical prints of the

time in Dublin.

XI. Reflections on the Approaching Executions.

It may not, perhaps, now be generally known that Mr. Burke was a marked

object of the rioters in this disgraceful commotion, from whose fury he

narrowly escaped. The Reflections will be found to contain maxims of the

soundest judicial policy, and do equal honor to the head and heart of

their illustrious writer.

XII. Letter to the Right Honorable Henry Dundas; with the Sketch of a

Negro Code.

Mr. Burke, in the Letter to Mr. Dundas, has entered fully into his own

views of the Slave Trade, and has thereby rendered any further

explanation on that subject at present unnecessary. With respect to the

Code itself, an unsuccessful attempt was made to procure the copy of it

transmitted to Mr. Dundas. It was not to be found amongst his papers.

The Editor has therefore been obliged to have recourse to a rough draft

of it in Mr. Burke's own handwriting; from which he hopes he has

succeeded in making a pretty correct transcript of it, as well as in the

attempt he has made to supply the marginal references alluded to in Mr.

Burke's Letter to Mr. Dundas.

XIII. Letter to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting.

Of the occasion of this Letter an account is given in the note subjoined

[prefixed] to it.

XIV. Tracts and Letters relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland.

These pieces consist of,--

1. An unfinished Tract on the Popery Laws. Of this Tract the reader will

find an account in the note prefixed to it.

2. A Letter to William Smith, Esq. Several copies of this letter having

got abroad, it was printed and published in Dublin without the

permission of Mr. Burke, or of the gentleman to whom it was addressed.

3. Second Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe. This may be considered as

supplementary to the first letter, addressed to the same person in

January, 1792, which was published in the third volume.[5]

4. Letter to Richard Burke, Esq. Of this letter it will be necessary to

observe, that the first part of it appears to have been originally

addressed by Mr. Burke to his son in the manner in which it is now

printed, but to have been left unfinished; after whose death he probably

designed to have given the substance of it, with additional

observations, to the public in some other form, but never found leisure

or inclination to finish it.

5. A Letter on the Affairs of Ireland, written in the year 1797. The

name of the person to whom this letter was addressed does not appear on

the manuscript; nor has the letter been found to which it was written as

an answer. And as the gentleman whom he employed as an amanuensis is not

now living, no discovery of it can be made, unless this publication of

the letter should produce some information respecting it, that may

enable us in a future volume to gratify, on this point, the curiosity of

the reader. The letter was dictated, as he himself tells us, from his

couch at Bath; to which place he had gone, by the advice of his

physicians, in March, 1797. His health was now rapidly declining; the

vigor of his mind remained unimpaired. This, my dear friend, was, I

believe, the last letter dictated by him on public affairs:--here ended

his political labors.

XV. Fragments and Notes of Speeches in Parliament.

1. Speech on the Acts of Uniformity.

2. Speech on a Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters.

3. Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians.

4. Speech on the Middlesex Election.

5. Speech on a Bill for shortening the Duration of Parliaments.

6. Speech on the Reform of the Representation in Parliament.

7. Speech on a Bill for explaining the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions

for Libels.

*7. Letter relative to the same subject.

8. Speech on a Bill for repealing the Marriage Act.

9. Speech on a Bill to quiet the Possessions of the Subject against

Dormant Claims of the Church.

With respect to these fragments, I have already stated the reasons by

which we were influenced in our determination to publish them. An

account of the state in which these manuscripts were found is given in

the note prefixed to this article.

XVI. Hints for an Essay on the Drama.

This fragment was perused in manuscript by a learned and judicious

critic, our late lamented friend, Mr. Malone; and under the protection

of his opinion we can feel no hesitation in submitting it to the

judgment of the public.

XVII. We are now come to the concluding article of this volume,--the

Essay on the History of England.

At what time of the author's life it was written cannot now be exactly

ascertained; but it was certainly begun before he had attained the age

of twenty-seven years, as it appears from an entry in the books of the

late Mr. Dodsley, that eight sheets of it, which contain the first

seventy-four pages of the present edition,[6] were printed in the year

1757. This is the only part that has received the finishing stroke of

the author. In those who are acquainted with the manner in which Mr.

Burke usually composed his graver literary works, and of which some

account is given in the Advertisement prefixed to the fourth volume,

this circumstance will excite a deep regret; and whilst the public

partakes with us in this feeling, it will doubtless be led to judge with

candor and indulgence of a work left in this imperfect and unfinished

state by its author.

Before I conclude, it may not be improper to take this opportunity of

acquainting the public with the progress that has been made towards the

completion of this undertaking. The sixth and seventh volumes, which

will consist entirely of papers that have a relation to the affairs of

the East India Company, and to the impeachment of Mr. Hastings, are now

in the press. The suspension of the consideration of the affairs of the

East India Company in Parliament till its nest session has made me very

desirous to get the sixth volume out as early as possible in the next

winter. The Ninth and Eleventh Reports of the Select Committee,

appointed to take into consideration certain affairs of the East India

Company in the year 1783, were written by Mr. Burke, and will be given

in that volume. They contain a full and comprehensive view of the

commerce, revenues, civil establishment, and general policy of the

Company, and will therefore be peculiarly interesting at this time to

the public.

The eighth and last volume will contain a narrative of the life of Mr.

Burke, which will be accompanied with such parts of his familiar

correspondence, and other occasional productions, as shall be thought

fit for publication.[7] The materials relating to the early years of his

life, alluded to in the Advertisement to the fourth volume, have been

lately recovered; and the communication of such as may still remain in

the possession of any private individuals is again most earnestly

requested.

Unequal as I feel myself to the task, I shall, my dear friend, lose no

time, nor spare any pains, in discharging the arduous duty that has

devolved upon me. You know the peculiar difficulties I labor under from

the failure of my eyesight; and you may congratulate me upon the

assistance which I have now procured from my neighbor, the worthy

chaplain[8] of Bromley College, who to the useful qualification of a

most patient amanuensis adds that of a good scholar and intelligent

critic.

And now, adieu, my dear friend,

And believe me ever affectionately yours,

WR. ROFFEN.

BROMLEY HOUSE, August 1, 1812.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Works, Vol. V., quarto edition, (London, F., C., & J. Rivington,

1812,)--Vol. IV. of that edition (London, F. & C. Rivington, 1802) being

the first posthumous volume,--and Vols. I., II., and III. (London, J.

Dodsley, 1792) comprising the collection published during the lifetime

of Mr. Burke.

[2] Prefixed to the first volume, in the other editions. For the account

referred to, see, in the present edition, Vol. I., pp. xiii., xiv.

[3] Page 86 of the present edition.

[4] In this edition, p. 91, near the top.

[5] In the fourth volume of the present edition.

[6] The quarto edition,--extending as far as Book II. ch. 2, near the

middle of the paragraph commencing, "The same regard to the welfare of

the people," &c.

[7] This design the editor did not live to execute.

[8] The Rev. J.J. Talman.

FOURTH LETTER

ON THE

PROPOSALS FOR PEACE WITH THE REGICIDE DIRECTORY OF FRANCE.

ADDRESSED TO

THE EARL FITZWILLIAM.

1795-7.

PRELIMINARY CORRESPONDENCE.

_Letter from the Right Honorable the Lord Auckland to the Lord Bishop of

Rochester_.

EDEN FARM, KENT, July 18th, 1812.

My dear Lord,--Mr. Burke's fourth letter to Lord Fitzwilliam is

personally interesting to me: I have perused it with a respectful

attention.

When I communicated to Mr. Burke, in 1795, the printed work which he

arraigns and discusses, I was aware that he would differ from me.

Some light is thrown on the transaction by my note which gave rise to

it, and by his answer, which exhibits the admirable powers of his great

and good mind, deeply suffering at the time under a domestic calamity.

I have selected these two papers from my manuscript collection, and now

transmit them to your Lordship with a wish that they may be annexed to

the publication in question.

I have the honor to be, my dear Lord,

Yours most sincerely,

AUCKLAND.

TO THE RIGHT REV. THE LORD BISHOP OF ROCHESTER.

* * * * *

_Letter from Lord Auckland to the Right Honorable Edmund Burke_.

EDEN FARM, KENT, October 28th, 1795.

My dear Sir,--

Though in the stormy ocean of the last twenty-three years we have seldom

sailed on the same tack, there has been nothing hostile in our signals

or manoeuvres, and, on my part at least, there has been a cordial

disposition towards friendly and respectful sentiments. Under that

influence, I now send to you a small work which exhibits my fair and

full opinions on the arduous circumstances of the moment, "as far as the

cautions necessary to be observed will permit me to go beyond general

ideas."

Three or four of those friends with whom I am most connected in public

and private life are pleased to think that the statement in question

(which at first made part of a confidential paper) may do good, and

accordingly a very large impression will be published to-day. I neither

seek to avow the publication nor do I wish to disavow it. I have no

anxiety in that respect, but to contribute my mite to do service, at a

moment when service is much wanted.

I am, my dear Sir,

Most sincerely yours,

AUCKLAND.

RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE.

* * * * *

_Letter from the Right Honorable Edmund Burke to Lord Auckland_.

My dear Lord,--

I am perfectly sensible of the very flattering honor you have done me in

turning any part of your attention towards a dejected old man, buried

in the anticipated grave of a feeble old age, forgetting and forgotten

in an obscure and melancholy retreat.

In this retreat I have nothing relative to this world to do, but to

study all the tranquillity that in the state of my mind I am capable of.

To that end I find it but too necessary to call to my aid an oblivion of

most of the circumstances, pleasant and unpleasant, of my life,--to

think as little and indeed to know as little as I can of everything that

is doing about me,--and, above all, to divert my mind from all

presagings and prognostications of what I must (if I let my speculations

loose) consider as of absolute necessity to happen after my death, and

possibly even before it. Your address to the public, which you have been

so good as to send to me, obliges me to break in upon that plan, and to

look a little on what is behind, and very much on what is before me. It

creates in my mind a variety of thoughts, and all of them unpleasant.

It is true, my Lord, what you say, that, through our public life, we

have generally sailed on somewhat different tacks. We have so,

undoubtedly; and we should do so still, if I had continued longer to

keep the sea. In that difference, you rightly observe that I have always

done justice to your skill and ability as a navigator, and to your good

intentions towards the safety of the cargo and of the ship's company. I

cannot say now that we are on different tacks. There would be no

propriety in the metaphor. I can sail no longer. My vessel cannot be

said to be even in port. She is wholly condemned and broken up. To have

an idea of that vessel, you must call to mind what you have often seen

on the Kentish road. Those planks of tough and hardy oak, that used for

years to brave the buffets of the Bay of Biscay, are now turned, with

their warped grain and empty trunnion-holes, into very wretched pales

for the inclosure of a wretched farm-yard.

The style of your pamphlet, and the eloquence and power of composition

you display in it, are such as do great honor to your talents, and in

conveying any other sentiments would give me very great pleasure.

Perhaps I do not very perfectly comprehend your purpose, and the drift

of your arguments. If I do not, pray do not attribute my mistake to want

of candor, but to want of sagacity. I confess, your address to the

public, together with other accompanying circumstances, has filled me

with a degree of grief and dismay which I cannot find words to express.

If the plan of politics there recommended--pray excuse my

freedom--should be adopted by the king's councils, and by the good

people of this kingdom, (as, so recommended, undoubtedly it will,)

nothing can be the consequence but utter and irretrievable ruin to the

ministry, to the crown, to the succession,--to the importance, to the

independence, to the very existence, of this country. This is my feeble,

perhaps, but clear, positive, decided, long and maturely reflected and

frequently declared opinion, from which all the events which have lately

come to pass, so far from turning me, have tended to confirm beyond the

power of alteration, even by your eloquence and authority. I find, my

dear Lord, that you think some persons, who are not satisfied with the

securities of a Jacobin peace, to be persons of intemperate minds. I may

be, and I fear I am, with you in that description; but pray, my Lord,

recollect that very few of the causes which make men intemperate can

operate upon me. Sanguine hopes, vehement desires, inordinate ambition,

implacable animosity, party attachments, or party interests,--all these

with me have no existence. For myself, or for a family, (alas! I have

none,) I have nothing to hope or to fear in this world. I am attached,

by principle, inclination, and gratitude, to the king, and to the

present ministry.

Perhaps you may think that my animosity to opposition is the cause of my

dissent, on seeing the politics of Mr. Fox (which, while I was in the

world, I combated by every instrument which God had put into my hands,

and in every situation in which I had taken part) so completely, if I at

all understand you, adopted in your Lordship's book: but it was with

pain I broke with that great man forever in that cause; and I assure

you, it is not without pain that I differ with your Lordship on the same

principles. But it is of no concern. I am far below the region of those

great and tempestuous passions. I feel nothing of the intemperance of

mind. It is rather sorrow and dejection than anger.

Once more my best thanks for your very polite attention; and do me the

favor to believe me, with the most perfect sentiments of respect and

regard,

My dear Lord,

Your Lordship's most obedient and humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

BEACONSFIELD, Oct. 30th, 1795.

Friday Evening.

LETTER IV.

TO THE EARL FITZWILLIAM.

My dear Lord,--I am not sure that the best way of discussing any

subject, except those that concern the abstracted sciences, is not

somewhat in the way of dialogue. To this mode, however, there are two

objections: the first, that it happens, as in the puppet-show, one man

speaks for all the personages. An unnatural uniformity of tone is in a

manner unavoidable. The other and more serious objection is, that, as

the author (if not an absolute skeptic) must have some opinion of his

own to enforce, he will be continually tempted to enervate the arguments

he puts into the mouth of his adversary, or to place them in a point of

view most commodious for their refutation. There is, however, a sort of

dialogue not quite so liable to these objections, because it approaches

more nearly to truth and Nature: it is called CONTROVERSY. Here the

parties speak for themselves. If the writer who attacks another's

notions does not deal fairly with his adversary, the diligent reader has

it always in his power, by resorting to the work examined, to do justice

to the original author and to himself. For this reason you will not

blame me, if, in my discussion of the merits of a Regicide Peace, I do

not choose to trust to my own statements, but to bring forward along

with them the arguments of the advocates for that measure. If I choose

puny adversaries, writers of no estimation or authority, then you will

justly blame me. I might as well bring in at once a fictitious speaker,

and thus fall into all the inconveniences of an imaginary dialogue. This

I shall avoid; and I shall take no notice of any author who my friends

in town do not tell me is in estimation with those whose opinions he

supports.

A piece has been sent to me, called "Some Remarks on the Apparent

Circumstances of the War in the Fourth Week of October, 1795," with a

French motto: "_Que faire encore une fois dans une telle nuit? Attendre

le jour_." The very title seemed to me striking and peculiar, and to

announce something uncommon. In the time I have lived to, I always seem

to walk on enchanted ground. Everything is new, and, according to the

fashionable phrase, revolutionary. In former days authors valued

themselves upon the maturity and fulness of their deliberations.

Accordingly, they predicted (perhaps with more arrogance than reason) an

eternal duration to their works. The quite contrary is our present

fashion. Writers value themselves now on the instability of their

opinions and the transitory life of their productions. On this kind of

credit the modern institutors open their schools. They write for youth,

and it is sufficient, if the instruction "lasts as long as a present

love, or as the painted silks and cottons of the season."

The doctrines in this work are applied, for their standard, with great

exactness, to the shortest possible periods both of conception and

duration. The title is "Some Remarks on the _Apparent_ Circumstances of

the War _in the Fourth Week of October_, 1795." The time is critically

chosen. A month or so earlier would have made it the anniversary of a

bloody Parisian September, when the French massacre one another. A day

or two later would have carried it into a London November, the gloomy

month in which it is said by a pleasant author that Englishmen hang and

drown themselves. In truth, this work has a tendency to alarm us with

symptoms of public suicide. However, there is one comfort to be taken

even from the gloomy time of year. It is a rotting season. If what is

brought to market is not good, it is not likely to keep long. Even

buildings run up in haste with untempered mortar in that humid weather,

if they are ill-contrived tenements, do not threaten long to incumber

the earth. The author tells us (and I believe he is the very first

author that ever told such a thing to his readers) "that the _entire

fabric_ of his speculations might be overset by unforeseen

vicissitudes," and what is far more extraordinary, "that even the

_whole_ consideration might be _varied whilst he was writing those

pages."_ Truly, in my poor judgment, this circumstance formed a very

substantial motive for his not publishing those ill-considered

considerations at all. He ought to have followed the good advice of his

motto: "_Que faire encore dans une telle nuit? Attendre le jour_." He

ought to have waited till he had got a little more daylight on this

subject. Night itself is hardly darker than the fogs of that time.

Finding the _last week in October_ so particularly referred to, and not

perceiving any particular event, relative to the war, which happened on

any of the days in that week, I thought it possible that they were

marked by some astrological superstition, to which the greatest

politicians have been subject. I therefore had recourse to my Rider's

Almanack. There I found, indeed, something that characterized the work,

and that gave directions concerning the sudden political and natural

variations, and for eschewing the maladies that are most prevalent in

that aguish intermittent season, "the last week of October." On that

week the sagacious astrologer, Rider, in his note on the third column of

the calendar side, teaches us to expect "_variable and cold weather";_

but instead of encouraging us to trust ourselves to the haze and mist

and doubtful lights of that changeable week, on the answerable part of

the opposite page he gives us a salutary caution (indeed, it is very

nearly in the words of the author's motto): "_Avoid_," says he, "_being

out late at night and in foggy weather, for a cold now caught may last

the whole winter_."[9] This ingenious author, who disdained the prudence

of the Almanack, walked out in the very fog he complains of, and has led

us to a very unseasonable airing at that time. Whilst this noble writer,

by the vigor of an excellent constitution, formed for the violent

changes he prognosticates, may shake off the importunate rheum and

malignant influenza of this disagreeable week, a whole Parliament may go

on spitting and snivelling, and wheezing and coughing, during a whole

session. All this from listening to variable, hebdomadal politicians,

who run away from their opinions without giving us a month's

warning,--and for not listening to the wise and friendly admonitions of

Dr. Cardanus Rider, who never apprehends he may change his opinions

before his pen is out of his hand, but always enables us to lay in at

least a year's stock of useful information.

At first I took comfort. I said to myself, that, if I should, as I fear

I must, oppose the doctrines of _the last week of October_, it is

probable that by this time they are no longer those of the eminent

writer to whom they are attributed. He gives us hopes that long before

this he may have embraced the direct contrary sentiments. If I am found

in a conflict with those of the last week of October, I may be in full

agreement with those of the last week in December, or the first week in

January, 1796. But a second edition, and a French translation, (for the

benefit, I must suppose, of the new Regicide Directory,) have let down a

little of these flattering hopes. We and the Directory know that the

author, whatever changes his works seemed made to indicate, like a

weathercock grown rusty, remains just where he was in the last week of

last October. It is true, that his protest against binding him to his

opinions, and his reservation of a right to whatever opinions he

pleases, remain in their full force. This variability is pleasant, and

shows a fertility of fancy:--

Qualis in æthereo felix Vertumnus Olympo

Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet.

Yet, doing all justice to the sportive variability of these weekly,

daily, or hourly speculators, shall I be pardoned, if I attempt a word

on the part of us simple country folk? It is not good for _us_, however

it may be so for great statesmen, that we should be treated with

variable politics. I consider different relations as prescribing a

different conduct. I allow, that, in transactions with an enemy, a

minister may, and often must, vary his demands with the day, possibly

with the hour. With an enemy, a fixed plan, variable arrangements. This

is the rule the nature of the transaction prescribes. But all this

belongs to treaty. All these shiftings and changes are a sort of secret

amongst the parties, till a definite settlement is brought about. Such

is the spirit of the proceedings in the doubtful and transitory state of

things between enmity and friendship. In this change the subjects of the

transformation are by nature carefully wrapt up in their cocoons. The

gay ornament of summer is not seemly in his aurelia state. This

mutability is allowed to a foreign negotiator; but when a great

politician condescends publicly to instruct his own countrymen on a

matter which may fix their fate forever, his opinions ought not to be

diurnal, or even weekly. These ephemerides of politics are not made for

our slow and coarse understandings. Our appetite demands a _piece of

resistance_. We require some food that will stick to the ribs. We call

for sentiments to which we can attach ourselves,--sentiments in which we

can take an interest,--sentiments on which we can warm, on which we can

ground some confidence in ourselves or in others. We do not want a

largess of inconstancy. Poor souls, we have enough of that sort of

poverty at home. There is a difference, too, between deliberation and

doctrine: a man ought to be decided in his opinions before he attempts

to teach. His fugitive lights may serve himself in some unknown region,

but they cannot free us from the effects of the error into which we have

been betrayed. His active Will-o'-the-wisp may be gone nobody can guess

where, whilst he leaves us bemired and benighted in the bog.

Having premised these few reflections upon this new mode of teaching a

lesson, which whilst the scholar is getting by heart the master forgets,

I come to the lesson itself. On the fullest consideration of it, I am

utterly incapable of saying with any great certainty what it is, in the

detail, that the author means to affirm or deny, to dissuade or

recommend. His march is mostly oblique, and his doctrine rather in the

way of insinuation than of dogmatic assertion. It is not only fugitive

in its duration, but is slippery in the extreme whilst it lasts.

Examining it part by part, it seems almost everywhere to contradict

itself; and the author, who claims the privilege of varying his

opinions, has exercised this privilege in every section of his remarks.

For this reason, amongst others, I follow the advice which the able

writer gives in his last page, which is, "to consider the _impression_

of what he has urged, taken from the _whole_, and not from detached

paragraphs." That caution was not absolutely necessary. I should think

it unfair to the author and to myself to have proceeded otherwise. This

author's _whole_, however, like every other whole, cannot be so well

comprehended without some reference to the parts; but they shall be

again referred to the whole. Without this latter attention, several of

the passages would certainly remain covered with an impenetrable and

truly oracular obscurity.

The great, general, pervading purpose, of the whole pamphlet is to

reconcile us to peace with the present usurpation in France. In this

general drift of the author I can hardly be mistaken. The other

purposes, less general, and subservient to the preceding scheme, are to

show, first, that the time of the Remarks was the favorable time for

making that peace upon our side; secondly, that on the enemy's side

their disposition towards the acceptance of such terms as he is pleased

to offer was rationally to be expected; the third purpose was, to make

some sort of disclosure of the terms which, if the Regicides are pleased

to grant them, this nation ought to be contented to accept: these form

the basis of the negotiation which the author, whoever he is, proposes

to open.

Before I consider these Remarks along with the other reasonings which I

hear on the same subject, I beg leave to recall to your mind the

observation I made early in our correspondence, and which ought to

attend us quite through the discussion of this proposed peace, amity, or

fraternity, or whatever you may call it,--that is, the real quality and

character of the party you have to deal with. This I find, as a thing of

no importance, has everywhere escaped the author of the October Remarks.

That hostile power, to the period of the fourth week in that month, has

been ever called and considered as an usurpation. In that week, for the

first time, it changed its name of an usurped power, and took the simple

name of _France_. The word France is slipped in just as if the

government stood exactly as before that Revolution which has astonished,

terrified, and almost overpowered Europe. "France," says the author,

"will do this,"--"it is the interest of France,"--"the returning honor

and generosity of France," &c., &c.--always merely France: just as if

we were in a common political war with an old recognized member of the

commonwealth of Christian Europe,--and as if our dispute had turned upon

a mere matter of territorial or commercial controversy, which a peace

might settle by the imposition or the taking off a duty, with the gain

or the loss of a remote island or a frontier town or two, on the one

side or the other. This shifting of persons could not be done without

the hocus-pocus of _abstraction_. We have been in a grievous error: we

thought that we had been at war with _rebels_ against the lawful

government, but that we were friends and allies of what is properly

France, friends and allies to the legal body politic of France. But by

sleight of hand the Jacobins are clean vanished, and it is France we

have got under our cup. "Blessings on his soul that first invented

sleep!" said Don Sancho Panza the Wise. All those blessings, and ten

thousand times more, on him who found out abstraction, personification,

and impersonals! In certain cases they are the first of all soporifics.

Terribly alarmed we should be, if things were proposed to us in the

_concrete_, and if fraternity was held out to us with the individuals

who compose this France by their proper names and descriptions,--if we

were told that it was very proper to enter into the closest bonds of

amity and good correspondence with the devout, pacific, and

tender-hearted Sieyès, with the all-accomplished Reubell, with the

humane guillotinists of Bordeaux, Tallien and Isabeau, with the meek

butcher, Legendre, and with "the returned humanity and generosity" (that

had been only on a visit abroad) of the virtuous regicide brewer,

Santerre. This would seem at the outset a very strange scheme of amity

and concord,--nay, though we had held out to us, as an additional

_douceur_, an assurance of the cordial fraternal embrace of our pious

and patriotic countryman, Thomas Paine. But plain truth would here be

shocking and absurd; therefore comes in _abstraction_ and

personification. "Make your peace with France." That word _France_

sounds quite as well as any other; and it conveys no idea but that of a

very pleasant country and very hospitable inhabitants. Nothing absurd

and shocking in amity and good correspondence with _France_. Permit me

to say, that I am not yet well acquainted with this new-coined France,

and without a careful assay I am not willing to receive it in currency

in place of the old Louis-d'or.

Having, therefore, slipped the persons with whom we are to treat out of

view, we are next to be satisfied that the French Revolution, which this

peace is to fix and consolidate, ought to give us no just cause of

apprehension. Though the author labors this point, yet he confesses a

fact (indeed, he could not conceal it) which renders all his labors

utterly fruitless. He confesses that the Regicide means to _dictate_ a

pacification, and that this pacification, according to their decree

passed but a very few days before his publication appeared, is to "unite

to their empire, either in possession or dependence, new barriers, many

frontier places of strength, a large sea-coast, and many sea-ports." He

ought to have stated it, that they would annex to their territory a

country about a third as large as France, and much more than half as

rich, and in a situation the most important for command that it would be

possible for her anywhere to possess.

To remove this terror, (even if the Regicides should carry their

point,) and to give us perfect repose with regard to their empire,

whatever they may acquire, or whomsoever they might destroy, he raises a

doubt "whether France will not be ruined by _retaining_ these conquests,

and whether she will not wholly lose that preponderance which she has

held in the scale of European powers, and will not eventually be

destroyed by the effect of her present successes, or, at least, whether,

so far as the _political interests of England are concerned_, she

[France] will remain an object of as _much jealousy and alarm as she was

under the reign of a monarch_." Here, indeed, is a paragraph full of

meaning! It gives matter for meditation almost in every word of it. The

secret of the pacific politicians is out. This republic, at all hazards,

is to be maintained. It is to be confined within some bounds, if we can;

if not, with every possible acquisition of power, it is still to be

cherished and supported. It is the return of the monarchy we are to

dread, and therefore we ought to pray for the permanence of the Regicide

authority. _Esto perpetua_ is the devout ejaculation of our Frà Paolo

for the Republic one and indivisible. It was the monarchy that rendered

France dangerous: Regicide neutralizes all the acrimony of that power,

and renders it safe and social. The October speculator is of opinion

that monarchy is of so poisonous a quality that a moderate territorial

power is far more dangerous to its neighbors under that abominable

regimen than the greatest empire in the hands of a republic. This is

Jacobinism sublimed and exalted into most pure and perfect essence. It

is a doctrine, I admit, made to allure and captivate, if anything in the

world can, the Jacobin Directory, to mollify the ferocity of Regicide,

and to persuade those patriotic hangmen, after their reiterated oaths

for our extirpation, to admit this well-humbled nation to the fraternal

embrace. I do not wonder that this tub of October has been racked off

into a French cask. It must make its fortune at Paris. That translation

seems the language the most suited to these sentiments. Our author tells

the French Jacobins, that the political interests of Great Britain are

in perfect unison with the principles of their government,--that they

may take and keep the keys of the civilized world, for they are safe in

their unambitious and faithful custody. We say to them, "We may, indeed,

wish you to be a little less murderous, wicked, and atheistical, for the

sake of morals; we may think it were better you were less new-fangled in

your speech, for the sake of grammar; but, as _politicians_, provided

you keep clear of monarchy, all our fears, alarms, and jealousies are at

an end: at least, they sink into nothing in comparison of our dread of

your detestable royalty." A flatterer of Cardinal Mazarin said, when

that minister had just settled the match between the young Louis the

Fourteenth and a daughter of Spain, that this alliance had the effect of

faith and had removed mountains,--that the Pyrenees were levelled by

that marriage. You may now compliment Reubell in the same spirit on the

miracles of regicide, and tell him that the guillotine of Louis the

Sixteenth had consummated a marriage between Great Britain and France,

which dried up the Channel, and restored the two countries to the unity

which it is said they had before the unnatural rage of seas and

earthquakes had broke off their happy junction. It will be a fine

subject for the poets who are to prophesy the blessings of this peace.

I am now convinced that the Remarks of the last week of October cannot

come from the author to whom they are given, they are such a direct

contradiction to the style of manly indignation with which he spoke of

those miscreants and murderers in his excellent memorial to the States

of Holland,--to that very state which the author who presumes to

personate him does not find it contrary to the political interests of

England to leave in the hands of these very miscreants, against whom on

the part of England he took so much pains to animate their republic.

This cannot be; and if this argument wanted anything to give it new

force, it is strengthened by an additional reason, that is irresistible.

Knowing that noble person, as well as myself, to be under very great

obligations to the crown, I am confident he would not so very directly

contradict, even in the paroxysm of his zeal against monarchy, the

declarations made in the name and with the fullest approbation of our

sovereign, his master, and our common benefactor. In those declarations

you will see that the king, instead of being sensible of greater alarm

and jealousy from a neighboring crowned head than from, these regicides,

attributes all the dangers of Europe to the latter. Let this writer hear

the description given in the royal declaration of the scheme of power of

these miscreants, as "_a system destructive of all public order,

maintained by proscriptions, exiles, and confiscations without number,

by arbitrary imprisonments, by massacres which cannot be remembered

without horror, and at length by the execrable murder of a just and

beneficent sovereign, and of the illustrious princess, who with an

unshaken firmness has shared all the misfortunes of her royal consort,

his protracted sufferings, his cruel captivity, his ignominious

death_." After thus describing, with an eloquence and energy equalled

only by its truth, the means by which this usurped power had been

acquired and maintained, that government is characterized with equal

force. His Majesty, far from thinking monarchy in France to be a greater

object of jealousy than the Regicide usurpation, calls upon the French

to reestablish "_a monarchical government_" for the purpose of shaking

off "_the yoke of a sanguinary anarchy_,--_of that anarchy which has

broken all the most sacred bonds of society, dissolved all the relations

of civil life, violated every right, confounded every duty_,--_which

uses the name of liberty to exercise the most cruel tyranny, to

annihilate all property, to seize on all possessions_,--_which founds

its power on the pretended consent of the people, and itself carries

fire and sword through extensive provinces, for having demanded their

laws, their religion, and their lawful sovereign_."

"That strain I heard was of a higher mood." That declaration of our

sovereign was worthy of his throne. It is in a style which neither the

pen of the writer of October nor such a poor crow-quill as mine can ever

hope to equal. I am happy to enrich my letter with this fragment of

nervous and manly eloquence, which, if it had not emanated from the

awful authority of a throne, if it were not recorded amongst the most

valuable monuments of history, and consecrated in the archives of

states, would be worthy, as a private composition, to live forever in

the memory of men.

In those admirable pieces does his Majesty discover this new opinion of

his political security, in having the chair of the scorner, that is, the

discipline of atheism, and the block of regicide, set up by his side,

elevated on the same platform, and shouldering, with the vile image of

their grim and bloody idol, the inviolable majesty of his throne? The

sentiments of these declarations are the very reverse: they could not be

other. Speaking of the spirit of that usurpation, the royal manifesto

describes, with perfect truth, its internal tyranny to have been

established as the very means of shaking the security of all other

states,--as "_disposing arbitrarily of the property and blood of the

inhabitants of France, in order to disturb the tranquillity of other

nations, and to render all Europe the theatre of the same crimes and of

the same misfortunes_." It was but a natural inference from this fact,

that the royal manifesto does not at all rest the justification of this

war on common principles: that it was "_not only to defend his own

rights, and those of his allies_," but "_that all the dearest interests

of his people imposed upon him a duty still more important_,--_that of

exerting his efforts for the preservation of civil society itself, as

happily established among the nations of Europe_." On that ground, the

protection offered is to "those who, by declaring for a _monarchical

government_, shall shake off the yoke of a sanguinary anarchy." It is

for that purpose the declaration calls on them "to join the standard of

an _hereditary monarchy_,"--declaring that the _peace and safety_ of

this kingdom and the other powers of Europe "_materially depend on the

reëstablishment of order in France_." His Majesty does not hesitate to

declare that "_the reëstablishment of monarchy, in the person of Louis

the Seventeenth, and the lawful heirs of the crown, appears to him_ [his

Majesty] _the best mode of accomplishing these just and salutary

views_."

This is what his Majesty does not hesitate to declare relative to the

political safety and peace of his kingdom and of Europe, and with regard

to France under her ancient hereditary monarchy in the course and order

of legal succession. But in comes a gentleman, in the fag end of

October, dripping with the fogs of that humid and uncertain season, and

does not hesitate in diameter to contradict this wise and just royal

declaration, and stoutly, on his part, to make a counter

declaration,--that France, so far as the political interests of England

are concerned, will not remain, under the despotism of Regicide, and

with the better part of Europe in her hands, so much an object of

jealousy and alarm as she was under the reign of a monarch. When I hear

the master and reason on one side, and the servant and his single and

unsupported assertion on the other, my part is taken.

This is what the Octobrist says of the political interests of England,

which it looks as if he completely disconnected with those of all other

nations. But not quite so: he just allows it possible (with an "at

least") that the other powers may not find it quite their interest that

their territories should be conquered and their subjects tyrannized over

by the Regicides. No fewer than ten sovereign princes had, some the

whole, all a very considerable part of their dominions under the yoke of

that dreadful faction. Amongst these was to be reckoned the first

republic in the world, and the closest ally of this kingdom, which,

under the insulting name of an independency, is under her iron yoke,

and, as long as a faction averse to the old government is suffered there

to domineer, cannot be otherwise. I say nothing of the Austrian

Netherlands, countries of a vast extent, and amongst the most fertile

and populous of Europe, and, with regard to us, most critically

situated. The rest will readily occur to you.

But if there are yet existing any people, like me, old-fashioned enough

to consider that we have an important part of our very existence beyond

our limits, and who therefore stretch their thoughts beyond the

_pomoerium_ of England, for them, too, he has a comfort which will

remove all their jealousies and alarms about the extent of the empire of

Regicide. "_These conquests eventually will be the cause of her

destruction_." So that they who hate the cause of usurpation, and dread

the power of France under any form, are to wish her to be a conqueror,

in order to accelerate her ruin. A little more conquest would be still

better. Will he tell us what dose of dominion is to be the _quantum

sufficit_ for her destruction?--for she seems very voracious of the food

of her distemper. To be sure, she is ready to perish with repletion; she

has a _boulimia_, and hardly has bolted down one state than she calls

for two or three more. There is a good deal of wit in all this; but it

seems to me (with all respect to the author) to be carrying the joke a

great deal too far. I cannot yet think that the armies of the Allies

were of this way of thinking, and that, when they evacuated all these

countries, it was a stratagem of war to decoy France into ruin,--or

that, if in a treaty we should surrender them forever into the hands of

the usurpation, (the lease the author supposes,) it is a master-stroke

of policy to effect the destruction of a formidable rival, and to render

her no longer an object of jealousy and alarm. This, I assure the

author, will infinitely facilitate the treaty. The usurpers will catch

at this bait, without minding the hook which this crafty angler for the

Jacobin gudgeons of the new Directory has so dexterously placed under

it.

Every symptom of the exacerbation of the public malady is, with him, (as

with the Doctor in Molière,) a happy prognostic of recovery.--Flanders

gone. _Tant mieux_.--Holland subdued. Charming!--Spain beaten, and all

the hither Germany conquered. Bravo! Better and better still!--But they

will retain all their conquests on a treaty. Best of all!--What a

delightful thing it is to have a gay physician, who sees all things, as

the French express it, _couleur de rose!_ What an escape we have had,

that we and our allies were not the conquerors! By these conquests,

previous to her utter destruction, she is "wholly to lose that

preponderance which she held in the scale of the European powers." Bless

me! this new system of France, after changing all other laws, reverses

the law of gravitation. By throwing in weight after weight, her scale

rises, and will by-and-by kick the beam. Certainly there is one sense in

which she loses her preponderance: that is, she is no longer

preponderant against the countries she has conquered. They are part of

herself. But I beg the author to keep his eyes fixed on the scales for a

moment longer, and then to tell me, in downright earnest, whether he

sees hitherto any signs of her losing preponderance by an augmentation

of weight and power. Has she lost her preponderance over Spain by her

influence in Spain? Are there any signs that the conquest of Savoy and

Nice begins to lessen her preponderance over Switzerland and the Italian

States,--or that the Canton of Berne, Genoa, and Tuscany, for example,

have taken arms against her,--or that Sardinia is more adverse than

ever to a treacherous pacification? Was it in the last week of October

that the German States showed that Jacobin. France was losing her

preponderance? Did the King of Prussia, when he delivered into her safe

custody his territories on this side of the Rhine, manifest any tokens

of his opinion of her loss of preponderance? Look on Sweden and on

Denmark: is her preponderance less visible there?

It is true, that, in a course of ages, empires have fallen, and, in the

opinion of some, not in mine, by their own weight. Sometimes they have

been unquestionably embarrassed in their movements by the dissociated

situation of their dominions. Such was the case of the empire of Charles

the Fifth and of his successor. It might be so of others. But so compact

a body of empire, so fitted in all the parts for mutual support, with a

frontier by Nature and Art so impenetrable, with such facility of

breaking out with irresistible force from every quarter, was never seen

in such an extent of territory, from the beginning of time, as in that

empire which the Jacobins possessed in October, 1795, and which Boissy

d'Anglas, in his report, settled as the law for Europe, and the dominion

assigned by Nature for the Republic of Regicide. But this empire is to

be her ruin, and to take away all alarm and jealousy on the part of

England, and to destroy her preponderance over the miserable remains of

Europe.

These are choice speculations with which the author amuses himself, and

tries to divert us, in the blackest hours of the dismay, defeat, and

calamity of all civilized nations. They have but one fault,--that they

are directly contrary to the common sense and common feeling of

mankind. If I had but one hour to live, I would employ it in decrying

this wretched system, and die with my pen in my hand to mark out the

dreadful consequences of receiving an arrangement of empire dictated by

the despotism of Regicide to my own country, and to the lawful

sovereigns of the Christian world.

I trust I shall hardly be told, in palliation of this shameful system of

politics, that the author expresses his sentiments only as doubts. In

such things, it may be truly said, that "once to doubt is once to be

resolved." It would be a strange reason for wasting the treasures and

shedding the blood of our country, to prevent arrangements on the part

of another power, of which we were doubtful whether they might not be

even to our advantage, and render our neighbor less than before the

object of our jealousy and alarm. In this doubt there is much decision.

No nation would consent to carry on a war of skepticism. But the fact

is, this expression of doubt is only a mode of putting an opinion, when

it is not the drift of the author to overturn the doubt. Otherwise, the

doubt is never stated as the author's own, nor left, as here it is,

unanswered. Indeed, the mode of stating the most decided opinions in the

form of questions is so little uncommon, particularly since the

excellent queries of the excellent Berkeley, that it became for a good

while a fashionable mode of composition.

Here, then, the author of the Fourth Week of October is ready for the

worst, and would strike the bargain of peace on these conditions. I must

leave it to you and to every considerate man to reflect upon the effect

of this on any Continental alliances, present or future, and whether it

would be possible (if this book was thought of the least authority)

that its maxims with regard to our political interest must not naturally

push them to be beforehand with us in the fraternity with Regicide, and

thus not only strip us of any steady alliance at present, but leave us

without any of that communion of interest which could produce alliances

in future. Indeed, with these maxims, we should be well divided from the

world.

Notwithstanding this new kind of barrier and security that is found

against her ambition in her conquests, yet in the very same paragraph he

admits, that, "for the _present_, at least, it is subversive of the

balance of power." This, I confess, is not a direct contradiction,

because the benefits which he promises himself from it, according to his

hypothesis, are future and more remote.

So disposed is this author to peace, that, having laid a comfortable

foundation for our security in the greatness of her empire, he has

another in reserve, if that should fail, upon quite a contrary ground:

that is, a speculation of her crumbling to pieces, and being thrown into

a number of little separate republics. After paying the tribute of

humanity to those who will be ruined by all these changes, on the whole

he is of opinion that "the change might be compatible with general

tranquillity, and with the establishment of a peaceful and prosperous

commerce among nations." Whether France be great or small, firm and

entire or dissipated and divided, all is well, provided we can have

peace with her.

But without entering into speculations about her dismemberment, whilst

she is adding great nations to her empire, is it, then, quite so certain

that the dissipation of France into such a cluster of petty republics

would be so very favorable to the true balance of power in Europe as

this author imagines it would be, and to the commerce of nations? I

greatly differ from him. I perhaps shall prove in a future letter, with

the political map of Europe before my eye, that the general liberty and

independence of the great Christian commonwealth could not exist with

such a dismemberment, unless it were followed (as probably enough it

would) by the dismemberment of every other considerable country in

Europe: and what convulsions would arise in the constitution of every

state in Europe it is not easy to conjecture in the mode, impossible not

to foresee in the mass. Speculate on, good my Lord! provided you ground

no part of your politics on such unsteady speculations. But as to any

practice to ensue, are we not yet cured of the malady of speculating on

the circumstances of things totally different from those in which we

live and move? Five years has this monster continued whole and entire in

all its members. Far from falling into a division within itself, it is

augmented by tremendous additions. We cannot bear to look that frightful

form in the face, as it is, and in its own actual shape. We dare not be

wise; we have not the fortitude of rational fear; we will not provide

for our future safety; but we endeavor to hush the cries of present

timidity by guesses at what may be hereafter,--

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow."

Is this our style of talk, when

"all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death"?

Talk not to me of what swarm of republics may come from this carcass! It

is no carcass. Now, now, whilst we are talking, it is full of life and

action. What say you to the Regicide empire of to-day? Tell me, my

friend, do its terrors appall you into an abject submission, or rouse

you to a vigorous defence? But do--I no longer prevent it--do go

on,--look into futurity. Has this empire nothing to alarm you when all

struggle against it is over, when mankind shall be silent before it,

when all nations shall be disarmed, disheartened, and _truly divided_ by

a treacherous peace? Its malignity towards humankind will subsist with

undiminished heat, whilst the means of giving it effect must proceed,

and every means of resisting it must inevitably and rapidly decline.

Against alarm on their politic and military empire these are the

writer's sedative remedies. But he leaves us sadly in the dark with

regard to the moral consequences, which he states have threatened to

demolish a system of civilization under which his country enjoys a

prosperity unparalleled in the history of man. We had emerged from our

first terrors, but here we sink into them again,--however, only to shake

them off upon the credit of his being a man of very sanguine hopes.

Against the moral terrors of this successful empire of barbarism, though

he has given us no consolation here, in another place he has formed

other securities,--securities, indeed, which will make even the enormity

of the crimes and atrocities of France a benefit to the world. We are to

be cured by her diseases. We are to grow proud of our Constitution upon,

the distempers of theirs. Governments throughout all Europe are to

become much stronger by this event. This, too, comes in the favorite

mode of _doubt_ and _perhaps_. "To those," he says, "who meditate on

the workings of the human mind, a doubt may perhaps arise, whether the

effects which I have described," (namely, the change he supposes to be

wrought on the public mind with regard to the French doctrines,) "though

_at present_ a salutary check to the dangerous spirit of innovation, may

not prove favorable to abuses of power, by creating a timidity in the

just cause of liberty." Here the current of our apprehensions takes a

contrary course. Instead of trembling for the existence of our

government from the spirit of licentiousness and anarchy, the author

would make us believe we are to tremble for our liberties from the great

accession of power which is to accrue to government.

I believe I have read in some author who criticized the productions of

the famous Jurieu, that it is not very wise in people who dash away in

prophecy, to fix the time of accomplishment at too short a period. Mr.

Brothers may meditate upon this at his leisure. He was a melancholy

prognosticator, and has had the fate of melancholy men. But they who

prophesy pleasant things get great present applause; and in days of

calamity people have something else to think of: they lose, in their

feeling of their distress, all memory of those who flattered them in

their prosperity. But merely for the credit of the prediction, nothing

could have happened more unluckily for the noble lord's sanguine

expectations of the amendment of the public mind, and the consequent

greater security to government, from the examples in France, than what

happened in the week after the publication of his hebdomadal system. I

am not sure it was not in the very week one of the most violent and

dangerous seditions broke out that we have seen in several years. This

sedition, menacing to the public security, endangering the sacred person

of the king, and violating in the most audacious manner the authority of

Parliament, surrounded our sovereign with a murderous yell and war-whoop

for that peace which the noble lord considers as a cure for all domestic

disturbances and dissatisfactions.

So far as to this general cure for popular disorders. As for government,

the two Houses of Parliament, instead of being guided by the

speculations of the Fourth Week in October, and throwing up new barriers

against the dangerous power of the crown, which the noble lord

considered as no unplausible subject of apprehension, the two Houses of

Parliament thought fit to pass two acts for the further strengthening of

that very government against a most dangerous and wide-spread faction.

Unluckily, too, for this kind of sanguine speculation, on the very first

day of the ever-famed "last week of October," a large, daring, and

seditious meeting was publicly held, from which meeting this atrocious

attempt against the sovereign publicly originated.

No wonder that the author should tell us that the whole consideration

might be varied _whilst he was writing those pages_. In one, and that

the most material instance, his speculations not only might be, but were

at that very time, entirely overset. Their war-cry for peace with France

was the same with that of this gentle author, but in a different note.

His is the _gemitus columbæ_, cooing and wooing fraternity; theirs the

funereal screams of birds of night calling for their ill-omened

paramours. But they are both songs of courtship. These Regicides

considered a Regicide peace as a cure for all their evils; and so far

as I can find, they showed nothing at all of the timidity which the

noble lord apprehends in what they call the just cause of liberty.

However, it seems, that, notwithstanding these awkward appearances with

regard to the strength of government, he has still his fears and doubts

about our liberties. To a free people this would be a matter of alarm;

but this physician of October has in his shop all sorts of salves for

all sorts of sores. It is curious that they all come from the

inexhaustible drug-shop of the Regicide dispensary. It costs him nothing

to excite terror, because he lays it at his pleasure. He finds a

security for this danger to liberty from the wonderful wisdom to be

taught to kings, to nobility, and even, to the lowest of the people, by

the late transactions.

I confess I was always blind enough to regard the French Revolution, in

the act, and much more in the example, as one of the greatest calamities

that had ever fallen upon mankind. I now find that in its effects it is

to be the greatest of all blessings. If so, we owe _amende honorable_ to

the Jacobins. They, it seems, were right; and if they were right a

little earlier than we are, it only shows that they exceeded us in

sagacity. If they brought out their right ideas somewhat in a disorderly

manner, it must be remembered that great zeal produces some

irregularity; but when greatly in the right, it must be pardoned by

those who are very regularly and temperately in the wrong. The master

Jacobins had told me this a thousand times. I never believed the

masters; nor do I now find myself disposed to give credit to the

disciple. I will not much dispute with our author, which party has the

best of this Revolution,--that which is from thence to learn wisdom, or

that which from the same event has obtained power. The dispute on the

preference of strength to wisdom may perhaps be decided as Horace has

decided the controversy between Art and Nature. I do not like to leave

all the power to my adversary, and to secure nothing to myself but the

untimely wisdom that is taught by the consequences of folly. I do not

like my share in the partition: because to his strength my adversary may

possibly add a good deal of cunning, whereas my wisdom may totally fail

in producing to me the same degree of strength. But to descend from the

author's generalities a little nearer to meaning, the security given to

liberty is this,--"that governments will have learned not to precipitate

themselves into embarrassments by speculative wars. Sovereigns and

princes will not forget that steadiness, moderation, and economy are the

best supports of the eminence on which they stand." There seems to me a

good deal of oblique reflection in this lesson. As to the lesson itself,

it is at all times a good one. One would think, however, by this formal

introduction of it as a recommendation of the arrangements proposed by

the author, it had never been taught before, either by precept or by

experience,--and that these maxims are discoveries reserved for a

Regicide peace. But is it permitted to ask what security it affords to

the liberty of the subject, that the prince is pacific or frugal? The

very contrary has happened in our history. Our best securities for

freedom have been obtained from princes who were either warlike, or

prodigal, or both.

Although the amendment of princes in these points can

have no effect in quieting our apprehensions for liberty on account of

the strength to be acquired to government by a Regicide peace, I allow

that the avoiding of speculative wars may possibly be an advantage,

provided I well understand what the author means by a speculative war. I

suppose he means a war grounded on speculative advantages, and not wars

founded on a just speculation of danger. Does he mean to include this

war, which we are now carrying on, amongst those speculative wars which

this Jacobin peace is to teach sovereigns to avoid hereafter? If so, it

is doing the party an important service. Does he mean that we are to

avoid such wars as that of the Grand Alliance, made on a speculation of

danger to the independence of Europe? I suspect he has a sort of

retrospective view to the American war, as a speculative war, carried on

by England upon one side and by Louis the Sixteenth on the other. As to

our share of that war, let reverence to the dead and respect to the

living prevent us from reading lessons of this kind at their expense. I

don't know how far the author may find himself at liberty to wanton on

that subject; but, for my part, I entered into a coalition which, when I

had no longer a duty relative to that business, made me think myself

bound in honor not to call it up without necessity. But if he puts

England out of the question, and reflects only on Louis the Sixteenth, I

have only to say, "Dearly has he answered it!" I will not defend him.

But all those who pushed on the Revolution by which he was deposed were

much more in fault than he was. They have murdered him, and have divided

his kingdom as a spoil; but they who are the guilty are not they who

furnish the example. They who reign through his fault are not among

those sovereigns who are likely to be taught to avoid speculative wars

by the murder of their master. I think the author will not be hardy

enough to assert that they have shown less disposition to meddle in the

concerns of that very America than he did, and in a way not less likely

to kindle the flame of speculative war. Here is one sovereign not yet

reclaimed by these healing examples. Will he point out the other

sovereigns who are to be reformed by this peace? Their wars may not be

speculative. But the world will not be much mended by turning wars from

unprofitable and speculative to practical and lucrative, whether the

liberty or the repose of mankind is regarded. If the author's new

sovereign in France is not reformed by the example of his own

Revolution, that Revolution has not added much to the security and

repose of Poland, for instance, or taught the three great partitioning

powers more moderation in their second than they had shown in their

first division of that devoted country. The first division, which

preceded these destructive examples, was moderation itself, in

comparison of what has been, done since the period of the author's

amendment.

This paragraph is written with something of a studied obscurity. If it

means anything, it seems to hint as if sovereigns were to learn

moderation, and an attention to the liberties of their people, from _the

fate of the sovereigns who have suffered in this war_, and eminently of

Louis the Sixteenth.

Will he say whether the King of Sardinia's horrible tyranny was the

cause of the loss of Savoy and of Nice? What lesson of moderation does

it teach the Pope? I desire to know whether his Holiness is to learn not

to massacre his subjects, nor to waste and destroy such beautiful

countries as that of Avignon, lest he should call to their assistance

that great deliverer of nations, _Jourdan Coupe-tête_? What lesson does

it give of moderation to the Emperor, whose predecessor never put one

man to death after a general rebellion of the Low Countries, that the

Regicides never spared man, woman, or child, whom they but suspected of

dislike to their usurpations? What, then, are all these lessons about

the _softening_ the character of sovereigns by this Regicide peace? On

reading this section, one would imagine that the poor tame sovereigns of

Europe had been a sort of furious wild beasts, that stood in need of

some uncommonly rough discipline to subdue the ferocity of their savage

nature.

As to the example to be learnt from the murder of Louis the Sixteenth,

if a lesson to kings is not derived from his fate, I do not know whence

it can come. The author, however, ought not to have left us in the dark

upon that subject, to break our shins over his hints and insinuations.

Is it, then, true, that this unfortunate monarch drew his punishment

upon himself by his want of moderation, and his oppressing the liberties

of which he had found his people in possession? Is not the direct

contrary the fact? And is not the example of this Revolution the very

reverse of anything which can lead to that _softening_ of character in

princes which the author supposes as a security to the people, and has

brought forward as a recommendation to fraternity with those who have

administered that happy emollient in the murder of their king and the

slavery and desolation of their country?

But the author does not confine the benefit of the Regicide lesson to

kings alone. He has a diffusive bounty. Nobles, and men of property,

will likewise be greatly reformed. They, too, will be led to a review of

their social situation and duties,--"and will reflect, that their large

allotment of worldly advantages is for the aid and benefit of the

whole." Is it, then, from the fate of Juigné, Archbishop of Paris, or of

the Cardinal de Rochefoucault, and of so many others, who gave their

fortunes, and, I may say, their very beings, to the poor, that the rich

are to learn, that their "fortunes are for the aid and benefit of the

whole"? I say nothing of the liberal persons of great rank and property,

lay and ecclesiastic, men and women, to whom we have had the honor and

happiness of affording an asylum: I pass by these, lest I should never

have done, or lest I should omit some as deserving as any I might

mention. Why will the author, then, suppose that the nobles and men of

property in France have been banished, confiscated, and murdered, on

account of the savageness and ferocity of their character, and their

being tainted with vices beyond those of the same order and description

in other countries? No judge of a revolutionary tribunal, with his hands

dipped in their blood and his maw gorged with their property, has yet

dared to assert what this author has been pleased, by way of a moral

lesson, to insinuate.

Their nobility, and their men of property, in a mass, had the very same

virtues, and the very same vices, and in the very same proportions, with

the same description of men in this and in other nations. I must do

justice to suffering honor, generosity, and integrity. I do not know

that any time or any country has furnished more splendid examples of

every virtue, domestic and public. I do not enter into the councils of

Providence; but, humanly speaking, many of these nobles and men of

property, from whose disastrous fate we are, it seems, to learn a

general softening of character, and a revision of our social situations

and duties, appear to me full as little deserving of that fate as the

author, whoever he is, can be. Many of them, I am sure, were such as I

should be proud indeed to be able to compare myself with, in knowledge,

in integrity, and in every other virtue. My feeble nature might shrink,

though theirs did not, from the proof; but my reason and my ambition

tell me that it would be a good bargain to purchase their merits with

their fate.

For which of his vices did that great magistrate, D'Espréménil, lose his

fortune and his head? What were the abominations of Malesherbes, that

other excellent magistrate, whose sixty years of uniform virtue was

acknowledged, in the very act of his murder, by the judicial butchers

who condemned him? On account of what misdemeanors was he robbed of his

property, and slaughtered with two generations of his offspring,--and

the remains of the third race, with a refinement of cruelty, and lest

they should appear to reclaim the property forfeited by the virtues of

their ancestor, confounded in an hospital with the thousands of those

unhappy foundling infants who are abandoned, without relation and

without name, by the wretchedness or by the profligacy of their parents?

Is the fate of the Queen of France to produce this softening of

character? Was she a person so very ferocious and cruel, as, by the

example of her death, to frighten us into common humanity? Is there no

way to teach the Emperor a _softening_ of character, and a review of

his social situation and duty, but his consent, by an infamous accord

with Regicide, to drive a second coach with the Austrian arms through

the streets of Paris, along which, after a series of preparatory horrors

exceeding the atrocities of the bloody execution itself, the glory of

the Imperial race had been carried to an ignominious death? Is this a

lesson of _moderation_ to a descendant of Maria Theresa, drawn from the

fate of the daughter of that incomparable woman and sovereign? If he

learns this lesson from such an object, and from such teachers, the man

may remain, but the king is deposed. If he does not carry quite another

memory of that transaction in the inmost recesses of his heart, he is

unworthy to reign, he is unworthy to live. In the chronicle of disgrace

he will have but this short tale told of him: "He was the first emperor

of his house that embraced a regicide; he was the last that wore the

imperial purple." Far am I from thinking so ill of this august

sovereign, who is at the head of the monarchies of Europe, and who is

the trustee of their dignities and his own.

What ferocity of character drew on the fate of Elizabeth, the sister of

King Louis the Sixteenth? For which of the vices of that pattern of

benevolence, of piety, and of all the virtues, did they put her to

death? For which of her vices did they put to death the mildest of all

human creatures, the Duchess of Biron? What were the crimes of those

crowds of matrons and virgins of condition, whom they mas sacred, with

their juries of blood, in prisons and on scaffolds? What were the

enormities of the infant king, whom they caused, by lingering tortures,

to perish in their dungeon, and whom if at last they dispatched by

poison, it was in that detestable crime the only act of mercy they have

ever shown?

What softening of character is to be had, what review of their social

situations and duties is to be taught by these examples to kings, to

nobles, to men of property, to women, and to infants? The royal family

perished because it was royal. The nobles perished because they were

noble. The men, women, and children, who had property, because they had

property to be robbed of. The priests were punished, after they had been

robbed of their all, not for their vices, but for their virtues and

their piety, which made them an honor to their sacred profession, and to

that nature of which we ought to be proud, since they belong to it. My

Lord, nothing can be learned from such examples, except the danger of

being kings, queens, nobles, priests, and children, to be butchered on

account of their inheritance. These are things at which not vice, not

crime, not folly, but wisdom, goodness, learning, justice, probity,

beneficence, stand aghast. By these examples our reason and our moral

sense are not enlightened, but confounded; and there is no refuge for

astonished and affrighted virtue, but being annihilated in humility and

submission, sinking into a silent adoration of the inscrutable

dispensations of Providence, and flying with trembling wings from this

world of daring crimes, and feeble, pusillanimous, half-bred, bastard

justice, to the asylum of another order of things, in an unknown form,

but in a better life.

Whatever the politician or preacher of September or of October may think

of the matter, it is a most comfortless, disheartening, desolating

example. Dreadful is the example of ruined innocence and virtue, and

the completest triumph of the completest villany that ever vexed and

disgraced mankind! The example is ruinous in every point of view,

religious, moral, civil, political. It establishes that dreadful maxim

of Machiavel, that in great affairs men are not to be wicked by halves.

This maxim is not made for a middle sort of beings, who, because they

cannot be angels, ought to thwart their ambition, and not endeavor to

become infernal spirits. It is too well exemplified in the present time,

where the faults and errors of humanity, checked by the imperfect,

timorous virtues, have been overpowered by those who have stopped at no

crime. It is a dreadful part of the example, that infernal malevolence

has had pious apologists, who read their lectures on frailties in favor

of crimes,--who abandon the weak, and court the friendship of the

wicked. To root out these maxims, and the examples that support them, is

a wise object of years of war. This is that war. This is that moral war.

It was said by old Trivulzio, that the Battle of Marignano was the

Battle of the Giants,--that all the rest of the many he had seen were

those of the Cranes and Pygmies. This is true of the objects, at least,

of the contest: for the greater part of those which we have hitherto

contended for, in comparison, were the toys of children.

The October politician is so full of charity and good-nature, that he

supposes that these very robbers and murderers themselves are in a

course of melioration: on what ground I cannot conceive, except on the

long practice of every crime, and by its complete success. He is an

Origenist, and believes in the conversion of the Devil. All that runs in

the place of blood in his veins is nothing but the milk of human

kindness. He is as soft as a curd,--though, as a politician, he might be

supposed to be made of sterner stuff. He supposes (to use his own

expression) "that the salutary truths which he inculcates are making

their way into their bosoms." Their bosom is a rock of granite, on which

Falsehood has long since built her stronghold. Poor Truth has had a hard

work of it, with her little pickaxe. Nothing but gunpowder will do.

As a proof, however, of the progress of this sap of Truth, he gives us a

confession they had made not long before he wrote. "'Their fraternity'

(as was lately stated by themselves in a solemn report) 'has been the

brotherhood of Cain and Abel,' and 'they have organized nothing but

bankruptcy and famine.'" A very honest confession, truly,--and much in

the spirit of their oracle, Rousseau. Yet, what is still more marvellous

than the confession, this is the very fraternity to which our author

gives us such an obliging invitation to accede. There is, indeed, a

vacancy in the fraternal corps: a brother and a partner is wanted. If we

please, we may fill up the place of the butchered Abel; and whilst we

wait the destiny of the departed brother, we may enjoy the advantages of

the partnership, by entering without delay into a shop of ready-made

bankruptcy and famine. These are the _douceurs_ by which we are invited

to Regicide fraternity and friendship. But still our author considers

the confession as a proof that "truth is making its way into their

bosoms." No! It is not making its way into their bosoms. It has forced

its way into their mouths! The evil spirit by which they are possessed,

though essentially a liar, is forced by the tortures of conscience to

confess the truth,--to confess enough for their condemnation, but not

for their amendment. Shakspeare very aptly expresses this kind of

confession, devoid of repentance, from the mouth of an usurper, a

murderer, and a regicide:--

"We are ourselves compelled,

Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,

To give in evidence."

Whence is their amendment? Why, the author writes, that, on their

murderous insurrectionary system, their own lives are not sure for an

hour; nor has their power a greater stability. True. They are convinced

of it; and accordingly the wretches have done all they can to preserve

their lives, and to secure their power; but not one step have they taken

to amend the one or to make a more just use of the other. Their wicked

policy has obliged them to make a pause in the only massacres in which

their treachery and cruelty had operated as a kind of savage

justice,--that is, the massacre of the accomplices of their crimes: they

have ceased to shed the inhuman blood of their fellow-murderers; but

when they take any of those persons who contend for their lawful

government, their property, and their religion, notwithstanding the

truth which this author says is making its way into their bosoms, it has

not taught them the least tincture of mercy. This we plainly see by

their massacre at Quiberon, where they put to death, with every species

of contumely, and without any exception, every prisoner of war who did

not escape out of their hands. To have had property, to have been robbed

of it, and to endeavor to regain it,--these are crimes irremissible, to

which every man who regards his property or his life, in every country,

ought well to look in all connection with those with whom to have had

property was an offence, to endeavor to keep it a second offence, to

attempt to regain it a crime that puts the offender out of all the laws

of peace or war. You cannot see one of those wretches without an alarm

for your life as well as your goods. They are like the worst of the

French and Italian banditti, who, whenever they robbed, were sure to

murder.

Are they not the very same ruffians, thieves, assassins, and regicides

that they were from the beginning? Have they diversified the scene by

the least variety, or produced the face of a single new villany? _Tædet

harum quotidianarum formarum_. Oh! but I shall be answered, "It is now

quite another thing;--they are all changed. You have not seen them in

their state dresses;--this makes an amazing difference. The new habit of

the Directory is so charmingly fancied, that it is impossible not to

fall in love with so well-dressed a Constitution;--the costume of the

_sans-culotte_ Constitution of 1793 was absolutely insufferable. The

Committee for Foreign Affairs were such slovens, and stunk so

abominably, that no _muscadin_ ambassador of the smallest degree of

delicacy of nerves could come within ten yards of them; but now they are

so powdered, and perfumed, and ribanded, and sashed, and plumed, that,

though they are grown infinitely more insolent in their fine clothes

even than they were in their rags, (and that was enough,) as they now

appear, there is something in it more grand and noble, something more

suitable to an awful Roman Senate receiving the homage of dependent

tetrarchs. Like that Senate, (their perpetual model for conduct towards

other nations,) they permit their vassals (during their good pleasure)

to assume the name of kings, in order to bestow more dignity on the

suite and retinue of the sovereign Republic by the nominal rank of their

slaves: _Ut habeant instrumenta servitutis et reges_." All this is very

fine, undoubtedly; and ambassadors whose hands are almost out for want

of employment may long to have their part in this august ceremony of the

Republic one and indivisible. But, with great deference to the new

diplomatic taste, we old people must retain some square-toed

predilection, for the fashions of our youth.

I am afraid you will find me, my Lord, again falling into my usual

vanity, in valuing myself on the eminent men whose society I once

enjoyed. I remember, in a conversation I once had with my ever dear

friend Garrick, who was the first of actors, because he was the most

acute observer of Nature I ever knew, I asked him how it happened, that,

whenever a senate appeared on the stage, the audience seemed always

disposed to laughter. He said, the reason was plain: the audience was

well acquainted with the faces of most of the senators. They knew that

they were no other than candle-snuffers, revolutionary scene-shifters,

second and third mob, prompters, clerks, executioners, who stand with

their axe on their shoulders by the wheel, grinners in the pantomime,

murderers in tragedies, who make ugly faces under black wigs,--in short,

the very scum and refuse of the theatre; and it was of course that the

contrast of the vileness of the actors with the pomp of their habits

naturally excited ideas of contempt and ridicule.

So it was at Paris on the inaugural day of the Constitution for the

present year. The foreign ministers were ordered to attend at this

investiture of the Directory;--for so they call the managers of their

burlesque government. The diplomacy, who were a sort of strangers, were

quite awe-struck with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of this

majestic senate; whilst the _sans-culotte_ gallery instantly recognized

their old insurrectionary acquaintance, burst out into a horse-laugh at

their absurd finery, and held them in infinitely greater contempt than

whilst they prowled about the streets in the pantaloons of the last

year's Constitution, when their legislators appeared honestly, with

their daggers in their belts, and their pistols peeping out of their

side-pocket-holes, like a bold, brave banditti, as they are. The

Parisians (and I am much of their mind) think that a thief with a crape

on his visage is much worse than a barefaced knave, and that such

robbers richly deserve all the penalties of all the black acts. In this

their thin disguise, their comrades of the late abdicated sovereign

_canaille_ hooted and hissed them, and from that day have no other name

for them than what is not quite so easy to render into English,

impossible to make it very civil English: it belongs, indeed, to the

language of the _halles_: but, without being instructed in that dialect,

it was the opinion of the polite Lord Chesterfield that no man could be

a complete master of French. Their Parisian brethren called them _gueux

plumés_, which, though not elegant, is expressive and characteristic:

_feathered scoundrels_, I think, comes the nearest to it in that kind of

English. But we are now to understand that these _gueux_, for no other

reason, that I can divine, except their red and white clothes, form at

last a state with which we may cultivate amity, and have a prospect of

the blessings of a secure and permanent peace. In effect, then, it was

not with the men, or their principles, or their polities, that we

quarrelled: our sole dislike was to the cut of their clothes.

But to pass over _their_ dresses,--good God! in what habits did the

representatives of the crowned heads of Europe appear, when they came to

swell the pomp of their humiliation, and attended in solemn function

this inauguration of Regicide? That would be the curiosity. Under what

robes did they cover the disgrace and degradation of the whole college

of kings? What warehouses of masks and dominoes furnished a cover to the

nakedness of their shame? The shop ought to be known; it will soon have

a good trade. Were the dresses of the ministers of those lately called

potentates, who attended on that occasion, taken from the wardrobe of

that property-man at the opera, from whence my old acquaintance,

Anacharsis Clootz, some years ago equipped a body of ambassadors, whom

he conducted, as from all the nations of the world, to the bar of what

was called the Constituent Assembly? Among those mock ministers, one of

the most conspicuous figures was the representative of the British

nation, who unluckily was wanting at the late ceremony. In the face of

all the real ambassadors of the sovereigns of Europe was this ludicrous

representation of their several subjects, under the name of _oppressed

sovereigns_,[10] exhibited to the Assembly. That Assembly received an

harangue, in the name of those sovereigns, against their kings,

delivered by this Clootz, actually a subject of Prussia, under the name

of Ambassador of the Human Race. At that time there was only a feeble

reclamation from one of the ambassadors of these tyrants and oppressors.

A most gracious answer was given to the ministers of the oppressed

sovereigns; and they went so far on that occasion as to assign them, in

that assumed character, a box at one of their festivals.

I was willing to indulge myself in an hope that this second appearance

of ambassadors was only an insolent mummery of the same kind; but, alas!

Anacharsis himself, all fanatic as he was, could not have imagined that

his opera procession should have been the prototype of the real

appearance of the representatives of all the sovereigns of Europe

themselves, to make the same prostration that was made by those who

dared to represent their people in a complaint against them. But in this

the French Republic has followed, as they always affect to do, and have

hitherto done with success, the example of the ancient Romans, who shook

all governments by listening to the complaints of their subjects, and

soon after brought the kings themselves to answer at their bar. At this

last ceremony the ambassadors had not Clootz for their Cotterel. Pity

that Clootz had not had a reprieve from the guillotine till he had

completed his work! But that engine fell before the curtain had fallen

upon all the dignity of the earth.

On this their gaudy day the new Regicide Directory sent for that

diplomatic rabble, as bad as themselves in principle, but infinitely

worse in degradation. They called them out by a sort of roll of their

nations, one after another, much in the manner in which they called

wretches out of their prison to the guillotine. When these ambassadors

of infamy appeared before them, the chief Director, in the name of the

rest, treated each of them with a short, affected, pedantic, insolent,

theatric laconium,--a sort of epigram of contempt. When they had thus

insulted them in a style and language which never before was heard, and

which no sovereign would for a moment endure from another, supposing any

of them frantic enough to use it, to finish their outrage, they drummed

and trumpeted the wretches out of their hall of audience.

Among the objects of this insolent buffoonery was a person supposed to

represent the King of Prussia. To this worthy representative they did

not so much as condescend to mention his master; they did not seem to

know that he had one; they addressed themselves solely to Prussia in the

abstract, notwithstanding the infinite obligation they owed to their

early protector for their first recognition and alliance, and for the

part of his territory he gave into their hands for the first-fruits of

his homage. None but dead monarchs are so much as mentioned by them, and

those only to insult the living by an invidious comparison. They told

the Prussians they ought to learn, after the example of Frederick the

Great, a love for France. What a pity it is, that he, who loved France

so well as to chastise it, was not now alive, by an unsparing use of the

rod (which, indeed, he would have spared little) to give them another

instance of his paternal affection! But the Directory were mistaken.

These are not days in which monarchs value themselves upon the title of

_great_: they are grown _philosophic_: they are satisfied to be good.

Your Lordship will pardon me for this no very long reflection on the

short, but excellent speech of the plumed Director to the ambassador of

Cappadocia. The Imperial ambassador was not in waiting, but they found

for Austria a good Judean representation. With great judgment, his

Highness, the Grand Duke, had sent the most atheistic coxcomb to be

found in Florence, to represent at the bar of impiety the House of

Apostolic Majesty, and the descendants of the pious, though high-minded,

Maria Theresa. He was sent to humble the whole race of Austria before

those grim assassins, reeking with the blood of the daughter of Maria

Theresa, whom they sent half dead, in a dung-cart, to a cruel execution;

and this true-born son of apostasy and infidelity, this renegado from

the faith and from all honor and all humanity, drove an Austrian coach

over the stones which were yet wet with her blood,--with that blood

which dropped every step through her tumbrel, all the way she was drawn

from the horrid prison, in which they had finished all the cruelty and

horrors not executed in the face of the sun. The Hungarian subjects of

Maria Theresa, when they drew their swords to defend her rights against

France, called her, with correctness of truth, though not with the same

correctness, perhaps, of grammar, a king: "_Moriamur pro rege nostro,

Maria Theresa._" SHE lived and died a king; and others will have

subjects ready to make the same vow, when, in either sex, they show

themselves real kings.

When the Directory came to this miserable fop, they bestowed a

compliment on his matriculation into _their_ philosophy; but as to his

master, they made to him, as was reasonable, a reprimand, not without a

pardon, and an oblique hint at the whole family. What indignities have

been offered through this wretch to his master, and how well borne, it

is not necessary that I should dwell on at present. I hope that those

who yet wear royal, imperial, and ducal crowns will learn to feel as

men and as kings: if not, I predict to them, they will not long exist as

kings or as men.

Great Britain was not there. Almost in despair, I hope she will never,

in any rags and _coversluts_ of infamy, be seen at such an exhibition.

The hour of her final degradation is not yet come; she did not herself

appear in the Regicide presence, to be the sport and mockery of those

bloody buffoons, who, in the merriment of their pride, were insulting

with every species of contumely the fallen dignity of the rest of

Europe. But Britain, though not personally appearing to bear her part in

this monstrous tragi-comedy, was very far from being forgotten. The

new-robed regicides found a representative for her. And who was this

representative? Without a previous knowledge, any one would have given a

thousand guesses before he could arrive at a tolerable divination of

their rancorous insolence. They chose to address what they had to say

concerning this nation to the ambassador of America. They did not apply

to this ambassador for a mediation: that, indeed, would have indicated a

want of every kind of decency; but it would have indicated nothing more.

But in this their American apostrophe, your Lordship will observe, they

did not so much as pretend to hold out to us directly, or through any

mediator, though in the most humiliating manner, any idea whatsoever of

peace, or the smallest desire of reconciliation. To the States of

America themselves they paid no compliment. They paid their compliment

to Washington solely: and on what ground? This most respectable

commander and magistrate might deserve commendation on very many of

those qualities which they who most disapprove some part of his

proceedings, not more justly than freely, attribute to him; but they

found nothing to commend in him "_but the hatred he bore to Great

Britain_." I verily believe, that, in the whole history of our European

wars, there never was such a compliment paid from the sovereign of one

state to a great chief of another. Not one ambassador from any one of

those powers who pretend to live in amity with this kingdom took the

least notice of that unheard-of declaration; nor will Great Britain,

till she is known with certainty to be true to her own dignity, find any

one disposed to feel for the indignities that are offered to her. To say

the truth, those miserable creatures were all silent under the insults

that were offered to themselves. They pocketed their epigrams, as

ambassadors formerly took the gold boxes and miniature pictures set in

diamonds presented them by sovereigns at whose courts they had resided.

It is to be presumed that by the next post they faithfully and promptly

transmitted to their masters the honors they had received. I can easily

conceive the epigram which will be presented to Lord Auckland, or to the

Duke of Bedford, as hereafter, according to circumstances, they may

happen to represent this kingdom. Few can have so little imagination as

not readily to conceive the nature of the boxes of epigrammatic lozenges

that will be presented to them.

But _hæ nugæ seria ducunt in mala_. The conduct of the Regicide faction

is perfectly systematic in every particular, and it appears absurd only

as it is strange and uncouth, not as it has an application to the ends

and objects of their policy. When by insult after insult they have

rendered the character of sovereigns vile in the eyes of their

subjects, they know there is but one step more to their utter

destruction. All authority, in a great degree, exists in opinion: royal

authority most of all. The supreme majesty of a monarch cannot be allied

with contempt. Men would reason, not unplausibly, that it would be

better to get rid of the monarchy at once than to suffer that which was

instituted, and well instituted, to support the glory of the nation, to

become the instrument of its degradation and disgrace.

A good many reflections will arise in your Lordship's mind upon the time

and circumstances of that most insulting and atrocious declaration of

hostility against this kingdom. The declaration was made subsequent to

the noble lord's encomium on the new Regicide Constitution,--after the

pamphlet had made something more than advances towards a reconciliation

with that ungracious race, and had directly disowned all those who

adhered to the original declaration in favor of monarchy. It was even

subsequent to the unfortunate declaration in the speech from the throne

(which this pamphlet but too truly announced) of the readiness of our

government to enter into connections of friendship with that faction.

Here was the answer from the throne of Regicide to the speech from the

throne of Great Britain. They go out of their way to compliment General

Washington on the supposed rancor of his heart towards this country. It

is very remarkable, that they make this compliment of malice to the

chief of the United States, who had first signed a treaty of peace,

amity, and commerce with this kingdom. This radical hatred, according to

their way of thinking, the most recent, solemn compacts of friendship

cannot or ought not to remove. In this malice to England, as in the one

great comprehensive virtue, all other merits of this illustrious person

are entirely merged. For my part, I do not believe the fact to be so as

they represent it. Certainly it is not for Mr. Washington's honor as a

gentleman, a Christian, or a President of the United States, after the

treaty he has signed, to entertain such sentiments. I have a moral

assurance that the representation of the Regicide Directory is

absolutely false and groundless. If it be, it is a stronger mark of

their audacity and insolence, and still a stronger proof of the support

they mean to give to the mischievous faction they are known to nourish

there, to the ruin of those States, and to the end that no British

affections should ever arise in that important part of the world, which

would naturally lead to a cordial, hearty British alliance, upon the

bottom of mutual interest and ancient affection. It shows in what part

it is, and with what a weapon, they mean a deadly blow at the heart of

Great Britain. One really would have expected, from this new

Constitution of theirs, which had been announced as a great reform, and

which was to be, more than any of their former experimental schemes,

alliable with other nations, that they would, in their very first public

act, and their declaration to the collected representation of Europe and

America, have affected some degree of moderation, or, at least, have

observed a guarded silence with regard to their temper and their views.

No such thing: they were in haste to declare the principles which are

spun into the primitive staple of their frame. They were afraid that a

moment's doubt should exist about them. In their very infancy they were

in haste to put their hand on their infernal altar, and to swear the

same immortal hatred to England which was sworn in the succession of all

the short-lived constitutions that preceded it. With them everything

else perishes almost as soon as it is formed; this hatred alone is

immortal. This is their impure Vestal fire that never is extinguished:

and never will it be extinguished, whilst the system of Regicide exists

in France. What! are we not to believe them? Men are too apt to be

deceitful enough in their professions of friendship, and this makes a

wise man walk with some caution through life. Such professions, in some

cases, may be even a ground of further distrust. But when a man declares

himself your unalterable enemy! No man ever declared to another a rancor

towards him which he did not feel. _Falsos in amore odia, non fingere_,

said an author who points his observations so as to make them

remembered.

Observe, my Lord, that, from their invasion of Flanders and Holland to

this hour, they have never made the smallest signification of a desire

of peace with this kingdom, with Austria, or, indeed, with any other

power that I know of. As superiors, they expect others to begin. We have

complied, as you may see. The hostile insolence with which they gave

such a rebuff to our first overture, in the speech from the throne, did

not hinder us from making, from the same throne, a second advance. The

two Houses a second time coincided in the same sentiments, with a degree

of apparent unanimity, (for there was no dissentient voice but yours,)

with which, when they reflect on it, they will be as much ashamed as I

am. To this our new humiliating overture (such, at whatever hazard, I

must call it) what did the Regicide Directory answer? Not one public

word of a readiness to treat. No,--they feel their proud situation too

well. They never declared whether they would grant peace to you or not.

They only signified to you their pleasure as to the terms on which alone

they would in any case admit you to it. You showed your general

disposition to peace, and, to forward it, you left everything open to

negotiations. As to any terms you can possibly obtain, they shut out all

negotiation at the very commencement. They declared that they never

would make a peace by which anything that ever belonged to France should

be ceded. We would not treat with the monarchy, weakened as it must

obviously be in any circumstance of restoration, without a reservation

of something for indemnity and security,--and that, too, in words of the

largest comprehension. You treat with the Regicides without any

reservation at all. On their part, they assure you formally and

publicly, that they will give you nothing in the name of indemnity or

security, or for any other purpose.

It is impossible not to pause here for a moment, and to consider the

manner in which such declarations would have been taken by your

ancestors from a monarch distinguished for his arrogance,--an arrogance

which, even more than his ambition, incensed and combined all Europe

against him. Whatever his inward intentions may have been, did Louis the

Fourteenth ever make a declaration that the true bounds of France were

the ocean, the Mediterranean, and the Rhine? In any overtures for peace,

did he ever declare that he would make no sacrifices to promote it? His

declarations were always directly to the contrary; and at the Peace of

Ryswick his actions were to the contrary. At the close of the war,

almost in every instance victorious, all Europe was astonished, even

those who received them were astonished, at his concessions. Let those

who have a mind to see how little, in comparison, the most powerful and

ambitious of all monarchs is to be dreaded consult the very judicious

critical observations on the politics of that reign, inserted in the

military treatise of the Marquis de Montalembert. Let those who wish to

know what is to be dreaded from an ambitious republic consult no author,

no military critic, no historical critic. Let them open their own eyes,

which degeneracy and pusillanimity have shut from the light that pains

them, and let them not vainly seek their security in a voluntary

ignorance of their danger.

To dispose us towards this peace,--an attempt in which our author has, I

do not know whether to call it the good or ill fortune to agree with

whatever is most seditious, factious, and treasonable in this

country,--we are told by many dealers in speculation, but not so

distinctly by the author himself, (too great distinctness of affirmation

not being his fault,)--but we are told, that the French have lately

obtained a very pretty sort of Constitution, and that it resembles the

British Constitution as if they had been twinned together in the

womb,--_mire sagaces fallere hospites discrimen obscurum_. It may be so:

but I confess I am not yet made to it: nor is the noble author. He finds

the "elements" excellent, but the disposition very inartificial indeed.

Contrary to what we might expect at Paris, the meat is good, the cookery

abominable. I agree with him fully in the last; and if I were forced to

allow the first, I should still think, with our old coarse by-word,

that the same power which furnished all their former _restaurateurs_

sent also their present cooks. I have a great opinion of Thomas Paine,

and of all his productions: I remember his having been one of the

committee for forming one of their annual Constitutions, I mean the

admirable Constitution of 1793, after having been a chamber council to

the no less admirable Constitution of 1791. This pious patriot has his

eyes still directed to his dear native country, notwithstanding her in

gratitude to so kind a benefactor. This outlaw of England, and lawgiver

to France, is now, in secret probably, trying his hand again, and

inviting us to him by making his Constitution such as may give his

disciples in England some plausible pretext for going into the house

that he has opened. We have discovered, it seems, that all which the

boasted wisdom of our ancestors has labored to bring to perfection for

six or seven centuries is nearly, or altogether, matched in six or seven

days, at the leisure hours and sober intervals of Citizen Thomas Paine.

"But though the treacherous tapster, Thomas,

Hangs a new Angel two doors from us,

As fine as dauber's hands can make it,

In hopes that strangers may mistake it,

We think it both a shame and sin

To quit the good old Angel Inn,"

Indeed, in this good old house, where everything at least is well aired,

I shall be content to put up my fatigued horses, and here take a bed for

the long night that begins to darken upon me. Had I, however, the honor

(I must now call it so) of being a member of any of the constitutional

clubs, I should think I had carried my point most completely. It is

clear, by the applauses bestowed on what the author calls this new

Constitution, a mixed oligarchy, that the difference between the

clubbists and the old adherents to the monarchy of this country is

hardly worth a scuffle. Let it depart in peace, and light lie the earth

on the British Constitution! By this easy manner of treating the most

difficult of all subjects, the constitution for a great kingdom, and by

letting loose an opinion that they may be made by any adventurers in

speculation in a small given time, and for any country, all the ties,

which, whether of reason or prejudice, attach mankind to their old,

habitual, domestic governments, are not a little loosened; all

communion, which the similarity of the basis has produced between all

the governments that compose what we call the Christian world and the

republic of Europe, would be dissolved. By these hazarded speculations

France is more approximated to us in constitution than in situation; and

in proportion as we recede from the ancient system of Europe, we

approach to that connection which alone can remain to us, a close

alliance with the new-discovered moral and political world in France.

These theories would be of little importance, if we did not only know,

but sorely feel, that there is a strong Jacobin faction in this country,

which has long employed itself in speculating upon constitutions, and to

whom the circumstance of their government being home-bred and

prescriptive seems no sort of recommendation. What seemed to us to be

the best system of liberty that a nation ever enjoyed to them seems the

yoke of an intolerable slavery. This speculative faction had long been

at work. The French Revolution did not cause it: it only discovered it,

increased it, and gave fresh vigor to its operations. I have reason to

be persuaded that it was in this country, and from English writers and

English caballers, that France herself was instituted in this

revolutionary fury. The communion of these two factions upon any

pretended basis of similarity is a matter of very serious consideration.

They are always considering the formal distributions of power in a

constitution: the moral basis they consider as nothing. Very different

is my opinion: I consider the moral basis as everything,--the formal

arrangements, further than as they promote the moral principles of

government, and the keeping desperately wicked persons as the subjects

of laws and not the makers of them, to be of little importance. What

signifies the cutting and shuffling of cards, while the pack still

remains the same? As a basis for such a connection as has subsisted

between the powers of Europe, we had nothing to fear, but from the

lapses and frailties of men,--and that was enough; but this new

pretended republic has given us more to apprehend from what they call

their virtues than we had to dread from the vices of other men. Avowedly

and systematically, they have given the upperhand to all the vicious and

degenerate part of human nature. It is from their lapses and deviations

from their principle that alone we have anything to hope.

I hear another inducement to fraternity with the present rulers. They

have murdered one Robespierre. This Robespierre, they tell us, was a

cruel tyrant, and now that he is put out of the way, all will go well in

France. Astræa will again return to that earth from which she has been

an emigrant, and all nations will resort to her golden scales. It is

very extraordinary, that, the very instant the mode of Paris is known

here, it becomes all the fashion in London. This is their jargon. It is

the old _bon-ton_ of robbers, who cast their common crimes on the

wickedness of their departed associates. I care little about the memory

of this same Robespierre. I am sure he was an execrable villain. I

rejoiced at his punishment neither more nor less than I should at the

execution of the present Directory, or any of its members. But who gave

Robespierre the power of being a tyrant? and who were the instruments of

his tyranny? The present virtuous constitution-mongers. He was a tyrant;

they were his satellites and his hangmen. Their sole merit is in the

murder of their colleague. They have expiated their other murders by a

new murder. It has always been the case among this banditti. They have

always had the knife at each other's throats, after they had almost

blunted it at the throats of every honest man. These people thought,

that, in the commerce of murder, he was like to have the better of the

bargain, if any time was lost; they therefore took one of their short

revolutionary methods, and massacred him in a manner so perfidious and

cruel as would shock all humanity, if the stroke was not struck by the

present rulers on one of their own associates. But this last act of

infidelity and murder is to expiate all the rest, and to qualify them

for the amity of an humane and virtuous sovereign and civilized people.

I have heard that a Tartar believes, when he has killed a man, that all

his estimable qualities pass with his clothes and arms to the murderer;

but I have never heard that it was the opinion of any savage Scythian,

that, if he kills a brother villain, he is, _ipso facto_, absolved of

all his own offences. The Tartarian doctrine is the most tenable

opinion. The murderers of Robespierre, besides what they are entitled to

by being engaged in the same tontine of infamy, are his representatives,

have inherited all his murderous qualities, in addition to their own

private stock. But it seems we are always to be of a party with the last

and victorious assassins. I confess I am of a different mind, and am

rather inclined, of the two, to think and speak less hardly of a dead

ruffian than to associate with the living. I could better bear the

stench of the gibbeted murderer than the society of the bloody felons

who yet annoy the world. Whilst they wait the recompense due to their

ancient crimes, they merit new punishment by the new offences they

commit. There is a period to the offences of Robespierre. They survive

in his assassins. "Better a living dog," says the old proverb, "than a

dead lion." Not so here. Murderers and hogs never look well till they

are hanged. From villany no good can arise, but in the example of its

fate. So I leave them their dead Robespierre, either to gibbet his

memory, or to deify him in their Pantheon with their Marat and their

Mirabeau.

It is asserted that this government promises stability. God of his mercy

forbid! If it should, nothing upon earth besides itself can be stable.

We declare this stability to be the ground of our making peace with

them. Assuming it, therefore, that the men and the system are what I

have described, and that they have a determined hostility against this

country,--an hostility not only of policy, but of predilection,--then I

think that every rational being would go along with me in considering

its permanence as the greatest of all possible evils. If, therefore, we

are to look for peace with such a thing in any of its monstrous shapes,

which I deprecate, it must be in that state of disorder, confusion,

discord, anarchy, and insurrection, such as might oblige the momentary

rulers to forbear their attempts on neighboring states, or to render

these attempts less operative, if they should kindle new wars. When was

it heard before, that the internal repose of a determined and wicked

enemy, and the strength of his government, became the wish of his

neighbor, and a security, against either his malice or his ambition? The

direct contrary has always been inferred from that state of things:

accordingly, it has ever been the policy of those who would preserve

themselves against the enterprises of such a malignant and mischievous

power to cut out so much work for him in his own states as might keep

his dangerous activity employed at home.

It is said, in vindication of this system, which demands the stability

of the Regicide power as a ground for peace with them, that, when they

have obtained, as now it is said (though not by this noble author) they

have, a permanent government, they will be _able_ to preserve amity with

this kingdom, and with others who have the misfortune to be in their

neighborhood. Granted. They will be _able_ to do so, without question;

but are they willing to do so? Produce the act; produce the declaration.

Have they made any single step towards it? Have they ever once proposed

to treat?

The assurance of a stable peace, grounded on the stability of their

system, proceeds on this hypothesis,--that their hostility to other

nations has proceeded from their anarchy at home, and from the

prevalence of a populace which their government had not strength enough

to master. This I utterly deny. I insist upon it as a fact, that, in the

daring commencement of all their hostilities, and their astonishing

perseverance in them, so as never once, in any fortune, high or low, to

propose a treaty of peace to any power in Europe, they have never been

actuated by the people: on the contrary, the people, I will not say have

been moved, but impelled by them, and have generally acted under a

compulsion, of which most of us are as yet, thank God, unable to form an

adequate idea. The war against Austria was formally declared by the

unhappy Louis the Sixteenth; but who has ever considered Louis the

Sixteenth, since the Revolution, to have been the government? The second

Regicide Assembly, then the only government, was the author of that war;

and neither the nominal king nor the nominal people had anything to do

with it, further than in a reluctant obedience. It is to delude

ourselves, to consider the state of France, since their Revolution, as a

state of anarchy: it is something far worse. Anarchy it is, undoubtedly,

if compared with government pursuing the peace, order, morals, and

prosperity of the people; but regarding only the power that has really

guided from the day of the Revolution to this time, it has been of all

governments the most absolute, despotic, and effective that has hitherto

appeared on earth. Never were the views and politics of any government

pursued with half the regularity, system, and method that a diligent

observer must have contemplated with amazement and terror in theirs.

Their state is not an anarchy, but a series of short-lived tyrannies. We

do not call a republic with annual magistrates an anarchy: theirs is

that kind of republic; but the succession is not effected by the

expiration of the term of the magistrate's service, but by his murder.

Every new magistracy, succeeding by homicide, is auspicated by accusing

its predecessors in the office of tyranny, and it continues by the

exercise of what they charged upon others.

This strong hand is the law, and the sole law, in their state. I defy

any person to show any other law,--or if any such should be found on

paper, that it is in the smallest degree, or in any one instance,

regarded or practised. In all their successions, not one magistrate, or

one form of magistracy, has expired by a mere occasional popular tumult;

everything has been the effect of the studied machinations of the one

revolutionary cabal, operating within itself upon itself. That cabal is

all in all. France has no public; it is the only nation I ever heard of,

where the people are absolutely slaves, in the fullest sense, in all

affairs, public and private, great and small, even down to the minutest

and most recondite parts of their household concerns. The helots of

Laconia, the regardants to the manor in Russia and in Poland, even the

negroes in the West Indies, know nothing of so searching, so

penetrating, so heart-breaking a slavery. Much would these servile

wretches call for our pity under that unheard-of yoke, if for their

perfidious and unnatural rebellion, and for their murder of the mildest

of all monarchs, they did not richly deserve a punishment not greater

than their crime.

On the whole, therefore, I take it to be a great mistake to think that

the want of power in the government furnished a natural cause of war;

whereas the greatness of its power, joined to its use of that power, the

nature of its system, and the persons who acted in it, did naturally

call for a strong military resistance to oppose them, and rendered it

not only just, but necessary. But at present I say no more on the genius

and character of the power set up in France. I may probably trouble you

with it more at large hereafter: this subject calls for a very full

exposure: at present it is enough for me, if I point it out as a matter

well worthy of consideration, whether the true ground of hostility was

not rightly conceived very early in this war, and whether anything has

happened to change that system, except our ill success in a war which in

no principal instance had its true destination as the object of its

operations. That the war has succeeded ill in many cases is undoubted;

but then let us speak the truth, and say we are defeated, exhausted,

dispirited, and must submit. This would be intelligible. The world would

be inclined to pardon the abject conduct of an undone nation. But let us

not conceal from _ourselves_ our real situation, whilst, by every

species of humiliation, we are but too strongly displaying our sense of

it to the enemy.

The writer of the Remarks in the Last Week of October appears to think

that the present government in France contains many of the elements

which, when properly arranged, are known to form the best practical

governments,--and that the system, whatever may become its particular

form, is no longer likely to be an obstacle to negotiation. If its form

now be no obstacle to such negotiation, I do not know why it was ever

so. Suppose that this government promised greater permanency than any of

the former, (a point on which I can form no judgment,) still a link is

wanting to couple the permanence of the government with the permanence

of the peace. On this not one word is said: nor can there be, in my

opinion. This deficiency is made up by strengthening the first ringlet

of the chain, that ought to be, but that is not, stretched to connect

the two propositions. All seems to be done, if we can make out that the

last French edition of Regicide is like to prove stable.

As a prognostic of this stability, it is said to be accepted by the

people. Here again I join issue with the fraternizers, and positively

deny the fact. Some submission or other has been obtained, by some means

or other, to every government that hitherto has been set up. And the

same submission would, by the same means, be obtained for any other

project that the wit or folly of man could possibly devise. The

Constitution of 1790 was universally received. The Constitution which

followed it, under the name of a Convention, was universally submitted

to. The Constitution of 1793 was universally accepted. Unluckily, this

year's Constitution, which was formed, and its genethliacon sung by the

noble author while it was yet in embryo, or was but just come bloody

from the womb, is the only one which in its very formation has been

generally resisted by a very great and powerful party in many parts of

the kingdom, and particularly in the capital. It never had a popular

choice even in show: those who arbitrarily erected the new building out

of the old materials of their own Convention were obliged to send for an

army to support their work: like brave gladiators, they fought it out

in the streets of Paris, and even massacred each other in their house of

assembly, in the most edifying manner, and for the entertainment and

instruction of their Excellencies the foreign ambassadors, who had a box

in this constitutional amphitheatre of a free people.

At length, after a terrible struggle, the troops prevailed over the

citizens. The citizen soldiers, the ever-famed national guards, who had

deposed and murdered their sovereign, were disarmed by the inferior

trumpeters of that rebellion. Twenty thousand regular troops garrison

Paris. Thus a complete military government is formed. It has the

strength, and it may count on the stability, of that kind of power. This

power is to last as long as the Parisians think proper. Every other

ground of stability, but from military force and terror, is clean out of

the question. To secure them further, they have a strong corps of

irregulars, ready-armed. Thousands of those hell-hounds called

Terrorists, whom they had shut up in prison, on their last Revolution,

as the satellites of tyranny, are let loose on the people. The whole of

their government, in its origination, in its continuance, in all its

actions, and in all its resources, is force, and nothing but force: a

forced constitution, a forced election, a forced subsistence, a forced

requisition of soldiers, a forced loan of money.

They differ nothing from all the preceding usurpations, but that to the

same odium a good deal more of contempt is added. In this situation,

notwithstanding all their military force, strengthened with the

undisciplined power of the Terrorists, and the nearly general disarming

of Paris, there would almost certainly have been before this an

insurrection against them, but for one cause. The people of France

languish for peace. They all despaired of obtaining it from the

coalesced powers, whilst they had a gang of professed regicides at their

head; and several of the least desperate republicans would have joined

with better men to shake them wholly off, and to produce something more

ostensible, if they had not been reiteratedly told that their sole hope

of peace was the very contrary to what they naturally imagined: that

they must leave off their cabals and insurrections, which could serve no

purpose but to bring in that royalty which was wholly rejected by the

coalesced kings; that, to satisfy them, they must tranquilly, if they

could not cordially, submit themselves to the tyranny and the tyrants

they despised and abhorred. Peace was held out by the allied monarchies

to the people of France, as a bounty for supporting the Republic of

Regicides. In fact, a coalition, begun for the avowed purpose of

destroying that den of robbers, now exists only for their support. If

evil happens to the princes of Europe from the success and stability of

this infernal business, it is their own absolute crime.

We are to understand, however, (for sometimes so the author hints,) that

something stable in the Constitution of Regicide was required for our

amity with it; but the noble Remarker is no more solicitous about this

point than he is for the permanence of the whole body of his October

speculations. "If," says he, speaking of the Regicide, "they can obtain

a practicable constitution, even for a limited period of time, they will

be in a condition to reestablish the accustomed relations of peace and

amity." Pray let us leave this bush-fighting. What is meant by a

_limited period of time_? Does it mean the direct contrary to the

terms, _an unlimited period_? If it is a limited period, what limitation

does he fix as a ground for his opinion? Otherwise, his limitation is

unlimited. If he only requires a constitution that will last while the

treaty goes on, ten days' existence will satisfy his demands. He knows

that France never did want a practicable constitution, nor a government,

which endured for a limited period of time. Her constitutions were but

too practicable; and short as was their duration, it was but too long.

They endured time enough for treaties which benefited themselves and

have done infinite mischief to our cause. But, granting him his strange

thesis, that hitherto the mere form or the mere term of their

constitutions, and not their indisposition, but their instability, has

been the cause of their not preserving the relations of amity,--how

could a constitution which might not last half an hour after the noble

lord's signature of the treaty, in the company in which he must sign it,

insure its observance? If you trouble yourself at all with their

constitutions, you are certainly more concerned with them after the

treaty than before it, as the observance of conventions is of infinitely

more consequence than the making them. Can anything be more palpably

absurd and senseless than to object to a treaty of peace for want of

durability in constitutions which had an actual duration, and to trust a

constitution that at the time of the writing had not so much as a

practical existence? There is no way of accounting for such discourse in

the mouths of men of sense, but by supposing that they secretly

entertain a hope that the very act of having made a peace with the

Regicides will give a stability to the Regicide system. This will not

clear the discourse from the absurdity, but it will account for the

conduct, which such reasoning so ill defends. What a roundabout way is

this to peace,--to make war for the destruction of regicides, and then

to give them peace in order to insure a stability that will enable them

to observe it! I say nothing of the honor displayed in such a system. It

is plain it militates with itself almost in all the parts of it. In one

part, it supposes stability in their Constitution, as a ground of a

stable peace; in another part, we are to hope for peace in a different

way,--that is, by splitting this brilliant orb into little stars, and

this would make the face of heaven so fine! No, there is no system upon

which the peace which in humility we are to supplicate can possibly

stand.

I believe, before this time, that the more form of a constitution, in

any country, never was fixed as the sole ground of objecting to a treaty

with it. With other circumstances it may be of great moment. What is

incumbent on the assertors of the Fourth Week of October system to prove

is not whether their then expected Constitution was likely to be stable

or transitory, but whether it promised to this country and its allies,

and to the peace and settlement of all Europe, more good-will or more

good faith than any of the experiments which have gone before it. On

these points I would willingly join issue.

Observe first the manner in which the Remarker describes (very truly, as

I conceive) the people of France under that auspicious government, and

then observe the conduct of that government to other nations. "The

people without _any_ established constitution; distracted by popular

convulsions; in a state of inevitable bankruptcy; without any commerce;

with their principal ports blockaded; and without a fleet that could

venture to face one of our _detached squadrons_." Admitting, as fully as

he has stated it, this condition of France, I would fain know how he

reconciles this condition with his ideas of _any kind of a practicable

constitution_, or _duration for a limited period_, which are his _sine

qua non_ of peace. But passing by contradictions, as no fair objections

to reasoning, this state of things would naturally, at other times, and

in other governments, have produced a disposition to peace, almost on

any terms. But, in that state of their country, did the Regicide

government solicit peace or amity with other nations, or even lay any

specious grounds for it, in propositions of affected moderation, or in

the most loose and general conciliatory language? The direct contrary.

It was but a very few days before the noble writer had commenced his

Remarks, as if it were to refute him by anticipation, that his France

thought fit to lay out a new territorial map of dominion, and to declare

to us and to all Europe what territories she was willing to allot to her

own empire, and what she is content (during her good pleasure) to leave

to others.

This their law of empire was promulgated without any requisition on that

subject, and proclaimed in a style and upon principles which never had

been heard of in the annals of arrogance and ambition. She prescribed

the limits to her empire, not upon principles of treaty, convention,

possession, usage, habitude, the distinction of tribes, nations, or

languages, but by physical aptitudes. Having fixed herself as the

arbiter of physical dominion, she construed the limits of Nature by her

convenience. That was Nature which most extended and best secured the

empire of France.

I need say no more on the insult offered not only to all equity and

justice, but to the common sense of mankind, in deciding legal property

by physical principles, and establishing the convenience of a party as a

rule of public law. The noble advocate for peace has, indeed, perfectly

well exploded this daring and outrageous system of pride and tyranny. I

am most happy in commending him, when he writes like himself. But hear

still further and in the same good strain the great patron and advocate

of amity with this accommodating, mild, and unassuming power, when he

reports to you the law they give, and its immediate effects:--"They

amount," says he, "to the sacrifice of powers that have been the most

nearly connected with us,--the direct or indirect annexation to France

of all the ports of the Continent from Dunkirk to Hamburg,--an immense

accession of territory,--and, in one word, THE ABANDONMENT OF THE

INDEPENDENCE OF EUROPE!" This is the LAW (the author and I use no

different terms) which this new government, almost as soon as it could

cry in the cradle, and as one of the very first acts by which it

auspicated its entrance into function, the pledge it gives of the

firmness of its policy,--such is the law that this proud power

prescribes to abject nations. What is the comment upon this law by the

great jurist who recommends us to the tribunal which issued the decree?

"An obedience to it would be" (says he) "dishonorable to us, and exhibit

us to the present age and to posterity as submitting to the law

prescribed to us by our enemy."

Here I recognize the voice of a British plenipotentiary: I begin to feel

proud of my country. But, alas! the short date of human elevation! The

accents of dignity died upon his tongue. This author will not assure us

of his sentiments for the whole of a pamphlet; but, in the sole

energetic part of it, he does not continue the same through an whole

sentence, if it happens to be of any sweep or compass. In the very womb

of this last sentence, pregnant, as it should seem, with a Hercules,

there is formed a little bantling of the mortal race, a degenerate, puny

parenthesis, that totally frustrates our most sanguine views and

expectations, and disgraces the whole gestation. Here is this

destructive parenthesis: "Unless some adequate compensation be secured

_to us_." _To us!_ The Christian world may shift for itself, Europe may

groan in slavery, we may be dishonored by receiving law from an

enemy,--but all is well, provided the compensation _to us_ be adequate.

To what are we reserved? An _adequate_ compensation "for the sacrifice

of powers the most nearly connected with us";--an _adequate_

compensation "for the direct or indirect annexation to France of all the

ports of the Continent from Dunkirk to Hamburg";--an _adequate_

compensation "for the abandonment of the independence of Europe"! Would

that, when all our manly sentiments are thus changed, our manly language

were changed along with them, and that the English tongue were not

employed to utter what our ancestors never dreamed could enter into an

English heart!

But let us consider this matter of adequate compensation. Who is to

furnish it? From what funds is it to be drawn? Is it by another treaty

of commerce? I have no objections to treaties of commerce upon

principles of commerce. Traffic for traffic,--all is fair. But commerce

in exchange for empire, for safety, for glory! We set out in our dealing

with a miserable cheat upon ourselves. I know it may be said, that we

may prevail on this proud, philosophical, military Republic, which looks

down with contempt on trade, to declare it unfit for the sovereign of

nations to be _eundem negotiatorem et dominum_: that, in virtue of this

maxim of her state, the English in France may be permitted, as the Jews

are in Poland and in Turkey, to execute all the little inglorious

occupations,--to be the sellers of new and the buyers of old clothes, to

be their brokers and factors, and to be employed in casting up their

debits and credits, whilst the master Republic cultivates the arts of

empire, prescribes the forms of peace to nations, and dictates laws to a

subjected world. But are we quite sure, that, when we have surrendered

half Europe to them in hope of this compensation, the Republic will

confer upon us those privileges of dishonor? Are we quite certain that

she will permit us to farm the guillotine,--to contract for the

provision of her twenty thousand Bastiles,--to furnish transports for

the myriads of her exiles to Guiana,--to become commissioners for her

naval stores,--or to engage for the clothing of those armies which are

to subdue the poor relics of Christian Europe? No! She is bespoke by the

Jew subjects of her own Amsterdam for all these services.

But if these, or matters similar, are not the compensations the Remarker

demands, and that on consideration he finds them neither adequate nor

certain, who else is to be the chapman, and to furnish the

purchase-money, at this market, of all the grand principles of empire,

of law, of civilization, of morals, and of religion, where British faith

and honor are to be sold by inch of candle? Who is to be the _dedecorum

pretiosus emptor_? Is it the _navis Hispanæ magister_? Is it to be

furnished by the Prince of Peace? Unquestionably. Spain as yet possesses

mines of gold and silver, and may give us in _pesos duros_ an adequate

compensation for our honor and our virtue. When these things are at all

to be sold, they are the vilest commodities at market.

It is full as singular as any of the other singularities in this work,

that the Remarker, talking so much as he does of cessions and

compensations, passes by Spain in his general settlement, as if there

were no such country on the globe,--as if there were no Spain in Europe,

no Spain in America. But this great matter of political deliberation

cannot be put out of our thoughts by his silence. She _has_ furnished

compensations,--not to you, but to France. The Regicide Republic and the

still nominally subsisting monarchy of Spain are united,--and are united

upon a principle of jealousy, if not of bitter enmity, to Great Britain.

The noble writer has here another matter for meditation. It is not from

Dunkirk to Hamburg that the ports are in the hands of France: they are

in the hands of France from Hamburg to Gibraltar. How long the new

dominion will last I cannot tell; but France the Republic has conquered

Spain, and the ruling party in that court acts by her orders and exists

by her power.

The noble writer, in his views into futurity, has forgotten to look back

to the past. If he chooses it, he may recollect, that, on the prospect

of the death of Philip the Fourth, and still more on the event, all

Europe was moved to its foundations. In the treaties of partition that

first were entered into, and in the war that afterwards blazed out to

prevent those crowns from being actually or virtually united in the

House of Bourbon, the predominance of France in Spain, and above all, in

the Spanish Indies, was the great object of all these movements in the

cabinet and in the field. The Grand Alliance was formed upon that

apprehension. On that apprehension the mighty war was continued during

such a number of years as the degenerate and pusillanimous impatience of

our dwindled race can hardly bear to have reckoned: a war equal, within

a few years, in duration, and not, perhaps, inferior in bloodshed, to

any of those great contests for empire which in history make the most

awful matter of recorded memory.

Ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis,

Omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu

Horrida contremuere sub altis ætheris auris,

In dubioque fuit sub utrorum regna cadendum

Omnibus humanis esset terrâque marique.--

When this war was ended, (I cannot stay now to examine how,) the object

of the war was the object of the treaty. When it was found

impracticable, or less desirable than before, wholly to exclude a branch

of the Bourbon race from that immense succession, the point of Utrecht

was to prevent the mischiefs to arise from the influence of the greater

upon the lesser branch. His Lordship is a great member of the diplomatic

body; he has, of course, all the fundamental treaties which make the

public statute law of Europe by heart: and, indeed, no active member of

Parliament ought to be ignorant of their general tenor and leading

provisions. In the treaty which closed that war, and of which it is a

fundamental part, because relating to the whole policy of the compact,

it was agreed that Spain should not give anything from her territory in

the West Indies to France. This article, apparently onerous to Spain,

was in truth highly beneficial. But, oh, the blindness of the greatest

statesman to the infinite and unlooked-for combinations of things which

lie hid in the dark prolific womb of futurity! The great trunk of

Bourbon is cut down; the withered branch is worked up into the

construction of a French Regicide Republic. Here we have formed a new,

unlooked-for, monstrous, heterogeneous alliance,--a double-natured

monster, republic above and monarchy below. There is no centaur of

fiction, no poetic satyr of the woods, nothing short of the hieroglyphic

monsters of Egypt, dog in head and man in body, that can give an idea of

it. None of these things can subsist in Nature (so, at least, it is

thought); but the moral world admits monsters which the physical

rejects.

In this metamorphosis, the first thing done by Spain, in the honey-moon

of her new servitude, was, with all the hardihood of pusillanimity,

utterly to defy the most solemn treaties with Great Britain and the

guaranty of Europe. She has yielded the largest and fairest part of one

of the largest and fairest islands in the West Indies, perhaps on the

globe, to the usurped powers of France. She completes the title of those

powers to the whole of that important central island of Hispaniola. She

has solemnly surrendered to the regicides and butchers of the Bourbon

family what that court never ventured, perhaps never wished, to bestow

on the patriarchal stock of her own august house.

The noble negotiator takes no notice of this portentous junction and

this audacious surrender. The effect is no less than the total

subversion of the balance of power in the West Indies, and indeed

everywhere else. This arrangement, considered in itself, but much more

as it indicates a complete union of France with Spain, is truly

alarming. Does he feel nothing of the change this makes in that part of

his description of the state of France where he supposes her not able to

face one of our detached squadrons? Does he feel nothing for the

condition of Portugal under this new coalition? Is it for this state of

things he recommends our junction in that common alliance as a remedy?

It is surely already monstrous enough. We see every standing principle

of policy, every old governing opinion of nations, completely gone, and

with it the foundation of all their establishments. Can Spain keep

herself internally where she is, with this connection? Does he dream

that Spain, unchristian, or even uncatholic, can exist as a monarchy?

This author indulges himself in speculations of the division of the

French Republic. I only say, that with much greater reason he might

speculate on the republicanism and the subdivision of Spain.

It is not peace with France which secures that feeble government; it is

that peace which, if it shall continue, decisively ruins Spain. Such a

peace is not the peace which the remnant of Christianity celebrates at

this holy season. In it there is no glory to God on high, and not the

least tincture of good-will to man. What things we have lived to see!

The King of Spain in a group of Moors, Jews, and Renegadoes; and the

clergy taxed to pay for his conversion! The Catholic King in the strict

embraces of the most Unchristian Republic! I hope we shall never see his

Apostolic Majesty, his Faithful Majesty, and the King, Defender of the

Faith, added to that unhallowed and impious fraternity.

The noble author has glimpses of the consequences of peace, as well as

I. He feels for the colonies of Great Britain, one of the principal

resources of our commerce and our naval power, if piratical France shall

be established, as he knows she must be, in the West Indies, if we sue

for peace on such terms as they may condescend to grant us. He feels

that their very colonial system for the interior is not compatible with

the existence of our colonies. I tell him, and doubt not I shall be able

to demonstrate, that, being what she is, if she possesses a rock there,

we cannot be safe. Has this author had in his view the transactions

between the Regicide Republic and the yet nominally subsisting monarchy

of Spain?

I bring this matter under your Lordship's consideration, that you may

have a more complete view than this author chooses to give of the _true

France_ you have to deal with, as to its nature, and to its force and

its disposition. Mark it, my Lord, France, in giving her law to Spain,

stipulated for none of her indemnities in Europe, no enlargement

whatever of her frontier. Whilst we are looking for indemnities from

France, betraying our own safety in a sacrifice of the independence of

Europe, France secures hers by the most important acquisition of

territory ever made in the West Indies since their first settlement. She

appears (it is only in appearance) to give up the frontier of Spain; and

she is compensated, not in appearance, but in reality, by a territory

that makes a dreadful frontier to the colonies of Great Britain.

It is sufficiently alarming that she is to have the possession of this

great island. But all the Spanish colonies, virtually, are hers. Is

there so puny a whipster in the _petty form_ of the school of politics

who can be at a loss for the fate of the British colonies, when he

combines the French and Spanish consolidation with the known critical

and dubious dispositions of the United States of America, as they are at

present, but which, when a peace is made, when the basis of a Regicide

ascendency in Spain is laid, will no longer be so good as dubious and

critical? But I go a great deal further; and on much consideration of

the condition and circumstances of the West Indies, and of the genius of

this new republic, as it has operated and is likely to operate on them,

I say, that, if a single rock in the West Indies is in the hands of this

_transatlantic Morocco_, we have not an hour's safety there.

The Remarker, though he slips aside from the main consideration, seems

aware that this arrangement, standing as it does, in the West Indies,

leaves us at the mercy of the new coalition, or rather at the mercy of

the sole guiding part of it. He does not, indeed, adopt a supposition

such as I make, who am confident that anything which can give them a

single good port and opportune piratical station there would lead to our

ruin: the author proceeds upon an idea that the Regicides may be an

existing and considerable territorial power in the West Indies, and, of

course, her piratical system more dangerous and as real. However, for

that desperate case he has an easy remedy; but, surely, in his whole

shop there is nothing so extraordinary. It is, that we three, France,

Spain, and England, (there are no other of any moment,) should adopt

some "_analogy_ in the interior systems of government in the several

islands which we may respectively retain after the closing of the war."

This plainly can be done only by a convention between the parties; and I

believe it would be the first war ever made to terminate in an analogy

of the interior government of any country, or any parts of such

countries. Such a partnership in domestic government is, I think,

carrying fraternity as far as it will go.

It will be an affront to your sagacity to pursue this matter into all

its details: suffice it to say, that, if this convention for analogous

domestic government is made, it immediately gives a right for the

residence of a consul (in all likelihood some negro or man of color) in

every one of your islands; a Regicide ambassador in London will be at

all your meetings of West India merchants and planters, and, in effect,

in all our colonial councils. Not one order of Council can hereafter be

made, or any one act of Parliament relative to the West India colonies

even be agitated, which will not always afford reasons for protests and

perpetual interference; the Regicide Republic will become an integral

part of the colonial legislature, and, so far as the colonies are

concerned, of the British too. But it will be still worse: as all our

domestic affairs are interlaced more or less intimately with our

external, this intermeddling must everywhere insinuate itself into all

other interior transactions, and produce a copartnership in our domestic

concerns of every description.

Such are the plain, inevitable consequences of this arrangement of a

system, of analogous interior government. On the other hand, without it,

the author assures us, and in this I heartily agree with him, "that the

correspondence and communications between the neighboring colonies will

be great, that the disagreements will be incessant, and that causes even

of national quarrels will arise _from day to day_." Most true. But, for

the reasons I have given, the case, if possible, will be worse by the

proposed remedy, by the triple fraternal interior analogy,--an analogy

itself most fruitful, and more foodful than the old Ephesian statue with

the three tier of breasts. Your Lordship must also observe how

infinitely this business must be complicated by our interference in the

slow-paced Saturnian movements of Spain and the rapid parabolic flights

of France. But such is the disease,--such is the cure,--such is, and

must be, the effect of Regicide vicinity.

But what astonishes me is, that the negotiator, who has certainly an

exercised understanding, did not see that every person habituated to

such meditations must necessarily pursue the train of thought further

than he has carried it, and must ask himself whether what he states so

truly of the necessity of our arranging an analogous interior

government, in consequence of the vicinity of our possessions, in the

West Indies, does not as extensively apply, and much more forcibly, to

the circumstance of our much nearer vicinity with the parent and author

of this mischief. I defy even his acuteness and ingenuity to show me any

one point in which the cases differ, except that it is plainly more

necessary in Europe than in America. Indeed, the further we trace the

details of the proposed peace, the more your Lordship will be satisfied

that I have not been guilty of any abuse of terms, when I use

indiscriminately (as I always do, in speaking of arrangements with

Regicide) the words peace and fraternity. An analogy between our

interior governments must be the consequence. The noble negotiator sees

it as well as I do. I deprecate this Jacobin interior analogy. But

hereafter, perhaps, I may say a good deal more upon this part of the

subject.

The noble lord insists on very little more than on the excellence of

their Constitution, the hope of their dwindling into little republics,

and this close copartnership in government. I hear of others, indeed,

that offer by other arguments to reconcile us to this peace and

fraternity. The Regicides, they say, have renounced the creed of the

Rights of Man, and declared equality a chimera. This is still more

strange than all the rest. They have apostatized from their apostasy.

They are renegadoes from that impious faith for which they subverted the

ancient government, murdered their king, and imprisoned, butchered,

confiscated, and banished their fellow-subjects, and to which they

forced every man to swear at the peril of his life. And now, to

reconcile themselves to the world, they declare this creed, bought by so

much blood, to be an imposture and a chimera. I have no doubt that they

always thought it to be so, when they were destroying everything at home

and abroad for its establishment. It is no strange thing, to those who

look into the nature of corrupted man, to find a violent persecutor a

perfect unbeliever of his own creed. But this is the very first time

that any man or set of men were hardy enough to attempt to lay the

ground of confidence in them by an acknowledgment of their own

falsehood, fraud, hypocrisy, treachery, heterodox doctrine,

persecution, and cruelty. Everything we hear from them is new, and, to

use a phrase of their own, _revolutionary_; everything supposes a total

revolution in all the principles of reason, prudence, and moral feeling.

If possible, this their recantation of the chief parts in the canon of

the Rights of Man is more infamous and causes greater horror than their

originally promulgating and forcing down the throats of mankind that

symbol of all evil. It is raking too much into the dirt and ordure of

human nature to say more of it.

I hear it said, too, that they have lately declared in favor of

property. This is exactly of the same sort with the former. What need

had they to make this declaration, if they did not know that by their

doctrines and practices they had totally subverted all property? What

government of Europe, either in its origin or its continuance, has

thought it necessary to declare itself in favor of property? The more

recent ones were formed for its protection against former violations;

the old consider the inviolability of property and their own existence

as one and the same thing, and that a proclamation for its safety would

be sounding an alarm on its danger. But the Regicide banditti knew that

this was not the first time they have been obliged to give such

assurances, and had as often falsified them. They knew, that, after

butchering hundreds of men, women, and children, for no other cause than

to lay hold on their property, such a declaration might have a chance of

encouraging other nations to run the risk of establishing a commercial

house amongst them. It is notorious, that these very Jacobins, upon an

alarm of the shopkeeper of Paris, made this declaration in favor of

property. These brave fellows received the apprehensions expressed on

that head with indignation, and said that property could be in no

danger, because all the world knew it was under the protection of the

_sans-culottes_. At what period did they not give this assurance? Did

they not give it; when they fabricated their first Constitution? Did

they not then solemnly declare it one of the rights of a citizen (a

right, of course, only declared, and not then fabricated) to depart from

his country, and choose another _domicilium_, without detriment to his

property? Did they not declare that no property should be confiscated

from the children for the crime of the parent? Can they now declare more

fully their respect for property than they did at that time? And yet was

there ever known such horrid violences and confiscations as instantly

followed under the very persons now in power, many of them leading

members of that Assembly, and all of them violators of that engagement

which was the very basis of their republic,--confiscations in which

hundreds of men, women, and children, not guilty of one act of duty in

resisting their usurpation, were involved? This keeping of their old is,

then, to give us a confidence in their new engagements. But examine the

matter, and you will see that the prevaricating sons of violence give no

relief at all, where at all it can be wanted. They renew their old

fraudulent declaration against confiscations, and then they expressly

exclude all adherents to their ancient lawful government from any

benefit of it: that is to say, they promise that they will secure all

their brother plunderers in their share of the common plunder. The fear

of being robbed by every new succession of robbers, who do not keep even

the faith of that kind of society, absolutely required that they should

give security to the dividends of spoil, else they could not exist a

moment. But it was necessary, in giving security to robbers, that honest

men should be deprived of all hope of restitution; and thus their

interests were made utterly and eternally incompatible. So that it

appears that this boasted security of property is nothing more than a

seal put upon its destruction; this ceasing of confiscation is to secure

the confiscators against the innocent proprietors. That very thing which

is held out to you as your cure is that which makes your malady, and

renders it, if once it happens, utterly incurable. You, my Lord, who

possess a considerable, though not an invidious estate, may be well

assured, that, if, by being engaged, as you assuredly would be, in the

defence of your religion, your king, your order, your laws, and

liberties, that estate should be put under confiscation, the property

would be secured, but in the same manner, at your expense.

But, after all, for what purpose are we told of this reformation in

their principles, and what is the policy of all this softening in ours,

which is to be produced by their example? It is not to soften us to

suffering innocence and virtue, but to mollify us to the crimes and to

the society of robbers and ruffians. But I trust that our countrymen

will not be softened to that kind of crimes and criminals; for, if we

should, our hearts will be hardened to everything which has a claim on

our benevolence. A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of

the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from

cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty are accomplices in it. The

pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancor produces an

indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where

they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.

There is another piece of policy, not more laudable than this, in

reading these moral lectures, which lessens our hatred to criminals and

our pity to sufferers by insinuating that it has been owing to their

fault or folly that the latter have become the prey of the former. By

flattering us that we are not subject to the same vices and follies, it

induces a confidence that we shall not suffer the same evils by a

contact with the infamous gang of robbers who have thus robbed and

butchered our neighbors before our faces. We must not be flattered to

our ruin. Our vices are the same as theirs, neither more nor less. If

any faults we had, which wanted this French example to call us to a

"_softening_ of character, and a review of our social relations and

duties," there is yet no sign that we have commenced our reformation. We

seem, by the best accounts I have from the world, to go on just as

formerly, "some to undo, and some to be undone." There is no change at

all: and if we are not bettered by the sufferings of war, this peace,

which, for reasons to himself best known, the author fixes as the period

of our reformation, must have something very extraordinary in it;

because hitherto ease, opulence, and their concomitant pleasure have

never greatly disposed mankind to that serious reflection and review

which the author supposes to be the result of the approaching peace with

vice and crime. I believe he forms a right estimate of the nature of

this peace, and that it will want many of those circumstances which

formerly characterizes that state of things.

If I am right in my ideas of this new republic, the different states of

peace and war will make no difference in her pursuits. It is not an

enemy of accident that we have to deal with. Enmity to us, and to all

civilized nations, is wrought into the very stamina of its Constitution.

It was made to pursue the purposes of that fundamental enmity. The

design will go on regularly in every position and in every relation.

Their hostility is to break us to their dominion; their amity is to

debauch us to their principles. In the former, we are to contend with

their force; in the latter, with their intrigues. But we stand in a very

different posture of defence in the two situations. In war, so long as

government is supported, we fight with the whole united force of the

kingdom. When under the name of peace the war of intrigue begins, we do

not contend against our enemies with the whole force of the kingdom.

No,--we shall have to fight, (if it should be a fight at all, and not an

ignominious surrender of everything which has made our country venerable

in our eyes and dear to our hearts,) we shall have to light with but a

portion of our strength against the whole of theirs. Gentlemen who not

long since thought with us, but who now recommend a Jacobin peace, were

at that time sufficiently aware of the existence of a dangerous Jacobin

faction within this kingdom. Awhile ago they seemed to be tremblingly

alive to the number of those who composed it, to their dark subtlety, to

their fierce audacity, to their admiration of everything that passes in

France, to their eager desire of a close communication with the mother

faction there. At this moment, when the question is upon the opening of

that communication, not a word of our English Jacobins. That faction is

put out of sight and out of thought. "It vanished at the crowing of the

cock." Scarcely had the Gallic harbinger of peace and light begun to

utter his lively notes, than all the cackling of us poor Tory geese to

alarm the garrison of the Capitol was forgot.[11] There was enough of

indemnity before. Now a complete act of oblivion is passed about the

Jacobins of England, though one would naturally imagine it would make a

principal object in all fair deliberation upon the merits of a project

of amity with the Jacobins of France. But however others may choose to

forget the faction, the faction does not choose to forget itself, nor,

however gentlemen may choose to flatter themselves, it does not forget

them.

Never, in any civil contest, has a part been taken with more of the

warmth, or carried on with more of the arts of a party. The Jacobins are

worse than lost to their country. Their hearts are abroad. Their

sympathy with the Regicides of France is complete. Just as in a civil

contest, they exult in all their victories, they are dejected and

mortified in all their defeats. Nothing that the Regicides can do (and

they have labored hard for the purpose) can alienate them from their

cause. You and I, my dear Lord, have often observed on the spirit of

their conduct. When the Jacobins of France, by their studied,

deliberated, catalogued files of murders with the poniard, the sabre,

and the tribunal, have shocked whatever remained of human sensibility

in our breasts, then it was they distinguished the resources of party

policy. They did not venture directly to confront the public sentiment;

for a very short time they seemed to partake of it. They began with a

reluctant and sorrowful confession; they deplored the stains which

tarnished the lustre of a good cause. After keeping a decent time of

retirement, in a few days crept out an apology for the excesses of men

cruelly irritated by the attacks of unjust power. Grown bolder, as the

first feeling of mankind decayed and the color of these horrors began to

fade upon the imagination, they proceeded from apology to defence. They

urged, but still deplored, the absolute necessity of such a proceeding.

Then they made a bolder stride, and marched from defence to

recrimination. They attempted to assassinate the memory of those whose

bodies their friends had massacred, and to consider their murder as a

less formal act of justice. They endeavored even to debauch our pity,

and to suborn it in favor of cruelty. They wept over the lot of those

who were driven by the crimes of aristocrats to republican vengeance.

Every pause of their cruelty they considered as a return of their

natural sentiments of benignity and justice. Then they had recourse to

history, and found out all the recorded cruelties that deform the annals

of the world, in order that the massacres of the Regicides might pass

for a common event, and even that the most merciful of princes, who

suffered by their hands, should bear the iniquity of all the tyrants who

have at any time infested the earth. In order to reconcile us the better

to this republican tyranny, they confounded the bloodshed of war with

the murders of peace; and they computed how much greater prodigality of

blood was exhibited in battles and in the storm of cities than in the

frugal, well-ordered massacres of the revolutionary tribunals of France.

As to foreign powers, so long as they were conjoined with Great Britain

in this contest, so long they were treated as the most abandoned

tyrants, and, indeed, the basest of the human race. The moment any of

them quits the cause of this government, and of all governments, he is

rehabilitated, his honor is restored, all attainders are purged. The

friends of Jacobins are no longer despots; the betrayers of the common

cause are no longer traitors.

That you may not doubt that they look on this war as a civil war, and

the Jacobins of France as of their party, and that they look upon us,

though locally their countrymen, in reality as enemies, they have never

failed to run a parallel between our late civil war and this war with

the Jacobins of France. They justify their partiality to those Jacobins

by the partiality which was shown by several here to the Colonies, and

they sanction their cry for peace with the Regicides of France by some

of our propositions for peace with the English in America.

This I do not mention as entering into the controversy how far they are

right or wrong in this parallel, but to show that they do make it, and

that they do consider themselves as of a party with the Jacobins of

France. You cannot forget their constant correspondence with the

Jacobins, whilst it was in their power to carry it on. When the

communication is again opened, the interrupted correspondence will

commence. We cannot be blind to the advantage which such a party affords

to Regicide France in all her views,--and, on the other hand, what an

advantage Regicide France holds out to the views of the republican party

in England. Slightly as they have considered their subject, I think this

can hardly have escaped the writers of political ephemerides for any

month or year. They have told us much of the amendment of the Regicides

of France, and of their returning honor and generosity. Have they told

anything of the reformation and of the returning loyalty of the Jacobins

of England? Have they told us of _their_ gradual softening towards

royalty? Have they told us what measures _they_ are taking for "putting

the crown in commission," and what approximations of any kind _they_ are

making towards the old Constitution of their country? Nothing of this.

The silence of these writers is dreadfully expressive. They dare not

touch the subject. But it is not annihilated by their silence, nor by

our indifference. It is but too plain that our Constitution cannot exist

with such a communication. Our humanity, our manners, our morals, our

religion, cannot stand with such a communication. The Constitution is

made by those things, and for those things: without them it cannot

exist; and without them it is no matter whether it exists or not.

It was an ingenious Parliamentary Christmas play, by which, in both

Houses, you anticipated the holidays; it was a relaxation from your

graver employment; it was a pleasant discussion you had, which part of

the family of the Constitution was the elder branch,--whether one part

did not exist prior to the others, and whether it might exist and

flourish, if "the others were cast into the fire."[12] In order to make

this Saturnalian amusement general in the family, you sent it down

stairs, that judges and juries might partake of the entertainment. The

unfortunate antiquary and augur who is the butt of all this sport may

suffer in the roistering horse-play and practical jokes of the servants'

hall. But whatever may become of him, the discussion itself, and the

timing it, put me in mind of what I have read, (where I do not

recollect,) that the subtle nation of the Greeks were busily employed,

in the Church of Santa Sophia, in a dispute of mixed natural philosophy,

metaphysics, and theology, whether the light on Mount Tabor was created

or uncreated, and were ready to massacre the holders of the

unfashionable opinion, at the very moment when the ferocious enemy of

all philosophy and religion, Mahomet the Second, entered through a

breach into the capital of the Christian world. I may possibly suffer

much more than Mr. Reeves (I shall certainly give much more general

offence) for breaking in upon this constitutional amusement concerning

the created or uncreated nature of the two Houses of Parliament, and by

calling their attention to a problem which may entertain them less, but

which concerns them a great deal more,--that is, whether, with this

Gallic Jacobin fraternity, which they are desired by some writers to

court, all the parts of the government, about whose combustible or

incombustible qualities they are contending, may "not be cast into the

fire" together. He is a strange visionary (but he is nothing worse) who

fancies that any one part of our Constitution, whatever right of

primogeniture it may claim, or whatever astrologers may divine from its

horoscope, can possibly survive the others. As they have lived, so they

will die, together. I must do justice to the impartiality of the

Jacobins. I have not observed amongst _them_ the least predilection for

any of those parts. If there has been any difference in their malice, I

think they have shown a worse disposition to the House of Commons than

to the crown. As to the House of Lords, they do not speculate at all

about it, and for reasons that are too obvious to detail.

The question will be concerning the effect of this French fraternity on

the whole mass. Have we anything to apprehend from Jacobin

communication, or have we not? If we have not, is it by our experience

before the war that we are to presume that after the war no dangerous

communion can exist between those who are well affected to the new

Constitution of France and ill affected to the old Constitution here?

In conversation I have not yet found nor heard of any persons, except

those who undertake to instruct the public, so unconscious of the actual

state of things, or so little prescient of the future, who do not

shudder all over and feel a secret horror at the approach of this

communication. I do not except from this observation those who are

willing, more than I find myself disposed, to submit to this fraternity.

Never has it been mentioned in my hearing, or from what I can learn in

my inquiry, without the suggestion of an Alien Bill, or some other

measures of the same nature, as a defence against its manifest mischief.

Who does not see the utter insufficiency of such a remedy, if such a

remedy could be at all adopted? We expel suspected foreigners from

hence; and we suffer every Englishman to pass over into France to be

initiated in all the infernal discipline of the place, to cabal and to

be corrupted by every means of cabal and of corruption, and then to

return to England, charged with their worst dispositions and designs. In

France he is out of the reach of your police; and when he returns to

England, one such English emissary is worse than a legion of French, who

are either tongue-tied, or whose speech betrays them. But the worst

aliens are the ambassador and his train. These you cannot expel without

a proof (always difficult) of direct practice against the state. A

French ambassador, at the head of a French party, is an evil which we

have never experienced. The mischief is by far more visible than the

remedy. But, after all, every such measure as an Alien Bill is a measure

of hostility, a preparation for it, or a cause of dispute that shall

bring it on. In effect, it is fundamentally contrary to a relation of

amity, whose essence is a perfectly free communication. Everything done

to prevent it will provoke a foreign war. Everything, when we let it

proceed, will produce domestic distraction. We shall be in a perpetual

dilemma. But it is easy to see which side of the dilemma will be taken.

The same temper which brings us to solicit a Jacobin peace will induce

us to temporize with all the evils of it. By degrees our minds will be

made to our circumstances. The novelty of such things, which produces

half the horror and all the disgust, will be worn off. Our ruin will be

disguised in profit, and the sale of a few wretched baubles will bribe a

degenerate people to barter away the most precious jewel of their souls.

Our Constitution is not made for this kind of warfare. It provides

greatly for our happiness, it furnishes few means for our defence. It

is formed, in a great measure, upon the principle of jealousy of the

crown,--and as things stood, when it took that turn, with very great

reason. I go farther: it must keep alive some part of that fire of

jealousy eternally and chastely burning, or it cannot be the British

Constitution. At various periods we have had tyranny in this country,

more than enough. We have had rebellions with more or less

justification. Some of our kings have made adulterous connections

abroad, and trucked away for foreign gold the interests and glory of

their crown. But, before this time, our liberty has never been

corrupted. I mean to say, that it has never been debauched from its

domestic relations. To this time it has been English liberty, and

English liberty only. Our love of liberty and our love of our country

were not distinct things. Liberty is now, it seems, put upon a larger

and more liberal bottom. We are men,--and as men, undoubtedly, nothing

human is foreign to us. We cannot be too liberal in our general wishes

for the happiness of our kind. But in all questions on the mode of

procuring it for any particular community, we ought to be fearful of

admitting those who have no interest in it, or who have, perhaps, an

interest against it, into the consultation. Above all, we cannot be too

cautious in our communication with those who seek their happiness by

other roads than those of humanity, morals, and religion, and whose

liberty consists, and consists alone, in being free from those

restraints which are imposed by the virtues upon the passions.

When we invite danger from a confidence in defensive measures, we ought,

first of all, to be sure that it is a species of danger against which

any defensive measures that can be adopted will be sufficient. Next, we

ought to know that the spirit of our laws, or that our own dispositions,

which are stronger than laws, are susceptible of all those defensive

measures which the occasion may require. A third consideration is,

whether these measures will not bring more odium than strength to

government; and the last, whether the authority that makes them, in a

general corruption of manners and principles, can insure their

execution. Let no one argue, from the state of things, as he sees them

at present, concerning what will be the means and capacities of

government, when the time arrives which shall call for remedies

commensurate to enormous evils.

It is an obvious truth, that no constitution can defend itself: it must

be defended by the wisdom and fortitude of men. These are what no

constitution can give: they are the gifts of God; and He alone knows

whether we shall possess such gifts at the time we stand in need of

them. Constitutions furnish the civil means of getting at the natural:

it is all that in this case they can do. But our Constitution has more

impediments than helps. Its excellencies, when they come to be put to

this sort of proof, may be found among its defects.

Nothing looks more awful and imposing than an ancient fortification. Its

lofty, embattled walls, its bold, projecting, rounded towers, that

pierce the sky, strike the imagination and promise inexpugnable

strength. But they are the very things that make its weakness. You may

as well think of opposing one of these old fortresses to the mass of

artillery brought by a French irruption into the field as to think of

resisting by your old laws and your old forms the new destruction which

the corps of Jacobin engineers of to-day prepare for all such forms and

all such laws. Besides the debility and false principle of their

construction to resist the present modes of attack, the fortress itself

is in ruinous repair, and there is a practicable breach in every part of

it.

Such is the work. But miserable works have been defended by the

constancy of the garrison. Weather-beaten ships have been brought safe

to port by the spirit and alertness of the crew. But it is here that we

shall eminently fail. The day that, by their consent, the seat of

Regicide has its place among the thrones of Europe, there is no longer a

motive for zeal in their favor; it will at best be cold, unimpassioned,

dejected, melancholy duty. The glory will seem all on the other side.

The friends of the crown will appear, not as champions, but as victims;

discountenanced, mortified, lowered, defeated, they will fall into

listlessness and indifference. They will leave things to take their

course, enjoy the present hour, and submit to the common fate.

Is it only an oppressive nightmare with which we have been loaded? Is

it, then, all a frightful dream, and are there no regicides in the

world? Have we not heard of that prodigy of a ruffian who would not

suffer his benignant sovereign, with his hands tied behind him, and

stripped for execution, to say one parting word to his deluded

people,--of Santerre, who commanded the drums and trumpets to strike up

to stifle his voice, and dragged him backward to the machine of murder!

This nefarious villain (for a few days I may call him so) stands high in

France, as in a republic of robbers and murderers he ought. What

hinders this monster from being sent as ambassador to convey to his

Majesty the first compliments of his brethren, the Regicide Directory?

They have none that can represent them more properly. I anticipate the

day of his arrival. He will make his public entry into London on one of

the pale horses of his brewery. As he knows that we are pleased with the

Paris taste for the orders of knighthood,[13] he will fling a bloody

sash across his shoulders, with the order of the holy guillotine

surmounting the crown appendant to the riband. Thus adorned, he will

proceed from Whitechapel to the further end of Pall Mall, all the music

of London playing the Marseillaise Hymn before him, and escorted by a

chosen detachment of the _Légion de l'Échafaud_. It were only to be

wished that no ill-fated loyalist, for the imprudence of his zeal, may

stand in the pillory at Charing Cross, under the statue of King Charles

the First, at the time of this grand procession, lest some of the rotten

eggs which the Constitutional Society shall let fly at his indiscreet

head may hit the virtuous murderer of his king. They might soil the

state dress which the ministers of so many crowned heads have admired,

and in which Sir Clement Cotterel is to introduce him at St. James's.

If Santerre cannot be spared from the constitutional butcheries at home,

Tallien may supply his place, and, in point of figure, with advantage.

He has been habituated to commissions; and he is as well qualified as

Santerre for this. Nero wished the Roman people had but one neck. The

wish of the more exalted Tallien, when he sat in judgment, was, that his

sovereign had eighty-three heads, that he might send one to every one of

the Departments. Tallien will make an excellent figure at Guildhall at

the next Sheriff's feast. He may open the ball with my Lady Mayoress.

But this will be after he has retired from the public table, and gone

into the private room for the enjoyment of more social and unreserved

conversation with the ministers of state and the judges of the bench.

There these ministers and magistrates will hear him entertain the worthy

aldermen with an instructing and pleasing narrative of the manner in

which he made the rich citizens of Bordeaux squeak, and gently led them

by the public credit of the guillotine to disgorge their

anti-revolutionary pelf.

All this will be the display, and the town-talk, when our regicide is on

a visit of ceremony. At home nothing will equal the pomp and splendor of

the _Hôtel de la République_. There another scene of gaudy grandeur will

be opened. When his Citizen Excellency keeps the festival, which every

citizen is ordered to observe, for the glorious execution of Louis the

Sixteenth, and renews his oath of detestation of kings, a grand ball of

course will be given on the occasion. Then what a hurly-burly! what a

crowding! what a glare of a thousand flambeaux in the square! what a

clamor of footmen contending at the door! what a rattling of a thousand

coaches of duchesses, countesses, and Lady Marys, choking the way, and

overturning each other, in a struggle who should be first to pay her

court to the _Citoyenne_, the spouse of the twenty-first husband, he

the husband of the thirty-first wife, and to hail her in the rank of

honorable matrons before the four days' duration of marriage is

expired!--Morals, as they were, decorum, the great outguard of the sex,

and the proud sentiment of honor, which makes virtue more respectable,

where it is, and conceals human frailty, where virtue may not be, will

be banished from this land of propriety, modesty, and reserve.

We had before an ambassador from the most Christian King. We shall have

then one, perhaps two, as lately, from the most Anti-Christian Republic.

His chapel will be great and splendid, formed on the model of the Temple

of Reason at Paris; while the famous ode of the infamous Chénier will be

sung, and a prostitute of the street adored as a goddess. We shall then

have a French ambassador without a suspicion of Popery. One good it will

have: it will go some way in quieting the minds of that synod of zealous

Protestant lay elders who govern Ireland on the pacific principles of

polemic theology, and who now, from dread of the Pope, cannot take a

cool bottle of claret, or enjoy an innocent Parliamentary job, with any

tolerable quiet.

So far as to the French communication here:--what will be the effect of

our communication there? We know that our new brethren, whilst they

everywhere shut up the churches, increased in Paris, at one time at

least fourfold, the opera-houses, the playhouses, the public shows of

all kinds; and even in their state of indigence and distress, no expense

was spared for their equipment and decoration. They were made an affair

of state. There is no invention of seduction, never wholly wanting in

that place, that has not been increased,--brothels, gaming-houses,

everything. And there is no doubt, but, when they are settled in a

triumphant peace, they will carry all these arts to their utmost

perfection, and cover them with every species of imposing magnificence.

They have all along avowed them as a part of their policy; and whilst

they corrupt young minds through pleasure, they form them to crimes.

Every idea of corporal gratification is carried to the highest excess,

and wooed with all the elegance that belongs to the senses. All elegance

of mind and manners is banished. A theatrical, bombastic, windy

phraseology of heroic virtue, blended and mingled up with a worse

dissoluteness, and joined to a murderous and savage ferocity, forms the

tone and idiom of their language and their manners. Any one, who attends

to all their own descriptions, narratives, and dissertations, will find

in that whole place more of the air of a body of assassins, banditti,

housebreakers, and outlawed smugglers, joined to that of a gang of

strolling players expelled from and exploded orderly theatres, with

their prostitutes in a brothel, at their debauches and bacchanals, than

anything of the refined and perfected virtues, or the polished,

mitigated vices of a great capital.

Is it for this benefit we open "the usual relations of peace and amity"?

Is it for this our youth of both sexes are to form themselves by travel?

Is it for this that with expense and pains we form their lisping infant

accents to the language of France? I shall be told that this abominable

medley is made rather to revolt young and ingenuous minds. So it is in

the description. So perhaps it may in reality to a chosen few. So it may

be, when the magistrate, the law, and the church frown on such manners,

and the wretches to whom they belong,--when they are chased from the

eye of day, and the society of civil life, into night-cellars and caves

and woods. But when these men themselves are the magistrates,--when all

the consequence, weight, and authority of a great nation adopt

them,--when we see them conjoined with victory, glory, power, and

dominion, and homage paid to them by every government,--it is not

possible that the downhill should not be slid into, recommended by

everything which has opposed it. Let it be remembered that no young man

can go to any part of Europe without taking this place of pestilential

contagion in his way; and whilst the less active part of the community

will be debauched by this travel, whilst children are poisoned at these

schools, our trade will put the finishing hand to our ruin. No factory

will be settled in France, that will not become a club of complete

French Jacobins. The minds of young men of that description will receive

a taint in their religion, their morals, and their politics, which they

will in a short time communicate to the whole kingdom.

Whilst everything prepares the body to debauch and the mind to crime, a

regular church of avowed atheism, established by law, with a direct and

sanguinary persecution of Christianity, is formed to prevent all

amendment and remorse. Conscience is formally deposed from its dominion

over the mind. What fills the measure of horror is, that schools of

atheism are set up at the public charge in every part of the country.

That some English parents will be wicked enough to send their children

to such schools there is no doubt. Better this island should be sunk to

the bottom of the sea than that (so far as human infirmity admits) it

should not be a country of religion and morals!

With all these causes of corruption, we may well judge what the general

fashion of mind will be through both sexes and all conditions. Such

spectacles and such examples will overbear all the laws that ever

blackened the cumbrous volumes of our statutes. When royalty shall have

disavowed itself,--when it shall have relaxed all the principles of its

own support,--when it has rendered the system of Regicide fashionable,

and received it as triumphant, in the very persons who have consolidated

that system by the perpetration, of every crime, who have not only

massacred the prince, but the very laws and magistrates which were the

support of royalty, and slaughtered with an indiscriminate proscription,

without regard to either sex or age, every person that was suspected of

an inclination to king, law, or magistracy,--I say, will any one dare to

be loyal? Will any one presume, against both authority and opinion, to

hold up this unfashionable, antiquated, exploded Constitution?

The Jacobin faction in England must grow in strength and audacity; it

will be supported by other intrigues and supplied by other resources

than yet we have seen in action. Confounded at its growth, the

government may fly to Parliament for its support. But who will answer

for the temper of a House of Commons elected under these circumstances?

Who will answer for the courage of a House of Commons to arm the crown

with the extraordinary powers that it may demand? But the ministers will

not venture to ask half of what they know they want. They will lose half

of that half in the contest; and when they have obtained their nothing,

they will be driven by the cries of faction either to demolish the

feeble works they have thrown up in a hurry, or, in effect, to abandon

them. As to the House of Lords, it is not worth mentioning. The peers

ought naturally to be the pillars of the crown; but when their titles

are rendered contemptible, and their property invidious, and a part of

their weakness, and not of their strength, they will be found so many

degraded and trembling individuals, who will seek by evasion to put off

the evil day of their ruin. Both Houses will be in perpetual oscillation

between abortive attempts at energy and still more unsuccessful attempts

at compromise. You will be impatient of your disease, and abhorrent of

your remedy. A spirit of subterfuge and a tone of apology will enter

into all your proceedings, whether of law or legislation. Your judges,

who now sustain so masculine an authority, will appear more on their

trial than the culprits they have before them. The awful frown of

criminal justice will be smoothed into the silly smile of seduction.

Judges will think to insinuate and soothe the accused into conviction

and condemnation, and to wheedle to the gallows the most artful of all

delinquents. But they will not be so wheedled. They will not submit even

to the appearance of persons on their trial. Their claim to this

exemption will be admitted. The place in which some of the greatest

names which ever distinguished the history of this country have stood

will appear beneath their dignity. The criminal will climb from the dock

to the side-bar, and take his place and his tea with the counsel. From

the bar of the counsel, by a natural progress, he will ascend to the

bench, which long before had been virtually abandoned. They who escape

from justice will not suffer a question upon reputation. They will take

the crown of the causeway; they will be revered as martyrs; they will

triumph as conquerors. Nobody will dare to censure that popular part of

the tribunal whose only restraint on misjudgment is the censure of the

public. They who find fault with the decision will be represented as

enemies to the institution. Juries that convict for the crown will be

loaded with obloquy. The juries who acquit will be held up as models of

justice. If Parliament orders a prosecution, and fails, (as fail it

will,) it will be treated to its face as guilty of a conspiracy

maliciously to prosecute. Its care in discovering a conspiracy against

the state will be treated as a forged plot to destroy the liberty of the

subject: every such discovery, instead of strengthening government, will

weaken its reputation.

In this state things will be suffered to proceed, lest measures of vigor

should precipitate a crisis. The timid will act thus from character, the

wise from necessity. Our laws had done all that the old condition of

things dictated to render our judges erect and independent; but they

will naturally fail on the side upon which they had taken no

precautions. The judicial magistrates will find themselves safe as

against the crown, whose will is not their tenure; the power of

executing their office will be held at the pleasure of those who deal

out fame or abuse as they think fit. They will begin rather to consult

their own repose and their own popularity than the critical and perilous

trust that is in their hands. They will speculate on consequences, when

they see at court an ambassador whose robes are lined with a scarlet

dyed in the blood of judges. It is no wonder, nor are they to blame,

when they are to consider how they shall answer for their conduct to the

criminal of to-day turned into the magistrate of to-morrow.

The press------

The army------

When thus the helm of justice is abandoned, an universal abandonment of

all other posts will succeed. Government will be for a while the sport

of contending factions, who, whilst they fight with one another, will

all strike at her. She will be buffeted and beat forward and backward by

the conflict of those billows, until at length, tumbling from the Gallic

coast, the victorious tenth wave shall ride, like the bore, over all the

rest, and poop the shattered, weather-beaten, leaky, water-logged

vessel, and sink her to the bottom of the abyss.

Among other miserable remedies that have been found in the _materia

medica_, of the old college, a change of ministry will be proposed, and

probably will take place. They who go out can never long with zeal and

good-will support government in the hands of those they hate. In a

situation of fatal dependence on popularity, and without one aid from

the little remaining power of the crown, it is not to be expected that

they will take on them that odium which more or less attaches upon every

exertion of strong power. The ministers of popularity will lose all

their credit at a stroke, if they pursue any of those means necessary to

give life, vigor, and consistence to government. They will be considered

as venal wretches, apostates, recreant to all their own principles,

acts, and declarations. They cannot preserve their credit, but by

betraying that authority of which they are the guardians.

To be sure, no prognosticating symptoms of these things have as yet

appeared,--nothing even resembling their beginnings. May they never

appear! May these prognostications of the author be justly laughed at

and speedily forgotten! If nothing as yet to cause them has discovered

itself, let us consider, in the author's excuse, that we have not yet

seen a Jacobin legation in England. The natural, declared, sworn ally of

sedition has not yet fixed its head-quarters in London.

There never was a political contest, upon better or worse grounds, that

by the heat of party-spirit may not ripen into civil confusion. If ever

a party adverse to the crown should be in a condition here publicly to

declare itself, and to divide, however unequally, the natural force of

the kingdom, they are sure of an aid of fifty thousand men, at ten days'

warning, from the opposite coast of France. But against this infusion of

a foreign force the crown has its guaranties, old and new. But I should

be glad to hear something said of the assistance which loyal subjects in

France have received from other powers in support of that lawful

government which secured their lawful property. I should be glad to

know, if they are so disposed to a neighborly, provident, and

sympathetic attention to their public engagements, by what means they

are to come at us. Is it from the powerful states of Holland we are to

reclaim our guaranty? Is it from the King of Prussia, and his steady

good affections, and his powerful navy, that we are to look for the

guaranty of our security? Is it from the Netherlands, which the French

may cover with the swarms of their citizen-soldiers in twenty-four

hours, that we are to look for this assistance? This is to suppose, too,

that all these powers have no views offensive or necessities defensive

of their own. They will cut out work for one another, and France will

cut out work for them all.

That the Christian religion cannot exist in this country with such a

fraternity will not, I think, be disputed with me. On that religion,

according to our mode, all our laws and institutions stand, as upon

their base. That scheme is supposed in every transaction of life; and if

that were done away, everything else, as in France, must be changed

along with it. Thus, religion perishing, and with it this Constitution,

it is a matter of endless meditation what order of things would follow

it. But what disorder would fill the space between the present and that

which is to come, in the gross, is no matter of doubtful conjecture. It

is a great evil, that of a civil war. But, in that state of things, a

civil war, which would give to good men and a good cause some means of

struggle, is a blessing of comparison that England will not enjoy. The

moment the struggle begins, it ends. They talk of Mr. Hume's euthanasia

of the British Constitution gently expiring, without a groan, in the

paternal arms of a mere monarchy. In a monarchy!--fine trifling

indeed!--there is no such euthanasia for the British Constitution.

* * * * *

The manuscript copy of this Letter ends here.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Here I have fallen into an unintentional mistake. Rider's Almanack

for 1794 lay before me; and, in troth, I then had no other. For variety,

that sage astrologer has made some small changes on the weather side of

1795; but the caution is the same on the opposite page of instruction.

[10] _Souverains opprimés_.--See the whole proceeding in the

_Procès-Verbal_ of the National Assembly.

[11]

Hic auratis volitans argenteus anser

Porticibus GALLOS in limine adesse canebat.

[12] See debates in Parliament upon motions made in both Houses for

prosecuting Mr. Reeves for a libel upon the Constitution, Dec., 1795.

[13] "In the costume assumed by the members of the legislative body we

almost behold the revival of the extinguished insignia of knighthood,"

&c., &c.--See _A View of the Relative State of Great Britain and France

at the Commencement of the Year_ 1796.

A

LETTER

TO

THE EMPRESS OF RUSSIA.

NOVEMBER 1, 1791.

Madam,--The Comte de Woronzow, your Imperial Majesty's minister, and Mr.

Fawkener, have informed me of the very gracious manner in which your

Imperial Majesty, and, after your example, the Archduke and Archduchess,

have condescended to accept my humble endeavors in the service of that

cause which connects the rights and duties of sovereigns with the true

interest and happiness of their people.

If, confiding in titles derived from your own goodness, I venture to

address directly to your Imperial Majesty the expressions of my

gratitude for so distinguished an honor, I hope it will not be thought a

presumptuous intrusion. I hope, too, that the willing homage I pay to

the high and ruling virtues which distinguish your Imperial Majesty, and

which form the felicity of so large a part of the world, will not be

looked upon as the language of adulation to power and greatness. In my

humble situation, I can behold majesty in its splendor without being

dazzled, and I am capable of respecting it in its fall.

It is, Madam, from my strong sense of what is due to dignity in

undeserved misfortune, that I am led to felicitate your Imperial Majesty

on the use you have lately made of your power. The princes and nobility

of France, who from honor and duty, from blood and from principle, are

attached to that unhappy crown, have experienced your favor and

countenance; and there is no doubt that they will finally enjoy the full

benefit of your protection. The generosity of your Imperial Majesty has

induced you to take an interest in their cause; and your sagacity has

made you perceive that in the case of the sovereign of France the cause

of all sovereigns is tried,--that in the case of its church, the cause

of all churches,--and that in the case of its nobility is tried the

cause of all the respectable orders of all society, and even of society

itself.

Your Imperial Majesty has sent your minister to reside where the crown

of France, in this disastrous eclipse of royalty, can alone truly and

freely be represented, that is, in its royal blood,--where alone the

nation can be represented, that is, in its natural and inherent dignity.

A throne cannot be represented by a prison. The honor of a nation cannot

be represented by an assembly which disgraces and degrades it: at

Coblentz only the king and the nation of France are to be found.

Your Imperial Majesty, who reigns and lives for glory, has nobly and

wisely disdained to associate your crown with a faction which has for

its object the subversion of all thrones.

You have not recognized this universal public enemy as a part of the

system of Europe. You have refused to sully the lustre of your empire by

any communion with a body of fanatical usurpers and tyrants, drawn out

of the dregs of society, and exalted to their evil eminence by the

enormity of their crimes,--an assemblage of tyrants, wholly destitute of

any distinguished qualification in a single person amongst them, that

can command reverence from our reason, or seduce it from our

prejudices. These enemies of sovereigns, if at all acknowledged, must be

acknowledged on account of that enmity alone: they have nothing else to

recommend them.

Madam, it is dangerous to praise any human virtue before the

accomplishment of the tasks which it imposes on itself. But in

expressing my part of what I hope is, or will become, the general voice,

in admiration of what you have done, I run no risk at all. With your

Imperial Majesty, declaration and execution, beginning and conclusion,

are, at their different seasons, one and the same thing.

On the faith and declaration of some of the first potentates of Europe,

several thousands of persons, comprehending the best men and the best

gentlemen in France, have given up their country, their houses, their

fortunes, their professional situation, their all, and are now in

foreign lands, struggling under the most grievous distresses. Whatever

appearances may menace, nobody fears that they can be finally abandoned.

Such a dereliction could not be without a strong imputation on the

public and private honor of sovereignty itself, nor without an

irreparable injury to its interests. It would give occasion to represent

monarchs as natural enemies to each other, and that they never support

or countenance any subjects of a brother prince, except when they rebel

against him. We individuals, mere spectators of the scene, but who sock

our liberties under the shade of legal authority, and of course

sympathize with the sufferers in that cause, never can permit ourselves

to believe that such an event can disgrace the history of our time. The

only thing to be feared is delay, in winch are included many mischiefs.

The constancy of the oppressed will be broken; the power of tyrants

will be confirmed. Already the multitude of French officers, drawn from

their several corps by hopes inspired by the freely declared disposition

of sovereigns, have left all the posts in which they might one day have

effectually served the good cause abandoned to the enemy.

Tour Imperial Majesty's just influence, which is still greater than your

extensive power, will animate and expedite the efforts of other

sovereigns. From your wisdom other states will learn that they who wait

until all the powers of Europe are at once in motion can never move at

all. It would add to the unexampled calamities of our time, if the

uncommon union of sentiment in so many powers should prove the very

cause of defeating the benefit which ought to flow from their general

good disposition. No sovereign can run any risk from the designs of

other powers, whilst engaged in tins glorious and necessary work. If any

attempt could be feared, your Imperial Majesty's power and justice would

secure your allies against all danger. Madam, your glory will be

complete, if, after having given peace to Europe by your moderation, you

shall bestow stability on all its governments by your vigor and

decision. The debt which your Imperial Majesty's august predecessors

have contracted to the ancient manners of Europe, by means of which they

civilized a vast empire, will be nobly repaid by preserving those

manners from the hideous change with which they are now menaced. By the

intervention of Russia the world will be preserved from barbarism and

ruin.

A private individual, of a remote country, in himself wholly without

importance, unauthorized and unconnected, not as an English subject,

but as a citizen of the world, presumes to submit his thoughts to one of

the greatest and wisest sovereigns that Europe has seen. He does it

without fear, because he does not involve in his weakness (if such it

is) his king, his country, or his friends. He is not' afraid that he

shall offend your Imperial Majesty,--because, secure in itself, true

greatness is always accessible, and because respectfully to speak what

we conceive to be truth is the best homage which can be paid to true

dignity.

I am, Madam, with the utmost possible respect and veneration,

Your Imperial Majesty's

Most obedient and most humble servant,

EDM. BURKE.

BEACONSFIELD, November 1st, 1791.

A

LETTER

TO

SIR CHARLES BINGHAM, BART.,

ON THE

IRISH ABSENTEE TAX.

OCTOBER 30, 1773.

NOTE.

From authentic documents found with the copy of this Letter

among Mr. Burke's papers, it appears that in the year 1773 a

project of imposing a tax upon all proprietors of landed

estates in Ireland, whose ordinary residence should be in

Great Britain, had been adopted and avowed by his Majesty's

ministers at that time. A remonstrance against this measure,

as highly unjust and impolitic, was presented to the

ministers by several of the principal Irish absentees, and

the project was subsequently abandoned.

LETTER.

Dear Sir,--I am much flattered by your very obliging letter, and the

rather because it promises an opening to our future correspondence. This

may be my only indemnification for very great losses. One of the most

odious parts of the proposed Absentee Tax is its tendency to separate

friends, and to make as ugly breaches in private society as it must make

in the unity of the great political body. I am sure that much of the

satisfaction of some circles in London will be lost by it. Do you think

that our friend Mrs. Vesey will suffer her husband to vote for a tax

that is to destroy the evenings at Bolton Row? I trust we shall have

other supporters of the same sex, equally powerful, and equally

deserving to be so, who will not abandon the common cause of their own

liberties and our satisfactions. We shall be barbarized on both sides of

the water, if we do not see one another now and then. _We_ shall sink

into surly, brutish Johns, and _you_ will degenerate into wild Irish. It

is impossible that we should be the wiser or the more agreeable,

certainly we shall not love one another the better, for this forced

separation, which our ministers, who have already done so much for the

dissolution of every other sort of good connection, are now meditating

for the further improvement of this too well united empire. Their next

step will be to encourage all the colonies, about thirty separate

governments, to keep their people from all intercourse with each other

and with the mother country. A gentleman of New York or Barbadoes will

be as much gazed at as a strange animal from Nova Zembla or Otaheite;

and those rogues, the travellers, will tell us what stories they please

about poor old Ireland.

In all seriousness, (though I am a great deal more than half serious in

what I have been saying,) I look upon this projected tax in a very evil

light; I think it is not advisable; I am sure it is not necessary; and

as it is not a mere matter of finance, but involves a political question

of much, importance, I consider the principle and precedent as far worse

than the thing itself. You are too kind in imagining I can suggest

anything new upon the subject. The objections to it are very glaring,

and must strike the eyes of all those who have not their reasons for

shutting them against evident truth. I have no feelings or opinions on

this subject which I do not partake with all the sensible and informed

people that I meet with. At first I could scarcely meet with any one who

could believe that this scheme originated from the English government.

They considered it not only as absurd, but as something monstrous and

unnatural. In the first instance, it strikes at the power of this

country; in the end, at the union of the whole empire. I do not mean to

express, most certainly I do not entertain in my mind, anything

invidious concerning the superintending authority of Great Britain. But

if it be true that the several bodies which make up this complicated

mass are to be preserved as one empire, an authority sufficient to

preserve that unity, and by its equal weight and pressure to

consolidate the various parts that compose it, must reside somewhere:

that somewhere can only be in England. Possibly any one member,

distinctly taken, might decide in favor of that residence within itself;

but certainly no member would give its voice for any other except this.

So that I look upon the residence of the supreme power to be settled

here: not by force, or tyranny, or even by mere long usage, but by the

very nature of things, and the joint consent of the whole body.

If all this be admitted, then without question this country must have

the sole right to the imperial legislation: by which I mean that law

which regulates the polity and economy of the several parts, as they

relate to one another and to the whole. But if any of the parts, which

(not for oppression, but for order) are placed in a subordinate

situation, will assume to themselves the power of hindering or checking

the resort of their municipal subjects to the centre, or even to any

other part of the empire, they arrogate to themselves the imperial

rights, which do not, which cannot, belong to them, and, so far as in

them lies, destroy the happy arrangement of the entire empire.

A free communication by _discretionary residence_ is necessary to all

the other purposes of communication. For what purpose are the Irish and

Plantation laws sent hither, but as means of preserving this sovereign

constitution? Whether such a constitution was originally right or wrong

this is not the time of day to dispute. If any evils arise from it, let

us not strip it of what may be useful in it. By taking the English Privy

Council into your legislature, you obtain a new, a further, and possibly

a more liberal consideration of all your acts. If a local legislature

shall by oblique means tend to deprive any of the people of this

benefit, and shall make it penal to them to follow into England the laws

which may affect them, then the English Privy Council will have to

decide upon your acts without those lights that may enable them to judge

upon what grounds you made them, or how far they ought to be modified,

received, or rejected.

To what end is the ultimate appeal in judicature lodged in this kingdom,

if men may be disabled from following their suits here, and may be taxed

into an absolute _denied of justice_? You observe, my dear Sir, that I

do not assert that in all cases two shillings will necessarily cut off

this means of correcting legislative and judicial mistakes, and thus

amount to a denial of justice. I might, indeed, state cases in which

this very quantum of tax would be fully sufficient to defeat this right.

But I argue not on the case, but on the principle, and I am sure the

principle implies it. They who may restrain may prohibit; they who may

impose two shillings may impose ten shillings in the pound; and those

who may condition the tax to six months' annual absence may carry that

condition to six weeks, or even to six days, and thereby totally defeat

the wise means which have been provided for extensive and impartial

justice, and for orderly, well-poised, and well-connected government.

What is taxing the resort to and residence in any place, but declaring

that your connection with that place is a grievance? Is not such an

Irish tax as is now proposed a virtual declaration that England is a

foreign country, and a renunciation on your part of the principle of

_common naturalization_, which runs through this whole empire?

Do you, or does any Irish gentleman, think it a mean privilege, that,

the moment he sets his foot upon this ground, he is to all intents and

purposes an Englishman? You will not be pleased with a law which by its

operation tends to disqualify you from a seat in this Parliament; and if

your own virtue or fortune, or if that of your children, should carry

you or them to it, should you like to be excluded from the possibility

of a peerage in this kingdom? If in Ireland we lay it down as a maxim,

that a residence in Great Britain is a political evil, and to be

discouraged by penal taxes, you must necessarily reject all the

privileges and benefits which are connected with such a residence.

I can easily conceive that a citizen of Dublin, who looks no further

than his counter, may think that Ireland will be repaid for such a loss

by any small diminution of taxes, or any increase in the circulation of

money that may be laid out in the purchase of claret or groceries in his

corporation. In such a man an error of that kind, as it would be

natural, would be excusable. But I cannot think that any educated man,

any man who looks with an enlightened eye on the interest of Ireland,

can believe that it is not highly for the advantage of Ireland, that

this Parliament, which, whether right or wrong, whether we will or not,

will make some laws to bind Ireland, should always have in it some

persons who by connection, by property, or by early prepossessions and

affections, are attached to the welfare of that country. I am so clear

upon this point, not only from the clear reason of the thing, but from

the constant course of my observation, by now having sat eight sessions

in Parliament, that I declare it to you as my sincere opinion, that (if

you must do either the one or the other) it would be wiser by far, and

far better for Ireland, that some new privileges should attend the

estates of Irishmen, members of the two Houses here, than that their

characters should be stained by penal impositions, and their properties

loaded by unequal and unheard-of modes of taxation. I do really trust,

that, when the matter comes a little to be considered, a majority of our

gentlemen will never consent to establish such a principle of

disqualification against themselves and their posterity, and, for the

sake of gratifying the schemes of a transitory administration of the

cockpit or the castle, or in compliance with the lightest part of the

most vulgar and transient popularity, fix so irreparable an injury on

the permanent interest of their country.

This law seems, therefore, to me to go directly against the fundamental

points of the legislative and judicial constitution of these kingdoms,

and against the happy communion of their privileges. But there is

another matter in the tax proposed, that contradicts as essentially a

very great principle necessary for preserving the union of the various

parts of a state; because it does, in effect, discountenance mutual

intermarriage and inheritance, things that bind countries more closely

together than any laws or constitutions whatsoever. Is it right that a

woman who marries into Ireland, and perhaps well purchases her jointure

or her dower there, should not after her husband's death have it in her

choice to return to her country and her friends without being taxed for

it? If an Irish heiress should marry into an English family, and that

great property in both countries should thereby come to be united in

this common issue, shall the descendant of that marriage abandon his

natural connection, his family interests, his public and his private

duties, and be compelled to take up his residence in Ireland? Is there

any sense or any justice in it, unless you affirm that there should be

no such intermarriage and no such mutual inheritance between the

natives? Is there a shadow of reason, that, because a Lord Rockingham, a

Duke of Devonshire, a Sir George Savile, possess property in Ireland,

which has descended to them without any act of theirs, they should

abandon their duty in Parliament, and spend the winters in Dublin? or,

having spent the session in Westminster, must they abandon their seats

and all their family interests in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and pass the

rest of the year in Wicklow, in Cork, or Tyrone?

See what the consequence must be from a municipal legislature

considering itself as an unconnected body, and attempting to enforce a

partial residence. A man may have property in more parts than two of

this empire. He may have property in Jamaica and in North America, as

well as in England and Ireland. I know some that have property in all of

them. What shall we say to this case? After the poor distracted citizen

of the whole empire has, in compliance with your partial law, removed

his family, bid adieu to his connections, and settled himself quietly

and snug in a pretty box by the Liffey, he hears that the Parliament of

Great Britain is of opinion that all English estates ought to be spent

in England, and that they will tax him double, if he does not return.

Suppose him then (if the nature of the two laws will permit it)

providing a flying camp, and dividing his year as well as he can

between England and Ireland, and at the charge of two town houses and

two country-houses in both kingdoms; in this situation he receives an

account, that a law is transmitted from Jamaica, and another from

Pennsylvania, to tax absentees from these provinces, which are

impoverished by the European residence of the possessors of their lands.

How is he to escape this _ricochet_ cross-firing of so many opposite

batteries of police and regulation? If he attempts to comply, he is

likely to be more a citizen of the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea than

of any of these countries. The matter is absurd and ridiculous, and,

while ever the idea of mutual marriages, inheritances, purchases, and

privileges subsist, can never be carried into execution with common

sense or common justice.

I do not know how gentlemen of Ireland reconcile such an idea to their

own liberties, or to the natural use and enjoyment of their estates. If

any of their children should be left in a minority, and a guardian

should think, as many do, (it matters not whether properly or no,) that

his ward had better he educated in a school or university here than in

Ireland, is he sure that he can justify the bringing a tax of ten per

cent, perhaps twenty, on his pupil's estate, by giving what in his

opinion is the best education in general, or the best for that pupil's

particular character and circumstances? Can he justify his sending him

to travel, a necessary part of the higher style of education, and,

notwithstanding what some narrow writers have said, of great benefit to

all countries, but very particularly so to Ireland? Suppose a guardian,

under the authority or pretence of such a tax of police, had prevented

our dear friend, Lord Charlemont, from going abroad, would he have lost

no satisfaction? would his friends have lost nothing in the companion?

would his country have lost nothing in the cultivated taste with which

he has adorned it in so many ways? His natural elegance of mind would

undoubtedly do a great deal; but I will venture to assert, without the

danger of being contradicted, that he adorns his present residence in

Ireland much the more for having resided a long time out of it. Will Mr.

Flood himself think he ought to have been driven by taxes into Ireland,

whilst he prepared himself by an English education to understand and to

defend the rights of the subject in Ireland, or to support the dignity

of government there, according as his opinions, or the situation of

things, may lead him to take either part, upon respectable principles? I

hope it is not forgot that an Irish act of Parliament sends its youth to

England for the study of the law, and compels a residence in the inns of

court hero for some years. Will you send out with one breath and recall

with another? This act plainly provides for that intercourse which

supposes the strictest union in laws and policy, in both which the

intended tax supposes an entire separation.

It would be endless to go into all the inconveniences this tax will lead

to, in the conduct of private life, and the use of property. How many

infirm people are obliged to change their climate, whose life depends

upon that change! How many families straitened in their circumstances

are there, who, from the shame, sometimes from the utter impossibility

otherwise of retrenching, are obliged to remove from their country, in

order to preserve their estates in their families! You begin, then, to

burden these people precisely at the time when their circumstances of

health and fortune render them rather objects of relief and

commiseration.

I know very well that a great proportion of the money of every

subordinate country will flow towards the metropolis. This is

unavoidable. Other inconveniences, too, will result to particular parts:

and why? Why, because they are particular parts,--each a member of a

greater, and not an whole within itself. But those members are to

consider whether these inconveniences are not fully balanced, perhaps

more than balanced, by the united strength of a great and compact body.

I am sensible, too, of a difficulty that will be started against the

application of some of the principles which I reason upon to the case of

Ireland. It will be said, that Ireland, in many particulars, is not

bound to consider itself as a part of the British body; because this

country, in many instances, is mistaken enough to treat you as

foreigners, and draws away your money by absentees, without suffering

you to enjoy your natural advantages in trade and commerce. No man

living loves restrictive regulations of any kind less than myself; at

best, nine times in ten, they are little better than laborious and

vexatious follies. Often, as in your case, they are great oppressions,

as well as great absurdities. But still an injury is not always a reason

for retaliation; nor is the folly of others with regard to us a reason

for imitating it with regard to them. Before we attempt to retort, we

ought to consider whether we may not injure ourselves even more than our

adversary; since, in the contest who shall go the greatest length in

absurdity, the victor is generally the greatest sufferer. Besides, when

there is an unfortunate emulation in restraints and oppressions, the

question of _strength_ is of the highest importance. It little becomes

the feeble to be unjust. Justice is the shield of the weak; and when

they choose to lay this down, and fight naked in the contest of mere

power, the event will be what must be expected from such imprudence.

I ought to beg your pardon for running into this length. You want no

arguments to convince you on this subject, and you want no resources of

matter to convince others. I ought, too, to ask pardon for having

delayed my answer so long; but I received your letter on Tuesday, in

town, and I was obliged to come to the country on business. From the

country I write at present; but this day I shall go to town again. I

shall see Lord Rockingham, who has spared neither time nor trouble in

making a vigorous opposition to this inconsiderate measure. I hope to be

able to send you the papers which will give you information of the steps

he has taken. He has pursued this business with the foresight,

diligence, and good sense with which he generally resists

unconstitutional attempts of government. A life of disinterestedness,

generosity, and public spirit are his titles to have it believed that

the effect which the tax may have upon his private property is not the

sole nor the principal motive to his exertions. I know he is of opinion

that the opposition in Ireland ought to be carried on with that spirit

as if no aid was expected from this country, and here as if nothing

would be done in Ireland: many things have been lost by not acting in

this manner.

I am told that you are not likely to be alone in the generous stand you

are to make against this unnatural monster of court popularity. It is

said, Mr. Hussey, who is so very considerable at present, and who is

everything in expectation, will give you his assistance. I rejoice to

see (that very rare spectacle) a good mind, a great genius, and public

activity united together, and united so early in life. By not running

into every popular humor, he may depend upon it, the popularity of his

character will wear the better.

Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem;

Ergo postque magisque viri nunc gloria claret.

Adieu, my dear Sir. Give my best respects to Lady Bingham; and believe

me, with great truth and esteem,

Your most obedient and most humble servant,

EDM. BURKE.

BEACONSFIELD, 30th October, 1773.

TO SIR CHARLES BINGHAM.

A

LETTER

TO

THE HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX,

ON THE AMERICAN WAR.

OCTOBER 8, 1777.

My Dear Charles,--I am, on many accounts, exceedingly pleased with your

journey to Ireland. I do not think it was possible to dispose better of

the interval between this and the meeting of Parliament. I told you as

much, in the same general terms, by the post. My opinion of the

infidelity of that conveyance hindered me from being particular. I now

sit down with malice prepense to kill you with a very long letter, and

must take my chance for some safe method of conveying the dose. Before I

say anything to you of the place you are in, or the business of it, on

which, by the way, a great deal might be said, I will turn myself to the

concluding part of your letter from Chatsworth.

You are sensible that I do not differ from you in many things; and most

certainly I do not dissent from the main of your doctrine concerning the

heresy of depending upon contingencies. You must recollect how uniform

my sentiments have been on that subject. I have ever wished a settled

plan of our own, founded in the very essence of the American business,

wholly unconnected with the events of the war, and framed in such a

manner as to keep up our credit and maintain our system at home, in

spite of anything which may happen abroad. I am now convinced, by a long

and somewhat vexatious experience, that such a plan is absolutely

impracticable. I think with you, that some faults in the constitution

of those whom we must love and trust are among the causes of this

impracticability; they are faults, too, that one can hardly wish them

perfectly cured of, as I am afraid they are intimately connected with

honest, disinterested intentions, plentiful fortunes, assured rank, and

quiet homes. A great deal of activity and enterprise can scarcely ever

be expected from such men, unless some horrible calamity is just over

their heads, or unless they suffer some gross personal insults from

power, the resentment of which may be as unquiet and stimulating a

principle in their minds as ambition is in those of a different

complexion. To say the truth, I cannot greatly blame them. We live at a

time when men are not repaid in fame for what they sacrifice in interest

or repose.

On the whole, when I consider of what discordant, and particularly of

what fleeting materials the opposition has been all along composed, and

at the same time review what Lord Rockingham has done, with that and

with his own shattered constitution, for these last twelve years, I

confess I am rather surprised that he has done so much and persevered so

long, than that he has felt now and then some cold fits, and that he

grows somewhat languid and desponding at last. I know that he, and those

who are much prevalent with him, though they are not thought so much

devoted to popularity as others, do very much look to the people, and

more than I think is wise in them, who do so little to guide and direct

the public opinion. Without this they act, indeed; but they act as it

were from compulsion, and because it is impossible, in their situation,

to avoid taking some part. All this it is impossible to change, and to

no purpose to complain of.

As to that popular humor which is the medium we float in, if I can

discern anything at all of its present state, it is far worse than I

have ever known or could ever imagine it. The faults of the people are

not popular vices; at least, they are not such as grow out of what we

used to take to be the English temper and character. The greatest number

have a sort of an heavy, lumpish acquiescence in government, without

much respect or esteem for those that compose it. I really cannot avoid

making some very unpleasant prognostics from this disposition of the

people. I think that many of the symptoms must have struck you: I will

mention one or two that are to me very remarkable. You must know that at

Bristol we grow, as an election interest, and even as a party interest,

rather stronger than we were when I was chosen. We have just now a

majority in the corporation. In this state of matters, what, think you,

have they done? They have voted their freedom to Lord Sandwich and Lord

Suffolk!--to the first, at the very moment when the American privateers

were domineering in the Irish Sea, and taking the Bristol traders in the

Bristol Channel;--to the latter, when his remonstrances on the subject

of captures were the jest of Paris and of Europe. This fine step was

taken, it seems, in honor of the zeal of these two profound statesmen in

the prosecution of John the Painter: so totally negligent are they of

everything essential, and so long and so deeply affected with trash the

most low and contemptible; just as if they thought the merit of Sir John

Fielding was the most shining point in the character of great

ministers, in the most critical of all times, and, of all others, the

most deeply interesting to the commercial world! My best friends in the

corporation had no other doubts on the occasion than whether it did not

belong to me, by right of my representative capacity, to be the bearer

of this auspicious compliment. In addition to this, if it could receive

any addition, they now employ me to solicit, as a favor of no small

magnitude, that, after the example of Newcastle, they may be suffered to

arm vessels for their own defence in the Channel. Their memorial, under

the seal of Merchants' Hall, is now lying on the table before me. Not a

soul has the least sensibility, on finding themselves, now for the first

time, obliged to act as if the community were dissolved, and, after

enormous payments towards the common protection, each part was to defend

itself, as if it were a separate state.

I don't mention Bristol as if that were the part furthest gone in this

mortification. Far from it: I know that there is, rather, a little more

life in us than in any other place. In Liverpool they are literally

almost ruined by this American war; but they love it as they suffer from

it. In short, from whatever I see, and from whatever quarter I hear, I

am convinced that everything that is not absolute stagnation is

evidently a party-spirit very adverse to our politics, and to the

principles from whence they arise. There are manifest marks of the

resurrection of the Tory party. They no longer criticize, as all

disengaged people in the world will, on the acts of government; but they

are silent under every evil, and hide and cover up every ministerial

blander and misfortune, with the officious zeal of men who think they

have a party of their own to support in power. The Tories do

universally think their power and consequence involved in the success of

this American business. The clergy are astonishingly warm in it; and

what the Tories are, when embodied and united with their natural head,

the crown, and animated by their clergy, no man knows better than

yourself. As to the Whigs, I think them far from extinct. They are, what

they always were, (except by the able use of opportunities,) by far the

weakest party in this country. They have not yet learned the application

of their principles to the present state of things; and as to the

Dissenters, the main effective part of the Whig strength, they are, to

use a favorite expression of our American campaign style, "not all in

force." They will do very little, and, as far as I can discern, are

rather intimidated than provoked at the denunciations of the court in

the Archbishop of York's sermon. I thought that sermon rather imprudent,

when I first saw it; but it seems to have done its business.

In this temper of the people, I do not wholly wonder that our Northern

friends look a little towards events. In war, particularly, I am afraid

it must be so. There is something so weighty and decisive in the events

of war, something that so completely overpowers the imagination of the

vulgar, that all counsels must in a great degree be subordinate to and

attendant on them. I am sure it was so in the last war, very eminently.

So that, on the whole, what with the temper of the people, the temper of

our own friends, and the domineering necessities of war, we must quietly

give up all ideas of any settled, preconcerted plan. We shall be lucky

enough, if, keeping ourselves attentive and alert, we can contrive to

profit of the occasions as they arise: though I am sensible that those

who are best provided with a general scheme are fittest to take

advantage of all contingencies. However, to act with any people with the

least degree of comfort, I believe we must contrive a little to

assimilate to their character. We must gravitate towards them, if we

would keep in the same system, or expect that they should approach

towards us. They are, indeed, worthy of much concession and management.

I am quite convinced that they are the honestest public men that ever

appeared in this country, and I am sure that they are the wisest, by

far, of those who appear in it at present. None of those who are

continually complaining of them, but are themselves just as chargeable

with all their faults, and have a decent stock of their own into the

bargain. They (our friends) are, I admit, as you very truly represent

them, but indifferently qualified for storming a citadel. After all, God

knows whether this citadel is to be stormed by them, or by anybody else,

by the means they use, or by any means. I know that as they are,

abstractedly speaking, to blame, so there are those who cry out against

them for it, not with a friendly complaint, as we do, but with the

bitterness of enemies. But I know, too, that those who blame them for

want of enterprise have shown no activity at all against the common

enemy: all their skill and all their spirit have been shown only in

weakening, dividing, and indeed destroying their allies. What they are

and what we are is now pretty evidently experienced; and it is certain,

that, partly by our common faults, but much more by the difficulties of

our situation, and some circumstances of unavoidable misfortune, we are

in little better than a sort of _cul-de-sac_. For my part, I do all I

can to give ease to my mind in this strange position. I remember, some

years ago, when I was pressing some points with great eagerness and

anxiety, and complaining with great vexation to the Duke of Richmond of

the little progress I make, he told me kindly, and I believe very truly,

that, though he was far from thinking so himself, other people could not

be persuaded I had not some latent private interest in pushing these

matters, which I urged with an earnestness so extreme, and so much

approaching to passion. He was certainly in the right. I am thoroughly

resolved to give, both to myself and to my friends, less vexation on

these subjects than hitherto I have done,--much less, indeed.

If _you_ should grow too earnest, you will be still more inexcusable

than I was. Your having entered into affairs so much younger ought to

make them too familiar to you to be the cause of much agitation, and you

have much more before you for your work. Do not be in haste. Lay your

foundations deep in public opinion. Though (as you are sensible) I have

never given you the least hint of advice about joining yourself in a

declared connection with our party, nor do I now, yet, as I love that

party very well, and am clear that you are better able to serve them

than any man I know, I wish that things should be so kept as to leave

you mutually very open to one another in all changes and contingencies;

and I wish this the rather, because, in order to be very great, as I am

anxious that you should be, (always presuming that you are disposed to

make a good use of power,) you will certainly want some better support

than merely that of the crown. For I much doubt, whether, with all your

parts, you are the man formed for acquiring real interior favor in this

court, or in any; I therefore wish you a firm ground in the country; and

I do not know so firm and so sound a bottom to build on as our

party.--Well, I have done with this matter; and you think I ought to

have finished it long ago. Now I turn to Ireland.

Observe, that I have not heard a word of any news relative to it, from

thence or from London; so that I am only going to state to you my

conjectures as to facts, and to speculate again on these conjectures. I

have a strong notion that the lateness of our meeting is owing to the

previous arrangements intended in Ireland. I suspect they mean that

Ireland should take a sort of lead, and act an efficient part in this

war, both with men and money. It will sound well, when we meet, to tell

us of the active zeal and loyalty of the people of Ireland, and contrast

it with the rebellious spirit of America. It will be a popular

topic,--the perfect confidence of Ireland in the power of the British

Parliament. From thence they will argue the little danger which any

dependency of the crown has to apprehend from the enforcement of that

authority. It will be, too, somewhat flattering to the country

gentlemen, who might otherwise begin to be sullen, to hold out that the

burden is not wholly to rest upon them; and it will pique our pride to

be told that Ireland has cheerfully stepped forward: and when a

dependant of this kingdom has already engaged itself in another year's

war, merely for our dignity, how can we, who are principals in the

quarrel, hold off? This scheme of policy seems to me so very obvious,

and is likely to be of so much service to the present system, that I

cannot conceive it possible they should neglect it, or something like

it. They have already put the people of Ireland to the proof. Have they

not borne the Earl of Buckinghamshire, the person who was employed to

move the fiery committee in the House of Lords in order to stimulate the

ministry to this war, who was in the chair, and who moved the

resolutions?

It is within a few days of eleven years since I was in Ireland, and then

after an absence of two. Those who have been absent from any scene for

even a much shorter time generally lose the true practical notion of the

country, and of what may or may not be done in it. When I knew Ireland,

it was very different from the state of England, where government is a

vast deal, the public something, but individuals comparatively very

little. But if Ireland bears any resemblance to what it was some years

ago, neither government nor public opinion can do a great deal; almost

the whole is in the hands of a few leading people. The populace of

Dublin, and some parts in the North, are in some sort an exception. But

the Primate, Lord Hillsborough, and Lord Hertford have great sway in the

latter; and the former may be considerable or not, pretty much as the

Duke of Leinster pleases. On the whole, the success of government

usually depended on the bargain made with a very few men. The resident

lieutenancy may have made some change, and given a strength to

government, which formerly, I know, it had not; still, however, I am of

opinion, the former state, though in other hands perhaps, and in another

manner, still continues. The house you are connected with is grown into

a much greater degree of power than it had, though it was very

considerable, at the period I speak of. If the D. of L. takes a popular

part, he is sure of the city of Dublin, and he has a young man attached

to him who stands very forward in Parliament and in profession, and, by

what I hear, with more good-will and less envy than usually attends so

rapid a progress. The movement of one or two principal men, if they

manage the little popular strength which is to be found in Dublin and

Ulster, may do a great deal, especially when money is to be saved and

taxes to be kept off. I confess I should despair of your succeeding with

any of them, if they cannot be satisfied that every job which they can

look for on account of carrying this measure would be just as sure to

them for their ordinary support of government. They are essential to

government, which at this time must not be disturbed, and their

neutrality will be purchased at as high a price as their alliance

offensive and defensive. Now, as by supporting they may get as much as

by betraying their country, it must be a great leaning to turpitude that

can make them take a part in this war. I am satisfied, that, if the Duke

of Leinster and Lord Shannon would act together, this business could not

go on; or if either of them took part with Ponsonby, it would have no

better success. Hutchinson's situation is much altered since I saw you.

To please Tisdall, he had been in a manner laid aside at the Castle. It

is now to be seen whether he prefers the gratification of his resentment

and his appetite for popularity, both of which are strong enough in him,

to the advantages which his independence gives him, of making a new

bargain, and accumulating new offices on his heap. Pray do not be asleep

in this scene of action,--at this time, if I am right, the principal.

The Protestants of Ireland will be, I think, in general, backward: they

form infinitely the greatest part of the landed and the moneyed

interests; and they will not like to pay. The Papists are reduced to

beasts of burden: they will give all they have, their shoulders, readily

enough, if they are flattered. Surely the state of Ireland ought forever

to teach parties moderation in their victories. People crushed by law

have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be

enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose

will always be dangerous, more or less. But this is not our present

business. If all this should prove a dream, however, let it not hinder

you from writing to me and tolling me so. You will easily refute, in

your conversation, the little topics which they will set afloat: such

as, that Ireland is a boat, and must go with the ship; that, if the

Americans contended only for their liberties, it would be

different,--but since they have declared independence, and so forth--

You are happy in enjoying Townshend's company. Remember me to him. How

does he like his private situation in a country where he was the son of

the sovereign?--Mrs. Burke and the two Richards salute you cordially.

E.B.

BEACONSFIELD, October 8th, 1777.

A

LETTER

TO

THE MARQUIS OF ROCKINGHAM,

WITH

ADDRESSES TO THE KING,

AND

THE BRITISH COLONISTS IN NORTH AMERICA,

IN RELATION TO

THE MEASURES OF GOVERNMENT IN THE AMERICAN CONTEST, AND A PROPOSED

SECESSION OF THE OPPOSITION FROM PARLIAMENT.

JANUARY, 1777.

NOTE.

This Letter, with the two Addresses which follow it, was

written upon occasion of a proposed secession from Parliament

of the members in both Houses who had opposed the measures of

government, in the contest between this country and the

colonies in North America, from the time of the repeal of the

Stamp Act. It appears, from an indorsement written by Mr.

Burke on the manuscript, that he warmly recommended the

measure, but (for what reasons is not stated) it was not

adopted.

LETTER

TO THE MARQUIS OF ROCKINGHAM.

My Dear Lord,--I am afraid that I ought rather to beg your pardon for

troubling you at all in this season of repose, than to apologize for

having been so long silent on the approaching business. It comes upon

us, not indeed in the most agreeable manner, but it does come-upon us;

and I believe your friends in general are in expectation of finding your

Lordship resolved in what way you are to meet it. The deliberation is

full of difficulties; but the determination is necessary.

The affairs of America seem to be drawing towards a crisis. The Howes

are at this time in possession of, or are able to awe, the whole middle

coast of America, from Delaware to the western boundary of Massachusetts

Bay; the naval barrier on the side of Canada is broken; a great tract of

country is open for the supply of the troops; the river Hudson opens a

way into the heart of the provinces; and nothing can, in all

probability, prevent an early and offensive campaign. What the Americans

_have_ done is, in their circumstances, truly astonishing; it is,

indeed, infinitely more than I expected from them. But having done so

much, for some short time I began to entertain an opinion that they

might do more. It is now, however, evident that they cannot look

standing armies in the face. They are inferior in everything, even in

numbers,--I mean, in the number of those whom they keep in constant duty

and in regular pay. There seem, by the best accounts, not to be above

ten or twelve thousand men, at most, in their grand army. The rest are

militia, and not wonderfully well composed or disciplined. They decline

a general engagement,--prudently enough, if their object had been to

make the war attend upon a treaty of good terms of subjection; but when

they look further, this will not do. An army that is obliged at all

times and in all situations to decline an engagement may delay their

ruin, but can never defend their country. Foreign assistance they have

little or none, nor are likely soon to have more. France, in effect, has

no king, nor any minister accredited enough either with the court or

nation to undertake a design of great magnitude.

In this state of things, I persuade myself Franklin is come to Paris to

draw from that court a definitive and satisfactory answer concerning the

support of the colonies. If he cannot get such an answer, (and I am of

opinion that at present he cannot,) then it is to be presumed he is

authorized to negotiate with Lord Stormont on the basis of dependence on

the crown. This I take to be his errand: for I never can believe that he

is come thither as a fugitive from his cause in the hour of its

distress, or that he is going to conclude a long life, which has

brightened every hour it has continued, with so foul and dishonorable a

flight. On this supposition, I thought it not wholly impossible that the

Whig party might be made a sort of mediators of the peace. It is

unnatural to suppose, that, in making an accommodation, the Americans

should not choose rather to give credit to those who all along have

opposed the measure of ministers, than to throw themselves wholly on the

mercy of their bitter, uniform, and systematic enemies. It is, indeed,

the victorious enemy that has the terms to offer; the vanquished party

and their friends are, both of them, reduced in their power; and it is

certain that those who are utterly broken and subdued have no option.

But, as this is hardly yet the case of the Americans, in this middle

state of their affairs, (much impaired, but not perfectly ruined,) one

would think it must be their interest to provide, if possible, some

further security for the terms which they may obtain from their enemies.

If the Congress could be brought to declare in favor of those terms for

which one hundred members of the House of Commons voted last year, with

some civility to the party which held out those terms, it would

undoubtedly have an effect to revive the cause of our liberties in

England, and to give the colonies some sort of mooring and anchorage in

this country. It seemed to me that Franklin might be made to feel the

propriety of such a step; and as I have an acquaintance with him, I had

a strong desire of taking a turn to Paris. Everything else failing, one

might obtain a better knowledge of the general aspect of affairs abroad

than, I believe, any of us possess at present. The Duke of Portland

approved the idea. But when I had conversed with the very few of your

Lordship's friends who were in town, and considered a little more

maturely the constant temper and standing maxims of the party, I laid

aside the design,--not being desirous of risking the displeasure of

those for whose sake alone I wished to take that fatiguing journey at

this severe season of the year.

The Duke of Portland has taken with him some heads of deliberation,

which were the result of a discourse with his Grace and Mr. Montagu at

Burlington House. It seems essential to the cause that your Lordship

should meet your friends with some settled plan either of action or

inaction. Your friends will certainly require such a plan; and I am sure

the state of affairs requires it, whether they call for it or not. As to

the measure of a secession with reasons, after rolling the matter in my

head a good deal, and turning it an hundred ways, I confess I still

think it the most advisable, notwithstanding the serious objections that

lie against it, and indeed the extreme uncertainty of all political

measures, especially at this time. It provides for your honor. I know of

nothing else that can so well do this. It is something, perhaps all,

that can be done in our present situation. Some precaution, in this

respect, is not without its motives. That very estimation for which you

have sacrificed everything else is in some danger of suffering in the

general wreck; and perhaps it is likely to suffer the more, because you

have hitherto confided more than was quite prudent in the clearness of

your intentions, and in the solidity of the popular judgment upon them.

The former, indeed, is out of the power of events; the latter is full of

levity, and the very creature of fortune. However, such as it is, (and

for one I do not think I am inclined to overvalue it,) both our interest

and our duty make it necessary for us to attend to it very carefully, so

long as we act a part in public. The measure you take for this purpose

may produce no immediate effect; but with regard to the party, and the

principles for whose sake the party exists, all hope of their

preservation or recovery depends upon your preserving your reputation.

By the conversation of some friends, it seemed as if they were willing

to fall in with this design, because it promised to emancipate them from

the servitude of irksome business, and to afford them an opportunity of

retiring to ease and tranquillity. If that be their object in the

secession and addresses proposed, there surely never were means worse

chosen to gain their end; and if this be any part of the project, it

were a thousand times better it were never undertaken. The measure is

not only unusual, and as such critical, but it is in its own nature

strong and vehement in a high degree. The propriety, therefore, of

adopting it depends entirely upon the spirit with which it is supported

and followed. To pursue violent measures with languor and irresolution

is not very consistent in speculation, and not more reputable or safe in

practice. If your Lordship's friends do not go to this business with

their whole hearts, if they do not feel themselves uneasy without it, if

they do not undertake it with a certain degree of zeal, and even with

warmth and indignation, it had better be removed wholly out of our

thoughts. A measure of less strength, and more in the beaten circle of

affairs, if supported with spirit and industry, would be on all accounts

infinitely more eligible. We have to consider what it is that in this

undertaking we have against us. We have the weight of King, Lords, and

Commons in the other scale; we have against us, within a trifle, the

whole body of the law; we oppose the more considerable part of the

landed and mercantile interests; we contend, in a manner, against the

whole Church; we set our faces against great armies flushed with

victory, and navies who have tasted of civil spoil, and have a strong

appetite for more; our strength, whatever it is, must depend, for a good

part of its effect, upon events not very probable. In such a situation,

such a step requires not only great magnanimity, but unwearied activity

and perseverance, with a good deal, too, of dexterity and management, to

improve every accident in our favor.

The delivery of this paper may have very important consequences. It is

true that the court may pass it over in silence, with a real or affected

contempt. But this I do not think so likely. If they do take notice of

it, the mildest course will be such an address from Parliament as the

House of Commons made to the king on the London Remonstrance in the year

1769. This address will be followed by addresses of a similar tendency,

from all parts of the kingdom, in order to overpower you with what they

will endeavor to pass as the united voice and sense of the nation. But

if they intend to proceed further, and to take steps of a more decisive

nature, you are then to consider, not what they may legally and justly

do, but what a Parliament omnipotent in power, influenced with party

rage and personal resentment, operating under the implicit military

obedience of court discipline, is capable of. Though they have made some

successful experiments on juries, they will hardly trust enough to them

to order a prosecution for a supposed libel. They may proceed in two

ways: either by an _impeachment_, in which the Tories may retort on the

Whigs (but with better success, though in a worse cause) the

proceedings in the case of Sacheverell, or they may, without this form,

proceed, as against the Bishop of Rochester, by a bill of pains and

penalties more or less grievous. The similarity of the cases, or the

justice, is (as I said) out of the question. The mode of proceeding has

several very ancient and very recent precedents. None of these methods

is impossible. The court may select three or four of the most

distinguished among you for the victims; and therefore nothing is more

remote from the tendency of the proposed act than any idea of retirement

or repose. On the contrary, you have, all of you, as principals or

auxiliaries, a much better [hotter?] and more desperate conflict, in all

probability, to undergo, than any you have been yet engaged in. The only

question is, whether the risk ought to be run for the chance (and it is

no more) of recalling the people of England to their ancient principles,

and to that personal interest which formerly they took in all public

affairs. At any rate, I am sure it is right, if we take this step, to

take it with a full view of the consequences, and with minds and

measures in a state of preparation to meet them. It is not becoming that

your boldness should arise from a want of foresight. It is more

reputable, and certainly it is more safe too, that it should be grounded

on the evident necessity of encountering the dangers which you foresee.

Your Lordship will have the goodness to excuse me, if I state in strong

terms the difficulties attending a measure which on the whole I heartily

concur in. But as, from my want of importance, I can be personally

little subject to the most trying part of the consequences, it is as

little my desire to urge others to dangers in which I am myself to have

no inconsiderable a share.

If this measure should be thought too great for our strength or the

dispositions of the times, then the point will be to consider what is to

be done in Parliament. A weak, irregular, desultory, peevish opposition

there will be as much too little as the other may be too big. Our scheme

ought to be such as to have in it a succession of measures: else it is

impossible to secure anything like a regular attendance; opposition will

otherwise always carry a disreputable air; neither will it be possible,

without that attendance, to persuade the people that we are in earnest.

Above all, a motion should be well digested for the first day. There is

one thing in particular I wish to recommend to your Lordship's

consideration: that is, the opening of the doors of the House of

Commons. Without this, I am clearly convinced, it will be in the power

of ministry to make our opposition appear without doors just in what

light they please. To obtain a gallery is the easiest thing in the

world, if we are satisfied to cultivate the esteem of our adversaries by

the resolution and energy with which we act against them: but if their

satisfaction and good-humor be any part of our object, the attempt, I

admit, is idle.

I had some conversation, before I left town, with the D. of M. He is of

opinion, that, if you adhere to your resolution of seceding, you ought

not to appear on the first day of the meeting. He thinks it can have no

effect, except to break the continuity of your conduct, and thereby to

weaken and fritter away the impression of it. It certainly will seem

odd to give solemn reasons for a discontinuance of your attendance in

Parliament, after having two or three times returned to it, and

immediately after a vigorous act of opposition. As to trials of the

temper of the House, there have been of that sort so many already that I

see no reason for making another that would not hold equally good for

another after that,--particularly as nothing has happened in the least

calculated to alter the disposition of the House. If the secession were

to be general, such an attendance, followed by such an act, would have

force; but being in its nature incomplete and broken, to break it

further by retreats and returns to the chase must entirely destroy its

effect. I confess I am quite of the D. of M.'s opinion in this point.

I send your Lordship a corrected copy of the paper: your Lordship will

be so good to communicate it, if you should approve of the alterations,

to Lord J.C. and Sir G.S. I showed it to the D. of P. before his Grace

left town; and at his, the D. of P.'s, desire, I have sent it to the D.

of R. The principal alteration is in the pages last but one. It is made

to remove a difficulty which had been suggested to Sir G.S., and which

he thought had a good deal in it. I think it much the better for that

alteration. Indeed, it may want still more corrections, in order to

adapt it to the present or probable future state of things.

What shall I say in excuse for this long letter, which frightens me when

I look back upon it? Your Lordship will take it, and all in it, with

your usual incomparable temper, which carries you through so much both

from enemies and friends. My most humble respects to Lady R., and

believe me, with the highest regard, ever, &o.

E.B.

I hear that Dr. Franklin has had a most extraordinary reception at Paris

from all ranks of people.

BEACONSFIELD, Monday night, Jan. 6, 1777.

ADDRESS TO THE KING.

We, your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, several of the peers

of the realm, and several members of the House of Commons chosen by the

people to represent them in Parliament, do in our individual capacity,

but with hearts filled with a warm affection to your Majesty, with a

strong attachment to your royal house, and with the most unfeigned

devotion to your true interest, beg leave, at this crisis of your

affairs, in all humility to approach your royal presence.

Whilst we lament the measures adopted by the public councils of the

kingdom, we do not mean to question the legal validity of their

proceedings. We do not desire to appeal from them to any person

whatsoever. We do not dispute the conclusive authority of the bodies in

which we have a place over all their members. We know that it is our

ordinary duty to submit ourselves to the determinations of the majority

in everything, except what regards the just defence of our honor and

reputation. But the situation into which the British empire has been

brought, and the conduct to which we are reluctantly driven in that

situation, we hold ourselves bound by the relation in which we stand

both to the crown and the people clearly to explain to your Majesty and

our country.

We have been called upon in the speech from the throne at the opening of

this session of Parliament, in a manner peculiarly marked, singularly

emphatical, and from a place from whence anything implying censure falls

with no common weight, to concur in unanimous approbation of those

measures which have produced our present distresses and threaten us in

future with others far more grievous. We trust, therefore, that we shall

stand justified in offering to our sovereign and the public our reasons

for persevering inflexibly in our uniform dissent from every part of

those measures. We lament them from an experience of their mischief, as

we originally opposed them from a sure foresight of their unhappy and

inevitable tendency.

We see nothing in the present events in the least degree sufficient to

warrant an alteration in our opinion. We were always steadily averse to

this civil war,--not because we thought it impossible that it should be

attended with victory, but because we were fully persuaded that in such

a contest victory would only vary the mode of our ruin, and by making it

less immediately sensible would render it the more lasting and the more

irretrievable. Experience had but too fully instructed us in the

possibility of the reduction of a free people to slavery by foreign

mercenary armies. But we had an horror of becoming the instruments in a

design, of which, in our turn, we might become the victims. Knowing the

inestimable value of peace, and the contemptible value of what was

sought by war, we wished to compose the distractions of our country, not

by the use of foreign arms, but by prudent regulations in our own

domestic policy. We deplored, as your Majesty has done in your speech

from the throne, the disorders which prevail in your empire; but we are

convinced that the disorders of the people, in the present time and in

the present place, are owing to the usual and natural cause of such

disorders at all times and in all places, where such have

prevailed,--the misconduct of government;--that they are owing to plans

laid in error, pursued with obstinacy, and conducted without wisdom.

We cannot attribute so much to the power of faction, at the expense of

human nature, as to suppose, that, in any part of the world, a

combination of men, few in number, not considerable in rank, of no

natural hereditary dependencies, should be able, by the efforts of their

policy alone, or the mere exertion of any talents, to bring the people

of your American dominions into the disposition which has produced the

present troubles. We cannot conceive, that, without some powerful

concurring cause, any management should prevail on some millions of

people, dispersed over an whole continent, in thirteen provinces, not

only unconnected, but, in many particulars of religion, manners,

government, and local interest, totally different and adverse,

voluntarily to submit themselves to a suspension of all the profits of

industry and all the comforts of civil life, added to all the evils of

an unequal war, carried on with circumstances of the greatest asperity

and rigor. This, Sir, we conceive, could never have happened, but from a

general sense of some grievance so radical in its nature and so

spreading in its effects as to poison all the ordinary satisfactions of

life, to discompose the frame of society, and to convert into fear and

hatred that habitual reverence ever paid by mankind to an ancient and

venerable government.

That grievance is as simple in its nature, and as level to the most

ordinary understanding, as it is powerful in affecting the most languid

passions: it is--

"AN ATTEMPT MADE TO DISPOSE OF THE PROPERTY OF A WHOLE PEOPLE WITHOUT

THEIR CONSENT."

Your Majesty's English subjects in the colonies, possessing the ordinary

faculties of mankind, know that to live under such a plan of government

is not to live in a state of freedom. Your English subjects in the

colonies, still impressed with the ancient feelings of the people from

whom they are derived, cannot live under a government which does not

establish freedom as its basis.

This scheme, being, therefore, set up in direct opposition to the rooted

and confirmed sentiments and habits of thinking of an whole people, has

produced the effects which ever must result from such a collision of

power and opinion. For we beg leave, with all duty and humility, to

represent to your Majesty, (what we fear has been industriously

concealed from you,) that it is not merely the opinion of a very great

number, or even of the majority, but the universal sense of the whole

body of the people in those provinces, that the practice of taxing, in

the mode and on the principles which have been lately contended for and

enforced, is subversive of all their rights.

This sense has been declared, as we understand on good information, by

the unanimous voice of all their Assemblies: each Assembly also, on this

point, is perfectly unanimous within itself. It has been declared as

fully by the actual voice of the people without these Assemblies as by

the constructive voice within them, as well by those in that country who

addressed as by those who remonstrated; and it is as much the avowed

opinion of those who have hazarded their all, rather than take up arms

against your Majesty's forces, as of those who have run the same risk to

oppose them. The difference among them is not on the grievance, but on

the mode of redress; and we are sorry to say, that they who have

conceived hopes from the placability of the ministers who influence the

public councils of this kingdom disappear in the multitude of those who

conceive that passive compliance only confirms and emboldens oppression.

The sense of a whole people, most gracious sovereign, never ought to be

contemned by wise and beneficent rulers,--whatever may be the abstract

claims, or even rights, of _the supreme power_. We have been too early

instructed, and too long habituated to believe, that the only firm seat

of all authority is in the minds, affections, and interests of the

people, to change our opinions on the theoretic reasonings of

speculative men, or for the convenience of a mere temporary arrangement

of state. It is not consistent with equity or wisdom to set at defiance

the general feelings of great communities, and of all the orders which

compose them. Much power is tolerated, and passes unquestioned, where

much is yielded to opinion. All is disputed, where everything is

enforced.

Such are our sentiments on the duty and policy of conforming to the

prejudices of a whole people, even where the foundation of such

prejudices may be false or disputable. But permit us to lay at your

Majesty's feet our deliberate judgment on the real merits of that

principle, the violation of which is the known ground and origin of

these troubles. We assure your Majesty, that, on our parts, we should

think ourselves unjustifiable, as good citizens, and not influenced by

the true spirit of Englishmen, if, with any effectual means of

prevention in our hands, we were to submit to taxes to which we did not

consent, either directly, or by a representation of the people securing

to us the substantial benefit of an absolutely free disposition of our

own property in that important case. And we add, Sir, that, if fortune,

instead of blessing us with a situation where we may have daily access

to the propitious presence of a gracious prince, had fixed us in

settlements on the remotest part of the globe, we must carry these

sentiments with us, as part of our being,--persuaded that the distance

of situation would render this privilege in the disposal of property but

the more necessary. If no provision had been made for it, such provision

ought to be made or permitted. Abuses of subordinate authority increase,

and all means of redress lessen, as the distance of the subject removes

him from the seat of the supreme power. What, in those circumstances,

can save him from the last extremes of indignity and oppression, but

something left in his own hands which may enable him to conciliate the

favor and control the excesses of government? When no means of power to

awe or to oblige are possessed, the strongest ties which connect mankind

in every relation, social and civil, and which teach them mutually to

respect each other, are broken. Independency, from that moment,

virtually exists. Its formal declaration will quickly follow. Such must

be our feelings for ourselves: we are not in possession of another rule

for our brethren.

When the late attempt practically to annihilate that inestimable

privilege was made, great disorders and tumults, very unhappily and very

naturally, arose from it. In this state of things, we were of opinion

that satisfaction ought instantly to be given, or that, at least, the

punishment of the disorder ought to be attended with the redress of the

grievance. We were of opinion, that, if our dependencies had so outgrown

the positive institutions made for the preservation of liberty in this

kingdom, that the operation of their powers was become rather a pressure

than a relief to the subjects in the colonies, wisdom dictated that the

spirit of the Constitution should rather be applied to their

circumstances, than its authority enforced with violence in those very

parts where its reason became wholly inapplicable.

Other methods were then recommended and followed, as infallible means of

restoring peace and order. We looked upon them to be, what they have

since proved to be, the cause of inflaming discontent into disobedience,

and resistance into revolt. The subversion of solemn, fundamental

charters, on a suggestion of abuse, without citation, evidence, or

hearing,--the total suspension of the commerce of a great maritime city,

the capital of a great maritime province, during the pleasure of the

crown,--the establishment of a military force, not accountable to the

ordinary tribunals of the country in which it was kept up,--these and

other proceedings at that time, if no previous cause of dissension had

subsisted, were sufficient to produce great troubles: unjust at all

times, they were then irrational.

We could not conceive, when disorders had arisen from the complaint of

one violated right, that to violate every other was the proper means of

quieting an exasperated people. It seemed to us absurd and preposterous

to hold out, as the means of calming a people in a state of extreme

inflammation, and ready to take up arms, the austere law which a rigid

conqueror would impose as the sequel of the most decisive victories.

Recourse, indeed, was at the same time had to force; and we saw a force

sent out, enough to menace liberty, but not to awe opposition,--tending

to bring odium on the civil power, and contempt on the military,--at

once to provoke and encourage resistance. Force was sent out not

sufficient to hold one town; laws were passed to inflame thirteen

provinces.

This mode of proceeding, by harsh laws and feeble armies, could not be

defended on the principle of mercy and forbearance. For mercy, as we

conceive, consists, not in the weakness of the means, but in the

benignity of the ends. We apprehend that mild measures may be powerfully

enforced, and that acts of extreme rigor and injustice may be attended

with as much feebleness in the execution as severity in the formation.

In consequence of these terrors, which, falling upon some, threatened

all, the colonies made a common cause with the sufferers, and proceeded,

on their part, to acts of resistance. In that alarming situation, we

besought your Majesty's ministers to entertain some distrust of the

operation of coercive measures, and to profit of their experience.

Experience had no effect. The modes of legislative rigor were construed,

not to have been erroneous in their policy, but too limited in their

extent. New severities were adopted. The fisheries of your people in

America followed their charters; and their mutual combination to defend

what they thought their common rights brought on a total prohibition of

their mutual commercial intercourse. No distinction of persons or merits

was observed: the peaceable and the mutinous, friends and foes, were

alike involved, as if the rigor of the laws had a certain tendency to

recommend the authority of the legislator.

Whilst the penal laws increased in rigor, and extended in application

over all the colonies, the direct force was applied but to one part. Had

the great fleet and foreign army since employed been at that time called

for, the greatness of the preparation would have declared the magnitude

of the danger. The nation would have been alarmed, and taught the

necessity of some means of reconciliation with our countrymen in

America, who, whenever they are provoked to resistance, demand a force

to reduce them to obedience full as destructive to us as to them. But

Parliament and the people, by a premeditated concealment of their real

situation, were drawn into perplexities which furnished excuses for

further armaments, and whilst they were taught to believe themselves

called to suppress a riot, they found themselves involved in a mighty

war.

At length British blood was spilled by British hands: a fatal era, which

we must ever deplore, because your empire will forever feel it. Your

Majesty was touched with a sense of so great a disaster. Your paternal

breast was affected with the sufferings of your English subjects in

America. In your speech from the throne, in the beginning of the session

of 1775, you were graciously pleased to declare yourself inclined to

relieve their distresses and to pardon their errors. You felt their

sufferings under the late penal acts of Parliament. But your ministry

felt differently. Not discouraged by the pernicious effects of all they

had hitherto advised, and notwithstanding the gracious declaration of

your Majesty, they obtained another act of Parliament, in which the

rigors of all the former were consolidated, and embittered by

circumstances of additional severity and outrage. The whole trading

property of America (even unoffending shipping in port) was

indiscriminately and irrecoverably given, as the plunder of foreign

enemies, to the sailors of your navy. This property was put out of the

reach of your mercy. Your people were despoiled; and your navy, by a

new, dangerous, and prolific example, corrupted with the plunder of

their countrymen. Your people in that part of your dominions were put,

in their general and political, as well as their personal capacity,

wholly out of the protection of your government.

Though unwilling to dwell on all the improper modes of carrying on this

unnatural and ruinous war, and which have led directly to the present

unhappy separation of Great Britain and its colonies, we must beg leave

to represent two particulars, which we are sure must have been entirely

contrary to your Majesty's order or approbation. Every course of action

in hostility, however that hostility may be just or merited, is not

justifiable or excusable. It is the duty of those who claim to rule over

others not to provoke them beyond the necessity of the case, nor to

leave stings in their minds which must long rankle even when the

appearance of tranquillity is restored. We therefore assure your Majesty

that it is with shame and sorrow we have seen several acts of hostility

which could have no other tendency than incurably to alienate the minds

of your American subjects. To excite, by a proclamation issued by your

Majesty's governor, an universal insurrection of negro slaves in any of

the colonies is a measure full of complicated horrors, absolutely

illegal, suitable neither to the practice of war nor to the laws of

peace. Of the same quality we look upon all attempts to bring down on

your subjects an irruption of those fierce and cruel tribes of savages

and cannibals in whom the vestiges of human nature are nearly effaced by

ignorance and barbarity. They are not fit allies for your Majesty in a

war with your people. They are not fit instruments of an English

government. These and many other acts we disclaim as having advised, or

approved when done; and we clear ourselves to your Majesty, and to all

civilized nations, from any participation whatever, before or after the

fact, in such unjustifiable and horrid proceedings.

But there is one weighty circumstance which we lament equally with the

causes of the war, and with the modes of carrying it on,--that no

disposition whatsoever towards peace or reconciliation has ever been

shown by those who have directed the public councils of this kingdom,

either before the breaking out of these hostilities or during the

unhappy continuance of them. Every proposition made in your Parliament

to remove the original cause of these troubles, by taking off taxes

obnoxious for their principle or their design, has been

overruled,--every bill brought in for quiet rejected, even on the first

proposition. The petitions of the colonies have not been admitted even

to an hearing. The very possibility of public agency, by which such

petitions could authentically arrive at Parliament, has been evaded and

chicaned away. All the public declarations which indicate anything

resembling a disposition to reconciliation seem to us loose, general,

equivocal, capable of various meanings, or of none; and they are

accordingly construed differently, at different times, by those on whose

recommendation they have been made: being wholly unlike the precision

and stability of public faith, and bearing no mark of that ingenuous

simplicity and native candor and integrity which formerly characterized

the English nation.

Instead of any relaxation of the claim of taxing at the discretion of

Parliament, your ministers have devised a new mode of enforcing that

claim, much more effectual for the oppression of the colonies, though

not for your Majesty's service, both as to the quantity and application,

than any of the former methods; and their mode has been expressly held

out by ministers as a plan not to be departed from by the House of

Commons, and as the very condition on which the legislature is to accept

the dependence of the colonies.

At length, when, after repeated refusals to hear or to conciliate, an

act dissolving your government, by putting your people in America out of

your protection, was passed, your ministers suffered several months to

elapse without affording to them, or to any community or any individual

amongst them, the means of entering into that protection, even on

unconditional submission, contrary to your Majesty's gracious

declaration from the throne, and in direct violation of the public

faith.

We cannot, therefore, agree to unite in new severities against the

brethren of our blood for their asserting an independency, to which we

know, in our conscience, they have been necessitated by the conduct of

those very persons who now make use of that argument to provoke us to a

continuance and repetition of the acts which in a regular series have

led to this great misfortune.

The reasons, dread Sir, which have been used to justify this

perseverance in a refusal to hear or conciliate have been reduced into a

sort of Parliamentary maxims which we do not approve. The first of these

maxims is, "that the two Houses ought not to receive (as they have

hitherto refused to receive) petitions containing matter derogatory to

any part of the authority they claim." We conceive this maxim and the

consequent practice to be unjustifiable by reason or the practice of

other sovereign powers, and that it must be productive, if adhered to,

of a total separation between this kingdom and its dependencies. The

supreme power, being in ordinary cases the ultimate judge, can, as we

conceive, suffer nothing in having any part of his rights excepted to,

or even discussed before himself. We know that sovereigns in other

countries, where the assertion of absolute regal power is as high as the

assertion of absolute power in any politic body can possibly be here,

have received many petitions in direct opposition to many of their

claims of prerogative,--have listened to them,--condescended to discuss,

and to give answers to them. This refusal to admit even the discussion

of any part of an undefined prerogative will naturally tend to

annihilate any privilege that can be claimed by every inferior dependent

community, and every subordinate order in the state.

The next maxim which has been put as a bar to any plan of accommodation

is, "that no offer of terms of peace ought to be made, before Parliament

is assured that these terms will be accepted." On this we beg leave to

represent to your Majesty, that, if, in all events, the policy of this

kingdom is to govern the people in your colonies as a free people, no

mischief can possibly happen from a declaration to them, and to the

world, of the manner and form in which Parliament proposes that they

shall enjoy the freedom it protects. It is an encouragement to the

innocent and meritorious, that they at least shall enjoy those

advantages which they patiently expected rather from the benignity of

Parliament than their own efforts. Persons more contumacious may also

see that they are resisting terms of perhaps greater freedom and

happiness than they are now in arms to obtain. The glory and propriety

of offered mercy is neither tarnished nor weakened by the folly of those

who refuse to take advantage of it.

We cannot think that the declaration of independency makes any natural

difference in the reason and policy of the offer. No prince out of the

possession of his dominions, and become a sovereign _de jure_ only, ever

thought it derogatory to his rights or his interests to hold out to his

former subjects a distinct prospect of the advantages to be derived from

his readmission, and a security for some of the most fundamental of

those popular privileges in vindication of which he had been deposed. On

the contrary, such offers have been almost uniformly made under similar

circumstances. Besides, as your Majesty has been graciously pleased, in

your speech from the throne, to declare your intention of restoring

your people in the colonies to a state of law and liberty, no objection

can possibly lie against defining what that law and liberty are; because

those who offer and those who are to receive terms frequently differ

most widely and most materially in the signification of these words, and

in the objects to which they apply.

To say that we do not know, at this day, what the grievances of the

colonies are (be they real or pretended) would be unworthy of us. But

whilst we are thus waiting to be informed of what we perfectly know, we

weaken the powers of the commissioners,--we delay, perhaps we lose, the

happy hour of peace,--we are wasting the substance of both

countries,--we are continuing the effusion of human, of Christian, of

English blood.

We are sure that we must have your Majesty's heart along with us, when

we declare in favor of mixing something conciliatory with our force.

Sir, we abhor the idea of making a conquest of our countrymen. We wish

that they may yield to well-ascertained, well-authenticated, and

well-secured terms of reconciliation,--not that your Majesty should owe

the recovery of your dominions to their total waste and destruction.

Humanity will not permit us to entertain such a desire; nor will the

reverence we bear to the civil rights of mankind make us even wish that

questions of great difficulty, of the last importance, and lying deep in

the vital principles of the British Constitution, should be solved by

the arms of foreign mercenary soldiers.

It is not, Sir, from a want of the most inviolable duty to your Majesty,

not from a want of a partial and passionate regard to that part of your

empire in which we reside, and which we wish to be supreme, that we

have hitherto withstood all attempts to render the supremacy of one part

of your dominions inconsistent with the liberty and safety of all the

rest. The motives of our opposition are found in those very sentiments

which we are supposed to violate. For we are convinced beyond a doubt,

that a system of dependence which leaves no security to the people for

any part of their freedom in their own hands cannot be established in

any inferior member of the British empire, without consequentially

destroying the freedom of that very body in favor of whose boundless

pretensions such a scheme is adopted. We know and feel that arbitrary

power over distant regions is not within the competence, nor to be

exercised agreeably to the forms or consistently with the spirit, of

great popular assemblies. If such assemblies are called to a nominal

share in the exercise of such power, in order to screen, under general

participation, the guilt of desperate measures, it tends only the more

deeply to corrupt the deliberative character of those assemblies, in

training them to blind obedience, in habituating them to proceed upon

grounds of fact with which they can rarely be sufficiently acquainted,

and in rendering them executive instruments of designs the bottom of

which they cannot possibly fathom.

To leave any real freedom to Parliament, freedom must be left to the

colonies. A military government is the only substitute for civil

liberty. That the establishment of such a power in America will utterly

ruin our finances (though its certain effect) is the smallest part of

our concern. It will become an apt, powerful, and certain engine for the

destruction of our freedom here. Great bodies of armed men, trained to

a contempt of popular assemblies representative of an English

people,--kept up for the purpose of exacting impositions without their

consent, and maintained by that exaction,--instruments in subverting,

without any process of law, great ancient establishments and respected

forms of governments,--set free from, and therefore above, the ordinary

English tribunals of the country where they serve,--these men cannot so

transform themselves, merely by crossing the sea, as to behold with love

and reverence, and submit with profound obedience to, the very same

things in Great Britain which in America they had been taught to

despise, and had been accustomed to awe and humble. All your Majesty's

troops, in the rotation of service, will pass through this discipline

and contract these habits. If we could flatter ourselves that this would

not happen, we must be the weakest of men; we must be the worst, if we

were indifferent whether it happened or not. What, gracious sovereign,

is the empire of America to us, or the empire of the world, if we lose

our own liberties? We deprecate this last of evils. We deprecate the

effect of the doctrines which must support and countenance the

government over conquered Englishmen.

As it will be impossible long to resist the powerful and equitable

arguments in favor of the freedom of these unhappy people that are to be

drawn from the principle of our own liberty, attempts will be made,

attempts have been made, to ridicule and to argue away this principle,

and to inculcate into the minds of your people other maxims of

government and other grounds of obedience than those which have

prevailed at and since the glorious Revolution. By degrees, these

doctrines, by being convenient, may grow prevalent. The consequence is

not certain; but a general change of principles rarely happens among a

people without leading to a change of government.

Sir, your throne cannot stand secure upon the principles of

unconditional submission and passive obedience,--on powers exercised

without the concurrence of the people to be governed,--on acts made in

defiance of their prejudices and habits,--on acquiescence procured by

foreign mercenary troops, and secured by standing armies. These may

possibly be the foundation of other thrones: they must be the subversion

of yours. It was not to passive principles in our ancestors that we owe

the honor of appearing before a sovereign who cannot feel that he is a

prince without knowing that we ought to be free. The Revolution is a

departure from the ancient course of the descent of this monarchy. The

people at that time reentered into their original rights; and it was not

because a positive law authorized what was then done, but because the

freedom and safety of the subject, the origin and cause of all laws,

required a proceeding paramount and superior to them. At that ever

memorable and instructive period, the letter of the law was superseded

in favor of the substance of liberty. To the free choice, therefore, of

the people, without either King or Parliament, we owe that happy

establishment out of which both King and Parliament were regenerated.

From that great principle of liberty have originated the statutes

confirming and ratifying the establishment from which your Majesty

derives your right to rule over us. Those statutes have not given us

our liberties: our liberties have produced them. Every hour of your

Majesty's reign, your title stands upon the very same foundation on

which it was at first laid; and we do not know a better on which it can

possibly be placed.

Convinced, Sir, that you cannot have different rights and a different

security in different parts of your dominions, we wish to lay an even

platform for your throne, and to give it an unmovable stability, by

laying it on the general freedom of your people, and by securing to your

Majesty that confidence and affection in all parts of your dominions

which makes your best security and dearest title in this the chief seat

of your empire.

Such, Sir, being, amongst us, the foundation of monarchy itself, much

more clearly and much more peculiarly is it the ground of all

Parliamentary power. Parliament is a security provided for the

protection of freedom, and not a subtile fiction, contrived to amuse the

people in its place. The authority of both Houses can still less than

that of the crown be supported upon different principles in different

places, so as to be for one part of your subjects a protector of

liberty, and for another a fund of despotism, through which prerogative

is extended by occasional powers, whenever an arbitrary will finds

itself straitened by the restrictions of law. Had it seemed good to

Parliament to consider itself as the indulgent guardian and strong

protector of the freedom of the subordinate popular assemblies, instead

of exercising its powers to their annihilation, there is no doubt that

it never could have been their inclination, because not their interest,

to raise questions on the extent of Parliamentary rights, or to

enfeeble privileges which were the security of their own. Powers evident

from necessity, and not suspicious from an alarming mode or purpose in

the exertion, would, as formerly they were, be cheerfully submitted to;

and these would have been fully sufficient for conservation of unity in

the empire, and for directing its wealth to one common centre. Another

use has produced other consequences; and a power which refuses to be

limited by moderation must either be lost, or find other more distinct

and satisfactory limitations.

As for us, a supposed, or, if it could be, a real, participation in

arbitrary power would never reconcile our minds to its establishment. We

should be ashamed to stand before your Majesty, boldly asserting in our

own favor inherent rights which bind and regulate the crown itself, and

yet insisting on the exercise, in our own persons, of a more arbitrary

sway over our fellow-citizens and fellow-freemen.

These, gracious sovereign, are the sentiments which we consider

ourselves as bound, in justification of our present conduct, in the most

serious and solemn manner to lay at your Majesty's feet. We have been

called by your Majesty's writs and proclamations, and we have been

authorized, either by hereditary privilege or the choice of your people,

to confer and treat with your Majesty, in your highest councils, upon

the arduous affairs of your kingdom. We are sensible of the whole

importance of the duty which this constitutional summons implies. We

know the religious punctuality of attendance which, in the ordinary

course, it demands. It is no light cause which, even for a time, could

persuade us to relax in any part of that attendance. The British empire

is in convulsions which threaten its dissolution. Those particular

proceedings which cause and inflame this disorder, after many years'

incessant struggle, we find ourselves wholly unable to oppose and

unwilling to behold. All our endeavors having proved fruitless, we are

fearful at this time of irritating by contention those passions which we

have found it impracticable to compose by reason. We cannot permit

ourselves to countenance, by the appearance of a silent assent,

proceedings fatal to the liberty and unity of the empire,--proceedings

which exhaust the strength of all your Majesty's dominions, destroy all

trust and dependence of our allies, and leave us, both at home and

abroad, exposed to the suspicious mercy and uncertain inclinations of

our neighbor and rival powers, to whom, by this desperate course, we are

driving our countrymen for protection, and with whom we have forced them

into connections, and may bind them by habits and by interests,--an evil

which no victories that may be obtained, no severities which may be

exorcised, ever will or can remove.

If but the smallest hope should from any circumstances appear of a

return to the ancient maxims and true policy of this kingdom, we shall

with joy and readiness return to our attendance, in order to give our

hearty support to whatever means may be left for alleviating the

complicated evils which oppress this nation.

If this should not happen, we have discharged our consciences by this

faithful representation to your Majesty and our country; and however few

in number, or however we may be overborne by practices whose operation

is but too powerful, by the revival of dangerous exploded principles,

or by the misguided zeal of such arbitrary factions as formerly

prevailed in this kingdom, and always to its detriment and disgrace, we

have the satisfaction of standing forth and recording our names in

assertion of those principles whose operation hath, in better times,

made your Majesty a great prince, and the British dominions a mighty

empire.

ADDRESS

TO THE

BRITISH COLONISTS IN NORTH AMERICA.

The very dangerous crisis into which the British empire is brought, as

it accounts for, so it justifies, the unusual step we take in addressing

ourselves to you.

The distempers of the state are grown to such a degree of violence and

malignity as to render all ordinary remedies vain and frivolous. In such

a deplorable situation, an adherence to the common forms of business

appears to us rather as an apology to cover a supine neglect of duty

than the means of performing it in a manner adequate to the exigency

that presses upon us. The common means we have already tried, and tried

to no purpose. As our last resource, we turn ourselves to you. We

address you merely in our private capacity, vested with no other

authority than what will naturally attend those in whose declarations of

benevolence you have no reason to apprehend any mixture of dissimulation

or design.

We have this title to your attention: we call upon it in a moment of the

utmost importance to us all. We find, with infinite concern, that

arguments are used to persuade you of the necessity of separating

yourselves from your ancient connection with your parent country,

grounded on a supposition that a general principle of alienation and

enmity to you had pervaded the whole of this kingdom, and that there

does no longer subsist between you and us any common and kindred

principles upon which we can possibly unite, consistently with those

ideas of liberty in which you have justly placed your whole happiness.

If this fact were true, the inference drawn from it would be

irresistible. But nothing is less founded. We admit, indeed, that

violent addresses have been procured with uncommon pains by wicked and

designing men, purporting to be the genuine voice of the whole people of

England,--that they have been published by authority here, and made

known to you by proclamations, in order, by despair and resentment,

incurably to poison your minds against the origin of your race, and to

render all cordial reconciliation between us utterly impracticable. The

same wicked men, for the same bad purposes, have so far surprised the

justice of Parliament as to cut off all communication betwixt us, except

what is to go in their own fallacious and hostile channel.

But we conjure you by the invaluable pledges which have hitherto united,

and which we trust will hereafter lastingly unite us, that you do not

suffer yourselves to be persuaded or provoked into an opinion that you

are at war with this nation. Do not think that the whole, or even the

uninfluenced majority, of Englishmen in this island are enemies to their

own blood on the American continent. Much delusion has been practised,

much corrupt influence treacherously employed. But still a large, and we

trust the largest and soundest, part of this kingdom perseveres in the

most perfect unity of sentiments, principles, and affections with you.

It spreads out a large and liberal platform of common liberty, upon

which we may all unite forever. It abhors the hostilities which have

been carried on against you, as much as you who feel the cruel effect of

them. It has disclaimed in the most solemn manner, at the foot of the

throne itself, the addresses which tended to irritate your sovereign

against his colonies. We are persuaded that even many of those who

unadvisedly have put their hands to such intemperate and inflammatory

addresses have not at all apprehended to what such proceedings naturally

lead, and would sooner die than afford them the least countenance, if

they were sensible of their fatal effects on the union and liberty of

the empire.

For ourselves, we faithfully assure you, that we have ever considered

you as rational creatures, as free agents, as men willing to pursue and

able to discern your own true interest. We have wished to continue

united with you, in order that a people of one origin and one character

should be directed to the rational objects of government by joint

counsels, and protected in them by a common force. Other subordination

in you we require none. We have never pressed that argument of general

union to the extinction of your local, natural, and just privileges.

Sensible of what is due both to the dignity and weakness of man, we have

never wished to place over you any government, over which, in great,

fundamental points, you should have no sort of check or control in your

own hands, or which should be repugnant to your situation, principles,

and character.

No circumstances of fortune, you may be assured, will ever induce us to

form or tolerate any such design. If the disposition of Providence

(which we deprecate) should even prostrate you at our feet, broken in

power and in spirit, it would be our duty and inclination to revive, by

every practicable means, that free energy of mind which a fortune

unsuitable to your virtue had damped and dejected, and to put you

voluntarily in possession of those very privileges which you had in vain

attempted to assert by arms. For we solemnly declare, that, although we

should look upon a separation from you as an heavy calamity, (and the

heavier, because we know you must have your full share in it,) yet we

had much rather see you totally independent of this crown and kingdom

than joined to it by so unnatural a conjunction as that of freedom with

servitude,--a conjunction which, if it were at all practicable, could

not fail, in the end, of being more mischievous to the peace,

prosperity, greatness, and power of this nation than beneficial by any

enlargement of the bounds of nominal empire.

But because, brethren, these professions are general, and such as even

enemies may make, when they reserve to themselves the construction of

what servitude and what liberty are, we inform you that we adopt your

own standard of the blessing of free government. We are of opinion that

you ought to enjoy the sole and exclusive right of freely granting, and

applying to the support of your administration, what God has freely

granted as a reward to your industry. And we do not confine this

immunity from exterior coercion, in this great point, solely to what

regards your local establishment, but also to what may be thought proper

for the maintenance of the whole empire. In this resource we cheerfully

trust and acquiesce, satisfied by evident reason that no other

expectation of revenue can possibly be given by freemen, and knowing

from an experience uniform both on yours and on our side of the ocean

that such an expectation has never yet been disappointed. We know of no

road to your coffers but through your affections.

To manifest our sentiments the more clearly to you and to the world on

this subject, we declare our opinion, that, if no revenue at all (which,

however, we are far from supposing) were to be obtained from you to this

kingdom, yet, as long as it is our happiness to be joined with you in

the bonds of fraternal charity and freedom, with an open and flowing

commerce between us, one principle of enmity and friendship pervading,

and one right of war and peace directing the strength of the whole

empire, we are likely to be at least as powerful as any nation, or as

any combination of nations, which in the course of human events may be

formed against us. We are sensible that a very large proportion of the

wealth and power of every empire must necessarily be thrown upon the

presiding state. We are sensible that such a state ever has borne and

ever must bear the greatest part, and sometimes the whole, of the public

expenses: and we think her well indemnified for that (rather apparent

than real) inequality of charge, in the dignity and preeminence she

enjoys, and in the superior opulence which, after all charges defrayed,

must necessarily remain at the centre of affairs. Of this principle we

are not without evidence in our remembrance (not yet effaced) of the

glorious and happy days of this empire. We are therefore incapable of

that prevaricating style, by which, when taxes without your consent are

to be extorted from you, this nation is represented as in the lowest

state of impoverishment and public distress, but when we are called upon

to oppress you by force of arms, it is painted as scarcely feeling its

impositions, abounding with wealth, and inexhaustible in its resources.

We also reason and feel as you do on the invasion of your charters.

Because the charters comprehend the essential forms by which you enjoy

your liberties, we regard them as most sacred, and by no means to be

taken away or altered without process, without examination, and without

hearing, as they have lately been. We even think that they ought by no

means to be altered at all, but at the desire of the greater part of the

people who live under them. We cannot look upon men as delinquents in

the mass; much less are we desirous of lording over our brethren,

insulting their honest pride, and wantonly overturning establishments

judged to be just and convenient by the public wisdom of this nation at

their institution, and which long and inveterate use has taught you to

look up to with affection and reverence. As we disapproved of the

proceedings with regard to the forms of your constitution, so we are

equally tender of every leading principle of free government. We never

could think with approbation of putting the military power out of the

coercion of the civil justice in the country where it acts.

We disclaim also any sort of share in that other measure which has been

used to alienate your affections from this country,--namely, the

introduction of foreign mercenaries. We saw their employment with shame

and regret, especially in numbers so far exceeding the English forces as

in effect to constitute vassals, who have no sense of freedom, and

strangers, who have no common interest or feelings, as the arbiters of

our unhappy domestic quarrel.

We likewise saw with shame the African slaves, who had been sold to you

on public faith, and under the sanction of acts of Parliament, to be

your servants and your guards, employed to cut the throats of their

masters.

You will not, we trust, believe, that, born in a civilized country,

formed to gentle manners, trained in a merciful religion, and living in

enlightened and polished times, where even foreign hostility is softened

from its original sternness, we could have thought of letting loose upon

you, our late beloved brethren, these fierce tribes of savages and

cannibals, in whom the traces of human nature are effaced by ignorance

and barbarity. We rather wished to have joined with you in bringing

gradually that unhappy part of mankind into civility, order, piety, and

virtuous discipline, than to have confirmed their evil habits and

increased their natural ferocity by fleshing them in the slaughter of

you, whom our wiser and better ancestors had sent into the wilderness

with the express view of introducing, along with our holy religion, its

humane and charitable manners. We do not hold that all things are lawful

in war. We should think that every barbarity, in fire, in wasting, in

murders, in tortures, and other cruelties, too horrible and too full of

turpitude for Christian mouths to utter or ears to hear, if done at our

instigation, by those who we know will make war thus, if they make it at

all, to be, to all intents and purposes, as if done by ourselves. We

clear ourselves to you our brethren, to the present age, and to future

generations, to our king and our country, and to Europe, which, as a

spectator, beholds this tragic scene, of every part or share in adding

this last and worst of evils to the inevitable mischiefs of a civil war.

We do not call you rebels and traitors. We do not call for the vengeance

of the crown against you. We do not know how to qualify millions of our

countrymen, contending with one heart for an admission to privileges

which we have ever thought our own happiness and honor, by odious and

unworthy names. On the contrary, we highly revere the principles on

which you act, though we lament some of their effects. Armed as you are,

we embrace you as our friends and as our brethren by the best and

dearest ties of relation.

We view the establishment of the English colonies on principles of

liberty as that which is to render this kingdom venerable to future

ages. In comparison of this, we regard all the victories and conquests

of our warlike ancestors, or of our own times, as barbarous, vulgar

distinctions, in which many nations, whom we look upon with little

respect or value, have equalled, if not far exceeded us. This is the

peculiar and appropriated glory of England. Those who _have and who

hold_ to that foundation of common liberty, whether on this or on your

side of the ocean, we consider as the true, and the only true,

Englishmen. Those who depart from it, whether there or here, are

attainted, corrupted in blood, and wholly fallen from their original

rank and value. They are the real rebels to the fair constitution and

just supremacy of England.

We exhort you, therefore, to cleave forever to those principles, as

being the true bond of union in this empire,--and to show by a manly

perseverance that the sentiments of honor and the rights of mankind are

not held by the uncertain events of war, as you have hitherto shown a

glorious and affecting example to the world that they are not dependent

on the ordinary conveniences and satisfactions of life.

Knowing no other arguments to be used to men of liberal minds, it is

upon these very principles, and these alone, we hope and trust that no

flattering and no alarming circumstances shall permit you to listen to

the seductions of those who would alienate you from your dependence on

the crown and Parliament of this kingdom. That very liberty which you so

justly prize above all things originated here; and it may be very

doubtful, whether, without being constantly fed from the original

fountain, it can be at all perpetuated or preserved in its native purity

and perfection. Untried forms of government may, to unstable minds,

recommend themselves even by their novelty. But you will do well to

remember that England has been great and happy under the present limited

monarchy (subsisting in more or less vigor and purity) for several

hundred years. None but England can communicate to you the benefits of

such a constitution. We apprehend you are not now, nor for ages are

likely to be, capable of that form of constitution in an independent

state. Besides, let us suggest to you our apprehensions that your

present union (in which we rejoice, and which we wish long to subsist)

cannot always subsist without the authority and weight of this great and

long respected body, to equipoise, and to preserve you amongst

yourselves in a just and fair equality. It may not even be impossible

that a long course of war with the administration of this country may be

but a prelude to a series of wars and contentions among yourselves, to

end at length (as such scenes have too often ended) in a species of

humiliating repose, which nothing but the preceding calamities would

reconcile to the dispirited few who survived them. We allow that even

this evil is worth the risk to men of honor, when rational liberty is at

stake, as in the present case we confess and lament that it is. But if

ever a real security by Parliament is given against the terror or the

abuse of unlimited power, and after such security given you should

persevere in resistance, we leave you to consider whether the risk is

not incurred without an object, or incurred for an object infinitely

diminished by such concessions in its importance and value.

As to other points of discussion, when these grand fundamentals of your

grants and charters are once settled and ratified by clear Parliamentary

authority, as the ground for peace and forgiveness on our side, and for

a manly and liberal obedience on yours, treaty and a spirit of

reconciliation will easily and securely adjust whatever may remain. Of

this we give you our word, that, so far as we are at present concerned,

and if by any event we should become more concerned hereafter, you may

rest assured, upon the pledges of honor not forfeited, faith not

violated, and uniformity of character and profession not yet broken, we

at least, on these grounds, will never fail you.

Respecting your wisdom, and valuing your safety, we do not call upon you

to trust your existence to your enemies. We do not advise you to an

unconditional submission. With satisfaction we assure you that almost

all in both Houses (however unhappily they have been deluded, so as not

to give any immediate effect to their opinion) disclaim that idea. You

can have no friends in whom you cannot rationally confide. But

Parliament is your friend from the moment in which, removing its

confidence from those who have constantly deceived its good intentions,

it adopts the sentiments of those who have made sacrifices, (inferior,

indeed, to yours,) but have, however, sacrificed enough to demonstrate

the sincerity of their regard and value for your liberty and prosperity.

Arguments may be used to weaken your confidence in that public security;

because, from some unpleasant appearances, there is a suspicion that

Parliament itself is somewhat fallen from its independent spirit. How

far this supposition may be founded in fact we are unwilling to

determine. But we are well assured from experience, that, even if all

were true that is contended for, and in the extent, too, in which it is

argued, yet, as long as the solid and well-disposed forms of this

Constitution remain, there ever is within Parliament itself a power of

renovating its principles, and effecting a self-reformation, which no

other plan of government has ever contained. This Constitution has

therefore admitted innumerable improvements, either for the correction

of the original scheme, or for removing corruptions, or for bringing its

principles better to suit those changes which have successively happened

in the circumstances of the nation or in the manners of the people.

We feel that the growth of the colonies is such a change of

circumstances, and that our present dispute is an exigency as pressing

as any which ever demanded a revision of our government. Public troubles

have often called upon this country to look into its Constitution. It

has ever been bettered by such a revision. If our happy and luxuriant

increase of dominion, and our diffused population, have outgrown the

limits of a Constitution made for a contracted object, we ought to bless

God, who has furnished us with this noble occasion for displaying our

skill and beneficence in enlarging the scale of rational happiness, and

of making the politic generosity of this kingdom as extensive as its

fortune. If we set about this great work, on both sides, with the same

conciliatory turn of mind, we may now, as in former times, owe even to

our mutual mistakes, contentions, and animosities, the lasting concord,

freedom, happiness, and glory of this empire.

Gentlemen, the distance between us, with other obstructions, has caused

much misrepresentation of our mutual sentiments. We, therefore, to

obviate them as well as we are able, take this method of assuring you of

our thorough detestation of the whole war, and particularly the

mercenary and savage war carried on or attempted against you,--our

thorough abhorrence of all addresses adverse to you, whether public or

private,--our assurances of an invariable affection towards you,--our

constant regard to your privileges and liberties,--and our opinion of

the solid security you ought to enjoy for them, under the paternal care

and nurture of a protecting Parliament.

Though many of us have earnestly wished that the authority of that

august and venerable body, so necessary in many respects to the union of

the whole, should be rather limited by its own equity and discretion,

than by any bounds described by positive laws and public compacts,--and

though we felt the extreme difficulty, by any theoretical limitations,

of qualifying that authority, so as to preserve one part and deny

another,--and though you (as we gratefully acknowledge) had acquiesced

most cheerfully under that prudent reserve of the Constitution, at that

happy moment when neither you nor we apprehended a further return of the

exercise of invidious powers, we are now as fully persuaded as you can

be, by the malice, inconstancy, and perverse inquietude of many men, and

by the incessant endeavors of an arbitrary faction, now too powerful,

that our common necessities do require a full explanation and ratified

security for your liberties and our quiet.

Although his Majesty's condescension, in committing the direction of his

affairs into the hands of the known friends of his family and of the

liberties of all his people, would, we admit, be a great means of giving

repose to your minds, as it must give infinite facility to

reconciliation, yet we assure you that we think, with such a security as

we recommend, adopted from necessity and not choice, even by the unhappy

authors and instruments of the public misfortunes, that the terms of

reconciliation, if once accepted by Parliament, would not be broken. We

also pledge ourselves to you, that we should give, even to those

unhappy persons, an hearty support in effectuating the peace of the

empire, and every opposition in an attempt to cast it again into

disorder.

When that happy hour shall arrive, let us in all affection, recommend to

you the wisdom of continuing, as in former times, or even in a more

ample measure, the support of your government, and even to give to your

administration some degree of reciprocal interest in your freedom. We

earnestly wish you not to furnish your enemies, here or elsewhere, with

any sort of pretexts for reviving quarrels by too reserved and severe or

penurious an exercise of those sacred rights which no pretended abuse in

the exercise ought to impair, nor, by overstraining the principles of

freedom, to make them less compatible with those haughty sentiments in

others which the very same principles may be apt to breed in minds not

tempered with the utmost equity and justice.

The well-wishers of the liberty and union of this empire salute you, and

recommend you most heartily to the Divine protection.

A

LETTER

TO

THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND S. PERY

SPEAKER OF THE IRISH HOUSE OF COMMONS,

IN RELATION TO

A BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF IRELAND.

JULY 18, 1778.

NOTE.

This Letter is addressed to Mr. Pery, (afterwards Lord Pery,)

then Speaker of the House of Commons of Ireland. It appears,

there had been much correspondence between that gentleman and

Mr. Burke, on the subject of Heads of a bill (which had

passed the Irish House of Commons in the summer of the year

1778, and had been transmitted by the Irish Privy Council of

[to?] England) for the relief of his Majesty's Roman Catholic

subjects in Ireland. The bill contained a clause for

exempting the Protestant Dissenters of Ireland from the

sacramental test, which created a strong objection to the

whole measure on the part of the English government. Mr.

Burke employed his most strenuous efforts to remove the

prejudice which the king's ministers entertained against the

clause, but the bill was ultimately returned without it, and

in that shape passed the Irish Parliament. (17th and 18th

Geo. III cap. 49.) In the subsequent session, however, a

separate act was passed for the relief of the Protestant

Dissenters of Ireland.

LETTER.

My Dear Sir,--I received in due course your two very interesting and

judicious letters, which gave me many new lights, and excited me to

fresh activity in the important subject they related to. However, from

that time I have not been perfectly free from doubt and uneasiness. I

used a liberty with those letters, which, perhaps, nothing can

thoroughly justify, and which certainly nothing but the delicacy of the

crisis, the clearness of my intentions, and your great good-nature can

at all excuse. I might conceal this from you; but I think it better to

lay the whole matter before you, and submit myself to your

mercy,--assuring you, at the same time, that, if you are so kind as to

continue your confidence on this, or to renew it upon any other

occasion, I shall never be tempted again to make so bold and

unauthorized an use of the trust you place in me. I will state to you

the history of the business since my last, and then you will see how far

I am excusable by the circumstances.

On the 3rd of July I received a letter from the Attorney-General, dated

the day before, in which, in a very open and obliging manner, he desires

my thoughts of the Irish Toleration Bill, and particularly of the

Dissenters' clause. I gave them to him, by the return of the post, at

large; but, as the time pressed, I kept no copy of the letter. The

general drift was strongly to recommend the _whole_, and principally to

obviate the objections to the part that related to the Dissenters, with

regard both to the general propriety and to the temporary policy at this

juncture. I took, likewise, a good deal of pains to state the difference

which had always subsisted with regard to the treatment of the

Protestant Dissenters in Ireland and in England, and what I conceived

the reason of that difference to be. About the same time I was called to

town for a day; and I took an opportunity, in Westminster Hall, of

urging the same points, with all the force I was master of, to the

Solicitor-General. I attempted to see the Chancellor for the same

purpose, but was not fortunate enough to meet him at home. Soon after my

return hither, on Tuesday, I received a very polite and I may say

friendly letter from him, wishing me (on supposition that I had

continued in town) to dine with him as [on?] that day, in order to talk

over the business of the Toleration Act, then before him. Unluckily I

had company with me, and was not able to leave them until Thursday, when

I went to town and called at his house, but missed him. However, in

answer to his letter, I had before, and instantly on the receipt of it,

written to him at large, and urged such topics, both with regard to the

Catholics and Dissenters, as I imagined were the most likely to be

prevalent with him. This letter I followed to town on Thursday. On my

arrival I was much alarmed with a report that the ministry had thoughts

of rejecting the whole bill. Mr. M'Namara seemed apprehensive that it

was a determined measure; and there seemed to be but too much reason for

his fears.

Not having met the Chancellor at home, either on my first visit or my

second after receiving his letter, and fearful that the Cabinet should

come to come unpleasant resolution, I went to the Treasury on Friday.

There I saw Sir G. Cooper. I possessed him of the danger of a partial,

and the inevitable mischief of the total rejection of the bill. I

reminded him of the understood compact between parties, upon which the

whole scheme of the toleration originating in the English bill was

formed,--of the fair part which the Whigs had acted in a business which,

though first started by them, was supposed equally acceptable to all

sides, and the risk of which they took upon themselves, when others

declined it. To this I added such matter as I thought most fit to engage

government, as government,--not to sport with a singular opportunity

which offered for the union of every description of men amongst us in

support of the common interest of the whole; and I ended by desiring to

see Lord North upon the subject. Sir Grey Cooper showed a very right

sense of the matter, and in a few minutes after our conversation I went

down from the Treasury chambers to Lord North's house. I had a great

deal of discourse with him. He told me that his ideas of toleration were

large, but that, large as they were, they did not comprehend a

promiscuous establishment, even in matters merely civil; that he thought

the established religion ought to be the religion of the state; that, in

this idea, he was not for the repeal of the sacramental test; that,

indeed, he knew the Dissenters in general did not greatly scruple it;

but that very want of scruple showed less zeal against the

Establishment; and, after all, there could no provision be made by human

laws against those who made light of the tests which were formed to

discriminate opinions. On all this he spoke with a good deal of temper.

He did not, indeed, seem to think the test itself, which was rightly

considered by Dissenters as in a manner dispensed with by an annual act

of Parliament, and which in Ireland was of a late origin, and of much

less extent than here, a matter of much moment. The thing which seemed

to affect him most was the offence that would be taken at the repeal by

the leaders among the Church clergy here, on one hand, and, on the

other, the steps which would be taken for its repeal in England in the

next session, in consequence of the repeal in Ireland. I assured him,

with great truth, that we had no idea among the Whigs of moving the

repeal of the test. I confessed very freely, for my own part, that, if

it were brought in, I should certainly vote for it; but that I should

neither use, nor did I think applicable, any arguments drawn from the

analogy of what was done in other parts of the British dominions. We did

not argue from analogy, even in this island and United Kingdom.

Presbytery was established in Scotland. It became no reason either for

its religious or civil establishment here. In New England the

Independent Congregational Churches had an established legal

maintenance; whilst that country continued part of the British empire,

no argument in favor of Independency was adduced from the practice of

New England. Government itself lately thought fit to establish the Roman

Catholic religion in Canada; but they would not suffer an argument of

analogy to be used for its establishment anywhere else. These things

were governed, as all things of that nature are governed, not by general

maxims, but their own local and peculiar circumstances. Finding,

however, that, though he was very cool and patient, I made no great way

in the business of the Dissenters, I turned myself to try whether,

falling in with his maxims, some modification might not be found, the

hint of which I received from your letter relative to the Irish Militia

Bill, and the point I labored was so to alter the clause as to repeal

the test _quoad_ military and revenue offices: for these being only

subservient parts in the economy and execution, rather than the

administration of affairs, the politic, civil, and judicial parts would

still continue in the hands of the conformists to religious

establishments. Without giving any hopes, he, however, said that this

distinction deserved to be considered. After this, I strongly pressed

the mischief of rejecting the whole bill: that a notion went abroad,

that government was not at this moment very well pleased with the

Dissenters, as not very well affected to the monarchy; that, in general,

I conceived this to be a mistake,--but if it were not, the rejection of

a bill in favor _of others_, because something in favor of _them_ was

inserted, instead of humbling and mortifying, would infinitely exalt

them: for, if the legislature had no means of favoring those whom they

meant to favor, as long as the Dissenters could find means to get

themselves included, this would make them, instead of their only being

subject to restraint themselves, the arbitrators of the fate of others,

and that not so much by their own strength (which could not be prevented

in its operation) as by the coöperation of those whom they opposed. In

the conclusion, I recommended, that, if they wished well to the measure

which was the main object of the bill, they must explicitly make it

their own, and stake themselves upon it; that hitherto all their

difficulties had arisen from their indecision and their wrong measures;

and to make Lord North sensible of the necessity of giving a firm

support to some part of the bill, and to add weighty authority to my

reasons, I read him your letter of the 10th of July. It seemed, in some

measure, to answer the purpose which I intended. I pressed the necessity

of the management of the affair, both as to conduct and as to gaining of

men; and I renewed my former advice, that the Lord Lieutenant should be

instructed to consult and cooperate with you in the whole affair. All

this was, apparently, very fairly taken.

In the evening of that day I saw the Lord Chancellor. With him, too, I

had much discourse. You know that he is intelligent, sagacious,

systematic, and determined. At first he seemed of opinion that the

relief contained in the bill was so inadequate to the mass of oppression

it was intended to remove, that it would be better to let it stand over,

until a more perfect and better digested plan could be settled. This

seemed to possess him very strongly. In order to combat this notion, and

to show that the bill, all things considered, was a very great

acquisition, and that it was rather a preliminary than an obstruction to

relief, I ventured to show him your letter. It had its effect. He

declared himself roundly against giving anything to a confederacy, real

or apparent, to distress government; that, if anything was done for

Catholics or Dissenters, it should be done on its own separate merits,

and not by way of bargain and compromise; that they should be each of

them obliged to government, not each to the other; that this would be a

perpetual nursery of faction. In a word, he seemed so determined on not

uniting these plans, that all I could say, and I said everything I could

think of, was to no purpose. But when I insisted on the disgrace to

government which must arise from their rejecting a proposition

recommended by themselves, because their opposers had made a mixture,

separable too by themselves, I was better heard. On the whole, I found

him well disposed.

As soon as I had returned to the country, this affair lay so much on my

mind, and the absolute necessity of government's making a serious

business of it, agreeably to the seriousness they professed, and the

object required, that I wrote to Sir G. Cooper, to remind him of the

principles upon which we went in our conversation, and to press the plan

which was suggested for carrying them into execution. He wrote to me on

the 20th, and assured me, "that Lord North had given all due attention

and respect to what you said to him on Friday, and will pay the same

respect to the sentiments conveyed in your letter: everything you say or

write on the subject undoubtedly demands it." Whether this was mere

civility, or showed anything effectual in their intentions, time and the

success of this measure will show. It is wholly with them; and if it

should fail, you are a witness that nothing on our part has been wanting

to free so large a part of our fellow-subjects and fellow-citizens from

slavery, and to free government from the weakness and danger of ruling

them by force. As to my own particular part, the desire of doing this

has betrayed me into a step which I cannot perfectly reconcile to

myself. You are to judge how far, on the circumstances, it may be

excused. I think it had a good effect. You may be assured that I made

this communication in a manner effectually to exclude so false and

groundless an idea as that I confer with you, any more than I confer

with them, on any party principle whatsoever,--or that in this affair we

look further than the measure which is in profession, and I am sure

ought to be in reason, theirs.

I am ever, with the sincerest affection and esteem,

My dear Sir,

Your most faithful and obedient humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

BEACONSFIELD, 18th July, 1778.

I intended to have written sooner, but it has not been in my power.

To the Speaker of the House of Commons of Ireland.

TWO LETTERS

TO

THOMAS BURGH, ESQ.,

AND

JOHN MERLOTT, ESQ.,

IN VINDICATION OF HIS PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT RELATIVE TO THE AFFAIRS OF

IRELAND.

1780.

LETTER

TO THOMAS BURGH, ESQ.[14]

My Dear Sir,--I do not know in what manner I am to thank you properly

for the very friendly solicitude you have been so good as to express for

my reputation. The concern you have done me the honor to take in my

affairs will be an ample indemnity from all that I may suffer from the

rapid judgments of those who choose to form their opinions of men, not

from the life, but from their portraits in a newspaper. I confess to you

that my frame of mind is so constructed, I have in me so little of the

constitution of a great man, that I am more gratified with a very

moderate share of approbation from those few who know me than I should

be with the most clamorous applause from those multitudes who love to

admire at a due distance.

I am not, however, Stoic enough to be able to affirm with truth, or

hypocrite enough affectedly to pretend, that I am wholly unmoved at the

difficulty which you and others of my friends in Ireland have found in

vindicating my conduct towards my native country. It undoubtedly hurts

me in some degree: but the wound is not very deep. If I had sought

popularity in Ireland, when, in the cause of that country, I was ready

to sacrifice, and did sacrifice, a much nearer, a much more immediate,

and a much more advantageous popularity here, I should find myself

perfectly unhappy, because I should be totally disappointed in my

expectations,--because I should discover, when it was too late, what

common sense might have told me very early, that I risked the capital of

my fame in the most disadvantageous lottery in the world. But I acted

then, as I act now, and as I hope I shall act always, from a strong

impulse of right, and from motives in which popularity, either here or

there, has but a very little part.

With the support of that consciousness I can bear a good deal of the

coquetry of public opinion, which has her caprices, and must have her

way. _Miseri, quibus intentata nitet_! I, too, have had my holiday of

popularity in Ireland. I have even heard of an intention to erect a

statue.[15] I believe my intimate acquaintance know how little that idea

was encouraged by me; and I was sincerely glad that it never took

effect. Such honors belong exclusively to the tomb,--the natural and

only period of human inconstancy, with regard either to desert or to

opinion: for they are the very same hands which erect, that very

frequently (and sometimes with reason enough) pluck down the statue. Had

such an unmerited and unlooked-for compliment been paid to me two years

ago, the fragments of the piece might at this hour have the advantage of

seeing actual service, while they were moving, according to the law of

projectiles, to the windows of the Attorney-General, or of my old

friend, Monk Mason.

To speak seriously,--let me assure you, my dear Sir, that, though I am

not permitted to rejoice at _all_ its effects, there is not one man on

your side of the water more pleased to see the situation of Ireland so

prosperous as that she can afford to throw away her friends. She has

obtained, solely by her own efforts, the fruits of a great victory,

which I am very ready to allow that the best efforts of her best

well-wishers here could not have done for her so effectually in a great

number of years, and perhaps could not have done at all. I could wish,

however, merely for the sake of her own dignity, that, in turning her

poor relations and antiquated friends out of doors, (though one of the

most common effects of new prosperity,) she had thought proper to

dismiss us with fewer tokens of unkindness. It is true that there is no

sort of danger in affronting men who are not of importance enough to

have any trust of ministerial, of royal, or of national honor to

surrender. The unforced and unbought services of humble men, who have no

medium of influence in great assemblies, but through the precarious

force of reason, must be looked upon with contempt by those who by their

wisdom and spirit have improved the critical moment of their fortune,

and have debated with authority against pusillanimous dissent and

ungracious compliance, at the head of forty thousand men.

Such feeble auxiliaries (as I talk of) to such a force, employed

against such resistance, I must own, in the present moment, very little

worthy of your attention. Yet, if one were to look forward, it scarcely

seems altogether politic to bestow so much liberality of invective on

the Whigs of this kingdom as I find has been the fashion to do both in

and out of Parliament. That you should pay compliments, in some tone or

other, whether ironical or serious, to the minister from whose

imbecility you have extorted what you could never obtain from his

bounty, is not unnatural. In the first effusions of Parliamentary

gratitude to that minister for the early and voluntary benefits he has

conferred upon Ireland, it might appear that you were wanting to the

triumph of his surrender, if you did not lead some of his enemies

captive before him. Neither could you feast him with decorum, if his

particular taste were not consulted. A minister, who has never defended

his measures in any other way than by railing at his adversaries, cannot

have his palate made all at once to the relish of positive commendation.

I cannot deny but that on this occasion there was displayed a great deal

of the good-breeding which consists in the accommodation of the

entertainment to the relish of the guest.

But that ceremony being past, it would not be unworthy of the wisdom of

Ireland to consider what consequences the extinguishing every spark of

freedom in this country may have upon your own liberties. You are at

this instant flushed with victory, and full of the confidence natural to

recent and untried power. We are in a temper equally natural, though

very different. We feel as men do, who, having placed an unbounded

reliance on their force, have found it totally to fail on trial. We

feel faint and heartless, and without the smallest degree of

self-opinion. In plain words, we are _cowed_. When men give up their

violence and injustice without a struggle, their condition is next to

desperate. When no art, no management, no argument, is necessary to

abate their pride and overcome their prejudices, and their uneasiness

only excites an obscure and feeble rattling in their throat, their final

dissolution seems not far off. In this miserable state we are still

further depressed by the overbearing influence of the crown. It acts

with the officious cruelty of a mercenary nurse, who, under pretence of

tenderness, stifles us with our clothes, and plucks the pillow from our

heads. _Injectu multæ vestis opprimi senem jubet_. Under this influence

we have so little will of our own, that, even in any apparent activity

we may be got to assume, I may say, without any violence to sense, and

with very little to language, we are merely passive. We have yielded to

your demands this session. In the last session we refused to prevent

them. In both cases, the passive and the active, our principle was the

same. Had the crown pleased to retain the spirit, with regard to

Ireland, which seems to be now all directed to America, we should have

neglected our own immediate defence, and sent over the last man of our

militia to fight with the last man of your volunteers.

To this influence the principle of action, the principle of policy, and

the principle of union of the present minority are opposed. These

principles of the opposition are the only thing which preserves a single

symptom of life in the nation. That opposition is composed of the far

greater part of the independent property and independent rank of the

kingdom, of whatever is most untainted in character, and of whatever

ability remains unextinguished in the people, and of all which tends to

draw the attention of foreign countries upon this. It is now in its

final and conclusive struggle. It has to struggle against a force to

which, I am afraid, it is not equal. The _whole_ kingdom of Scotland

ranges with the venal, the unprincipled, and the wrong-principled of

this; and if the kingdom of Ireland thinks proper to pass into the same

camp, we shall certainly be obliged to quit the field. In that case, if

I know anything of this country, another constitutional opposition _can

never_ be formed in it; and if this be impossible, it will be at least

as much so (if there can be degrees in impossibility) to have a

constitutional administration at any future time. The possibility of the

former is the only security for the existence of the latter. Whether the

present administration be in the least like one, I must venture to

doubt, even in the honey-moon of the Irish fondness to Lord North, which

has succeeded to all their slappings and scratchings.

If liberty cannot maintain its ground in this kingdom, I am sure that it

cannot have any long continuance in yours. Our liberty might now and

then jar and strike a discord with that of Ireland. The thing is

possible: but still the instruments might play in concert. But if ours

be unstrung, yours will be hung up on a peg, and both will be mute

forever. Your new military force may give you confidence, and it serves

well for a turn; but you and I know that it has not root. It is not

perennial, and would prove but a poor shelter for your liberty, when

this nation, having no interest in its own, could look upon yours with

the eye of envy and disgust. I cannot, therefore, help thinking, and

telling you what with great submission I think, that, if the Parliament

of Ireland be so jealous of the spirit of our common Constitution as she

seems to be, it was not so discreet to mix with the panegyric on the

minister so large a portion of acrimony to the independent part of this

nation. You never received any sort of injury from them, and you are

grown to that degree of importance that the discourses in your

Parliament will have a much greater effect on our immediate fortune than

our conversation can have upon yours. In the end they will seriously,

affect both.

I have looked back upon our conduct and our public conversations in

order to discover what it is that can have given you offence. I have

done so, because I am ready to admit that to offend you without any

cause would be as contrary to true policy as I am sure it must be to the

inclinations of almost every one of us. About two years ago Lord Nugent

moved six propositions in favor of Ireland in the House of Commons. At

the time of the motions, and during the debate, Lord North was either

wholly out of the House, or engaged in other matters of business or

pleasantry, in the remotest recesses of the West Saxon corner. He took

no part whatsoever in the affair; but it was supposed his neutrality was

more inclined towards the side of favor. The mover being a person in

office was, however, the only indication that was given of such a

leaning. We who supported the propositions, finding them better relished

than at first we looked for, pursued our advantage, and began to open a

way for more essential benefits to Ireland. On the other hand, those

who had hitherto opposed them in vain redoubled their efforts, and

became exceedingly clamorous. Then it was that Lord North found it

necessary to come out of his fastness, and to interpose between the

contending parties. In this character of mediator, he declared, that, if

anything beyond the first six resolutions should be attempted, he would

oppose the whole, but that, if we rested there, the original motions

should have his support. On this a sort of convention took place between

him and the managers of the Irish business, in which the six resolutions

were to be considered as an _uti possidetis_, and to be held sacred.

By this time other parties began to appear. A good many of the trading

towns, and manufactures of various kinds, took the alarm. Petitions

crowded in upon one another, and the bar was occupied by a formidable

body of council. Lord N. was staggered by this new battery. He is not of

a constitution to encounter such an opposition as had then risen, when

there were no other objects in view than those that were then before the

House. In order not to lose him, we were obliged to abandon, bit by bit,

the most considerable part of the original agreement.

In several parts, however, he continued fair and firm. For my own part,

I acted, as I trust I commonly do, with decision. I saw very well that

the things we had got were of no great consideration; but they were,

even in their defects, somewhat leading. I was in hopes that we might

obtain gradually and by parts what we might attempt at once and in the

whole without success,--that one concession would lead to another,--and

that the people of England discovering by a progressive experience that

none of the concessions actually made were followed by the consequences

they had dreaded, their fears from what they were yet to yield would

considerably diminish. But that to which I attached myself the most

particularly was, to fix _the principle_ of a free trade in all the

ports of these islands, as founded in justice, and beneficial to the

whole, but principally to this, the seat of the supreme power. And this

I labored to the utmost of my might, upon general principles,

illustrated by all the commercial detail with which my little inquiries

in life were able to furnish me. I ought to forget such trifling things

as those, with all concerning myself; and possibly I might have

forgotten them, if the Lord Advocate of Scotland had not, in a very

flattering manner, revived them in my memory, in a full House in this

session. He told me that my arguments, such as they were, had made him,

at the period I allude to, change the opinion with which he had come

into the House strongly impressed. I am sure that at the time at least

twenty more told me the same thing. I certainly ought not to take their

style of compliment as a testimony to fact; neither do I. But all this

showed sufficiently, not what they thought of my ability, but what they

saw of my zeal. I could say more in proof of the effects of that zeal,

and of the unceasing industry with which I then acted, both in my

endeavors which were apparent and those that were not so visible. Let it

be remembered that I showed those dispositions while the Parliament of

England was in a capacity to deliberate and in a situation to refuse,

when there was something to be risked here by being suspected of a

partiality to Ireland, when there was an honorable danger attending the

profession of friendship to you, which heightened its relish, and made

it worthy of a reception in manly minds. But as for the awkward and

nauseous parade of debate without opposition, the flimsy device of

tricking out necessity and disguising it in the habit of choice, the

shallow stratagem of defending by argument, what all the world must

perceive is yielded to force,--these are a sort of acts of friendship

which I am sorry that any of my countrymen should require of their real

friends. They are things not _to my taste_; and if they are looked upon

as tests of friendship, I desire for one that I may be considered as an

enemy.

What party purpose did my conduct answer at that time? I acted with Lord

N. I went to all the ministerial meetings,--and he and his associates in

office will do me the justice to say, that, aiming at the concord of the

empire, I made it my business to give his concessions all the value of

which they were capable, whilst some of those who were covered with his

favors derogated from them, treated them with contempt, and openly

threatened to oppose them. If I had acted with my dearest and most

valued friends, if I had acted with the Marquis of Rockingham or the

Duke of Richmond, in that situation, I could not have attended more to

their honor, or endeavored more earnestly to give efficacy to the

measures I had taken in common with them. The return which I, and all

who acted as I did, have met with from him, does not make me repent the

conduct which I then held.

As to the rest of the gentlemen with whom I have the honor to act, they

did not then, or at any other time, make a party affair of Irish

politics. That matter was always taken up without concert; but, in

general, from the operation of our known liberal principles in

government, in commerce, in religion, in everything, it was taken up

favorably for Ireland. Where some local interests bore hard upon the

members, they acted on the sense of their constituents, upon ideas

which, though I do not always follow, I cannot blame. However, two or

three persons, high in opposition, and high in public esteem, ran great

risks in their boroughs on that occasion. But all this was without any

particular plan. I need not say, that Ireland was in that affair much

obliged to the liberal mind and enlarged understanding of Charles Fox,

to Mr. Thomas Townshend, to Lord Midleton, and others. On reviewing that

affair, which gave rise to all the subsequent manoeuvres, I am convinced

that the whole of what has this day been done might have then been

effected. But then the minister must have taken it up as a great plan of

national policy, and paid with his person in every lodgment of his

approach. He must have used that influence to quiet prejudice, which he

has so often, used to corrupt principle: and I know, that, if he had, he

must have succeeded. Many of the most active in opposition would have

given him an unequivocal support. The corporation of London, and the

great body of the London West India merchants and planters, which forms

the greatest mass of that vast interest, were disposed to fall in with

such a plan. They certainly gave no sort of discountenance to what was

done or what was proposed. But these are not the kind of objects for

which our ministers bring out the heavy artillery of the state.

Therefore, as things stood at that time, a great deal more was not

practicable.

Last year another proposition was brought out for the relief of Ireland.

It was started without any communication with a single person of

activity in the country party, and, as it should seem, without any kind

of concert with government. It appeared to me extremely raw and

undigested. The behavior of Lord N., on the opening of that business,

was the exact transcript of his conduct on the Irish question in the

former session. It was a mode of proceeding which his nature has wrought

into the texture of his politics, and which is inseparable from them. He

chose to absent himself on the proposition and during the agitation of

that business,--although the business of the House is that alone for

which he has any kind of relish, or, as I am told, can be persuaded to

listen to with any degree of attention. But he was willing to let it

take its course. If it should pass without any considerable difficulty,

he would bring his acquiescence to tell for merit in Ireland, and he

would have the credit, out of his indolence, of giving quiet to that

country. If difficulties should arise on the part of England, he knew

that the House was so well trained that he might at his pleasure call us

off from the hottest scent. As he acted in his usual manner and upon his

usual principle, opposition acted upon theirs, and rather generally

supported the measure. As to myself, I expressed a disapprobation at the

practice of bringing imperfect and indigested projects into the House,

before means were used to quiet the clamors which a misconception of

what we were doing might occasion at home, and before measures were

settled with men of weight and authority in Ireland, in order to render

our acts useful and acceptable to that country. I said, that the only

thing which could make the influence of the crown (enormous without as

well as within the House) in any degree tolerable was, that it might be

employed to give something of order and system to the proceedings of a

popular assembly; that government being so situated as to have a large

range of prospect, and as it were a bird's-eye view of everything, they

might see distant dangers and distant advantages which were not so

visible to those who stood on the common level; they might, besides,

observe them, from this advantage, in their relative and combined state,

which people locally instructed and partially informed could behold only

in an insulated and unconnected manner;--but that for many years past we

suffered under all the evils, without any one of the advantages of a

government influence; that the business of a minister, or of those who

acted as such, had been still further to contract the narrowness of

men's ideas, to confirm inveterate prejudices, to inflame vulgar

passions, and to abet all sorts of popular absurdities, in order the

better to destroy popular rights and privileges; that, so far from

methodizing the business of the House, they had let all things run into

an inextricable confusion, and had left affairs of the most delicate

policy wholly to chance.

After I had expressed myself with the warmth I felt on seeing all

government and order buried under the ruins of liberty, and after I had

made my protest against the insufficiency of the propositions, I

supported the principle of enlargement at which they aimed, though short

and somewhat wide of the mark,--giving, as my sole reason, that the more

frequently these matters came into discussion, the more it would tend

to dispel fears and to eradicate prejudices.

This was the only part I took. The detail was in the hands of Lord

Newhaven and Lord Beauchamp, with some assistance from Earl Nugent and

some independent gentlemen of Irish property. The dead weight of the

minister being removed, the House recovered its tone and elasticity. We

had a temporary appearance of a deliberative character. The business was

debated freely on both sides, and with sufficient temper. And the sense

of the members being influenced by nothing but what will naturally

influence men unbought, their reason and their prejudices, these two

principles had a fair conflict, and prejudice was obliged to give way to

reason. A majority appeared, on a division, in favor of the

propositions.

As these proceedings got out of doors, Glasgow and Manchester, and, I

think, Liverpool, began to move, but in a manner much more slow and

languid than formerly. Nothing, in my opinion, would have been less

difficult than entirely to have overborne their opposition. The London

West India trade was, as on the former occasion, so on this, perfectly

liberal and perfectly quiet; and there is abroad so much respect for the

united wisdom of the House, when supposed to act upon a fair view of a

political situation, that I scarcely ever remember any considerable

uneasiness out of doors, when the most active members, and those of most

property and consideration in the minority, have joined themselves to

the administration. Many factious people in the towns I mentioned began,

indeed, to revile Lord North, and to reproach his neutrality as

treacherous and ungrateful to those who had so heartily and so warmly

entered into all his views with regard to America. That noble lord,

whose decided character it is to give way to the latest and nearest

pressure, without any sort of regard to distant consequences of any

kind, thought fit to appear, on this signification of the pleasure of

those his worthy friends and partisans, and, putting himself at the head

of the _posse scaccarii_, wholly regardless of the dignity and

consistency of our miserable House, drove the propositions entirely out

of doors by a majority newly summoned to duty.

In order to atone to Ireland for this gratification to Manchester, he

graciously permitted, or rather forwarded, two bills,--that for

encouraging the growth of tobacco, and that for giving a bounty on

exportation of hemp from Ireland. They were brought in by two very

worthy members, and on good principles; but I was sorry to see them,

and, after expressing my doubts of their propriety, left the House.

Little also [else?] was said upon them. My objections were two: the

first, that the cultivation of those weeds (if one of them could be at

all cultivated to profit) was adverse to the introduction of a good

course of agriculture; the other, that the encouragement given to them

tended to establish that mischievous policy of considering Ireland as a

country of staple, and a producer of raw materials.

When the rejection of the first propositions and the acceptance of the

last had jointly, as it was natural, raised a very strong discontent in

Ireland, Lord Rockingham, who frequently said that there never seemed a

more opportune time for the relief of Ireland than that moment when Lord

North had rejected all rational propositions for its relief, without

consulting, I believe, any one living, did what he is not often very

willing to do; but he thought this an occasion of magnitude enough to

justify an extraordinary step. He went into the closet, and made a

strong representation on the matter to the king, which was not ill

received, and I believe produced good effects. He then made the motion

in the House of Lords which you may recollect; but he was content to

withdraw all of censure which it contained, on the solemn promise of

ministry, that they would in the recess of Parliament prepare a plan for

the benefit of Ireland, and have it in readiness to produce at the next

meeting. You may recollect that Lord Gower became in a particular manner

bound for the fulfilling this engagement. Even this did not satisfy, and

most of the minority were very unwilling that Parliament should be

prorogued until something effectual on the subject should be

done,--particularly as we saw that the distresses, discontents, and

armaments of Ireland were increasing every day, and that we are not so

much lost to common sense as not to know the wisdom and efficacy of

early concession in circumstances such as ours.

The session was now at an end. The ministers, instead of attending to a

duty that was so urgent on them, employed themselves, as usual, in

endeavors to destroy the reputation of those who were bold enough to

remind them of it. They caused it to be industriously circulated through

the nation, that the distresses of Ireland were of a nature hard to be

traced to the true source, that they had been monstrously magnified, and

that, in particular, the official reports from Ireland had given the lie

(that was their phrase) to Lord Rockingham's representations: and

attributing the origin of the Irish proceedings wholly to us, they

asserted that everything done in Parliament upon the subject was with a

view of stirring up rebellion; "that neither the Irish legislature nor

their constituents had signified any dissatisfaction at the relief

obtained in the session preceding the last; that, to convince both of

the impropriety of their _peaceable_ conduct, opposition, by making

demands in the name of Ireland, pointed out what she might extort from

Great Britain; that the facility with which relief was (formerly)

granted, instead of satisfying opposition, was calculated to create new

demands; these demands, as they _interfered_ with the commerce of Great

Britain, were _certain_ of being opposed,--a circumstance which could

not fail to create that desirable confusion which suits the views of the

party; that they (the Irish) had long felt their own misery, _without

knowing well from whence it came_; our worthy patriots, by _pointing out

Great Britain_ as the _cause of Irish distress_, may have some chance of

rousing Irish resentment." This I quote from a pamphlet as perfectly

contemptible in point of writing as it is false in its facts and wicked

in its design: but as it is written under the authority of ministers, by

one of their principal literary pensioners, and was circulated with

great diligence, and, as I am credibly informed, at a considerable

expense to the public, I use the words of that book to let you see in

what manner the friends and patrons of Ireland, the heroes of your

Parliament, represented all efforts for your relief here, what means

they took to dispose the minds of the people towards that great object,

and what encouragement they gave to all who should choose to exert

themselves in your favor. Their unwearied endeavors were not wholly

without success, and the unthinking people in many places became

ill-affected towards us on this account. For the ministers proceeded in

your affairs just as they did with regard to those of America. They

always represented you as a parcel of blockheads, without sense, or even

feeling; that all your words were only the echo of faction here; and (as

you have seen above) that you had not understanding enough to know that

your trade was cramped by restrictive acts of the British Parliament,

unless we had, for factious purposes, given you the information. They

were so far from giving the least intimation of the measures which have

since taken place, that those who were supposed the best to know their

intentions declared them impossible in the actual state of the two

kingdoms, and spoke of nothing but an act of union, as the only way that

could be found of giving freedom of trade to Ireland, consistently with

the interests of this kingdom. Even when the session opened, Lord North

declared that he did not know what remedy to apply to a disease of the

cause of which he was ignorant; and ministry not being then entirely

resolved how far they should submit to your energy, they, by

anticipation, set the above author or some of his associates to fill the

newspapers with invectives against us, as distressing the minister by

extravagant demands in favor of Ireland.

I need not inform you, that everything they asserted of the steps taken

in Ireland, as the result of our machinations, was utterly false and

groundless. For myself, I seriously protest to you, that I neither wrote

a word or received a line upon any matter relative to the trade of

Ireland, or to the polities of it, from the beginning of the last

session to the day that I was honored with your letter. It would be an

affront to the talents in the Irish Parliament to say one word more.

What was done in Ireland during that period, in and out of Parliament,

never will be forgotten. You raised an army new in its kind and adequate

to its purposes. It effected its end without its exertion. It was not

under the authority of law, most certainly, but it derived from an

authority still higher; and as they say of faith, that it is not

contrary to reason, but above it, so this army did not so much

contradict the spirit of the law as supersede it. What you did in the

legislative body is above all praise. By your proceeding with regard to

the supplies, you revived the grand use and characteristic benefit of

Parliament, which was on the point of being entirely lost amongst us.

These sentiments I never concealed, and never shall; and Mr. Fox

expressed them with his usual power, when he spoke on the subject.

All this is very honorable to you. But in what light must we see it? How

are we to consider your armament without commission from the crown, when

some of the first people in _this_ kingdom have been refused arms, at

the time they did not only not reject, but solicited the king's

commissions? Here to arm and embody would be represented as little less

than high treason, if done on private authority: with you it receives

the thanks of a Privy Counsellor of Great Britain, who obeys the Irish

House of Lords in that point with pleasure, and is made Secretary of

State, the moment he lands here, for his reward. You shortened the

credit given to the crown to six months; you hung up the public credit

of your kingdom by a thread; you refused to raise any taxes, whilst you

confessed the public debt and public exigencies to be great and urgent

beyond example. You certainly acted in a great style, and on sound and

invincible principles. But if we in the opposition, which fills Ireland

with such loyal horrors, had even attempted, what we never did even

attempt, the smallest delay or the smallest limitation of supply, in

order to a constitutional coercion of the crown, we should have been

decried by all the court and Tory mouths of this kingdom, as a desperate

faction, aiming at the direct ruin of the country, and to surrender it

bound hand and foot to a foreign enemy. By actually doing what we never

ventured to attempt, you have paid your court with such address, and

have won so much favor with his Majesty and his cabinet, that they have,

of their special grace and mere motion, raised you to new titles, and

for the first time, ill a speech from the throne, complimented you with

the appellation of "faithful and loyal,"--and, in order to insult our

low-spirited and degenerate obedience, have thrown these epithets and

your resistance together in our teeth! What do you think were the

feelings of every man who looks upon Parliament in an higher light than

that of a market-overt for legalizing a base traffic of votes and

pensions, when he saw you employ such means of coercion to the crown, in

order to coerce our Parliament through _that_ medium? How much his

Majesty is pleased with _his_ part of the civility must be left to his

own taste. But as to us, you declared to the world that you knew that

the way of bringing us to reason was to apply yourselves to the true

source of all our opinions and the only motive to all our conduct! Now,

it seems, you think yourselves affronted, because a few of us express

some indignation at the minister who has thought fit to strip us stark

naked, and expose the true state of our poxed and pestilential habit to

the world! Think or say what you will in Ireland, I shall ever think it

a crime hardly to be expiated by his blood. He might, and ought, by a

longer continuance or by an earlier meeting of this Parliament, to have

given us the credit of some wisdom in foreseeing and anticipating an

approaching force. So far from it, Lord Gower, coming out of his own

cabinet, declares that one principal cause of his resignation was his

not being able to prevail on the present minister to give any sort of

application to this business. Even on the late meeting of Parliament,

nothing determinate could be drawn from him, or from any of his

associates, until you had actually passed the short money bill,--which

measure they flattered themselves, and assured others, you would never

come up to. Disappointed in their expectation at [of?] seeing the siege

raised, they surrendered at discretion.

Judge, my dear Sir, of our surprise at finding your censure directed

against those whose only crime was in accusing the ministers of not

having prevented your demands by our graces, of not having given you the

natural advantages of your country in the most ample, the most early,

and the most liberal manner, and for not having given away authority in

such a manner as to insure friendship. That you should make the

panegyric of the ministers is what I expected; because, in praising

their bounty, you paid a just compliment to your own force. But that you

should rail at us, either individually or collectively, is what I can

scarcely think a natural proceeding. I can easily conceive that

gentlemen might grow frightened at what they had done,--that they might

imagine they had undertaken a business above their direction,--that,

having obtained a state of independence for their country, they meant to

take the deserted helm into their own hands, and supply by their very

real abilities the total inefficacy of the nominal government. All these

might be real, and might be very justifiable motives for their

reconciling themselves cordially to the present court system. But I do

not so well discover the reasons that could induce them, at the first

feeble dawning of life in this country, to do all in their power to cast

a cloud over it, and to prevent the least hope of our effecting the

necessary reformations which are aimed at in our Constitution and in our

national economy.

But, it seems, I was silent at the passing the resolutions. Why, what

had I to say? If I had thought them too much, I should have been accused

of an endeavor to inflame England. If I should represent them as too

little, I should have been charged with a design of fomenting the

discontents of Ireland into actual rebellion. The Treasury bench

represented that the affair was a matter of state: they represented it

truly. I therefore only asked whether they knew these propositions to be

such as would satisfy Ireland; for if they were so, they would satisfy

me. This did not indicate that I thought them too ample. In this our

silence (however dishonorable to Parliament) there was one

advantage,--that the whole passed, as far as it is gone, with complete

unanimity, and so quickly that there was no time left to excite any

opposition to it out of doors. In the West India business, reasoning on

what had lately passed in the Parliament of Ireland, and on the mode in

which it was opened here, I thought I saw much matter of perplexity.

But I have now better reason than ever to be pleased with my silence. If

I had spoken, one of the most honest and able men[16] in the Irish

Parliament would probably have thought my observation an endeavor to sow

dissension, which he was resolved to prevent,--and one of the most,

ingenious and one of the most amiable men[17] that ever graced yours or

any House of Parliament might have looked on it as a chimera. In the

silence I observed, I was strongly countenanced (to say no more of it)

by every gentleman of Ireland that I had the honor of conversing with in

London. The only word, for that reason, which I spoke, was to restrain a

worthy county member,[18] who had received some communication from a

great trading place in the county he represents, which, if it had been

opened to the House, would have led to a perplexing discussion of one of

the most troublesome matters that could arise in this business. I got up

to put a stop to it; and I believe, if you knew what the topic was, you

would commend my discretion.

That it should be a matter of public discretion in me to be silent on

the affairs of Ireland is what on all accounts I bitterly lament. I

stated to the House what I felt; and I felt, as strongly as human

sensibility can feel, the extinction of my Parliamentary capacity, where

I wished to use it most. When I came into this Parliament, just fourteen

years ago,--into this Parliament, then, in vulgar opinion at least, the

presiding council of the greatest empire existing, (and perhaps, all

things considered, that ever did exist,) obscure and a stranger as I

was, I considered myself as raised to the highest dignity to which a

creature of our species could aspire. In that opinion, one of the chief

pleasures in my situation, what was first and-uppermost in my thoughts,

was the hope, without injury to this country, to be somewhat useful to

the place of my birth and education, which in many respects, internal

and external, I thought ill and impolitically governed. But when I found

that the House, surrendering itself to the guidance of an authority, not

grown out of an experienced wisdom and integrity, but out of the

accidents of court favor, had become the sport of the passions of men at

once rash and pusillanimous,--that it had even got into the habit of

refusing everything to reason and surrendering everything to force, all

my power of obliging either my country or individuals was gone, all the

lustre of my imaginary rank was tarnished, and I felt degraded even by

my elevation. I said this, or something to this effect. If it gives

offence to Ireland, I am sorry for it: it was the reason I gave for my

silence; and it was, as far as it went, the true one.

With you, this silence of mine and of others was represented as

factious, and as a discountenance to the measure of your relief. Do you

think us children? If it had been our wish to embroil matters, and, for

the sake of distressing ministry, to commit the two kingdoms in a

dispute, we had nothing to do but (without at all condemning the

propositions) to have gone into the commercial detail of the objects of

them. It could not have been refused to us: and you, who know the nature

of business so well, must know that this would have caused such delays,

and given rise during that delay to such discussions, as all the wisdom

of your favorite minister could never have settled. But, indeed, you

mistake your men. We tremble at the idea of a disunion of these two

nations. The only thing in which we differ with you is this,--that we do

not think your attaching yourselves to the court and quarrelling with

the independent part of this people is the way to promote the union of

two free countries, or of holding them together by the most natural and

salutary ties.

* * * * *

You will be frightened, when you see this long letter. I smile, when I

consider the length of it myself. I never, that I remember, wrote any of

the same extent. But it shows me that the reproaches of the country that

I once belonged to, and in which I still have a dearness of instinct

more than I can justify to reason, make a greater impression on me than

I had imagined. But parting words are admitted to be a little tedious,

because they are not likely to be renewed. If it will not be making

yourself as troublesome to others as I am to you, I shall be obliged to

you, if you will show this, at their greatest leisure, to the Speaker,

to your excellent kinsman, to Mr. Grattan, Mr. Yelverton, and Mr. Daly:

all these I have the honor of being personally known to, except Mr.

Yelverton, to whom I am only known by my obligations to him. If you live

in any habits with my old friend, the Provost, I shall be glad that he,

too, sees this my humble apology.

Adieu! once more accept my best thanks for the interest you take in me.

Believe that it is received by an heart not yet so old as to have lost

its susceptibility. All here give you the best old-fashioned wishes of

the season; and believe me, with the greatest truth and regard,

My dear Sir,

Your most faithful and obliged humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

BEACONSFIELD, New year's Day, 1780.

I am frightened at the trouble I give you and our friends; but I

recollect that you are mostly lawyers, and habituated to read long,

tiresome papers--and, where your friendship is concerned, without a fee;

I am sure, too, that you will not act the lawyer in scrutinizing too

minutely every expression which my haste may make me use. I forgot to

mention my friend O'Hara, and others; but you will communicate it as you

please.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Mr. Thomas Burgh, of Old Town, was a member of the House of Commons

in Ireland.--It appears from a letter written by this gentleman to Mr.

Burke, December 24, 1779, and to which the following is an answer, that

the part Mr. Burke had taken in the discussion which the affairs of

Ireland had undergone in the preceding sessions of Parliament in England

had been grossly misrepresented and much censured in Ireland.

[15] This intention was communicated to Mr. Burke in a letter from Mr.

Pery, the Speaker of the House of Commons in Ireland.

[16] Mr. Grattan.

[17] Mr. Hussey Burgh

[18] Mr. Stanley, member for Lancashire.

LETTER

TO JOHN MERLOTT, ESQ.[19]

Dear Sir,--I am very unhappy to find that my conduct in the business of

Ireland, on a former occasion, had made many to be cold and indifferent

who would otherwise have been warm in my favor. I really thought that

events would have produced a quite contrary effect, and would have

proved to all the inhabitants of Bristol that it was no desire of

opposing myself to their wishes, but a certain knowledge of the

necessity of their affairs, and a tender regard to their honor and

interest, which induced me to take the part which I then took. They

placed me in a situation which might enable me to discern what was fit

to be done, on a consideration of the relative circumstances of this

country and all its neighbors. This was what you could not so well do

yourselves; but you had a right to expect that I should avail myself of

the advantage which I derived from your favor. Under the impression-of

this duty and this trust, I had endeavored to render, by preventive

graces and concessions, every act of power at the same time an act of

lenity,--the result of English bounty, and not of English timidity and

distress. I really flattered myself that the events which have proved

beyond dispute the prudence of such a maxim would have obtained pardon

for me, if not approbation. But if I have not been so fortunate, I do

most sincerely regret my great loss,--this comfort, however, that, if I

have disobliged my constituents, it was not in pursuit of any sinister

interest or any party passion of my own, but in endeavoring to save them

from disgrace, along with the whole community to which they and I

belong. I shall be concerned for this, and very much so; but I should be

more concerned, if, in gratifying a present humor of theirs, I had

rendered myself unworthy of their former or their future choice. I

confess that I could not bear to face my constituents at the next

general election, if I had been a rival to Lord North in the glory of

having refused some small, insignificant concessions, in favor of

Ireland, to the arguments and supplications of English members of

Parliament,--and in the very next session, on the demand of forty

thousand Irish bayonets, of having made a speech of two hours long to

prove that my former conduct was founded upon no one right principle,

either of policy, justice, or commerce. I never heard a more elaborate,

more able, more convincing, and more shameful speech. The debater

obtained credit, but the statesman was disgraced forever. Amends were

made for having refused small, but timely concessions, by an unlimited

and untimely surrender, not only of every one of the objects of former

restraints, but virtually of the whole legislative power itself which

had made them. For it is not necessary to inform you, that the

unfortunate Parliament of this kingdom did not dare to qualify the very

liberty she gave of trading with her _own_ plantations, by applying, of

her _own_ authority, any one of the commercial regulations to the new

traffic of Ireland, which bind us here under the several Acts of

Navigation. We were obliged to refer them to the Parliament of Ireland,

as conditions, just in the same manner as if we were bestowing a

privilege of the same sort on France and Spain, or any other independent

power, and, indeed, with more studied caution than we should have used,

not to shock the principle of their independence. How the minister

reconciled the refusal to reason, and the surrender to arms raised in

defiance of the prerogatives of the crown, to his master, I know not: it

has probably been settled, in some way or other, between themselves. But

however the king and his ministers may settle the question of his

dignity and his rights, I thought it became me, by vigilance and

foresight, to take care of yours: I thought I ought rather to lighten

the ship in time than expose it to a total wreck. The conduct pursued

seemed to me without weight or judgment, and more fit for a member for

Banbury than a member for Bristol. I stood, therefore, silent with grief

and vexation, on that day of the signal shame and humiliation of this

degraded king and country. But it seems the pride of Ireland, in the day

of her power, was equal to ours, when we dreamt we were powerful too. I

have been abused there even for my silence, which was construed into a

desire of exciting discontent in England. But, thank God, my letter to

Bristol was in print, my sentiments on the policy of the measure were

known and determined, and such as no man could think me absurd enough to

contradict. When I am no longer a free agent, I am obliged in the crowd

to yield to necessity: it is surely enough that I silently submit to

power; it is enough that I do not foolishly affront the conqueror; it is

too hard to force me to sing his praises, whilst I am led in triumph

before him,--or to make the panegyric of our own minister, who would put

me neither in a condition to surrender with honor or to fight with the

smallest hope of victory. I was, I confess, sullen and silent on that

day,--and shall continue so, until I see some disposition to inquire

into this and other causes of the national disgrace. If I suffer in my

reputation for it in Ireland, I am sorry; but it neither does nor can

affect me so nearly as my suffering in Bristol for having wished to

unite the interests of the two nations in a manner that would secure the

supremacy of this.

Will you have the goodness to excuse the length of this letter? My

earnest desire of explaining myself in every point which may affect the

mind of any worthy gentleman in Bristol is the cause of it. To yourself,

and to your liberal and manly notions, I know it is not so necessary.

Believe me,

My dear Sir,

Your most faithful and obedient humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

BEACONSFIELD, April 4th, 1780.

To JOHN MERLOTT, Esq., Bristol.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] An eminent merchant in the city of Bristol, of which Mr. Burke was

one of the representatives in Parliament.--It relates to the same

subject as the preceding Letter.

LETTERS AND REFLECTIONS

ON THE

EXECUTIONS OF THE RIOTERS

IN 1780.

LETTERS.

_To the Lord Chancellor_.

My Lord,--I hope I am not too late with the inclosed slight

observations. If the execution already ordered cannot be postponed,

might I venture to recommend that it should extend to one only? and then

the plan suggested in the inclosed paper may, if your Lordship thinks

well of it, take place, with such improvements as your better judgment

may dictate. As to fewness of the executions, and the good effects of

that policy, I cannot, for my own part, entertain the slightest doubt.

If you have no objection, and think it may not occupy more of his

Majesty's time than such a thing is worth, I should not be sorry that

the inclosed was put into the king's hands.

I have the honor to be, my Lord,

Your Lordship's most obedient humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

CHARLES STREET, July 10, 1780.

* * * * *

_To the Earl Bathurst, Lord President of the Council_

My Lord,--

I came to town but yesterday, and therefore did not learn more early the

probable extent of the executions in consequence of the late

disturbances. I take the liberty of laying before you, with the

sincerest deference to your judgment, what appeared to me very early as

reasonable in this business. Further thoughts have since occurred to me.

I confess my mind is under no small degree of solicitude and anxiety on

the subject; I am fully persuaded that a proper use of mercy would not

only recommend the wisdom and steadiness of government, but, if properly

used, might be made a means of drawing out the principal movers in this

wicked business, who have hitherto eluded your scrutiny. I beg pardon

for this intrusion, and have the honor to be, with great regard and

esteem,

My Lord,

Your Lordship's most obedient humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

CHARLES STREET, July 18, 1780.

* * * * *

_To Sir Grey Cooper, Bart_.[20]

Dear Sir,--

According to your desire, I send you a copy of the few reflections on

the subject of the present executions which occurred to me in the

earliest period of the late disturbances, and which all my experience

and observation since have most strongly confirmed. The executions,

taking those which have been made, which are now ordered, and which may

be the natural consequence of the convictions in Surrey, will be

undoubtedly too many to answer any good purpose. Great slaughter

attended the suppression of the tumults, and this ought to be taken in

discount from the execution of the law. For God's sake entreat of Lord

North to take a view of the sum total of the deaths, before any are

ordered for execution; for by not doing something of this kind people

are decoyed in detail into severities they never would have dreamed of,

if they had the whole in their view at once. The scene in Surrey would

have affected the hardest heart that ever was in an human breast.

Justice and mercy have not such opposite interests as people are apt to

imagine. I saw Lord Loughborough last night. He seemed strongly

impressed with the sense of what necessity obliged him to go through,

and I believe will enter into our ideas on the subject. On this matter

you see that no time is to be lost. Before a final determination, the

first thing I would recommend is, that, if the very next execution

cannot be delayed, (by the way, I do not see why it may not,) it may be

of but a single person, and that afterwards you should not exceed two or

three; for it is enough for one riot, where the very act of Parliament

on which you proceed is rather a little hard in its sanctions and its

construction: not that I mean to complain of the latter as either new or

strained, but it was rigid from the first.

I am, dear Sir,

Your most obedient humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

Tuesday, 18th July, 1780.

I really feel uneasy on this business, and should consider it as a sort

of personal favor, if you do something to limit the extent and severity

of the law on this point. Present my best compliments to Lord North, and

if he thinks that I have had wishes to be serviceable to government on

the late occasion, I shall on my part think myself abundantly rewarded,

if a few lives less than first intended should be saved [taken?]; I

should sincerely set it down as a personal obligation, though the thing

stands upon general and strong reason of its own.[21]

FOOTNOTES:

[20] One of the Secretaries of the Treasury.

[21] It appears by the following extract from a letter written by the

Earl of Mansfield to Mr. Burke, dated the 17th July, 1780, that these

Reflections had also been communicated to him:--"I have received the

honor of your letter and very judicious thoughts. Having been so greatly

injured myself, I have thought it more decent not to attend the reports,

and consequently have not been present at any deliberation upon the

subject."

SOME THOUGHTS

ON THE APPROACHING EXECUTIONS,

HUMBLY OFFERED TO CONSIDERATION.

As the number of persons convicted on account of the late unhappy

tumults will probably exceed what any one's idea of vengeance or example

would deliver to capital punishment, it is to be wished that the whole

business, as well with regard to the number and description of those who

are to suffer death as with regard to those who shall be delivered over

to lighter punishment or wholly pardoned, should be entirely a work of

reason.

It has happened frequently, in cases of this nature, that the fate of

the convicts has depended more upon the accidental circumstance of their

being brought earlier or later to trial than to any steady principle of

equity applied to their several cases. Without great care and sobriety,

criminal justice generally begins with anger and ends in negligence. The

first that are brought forward suffer the extremity of the law, with

circumstances of mitigation of their case; and after a time, the most

atrocious delinquents escape merely by the satiety of punishment.

In the business now before his Majesty, the following thoughts are

humbly submitted.

If I understand the temper of the public at this moment, a very great

part of the lower and some of the middling people of this city are in a

very critical disposition, and such as ought to be managed with firmness

and delicacy. In general, they rather approve than blame the principles

of the rioters, though the better sort of them are afraid of the

consequences of those very principles which they approve. This keeps

their minds in a suspended and anxious state, which may very easily be

exasperated by an injudicious severity into desperate resolutions,--or

by weak measures on the part of government it may be encouraged to the

pursuit of courses which may be of the most dangerous consequences to

the public.

There is no doubt that the approaching executions will very much

determine the future conduct of those people. They ought to be such as

will humble, not irritate. Nothing will make government more awful to

them than to see that it does not proceed by chance or under the

influence of passion.

It is therefore proposed that no execution should be made until the

number of persons which government thinks fit to try is completed. When

the whole is at once under the eye, an examination ought to be made into

the circumstances of every particular convict; and _six_, at the very

utmost, of the fittest examples may then be selected for execution, who

ought to be brought out and put to death on one and the same day, in six

different places, and in the most solemn manner that can be devised.

Afterwards great care should be taken that their bodies may not be

delivered to their friends, or to others who may make them objects of

compassion or even veneration: some instances of the kind have happened

with regard to the bodies of those killed in the riots. The rest of the

malefactors ought to be either condemned, for larger [longer?] or

shorter terms, to the lighters, houses of correction, service in the

navy, and the like, according to the case.

This small number of executions, and all at one time, though in

different places, is seriously recommended; because it is certain that a

great havoc among criminals hardens rather than subdues the minds of

people inclined to the same crimes, and therefore fails of answering its

purpose as an example. Men who see their lives respected and thought of

value by others come to respect that gift of God themselves. To have

compassion for oneself, or to care, more or less, for one's own life, is

a lesson to be learned just as every other; and I believe it will be

found that conspiracies have been most common and most desperate where

their punishment has been most extensive and most severe.

Besides, the least excess in this way excites a tenderness in the milder

sort of people, which makes them consider government in an harsh and

odious light. The sense of justice in men is overloaded and fatigued

with a long series of executions, or with such a carnage at once as

rather resembles a massacre than a sober execution of the laws. The laws

thus lose their terror in the minds of the wicked, and their reverence

in the minds of the virtuous.

I have ever observed that the execution of one man fixes the attention

and excites awe; the execution of multitudes dissipates and weakens the

effect: but men reason themselves into disapprobation and disgust; they

compute more as they feel less; and every severe act which does not

appear to be necessary is sure to be offensive.

In selecting the criminals, a very different line ought to be followed

from that recommended by the champions of the Protestant Association.

They recommend that the offenders for plunder ought to be punished, and

the offenders from principle spared. But the contrary rule ought to be

followed. The ordinary executions, of which there are enough in

conscience, are for the former species of delinquents; but such common

plunderers would furnish no example in the present case, where the false

or pretended principle of religion, which leads to crimes, is the very

thing to be discouraged.

But the reason which ought to make these people objects of selection for

punishment confines the selection to very few. For we must consider that

the whole nation has been for a long time guilty of their crime.

Toleration is a new virtue in any country. It is a late ripe fruit in

the best climates. We ought to recollect the poison which, under the

name of antidotes against Popery, and such like mountebank titles, has

been circulated from our pulpits and from our presses, from the heads of

the Church of England and the heads of the Dissenters. These

publications, by degrees, have tended to drive all religion from our own

minds, and to fill them with nothing but a violent hatred of the

religion of other people, and, of course, with a hatred of their

persons; and so, by a very natural progression, they have led men to the

destruction of their goods and houses, and to attempts upon their lives.

This delusion furnishes no reason for suffering that abominable spirit

to be kept alive by inflammatory libels or seditious assemblies, or for

government's yielding to it, in the smallest degree, any point of

justice, equity, or sound policy. The king certainly ought not to give

up any part of his subjects to the prejudices of another. So far from

it, I am clearly of opinion that on the late occasion the Catholics

ought to have been taken, more avowedly than they were, under the

protection of government, as the Dissenters had been on a similar

occasion.

But though we ought to protect against violence the bigotry of others,

and to correct our own too, if we have any left, we ought to reflect,

that an offence which in its cause is national ought not in its effects

to be vindicated on individuals, but with a very well-tempered severity.

For my own part, I think the fire is not extinguished,--on the contrary,

it seems to require the attention of government more than ever; but, as

a part of any methodical plan for extinguishing this flame, it really

seems necessary that the execution of justice should be as steady and as

cool as possible.

SOME ADDITIONAL REFLECTIONS

ON THE EXECUTIONS.

The great number of sufferers seems to arise from the misfortune

incident to the variety of judicatures which have tried the crimes. It

were well, if the whole had been the business of one commission; for now

every trial seems as if it were a separate business, and in that light

each offence is not punished with greater severity than single offences

of the kind are commonly marked: but in reality and fact, this

unfortunate affair, though diversified in the multitude of overt acts,

has been one and the same riot; and therefore the executions, so far as

regards the general effect on the minds of men, will have a reference to

the unity of the offence, and will appear to be much more severe than

such a riot, atrocious as it was, can well justify in government. I pray

that it may be recollected that the chief delinquents have hitherto

escaped, and very many of those who are fallen into the hands of justice

are a poor, thoughtless set of creatures, very little aware of the

nature of their offence. None of the list-makers, the assemblers of the

mob, the directors and arrangers, have been convicted. The preachers of

mischief remain safe, and are wicked enough not to feel for their

deluded disciples,--no, not at all. I would not plead the ignorance of

the law in any, even the most ignorant, as a justification; but I am

sure, that, when the question is of mercy, it is a very great and

powerful argument. I have all the reason in the world to believe that

they did not know their offence was capital.

There is one argument, which I beg may not be considered as brought for

any invidious purpose, or meant as imputing blame anywhere, but which, I

think, with candid and considerate men, will have much weight. The

unfortunate delinquents were perhaps much encouraged by some remissness

on the part of government itself. The absolute and entire impunity

attending the same offence in Edinburgh, which was over and over again

urged as an example and encouragement to these unfortunate people, might

be a means of deluding them. Perhaps, too, a languor in the beginning of

the riots here (which suffered the leaders to proceed, until very many,

as it were by the contagion of a sort of fashion, were carried to these

excesses) might make these people think that there was something in the

case which induced government to wink at the irregularity of the

proceedings.

The conduct and condition of the Lord Mayor ought, in my opinion, to be

considered. His answers to Lord Beauchamp, to Mr. Malo, and to Mr.

Langdale make him appear rather an accomplice in the crimes than guilty

of negligence as a magistrate. Such an example set to the mob by the

first magistrate of the city tends greatly to palliate their offence.

The license, and complete impunity too, of the publications which from

the beginning instigated the people to such actions, and in the midst of

trials and executions still continues, does in a great degree render

these creatures an object of compassion. In the Public Advertiser of

this morning there are two or three paragraphs strongly recommending

such outrages, and stimulating the people to violence against the houses

and persons of Roman Catholics, and even against the chapels of the

foreign ministers.

I would not go so far as to adopt the maxim, _Quicquid multis peccatur

inultum_; but certainly offences committed by vast multitudes are

somewhat palliated in the _individuals_, who, when so many escape, are

always looked upon rather as unlucky than criminal. All our loose ideas

of justice, as it affects any individual, have in them something of

comparison to the situation of others; and no systematic reasoning can

wholly free us from such impressions.

Phil. de Comines says our English civil wars were less destructive than

others, because the cry of the conqueror always was, "Spare the common

people." This principle of war should be at least as prevalent in the

execution of justice. The appetite of justice is easily satisfied, and

it is best nourished with the least possible blood. We may, too,

recollect that between capital punishment and total impunity there are

many stages.

On the whole, every circumstance of mercy, and of comparative justice,

does, in my opinion, plead in favor of such low, untaught, or ill-taught

wretches. But above all, the policy of government is deeply interested

that the punishments should appear _one_, solemn, deliberate act, aimed

not at random, and at particular offences, but done with a relation to

the general spirit of the tumults; and they ought to be nothing more

than what is sufficient to mark and discountenance that spirit.

CIRCUMSTANCES FOR MERCY.

Not being principal.

Probable want of early and deliberate purposes.

Youth where the highest malice does not appear.

Sex where the highest malice does not appear.

Intoxication and levity, or mere wantonness of any kind.

A

LETTER

TO

THE RIGHT HON. HENRY DUNDAS,

ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S PRINCIPAL SECRETARIES OF STATE.

WITH THE

SKETCH OF A NEGRO CODE.

1792.

Dear Sir,--I should have been punctual in sending you the sketch I

promised of my old African Code, if some friends from London had not

come in upon me last Saturday, and engaged me till noon this day: I send

this packet by one of them who is still here. If what I send be, as

under present circumstances it must be, imperfect, you will excuse it,

as being done near twelve years ago. About four years since I made an

abstract of it, upon which I cannot at present lay my hands; but I hope

the marginal heads will in some measure supply it.

If the African trade could be considered with regard to itself only, and

as a single object, I should think the utter abolition to be on the

whole more advisable than any scheme of regulation an reform. Rather

than suffer it to continue as it is, I heartily wish it at an end. What

has been lately done has been done by a popular spirit, which seldom

calls for, and indeed very rarely relishes, a system made up of a great

variety of parts, and which is to operate its effect in a great length

of time. The people like short methods; the consequences of which they

sometimes have reason to repent of. Abolition is but a single act. To

prove the nature of the trade, and to expose it properly, required,

indeed, a vast collection of materials, which have been laboriously

collected, and compiled with great judgment. It required also much

perseverance and address to excite the spirit which has been excited

without doors, and which has carried it through. The greatest eloquence

ever displayed in the House has been employed to second the efforts

which have been made abroad. All this, however, leads but to one single

resolve. When this was done, all was done. I speak of absolute and

immediate abolition, the point which the first motions went to, and

which is in effect still pressed; though in this session, according to

order, it cannot take effect. A _remote_, and a _gradual_ abolition,

though they may be connected, are not the same thing. The idea of the

House seems to me, if I rightly comprehend it, that the two things are

to be combined: that is to say, that the trade is gradually to decline,

and to cease entirely at a determinate period. To make the abolition

gradual, the regulations must operate as a strong discouragement. But it

is much to be feared that a trade continued and discouraged, and with a

sentence of death passed upon it, will perpetuate much ill blood between

those who struggle for the abolition and those who contend for an

effectual continuance.

At the time when I formed the plan which I have the honor to transmit to

you, an abolition of the slave trade would have appeared a very

chimerical project. My plan, therefore, supposes the continued existence

of that commerce. Taking for my basis that I had an incurable evil to

deal with, I cast about how I should make it as small an evil as

possible, and draw out of it some collateral good.

In turning the matter over in my mind at that time and since, I never

was able to consider the African trade upon a ground disconnected with

the employment of negroes in the West Indies, and distinct from their

condition in the plantations whereon they serve. I conceived that the

true origin of the trade was not in the place it was begun at, but at

the place of its final destination. I therefore was, and I still am, of

opinion that the whole work ought to be taken up together, and that a

gradual abolition of slavery in the West Indies ought to go hand in hand

with anything which, should be done with regard to its supply from the

coast of Africa. I could not trust a cessation of the demand for this

supply to the mere operation of any abstract principle, (such as, that,

if their supply was cut off, the planters would encourage and produce an

effectual population,) knowing that nothing can be more uncertain than

the operation of general principles, if they are not embodied in

specific regulations. I am very apprehensive, that, so long as the

slavery continues, some means for its supply will be found. If so, I am

persuaded that it is better to allow the evil, in order to correct it,

than, by endeavoring to forbid what we cannot be able wholly to prevent,

to leave it under an illegal, and therefore an unreformed existence. It

is not that my plan does not lead to the extinction of the slave trade,

but it is through a very slow progress, the chief effect of which is to

be operated in our own plantations, by rendering, in a length of time,

all foreign supply unnecessary. It was my wish, whilst the slavery

continued, and the consequent commerce, to take such measures as to

civilize the coast of Africa by the trade, which now renders it more

barbarous, and to lead by degrees to a more reputable, and, possibly, a

more profitable connection with it, than we maintain at present.

I am sure that you will consider as a mark of my confidence in yours and

Mr. Pitt's honor and generosity, that I venture to put into your hands

a scheme composed of many and intricate combinations, without a full

explanatory preface, or any attendant notes, to point out the principles

upon which I proceeded in every regulation which I have proposed towards

the civilization and gradual manumission of negroes in the two

hemispheres. I confess I trust infinitely more (according to the sound

principles of those who ever have at any time meliorated the state of

mankind) to the effect and influence of religion than to all the rest of

the regulations put together.

Whenever, in my proposed reformation, we take our _point of departure_

from a state of slavery, we must precede the donation of freedom by

disposing the minds of the objects to a disposition to receive it

without danger to themselves or to us. The process of bringing _free_

savages to order and civilization is very different. When a state of

slavery is that upon which we are to work, the very means which lead to

liberty must partake of compulsion. The minds of men, being crippled

with that restraint, can do nothing for themselves: everything must be

done for them. The regulations can owe little to consent. Everything

must be the creature of power. Hence it is that regulations must be

multiplied, particularly as you have two parties to deal with. The

planter you must at once restrain and support, and you must control at

the same time that you ease the servant. This necessarily makes the work

a matter of care, labor, and expense. It becomes in its nature complex.

But I think neither the object impracticable nor the expense

intolerable; and I am fully convinced that the cause of humanity would

be far more benefited by the continuance of the trade and servitude,

regulated and reformed, than by the total destruction of both or either.

What I propose, however, is but a beginning of a course of measures

which an experience of the effects of the evil and the reform will

enable the legislature hereafter to supply and correct.

I need not observe to you, that the forms are often neglected, penalties

not provided, &c., &c., &c. But all this is merely mechanical, and what

a couple of days' application would set to rights.

I have seen what has been done by the West Indian Assemblies. It is

arrant trifling. They have done little; and what they have done is good

for nothing,--for it is totally destitute of an _executory_ principle.

This is the point to which I have applied my whole diligence. It is easy

enough to say what shall be done: to cause it to be done,--_hic labor,

hoc opus_.

I ought not to apologize for letting this scheme lie beyond the period

of the Horatian keeping,--I ought much more to entreat an excuse for

producing it now. Its whole value (if it has any) is the coherence and

mutual dependency of parts in the scheme; separately they can be of

little or no use.

I have the honor to be, with very great respect and regard,

Dear Sir,

Your most faithful and obedient humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

BEACONSFIELD, Easter-Monday night, 1792.

SKETCH OF A NEGRO CODE.

This constitution consists of four principal members.

I. The rules for qualifying a ship for the African trade.

II. The mode of carrying on the trade upon the coast of Africa, which

includes a plan for introducing civilization in that part of the world.

III. What is to be observed from the time of shipping negroes to the

sale in the West India islands.

IV. The regulations relative to the state and condition of slaves in the

West Indies, their manumission, &c.

[Sidenote: PREAMBLE.]

Whereas it is expedient, and comformable to the principles of true

religion and morality, and to the rules of sound policy, to put an end

to all traffic in the persons of men, and to the detention of their said

persons in a state of slavery, as soon as the same may be effected

without producing great inconveniences in the sudden change of practices

of such long standing, and during the time of the continuance of the

said practices it is desirable and expedient by proper regulations to

lessen the inconveniences and evils attendant on the said traffic and

state of servitude, until both shall be gradually done away:

And whereas the objects of the said trade and consequential servitude,

and the grievances resulting therefrom, come under the principal heads

following, the regulations ought thereto to be severally applied: that

is to say, that provision should be made by the said regulations,

1st, For duly qualifying ships for the said traffic;

2nd, For the mode and conditions of permitting the said trade to be

carried on upon the coast of Africa;

3rd, For the treatment of the negroes in their passage to the West India

islands;

4th, For the government of the negroes which are or shall be employed in

his Majesty's colonies and plantations in the West Indies:

[Sidenote: Ships to be registered.]

Be it therefore enacted, that every ship or trading vessel which is

intended for the negro trade, with the name of the owner or owners

thereof, shall be entered and registered as ships trading to the West

Indies are by law to be registered, with the further provisions

following:

[Sidenote: Measured and surveyed.]

1. The same entry and register shall contain an account of the greatest

number of negroes of all descriptions which are proposed to be taken

into the said ship or trading vessel; and the said ship, before she is

permitted to be entered outwards, shall be surveyed by a ship-carpenter,

to be appointed by the collector of the port from which the said vessel

is to depart, and by a surgeon, also appointed by the collector, who

hath been conversant in the service of the said trade, but not at the

time actually engaged or covenanted therein; and the said carpenter and

surgeon shall report to the collector, or in his absence, to the next

principal officer of the port; upon oath, (which oath the said collector

or principal officer is hereby empowered to administer,) her

measurement, and what she contains in builder's tonnage, and that she

has ---- feet of grated portholes between the decks, and that she is

otherwise fitly found as a good transport vessel.

[Sidenote: Number of slaves limited.]

2. And be it enacted, that no ship employed in the said trade shall upon

any pretence take in more negroes than one grown man or woman for one

ton and half of builder's tonnage, nor more than one boy or girl for one

ton.

[Sidenote: Provisions.]

3. That the said ship or other vessel shall lay in, in proportion to the

ship's company of the said vessel, and the number of negroes registered,

a full and sufficient store of sound provision, so as to be secure

against all probable delays and accidents, namely, salted beef, pork,

salt-fish, butter, cheese, biscuit, flour, rice, oat-meal, and white

peas, but no horse-beans, or other inferior provisions; and the said

ship shall be properly provided with water-casks or jars, in proportion

to the intended number of the said negroes; and the said ship shall be

also provided with a proper and sufficient stock of coals or firewood.

[Sidenote: Stores.]

4. And every ship entered as aforesaid shall take out a coarse shirt and

a pair of trousers, or petticoat, for each negro intended to be taken

aboard; as also a mat, or coarse mattress, or hammock, for the use of

the said negroes. The proportions of provision, fuel, and clothing to be

regulated by the table annexed to this act.

[Sidenote: Certificate thereof.]

5. And be it enacted, that no ship shall be permitted to proceed on the

said voyage or adventure, until the searcher of the port from whence the

said vessel shall sail, or such person as he shall appoint to act for

him, shall report to the collector that he hath inspected the said

stores, and that the ship is accommodated and provided in the manner

hereby directed.

[Sidenote: Guns for trade to be inspected.]

6. And be it enacted, that no guns be exported to the coast of Africa,

in the said or any other trade, unless the same be duly marked with the

maker's name on the barrels before they are put into the stocks, and

vouched by an inspector in the place where the same are made to be

without fraud, and sufficient and merchantable arms.

[Sidenote: Owners and masters to enter into bonds.]

7. And be it enacted, that, before any ship as aforesaid shall proceed

on her voyage, the owner or owners, or an attorney by them named, if the

owners are more than two, and the master, shall severally give bond, the

owners by themselves, the master for himself, that the said master shall

duly conform himself in all things to the regulations in this act

contained, so far as the same regards his part in executing and

conforming to the same.

* * * * *

II. And whereas, in providing for the second object of this act, that is

to say, for the trade on the coast of Africa, it is first prudent not

only to provide against the manifold abuses to which a trade of that

nature is liable, but that the same may be accompanied, as far as it is

possible, with such advantages to the natives as may tend to the

civilizing them, and enabling them to enrich themselves by means more

desirable, and to carry on hereafter a trade more advantageous and

honorable to all parties:

And whereas religion, order, morality, and virtue are the elemental

principles, and the knowledge of letters, arts, and handicraft trades,

the chief means of such civilization and improvement: for the better

attainment of the said good purposes,

[Sidenote: Marts to be established on the coast.]

1. Be it hereby enacted, that the coast of Africa, on which the said

trade for negroes may be carried on, shall be and is hereby divided into

marts or staples, as hereafter follows. [Here name the marts.] And be it

enacted, that it shall not be lawful for the master of any ship to

purchase any negro or negroes, but at one of the said marts or staples.

[Sidenote: Governors and counsellors.]

2. That the directors of the African Company shall appoint, where not

already appointed, a governor, with three counsellors, at each of the

said marts, with a salary of ---- to the governor, and of ---- to each

of the said counsellors. The said governor, or, in his absence or

illness, the senior counsellor, shall and is hereby empowered to act as

a justice of the peace, and they, or either of them, are authorized,

ordered, and directed to provide for the peace of the settlement, and

the good regulation of their station and stations severally, according

to the rules of justice, to the directions of this act, and the

instructions they shall receive from time to time from the said African

Company. And the said African Company is hereby authorized to prepare

instructions, with the assent of the Lords of his Majesty's Privy

Council, which shall be binding in all things not contrary to this act,

or to the laws of England, on the said governors and counsellors, and

every of them, and on all persons acting in commission with them under

this act, and on all persons residing within the jurisdiction of the

magistrates of the said mart.

[Sidenote: Ships of war stationed.]

3. And be it enacted, that the Lord High Admiral, or commissioners for

executing his office, shall appoint one or more, as they shall see

convenient, of his Majesty's ships or sloops of war, under the command

severally of a post-captain, or master and commander, to each mart, as a

naval station.

[Sidenote: Inspectors appointed.]

4. And be it enacted, that the Lord High Treasurer, or the commissioners

for executing his office, shall name two inspectors of the said trade at

every mart, who shall provide for the execution of this act, according

to the directions thereof, so far as shall relate to them; and it is

hereby provided and enacted, that, as cases of sudden emergency may

arise, the said governor or first counsellor, and the first commander of

his Majesty's ship or ships on the said station, and the said

inspectors, or the majority of them, the governor having a double or

casting vote, shall have power and authority to make such occasional

rules and orders relating to the said trade as shall not be contrary to

the instructions of the African Company, and which shall be valid until

the same are revoked by the said African Company.

[Sidenote: Lands may be purchased.]

5. That the said African Company is hereby authorized to purchase, if

the same may conveniently be done, with the consent of the Privy

Council, any lands adjoining to the fort or principal mart aforesaid,

not exceeding ---- acres, and to make allotments of the same; no

allotment to one person to exceed (on pain of forfeiture) ---- acres.

[Sidenote: Churches and schoolhouses, and hospitals to be erected.]

[Sidenote: Chaplain and assistant.]

[Sidenote: Clerk and catechist.]

6. That the African Company shall, at each fort or mart, cause to be

erected, in a convenient place, and at a moderate cost, the estimate of

which shall be approved by the Treasury, one church, and one

school-house, and one hospital; and shall appoint one principal

chaplain, with a curate or assistant in holy orders, both of whom shall

be recommended by the Lord Bishop of London; and the said chaplain or

his assistant shall perform divine service, and administer the

sacraments, according to the usage of the Church of England, or to such

mode not contrary thereto as to the said bishop shall seem more suitable

to the circumstances of the people. And the said principal chaplain

shall be the third member in the council, and shall be entitled to

receive from the directors of the said African Company a salary of ----,

and his assistant a salary of ----, and he shall have power to appoint

one sober and discreet person, white or black, to be his clerk and

catechist, at a salary of ----.

[Sidenote: Schoolmaster.]

[Sidenote: Carpenter and blacksmith.]

[Sidenote: Native apprentices.]

[Sidenote: Surgeon and mate.]

[Sidenote: Native apprentice.]

7. And be it enacted, that the African Company shall appoint one

sufficient schoolmaster, who shall be approved by the Bishop of London,

and who shall be capable of teaching writing, arithmetic, surveying, and

mensuration, at a salary of ----. And the said African Company is hereby

authorized to provide for each settlement a carpenter and blacksmith,

with such encouragement as to them shall seem expedient, who shall take

each two apprentices from amongst the natives; to instruct them in the

several trades, the African Company allowing them, as a fee for each

apprentice, ----. And the said African Company shall appoint one surgeon

and one surgeon's mate, who are to be approved on examination, at

Surgeons' Hall, to each fort or mart, with a salary of ---- for the

surgeon, and for his mate ----; and the said surgeon shall take one

native apprentice, at a fee to be settled by the African Company.

[Sidenote: How removable.]

8. And be it enacted, that the said catechist, schoolmaster, surgeon,

and surgeon's mate, as well as the tradesmen in the Company's service,

shall be obedient to the orders they shall from time to time receive

from the governor and council of each fort; and if they, or any of them,

or any other person, in whatever station, shall appear, on complaint and

proof to the majority of the commissioners, to lead a disorderly and

debauched life, or use any profane or impious discourses, to the danger

of defeating the purposes of this institution, and to the scandal of the

natives, who are to be led by all due means into a respect for our holy

religion, and a desire of partaking of the benefits thereof, they are

authorized and directed to suspend the said person from his office, or

the exercise of his trade, and to send him to England (but without any

hard confinement, except in case of resistance) with a complaint, with

inquiry and proofs adjoined, to the African Company.

9. And be it enacted, that the Bishop of London for the time being shall

have full authority to remove the said chaplain for such causes as to

him shall seem reasonable.

[Sidenote: No public officer to be concerned in the negro trade.]

10. That no governor, counsellor, inspector, chaplain, surgeon, or

schoolmaster shall be concerned, or have any share, directly or

indirectly, in the negro trade, on pain of ----.

[Sidenote: Journals and letter-books to be kept and transmitted.]

11. Be it enacted, that the said governor and council shall keep a

journal of all their proceedings, and a book in which copies of all

their correspondence shall be entered, and they shall transmit copies of

the said journals and letter-book, and their books of accounts, to the

African Company, who, within ---- of their receipt thereof, shall

communicate the same to one of his Majesty's principal secretaries of

state.

[Sidenote: Chaplain to report to the Bishop of London.]

12. And be it enacted, that the said chaplain or principal minister,

shall correspond with the Bishop of London, and faithfully and

diligently transmit to him an account of whatever hath been done for the

advancement of religion, morality, and learning amongst the natives.

[Sidenote: Negroes to be attested before sale.]

13. And be it enacted, that no negro shall be conclusively sold, until

he shall be attested by the two inspectors and chaplain, or, in case of

the illness of any of them, by one inspector, and the governor, or one

of the council, who are hereby authorized and directed, by the best

means in their power, to examine into the circumstances and condition of

the persons exposed to sale.

[Sidenote: Causes for rejection.]

14. And for the better direction of the said inspectors, no persons are

to be sold, who, to the best judgment of the said inspectors, shall be

above thirty-five years of age, or who shall appear, on examination,

stolen or carried away by the dealers by surprise; nor any person who is

able to read in the Arabian or any other book; nor any woman who shall

appear to be advanced three months in pregnancy; nor any person

distorted or feeble, unless the said persons are consenting to such

sale; or any person afflicted with a grievous or contagious distemper:

but if any person so offered is only lightly disordered, the said person

may be sold, but must be kept in the hospital of the mart, and shall not

be shipped until completely cured.

[Sidenote: Traders to be licensed by the governors.]

15. Be it enacted, that no black or European factor or trader into the

interior country, or on the coast, (the masters of English ships only

excepted, for whose good conduct provision is otherwise herein made,)

shall be permitted to buy or sell in any of the said marts, unless he be

approved by the governor of the mart in which he is to deal, or, in his

absence or disability, by the senior counsellor for the time being, and

obtaining a license from such governor or counsellor; and the said

traders and factors shall, severally or jointly, as they shall be

concerned, before they shall obtain the said license, be bound in a

recognizance, with such surety for his or their good behavior as to the

said governor shall seem the best that can be obtained.

[Sidenote: Offences how to be tried and punished.]

16. Be it enacted, that the said governor, or other authority aforesaid,

shall examine, by duty of office, into the conduct of all such traders

and factors, and shall receive and publicly hear (with the assistance of

the council and inspectors aforesaid, and of the commodore, captain, or

other principal commander of one of his Majesty's ships on the said

station, or as many of the same as can be assembled, two whereof, with

the governor, are hereby enabled to act) all complaints against them, or

any of them; and if any black or white trader or factor, (other than in

this act excepted,) either on inquisition of office or on complaint,

shall be convicted by a majority of the said commissioners present of

stealing or taking by surprise any person or persons whatsoever, whether

free or the slaves of others, without the consent of their masters, or

of wilfully and maliciously killing or maiming any person, or of any

cruelty, (necessary restraint only excepted,) or of firing houses, or

destroying goods, the said trader or factor shall be deemed to have

forfeited his recognizance, and his surety to have forfeited his; and

the said trader or factor, so convicted, shall be forever disabled from

dealing in any of the said marts, unless the offence shall not be that

of murder, maiming, arson, or stealing or surprising the person, and

shall appear to the commissioners aforesaid to merit only, besides the

penalty of his bond, a suspension for one year; and the said trader or

factor, so convicted of murder, maiming, arson, stealing or surprising

the person, shall, if a native, be delivered over to the prince to whom

he belongs, to execute further justice on him. But it is hereby provided

and enacted, that, if any European shall be convicted of any of the said

offences, he shall be sent to Europe, together with the evidence against

him; and on the warrant of the said commissioners, the keeper of any of

his Majesty's jails in London, Bristol, Liverpool, or Glasgow shall

receive him, until he be delivered according to due course of law, as if

the said offences had been committed within the cities and towns

aforesaid.

[Sidenote: Negroes exposed to sale contrary to the provisions of this

act, how to be dealt with.]

17. Be it further enacted, that, if the said governor, &c, shall be

satisfied that person or persons are exposed to sale, who have been

stolen or surprised as aforesaid, or are not within the qualifications

of sale in this act described, they are hereby authorized and required,

if it can be done, to send the persons so exposed to sale to their

original habitation or settlement, in the manner they shall deem best

for their security, (the reasonable charges whereof shall be allowed to

the said governor by the African Company,) unless the said persons

choose to sell themselves; and then, and in that case, their value in

money and goods, at their pleasure, shall be secured to them, and be

applicable to their use,-without any dominion over the same of any

purchaser, or of any master to whom they may in any colony or plantation

be sold, and which shall always be in some of his master's [Majesty's?]

colonies and plantations only. And the master of the ship in which such

person shall embark shall give bond for the faithful execution of his

part of the trust at the island where he shall break bulk.

18. Be it further enacted, that, besides the hospitals on shore, one or

more hospital-ships shall be employed at each of the said chief marts,

wherein slaves taken ill in the trading ships shall be accommodated,

until they shall be cured; and then the owner may reclaim and shall

receive them, paying the charges which shall be settled by regulation to

be made by the authority in this act enabled to provide such

regulations.

* * * * *

III. And whereas it is necessary that regulations be made to prevent

abuses in the passage from Africa to the West Indies:

[Sidenote: Slave ships to be examined on the coast.]

1. Be it further enacted, that the commander or lieutenant of the king's

ship on each station shall have authority, as often as he shall see

occasion, attended with one other of his officers, and his surgeon or

mate, to enter into and inspect every trading ship, in order to provide

for the due execution of this act, and of any ordinances made in virtue

thereof and conformable thereto by the authorities herein constituted

and appointed; and the said officer and officers are hereby required to

examine every trading ship before she sails, and to stop the sailing of

the said ship for the breach of the said rules and ordinances, until the

governor in council shall order and direct otherwise: and the master of]

the said ship shall not presume, under the penalty of ----, to be

recovered in the courts of the West Indies, to sail without a

certificate from the commander aforesaid, and one of the inspectors in

this act appointed, that the vessel is provided with stores and other

accommodation sufficient for her voyage, and has not a greater number of

slaves on board than by the provisions of this act is allowed.

[Sidenote: Governor to give special instructions.]

2. And be it enacted, that the governor and council, with the assistance

of the said naval commander, shall have power to give such special

written instructions for the health, discipline, and care of the said

slaves, during their passage, as to them shall seem good,

[Sidenote: Presents and musical instruments to be provided.]

3. And be it further enacted, that each slave, at entering the said

ship, is to receive some present, not exceeding in value ----, to be

provided according to the instructions aforesaid; and musical

instruments, according to the fashion of the country, are to be

provided.

[Sidenote: Table of allowances.]

4. And be it further enacted, that the negroes on board the transports,

and the seamen who navigate the same, are to receive their daily

allowance according to the table hereunto annexed, together with a

certain quantity of spirits to be mixed with their water. And it is

enacted, that the table is to be fixed, and continue for one week after

sailing, in some conspicuous part of the said ship, for the seamen's

inspection of the same.

[Sidenote: Negro superintendents to be appointed.]

5. And be it enacted, that the captain of each trading vessel shall be

enabled and is to divide the slaves in his ship into crews of not less

than ten nor more than twenty persons each, and to appoint one negro man

to have such authority severally over each crew, as according to his

judgment, with the advice of the mate and surgeon, he and they shall see

good to commit to them, and to allow to each of them some compensation,

in extraordinary diet and presents, not exceeding [ten shillings].

[Sidenote: Communication with female slaves, how punished.]

6. And be it enacted, that any European officer or seaman, having

unlawful communication with any woman slave, shall, if an officer, pay

five pounds to the use of the said woman, on landing her from the said

ship, to be stopped out of his wages, or if a seaman, forty shillings:

the said penalties to be recovered on the testimony of the woman so

abused, and one other.

[Sidenote: Premium to commanders of slave-ships.]

7. And be it enacted, that all and every commander of a vessel or

vessels employed in slave trade, having received certificates from the

port of the outfit, and from the proper officers in Africa and the West

Indies, of their having conformed to the regulations of this act, and of

their not having lost more than one in thirty of their slaves by death,

shall be entitled to a bounty or premium of [ten pounds].

* * * * *

IV. And whereas the condition of persons in a state of slavery is such

that they are utterly unable to take advantage of any remedy which the

laws may provide for their protection and the amendment of their

condition, and have not the proper means of pursuing any process for

the same, but are and must be under guardianship: and whereas it is not

fitting that they should be under the sole guardianship of their

masters, or their attorneys and overseers, to whom their grievances,

whenever they suffer any, must ordinarily be owing:

[Sidenote: Attorney-General to be protector of negroes.]

[Sidenote: To inquire and file information _ex officio_.]

1. Be it therefore enacted, that his Majesty's Attorney-General for the

time being successively shall, by his office, exercise the trust and

employment of protector of negroes within the island in which he is or

shall be Attorney-General to his Majesty, his heirs and successors; and

that the said Attorney-General, protector of negroes, is hereby

authorized to hear any complaint on the part of any negro or negroes,

and inquire into the same, or to institute an inquiry _ex officio_ into

any abuses, formations and to call before him and examine witnesses upon

oath, relative to the subject-matter of the said official inquiry or

complaint: and it is hereby enacted and declared, that the said

Attorney-General, protector of negroes, is hereby authorized and

empowered, at his discretion, to file an information _ex officio_ for

any offences committed against the provisions of this act, or for any

misdemeanors or wrongs against the said negroes, or any of them.

[Sidenote: Power to challenge jurors.]

2. And it is further enacted, that in all trials of such informations

the said protector of negroes may and is hereby authorized to challenge

peremptorily a number not exceeding ---- of the jury who shall be

impanelled to try the charge in the said information contained.

[Sidenote: To appoint inspectors of districts.]

[Sidenote: who are to report to him twice in the year the number and

condition of the slaves.]

3. And be it enacted, that the said Attorney-General, protector of

negroes, shall appoint inspectors, not exceeding the number of ----, at

his discretion; and the said inspectors shall be placed in convenient

districts in each island severally, or shall twice in the year make a

circuit in the same, according to the direction which they shall receive

from the protector of negroes aforesaid; and the inspectors shall and

they are hereby required, twice in the year, to report in writing to the

protector aforesaid the state and condition of the negroes in their

districts or on their circuit severally, the number, sex, age, and

occupation of the said negroes on each plantation; and the overseer or

chief manager on each plantation is hereby required to furnish an

account thereof within [ten days] after the demand of the said

inspectors, and to permit the inspector or inspectors aforesaid to

examine into the same; and the said inspectors shall set forth, in the

said report, the distempers to which the negroes are most liable in the

several parts of the island.

[Sidenote: Instructions to be formed for inspectors.]

4. And be it enacted, that the said protector of negroes, by and with

the consent the governor and chief judge of each island, shall form

instructions, by which the said inspectors shall discharge their trust

in the manner the least capable of exciting any unreasonable hopes in

the said negroes, or of weakening the proper authority of the overseer,

and shall transmit them to one of his Majesty's principal secretaries of

state; and when sent back with his approbation, the same shall become

the rule for the conduct of the said inspectors.

[Sidenote: Registry.]

5. And be it enacted, that the said Attorney-General, protector of

negroes, shall appoint an office for registering all proceedings

relative to the duty of his place as protector of negroes, and shall

appoint his chief clerk to be registrar, with a salary not exceeding

----.

[Sidenote: Ports where negroes are to be landed. Vessels to be

inspected.]

[Sidenote: Masters or officers offending to be fined.]

6. And be it enacted, that no negroes shall be landed for sale in any

but the ports following: that is to say, ----. And the collector of each

of the said ports severally shall, within ---- days after the arrival of

any ship transporting negroes, report the same to the protector of

negroes, or to one of his inspectors; and the said protector is hereby

authorized and required to examine, or cause to be examined by one of

his inspectors, with the assistance of the said collector, or his

deputy, and a surgeon to be called in on the occasion, the state of the

said ship and negroes; and upon what shall appear to them, the said

protector of negroes, and the said collector and surgeon, to be a

sufficient proof, either as arising from their own inspection, or

sufficient information on a summary process, of any contravention of

this act, or cruelty to the negroes, or other malversation of the said

captain, or any of his officers the said protector shall impose a fine

on him or them, not exceeding ----; which shall not, however, weaken or

invalidate any penalty growing from the bond of the said master or his

owners. And it is hereby provided, that, if the said master, or any of

his officers, shall find himself aggrieved by the said fine, he may

within ---- days appeal to the chief judge, if the court shall be

sitting, or to the governor, who shall and are required to hear the said

parties, and on hearing are to annul or confirm the same.

[Sidenote: Rates respecting the sale of negroes.]

7. And be it enacted, that no sale of negroes shall be made but in the

presence of an inspector, and all negroes shall be sold severally, or in

known and ascertained lots, and not otherwise; and a paper containing

the state and description of each negro severally sold, and of each lot,

shall be taken and registered in the office aforesaid; and if, on

inspection or information, it shall be found that any negroes shall

have, in the same ship, or any other at the same time examined, a wife,

an husband, a brother, sister, or child, the person or persons so

related shall not be sold separately at that or any future sale.

[Sidenote: Every island to be divided into districts.]

[Sidenote: A church to be built in each.]

8. And be it enacted, that each and every of his Majesty's islands and

plantations, in which negroes are used in cultivation, shall be, by the

governor and the protector of negroes for the time being, divided into

districts, allowing as much as convenience will admit to the present

division into parishes, and subdividing them, where necessary, into

districts, according to the number of negroes. And the said governor and

protector of negroes shall cause in each district a church to be built

in a convenient place, and a cemetery annexed, and an house for the

residence of a clergyman, with ---- acres of land annexed; and they are

hereby authorized to treat for the necessary ground with the proprietor,

who is hereby obliged to sell and dispose of the same to the said use;

and in case of dispute concerning the value, the same to be settled by a

jury, as in like cases is accustomed.

[Sidenote: Appointment of a priest and clerk.]

9. And be it enacted, that in each of the said districts shall be

established a presbyter of the Church of England as by law established,

who shall appoint under him one clerk, who shall be a free negro, when

such properly qualified can be found, (otherwise, a white man,) with a

salary, in each case, of ----; and the said minister and clerk, both or

one, shall instruct the said negroes in the Church Catechism, or such

other as shall be provided by the authority in this act named; and the

said minister shall baptize, as he shall think fit, all negroes not

baptized, and not belonging to Dissenters from the Church of England.

[Sidenote: Owner to deliver a list of negroes to the minister, and to

cause them to attend divine service.]

10. And the principal overseer of each plantation is hereby required to

deliver annually unto the minister a list of all the negroes upon his

plantation, distinguishing their sex and age, and shall, under a penalty

of ----, cause all the negroes under his care, above the age of ----

years, to attend divine service once on every Sunday, except in case of

sickness, infirmity, or other necessary cause, to be given at the time,

and shall, by himself or one of those who are under him, provide for the

orderly behavior of the negroes under him, and cause them to return to

his plantation, when divine service, or administration of sacraments, or

catechism, is ended.

[Sidenote: Mister to direct punishment for disorderly conduct.]

11. And be it enacted, that the minister shall have power to punish any

negro for disorderly conduct during divine service, by a punishment not

exceeding [ten] blows to be given in one day and for one offence, which

the overseer or his under agent or agents is hereby directed, according

to the orders of the said minister, effectually to inflict, whenever the

same shall be ordered.

[Sidenote: Spirituous liquors not to be sold.]

12. And be it enacted, that no spirituous liquors of any kind shall be

sold, except in towns, within ---- miles distance of any church, nor

within any district during divine service, and an hour preceding and an

hour following the same; and the minister of each parish shall and is

hereby authorized to act as a justice of the peace in enforcing the said

regulation.

[Sidenote: Register of births, burials, and marriages.]

13. And be it enacted, that every minister shall keep a register of

births, burials, and marriages of all negroes and mulattoes in his

district.

[Sidenote: Synod to assemble annually, and to form regulations,]

14. And be it enacted, that the ministers of the several districts shall

meet annually, on the ---- day of ----, in a synod of the island to

which they belong; and the said synod shall have for its president such

person as the Bishop of London shall appoint for his commissary; and the

said synod or general assembly is hereby authorized, by a majority of

voices, to make regulations, which regulations shall be transmitted by

the said president or commissary to the Bishop of London; and when

returned by the Bishop of London approved of, then, and not before, the

said regulations shall be held in force to bind the said clergy, their

assistants, clerks, and schoolmasters only, and no other persons.

[Sidenote: and to report to the Bishop of London.]

15. And be it enacted, that the said president shall collect matter in

the said assembly, and shall make a report of the state of religion and

morals in the several parishes from whence the synod is deputed, and

shall transmit the same, once in the year, in duplicate, through the

governor and protector of negroes, to the Bishop of London.

[Sidenote: Bishop of London to be patron of the cures.]

16. And be it enacted and declared, that the Bishop of London for the

time being patron of the shall be patron to all and every the said

cures in this act directed; and the said bishop is hereby required to

provide for the due filling thereof, and is to receive, from the fund in

this act provided for the due execution of this act, a sum not exceeding

---- for each of the said ministers, for his outfit and passage.

[Sidenote: and to have power of suspending and removing ministers.]

17. And be it enacted, that, on misbehavior, and on complaint from the

said synod, and on hearing the party accused in a plain and summary

manner, it shall and may be lawful for the Bishop of London to suspend

or to remove any minister from his cure, as his said offences shall

appear to merit.

[Sidenote: Schools for young negroes.]

18. And be it enacted, that for every two districts a school shall be

established for young negroes to be taught three days in the week, and

to be detained from their owner four hours in each day, the number not

to be more or fewer than twenty males in each district, who shall be

chosen, and vacancies filled, by the minister of the district; and the

said minister shall pay to the owner of the said boy, and shall be

allowed the same in his accounts at the synod, to the age of twelve

years old, three-pence by the day, and for every boy from twelve years

old to fifteen, five-pence by the day.

[Sidenote: Extraordinary abilities to be encouraged.]

19. And it is enacted, that, if the president of the synod aforesaid

shall certify to the protector of negroes, that any boys in the said

schools (provided that the number in no one year shall exceed one in the

island of Jamaica, and one in two years in the islands of Barbadoes,

Antigua, and Grenada, and one in four years in any of the other islands)

do show a remarkable aptitude for learning, the said protector is hereby

authorized and directed to purchase the said boy at the best rate at

which boys of that age and strength have been sold within the year; and

the said negro so purchased shall be under the entire guardianship of

the said protector of negroes, who shall send him to the Bishop of

London for his further education in England, and may charge in his

accounts for the expense of transporting him to England; and the Bishop

of London shall provide for the education of such of the said negroes as

he shall think proper subjects, until the age of twenty-four years, and

shall order those who shall fall short of expectation after one year to

be bound apprentice to some handicraft trade; and when his

apprenticeship is finished, the Lord Mayor of London is hereby

authorized and directed to receive the said negro from his master, and

to transmit him to the island from which he came, in the West Indies, to

be there as a free negro, subject, however, to the direction of the

protector of negroes, relatively to his behavior and employment.

[Sidenote: Negroes of Dissenters.]

[Sidenote: their marriages, &c., to be registered.]

20. And it is hereby enacted and provided, that any planter, or owner of

negroes, not being of the Church of England, and not choosing to send

his negroes to attend divine service in manner by this act directed,

shall give, jointly or severally, as the case shall require, security to

the protector of negroes that a competent minister of some Christian

church or congregation shall be provided for the due instruction of the

negroes, and for their performing divine service according to the

description of the religion of the master or masters, in some church or

house thereto allotted, in the manner and with the regulations in this

act prescribed with regard to the exercise of religion according to the

Church of England: provided always, that the marriages of the said

negroes belonging to Dissenters shall be celebrated only in the church

of the said district, and that a register of the births shall be

transmitted to the minister of the said district.

[Sidenote: Regulations concerning marriage.]

21. And whereas a state of matrimony, and the government of a family, is

a principal means of forming men to a fitness for freedom, and to become

good citizens: Be it enacted, that all negro men and women, above

eighteen years of age for the man and sixteen for the woman, who have

cohabited together for twelve months or upwards, or shall cohabit for

the same time, and have a child or children, shall be deemed to all

intents and purposes to be married, and either of the parties is

authorized to require of the ministers of the district to be married in

the face of the church.

[Sidenote: Concerning the same.]

22. And be it enacted, that, from and after the ---- of ----, all negro

men in an healthy condition, and so reported to be, in case the same is

denied, by a surgeon and by an inspector of negroes, and being

twenty-one years old, or upwards, until fifty, and not being before

married, shall, on requisition of the inspectors, be provided by their

masters or overseers with a woman not having children living, and not

exceeding the age of the man, nor, in any case, exceeding the age of

twenty-five years; and such persons shall be married publicly in the

face of the church.

[Sidenote: Concerning the same.]

23. And be it enacted, that, if any negro shall refuse a competent

marriage tendered to him, and shall not demand another specifically,

such as it may be in his master's power to provide, the master or

overseer shall be authorized to constrain him by an increase of work or

a lessening of allowance.

[Sidenote: Adultery, &c., how to be punished.]

24. And be it enacted, that the minister in each district shall have,

with the assent of the inspector, full power and authority to punish all

acts of adultery, unlawful concubinage, and fornication, amongst

negroes, on hearing and a summary process, by ordering a number of

blows, not exceeding ----, for each offence; and if any white person

shall be proved, on information in the supreme court, to be exhibited by

the protector of negroes, to have committed adultery with any negro

woman, or to have corrupted any negro woman under sixteen years of age

he shall be fined in the sum of ----, and shall be forever disabled from

serving the office of overseer of negroes, or being attorney to any

plantation.

[Sidenote: Concerning marriage.]

25. And be it enacted, that no slaves shall be compelled to do any work

for their masters for [three] days after their marriage.

[Sidenote: Concerning pregnant women.]

26. And be it enacted, that no woman shall be obliged to field-work, or

any other laborious work, for one month before her delivery, or for six

weeks afterwards.

[Sidenote: Separation of husband and wife, and children, to be avoided.]

27. And be it enacted, that no husband and wife shall be sold

separately, if originally belonging to the same master; nor shall any

children under sixteen be sold separately from their parents, or one

parent, if one be living.

[Sidenote: Concerning the same.]

28. And be it enacted, that, if an husband and wife, which before their

intermarriage belonged to different owners, shall be sold, they shall

not be sold at such a distance as to prevent mutual help and

cohabitation; and of this distance the minister shall judge, and his

certificate of the inconvenient distance shall be valid, so as to make

such sale unlawful, and to render the same null and void.

[Sidenote: Negroes not to work on Saturday afternoon or Sunday.]

29. And be it enacted, that no negro shall be compelled to work for his

owner at field-work, or any service relative to a plantation, or to work

at any handicraft trade, from eleven o'clock on Saturday forenoon until

the usual working hour on Monday morning.

[Sidenote: Other cases of exemption from labor.]

30. And whereas habits of industry and sobriety, and the means of

acquiring and preserving property, are proper and reasonable

preparatives to freedom, and will secure against an abuse of the same:

Be it enacted, that every negro man, who shall have served ten years,

and is thirty years of age, and is married, and has had two children

born of any marriage, shall obtain the whole of Saturday for himself and

his wife, and for his own benefit, and after thirty-seven years of age,

the whole of Friday for himself and his wife: provided that in both

cases the minister of the district and the inspector of negroes shall

certify that they know nothing against his peaceable, orderly, and

industrious behavior.

[Sidenote: Huts and land to be appropriated.]

31. And be it enacted, that the master of every plantation shall provide

the materials of a good and substantial hut for each married field

negro; and if his plantation shall exceed ---- acres, he shall allot to

the same a portion of land not less than ----: and the said hut and land

shall remain and stand annexed to the said negro, for his natural life,

or during his bondage; but the same shall not be alienated without the

consent of the owners.

[Sidenote: Property of negroes secured.]

32. And be it enacted, that it shall not be lawful for the owner of any

negro, by himself or any other, to take from him any land, house,

cattle, goods, or money, acquired by the said negro, whether by

purchase, donation, or testament, whether the same has been derived from

the owner of the said negro, or any other.

33. And be it enacted, that, if the said negro shall die possessed of

any lands, goods, or chattels, and dies without leaving a wife or issue,

it shall be lawful for the said negro to devise or bequeath the same by

his last will; but in case the said negro shall die intestate, and leave

a wife and children, the same shall be distributed amongst them,

according to the usage under the statute, commonly called the Statute of

Distributions; but if the said negro shall die intestate without wife or

children, then, and in that case, his estate shall go to the fund

provided for the better execution of this act.

34. And be it enacted, that no negro, who is married, and hath resided

upon any plantation for twelve months, shall be sold, either privately

or by the decree of any court, but along with the plantation on which he

hath resided, unless he should himself request to be separated

therefrom.

[Sidenote: Of the punishment of negroes.]

35. And be it enacted, that no blows or stripes exceeding thirteen,

shall be inflicted for one offence upon any negro, without the order of

one of his Majesty's justices of peace.

[Sidenote: Of the same.]

36. And it is enacted, that it shall be lawful for the protector of

negroes, as often as on complaint and hearing he shall be of opinion

that any negro hath been cruelly and inhumanly treated, or when it

shall be made to appear to him that an overseer hath any particular

malice, to order, at the desire of the suffering party, the said negro

to be sold to another master.

37. And be it enacted, that, in all cases of injury to member or life,

the offences against a negro shall be deemed and taken to all intents

and purposes as if the same were perpetrated against any of his

Majesty's subjects; and the protector of negroes, on complaint, or if he

shall receive credible information thereof, shall cause an indictment to

be presented for the same; and in case of suspicion of any murder of a

negro, an inquest by the coroner, or officer acting as such, shall, if

practicable, be held into the same.

[Sidenote: Of the manumission of negroes.]

38. And in order to a gradual manumission of slaves, as they shall seem

fitted to fill the offices of freemen, be it enacted, that every negro

slave, being thirty years of ago and upwards, and who has had three

children born to him in lawful matrimony, and who hath received a

certificate from the minister of his district, or any other Christian

teacher, of his regularity in the duties of religion, and of his orderly

and good behavior, may purchase, at rates to be fixed by two justices of

peace, the freedom of himself, or his wife or children, or of any of

them separately, valuing the wife and children, if purchased into

liberty by the father of the family, at half only of their marketable

values: provided that the said father shall bind himself in a penalty of

---- for the good behavior of his children.

[Sidenote: Of the same.]

39. And be it enacted, that it shall be lawful for the protector of

negroes to purchase the freedom of any negro who shall appear to him to

excel in any mechanical art, or other knowledge or practice deemed

liberal, and the value shall be settled by a jury.

[Sidenote: Free negroes how to be punished.]

40. And be it enacted, that the protector of negroes shall be and is

authorized and required to act as a magistrate for the coercion of all

idle, disobedient, or disorderly free negroes, and he shall by office

prosecute them for the offences of idleness, drunkenness, quarrelling,

gaming, or vagrancy, in the supreme court, or cause them to be

prosecuted before one justice of peace, as the case may require.

[Sidenote: Of the same.]

41. And be it enacted, that, if any free negro hath been twice convicted

for any of the said misdemeanors, and is judged by the said protector of

negroes, calling to his assistance two justices of the peace, to be

incorrigibly idle, dissolute, and vicious, it shall be lawful, by the

order of the said protector and two justices of peace, to sell the said

free negro into slavery: the purchase-money to be paid to the person so

remanded into servitude, or kept in hand by the protector and governor

for the benefit of his family.

[Sidenote: Governor to receive and transmit annual reports.]

42. And be it enacted, that the governor in each colony shall be

assistant to the execution of this act, and shall receive the reports of

the protector, and such other accounts as he shall judge material,

relative thereto, and shall transmit the same annually to one of his

Majesty's principal secretaries of state.

LETTER

TO

THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE MEETING,

HELD AT AYLESBURY, APRIL 13, 1780,

ON THE SUBJECT OF

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.

NOTE.

The meeting of the freeholders of the County of Buckingham,

which occasioned the following Letter, was called for the

purpose of taking into consideration a petition to Parliament

for shortening the duration of Parliaments, and for a more

equal representation of the people in the House of Commons.

Sir,--Having heard yesterday, by mere accident, that there is an

intention of laying before the county meeting _new matter, which is not

contained in our petition_, and the consideration of which had been

deferred to a fitter time by a majority of our committee in London,

permit me to take this method of submitting to you my reasons for

thinking, with our committee, that nothing ought to be hastily deter

mined upon the subject.

Our petition arose naturally from distresses which we _felt_; and the

requests which we made were in effect nothing more than that such things

should be done in Parliament as it was evidently the duty of Parliament

to do. But the affair which will be proposed to you by a person of rank

and ability is an alteration in the constitution of Parliament itself.

It is impossible for you to have a subject before you of more

importance, and that requires a more cool and more mature consideration,

both on its own account, and for the credit of our sobriety of mind, who

are to resolve upon it.

The county will in some way or other be called upon to declare it your

opinion, that the House of Commons is not sufficiently numerous, and

that the elections are not sufficiently frequent,--that an hundred new

knights of the shire ought to be added, and that we are to have a new

election once in three years for certain, and as much oftener as the

king pleases. Such will be the state of things, if the proposition made

shall take effect.

All this may be proper. But, as an honest man, I cannot possibly give my

rote for it, until I have considered it more fully. I will not deny that

our Constitution may have faults, and that those faults, when found,

ought to be corrected; but, on the whole, that Constitution has been our

own pride, and an object of admiration to all other nations. It is not

everything which appears at first view to be faulty, in such a

complicated plan, that is to be determined to be so in reality. To

enable us to correct the Constitution, the whole Constitution must be

viewed together; and it must be compared with the actual state of the

people, and the circumstances of the time. For that which taken singly

and by itself may appear to be wrong, when considered with relation to

other things, may be perfectly right,--or at least such as ought to be

patiently endured, as the means of preventing something that is worse.

So far with regard to what at first view may appear a _distemper_ in the

Constitution. As to the _remedy_ of that distemper an equal caution

ought to be used; because this latter consideration is not single and

separate, no more than the former. There are many things in reformation

which would be proper to be done, if other things can be done along with

them, but which, if they cannot be so accompanied, ought not to be done

at all. I therefore wish, when any new matter of this deep nature is

proposed to me, to have the whole scheme distinctly in my view, and full

time to consider of it. Please God, I will walk with caution, whenever I

am not able clearly to see my way before me.

I am now growing old. I have from my very early youth been conversant in

reading and thinking upon the subject of our laws and Constitution, as

well as upon those of other times and other countries; I have been for

fifteen years a very laborious member of Parliament, and in that time

have had great opportunities of seeing with my own eyes the working of

the machine of our government, and remarking where it went smoothly and

did its business, and where it checked in its movements, or where it

damaged its work; I have also had and used the opportunities of

conversing with men of the greatest wisdom and fullest experience in

those matters; and I do declare to you most solemnly and most truly,

that, on the result of all this reading, thinking, experience, and

communication, I am not able to come to an immediate resolution in favor

of a change of the groundwork of our Constitution, and in particular,

that, in the present state of the country, in the present state of our

representation, in the present state of our rights and modes of

electing, in the present state of the several prevalent interests, in

the present state of the affairs and manners of this country, the

addition of an hundred knights of the shire, and hurrying election on

election, will be things advantageous to liberty or good government.

This is the present condition of my mind; and this is my apology for not

going as fast as others may choose to go in this business. I do not by

any means reject the propositions; much less do I condemn the gentlemen

who, with equal good intentions, with much better abilities, and with

infinitely greater personal weight and consideration than mine, are of

opinion that this matter ought to be decided upon instantly.

I most heartily wish that the deliberate sense of the kingdom on this

great subject should be known. When it is known, it _must_ be prevalent.

It would be dreadful indeed, if there was any power in the nation

capable of resisting its unanimous desire, or even the desire of any

very great and decided majority of the people. The people may be

deceived in their choice of an object; but I can scarcely conceive any

choice they can make to be so very mischievous as the existence of any

human force capable of resisting it. It will certainly be the duty of

every man, in the situation to which God has called him, to give his

best opinion and advice upon the matter: it will _not_ be his duty, let

him think what he will, to use any violent or any fraudulent means of

counteracting the general wish, or even of employing the legal and

constructive organ of expressing the people's sense against the sense

which they do actually entertain.

In order that the real sense of the people should be known upon so great

an affair as this, it is of absolute necessity that timely notice should

be given,--that the matter should be prepared in open committees, from a

choice into which no class or description of men is to be excluded,--and

the subsequent county meetings should be as full and as well attended as

possible. Without these precautions, the true sense of the people will

ever be uncertain. Sure I am, that no precipitate resolution on a great

change in the fundamental constitution of any country can ever be called

the real sense of the people.

I trust it will not be taken amiss, if, as an inhabitant and freeholder

of this county, (one, indeed, among the most inconsiderable,) I assert

my right of dissenting (as I do dissent fully and directly) from any

resolution whatsoever on the subject of an alteration in the

representation and election of the kingdom _at this time_. By preserving

this light, and exercising it with temper and moderation, I trust I

cannot offend the noble proposer, for whom no man professes or feels

more respect and regard than I do. A want of concurrence in _everything_

which _can_ be proposed will in no sort weaken the energy or distract

the efforts of men of upright intentions upon those points in which they

are agreed. Assemblies that are met, and with a resolution to be all of

a mind, are assemblies that can have no opinion at all of their own. The

first proposer of any measure must be their master. I do not know that

an amicable variety of sentiment, conducted with mutual good-will, has

any sort of resemblance to discord, or that it can give any advantage

whatsoever to the enemies of our common cause. On the contrary, a forced

and fictitious agreement (which every universal agreement must be) is

not becoming the cause of freedom. If, however, any evil should arise

from it, (which I confess I do not foresee,) I am happy that those who

have brought forward new and arduous matter, when very great doubts and

some diversity of opinion must be foreknown, are of authority and weight

enough to stand against the consequences.

I humbly lay these my sentiments before the county. They are not taken

up to serve any interests of my own, or to be subservient to the

interests of any man or set of men under heaven. I could wish to be able

to attend our meeting, or that I had time to reason this matter more

fully by letter; but I am detained here upon our business: what you have

already put upon us is as much as we can do. If we are prevented from

going through it with any effect, I fear it will be in part owing not

more to the resistance of the enemies of our cause than to our imposing

on ourselves such tasks as no human faculties, employed as we are, can

be equal to. Our worthy members have shown distinguished ability and

zeal in support of our petition. I am just going down to a bill brought

in to frustrate a capital part of your desires. The minister is

preparing to transfer the cognizance of the public accounts from those

whom you and the Constitution have chosen to control them, to unknown

persons, creatures of his own. For so much he annihilates Parliament.

I have the honor, &c.

EDMUND BURKE.

CHARLES STREET, 12th April, 1780.

FRAGMENTS OF A TRACT

RELATIVE TO

THE LAWS AGAINST POPERY

IN IRELAND.

NOTE.

The condition of the Roman Catholics in Ireland appears to

lave engaged the attention of Mr. Burke at a very early

period of his political life. It was probably soon after the

year 1765 that he formed the plan of a work upon that

subject, the fragments of which are now given to the public.

No title is prefixed to it in the original manuscript; and

the _Plan_, which it has been thought proper to insert here,

was evidently designed merely for the convenience of the

author. Of the first chapter some unconnected fragments only,

too imperfect for publication, have been found. Of the second

there is a considerable portion, perhaps nearly the whole;

but the copy from which it is printed is evidently a first

rough draught. The third chapter, as far as it goes, is taken

from a fair, corrected copy; but the end of the second part

of the first head is left unfinished, and the discussion of

the second and third heads was either never entered upon or

the manuscript containing it has unfortunately been lost.

What follows the third chapter appears to have been designed

for the beginning of the fourth, and is evidently the first

rough draught; and to this we have added a fragment which

appears to have been a part either of this or the first

chapter.

In the volume with which it is intended to close this

posthumous publication of Mr. Burke's Works, we shall have

occasion to enter into a more particular account of the part

which he took in the discussion of this great political

question. At present it may suffice to say, that the Letter

to Mr. Smith, the Second Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe,

and the Letter to his Son, which here follow in order the

Fragment on the Popery Laws, are the only writings upon this

subject found amongst his papers in a state fit to appear in

this stage of the publication. What remain are some small

fragments of the Tract, and a few letters containing no new

matter of importance.

TRACT

ON THE POPERY LAWS

THE PLAN.

I propose, first, to make an Introduction, in order to show the

propriety of a closer inspection into the affairs of Ireland; and this

takes up the first chapter, which is to be spent in this introductory

matter, and in stating the Popery laws in general, as one leading cause

of the imbecility of the country.

CH. II. states particularly the laws themselves, in a plain and popular

manner.

CH. III. begins the remarks upon them, under the heads of, 1st, The

object,--which is a numerous people; 2ndly, Their means,--a restraint on

property; 3rdly, Their instruments of execution,--corrupted morals,

which affect the national prosperity.

CH. IV. The impolicy of those laws, as they affect the national

security.

CH. V. Reasons by which the laws are supported, and answers to them.

CHAPTER II.

In order to lay this matter with full satisfaction before the reader, I

shall collect into one point of view, and state as shortly and as

clearly as I am able, the purport of these laws, according to the

objects which they affect, without making at present any further

observation upon them, but just what shall be necessary to render the

drift; and intention of the legislature and the tendency and operation

of the laws the more distinct and evident.

I shall begin with those which relate to the possession and inheritance

of landed property in Popish hands. The first operation of those acts

upon this object was wholly to change the course of descent by the

Common Law, to take away the right of primogeniture, and, in lieu

thereof, to substitute and establish a new species of Statute Gavelkind.

By this law, on the death of a Papist possessed of an estate in fee

simple or in fee tail, the land is to be divided by equal portions

between all the male children; and those portions are likewise to be

parcelled out, share and share alike, amongst the descendants of each

son, and so to proceed in a similar distribution _ad infinitum_. From

this regulation it was proposed that some important consequences should

follow. First, by taking away the right of primogeniture, perhaps in the

very first generation, certainly in the second, the families of Papists,

however respectable, and their fortunes, however considerable, would be

wholly dissipated, and reduced to obscurity and indigence, without any

possibility that they should repair them by their industry or

abilities,--being, as we shall see anon, disabled from every species of

permanent acquisition. Secondly, by this law the right of testamentation

is taken away, which the inferior tenures had always enjoyed, and all

tenures from the 27th Hen. VIII; Thirdly, the right of settlement was

taken away, that no such persons should, from the moment the act passed,

be enabled to advance themselves in fortune or connection by marriage,

being disabled from making any disposition, in consideration of such

marriage, but what the law had previously regulated: the reputable

establishment of the eldest son, as representative of the family, or to

settle a jointure, being commonly the great object in such settlements,

which was the very power which the law had absolutely taken away.

The operation of this law, however certain, might be too slow. The

present possessors might happen to be long-lived. The legislature knew

the natural impatience of expectants, and upon this principle they gave

encouragement to children to anticipate the inheritance. For it is

provided, that the eldest son of any Papist shall, immediately on his

conformity, change entirely the nature and properties of his father's

legal estate: if he before held in fee simple, or, in other words, had

the entire and absolute dominion over the land, he is reduced to an

estate for his life only, with all the consequences of the natural

debility of that estate, by which he becomes disqualified to sell,

mortgage, charge, (except for his life,) or in any wise to do any act by

which he may raise money for relief in his most urgent necessities. The

eldest son, so conforming, immediately acquires, and in the lifetime of

his father, the permanent part, what our law calls the reversion and

inheritance of the estate; and he discharges it by retrospect, and

annuls every sort of voluntary settlement made by the father ever so

long before his conversion. This he may sell or dispose of immediately,

and alienate it from the family forever.

Having thus reduced his father's estate, he may also bring his father

into the Court of Chancery, where he may compel him to swear to the

value of his estate, and to allow him out of that possession (which had

been before reduced to an estate for life) such an immediate annual

allowance as the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper shall judge suitable to

his ago and quality.

This indulgence is not confined to the eldest son. The other children

likewise, by conformity, may acquire the same privileges, and in the

same manner force from their father an immediate and independent

maintenance. It is very well worth remarking, that the statutes have

avoided to fix any determinate age for these emancipating conversions;

so that the children, at any age, however incapable of choice in other

respects, however immature or even infantile, are yet considered

sufficiently capable to disinherit their parents, and totally to

subtract themselves from their direction and control, either at their

own option, or by the instigation of others. By this law the tenure and

value of a Roman Catholic in his real property is not only rendered

extremely limited and altogether precarious, but the paternal power is

in all such families so enervated that it may well be considered as

entirely taken away; even the principle upon which it is founded seems

to be directly reversed. However, the legislature feared that enough was

not yet done upon this head. The Roman Catholic parent, by selling his

real estate, might in some sort preserve the dominion over his substance

and his family, and thereby evade the operation of these laws, which

intended to take away both. Besides, frequent revolutions and many

conversions had so broken the landed property of Papists in that

kingdom, that it was apprehended that this law could have in a short

time but a few objects upon which it would be capable of operating.

To obviate these inconveniences another law was made, by which the

dominion of children over their parents was extended universally

throughout the whole Popish part of the nation, and every child of every

Popish parent was encouraged to come into what is called a court of

equity, to prefer a bill against his father, and compel him to confess,

upon oath, the quantity and value of his substance, personal as well as

real, of what nature soever, or howsoever it might be employed; upon

which discovery, the court is empowered to seize upon and allocate, for

the immediate maintenance of such child or children, any sum not

exceeding a third of the whole fortune: and as to their future

establishment on the death of the father, no limits are assigned; the

Chancery may, if it thinks fit, take the whole property, personal as

well as real, money, stock in trade, &c, out of the power of the

possessor, and secure it in any manner they judge expedient for that

purpose; for the act has not assigned any sort of limit with regard to

the quantity which is to be charged, or given any direction concerning

the means of charging and securing it: a law which supersedes all

observation.

But the law is still more extensive in its provision. Because there was

a possibility that the parent, though sworn, might by false

representations evade the discovery of the ultimate value of his estate,

a new bill may be at any time brought, by one, any, or all of the

children, for a further discovery; his effects are to undergo a fresh

scrutiny, and a now distribution is to be made in consequence of it. So

that the parent has no security against perpetual inquietude, and the

reiteration of Chancery suits, but by (what is somewhat difficult for

human nature to comply with) fully, and without reserve, abandoning his

whole property to the discretion of the court, to be disposed of in

favor of such children.

But is this enough, and has the parent purchased his repose by such a

surrender? Very far from it. The law expressly, and very carefully,

provides that he shall not: before he can be secure from the persecution

of his children, it requires another and a much more extraordinary

condition: the children are authorized, if they can find that their

parent has by his industry, or otherwise, increased the value of his

property since their first bill, to bring another, compelling a new

account of the value of his estate, in order to a new distribution

proportioned to the value of the estate at the time of the new bill

preferred. They may bring such bills, _toties quoties_, upon every

improvement of his fortune, without any sort of limitation of time, or

regard to the frequency of such bills, or to the quantity of the

increase of the estate, which shall justify the bringing them. This act

expressly provides that he shall have no respite from the persecution of

his children, but by totally abandoning all thoughts of improvement and

acquisition.

This is going a great way, surely: but the laws in question have gone

much further. Not satisfied with calling upon children to revolt against

their parents, and to possess themselves of their substance, there are

cases where the withdrawing of the child from his father's obedience is

not left to the option of the child himself: for, if the wife of a Roman

Catholic should choose to change her religion, from that moment she

deprives her husband of all management and direction of his children,

and even of all the tender satisfaction which a parent can feel in their

society, and which is the only indemnification he can have for all his

cares and sorrows; and they are to be torn forever, at the earliest age,

from his house and family: for the Lord Chancellor is not only

authorized, but he is strongly required, to take away all his children

from such Popish parent, to appoint where, in what manner, and by whom

they are to be educated; and the father is compelled to pay, not for the

ransom, but for the deprivation of his children, and to furnish such a

sum as the Chancellor thinks proper to appoint for their education to

the age of eighteen years. The case is the same, if the husband should

be the conformist; though how the law is to operate in this case I do

not see: for the act expressly says, that the child shall be taken from

such Popish parent; and whilst such husband and wife cohabit, it will be

impossible to put it into execution without taking the child from one as

well as from the other; and then the effect of the law will be, that, if

either husband or wife becomes Protestant, both are to be deprived of

their children.

The paternal power thus being wholly abrogated, it is evident that by

the last regulation the power of an husband over his wife is also

considerably impaired; because, if it be in her power, whenever she

pleases, to subtract the children from his protection and obedience, she

herself by that hold inevitably acquires a power and superiority over

her husband.

But she is not left dependent upon this oblique influence: for, if in

any marriage settlement the husband has reserved to him a power of

making a jointure, and he dies without settling any, her conformity

executes his powers, and executes them in as large extent as the

Chancellor thinks fit. The husband is deprived of that coercive power

over his wife which he had in his hands by the use he might make of the

discretionary power reserved in the settlement.

But if no such power had been reserved, and no such settlement existed,

yet, if the husband dies, leaving his conforming wife without a filed

provision by some settlement on his real estate, his wife may apply to

Chancery, where she shall be allotted a portion from his leases, and

other personal estate, not exceeding one third of his whole clear

substance. The laws in this instance, as well as in the former, have

presumed that the husband has omitted to make all the provision which he

might have done, for no other reason than that of her religion. If,

therefore, she chooses to balance any domestic misdemeanors to her

husband by the public merit of conformity to the Protestant religion,

the law will suffer no plea of such misdemeanors to be urged on the

husband's part, nor proof of that kind to be entered into. She acquires

a provision totally independent of his favor, and deprives him of that

source of domestic authority which the Common Law had left to him, that

of rewarding or punishing, by a voluntary distribution of his effects,

what in his opinion was the good or ill behavior of his wife.

Thus the laws stand with regard to the property already acquired, to its

mode of descent, and to family powers. Now as to the new acquisition of

real property, and both to the acquisition and security of personal, the

law stands thus:--

All persons of that persuasion are disabled from taking or purchasing,

directly or by a trust, any lands, any mortgage upon land, any rents or

profits from land, any lease, interest, or term of any land, any

annuity for life or lives or years, or any estate whatsoever, chargeable

upon, or which may in any manner affect, any lands.

One exception, and one only, is admitted by the statutes to the

universality of this exclusion, viz., a lease for a term not exceeding

thirty-one years. But even this privilege is charged with a prior

qualification. This remnant of a right is doubly curtailed: 1st, that on

such a short lease a rent not less than two thirds of the full improved

yearly value, at the time of the making it, shall be reserved during the

whole continuance of the term; and, 2ndly, it does not extend to the

whole kingdom. This lease must also be in possession, and not in

reversion. If any lease is made, exceeding either in duration or value,

and in the smallest degree, the above limits, the whole interest is

forfeited, and vested _ipso facto_ in the first Protestant discoverer or

informer. This discoverer, thus invested with the property, is enabled

to sue for it as his own right. The courts of law are not alone open to

him; he may (and this is the usual method) enter into either of the

courts of equity, and call upon the parties, and those whom he suspects

to be their trustees, upon oath, and under the penalties of perjury, to

discover against themselves the exact nature and value of their estates

in every particular, in order to induce their forfeiture on the

discovery. In such suits the informer is not liable to those delays

which the ordinary procedure of those courts throws into the way of the

justest claimant; nor has the Papist the indulgence which he [it?]

allows to the most fraudulent defendant, that of plea and demurrer; but

the defendant is obliged to answer the whole directly upon oath. The

rule of _favores ampliandi,_ &c., is reversed by this act, lest any

favor should be shown, or the force and operation of the law in any part

of its progress be enervated. All issues to be tried on this act are to

be tried by none but known Protestants.

It is here necessary to state as a part of this law what has been for

some time generally understood as a certain consequence of it. The act

had expressly provided that a Papist could possess no sort of estate

which might affect land (except as before excepted). On this a

difficulty did, not unnaturally, arise. It is generally known, a

judgment being obtained or acknowledged for any debt, since the statute

of Westm. 2, 13 Ed. I. c. 18, one half of the debtor's land is to be

delivered unto the creditor until the obligation is satisfied, under a

writ called _Elegit_, and this writ has been ever since the ordinary

assurance of the land, and the great foundation of general credit in the

nation. Although the species of holding under this writ is not specified

in the statute, the received opinion, though not juridically delivered,

has been, that, if they attempt to avail themselves of that security,

because it may create an estate, however precarious, in land, their

whole debt or charge is forfeited, and becomes the property of the

Protestant informer. Thus you observe, first, that by the express words

of the law all possibility of acquiring any species of valuable

property, in any sort connected with land, is taken away; and, secondly,

by the construction all security for money is also cut off. No security

is left, except what is merely personal, and which, therefore, most

people who lend money would, I believe, consider as none at all.

Under this head of the acquisition of property, the law meets them in

every road of industry, and in its direct and consequential provisions

throws almost all sorts of obstacles in their way. For they are not only

excluded from all offices in Church and State, which, though a just and

necessary provision, is yet no small restraint in the acquisition, but

they are interdicted from the army, and the law, in all its branches.

This point is carried to so scrupulous a severity, that chamber

practice, and even private conveyancing, the most voluntary agency, are

prohibited to them under the severest penalties and the most rigid modes

of inquisition. They have gone beyond even this: for every barrister,

six clerk, attorney, or solicitor, is obliged to take a solemn oath not

to employ persons of that persuasion,--no, not as hackney clerks, at the

miserable salary of seven shillings a week. No tradesman of that

persuasion is capable by any service or settlement to obtain his freedom

in any town corporate; so that they trade and work in their own native

towns as aliens, paying, as such, quarterage, and other charges and

impositions. They are expressly forbidden, in whatever employment, to

take more than two apprentices, except in the linen manufacture only.

* * * * *

In every state, next to the care of the life and properties of the

subject, the education of their youth has been a subject of attention.

In the Irish laws this point has not been neglected. Those who are

acquainted with the constitution of our universities need not be

informed that none but those who conform to the Established Church can

be at all admitted to study there, and that none can obtain degrees in

them who do not previously take all the tests, oaths, and declarations.

Lest they should be enabled to supply this defect by private academies

and schools of their own, the law has armed itself with all its terrors

against such a practice. Popish schoolmasters of every species are

proscribed by those acts, and it is made felony to teach even in a

private family. So that Papists are entirely excluded from an education

in any of our authorized establishments for learning at home. In order

to shut up every avenue to instruction, the act of King William in

Ireland has added to this restraint by precluding them from all foreign

education.

This act is worthy of attention on account of the singularity of some of

its provisions. Being sent for education to any Popish school or college

abroad, upon conviction, incurs (if the party sent has any estate of

inheritance) a kind of unalterable and perpetual outlawry. The tender

and incapable age of such a person, his natural subjection to the will

of others, his necessary, unavoidable ignorance of the laws, stands for

nothing in his favor. He is disabled to sue in law or equity; to be

guardian, executor, or administrator; he is rendered incapable of any

legacy or deed of gift; he forfeits all his goods and chattels forever;

and he forfeits for his life all his lands, hereditaments, offices, and

estate of freehold, and all trusts, powers, or interests therein. All

persons concerned in sending them or maintaining them abroad, by the

least assistance of money or otherwise, are involved in the same

disabilities, and subjected to the same penalties.

The mode of conviction is as extraordinary as the penal sanctions of

this act. A justice of peace, upon information that any child is sent

away, may require to be brought before him all persons charged or even

suspected of sending or assisting, and examine them and other persons

on oath concerning the fact. If on this examination he finds it

_probable_ that the party was sent contrary to this act, he is then, to

bind over the parties and witnesses in any sum he thinks fit, but not

less than two hundred pounds, to appear and take their trial at the next

quarter sessions. Here the justices are to reexamine evidence, until

they arrive, as before, to what shall appear to them a probability. For

the rest they resort to the accused: if they can prove that any person,

or any money, or any bill of exchange, has been sent abroad by the party

accused, they throw the proof upon him to show for what innocent

purposes it was sent; and on failure of such proof, he is subjected to

all the above-mentioned penalties. Half the forfeiture is given to the

crown; the other half goes to the informer.

It ought here to be remarked, that this mode of conviction not only

concludes the party has failed in his expurgatory proof, but it is

sufficient also to subject to the penalties and incapacities of the law

the infant upon whose account the person has been so convicted. It must

be confessed that the law has not left him without some species of

remedy in this case apparently of much hardship, where one man is

convicted upon evidence given against another, if he has the good

fortune to live; for, within a twelvemonth after his return, or his age

of twenty-one, he has a, right to call for a new trial, in which he also

is to undertake the negative proof, and to show by sufficient evidence

that he has not been sent abroad against the intention of the act. If he

succeeds in this difficult exculpation, and demonstrates his innocence

to the satisfaction of the court, he forfeits all his goods and

chattels, and all the profits of his lands incurred and received before

such acquittal; but he is freed from all other forfeitures, and from all

subsequent incapacities. There is also another method allowed by the law

in favor of persons under such unfortunate circumstances, as in the

former case for their innocence, in this upon account of their

expiation: if within six months after their return, with the punctilious

observation of many ceremonies, they conform to the Established Church,

and take all the oaths and subscriptions, the legislature, in

consideration of the incapable age in which they were sent abroad, of

the merit of their early conformity, and to encourage conversions, only

confiscates, as in the former case, the whole personal estate, and the

profits of the real; in all other respects, restoring and rehabilitating

the party.

* * * * *

So far as to property and education. There remain some other heads upon

which the acts have changed the course of the Common Law; and first,

with regard to the right of self-defence, which consists in the use of

arms. This, though one of the rights by the law of Nature, yet is so

capable of abuses that it may not be unwise to make some regulations

concerning them; and many wise nations have thought proper to set

several restrictions on this right, especially temporary ones, with

regard to suspected persons, and on occasion of some imminent danger to

the public from foreign invasion or domestic commotions.

But provisions in time of trouble proper, and perhaps necessary, may

become in time of profound peace a scheme of tyranny. The method which

the statute law of Ireland has taken upon this delicate article is, to

get rid of all difficulties at once by an universal prohibition to all

persons, at all times, and under all circumstances, who are not

Protestants, of using or keeping any kind of weapons whatsoever. In

order to enforce this regulation, the whole spirit of the Common Law is

changed, very severe penalties are enjoined, the largest powers are

vested in the lowest magistrates. Any two justices of peace, or

magistrates of a town, with or without information, at their pleasure,

by themselves or their warrant, are empowered to enter and search the

house of any Papist, or even of any other person, whom they suspect to

keep such arms in trust for them. The only limitation to the extent of

this power is, that the search is to be made between the rising and

setting of the sun: but even this qualification extends no further than

to the execution of the act in the open country; for in all cities and

their suburbs, in towns corporate and market-towns, they may at their

discretion, and without information, break open houses and institute

such search at any hour of the day or night. This, I say, they may do at

their discretion; and it seems a pretty ample power in the hands of such

magistrates. However, the matter does by no means totally rest on their

discretion. Besides the discretionary and occasional search, the statute

has prescribed one that is general and periodical. It is to be made

annually, by the warrant of the justices at their midsummer quarter

sessions, by the high and petty constables, or any others whom they may

authorize, and by all corporate magistrates, in all houses of Papists,

and every other where they suspect arms for the use of such persons to

be concealed, with the same powers, in all respects, which attend the

occasional search. The whole of this regulation, concerning both the

general and particular search, seems to have been made by a legislature

which was not at all extravagantly jealous of personal liberty. Not

trusting, however, to the activity of the magistrate acting officially,

the law has invited all voluntary informers by considerable rewards, and

even pressed involuntary informers into this service by the dread of

heavy penalties. With regard to the latter method, two justices of

peace, or the magistrate of any corporation, are empowered to summon

before them any persons whatsoever, to tender them an oath by which they

oblige them to discover all persons who have any arms concealed contrary

to law. Their refusal or declining to appear, or, appearing, their

refusal to inform, subjects them to the severest penalties. If peers or

peeresses are summoned (for they may be summoned by the bailiff of a

corporation of six cottages) to perform this honorable service, and

refuse to inform, the first offence is three hundred pounds penalty; the

second is _præmunire_,--that is to say, imprisonment for life, and

forfeiture of all their goods. Persons of an inferior order are, for the

first offence, fined thirty pounds; for the second, they, too, are

subjected to _præmunire_. So far as to involuntary;--now as to voluntary

informers: the law entitles them to half the penalty incurred by

carrying or keeping arms; for, on conviction of this offence, the

penalty upon persons, of whatever substance, is the sum of fifty pounds

and a year's imprisonment, which cannot be remitted even by the crown.

The only exception to this law is a license from the Lord Lieutenant and

Council to carry arms, which, by its nature, is extremely limited, and I

do not suppose that there are six persons now in the kingdom who have

been fortunate enough to obtain it.

* * * * *

There remains, after this system concerning property and defence, to say

something concerning the exercise of religion, winch is carried on in

all persuasions, but especially in the Romish, by persons appointed for

that purpose. The law of King William and Queen Anne ordered all Popish

parsons exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction, all orders of monks and

friars, and all priests, not then actually in parishes, and to be

registered, to be banished the kingdom; and if they should return from

exile, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Twenty pounds reward is given

for apprehending them. Penalty on harboring and concealing.

As all the priests then in being and registered are long since dead, and

as these laws are made perpetual, every Popish priest is liable to the

law.

* * * * *

The reader has now before him a tolerably complete view of the Popery

laws relative to property by descent or acquisition, to education, to

defence, and to the free exercise of religion, which may be necessary to

enable him to form some judgment of the spirit of the whole system, and

of the subsequent reflections that are to be made upon it.